Songs of Freedom

In Robert Moss’ blog post about Mircea Eliade he quotes:

“Nothing, absolutely nothing, can sterilize spiritual creativity so long as a man is—and realizes himself to be—free. Only the loss of freedom, or of the consciousness of freedom, can sterilize a creative spirit.”

I hear Bob Marley’s voice singing:

“Old pirates, yes, they rob I;
Sold I to the merchant ships…

But my hand was made strong
By the ‘and of the Almighty.
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly…

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our minds.

Won’t you help to sing this song of freedom”

Our songs of freedom are sung through our creativity. Yesterday I sat at a small book fair table helping to promote the books published by Nighthawk Press, Including my soon to be published memoir, Love on the Brink of History. People came and looked but not many books were actually sold. Bonnie Lee Black and I talked about how more and more people are creating books even as there are fewer and fewer people who actually read books—a strange dichotomy. Some freedom emerges through the creative urge of humanity that simply hopes to be met by the witness/receiver. We have stories we must tell.

I sometimes have the image that all these books that don’t get sold or appreciated by the “merchant ships”—our current market driven world—will be a goldmine of understanding for those who inhabit this planet long after we have gone. Our stories are laying tracks for those who wonder what kind of world this was, back in what they called the first part of the 21st century.

We are the ancestors of future generations born from our species and/or future inhabitants of this planet who come from somewhere else. Despite the pirates now working to greedily claim the bounty of our planet and our freedom, we strive forward with “the consciousness of freedom” in our individual and humble ways, through our God given freedom—the creative spirit.