#10: Freedom in the Light of the Spirit

Participation in the Lindisfarne Community has provided me with a range of freedoms which I cherish deeply: freedom from the misogyny and judgment that would prevent me from being a priest, or addressing God as more-than-male; freedom from ecclesiastical structures that seek conformity over creativity and authenticity; freedom from the facile moralism that so often characterizes modern American expressions of Christianity.  Within the community I can breathe the free air of the Spirit, valuing others and myself as full partners in God's creative work.

It is, however, a truism in religion that freedom is not merely from something, but for something more. And it is to the "freedom for" that Understanding #10 points.  Here were are instructed to embrace the freedom to love and be loved, serve and be served, to be all that God wishes, desires, and creates us to be.  And side by side with that embrace, to check ourselves for the impulse to limit our own and others' freedoms; to resist the voices of control and domination that limit us - and others, from our point of view - in who and what we can be.

The aspect of our communal life in which I most appreciate this awareness is in our embrace of "all truth as God's truth," a statement which appears on our community home page.  Here is where I feel free to celebrate my brother who is a Zen priest as well as priest and monastic with Lindisfarne.  Here I applaud my brothers who play taiji, and explore the deep wisdom of Daoism.  Here I rejoice with my sister who practices Reiki healing for body, mind and spirit, as I do, and have for many years.  Here is where I find the freedom to explore Advaita Vedanta, the Indian non-dual philosophy that reminds me that the human and the divine are not separate realities.  Where I and others find harmony with Christ, we are free to explore and embrace a variety of human expressions of relationship with the Divine.

Legalism has no place in the workings of the heart, or of the Holy Spirit.  Guidelines, yes; Understandings, yes.  But we are called to engage in the work of making ourselves and others free so that God can be and do the work of creation and re-creation, in us and around us.  Thanks be to God.