Thursday, May 05, 2005

the question of freedom

This is a groovy quote I lifted from Mittens' livejournal, whose journal title you have to love:

faith.family.fiction.fucking

One of the purposes of the ascetical life is freedom. Freedom to do what you really want. And what do you really want? To be able to love without impediment! To be free to do what in the depths of your heart you really want to. To be free to love what is important, what is worthy of our freedom as sons and daughters of God. To be free from compulsions. To be free in the realm of imagination, which is very important. To be free from threatening images, people disagreeing with you. To be free from heedlessness, to be attentive to reality and fully awake to what we are doing. To be free to be at the disposal of reality, of others, of God. To be free to be able to be moved by the love of God. To be free from being overly sensitive, which is a danger in this life. This is not just being hard-boiled. We are free to be real or not....The really question is not 'Am I happy?' but 'Am I free?' --Thomas Merton

Even taking out the God stuff, it strikes a rich chord.

Love is a lot of things. And freedom is too.
Sometimes you need to be freed. Sometimes you are the only one who can free yourself.

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