Living Happily

 

It is not that someone else is preventing you from living happily; you yourself do not know what you want.  Rather than admit this, you pretend that someone is keeping you from exercising your liberty.  Who is this?  It is you yourself.”

New Seeds

Last weekend I visited with my son Alexander in Lexington, Kentucky.  During a free afternoon and feeling a bit tired, I went back to my hotel room and watched the movie “Invictus”.  The word means unconquered and the story takes place in South Africa in the first months of a new government headed by Nelson Mandela. In the movie, Nelson Mandela-played by Morgan Freeman- continues to offer the hand of forgiveness rather than the sting of revenge.  The fruit of forgiveness is invariably freedom for the forgiven and the forgiver.

Woven through the story is the poem “Vindictus”, by William Ernest Henley.  The poem was written from a sick bed in hospital. Henley used his experience of suffering to write about the unconquerable freedom within the human soul.  Here is the last stanza of the poem:

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll.

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

What Merton and Henley and the movie Invictus all have in common is the inalienable choice that human beings have to be free or to be enslaved.  Let me be clear about this.  We cannot always choose our circumstances, but we can choose freedom of spirit regardless of circumstances.  History is illuminated by human witnesses who regardless of their circumstances chose freedom.  I can name a few here: Portia and her companions, Dostoyevsky, and Victor Frankl. 

Freedom is essential for growth in the spiritual life.  Christ serves as our guide to this way of life, doesn’t He?  Never subject to anyone or any circumstance, Jesus kept His eyes on God and listened to Him above all other voices that clamored for His attention.  Over and over again, it is the behavior of freedom that creates the compassion of Love.  True love is also truly free, and wants only the best for the other.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 2Cor 3:17

Freedom is a touchstone of the heart.  When I do not experience spiritual freedom, which is my inheritance, then I know that I have allowed some other attachments to cloud my perceptions. 

Christ invites us to live in freedom.  Let us welcome freedom.  Let us live freedom, and let us become witnesses ourselves to true freedom in Christ.

For the complete version of Invictus go to:

http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/william-ernest-henley/invictus/