The light was fading pretty fast in the late hours of the day, here in the foothills of the Rockies. It fades all the more quickly when, as it did today, the clouds roll in and a late spring snow begins to cover the ground.
I had finished my first day of reflection and much of what had been on my mind was the need to exercise the freedom that God has given me. It is easy to feel hemmed in, stymied, and confined by life. Structures, places, people, the times in which we live — they all conspire to limit the freedom we exercise.
The only key to exercising some freedom from those restrictions is to choose freely those things that draw us into deeper, loving relationships with God and with one another. That is, in fact, life’s true agenda: to live in ever-deeper connection with God and with one another.
I watched as the lights on the mountainside became visible in the homes scattered across the mountains and thought of the life choices that had brought each of those families to the places they now live. My prayer is that they and all of us are where we are today, thanks to the freedom of that kind of choosing.
A million choices,
Their lights scattered across the hillside,
Undifferentiated in the quality of their light
Or the nobility of the choice made.
Undifferentiated, that is,
Except by freedom,
The desire to love,
And the desire to be loved.