Allergies are kick'en my rear. For the last two weeks I've done nothing but blow my nose, cough, sneeze, and rub my eyes. Medication only works so-so, and since most allergy or sinus meds don't alter my mind/mood, I don't like taking them. Talk about irony. (If you have to ask, then don't.)

A few nights ago I was trying to share an idea that hadn't fully formed. I'm blaming my incoherency on my mucus-filled head. "My mind's a bit fuzzy.” Yea, that works, or "It's hard to put two sentences together through the....achoooooo." In reality, most of the time my thoughts are incoherent, so the other night wasn't anything new.

I was attempting to bring the two concepts of "space" and "freedom" together in order to better speak about both and how they applied to my life at that moment. Earlier that week I'd read an interesting bit of ancient wisdom from the Tao Ching (some of it’s really odd, but some is thought provoking) which said, "Thirty spokes unite in the one nave; but it is on the empty space (the axle) that the use of the wheel depends. Clay is fashioned into vessels; but it is on their empty hollowness that their use depends...Therefore, what has a positive existence serves for profitable adaptation, and what has not that for actual usefulness." Now I take the last line as meaning: "positive existence" is stuff, good for being molded or shaped into something which allows for functional space thus, "actual usefulness." This understanding makes sense of the examples.

So taking that idea of space being a really useful thing, I tried to apply that to the concept of freedom, at least personally. Here goes, so much of who I was, was defined by the space around me. When the walls around me dictated who I was they became prisons. When who I was, was understood by what I saw - not within - but by a title on a door, a "seat at the table," a car payment, an association with X, you can fill in your own blanks, then my "positive existence" stopped being a tool for service and became a constricting container. I had to live into the surroundings (which is backwards). No longer was the space adaptable for usefulness, but instead it was a limiting and restrictive force. Eventually it atrophyed becoming smaller like a straightjacket.

What I didn't get - what I'm trying to understand now - is that freedom, true freedom isn't something you can point to and say, "there it is." Freedom doesn't have a color or texture. Freedom is a space within me that isn't defined by the exterior. I think of the movie Shawshank Redemption where Andy puts on the opera music and for a fleeting second everyone in the prison yard is transported by the beauty of the singing. They are moved beyond the barbed wire and into an - excuse the word here - existential place that can't be reached by hands. That’s freedom.

Freedom isn't defined by walls. Freedom is defined by the empty, but willing space, within my heart. It is a space that isn't occupied by fear or anxiety but peace. Maybe Jesus was hinting at this when he said, "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid." Peace.