Spiritual Freedom by Rev. Glenda Walden

Isn’t today a beautiful day to be Free? This month we celebrate the birth of our nation and politically freedom. But how many of us are still in bondage to our thoughts, our beliefs, our stories about our present condition? Isn’t it time we claim our spiritual freedom and share the good news with others?

John 8:32 tells us: “and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

The key to freedom then is Truth; and Truth is exactly what Myrtle Fillmore taught would return us to a state of wholeness. But notice that first you have to know the Truth. I don’t think the author was talking about reading another self-help book or learning a new technique or method for healing. I think that what the writer meant is what Merriam Webster’s describes as “practical understanding”. To have a practical understanding means that you not only know the Truth, but you put it to use. Another passage in the New Testament tells us that faith without works is dead. If we don’t use what we know then there can be no freedom, no wholeness. We are the ones, and now is the time to practice the Truth that we know.

“It is the God in the midst of us that heals and frees, Myrtle Fillmore wrote in Healing Letters, “You need to think of God, the all-powerful Healer, as being already within you. In every part of your mind, heart, and body.” In the midst of presidential debates, increased gun violence, and global warming, it often difficult to remember that we are an expression of Spirit, Presence. We are not black, white, brown; this is only a body that is home to the Soul and Spirit. We are not Lesbian, Gay, Transgendered, Straight…; we are living breathing expressions of the One Power and Presence. It is up to us to recognize our wholeness and that of our brothers and sisters, to courageously step beyond perceived differences to extend the hand of collaboration, of empathy, of Love.

I recently watched the “Boxtrolls” with my grandson, and at the end of the movie the hero states “The hat, the cheese, the box, don’t make you. You Make You.” It was a reminder

You get to decide how you are going to express the One Power and Presence in the world, how you are going to demonstrate the Truth that you know. I remember a line from Alice and Wonderland, “My father used to think of 1,000 impossible things each morning before he finished his tea.” What if we were that bold? What if each morning we thought of everything that is possible because God is within and we are expressions of the Power and Presence? We would create bridges rather than deepening the divide? We would find innovative ways to support others, to spread kindness, to demonstrate love? How would we “define” ourselves if we knew nothing was impossible?

Seek the Truth, Know the Truth, Live the Truth. We are free! How will you share this gift?