The Limits of Outer Freedom

Emancipation calls us beyond the illusion of individual freedom into the uncomfortable work of collective liberation. Personal liberties mean little if shaped by systems that benefit a few at the expense of the many. Cultural, political, and religious assumptions keep us confined, often without our awareness. If we haven’t achieved the inner freedom to love, we are totally dependent on outer systems which, paradoxically, can never fully deliver the very freedoms they promise. The freedom to love, to imagine alternatives, and to question dominant norms requires interior transformation. Unless we are willing to face the subtle ways our security depends on exclusion, we remain complicit in maintaining injustice. Holding citizenship in something larger than nation or ideology, we commit to freedom that includes everyone, not just ourselves.

May we seek the inner freedom to love,
so we are no longer bound by systems that
cannot give what only the soul can receive.

(inspired by Richard Rohr, Emancipation)