I write, speak, invest, network, and question to stimulate fruitful conversation. Let's talk about human flourishing! It begins with freedom. Holy leisure is the key to human being, freedom and generativity. Please join me in the adventure of realizing Christ!
You’re Free, Right?We live in a free country. You’re free to do whatever you want. The stuff you want is yours for next to nothing – free.
Let’s set two of these ‘frees’ aside quickly and focus on the one that matters most to you, personally – or should.
It’s a free country, right? Nope. A nation that is systematically killing off hundreds of thousands of its children and now pushing its elders into early graves is in bondage to sin and death, not ‘free’.
All that free stuff? Not so free. Many of the costs of producing it are externalized – damage to the Creation, for example – borne by the human laborers fed into the manufacturing process as ‘resources,’ put off onto future generations – or are unquantifiable opportunity costs we are less and less capable of counting. Free stuff has a price.
But, at least YOU are free. Not so fast. Not if your definition of freedom is wrong. Not if you aren’t putting up a fight for freedom. Not if you aren’t supported in freedom by external and internal structures. Again, let’s consider two of these ‘freedoms’ briefly so as to focus on the one that matters most to you, personally – or should.
If you are wrong about what freedom IS, then you are not free. It is essential to know the truth about freedom in order to pursue it, achieve it, and set others free. If you think freedom is a right conferred by law; is a choice about which button to push, or which shoe to buy; is a quality of life you can enhance with money; is an escape from obligation, space, time, physics, or other constraints, or has nothing to do with virtue, you’re simply wrong. And your freedom is dangerously compromised as a result.
Can you be free without the support of divine grace, human organizations and institutions, excellent education, taboos and social norms, friendships and family bonds, physical and moral laws, an accurate historical narrative, demands and duties, or hard work? The answer is no in every case.
Your external atmosphere must be THICK with all these supports. Otherwise, you will inhale the illusion of freedom, but not experience the reality of freedom. Your infrastructure for freedom is generated by all that hard work of adjusting to and appropriating the external structures.
Freedom grows by every act of freedom, so let’s turn to that condition for freedom.
Fulton Sheen said, “Free will is a gift, but freedom is a conquest.” Are you engaged in a battle for your own freedom? You’d better be, or you’re already losing it. Who is fighting against you? Demons, and those who have given over to demons the gift of their own free will. You resist your freedom yourself. Every support for freedom but one can be its enemy – your enemy – in this fight.
Though demons shouldn’t be minimized – as they are actual, active hostile forces arrayed against you – if you stand under the constant protection of Christ in His Church, they will not prevail against you. Since every human support is, well, human, the air you must breathe to be free is full of toxins.
Notice the broken families, distorted narratives, utter confusion of social norms and standards, institutionalized bondage, education for impotence. The bad news is, your freedom is under assault from every possible angle. The good news is, Christ in His Church promises victory, if you will fight the fight. In fact, the fight, the work, the struggle is the making of you, free.
You, Free is my attempt to come along side as your companion in that struggle. May God bless you readers!
This is my most-requested audio – about how we can educate our children well, despite our own inadequacies. The Problem – We must get kids from where they are, to where they need to be; from ‘uneducated’ to ‘educated’. Given the poverty of our own education, we feel asked to do the impossible: build a […]
Some audiences want to cut right to the chase: “Give us practical applications of all your ideas about Sabbath-keeping.” OK – here you go: In this talk I do just that – give concrete, practical ways to dip into the kind of leisure that brings interior equanimity and leaves you more whole, more human, more […]
I prepared this talk for the Heart of a Woman group, in Kansas City, shortly after the suicide of a Catholic mother of ten. It was a shock to me, but not entirely unexpected, as I had known her during the years she struggled with depression and disintegration, despite her devotion to the Church, Christ, […]
For an Apostles of the Interior Life Women’s Retreat, where the theme was “The King Desires Your Beauty,” I prepared this truly interesting talk. Will you believe me when I say that this is another of my favorites?!?! I know, I’ve said that about a lot of these talks, but revisiting them to give a […]
I once asked a friend who calls herself a Jewish-Catholic if it had been hard for her to accept Mary’s role in Salvation History. She laughed and said, “Heck no! Every Sabbath was begun by a Jewish mama’s prayers! I’d have been suspicious if Lord Sabbaoth hadn’t come through a woman.” Jewish women welcomed Sabbath […]
Differences between the original myth of Cupid and Psyche, and C.S. Lewis’ retelling of the myth in Till We Have Faces have the effect of revealing new dimensionality in the Christian understanding of both myth and of the human person. The pre-Christian myth, like the pre-Christian person, is veiled in a darkness that constitutes a […]
In “Stour Valley and Dedham Church” Constable has painted the Vale of Dedham – a familiar and beloved area of his native England.
“The Merry Drinker,” by Frans Hals This is a portrait of an unnamed man, called in the title only ‘a merry drinker’.
Giotto’s painting, The Wedding Feast at Cana, portrays the literal and spiritual senses of this story.
Berlinghieri’s St. Francis appears behind the altar of San Francesco in Pescia, Italy. It is an excellent example of art ordered to divine worship.
A mom is the caretaker of a huge, wonderful, potentially beautiful, critically important place! She, herself, this actual, unique person, is the single most important ‘environment’ in the lives of her children. Like Mary, like the Church, she is an atmosphere. She is an atmosphere of affection. This is not just warm, fuzzy feelings, but […]
Benedictine College hosted a Symposium for Advancing the New Evangelization in 2014. The theme was Transcendentals as Preambles to Faith, and I got to propose my take on that as a paper. Anyone who knows me could probably have bet good money I’d do something ‘three dimensional’ with that, and they’d have won those bets. […]
I once got a chance to do an all-day retreat with one of the sister Apostles of the Interior Life. Naturally, I wanted to discuss the role of leisure in the formation of persons! As usual, I prayed about the upcoming event, and God brought together several threads of my contemplation to weave this talk. […]
Did you know YOU are a poem? Check out Ephesians 2:10, where the Greek ‘poema’ is usually translated ‘workmanship’. I like ‘poema’ better, as it implies beauty and artistry, but ‘workmanship’ is nice. I’ve discussed the importance of poetry, poetic education, poetic imagination and poetic reading in many different venues (many of the talk topics […]
