Faith & Life Inspirational Message

To be free, oh, to be free.   Freedom has always been a major theme of American culture.   Indeed, this country was rooted in a political and religious quest for freedom.   Any of us with any age hears the resonant voice of Martin Luther King, Jr. and others in the turbulent 1960s calling for freedom to ring out.             But freedom is a much older concept than these North American colonies, now global super-state.   And freedom certainly is not an American concept alone.   Freedom goes back to those Jews who experienced liberation from Egyptian bondage.   It is as old as those Greek philosophers, like Plato and Aristotle.   Freedom has been an issue on the national scale as well as on the individual scale.             Freedom is always the opposite of bondage and slavery. In many ways I would claim never to have experienced bondag...

My friend gave me a poem written by Wendell Berry.   My friend knows I like Wendell Berry, although I would never claim that I know too much about him.   Born about ten years before I was born, Berry is still active.   Berry is a fascinating guy.   Berry is a Kentuckian farmer.   However that does not tell you much about this man.   He is a learned farmer.   He is famous writer and poet.   He is an active Christian---a Baptist.   He is a contemporary prophet who has challenged the complacency of so much of the traditional church.   I have laughed at him and cringed at some of his challenge to my own faith.             My friend gave me a poem Berry penned in 1991.   He entitled the poem, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.”   Berry may be the most quotable living American.   So to be given this poem is to be given enough thoughts and one-liners to fill a mo...