Tuesday, February 3, 2009
The Free Spirit
After several weeks of thinking about several important parts of my life and what I need to change to become the person I want to be, I had a moment of personal discovery. I was trying to answer a question for Jeanette and some things just seemed to fall together as the answer to all my pondering over the past few weeks. The answer came from the sixth verse of the song "A Poor Wayfaring Man" the line that says "but my free spirit cried I will". This line is in response to his friends query, "If I for him would die". WHAT IS MY FREE SPIRIT? A riot of thoughts and ideas followed in a few seconds. I'm still working them out, but the main idea is that the person that is able to free themselves of one main human frailty could actually give their life for a noble cause without doubting. It started as several ideas and I've narrowed this to just one thing that is the root all human problems. SELFISHNESS. Selfishness makes every problem we have worse. I've been trying to think of a problem I have that isn't caused or worsened greatly by selfishness. I'd like challenge any reader of this post to find a problem you have that could not be resolved by being totally unselfish. For this to work you have to believe in God and His Eternal Plan which includes the Atonement of Jesus Christ. If you don't there's no reason but fear to keep you from doing anything you'd like any time. The "Free Spirit" isn't someone that can do anything they want (Drugs, alcohol, no responsibility, no cares, that person will be in bondage to the natural man or woman). The Free Spirit is a person doesn't let selfish personal desire from preventing them from gaining all the good experience in life and personal relationships that is possible. Take a look at your life, looking in this direction showed me plenty of things to work on.
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4 comments:
Very profound! It's that whole 'overcoming human nature' thing that I struggle with constantly. I'll keep working on it...
Ain't epiphany grand
Dad,
You should share more of your ponderings and thoughts. "The gift without the giver is bare." It must be the gift of the free spirit or the gift is meaningless.
Thanks for a different view of this songs meaning, although I think it may be the same expressed in different words.
I had always viewed it as a song of a man learning to love, felt initially without understanding why, but through service had tasted manna, had his thirst quenched with living waters, was able to forget his own problems (wounds), and finally (although the flesh was weak) the man had become love (or attained the quality of Christ-like love) and therefore was freely willing to do for this "man" what Christ did for us all.
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