“The state can’t give you freedom, and the state can’t take it away. You’re born with it, like your eyes, like your ears. Freedom is something you assume, then you wait for someone to try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free….”
―Utah Phillips
How have you resisted attempts to limit your freedom to be who you truly are?
Sometimes it looks as if there are secret codes written in nature: in the pattern left in the bark of a tree by a boring beetle, in the curls of frost on a window pane, in the pattern of the clouds. There is no Rosetta stone to translate these messages, but perhaps it is worth reading them anyway.
What messages have you received from sources you couldn’t understand in any literal way?
St. Patrick is fabled to have driven the snakes out of Ireland. Which is more heroic if you don’t like snakes than if you are a snake.
What have you driven from your life? Has it helped or hindered you?
Some ambitious architects have created buildings with gilded domes, but the sunrise coats the entire landscape in gold, a prospect no human artist could even conceive of managing.
What has been given to you that is utterly beyond your power to create for yourself?
For a river rafter or kayaker, white water is the dangerous part of the river, the place that threatens to throw them overboard to hazards of bone-breaking rocks and even drowning. The white water, of course, is the whole reason they go out on the river to begin with.
What challenge is enlivening your life?
