The Awesome Responsibility of Freedom
Photo by Keoni Cabral/Flickr Creative Commons
This week marks the intersection of two religious holidays that are all about freedom: Passover and Easter.
Passover, which began yesterday and continues for 8 days, commemorates the journey of the Jewish people from slavery into freedom. Over the years, I’ve gotten a feel for the spirit of freedom inherent in the holiday from some dear Jewish friends. Last year, I participated in a beautiful seder with Sharon Salzberg and Roshi Joan Halifax at Upaya Zen Center.
This article from Dr. James Hyman of the Partnership for Jewish Life and Learning is a wonderful reminder of the power of ritual and its role in freedom. Here’s an excerpt:
As human beings we are entitled to be free, and we have a responsibility to help others be free.
That’s why we must begin by asking the central question of the evening: What does it mean to be free? At the Seder, the notion of freedom is about freedom from slavery – from the enslavement that the ancient Israelites experienced – and from enslavements today.
This ritual, repeated year after year, is designed to reinforce both the commitment to keep the value of freedom front and center to help remember that the past is a most critical factor in determining the future. Indeed, remembrance is the vehicle that enables us to be truly free.
And then there’s Easter, coming up this Sunday. The day marks the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who rose from the dead three days after being crucified by those who could not recognize his divinity.
How interesting to consider Easter in that light — when we deny others of their divinity as well as their humanity, how do we take their life away? And how can we step into our humanity and divinity, so that we can walk out of the tomb of our suffering and oppression and into a space of liberation and love?
I just love the way that the reverberations of freedom from these two religious traditions come together in the beautiful voices of these two cantors at the Central Synagogue in New York City:
This week, may you remember both your humanity and divinity, and may you dwell in true freedom.
___________
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2 Comments
First, what an amazing video. I swear I could have heard the name Jesus in there somewhere! And what a transformation of the idiom, to near klezmatic! Well!
Regarding freedom…We ARE free, and exercise that freedom every moment. Opting out of ignorance is not denied us, ever. And if the thought is worldly freedom…my perspective is that we just made our life into what it is, with a great deal of cooperation from other beings, both incarnate and disincarnate. I see freedom as something that merges with the concept of overcoming disability. We all have our spiritual challenges. Many of us will never know in the current lifetime, the bliss of oneness with God or unconditional love, and that is fine too, because it is the exercise of freedom of choice, that is to say, free will, to experience ignorance, in one of its unique and I would say, beautiful, expressions.
March 27, 2013
Maia,
Finding this as this day winds down I recall how the day began for me.
In the last moment of the last lucid dream this morning I heard that Mathew (the Gospel writer) was, “an uncivilized attorney”. Thinking nothing of it until reading your title, The Awesome Responsibility of Freedom, a vital layer of meaning leapt out: that to be an attorney can mean being directly involved in working for justice, and to be ‘uncivilized’ can be taken in a sense that Noam Chomsky might advise, or Howard Zinn may have advocated, or as indicated in M.K.Gandhi’s response to the question, “What do you think of Western Civilization?” > “I think that it would be a good idea.” So the phrase, uncivilized attorney, holds the parallel aspects, freedom and responsibility, in place.
It so happened that my first day as a formal student of Daido Roshi (my ‘tangaryo’) fell on a day that was a first day of Passover, and Vesak (‘Buddha’s Birthday’) and also the day between Good Friday and Easter, corresponding to ‘the time in the tomb’. I liked that. It made sense, with all my interfaith involvement.
As it turns out, it’s Mathew’s gospel that places the start of Passover two days after The Last Supper; …another resonance with today, with my tangaryo, and with the occasion of recognizing that for each of us, personally finding meaning is inextricably bound with what our lives come to mean for the rest of the world. It seems that’s where responsible freedom lives. Not in the subjectivity of a dream or an annual cultural liturgy, but in what these come to mean for any and all who may never partake of these, personally.
To dream alone is of no use until it meets the world on the world’s terms, just as any personal freedom is, I think, meaningless without regard to its corresponding responsibility in the common life.
March 26, 2013