And did those feet...?

Glastonbury in Somerset is one of my favourite places. It is the claimed cradle of Christianity in the UK, festooned as it is now with all manner of loopy baubles. After around a year and a half of difficulties, my lovely husband allowed me to schedule some time away, retreat style, and I chose Glastonbury.
I spent most of the time sitting in Glastonbury Abbey. I like Glastonbury Abbey. Like any other grand church building, it has that air of cloistered, tranquil holiness, set apart from the bustle of the everyday.
And yet the floor is grass, and blue sky and clouds are in place of a vaulted roof. Which is wonderfully appropriate really, given that the idea of a vaulted ceiling, from an architectural viewpoint, is to draw your gaze and mind heavenward. Can anything truly do that better than the heavens themselves?

I found myself thinking a lot about freedom and being free while I was there. I found that I didn't really think they were always the same thing.

Dragonflies in many hues were darting about the cloister walls, flying where-ever they wanted to, subject to the bluster of the wind. But they were there because of the pools of water in the grounds. Free, as they are, to fly many miles away, they are constrained to hover in the Abbey, because that's where the water is. Are they any less free because of that? Perhaps. But is their freedom diminished? I wouldn't have said so.

I did not feel free. I was pretty much constrained by how much pain I could endure, and the trip was cut short because of that. Yet within the Abbey I had freedom to read, walk, sit when I needed to.
Did I truly have more freedom there than at home? I was alone. Yes, I could determine the shape of my day, but only so far as my limitations would allow. I was the same person there. Surrounded by the fascination of incensed bookshops and curiosities, I still gravitated to what I know to be true.

The trip was cut short, but it was useful, none-the-less. Quiet space, time to think, to breathe.

I need my family. I am dependent and this is no bad thing. I am no longer footloose and carefree, with the illusion of open choice before me. I am a mother, a wife, a Christian. These thing planned out for me do not hold me back. They are my circumstances but they are not my prison.

When we're young, we fondly imagine our many choices are entirely free - and ours alone to make. As we grow, and take each turn along the path, our choices appear to narrow.
Has anything really changed? Or, in actuality, have we merely been peeling away layers of illusion of being 'free', until we see our ordained place and we know freedom?

So, did those feet really walk upon Englands green and pleasant land? It's rather unlikely to have happened 2000 years ago with Uncle Joe. But it happens everyday that this world exists - same as He walks all about this creation of His. And I am very grateful to be placed here in this land that still bears so many of His footprints, even though some have been distorted and filled in.

I pray that in His providence He has not finished with us, and that one day He will bless my country with a fresh awakening to His gospel. That's the only real freedom there is.