A 30-Year-Old Mystery About Freedom Finally Solved

Good conversations lead to new understandings

On July 22, 1992, I left my parent's house in Arizona, got on a plane, and landed in Bogota, Colombia. I had just turned 22, I had graduated from college a whole month ago, and I was ready to start my education.

I went in search of adventure and new ideas. Upon arrival, I was assigned a volunteer position in a human rights office run by Jesuits. It was there that I met a priest who became my friend. We liked each other’s company and he took me to explore small villages until it became unseemly for a priest to be seen with a young, single woman. So, although there was never anything romantic between us, we had to stop spending time together.

On one of our trips, we started talking about his decision to become a priest. He brought up the topic, I suspect out of a vague regret that we were going to have to give up our friendship so the gossip mill at the monastery would stop.

Because I was young and just starting to explore the freedom that came with adulthood, it was baffling to me how he could give it all up to join the order.

He said that he had always been an extremely independent person who loved freedom. He loved it so much that his ultimate act of freedom was to give it up.

I thought about this for a few minutes and simply could not wrap my mind around it. How could giving up your freedom be an act of freedom?!? It made no sense, yet it seemed there must be some way in which I could understand it if I just thought about it hard enough.

30 years passed and his phrase continued to baffle me. I was no closer to understanding it than I had been, but I never forgot it.

Then, last month I had a really good conversation about religion with a former pastor who continued to be very religious. In the 30 years since my long conversations with my Colombian friend, I had learned to avoid talking about religion with religious people.

Whenever the topic came up, I was adept at diverting it to less adversarial areas. I was a master of deflection, so when I found myself sitting on a bus for hours next to a clearly religious person, I was trepidatious and fully prepared to not talk about religion.

When the topic came up this time though, for some reason I went for it. It was the kind of religious conversation I had been starved of for so long.

We disagreed about many things but we also agreed about many things. It was a beautiful exploration of thought. Neither one of us was trying to “convert” the other to our way of thinking, we were simply curious about how the other person viewed the world and their role in it.

Finally, I asked him about how giving up your freedom could be an act of freedom and he explained it to me in a way that made perfect sense.

Giving up your freedom to join a religious order does, in fact, free you from many of the trials and frustrations of life. You are free from so many hassles like paying rent, figuring out a career and going through the ups and downs of romantic relationships. You are even free from little things like decorating your living space since you have given up having lots of personal possessions. The Colombian priest’s room consisted of a plain wooden desk and chair, a small bed, and a crucifix hanging above it. That’s it!

He was also free from having to navigate most of the moral gray areas in life. His religion gave him a very clear rule book to follow.

While I would never choose his route to freedom, finally, at the age of 52, I understand it.

I hope to have many more interesting conversations about religion in the future that challenge me to think about things differently. I will no longer shy away from talking about religion.

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