a spiritual study: freedom
Get busy livin’, or get busy dyin’. I find I’m so excited I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it’s the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. –- “Red”, final scene, The Shawshank Redemption
It was for freedom that Christ set us free;--Paul to Galatians 5:1
Jesus first public words: (Luke 4:14-19) And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up; and as was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath, and stood up to read. And the scroll of Isaiah the prophet was handed to Him. And He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He anointed Me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to captives, And recovery of sight to the blind, To set free those who are oppressed…”
Consider these thoughts and quotes about the nature of freedom and what keeps us un-free.
‘Salvation’ is not merely a transaction to a better place; it is the awakened transition and transformation in this present life to an unseen but more real realm of freedom, love, joy and peace. Freedom is universally written in the stars and in our skin as a supreme value and longing. Biblically speaking, it is spaciousness, uncoerced lightness of being, and awareness of God’s Spirit abiding in us. Barbara Brown Taylor has written: Salvation is much more than many of its proponents would have us believe. In the Bible, human beings experience God’s salvation when peace ends war, when food follows famine, when health supplants sickness and freedom overcomes oppression. Salvation is a word for the divine spaciousness that comes to human beings in all the tight places where their lives are at risk, regardless of how they got there or whether they know God’s name.--Leaving Church, pg. 226.
But whenever someone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. But we all, with unveiled faces, looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit. –Paul, 2nd letter to Corinth 3:16-18
It seems that simply allowing ourselves to be here, to recognize the sacrament and the grace of the present moment, is enough to allow God’s loving gaze to happen. What we are doing.. is returning the gaze. That’s it. We are completing the circuit and saying it’s okay…. We belong to any moment simply by meeting it with joy. This is freedom. Love is the ultimate expression of joy and freedom. Joy, freedom, and love could be considered synonyms for each other, and for belonging. --- Fr. Richard Rohr
The whole purpose of learning the life of Spirit is to penetrate beneath the surface of our life, to get behind the facade of conventional gestures and attitudes which we present to the world, to bring out our inner spiritual freedom. —–Thomas Merton
The first step to experiencing freedom from fear and allowing love to replace it as the foundational dynamic of our soul is to understand our resistance to love. Love involves vulnerability. In fact, the two are inseparable. Transformational love must always be received in vulnerability. And that is often why we prefer our fear to freedom. Tragically, we often become comfortable in our unfriendly universe and are unwilling to take the step of daring to open ourselves in trust to the love that promises to make us free and whole. –From: Surrender to Love; by David Benner
God’s love and our salvation are completely expressed and fully accomplished in Jesus Christ. That is good news. …we live freely and not apprehensively. We live in open praise and not in piggish greed. Our lives are changed from being obsessed with guilt and ridden with fear to being spontaneous and filled with hope. ---Eugene Peterson
There is an old Sanskrit word, Lila, which means play. Richer than our word, it means divine play, the play of creation, destruction, and re-creation, the folding and unfolding of the cosmos. Lila, free and deep, is both the delight and enjoyment of this moment, and the play of God. It also means love. Lila may be the simplest thing there is-- spontaneous, childish, disarming. But as we grow and experience the complexities of life, it may also be the most difficult and hard-won achievement imaginable, and its coming to fruition is a kind of homecoming to our true selves. –—intro to Free Play, by Stephen Nachmanovitch
To pray is to listen to the One who calls you “my beloved daughter,” “my beloved son,” “my beloved child.” To pray is to let that voice speak to the center of your being, your guts. Let that voice resound in your whole being. Who am I? I am the beloved. That's the voice Jesus heard when he came out of the Jordan river: “You are my beloved; on you my favor rests.” And Jesus says to you and to me that we are loved as he is loved. That same voice is there for you. When you are not claiming that voice, you cannot walk freely in this world… But you have to pray. You have to listen to the voice who calls you the beloved, because otherwise you will run around begging for affirmation, for praise, for success. And then you're not free. – Henri Nouwen
…simple living is about freedom. It’s about a freedom to choose space rather than clutter, to choose open and generous living rather than a secure and sheltered way. Freedom is about choices: Freedom to choose less rather than more. It’s about choosing time for people and ideas and self-growth rather than for maintenance, guarding, and possessing... Simple living is about moving through life rather lightly, delighting in the plain and the subtle. It is about poetry and dance, song and art, music and grace. It is about optimism and humor, gratitude and appreciation. It is about embracing life with wide-open arms. It’s about living and giving with no strings attached. . . .Sister José Hobday (1929–2009)
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