Freedom is...

Freedom is...

(Testimony in the Glen, Broadmoor Community Church,

July 2, 2017, Charlie Coon.)

Stephen Hawking, the British physicist, has been revising

downward his prediction of how long we have on the planet

to change our "materialist" paradigm of living.  His latest

estimate is a short 100 years.  Spiritual teachers have

made similar estimates usually a few hundred years, a

speck of time in cosmic terms. I suppose this is a bit of

a pinprick to the July 4th holiday balloon which we will

soon be flying!

History has long recorded the various steps humankind has

taken to reach for Freedom and Peace.  (I speak synonymously

regarding these two names.)  We know of treaties, boundaries,

negotiations, war deterrence through military strength, and

walls. We also know of peaceful demonstrations and resistance.

 I started my military years in Cheyenne Wyoming, 

and was assigned to one of the early strategic missile programs

located there.  Peacekeeping was called mutually assured

destruction (MAD), and indeed, the motto emblazoned on

the missiles and bombers was: "Peace is our Profession."

And, there have obviously been temporary successes in the

history of these peace endeavors. The question history asks,

from time to time, is whether there can be permanent 

Peace and Freedom.

I like the tale of the Prodigal Son to gain insight into the

understanding of Freedom,  and as a response to Stephen 

Hawking.  This story involves a search for fulfillment,

in which all 7 billion of us engage. The Prodigal went to the

far country and searched among all of the material offerings

for Happiness (another synonym for Peace and Freedom).

We all engage in this search.  The search may involve material

things, but also relationships, or new spiritual ventures 

which promise the fulfillment for which we long.

The mind is the instrument we use for our searching, but we fail

to recognize its limitations.  The mind is like a moth which

desires the flame, but intuits that in order to really experience

the flame, it must sacrifice itself.  The experience of the

Prodigal, as we all are, is similar.  Our finite minds will

never find the Peace and Freedom we desire without recognition

of the mind's limitations.     At last, the Prodigal Son turned

toward home, toward the welcoming Grace, which had always

been available.  So must we, not turn to another planet for

escape, as Dr. Hawking recommends, but a turning toward the

real Peace and Freedom which make up our true Identity.

The Prodigal's story, our story, can also be understood as the 

interplay between Forgetting and Remembering.  I will end 

with a piece I wrote to illustrate this interplay....

Forgetting and Remembering

Two sides of a coin really..

Yet..with our birth

separation shows up

and seemingly at least

a curtain is drawn

concealing our Freedom..

The separation adventure

extracts a high price..

Something seems missing:

the Freedom we knew..

Separation starts searching

for the lost Freedom

intuited as close

but perceived as far..

For how long..?

We search in wrong places

until Remembering appears

and our discovery:

Remembering is Freedom

dissolving our Forgetting..

Remember that coin...?