Ways of Sincerity, More Than One

   UPSTREAM COLOR --2013

Author and theologian Thomas Merton wrote about a facet of human nature which he calls fears of the truth. And there are several. In particular, he addresses the meaning of sincerity in every day life.
While much in our lives is motivated by our fears, Merton notes that "sincerity is a simplicity of spirit which is preserved by the will to be true. It implies an obligation to manifest the truth and to defend it... Sincerity in the fullest sense is a divine gift."
He notes that it takes more "courage than we imagine to be perfectly simple with other men... False sincerity has much to say because it is afraid. Yet true candor cannot be silent. It does not need to face an impending attack. Anything... may be defended with perfect simplicity."

In the end, by Merton's reckoning, sincerity is really an issue of love. The sincere one is one who seeks the truth and embodies it. Truth then is not just an abstraction. It is real, living flesh, like yours and mine.
Many in today's world fear that they are not really lovable, not lovable to the extent they think they deserve. And others fear that a lack of real, meaningful love in our lives indicates that "since we are not lovable as we are, we must be lovable under false pretenses, making ourself appear to be different that we are."

In the conclusion to his essay, No Man Is An Island, Merton writes that so few believe in God because they do not believe that even a god can love them. The man who will admit that what he sees may be wrong with him, and recognizes that he may be, still, the object of God's love precisely because of his shortcomings can make a start to become sincere. His love is based then upon confidence rather than the falseness of illusion.

The film Upstream Color examines the lives of two deeply imperfect, and in some ways, flawed individuals. While much is remarked upon the film's abstraction, the central characters meet, develop and share an intense love for one another that becomes based in sincerity.
She suffers from a serious mental illness and he, from a professional shortcoming that results in the loss of the licensing required to carry out his profession. Initially she offers up certain details of her illness, while he initially withholds facts about his own situation.

The resulting social stigma he bears from past indiscretions and the stigma of her illness, combine to create a powerful portrait of two people picking their way through the world, salvaging and in a measure, redeeming themselves, and each other through sincere love.
The simplicity of the film is provided by the many scenes of nature and the interactions with that nature. The film maker leaves us with a certain ambiguity in those scenes, to believe or not. The effect is both spiritually powerful and insightful.

Sincerity and Love

“We make ourselves real by telling the truth.” Thomas Merton

Duran Duran

Come Undone

Listen Here 

Mine, immaculate dream made breath and skin

I've been waiting for you

Signed, with a home tattoo,

Happy birthday to you was created for you...

Oh, it'll take a little time,

Might take a little crime

To come undone now

We'll try to stay blind

To the hope and fear outside

Hey child, stay wilder than the wind

And blow me into cry

refrain:

Who do you need, who do you love

When you come undone?

Who do you need, who do you love

When you come undone?

Words, playing me deja vu

Like a radio tune I swear I've heard before

Chill, is it something real

Or the magic I'm feeding off your fingers?

Lost, in a snow filled sky,

we'll make it alright

To come undone now

refrain:

(can not forgive from falling apart)

Who do you need, who do you love

When you come undone?

(can not forgive from falling apart)

Who do you need, who do you love?

(can not forgive from falling apart)

Who do you love

When you come undone?

(can not forgive from falling apart) 

We all very much need to know the truth as a function of living in the real world. Cold makes snow; water makes rain, and wind makes tornadoes. These simple truths we know as facts.
But when dealing with the myriad other aspects of a human life, we can very often forget how very badly we need to tell the truth. It is not possible for a person to be in harmony with a truth that he does not yet possess.
So it seems that we must be true inside, with our self, before we can know a truth that is outside us. We make ourselves true when we manifest what we see.

Sincerity is still something to admire, be it in ignorance, humor, understanding or joy. Yet many times, upon meeting with truth, we refuse it, crucifying that which is before our own eyes. Transformed into a grotesque caricature of its former self, sincere truth, now stripped of harmony, wreaks vengeance. It seems the need for truth is inescapable. I deeply need to know wherein to place my confidence, my joy.
The whole package of truth consists in the trite phrase of “talk the talk, walk the walk.” There is a sort of homage to the world which we pay by truth.
Without this, there is left the specter of mental instability or chaos in the form of illness. The classic feature of psychosis is the inability to distinguish reality from fantastic pretense.

Despite this potentiality, men seem often consumed in idle gossip, scurrilous malignment and scandalous calumnies. There is, in their actions contempt, a lack of respect for reality. Some say the base of this issue rests in the will.
We refuse many times to conform with what we know true. We refuse it, fight it; our will plunges into false values, false views. The restless wagging of our tongues is evidence of this state.
Does a spring send out both sweet water to drink, and poison from the exact same source? Can unquiet evil be tamed, filled full, with its own poison?

We are still, despite it all, free in our will to value what we know to be true, or not. And to speak the truth in sincerity is more than frankness. It is a manifestation of a spirit to be simple, to be real, to observe an obligation to the truth about one self.
When we rake the truth, it is our soul we make foul. Heaped with dirt until we recognize it no more. So without a personal commitment to honest self-justice, lying and double dealing become unavoidable. Fear is possibly the greatest obstacle to candor. Others have no authority to demand that I be other than I rightly am.
And when they arrested and beat me, they could not take me down. It was a test of love. When fully myself, my life becomes its own fulfillment and completion.
So in the end, while a surge of pride may devour and destroy, sincerity remains a question of love. In love a person may see the true, and offer love for beauty in its own soul.
'Truth makes us real', as Merton said.