And I think it's gonna be all right
Yeah, the worst is over now
The mornin' sun is shinin' like a red rubber ball—Paul Simon and Bruce Woodley
Not only must we be forced into freedom, but, once forced free,* we must also be forced to stay that way — until we at last grow accustomed to freedom. After that, we must ourselves continue constantly to work to keep free. Without regular, recurrent, and ongoing effort, we will inevitably relapse into bondage.
Freedom is not a lasting condition or a steady state. It is no possession, no personal property. If you don’t use it, you will lose it. Freedom is a direction of travel, not a goal to be reached by that travel. It is a not an end point toward which we are going, but a star by which to guide ourselves, maintaining our orientation with constant vigilance. Put just a bit differently, freedom is a road along which we are called to travel, not a destination we are trying someday to reach.
When we first start walking along that road, the unfamiliarity of it is intimidating. The darkness from which we have just come seems in our memory to be brighter than the light into which we have now been thrust. We are tempted to turn back, and re-hook our chains. We need help to avoid yielding to that temptation.
That is why fear is given to us when we begin such a journey: the fear of the punishment we think we are likely to receive if we turn back. So long as that fear remains stronger than our fear of continuing to venture into the unknown, we will keep going.
Photo by Jen Theodore on Unsplash
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The first degree of humility, then, is that one keeps the fear of God always before one’s eyes and is careful never to forget it. Let one constantly remember all that God has commanded, keeping in mind that all who despise God will burn in hell for their sins [. . .]. While guarding oneself at every moment from sins and vices of thought or tongue, of hand or foot, of self-will or bodily desire, let one recall that one is always seen by God in heaven, and that one’s actions everywhere are in God’s sight and are reported by angels at every hour.
— The Rule of St. Benedict, Ch. 7: Humility, verses 10-13
In the case of one’s initial steps along the road of freedom, it does not matter what one calls that, the fear of which keeps one moving forward. Nor does it matter how one envisions it. If one uses the word God to name that the fear of the wrath of which keeps one going forward, so be it. What’s more, even if one childishly imagines what one calls God to be some sort of great puppet-master in the sky, that’s all right, too. Let one call that the wrath of which one fears, should one turn around and go back, by whatever name one wishes; it does not matter. And let one conceive that, the wrath of which one fears, however one wants. One may conceive of it as some sort of entity, or one may conceive of it as the breath that moves between all parties to the human conversation. For that matter, it is just the same if what one fears, should one fall back, is really no more than that falling back itself — returning to what it used to be like before one was first forced free.
All that matters when one first sets out on the road of freedom is that one does feel fear, when one imagines oneself letting up on one’s progression; and that that fear keeps one moving forward. All the rest is of no real consequence.**
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Now, therefore, after ascending all these steps of humility, the monk will soon come to that perfect love of God that casts out fear. All that one once performed with dread, one will now begin to observe effortlessly, as though naturally, from habit, no longer out of fear of hell, but out of love of God, good habit, and delight in virtue.
— The Rule of St. Benedict, Ch. 7: Humility, verses 67-69
Once forced free, if our fear keeps us free for just a while, we will soon find our vision clearing. We will come to see that, in fact, we can simply trust our new-found freedom. We no longer need to fear losing it, just so long as we keep moving forward along the path we have so unexpectedly found opening up before us, the path of ongoing freedom itself: not the path to freedom, but the path of it. Then all we have to do is to keep on walking, one step as a time, as those steps are given to us to see one after another.
At that point, we are freed not only of our chains, but also of our fear of ever having to return to them. The fear that at first kept us going is now replaced with the joy of never having to stop going, so long as we live. Nor do we need to keep checking to be sure that we are on the right path. Gifted with trust in our freedom, we no longer feel any need to keep testing it — no need, as if were, to keep pulling up the potted plant to see if its roots are growing, a thing that will, of course, soon kill the very plant we are checking. We are certain, now, that we are no longer in hell, and need no longer fear having to return there if we’re not extraordinarily careful. We now feel safe and protected, accepting with open arms the gift of freedom.
That is a happy destiny indeed! What a deal for us bunch of derelicts!
