Prison Break

To truly be alive, requires risk; the risk to relate, to be vulnerable, to journey, to believe. But to risk requires volition and we are not always free to exercise our will. Trapped by circumstance, fear, oppression, our past or a myriad of other prisons, we cannot make the decisive move. Freedom is a grace won at great cost. I think of the freedom of 1994 and what it cost. A woman sacrifices security and status to ditch an abusive husband. A man gives up his job to follow his heart. A child grieves a broken past and becomes an adult. But once freedom has been won, we have the energy to risk. And so we live.

Risk is dangerous and freedom is expensive. Prison is death.

Katie, Phoebe and I run past a house every day that has a big rottweiler and two small terriers in the yard. Every day, the big roti barks like crazy (and Phoebe goads him). The little dogs follow suit. As we run past, the roti gets more and more agitated and frustrated because he can’t get past the fence. Eventually he takes out either one the terriers closest at the time. When the roti turns back to the fence the little terrier is even more angry and crazy, having been beaten up, but aims all that animosity at Phoebe.