Today is Patriot’s Day in Massachusetts.  All kinds of celebrations and reenactments have been taking place for the past few days in my town and the neighboring towns of Lexington and Concord.  It is a day to commemorate the beginnings of the American Revolution in 1775 and the promise of freedom that it held for this country and ultimately the world.  A promise that has been borne out in many instances but which has sadly failed in others.

But this got me thinking about freedom and what its real essence is.  It goes far beyond any national or political doctrine.  It goes far beyond gender, race, creed, age, nationality, or ethnicity.

It is entirely spiritual.  And it is entirely of God.

While reading Mary Baker Eddy’s book No and Yes the other day, I was struck by this sentence (p. 45):

Truth cannot be stereotyped; it unfoldeth forever.

Now, you may ask why that had caught my attention so strongly.  Well, it caused me to think more deeply about how often we’re tempted to stereotype others and even ourselves.  If Eddy’s statement is true—and I am certain that it is—then each of us as children of God—of Truth—cannot in fact be stereotyped, cannot be limited, because we are the individual, unique creations of our Father-Mother God.  Creations that are forever unfolding.

Think of the freedom that the application of this idea in our lives can bring!

For example, we cannot be pigeon-holed into any form of a limited existence.  Eddy states on page 258 of the same book that:

God expresses in man the infinite idea forever developing itself, broadening and rising higher and higher from a boundless basis.

Likewise, we can’t be tempted to pigeon-hole others either.  As God’s ideas—as His/Her children—we can’t be made to see our brothers and sisters in any limited fashion either.  Spiritually, we can only see them as our Creator does—infinite and good in all ways.

And since this freedom—this limitlessness—is forever unfolding, it is forever opening to each of us new views—new vistas—of God, of ourselves, and of all creation.  And these inherently include the elimination of any sense of confinement of God-inspired/directed expression and activity.

Such a recognition enables us to begin to see right through the caricatures that a limited, mortal and material sense of life is always trying to get us to accept.  Caricatures which would attempt to have us worship matter and thereby break the First Commandment—to acquiesce to the lie that there are gods many, instead of the healing, all-encompassing truth that there is only one God, only one power, only one existence.

And it is a recognition of freedom that knows no boundaries.

Just a few ideas to munch on this Monday!