Formal landscaping has never been quite my cup of tea, though I enjoy seeing them in period movies — those pristine swaths of green, controlled and controlling, dotted with the dutifully pruned perennials and shrubs here and there.
Our family seems to prefer a certain kind of wildness, evident in our gardening habits. People can have their perfect lawns; I’ll take my son’s joy anytime. On what my husband calls my personal prairie, our six-year-old runs, barefoot and carefree. He climbs the tree in his frayed jeans and sits there, his feet dangling in the air while he reads a favorite book. Then he jumps down and gathers a handful of dandelions, and plops down on the grass to blow them leisurely, watching the seeds fly. Sometimes he gently picks them off, one at a time. Other times he’s a violent force of nature, beating previous records of deadheaded dandelions in one well-aimed kick. Save for the hottest part of the day, my son gets to do this anytime he wants, early morning, mid-afternoon, even some nights.
My two older boys are past those days; today they’re preoccupied with proms, work, and/or girls, not necessarily in that order. Whenever I read the news about Syria and other places I can’t help but wonder if they will be called to active duty someday soon, and then there’s this sudden, overwhelming wish for the ability to cram their tall frames back into six-year-old bodies.
Alas! They grow too fast, and even faster these days it seems. Though I very much look on parenting as an exciting adventure, it still isn’t fun having to talk to them about pornography, abortion, same sex marriage, or divorce, in their teenage years. The issues we deal with today are forcing my kids to become adults in their faith much earlier than they would have to were the culture different. I do lament this at times, and like most every parent I know, want to hold on to every last bit of innocence for as long as I can. And yet I am also thankful, because we’ve seen the pitfalls of prolonged adolescence everywhere. That’s not something we dream about for our sons. If they would be confused about anything, the last thing I’d want them confused about is their faith.
A friend was interviewing me recently about our family’s homeschooling choices, and the question he kept coming back to was failure. I tried to explain that failure in our particular paradigm doesn’t mean the same thing as failure in the world’s eyes.
To taste real freedoms and then to choose false freedoms… to fail to recognize real freedom and instead seek the temporary happiness of pleasures that are ultimately, in truth, invisible shackles — that’s how I would define failure. Our fallen heroes died for so much more than the “freedoms” people fight for these days, here in America and elsewhere. But people are a fickle lot, and even the Israelites in Moses’ time couldn’t seem to appreciate freedom after slavery.
This Memorial Day, we remember our fallen heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice for this country and the freedoms we enjoy here. But it’s also the Monday after Pentecost. And as we honor the men and women who died for our earthly freedom, we are also called to remember the One who died for the whole world, not just Americans; the One Who died, and rose again, that we may have freedom beyond the grave; the One Who sent us His Spirit to remain with us, and give us gifts.
Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility. By free will one shapes one’s own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude. – Catechism of the Catholic Church 1731
The Catechism tells us that we have an innate dignity as God’s creations. We were created for one specific freedom — that for which Christ died on the Cross. It is a harsh world my sons live in today. I hope they know that no matter where they are, whether they walk on carefree fields or they ever find themselves within the walls of an earthly prison, they can quiet their spirits and go back to the dandelions of their childhood, to that place of peace within, and listen to the Holy Spirit. My hope is that as they grow older they increasingly understand that freedom is theirs to enjoy only when they embrace self-mastery and responsibility along with it. I hope they use every gift that the Holy Spirit gives them, that they may one day approach the gates of heaven bearing fruits.
On the contrary, as Christian experience attests especially in prayer, the more docile we are to the promptings of grace, the more we grow in inner freedom and confidence during trials, such as those we face in the pressures and constraints of the outer world. By the working of grace the Holy Spirit educates us in spiritual freedom in order to make us free collaborators in his work in the Church and in the world. – Catechism of the Catholic Church 1742
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