"It's twue! It's twue!"

A somewhat sorrowing note from an Internet friend this morning inspired me to respond with what I consider to be one of the wry ironies of spiritual endeavor:

Isn't it funny that after all those days and weeks and years during which anyone might have extolled and insisted on a spiritual-endeavor framework, one day you wake up and realize that what had been called "true" really is true?

Old age, sickness, death and uncertainty (for example), which once might have been hailed as impellers of spiritual action ... well, guess what ... it's ain't someone else's old age, sickness, death and uncertainty. Shit! Who knew?!

There is something simultaneously touching and funny about it -- all that bullshit of the past and now, this! The more anyone dreams of or imputes to others an escape, the harder the escape becomes.

And there's no outflanking or escaping the bullshit phase ... the praise, the explanations, the wonderment-quotient meanings, the heart-wrenching beliefs, the longing for relief and release and escape, the ascents into heaven and descents into hell ... they're all part and parcel of the adventure, however ironic they may be when the reality check comes calling.

All of this cud-munching may inspire swaths of sympathy or empathy or compassion in others, but the thing it suggests to me most strongly is the following scene from the old movie, "Blazing Saddles:"

"It's twue! It's twue!"