I minister to a convicted killer. He lives behind real bars. We are free. Or are we?

   Most of us are inmates in our own physical or emotional prisons. Consider those trapped in wheelchairs or suffering from ALS or blindness or raw poverty.

   A paralyzed person can, of course, be freer than an Olympic sprinter. Fear is the great jailer.

   Three centuries before Christ, Aristotle said that the only path to freedom was to overcome fear. Freedom may be free, but it is not cheap.

   "You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once," Robert Heinlein wrote. 

   Your bad boss walks into the room & your spirit is paralyzed. A piece of your soul breaks off every time you give in to such terror. How much of freedom is sold to sustain our lifestyle? Do we lug around financial debt like a ball and chain?

   Agoraphobia walls its sufferers in their own homes. Depression can convert life into a jail where the only exit may look like suicide. 

   Elbert Hubbard wrote that "Freedom cannot be bestowed, it must be achieved." How?

   It begins by recognizing that freedom's price is struggle & its currency is courage. Frederick Douglas knew that: "Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground."

   When Jesus said the truth would set us free he meant the truth of God's Love. Because that love is often painful the price is high. It demands the courage to hold fast to our dreams against the endless seductions of surrender. None of us can live free unless we find the bravery to live love, not fear.    

-Rev. Erie Chapman

Photograph: "Nina Imprisoned" by Erie