Truth Be Told...

It's odd, sometimes, the things that happen when I'm putting my son to sleep. I've taken to singing him all the verses of The Streets Of Laredo, not the most tender-hearted song to set a boy's mind at ease, and at the end, after the final "He was a young cowboy and he said he'd done wrong", Roy asks me "What did he do wrong?" I try to explain that the song doesn't say exactly but that something must have happened between going down to the cardhouse and then down to Rosie's that pissed someone off enough to shoot the poor guy in the breast.

But the power and the mystery of the song is found in exactly that: it doesn't tell the listener everything. The cowboy, however, has accepted his fate and seems to be at peace with himself: he knows exactly who he is and therefore, he's complete. His journey of self-discovery is over: "For I'm a young cowboy and I know I've done wrong." He's not hiding anything from anyone and one of the last people he speaks to, the song's narrator, becomes the recipient of his simple, blunt and powerful truth.

As Roy begins to sleep and I'm lying next to him, I soon find myself thinking the following: what does it matter if I believe in God or not? It doesn't change how I feel about Roy or music or even life and death. I believe in Roy, I believe in Music and I believe we're alive until we're dead. And if the word God includes those things, and by it's very definition I believe it should, then I believe in God. If God is a cosmic being, a giant burst of pulsating light somewhere...out there...well then, I don't.

Perhaps God is truth. And in realizing and knowing the truth, there is peace and fulfillment. At the point the cowboy says "I know I've done wrong", he is fully cognizant of who he is and he embraces that truth. He passes his truth on to the narrator, a young cowboy himself who may or not follow in his footsteps.

And my job is to pass my truth on to Roy, not that he can claim it for his own, but that he may learn to seek the truth for himself. My truth may not be pretty or clean but it's me and it is mine. I know I've done wrong.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." -St. John 1:1

"Have you heard the Word is Love?" -John Lennon