Free

Freedom has been on my mind a lot lately.  

Not so much freedom from something, but freedom towards something.  Ginny Owens wrote a great song about this a decade ago that I planned to insert…HERE.  But the videos I could find are all covers or are accompanied by really "out there" animation.

If you look through the videos though, it's clear that Ginny Owens has struck a chord with a wide range of folks who feel bound – bound by fear, performance, doubt, spiritual/physical blindness, insecurity, etc.  She struck a chord with me years ago that still rings in my thoughts.  

(Closest I could get to an unfettered "Free", http://www.filestube.com/ezuoDQLprhwqN6BWuL8Ky4/11-Ginny-Owens-Free.html)

Who doesn't want to be free?  Free to chose a life path?  Free to do and say and worship and pray independently of another person's expectation or demand?

Free to go to school, fetch water safely, sleep soundly…

We, in America, talk a lot about freedoms.  We cling tightly to our freedom to do just about anything and we'll fight to stay "free."  

Tip O'Neil said once that "your freedom to punch me ends at the tip of my nose" or something like that.  Our freedoms are beautiful; a brilliant brush stroke on our constitution that revealed the foresight of our founders and the cultural memory of having lived with freedom curtailed.

One day, I might write about how our freedoms of speech – which I hold dear – have been interpreted to allow all sorts of gross national embarrassments like Fred Phelps & the Westboro Baptist Church and porn which enslaves not only the "stars", but the unwilling children participants, and the folks down the supply chain and their families.  Not today.

I am going to just mention this thing that I am finally learning about:  Freedom.  

Freedom to be wrong or right and to allow others the same grace.  Freedom to flub up.  Freedom to sing loudly or bounce on my pogo stick at midnight so my neighbors get to celebrate my freedoms, too.  

Freedom to believe.

Freedom to be in process (oh geez, my hearts pumping fast on that one).

Freedom to fling ourselves over the edge of fear and into faith.

And to freefall into more freedom.  (Cue up Tom Petty's, Freefalling, here.)

Keeping with the trend to offer up a clickable link with the blogs, I offer you this freewheeling race down the side of an Austrian mountain "summer" track.  (I love how the guy gets giddy and WooHoos!)

Enjoy.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqCkICXWdWI&feature=youtu.be