Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Kite strings

I was thinking today about the beautiful sermon my mom's Anglican priest gave this Sunday. Sunday was, of course, July fourth, so in honor of the day he talked about freedom, and the greatness of a nation that allows it - freedom of religion, of speech, of assembly. We can gather into large groups in order to scream about how much we hate our country, our government, our military, our president and said country, government, military and president sit by and let us do it. In that sense, we are freer than the people of almost any country in the world.

But nevertheless, he said, we are enslaved. Both free, and enslaved. Freedom, he said, was not about having no master at all, but rather about having a choice of masters. You could choose to be enslaved to commerce - to spend all day, every day, commuting to and from work and being at work and thinking about work and never seeing your wife or your kids or ever do anything for yourself. You'd be a well-paid slave, he said, but a slave nevertheless. Another example I would give is that you could enslave yourself to your spouse and kids - to people you love and trust. I would point out that wife and kids are wonderful, but, to be terribly depressing, fragile. Still, better to be a beloved slave, I think, then simply a well-paid one. The point is, we attach ourselves to things - tie ourselves down.

From there, my priest gave an absolutely lovely metaphor. He talked about a friend of his, another priest, who went to a barbecue, and flew a kite with his two nephews. It was a nice windy day, and the kite flew easily and high, straining hard against the string as if to say 'let me go! Let me fly! I could go so much higher than this if you would just release me!" So this other priest asked the kids, "So? What do you think?" The boys were very excited. "Release it!" they said. "Let it fly!" And so the man released it. Predictably, the kite was caught up in the chaos of the wind and pretty quickly came crashing down. My priests comment was something like, "Interesting, isn't it, how much higher we fly when we are tied down? We strain so hard to be 'free,' only to discover how much harder gravity pulls on a kite that is 'freed' from all restraint."

So the question is, of course, to what or whom do we tie our kite strings? Who or what will allow us to fly the highest? What restraint will help us towards the most freedom? The answer, I think, is obvious.

1 comment:

  1. Oh, that's a great metaphor. I was going to write this post off as a downer, right up until I read the last couple of sentences. Thanks for sharing :)

    ReplyDelete