Sixty-five degrees
and sunny
after a winter
of bitter isolation,
friends walking
in shorts
and t-shirts, some
without masks.
We are all survivors,
everyday champions.
Freedom our new
currency and time
our greatest gift.
We look at each other
and know–not even
a nod is necessary.
We made it.
Now let’s act like it.
We are unique in our awareness. No other being on earth can see the world like we see it. Nothing else can realize it’s place in the grandeur that is creation.
But this awareness is a choice. In every moment we have a choice between awareness and ignorance, between waking up and staying asleep.
I’m ignorant of many things. I’m trying to wake up. Not to be “woke” but to be “awake.”
There’s freedom in this choice. I will use my freedom to choose awareness, paying attention, and presence, here and now. I can’t afford the alternative, and neither can those I seek to serve.
Threat of World War III. Kobe dies. Coronavirus devastates humanity. Global lockdown. 3+ month Stay at Home order. Economy tanks. Businesses close. Countless black people are senselessly murdered by racists and police. Protests turn into riots. Societal upheaval. President threatens citizens. Twitter threatens President. First amendment uncertain. Basic human rights uncertain.
Fr. McNally always said: “Life is complicated, Love is not.”
Life is complicated.
Love is not.
Get better at liberating. To liberate is to let go of what is no longer serving you. Most people hold onto the things they hate about themselves. But when you release those things, when you express them to another human in some way, they no longer have power over you. This is where true freedom lives.
Bob said it best: “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our mind.” That’s a rallying cry to take back control of your life through breaking down the prison doors of our minds. Those doors are made of trauma, but they’re made of glass. They shatter if you start to chip away.
If you want freedom, you have to break down walls that cast shadows over your life. Your life will begin when you realize your biggest fear isn’t anything to be afraid of.
My family and I went to eat at a nice Japanese / Chinese restaurant yesterday. The fortune in my fortune cookie read as follows: “only the educated are free.”
Nobody knows who writes these “fortunes.” When they are right, we praise them. When they are wrong, we don’t pay them any mind. Usually. This time was different. I don’t agree with this fortune.
This short statement says a few thing about human nature. The first is that you should “be educated,” whatever that means. The next is that those who aren’t educated are not free. What the author means by education is unknown.
Here’s why I don’t agree. An uneducated person can learn to sit with himself, calm his mind, and meditate on the many observable, sensible mysteries of the world. Through this approach he can free himself from the rat races of the world—he can became free of the trappings of his own mind.
And tell me, who is truly free: an educated man who has learned all there is to learn or an uneducated man who is ready to learn anything?