Loyal to the Truth

I sat down to read a bit of Thomas Merton last night - after a wonderful evening of helping Adam and Jake with their .bE alt.worship installation thing. It so often surprises me how postmodern and contextual Merton is in his thinking. Even from his hermitage in Kentucky he was speaking of a hermeneutic of suspicion, a non-rule based ethic, and favoured right action over right words. Most of what he said echoed the thoughts Jake and Adam used in the worship experience last night - those of Meister Eckhart, Derrida, Ricouer, Rilke etc.

The Truth is a Way and a Person - and a Way and a Person have to be found and followed. Truth is to be lived. There are, in fact, no simple formulas that will suffice once for all. True, there are principles. But a principle is worthless if it is usually known and not applied. And if we apply it, we have to have regard for circumstances that make the principle true in a unique way in this unique case - or that perhaps calls into action some entirely different principle that gives the lie to the first.
How hard it is to be loyal to the Truth when most of the time you do not see any of it! Thus loyalty demands constant criticism, constant rejection of empty formulas, of words use to evade the struggle and to allay anguish, rather than to find Truth or express it. And can we use words simply to find Truth? Is this not an illusion?

The Journals of Thomas Merton, III. 192. April 20, 1958.

Hmmm... what does this have to say about Preaching and its use of 'words'. What empty formulas do I have to reject? Could it be that our Christian principles are contingent and only 'work' in certain circumstances? Uneasy questions! Good old Merton. Just when i thought i was coming back to some absolutes I'm told not settle for easy words or answers that evade the struggle. Truth is expression, not opinion.