let freedom reign

We fight for it every second of our lives. The battle rages in our world for release from tyranny & in our hearts from selfishness. For centuries poets have contemplated it's depth & appearance, politicians have argued over it & soldiers have died for it. In every facet of our history there is a tale of liberation or oppression, our lives do the same. Freedom, it is a noble pursuit, for the most part & everyone seems to have a thought or some insight speaking to it, this is mine.

Freedom will never exist, personally or globally, in absence of wisdom & truth. We often do not have truth or wisdom because we do not ask for it & if we do ask for it, we do not believe in it when it is offered to us. We are a wave of the sea, blown & tossed by anyone who shares a truth more comfortable than the man before him. We look for truth from the parched dirt of the earth, our wishful eyes pointed down thinking we will see it grow miraculously. But truth falls from the heavens like rain & without it nothing good would grow. There are imposters selling us truth & they are everywhere, feeding us lies with a rotten heart & a tempting exterior. There are people preaching to & teaching us with eloquent & articulate words that are empty of love, resolve & morals, we are convinced this is wisdom. Do not believe for one second that a lie can offer you ever the slightest hope of freedom. We must be careful what we allow to take root in our minds & we must guard our hearts fiercely, it is where life begins.

While physical freedom in this world is a beautiful thing, one that I am wildly thankful for, it is not the most important freedom we can obtain. We must exchange the fear of losing freedom in this world for a passion for spiritual freedom. Our lives here are nothing but a mist & in a second we will be gone from this place. Yet our fears keeping us from caring for our neighbor, from new adventures, from exploring the human spirit, from love. We use our freedoms as a means of extending our lives, forgetting the reality that we will, in fact, die one day. We lock ourselves in the illusion that our greatest freedom lies is complete independence from everything; no help, no relationship, no support, no love, no God. We find ourselves lonely, dead inside, & we wonder why.
 
My big brother shared this thought at the end of his thesis, "Even for all the difficulties in a wounded world, man is not without hope, because he is not without means of living the life of God even now." Even if all in the world was taken away, we could still have hope & freedom would still reign. 

That is all for now.

“The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty -- it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.”-Mother Teresa