“Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”

– Fannie Lou Hamer

Early May is the season every year when it feels as though my soul comes out from under its pile of winter blankets for the final time, shakes off the wintry sleep lingering through early spring, and takes flight. Everything is bloom and leaf and fullness, and I can feel it rising in my spirit like freedom.

In May, you could catch me skipping down the street, when most of the time I’m at least pretending to be too dignified for such a thing. In May, I can hardly keep from singing.

I have come to believe that this feeling is the starting place of our collective liberation – this joy, this pleasurable freedom that springs up from deep inside, rising inexorably like bird song. It is the soul-sensation that we are here to live life abundant and to ensure that others can do the same.

When I feel this soul-freedom – this rising song of joy – I want my loved ones to feel it too. When I see my loved ones so free, I want it for the whole world. And from there comes collective liberation, when a song of joy rises from within us and spreads in widening circles until everybody’s got their part in the song.

“Nobody’s free until everybody’s free,” says civil rights pioneer Fannie Lou Hamer, and that includes you – your own spirit is the starting place.

How will you get free this summer? Who will you bring along?

See you in church!
Rev. Molly