It’s a long road to freedom

It's a long road to freedom, a-winding steep and high. But when you walk in love with the wind on your wings and cover the earth with the songs you sing, the miles fly by. I love this old chorus from my charismatic renewal days: it is so easy to soar into ecstasy, or at least savour the memory and potential of ecstasy in the words and music. These days I am more likely to remember who I am, to soar into ecstasy with Rumi:

I am Life itself

You have been a prisoner

of a little pond

I am the ocean

and its turbulent flood

Come merge with me

leave this world of ignorance

 

Be with me

I will open

The gate to your love

 

And again . . .

 

Defeated by Love

The sky was lit

by the splendour of the moon

so powerful

I fell to the ground

 

I am ready to

forsake this worldly life

and surrender

to the magnificence

of your being.

I have tasted the joy, the ecstasy that flows from this knowing who I am, knowing the great I AM, knowing who I AM. And yet I continue to walk in this world, in this world but not of it; and as such I find myself increasingly immersed in business, in human frailties (including of course my own) rather than simply leaving it all behind me.

Today I am tired, today, my last day in Ethiopia for now I find myself already grieving this place, somehow wishing I was staying, and yet knowing there is much work to be done in Ottawa and other places before I can return. It is indeed a long road to freedom, when it winds through the valleys of this worldly existence rather than across the mountain tops of the sublime joy of merging with our creator, our lover, our mother, our Abba. Yet this is my path, learning as I go, dropping attachments as quickly as I can and yet finding myself tired this day . . .

It is of course all good, my arms are open wide as I walk and as I remember to sing. There are no easy answers, no quick solutions, I cannot give money to every beggar I see, not even to every seemingly deserving beggar I see. Even when meals cost a dollar or two, when bus fares are 15 to 35 cents, even with such a low cost of living, still I cannot give money to everyone who wants it from me. No, I have to harden myself, so against my nature, although yesterday I started telling little children to stop begging and they listened! J

On the path as it leads from Ethiopia back to Ottawa . . .

Your brother Daniel