Searching for The Truth

“He felt that the truth was about to reveal itself, and yet it was disconcerting.”  

Detective Harry Bosch

I am always reading some book or another.  Well, in truth, I’m always “listening” to some book or series of books on my IPhone.  I’ve been cycling through Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch novels about a gritty homicide detective based in Los Angeles/Hollywood.  Good stuff, if you like police dramas and detective stories.  But dark stuff, as well.  Bosch considers finding murderers his calling – his vocation – and his only concern is finding the truth, no matter what the cost.  And sometimes that cost is his own soul.  

I’ve never had any interest in being a cop, but the law has always fascinated me.  Ever since I was a kid I wanted to be a lawyer.  I imagine it stemmed from going to work with my mother who worked for a court reporter at the Federal Courthouse in downtown Philadelphia.  601 Market Street.  I can still remember the address more than 20 years later, and if you want to hop on a train with me from the Berwyn station on the Main Line outside of Philadelphia I could take you right there without missing a step.  It was within spitting distance of Ben Franklin’s house, Betsy Ross’s house, the Liberty Bell and Independence Mall.  You could smell history in the air mixed with the exhaust from Septa buses and the aroma of hot dogs and pretzels out of the stands on the street corners.  I loved being downtown in the hustle and bustle, especially during the holidays.  We used to buy purses (we called the pocketbooks out east) and socks from the vendors who set up outside the mall, and there was a jewelry lady on a corner close by where we always stopped to look at earrings.  And of course, it wouldn’t be a trip to the city without some strange man opening a trench coat lined with toothbrushes and other personal toiletry items to sell.  “Just keep walking and don’t look at them,” my mother would always say.  And that’s how I learned to survive in the city without being pegged as a tourist.  

I loved going to work with her – riding the train with all the men and women in suits clutching their briefcases; watching the women fast-walk in their gleaming white sneakers (high heels hidden in their briefcases, of course); going through the metal detector at the courthouse where the security guards all knew my mother because of the hours she worked – a lot of nights – and the flower she wore in her hair.  That kind of fashion faux pas was acceptable in the 70’s and 80’s, and in those days the metal detector did not object to the small pair of scissors in her purse which she used to clutch in her hand when walking to the train station late at night.  She was city-tough and beautiful to boot.

One of the things I loved and remembered most was the food eaten on these trips.  (You see?  Even then I loved food.)  We always got off the train at Market East, the last stop on the R5 line into downtown.  This dumped you out into The Gallery - the mall where I once got separated from my mother while shopping on Christmas Eve, and she not only had my brother and sister posted on the second floor so they could scan the crowd for me but also had the police on the lookout.  I can’t imagine how freaked out she was.  Of course, I was walking around without a worry from store to store, and even though I couldn’t find my mother I knew my grandmother was waiting in the train station for us to finish.  I had actually stopped to sit with her for a few seconds before I went back out into the mall to look for my mom.  Of course, when I was found by my brother and sister who screamed, “There she is!” from the second floor loud enough for Jesus to hear it, I got the angry, “Where were you???” yell from my mother which no doubt masked the building fear underneath.  But I digress.

When the weather was bad, you could walk from the Gallery through a small, indoor food market, then past a few decorative windows that looked into fabled downtown department stores like Abram and Strauss as you entered into another smaller mall/office building called the Mellon Independence Center.  This was a bit more posh and served a lot of the business people through its restaurants – the obligatory Au Bon Pain and Dunkin Donuts, plus a number of other small “mom and pop” type stands where you could get a quick lunch and/or breakfast to go on your way to the office.  These little shops opened up into a large, atrium of gray and black marble with many small tables and a baby grand piano keep people occupied while they munched.  I loved this place.  But work waits for no one.  We would take the escalator upstairs and walk out the front doors onto Market Street.  From here, the courthouse was just on the next block over.  But first, a stop on 7th street at the first stand to grab a fruit salad for lunch.  Yum.  But enough about food.

The federal courthouse was perhaps not the most imposing building in the city, but you felt the importance of it as you walked in the doors.  This was the place where Cosa Nostra was put on trial, for crying out loud.  The hallowed halls of history and justice.  There were 3 or 4 revolving doors at the entrance of the tall, brick building which turned you out into a large, dark foyer with several escalators up to the main lobby area.  The ceilings were impossibly high, and as a small person you felt as if you were walking into a temple of sorts.  And in a way, I believe that’s what these places are supposed to be – a temple for the truth.  

Any attorney reading this is probably laughing their socks off at this point.  And perhaps those of you out there that have been involved in any legal action are laughing as well.  But I do believe that in its essence, the practice of law and the legal system are about the search for The Truth.  In reality, it seems the proper definition would be that they are the search for A Truth - perhaps not The Truth - that those involved in the argument can agree upon or must be forced to accept.  Perhaps even a shade of The Truth, or in some cases a complete reconstruction of it.  But underneath it all there is still the quest for the actual truth and I believe that there are still a few faithful seekers out there who haven’t given up the quest.

Why are you talking about these things in the middle of Advent, Nicole?  Well, because I think those of us who are seeking something – some name it as God, some as inner peace, some as spirituality – are actually seeking The Truth, not A Truth.  And The Truth is a hard thing to find and define, whether it is the truth of a human situation or the spiritual truth of our existence.  And while Advent (and Lent, for that matter) is a season of waiting and preparation, it is also a season of seeking, just as three “Wise Men” sought the birth of a small, defenseless child in the middle of a desert.  Think of how ridiculous and impossible a task that was – ridiculous and impossible without a ridiculous and impossible faith to guide them to The Truth which they knew in their hearts they would find.     

The journey to The Truth is an impossible journey.  And at times a ridiculous one.  But a necessary one, all the same.  And at some point we have to come to the realization that when we find the truth, we are most likely incapable of understanding it and accepting it because it is JUST TOO BIG for us, even though it may seem so small and so simple.  And that is indeed disconcerting.  But we keep seeking, just the same.  I think it’s built into our DNA.  We can only live in darkness for so long until it begins to cost us our souls.  Without a soul, we are only a slave to the darkness that has overtaken us.  And that is why we keep trudging through the desert to find and wrestle with that impossible, ridiculous, small, and defenseless Truth.