As I clickety-click my way through various blog posts today, I find some wonderful posts about religious freedom, about America, some great links to the Founding Fathers and their vision of what liberty meant then, and some great writing among peers about what freedom means now.

I belong to a number of minorities.  I’m a woman.  I’m a Witch.  I’m a single mother.  I’m an optimist with a dominant smart ass gene — I’m not kidding!  Most people with the smart ass gene are born cynics.  Or worse, lots of people born optimists have a dominant uber-cheerleader gene.  I’m special!  (All the cynics out there are saying, “Yeah, you’re SPECIAL, alright.”)

Because I connect with these social minority groups, I don’t find it terribly hard to find something for which to be thankful.  Thankful that I can practice my religion instead of a centrally dictated religion.  Thankful that I have the right to vote, to work to support my child.  Thankful that I can choose what I want to do with my life.  Thankful that I can be that happy person with the zinger-up-my-sleeve for fun and profit.  Yes, life is good in many ways.

However, what if I told you that the arena of freedom is shifting?  That the arena where we’ve bought and paid for our tickets for the fireworks show isn’t where the gig is going down?  What if I told you that Lady Liberty is in the back alley getting mugged while we’re celebrating at a party in Her honor?  I guess I’d better explain myself.

The physical freedoms we have are important.  They allow us the most full integration of the many levels of our lives.  For example, I am a Witch and Priestess of the Craft.  I can spiritually follow this path.  I can mentally explore this path and have intellectual tools to aid me in the form of books, website access, and training on tools such as meditation and journeying that allow me to grow mentally from within as well.  I can emotionally enjoy this path, express it to others who also find joy in it, and take pleasure in the practice of it.  I can physically practice this path, decorate my home with art and symbols of my practice, put bumper stickers on my car, buy and wear jewelry to that echoes my faith, get a tattoo that means something deeply spiritual to me.  In this way, through these freedoms, I am able to achieve full elemental unity in my life in the area of being a Witch and Priestess of the Old Ways.

What I find happens all too often is that we take our physical freedoms for granted, or worse, view the physical freedoms we have as proof that we have freedom.  And so, because we can go to whatever religious function we like, we stand up and say “I’m free!” and move along to more pressing matters.  This “taking for granted” spills backwards into the other layers, and we become lazy and apathetic in examining the boundaries of our cages.  As long as we can get to what *WE* want to get, we really don’t seem to care where the fence boundaries are for others.  And we often don’t question if the boundaries we have keep us from something more that we are meant to achieve.

You can argue until the cows come home about whether or not we are free.  As I said, where the boundaries of YOUR fence are may not be where the boundaries of someone ELSE’S fence reside.  For example, I am straight and it is perfectly within my boundary to marry someone of the opposite sex.  The gay marriage issue happens to be near and dear to my heart and so, I intentionally choose to widen my own freedom boundary to include that right, even though I will never exercise it.  Even though I am not gay and will likely never choose to exercise that right, the lack of that right still oppresses my life because I see the suffering it causes.  As a result, I cannot say that we are a free people until that boundary is expanded and I am on the same side of the Freedom Fence as my gay brothers and lesbian sisters.  For someone who doesn’t really care and prefers that fence be between them and the gays and lesbians of the world, freedom is just right, isn’t it?

In response to the accusations that I am a feminist, I have repeatedly said that I am a HUMANIST.  In other words, ANYTHING that prevents a human from having the full scale opportunity to pursue his OR her life in a peaceful and life-affirming way needs to be addressed.  I don’t care if you’re black, white, red, or yellow… male or female or which one you started out as… young or old… American or Arabic or Aboriginal… the core common denominator is HUMAN BEING.  If you want to go farther, you can extend this to animals, too — prepare to become vegetarian if you widen your circle that far.  And when we discover we’re not alone in the Universe, will we have grown enough to extend the circle of rights beyond the label of HUMAN BEING?

There are a lot of people happy as long as their Freedom Fence includes the things they want.  There are a lot of people content to sit on the Freedom Fence and admire the view of their domain, to wave at the people still outside the Freedom Fence and say “Hey, I’m here for you, brother!” while they brandish their Rainbow/Support AIDS Research/End Violence/Stop Poverty t-shirts.  They’ve spent their energy climbing the fence but most don’t go looking for the wire clippers to sever the barbed wire.  Most don’t pick up the sledgehammer to chisel down the wall.

And then you have the ones who are are the boddhisatvas of Freedom.  These are the ones that have realized an internal level of Freedom that they have chosen to see themselves as prisoners, to return to the land of the Not-Really-So-Free-After-All and work for the liberation of all humans, all beings, until the Freedom Fence is no more.  These people turn their words to actions.  Volunteer for causes.  Stand up for those oppressed.  While everyone else is at the Freedom Party, they’re hearing Lady Liberty screaming in the back alley and they’re running to help.  These are people who have chosen to return again and again to the front line of the Freedom Fence and hold hands, hold signs, hold their ground until there’s a chink, a hole, a passageway through the barbed-wire opinions and the stone walls of judgment and prejudice.

Today, as people are celebrating Independence Day, I’m having a hard talk with myself.  I can hear the party going on inside while I’m standing in the doorway.  I realize that I’ve heard Lady Liberty screaming all along, and sometimes it’s just been more convenient to pretend I couldn’t hear her over the fireworks and sizzles of the grill.  I think about those Freedom Boddhisatvas — our Founding Fathers — and how their sacrifice was for ALL of America, not just for the ones that agreed with them.  And I look at my existence in that false Nirvana of my own freedom and realize I want to come back to Earth.  To the reality of the Freedom Fence and which side I’m actually on.

Will you commit today to being a freedom boddhisatva?  Will you cease seeing yourself as free as long as there is oppression in the world?  Will you work tirelessly to put a chink, a hole, a passage through the Freedom Fence until the day it is gone?  Will you do more than sit on the Freedom Fence in your “show your support” T-shirts?  Will you do more than sit on the Freedom Fence by blogging from your armchair or putting your support into 140 characters or less?  Do you realize that none of us are free until all of us are free?

If so, then I am not the only enlightened one today.  If you are here with me, then this doorway is thankfully crowded with those of us exiting the party to stop the imprisonment of and assault on Lady Liberty.  We have a long list of people who have boycotted the party to serve as examples to us:  the “Indians” who dumped the tea into Boston Harbor, the Founding Fathers whose writings continue to show us how far we have come and how far we have to go to bring their vision into being, activists such as Susan B. Anthony and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Harvey Milk, as well as those near and dear to my heart — Starhawk and Zsuzsanna Budapest — who first stirred me to action on my own behalf and who remain an example to not park my ass on the Freedom Fence.

I am not saying that we should not celebrate today.  I am only saying that the fireworks tonight are still only lights in the darkness and not the Light itself.  Push back the darkness, tear down the wall, bring down the Freedom Fence.

It’s not a party until everyone has arrived.

Photo by badboy69 (via Flickr).