saoirse reviuquer Saoirse Her name is freedom, Saoirse, my love, my partner, my alter ego. As you might have surmised, I know something about freedom, surely more than most. For many years, as luck surely more than any skill of mine would have it, I have lived with freedom, loved and made love with freedom, freed freedom, cared for and about freedom, cooked for and with freedom, trekked and read and written with freedom, supped and bathed with freedom, slept with freedom, awakened and been awakened by freedom, been fed and cared for by freedom, been freed by freedom, and been loved by freedom. Freedom and I have been together at the highest mountaintops of happiness and hopefulness and in the deepest valleys of sadness and despair. Some have told us that each of us is part of the same being. Still freedom and how people, including us, perceive it are no less complex and perplexing than love. Possibly more so. Notice, for example, that more space on blather is taken by blathes on love than by those on any other thing. Love and how people perceive it are too complex and perplexing to describe publicly with mere written words or any other form of public expression. So it is also with freedom. Yet there are but three blathes on freedom, counting yours yesterday and this one, and six on power, a crucial element in considerations of freedom but one that I will not address specifically here. This de minimis blathing reflects public expression generally, which concerns freedom much less than love. People, or at least those who express themselves publicly on things that matter, think about freedom much less frequently than about love. Yet to think even a bit about freedom, after being free and in love with the same person, reveals with amazing clarity that freedom and love are related fundamentally and inextricably. It is not possible to be simultaneously not free in one's own mind and actions about life with another person and be in love with the person. To be not free and believe one is in love is infatuation, a very dangerous, delusional disease. It would benefit a person who is in love, or thinks he or she is or might be in love, or has in mind another person with whom he or she seeks or wishes to become in love, to think not just about love but also about freedom. Considerable pain would be avoided. Joy would be achieved sooner and be longer lasting. The world would be spared considerable angst-laden blathering and not just on blather or about love specifically. See, for example, the 13 blathes on pain. In an ideal world, the number of blathes on blather on freedom would approximate the number on love. To try in some way to answer your questions more concretely, I will provide two descriptions of freedom that I have found to be profound and helpful. I ask that you recognize the inherent, unavoidable incompleteness of these attempts. The first is a description of freedom that Saoirse and I heard Richie Havens deliver musically some years ago. In the course of our lives, we have discovered this description to be profound and helpful for reminding us what freedom is all about: "Freedom, freedom Freedom, freedom Sometimes I feel like a motherless child Sometimes I feel like a motherless child A long way from my home "Freedom, freedom Freedom, freedom Sometime I feel like I'm almost gone Sometime I feel like I'm almost gone A long way from my home "Clap your hands, clap your hands Clap your hands, clap your hands Hey, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya I got a telephone in my pajama, and I can call you from my heart I got a telephone in my pajama, and I can call you from my heart When I need my Brother, Father, Mother, Sister When I need my Brother, Mother, Father, Sister "Freedom, freedom Freedom, freedom Sometimes I feel like a motherless child Sometimes I feel like a motherless child A long way from my home "Freedom, freedom Freedom, freedom Sometime I feel like I'm almost gone Sometime I feel like I'm almost gone A long way from my home" I apologize. You really do need to hear it to fully appreciate its message. There are CD's that include it. I want to conclude with a description of a continuing, personal experience of Saoirse's and mine. This experience began near the beginning of our relationship, now many years ago. In thinking about freedom and love, I recall the conversation we had at breakfast on the morning after we had made love with each other the first time. I remember feeling very deeply in love with her, as I still do, and ironically also very free, unchained, freer than I had ever felt before. Saoirse said to me then "Rev, my Love, my name is "freedom" but you know until now I have never felt free. Isn't that counterintuitive"? I then told her that I felt the same way. Since then, as we have grown closer and closer, we often remark to each other how we feel freer and freer. More than that, I believe we are freer and freer. C 2000 000323 ... notme sometimes i hear my mother sing sometimes i feel like a motherless child 040204 ... egger beauty. 040205 ... deathofarose . 040205 what's it to you? who go blather from