One of the beliefs of my faith tradition is in the “independent investigation of truth”. What I’ve taken that to mean is to be willing to dig deeper into the truth of matters for yourself and not just take everything at face value.

Many times, we rely on “truisms” which could be a claim that is so obvious it is hardly worth mentioning such as “the sun will rise in the morning. But a truism can also be a saying about people or an accepted truth about life in general that may or may not actually be true. It’s easy to see truisms in the latter context when we group a huge populace of people together into one generality such as “all blondes are dumb”. I know for a fact that isn’t true because I have several very smart blonde friends including at least one who is a Ph.D. (shout out to Ginger and Terri!).

Let it be said that I am as guilty as the next person (probably a form of a truism) for using truisms about ideas and beliefs and people and situations and oh…I don’t know…let’s throw politics and political debate into the pile! Part of the reason I do slide into accepting a truism as fact is because it’s something I’ve always done. I’ve apathetically resorted to the person/idea/place with the strongest truism and not thought to explore it further. I don’t do this about everything, but some things I do. Especially if the subject matter is hot wired to push a lot of buttons in people or make them feel like someone is poking them in the eye if they disagree.

When it comes to a hot subject such as immigration for instance, I would suggest that independent investigation of truth would be a really good exercise in exploration. Interviewing people from all kinds of sides of the issue. Reading material and listening to people from all kinds of sources with varied opinions and facts. And while doing this, keeping your mind open for new ideas to occur. In the hallowed halls of 12-step meetings they encourage us to “take what we want and delete the rest” which is good AND when investigating truth don’t be too hasty to delete something from your mind/heart/beliefs just because you don’t agree. Follow it through to understand why you don’t agree. Get some facts in there. Not just other people’s opinions. I know, I know, I can feel a big ole wad of all of this coming back to me to stuff into my own pipe to smoke–and gladly I will!

This blog came up for me when I started thinking of some of the large groups of people who I am connected with in life. Even if you took a look at some of my SNS friends, you can see that I know and love a wide variety of people with many different viewpoints. I love them all. I am blessed to have friends who face opposite sides of the street from each other and to be able to know them and love them for who they are. One of the reasons I can do this is because I pray often to have an open mind and to be able to keep an open mind so that I can investigate for the truth of a situation for myself and to take what I want and leave the rest.

Guess what color “flesh” Crayola Crayon was back in the day? As if there was only one color of flesh. Same with panty hose! This has been in my lifetime that our large community has been able to see the facts of the truism about the color of flesh.

So what I’d like to leave you with today is to notice the truisms that float in and out of your life and if one snags somewhere in your mind or heart, follow it through and investigate what the real truth is about what is being said or believed!