This Journal was written originally on my “mspace blog” but I decided to post it on my personal site as well. I WILL POST A NEW JOURNAL WEDNESDAY NIGHT.
Posted on Friday, March 16 2007
What is True Freedom?
Besides
wearing my favorite color, green, tomorrowI am also celebrating a day
in human history that signifies the light one man brought to this world.
St. Patrick
is widely recognized as the first bishop to bring the Christian faith
to the Irish. However, it is also interesting to note that he
considered himself a pagan up until his teenage years when he was
captured as a slave at the age of 16. For 6 years in captivity, Saint
Patrick prayed, prayed and prayed some more. It was during
this period of physical isolation and enslavement when he truly found
‘freedom’ in his fervent spirit and his newfound faith in God.
Freedom
is a term we use often after all, we are: “The Land of the Free”. We
think we are able to live the American dream, buy expensive things and
hoard materialistic wealth.but, are we truly free?
Are we free when our minds are occupied by desires of social acceptance and physical envy?
Are we free when our days are clouded by all the things we ‘have to do’ versus what we ‘want to do’?
Are we free when our lives are dictated by peer pressure, family obligation, social materialism, ego, pride and insecurity??
No. We are not free.
We are as enslaved as St. Patrick was when pirates stole him from his hometown to become an Irish Slave.
We are as enslaved as Immaculee IIibagiza was when she hid in a small bathroom for 91 days during the genocide in Rwanda.
We are as enslaved as Victor Frankl
was when his captivity inspired one of literature’s greatest work’s
“Man’s Search for meaning” during his stay at a concentration camp
during WWII.
All of these great people found God, faith and love during a period when their world seemed dark and “God-less”..
It
is during this time when we realize that WE are NOT controlled by our
circumstances, WE control our minds and therefore have a freedom by
‘will’ to choose what penetrates our spirits. Therefore, it is
not other’s who impose circumstances on usit is US who control our
actions and reactions to the circumstances we choose to negate, create,
and dictate.
As
I have written before, I believe that you are the artist of your own
painting. You are the writer of your own book and you are the hero of
your own battle.
We come to terms with ‘who we really are’ at some point in our lifeAnd I write all of this today to share that I also have…
Take
away my face, my body and my titlestake away my money, my clothes and
all remnants of what I hoard to symbolize ‘me’ and all you will have
is a naked spirit desiring the presence of its maker.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone. I
leave you with 3 quotes from the 3 extraordinary people mentioned
above, who allowed an omnipresent spirit transcend them during painful
times.
“His
fear increased in me more and more, and the faith grew in me, and the
spirit was roused, so that, in a single day, I have said as many as a
hundred prayers, and in the night nearly the same, so that whilst in
the woods and on the mountain, even before the dawn, I was roused to
prayer and felt no hurt from it, whether there was snow or ice or rain;
nor was there any slothfulness in me, such as I see now, because the
spirit was then fervent within me.” St. Patrick
“We
who lived in concentration camps can remember those who walked through
the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They
may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that
everything can be taken from a person but the last of the human
freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances –
to choose one’s own way.” Victor Frankl
“You
love because you have it in your heart. You don’t love because people
deserve it. You love because they are human beings, because they are
the creations of God.” – Immaculee IIibagiza