Keys to Liberty

I just traveled to Flamingo Crossing for a dish of delicious homemade ice cream. I don't know if everything tastes better in Key West or if this dish is truly some of the greatest iced cream ever, but it sure tastes like epic, coconut and key lime style.

I sat down, pen in hand, to write about Memorial Day. What is the cost of liberty? What price do we pay as a society to ensure our unalienable rights? What degree of respect and honor should we show to those who stand on the frontlines of these questions, where theory and conjecture meet physical reality and blood becomes the currency of liberty? Utmost respect, tremendous honor.

Earlier today I felt a movement of expression, a song came forth from the springs of my soul calling out the demons of fear, regret, shame, and such. Call it a declaration of personal liberty. Now, I'm here in Key West, Florida for the better part of four weeks. This time on the island is more than a vacation for me, it's an opportunity to grow in compassion, to stretch those areas of my heart most hardened through my past.

I find I am always on the giving or receiving end of action, of essence. At times, this activity has brought about, or been born of, negative emotion. Key West, for all of its glory, is also a crucible of my emotional development. Consider an image of my heart--my love, compassion, peace, empathy, security, fear, and all those constructs that guide to whom and how I share my heart--brought into a great crucible and challenged by the fires of God's tapestry.

I've written, either publically or privately, about dancing with the tapestry of life. It's a marvelous thing, a source for delightful poetic inspiration. Mind you, though, that dancing with glory is not always a pleasant waltz. Growing in life, growing in God, growing in love, never ceases to bring new opportunities to go higher. Instead of all life being one repetitive cycle, it is as though there are infinite cycles stacked on top of each other. With that in mind, there come times in life--depending on our awareness, desires, mindsets, fears, etc.--were we are presented with opportunities to "jump" from one cycle to the next. Call it a quantum leap or maturation of spirit, I've found these opportunities invariably entail, nay, demand great faith and a challenge to the fiber of my character.

The dance, then, evolves if and only if I am willing to learn new moves, rhythms, styles. It is in this learning where we are stretched, tried, and challenged to grow beyond our limits. Just as working out will cause stale muscles to feel nearly torn before the glorious six-pack is born, so those hardened areas of our hearts must be humbled before our spirit can grow to bring greater healing and peace in our lives.

I've had opportunities to grow and bring healing in these most tender-jaded places before, and I'm thankful that I have become wiser over time in how I engage--in how willing I am to go through trials for the sake of a future more ripe with love and peace.

In my case, in this case, the matter is forgiveness. It is relevant just as much to feelings of myself as it is to my feelings of significant loved ones. Forgiveness is not words to ease another's feelings. Forgiveness is not choosing to be quiet about past offenses... Forgiveness is tremendously greater: Absolution; it is the absolving of all past record on our heart-tablets; it is wiping clean the slate: tabula rasa. Forgiveness is the greatest liberation, clearing our vision all preconceived filters so the full radiant brilliance of who we now see, of who we now are, might shine into and out from our hearts.