universal versus unique

I had a discussion with a friend yesterday. A topic in our conversation came up and I told my friend that I had just finished reading a chapter on the poet John Donne. Some of the things he wrote about in his suffering are lessons for me in how I deal pain or suffering. My friend told me that it was impossible to apply somebody elses lessons learned to another person's life. They said because each life is so unique it doesn't work. I agree that each person is a unique individual and you can't apply a one size fits all solution to life's problems. However, I have found over the years that we are all so much more alike than we are different. We each will deal with pain and suffering in some form during our lives. We each seek love and compassion from others. We each want to know that our life has meaning and that the world is not just full of arbitrary moments without a greater meaning.

In the conversations I've had with my friend, they always use the response that there is no universal truth. That each person's truth is just an opinion that isn't any more valid than anyone elses. That no religious or philosophical truth is any more important than any other. Somehow I can't believe that. My idea of the truth may be different from someone elses, that is true. But my striving to find the truth is universal. My friend Nick has a plumb bob that he had hanging in his office for many years. It always hangs straight up and down. It is used by builders to find a straight up and down line. He would always say that we all stand at different points looking at that line and measure our truths against that line. That line represents God. Another person who is a modern writer wrote a book about the universal theory of everything. He says that we each come from four quadrants and that universal truth will hold up from all perspectives. Like a scientific theory it may be true that a+b+c=d when looked at from one point. However if b+a+c does not equal d from a different point then it is not a universal truth. Each faith tradition has found a path that seems to be true for its followers- some feel more connected by becoming more involved in physical activities, others feel more connected by separation from the everyday world and meditation. Which is more true? Some feel that what is morally right from a religious perspective should be the legal law. Others feel that laws should not be based on religious morality. (The Taliban and the Inquisition come to mind.) Some want to return to the values and traditions of 50 years ago and fight against a world that doesn't want to return.

The only answer that seems to make sense to me in this complicated, globally connected, multi-tasking world of ours is to guide our lives by certain universal principles learned from many others who have gone before us.

These are the lessons that I've learned from others that I try to apply to my life:

We don't hold the complete truth- we only know the truth from our vantage point in time and relative to others.

We all are striving towards something. It may be striving to be loved, to find God, to make a difference in the world, and to create something lasting, etc... For me it is better to believe in some universal redeeming truth than to believe there isn't one. Ultimately the only thing we create that is lasting is how we deal with others. Each life touches another, who will then touch another and on forever. We are connected all the way back through time and all the way forward into the future. This is how I can understand the faith idea of being present at the beginning of time, now and at the end of time. Each life is connected to another.

What I do today changes the world. I'm reminded of all the things that my mother and father did on a daily basis when I was a child. Childhood friends of mine will tell me stories about how my parents did something that they remember from their childhood. My parents and community formed who I am. They were formed by their parents and those they met growing up, and so on. We will each treat others and ourselves badly at some time during our lives. We will each feel pain and loss. But there is something that calls us to become more than a collection of life experiences. As Mother's Day approaches this weekend I think about the lifetime of giving to her family, her church, and her community that shaped my mother's life. She instilled in me by her daily actions that life is precious and has meaning. Her life proves to me that there are universal truths.

Yes it may only be my universal truth, but it seems to pass the plumb bob test and the universal theory test.