Freedom

For the past few years I have chosen a word to guide my year.  A word to return to, to anchor my dreams and my heart as I step forward into the year ahead.  This year it felt more like the word found me.  A bit of an intrusion really.  When I least expected it, my word came and slid down beside me. More of an invitation than an intention, freedom came in close and whispered, “Hello, it’s been awhile.  I’ve missed you.”

As I ponder the connotations and baggage I have about freedom, what it is and what it is not, I am struck by the ways I have held freedom at bay.  Fears about privilege and wealth, questions about choice and opportunities all seem to have pushed freedom farther and farther out of my daily living.  So if I am going to embrace the invitation freedom is offering, I will need a new way of seeing.  Jesus invited his followers to, “Come to me… Walk with me and work with me - watch how I do it.  Learn the unforced rhythms of grace…learn to live freely and lightly.” (Matthew 11.28-30 - The Message).  Might it be that Jesus was speaking of the same freedom that whispered to me? Lightly and freely, unforced rhythms of grace sound open and expansive.  Other translations of this scripture passage use the word yoke to describe the walking.  But yokes are for oxen, for working in the fields, for keeping someone or something in line.  How can stepping into Jesus’ yoke be an invitation to freedom?  What new places might open up in me, and through me, if I embrace a new definition of freedom? What ways of thinking, and what judgments will I need to lay down?

Freedom.  A vast openness, sometimes silly even.  A time and a way of engaging.  A gift of holy presence, of actively engaging in the moment.  To be truly alive, to experience joy, suffering, disappointment, grace, laughter, curiosity, beauty, hopefulness.  To embrace aging, to hold all things lightly, to lean forward, to welcome, to invite, to be okay with change, to explore, to say yes, to say no, to acknowledge growth along with missteps and narrowmindedness.  To expand.  To breathe.  To dance.  To listen for the still, small voice. To follow.

And so, freedom it is.  A walking side by side, teacher and student.  Setting aside old baggage and stories that no longer serve me, and in some cases, never did.  Freedom. A new pace, a co-creating, one step at a time.