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Good Morning What is truth? Many people now answer that it’s relative, indeed, it has become respectable to be cynical about truth and facts - and it is a regular craft to manage the amount of true information we are given. But at what cost? Certainly in the personal realm when truth is sacrificed, relationships can fall apart. Mediation between two parties makes the most of relative truth. Once everyone has witnessed an agreement that an act is wrong, the facilitation between opposing parties or even between an aggressor and a victim, is in fact about listening and agreeing that there is always more to a story. We experience the impact of events on people’s lives, as well as their motivations and situations - which in turn becomes a deeper layer of truth. It doesn’t make a wrong action right but does make the two parties more human and understandable. We see that there are always more things to heal or change than we had previously thought. Some people even come away with a renewed faith in collective responsibility for each other to have a just and good life. But in order to listen in this way, which can feel like the beginning of an open mind and even an open heart, our understanding of truth needs to be fed by a commitment to a common ethic. Years ago I worked with a man who had a facilitated one-to-one dialogue with the person who had abused his daughter. He described the unexpected experience of watching through a searing eye from something beyond himself. That eye was willing to understand more - even see compassion but – if there was a sniff of trickster, he knew it! When I saw him again recently, he said his real takeaway was a renewed faith in the power of truth. He said, ‘I don’t believe in religion or politics, I just want the truth’. ‘What would that give you?’ I asked. ‘A reminder of what integrity feels like, and a better world for all of us,’ he said. When Saint Paul described the Christian use of bread in the Eucharist, he said it was not to be leavened with malice and wickedness but an unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Recently concepts of truth have been repeatedly invoked regarding politics, medicine and religion. Perhaps the underlying question of the moment is – what deeper belief does our truth point to.