There is all this untouched beauty
The light the dark both running through me
Is there still redemption for anyone?

-Karin Bergquist

In an earlier post in this series, I hinted at two versions of freedom. Standard contemporary understandings of freedom center on the power to choose among alternatives. A second, older view locates freedom in the giving of consent. Consent freedom doesn’t mean passive acceptance of evil or injustice. These must be named and opposed. Consent freedom involves reckoning with human and earthly limits, living responsibly, and acknowledging we control almost nothing in life save how we respond. It requires constancy in a world where the chief constant is change. It means finding goodness in the shape of what’s given and saying “yes.”