Alan Jones is the Dean of Grace Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco and the author of many books including Exploring Spiritual Direction. In this fascinating work, he presents twelve cogent meditations on truth, divided into four sections. With a spiritual magnifying glass, Jones examines truth as fact, as fiction, as relationship, and as mystery. The book is filled with rich illustrative material and a delectable smorgasbord of quotations from theology, literature, and the arts.
"The truth that matters to people is not factual truth but moral truth," Michael Ignatieff has written, "not a narrative that tells what happened but a narrative that explains why it happened and who is responsible." The Gospel is a very reliable narrative on that score. Jones ponders the difficulty of telling the truth in today's duplicitous world. He shows how Christians are still "pilgrims of the truth — we haven't arrived." To be a believer is to participate in this grand moral adventure.
The most poignant and soul-stirring section of the book is the author's commentary on truth as mystery. "God is better known by not knowing," he writes as a good mystic. Under this rubric, we live with the catalysts of wonder and gratitude. In our relationship with God, we find just the right key. Or as Jones puts it: "The image of God is our 'instrument.' It is there in all of us, but we have to know where to look for it. When we find it, we find we can trust it. When we trust it, truth is revealed in all of its integrity and radiance. We make music."
