On a personal level I am going through things and letting go of any that do not bring me joy and that I don't need going forward. (Please see my other blog on this site "The Tidying Project.) One surprising effect is feeling increasingly free - free of guilt about not using some of my clothes, not reading some of my books. Each item I thank and let go acknowledges some little truth and makes me a little more free.. Dealing with all my things means completing tasks put on hold but that hang over me. Each completion brings more freedom to do other things, like writing.
Going through books I discovered little notebooks with ideas for poems, some of which I never wrote. As I was entering one of these drafts, freedom came up in a way that surprised me.
By Tess Baumberger
Today’s insight is about accepting turnings,
Changes of direction this subtle path requires.
Trusting each to bring me to the center of it all
At which point I might look back, discern a pattern.
How many walked serenely towards destruction,
Injustice, spiraling toward acts of evil,
thinking they had to accept each turn as fate?
The stones that mark the way blur in the shadows.
I stop. Leaves skitter across the labyrinth.
Light and pushed by the wind, they have no choice.
The wan autumn sun slants across the sky.
I walk across the pathways to a destination of my own.
***
This poem bridges the notion of personal freedom with the wider freedom that comes from justice. Of course the two are related, perhaps through the kind of agency expressed in this poem. When we choose not to accept larger movements that restrict our own freedom or that of others, when we choose to act to counter those trends toward injustice, then we begin to move beyond our individual liberty to collective freedom. This reminds me of another poem I wrote years ago, in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.
In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.
By Tess Baumberger
When a black man rose
to teach me of tolerance
and treating respectfully
all my brothers and sisters,
I stood with him
flushed with rage
at those who can not,
will not, do not,
see as equal
all other people.
He freed my feet
and as I walked
shoulder to shoulder
with hallowed humanity
that hot holy ruby
rose again to my face,
coloring my voice to proclaim
the rights of every one,
the challenge of democracy,
the claims of freedom,
and the tasks of true liberty,
which will not sit with us all
until it stands for us each.
***
Reading this now I can see that rage may work against treating all respectfully. Howard Thurman wrote about that in an essay on hate. He wrote about the hate of the oppressor which limits the freedom of the oppressed, and also about the hatred of the oppressed toward the oppressor. He says that while hate can motivate us to act for justice, in the end it is a destructive force that can burn the heart of those who hate whoever they hate. Hate limits freedom. Perhaps this is why those who were once oppressed sometimes turn and act to oppress others. The cycle of hate then continues - unless we can together break free from it.
Employment of Joy
By Tess Baumberger
There is so much to do.
Let us go in freedom, singing, to the fields
To bend our backs to the labor before us
Using tools shaped to our hand.
Scent of the earth rising towards us
Glory of sun shining about us
Trees dancing in birdsong and breeze.
When we join our voices with that chorus
The work we share is the employment of joy.
***
May it be so.