doorway

Certainty is a bad thing. If one is certain of all the facts, then one's mind is completely closed. Certainty leads to fundamentalism, repression, and stagnation. Better to have an open mind, knowing that one does not have all the answers.

Certitude, on the other hand, I use as a word to describe the awareness that one is investigating reality to the best of one's ability, with an open mind, and that one is choosing the best options. Certitude is questing, growing, never resting in any state of mind except that state of mind which knows that reality is real. With certitude, we face the unknown with equanimity, hope, and faith.

Certitude is the best we can strive towards. Certitude is open minded, certitude is willing to to eagerly follow the truth, wherever the truth may lead.

The quest for certitude can and does invest our lives with the sacred. Certitude does invest our culture with meaning. Certitude is an open door to the future, with the firm foundation of the sacred past to support us as we stand in the timeless doorway, facing our mortality and our timelessness, making the decision to step boldly into another world.

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