Freedom

What comes to mind when you hear the word FREEDOM?

 As a child it was for me school holidays, no homework, long summer days, making new friends and doing fun and  adventurous things. Nothing wrong with all of that.  As we move into the teenage years it maybe the struggle to grow up and the urge to pull away from parental control or what to us may feel like control. The cycle continues throughout our lives and into our senior years. But there is a freedom we all long for and it is worth the effort to search for It is inner freedom.

The poet David Whyte has this to say

‘Freedom is perhaps the ultimate spiritual longing of an individual human being, but freedom is only really appreciated when it falls within the parameters of a larger sense of belonging. In freedom is the wish to belong to a structure in our own particular way.’

(David Whyte   from "Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work As a Pilgrimage of Identity")

 But there is so much more than that. Time helps us understa
nd freedom as a gift of the Spirit which is within each person.  We have all read about people who have made this journey. The paradox is some make this discovery while in prison, either as prisoners of conscience or others who are serving time for serious wrongdoing.

In our Carmelite way of life, the structure or externals of our lives seem for people outside the monastery to be very restrictive but the opposite is the case. We are creating space for silence and solitude where we can grow close to God and find that desired freedom within. All people are called to grow in union with God and find inner freedom in their own unique lifestyle.

 ‘Silence is fearful exactly because in its spacious depths lies both the soul's sense of rest and its possible break for freedom’. David Whyte

 Take the risk and search for that Freedom that liberates and sets us free!