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The Promised Land... Utopia... Shangri-La... Paradise...
The dream of the ages where all would live in peace...
A land where all of its inhabitants would be free...
Each one... free from the tyranny of another...
Each one... resting peacefully beneath his own fig tree...
A place where the Fountain of Life flows freely...
On earth as it is in Heaven...
The American dream...
To believe according to one's own conscience...
To prosper from one's labor and ingenuity...
To claim one's birthright to a place in this world...
Our currency...
Promising that freedom is backed by God...
Engraved on its face "In God We Trust"...
Our flag...
Stars rising over stripes...
Dreams rising over oppression...
The United States' Constitution...
The refined hopes of humanity molded into a nation
That would preserve forever the precepts
of liberty and justice...
Even as the design of freedom takes shape...
Servitude to power being something
all contend with...
As individuals... and as peoples...
And this... a path home...
Our Constitution is not just the foundation for a government...
It is not just a contract between states of legal words...
It gives its people no religious creed or mandate...
But its principles hold a blueprint for peace.
It is a guidepost for us... the people of the nation...
To structure a kind of society that is based on respect...
Each for the other.
That document is but the cornerstone of a human freedom
With which we were given charge to build
a just and a free society.
Those blocks... the framework of our freedom...
Rely on the cornerstone for guidance...
A cornerstone that is based... on our shared humanity.
The building blocks of such a free nation
Can only be bonded by the will of the people
When we are compelled by all truth
To understand those laws of mutual respect
And then to practice them in our lives...
Our bonds... not of nationality...
not of religion... not of history...
But of our own shared regard for freedom.
This forging of human freedom...
This sanctuary for humanity...
Compels us to overcome oppression...
To discover and to correct injustice...
To define and to refine our principles...
To accept and to understand each other...
To dispel our fears of each other...
To find our way out of the darkness
Where we battle over what is right...
To find satisfactory compromises
So that we can go about our lives
In a way that we can live together in peace...
All of us... finding peace in our own lives...
Each with our own beliefs and struggles...
And in doing all this... perhaps...
Show a way for all of mankind
To find a way to live together in peace.
But, freedom can go wrong...
When it becomes an amusement park for the base...
Or a free-for-all for the powerful and influential...
Or a human version of the survival of the fittest.
Freedom can become its own version of tyranny
Unless we can find a better understanding
Of what it is that our lives really are on this earth...
Unless we can find a meaning to life that we all know is true...
A living truth
That compels all we are as human beings...
...Unless we had been freed to think...
To discuss... to question... to be different...
To be honest with ourselves and each other...
We could never find that truth.
Without clear truth there can be no understanding...
And without understanding there can be no peace.
It is in this that we see our true mission...
Our inevitable and our most joyous mission...
The threshing out of that Truth.
As citizens of freedom we have a Covenant with Truth.
As we break the yokes of oppression, suppression, and repression
We must grasp something more true...
Something beyond the forces of convention and doctrine...
We must find the source of all that is
true to us as human beings.
Without it... we should admit that we can never be free...
We must resign ourselves to allow others to be our masters.
Freedom was the beginning of a human maturity...
It required us to become more than what before
We had been compelled to be
When we were told what to do.
But...the framework within which we function needs to be such
That our lives are more than just a mere illusion of freedom.
The machinery of life does not need to dehumanize us
For it to work well.
We must become our own masters...
Become men and women in our own right
By the strength of our own hearts.
To do this, we need to find that truth that... is truth...
Beyond doctrines and rules.
It is only with our freedom that we will find that truth,
And it is only with that truth that we will ensure our freedom.
Freedom is peace to the human heart.
Freedom is life to us.
Freedom is surely our very truth.
Freedom is as essential to an intelligent being as is food.
Shall we open the storage bins of the
priests and feast on freedom?
In John 8:32 then in 8:36, it is said,
"And you shall know the Truth, and the Truth
shall make you free,"
and
"If the Son therefore shall make you free,
you shall be free indeed."
We have been given permission to be free.
We, surely, must find that Truth and that freedom...
We must discover the truth of our lives here on earth.
And yet, if we discover absolute Truth,
Won't we be taking the risk
That it will become just another doctrine?
Just another dictate over freedom?
Rather than freedom itself?
After all!
The Truth is said to set us free!
And not lock us in!
Truth and freedom must walk hand in hand, but...
What is that fearful Truth?
Journey with me as I build a case for Truth...
As I gather from some of our greatest truths...
So that former definitions of all we are can wash away...
So that we can see clearly...
So that we can find our true meaning...
So that we each... can find the "Meaning of Life" itself.
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