There it was plain….needing something that wasn't? I could not help but chuckle. "Remembering and imagining," I thought, "well, ain't it the truth?" Robert Fulghum has said that imagination is stronger than fact. Maybe my fellow progressive preacher had captured a cosmic truth. "What if," I said out loud smiling at the thought. I took control of my imagination and intentions and made the turns necessary to get to the Old Stone Bridge Park near the River. I wasn't ready for the barrenness of facts. Pretend and Mr. Jones' mysteries were much more comfortable.
It was a little after four o'clock on an overcast, blustery, October day. Rain was promised and the faded gray vault set snuggly over the sad yellow browns and dying greens of fall foliage. As I looked to the southern horizon, the sky appeared the color of light gray marble popular for funeral monuments.
My thoughts were of the fry cook's teachings about honesty. As I sat stirring ideas in my thinking, I realized she had not spoken directly of hypocrisy. What about believing and feeling one way while acting another? Where is honesty when taking one position outwardly but inwardly believing the opposite: acting contrary to avowed positions or, when it really matters, betraying what you'd pledged? Is it simply an issue of dishonesty, hypocrisy, or more troublesome qualities: denial, delusion, and the worshipping of false gods?
Hypocrisy is sinister and covert: a corruption of accountability and honor. Is that not a special category of dishonesty? "There are sins of commission and omission," thus sayeth the preacher. Commission is with full knowledge and evil self-justification. Omission is a symptom of the lack of awareness and of self-knowledge. The former is willful and the latter ignorance.
With my body weary and my mind tired, I resolved to head towards Mother's. Sister had promised her corn bread, pintos, and pan-fried potatoes and I had said I'd fix pork shoulder for supper. I do occasionally protest dietary orthodoxy. I'd go on home and get the potatoes peeled and sliced and the shoulder ready to cook. We'd be ready to do the cooking when she got home from work. Just as that decision was made, I heard the tap-tap of his cane a way off behind me. Expelling a nearly full breath, I stood to greet my phantom. More work for me. What had I wanted? Hadn't I griped about the preference for pretense and mystery over confronting our lazy avoidance of the harshness that is basic to the real?
"Mr. Jones, I wasn't sure you'd find me." I bent candor quite a bit because it seemed easier than a dissertation on what I'd been working through for most of the day.