Freedom
Freedom is not given, it is taken.
It takes personal responsibility to achieve liberty.
Our forefathers knew this.
Taking up arms to become a nation;
fighting taxation without representation.
Dressed as native Americans,
dumping tea in the bay.
Riding through the night…
“The British are coming!”
Putting lives and fortunes on the line
for this ideal.
Creating a nation that champions freedom,
a nation still striving for freedom 243 years later,
Because this idea of freedom
is not cut and dried.
One person’s freedom to bear arms
encroaches on another’s very life.
Another person’s right to free speech
offends another’s sense of decency.
Still another person’s self-expression
interrupts someone’s quiet meditation.
A person’s freedom of choice about her body
encroaches on another’s belief in the right to life.
Questions of freedom and rights are forever
pondered and rehashed.
Old rules and laws come up for current debate.
Criminals go free in a flawed justice system
taking pains to preserve liberty.
Innocents are jailed…or killed
in the name of rights and freedom.
With so many souls on the planet now,
new questions of freedom emerge.
Even with all of our principles, laws and debate…
Are we really free?
That question will forever be argued.
Freedom is a plumb line
that orients us to an ideal.
It aligns human hearts,
of which government is composed.
Flawed and imperfect as humans are,
we strive for the ideal,
Personally and societally
rarely reaching the mark,
But striving nevertheless…
in our own imperfect ways,
For freedom.