FREEDOM IS MY NAME — free as the sky

Below is Thomas Merton at his best from his journal book, The Signs of Jonas.

God, Who owns all things, leaves them all to themselves. He never takes them for His own, the way we take them for our own and destroy them. He leaves them to themselves. He keeps giving them all that they are, asking no thanks of them save that they should receive from Him and be loved and nurtured by Him, and that they should increase and multiply, and so praise Him.
He saw that all things were good, and He did not enjoy them. He saw that all things were beautiful and He did not want them. His love is not like ours. His love is unpossessive. His love is pure because it needs nothing.
God is His own law and the law of all things is in His freedom. Therefore the stars serve Him freely and the sun rises with a song of joy and the clean gentle speechless moon gets down to her bed without protest.
Every wave of the sea is free. Every river on earth proclaims its own liberty. . . (pgs. 346-347)

Earlier in the book, Merton captures a vintage Mertonism. I lifted the phrase below “free as the sky” as my blog name.

To belong to God I have to belong to myself. I have to be alone—at least interiorly alone. This means the constant renewal of a decision. I cannot belong to people. None of me belongs to anybody but God. Absolute loneliness of the imagination, the memory, the will. My love for everybody is equal, neutral and clean. No exclusiveness. Simple and free as the sky because I love everybody and am possessed by nobody, not held, not bound. (253, The Sign of Jonas)

Freedom (small letter f) is my name. Freedom is at the core of who I am and how I foundationally express my love as love can be expressed in so many colorful ways. My thoughts, actions (or reactions) come out of this place of freedom. When exercised right, freedom is my gift to the world. The greatest freedom is freedom to be as Merton alluded above. To be how God created every creature to be without comparison and judgment. I am me and cannot be someone else, not even my false self (which disguises as real me). And I cannot force, coax, subversively encourage others to be like me. I praise God that “the law of all things is in His freedom.” Stars are what they are. Moon is what it is. Every wave of the sea is what it is. Nothing else. God Who possesses everything chooses not to be possessive. God’s love is never possessive! Ironically, we as His creatures constantly struggle with possessiveness and control. No wonder God’s love Is not like ours. No wonder we can ultimately and purely depend on His self-emptying love!

What many call Jesus’ mission statement is found in Luke 4:18-19 (which He is quoting from Isaiah 61:1-2, omitting the latter half of verse 2).

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

I love the wholistic emphasis Jesus captures based on liberty. In John 8:32, Jesus says, “and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” The truth in this context refers to Jesus Himself. It is only in Him we experience freedom. As Michael Card sings, there is “freedom for those who obey” Jesus.

Back to Merton

he ends his journal book with this paragraph…

O children of men! Don’t you know that God refuses to be seen? If you only could see how unlike our glory is His glory, you would die for love of Him. But how can we believe who seek glory one from another? If we only knew that God seeks glory by giving glory. He does not ask us to give Him any glory we have not received from Him. . . And where can we find Him to give Him back what we have received from Him? The moment we have found Him, He is already gone! (348, The Sign of Jonas)

Someone has said that God refuses to be known by our intellectual pursuit of knowledge. God is ultimately shy because He doesn’t need anything from us to be validated as God. He is I am Who I am.

REFLECTION QUESTION

What does it mean, to be who you freely are, reflecting the very image of God? What does that look like?