Several years ago, I was on my weekly Saturday morning 9:30 am call to one of my best friends, one of my college cronies, a fraternity brother in our very unfraternity-like fraternity (If no one else will take you, we will), the best man at Jennie’s and my wedding forty years ago.  We’ve had these weekly dates for who-knows-how-long, an hour during which we check in on what we did the previous week and more importantly, how we’re doing.  Nothing is out-of-bounds.  As Matt puts it, “We get honest with ourselves” by telling the truth to each other.  All of it.  And still we’re friends.               

Matt was reminiscing about a night during the spring of our senior year:

“Dave, we went to that nightclub on Walnut several blocks north of the courthouse in downtown Bloomington (We graduated from Indiana University).  It was on the west side of the street.  Had a guy’s name, I think.  Otto’s?  Ollie’s?  Oscar’s?  I think it was Oscar’s.  When you walked in, there was a big multicolored fish painted on the wall.  To the left was a bar and several high-top tables.  To the right was where they had live bands.  The night I’m remembering, it was a band that made it big, but we saw them when they were just getting started and they were playing small venues. I think it was Toto.  You and I just stood there and took it all in – the music, a beverage or two (or three), the atmosphere, the vibe.  Our senior year, our college town, our friendship so solid we didn’t need to say a thing; we just basked in the goodness of it all.  After the encore, we walked out into the Bloomington night.  I remember looking up and seeing the stars in the sky as we walked back to campus down Kirkwood, took a left on Indiana Avenue, then cut through Dunn Meadow in front of the Union to Seventh Street. I remember us walking arm-in-arm, me at 5’ 6” reaching up to put my arm around your 6’4” shoulder, the best of buds. We walked across Seventh Street past Showalter Fountain and the IU Auditorium to Jordan where we turned north, passed the library on our left, crossed Tenth Street, then out Fraternity Row past Fee Lane to the Alpha Sig house. I’ll never forget that night, the perfect culmination to our college years.  It was glorious.”          

I imagined Matt leaning back in his chair in San Antonio, hands behind his head, eyes closed, lost in the reverie of remembrance. 

Then I said, “Matt, I don’t remember that at all. You sure that was me?” 

“What!” he said, “I’m positive.”  He then retold the story, walked it all back out again – the streets, setting, music, stars, and all. 

“Geez,” I said, “I don’t remember. Must be getting old.” 

To which he said, “But it’s one of my favorite memories. I hope it’s true!” 

What a great line.  I typed “It’s one of my favorite memories. I hope it’s true” into the world’s fastest, most comprehensive search engine, clicked enter, and in 0.46 seconds Google replied, No results found for "It's one of my favorite memories. I hope it’s true."

Never in recorded history has anyone ever said such a thing. 

Last Saturday, Matt brought up that magical night again. He waxed nostalgic about it from the start to the stars and once again, I claimed to remember nothing of the sort. Which led us into a conversation about truth and facts and the fact that truth doesn’t necessarily need facts to be true.  

Let me explain. 

True, but not factual.  Some things are profoundly true but are not factual.  Great fiction, for instance. Novels and short stories. From Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov to Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Homer’s The Odyssey, and Don Quixote by Cervantes, not a one of ‘em is factual.  All are fiction.  Ah, but they are read and reread by multitudes. Why?  Because they’re true.  They tell us something about what it means to be human in this world that resonates deep down where it matters most. Something within us hears the telling of the story and says, “True!” though not a word of it is factual. Same with the greatest works of art: theater, movies, poems, paintings. Shakespeare. Spielberg. Seurat. We wonder at their craft because it’s true, not because it is factual. 

True and factual.  There are great works of art that are both true and factual.  A subheading under a movie title reads “Based on a true story.”  An artist takes brush in hand and renders a masterpiece, the subject of which is a real person or an actual location.  A writer ponders a person, an event, an actual happening, and joins words to words in a way that penetrates beneath the surface to the depths.  Such art is both true and factual.

Neither factual nor true.  There is also art that is neither factual nor true.  It’s just entertainment or escapist fantasy, which can be good things, of course.  Then again, it could just be bad art that has no redeeming value at all. Vulgar.  Depraved.  Bald face lies. There’s plenty of that out there.

Factual, but not true. Some things are factual, but they aren’t true in the sense of resonating deep down within as depictions of meaning, purpose, and beauty.  I read some things for information, to increase my knowledge, not to teach me the fine art of living.  A book of day trips to take from Columbia.  How to write cleaner prose.  Textbooks.  Newspaper articles. 

The Bible.  Some think that in order to honor Scripture we must be biblical literalists and insist that the Bible is the inerrant, infallible (read: factual) Word of God.  Behind that reasoning is the belief that for something to be true, it must be factual, and conversely, if something is not factual, then it’s not true.  So, if the Bible says the world was created in seven days, and since the Bible is true, then everything from the galaxies to the Gulf of Mexico, gulls, and goldfish came to be in 168 hours. As the bumper sticker proclaims: The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.  That’s a fact, Jack!

But if it were true that something that is not factual is not true and therefore a falsehood not worth reading, then why read fiction, go to movies, look at great art, or read poems?  Why waste your time on a pack of lies (untruths)?  The reason is that something need not be factual to be true.   

That holds for the Bible.  The reason I read the Bible and revere it so is that when interpreted by minds and souls broader, brighter, and deeper than mine, I’m afforded a glimpse of Truth that is beyond mere facts.  Don’t get me wrong.  There are parts of the Bible that are both true and factual.  But I don’t feel a need to insist the whole shebang can be dated, independently authenticated and verified, photographed, documented, fingerprinted and laboratory-tested for it to be true.  I can turn to science, secular history and such for facts (when, where, and how) if I want them. But those facts don’t tell me the more important truths of why, what for, and how come.  For those truths, the Bible tells me so.    

The next time my buddy Matt lapses into his reverie over our starlit senior year stroll, I’ll listen along yet again, caught up in the shimmering truth of it all – its portrait of a friendship that has been burnished to brightness over nearly half a century, the things we’ve come through in our respective walks that we’ve made it through by leaning on each other arm-in-arm, our finding the way through life block by block, year by year, with thanksgiving for a friendship that is ours from above the stars.  

There’s truth, facts, both, and neither. The way Matt tells that story, it’s one of my favorite memories now. I don’t just hope it’s true – I know it is.