What is it exactly? What defines freedom? When you are ‘free’ what are you? Does it simply mean you are not incarcerated? Does it mean you have no commitments? Does it mean that no one can tell you what to do? Does it mean the absence of rules or laws? Is freedom the absence of consequences? What does it mean to “be free”?
Freedom! Won by the blood of those willing to fight for it. The very sound of the word carries with it the memories of men and women who have stood side by side on the battlefields of life and carved out for themselves and for their children and for their grandchildren a future that would hold more choices. And then the discovery comes. That’s it! That’s what freedom is. Freedom is the ability to have unlimited choices.
Unlimited choices means limitless possibilities. If freedom of choice is preserved, then the development of infinite ideas is nurtured. If we have “freedom,” we are free to have our lives matter. We can choose. We can produce. We can expand. We can explore. We can soar – far above the bounds of earth and into the sky – borne upon eagle’s wing power to heights hitherto undefined – hitherto un-experienced.
There is a quote from Tennyson which reads – “it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” Encompassed in this statement is the idea that to really know and really experience life, one must not be afraid to experience death.
In our minds and in the depths of our hearts there is a cry that bubbles just below our awareness, but it drives us and it fuels us and it stirs within all of mankind – even to those most oppressed – most enslaved. It brings righteous discontent and longs to burst forth and shout, “Let me be free!”
There is a lethargy that one gets from walking through life with no vision or purpose except to avoid discomfort or the unfamiliar. A stupefied, dull, featureless life – lived as those anesthetized in our institutions. Not feeling the pain, but not really living either. Slowly it creeps over us like a hardening plaster as we become adults – if we let it.
When we were children we used to dream dreams – we believed in the impossible and every day was an adventure. Sure, we cried, got sad, felt scared – we hurt when we bled and sometimes we got all huffy and angry. But when we got excited we got really, really excited. When we laughed we really laughed and the sense of being on an adventure never left us. We never worried that we might hurt, because we knew in the end it would be okay. We didn’t believe in failure or in depression or in anxiety. We waited breathlessly for the things that would happen next, anticipating with delight the unknown. We had an undying optimism: following any bad thing was the next good thing. And we as children spent little time contemplating the bad. Maybe we would pout – but did it ever extend past the boundaries of that day? Never! It was only as we grew older that we discovered pensiveness and anxiety in any voluminous way. It was as we became much more aware of good and evil that we grew to contemplate the evil that could happen more than we contemplated the good we experienced. We learned to dwell on it – brood on it – fear it – and avoid it at all cost lest it come to us. Suddenly we began to think that it was our responsibility to “deliver us from evil” and this part of the Lord’s Prayer lost its meaning to us.
Jesus said, “Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all.” (Mark 10:15) And as we contemplate “freedom” or should I say the loss of it, we begin to understand the doorway to the kingdom of life. It’s a doorway that leads to infinite possibilities and unbridled passions – a doorway that leads us to life and away from death – and yet has in its promise the echoes of death.
Freedom is the name of this doorway. It is magical. It is delightful. It is sort of scary. Beyond it lies all that you are meant to be – all that you are meant to experience. There is no hypocrisy through this doorway. There is no facade. There is no Churchianity. There is just “life,” and that there is abundantly!
The commonplace cannot pass through it. “The way it’s always been done” never survives the passage through this “doorway of freedom.” “Ownership” and “Control” may not be taken through. And no one can pass through it while holding tightly to themselves. The infinite beyond can only be navigated by holding tightly to the possibilities ahead.
Will you be free? Will you let go of the commonplace and the mundane to grab hold of the unknown? Oh, that all would pass through the door and restore our nation to greatness again! Oh, that all might taste freedom every day of their life and know its value. Oh, that we in the land of the free might truly walk in our liberty. But then we would need to be the land of the brave.
