My mad dash into everything started Friday. I spent two hours on a personality test for a job prospective. I wanted to finish the roof, which I did in about an hour and then it was time to get the kids off to the grandparents so that my wife an I could enjoy the ‘Anniversary Weekend’.

We had another lovely dinner at the Joel Palmer House on Friday night to celebrate our 22nd wedding anniversary. We capped the night off with a quiet fire (for once). Anyway, I am not going to go into all of our celebration but it lasted all weekend. Smack dab in the middle we got this little girl.

Moving on to this week’s message…

Admittedly, this week wandered a little for me. I think that I got the gist of what was being said. I will paraphrase… there is a holy association that we have despite our residence or citizenship. We need to keep our eyes on the right things rather than getting caught up in a more temporal existence. Submitting to secular authority is part of our duties as citizens of the holy nation.

Now, I haven’t been super direct about my beliefs and I intellectually understand that there is a certain zen or reverence in submission. Not that I know first hand, but I believe that monks act in similar belief. So there must be something to that. I suppose that you can distill it down more coarsely by saying ‘put up with what is going on here so that you can have a better, future life (in heaven)’.

Interestingly enough, in these two weeks there is a whole series on freedom in The Survival Podcast. The thrust of the series is about developing personal independence so that freedom is more attainable. These would be more in-line with career happiness and lifestyle. However, I think that the two work nicely together.

The questions of the week are

  • What is the most important thing about your freedom?
  • What can you do this week to honor the freedom that you have?

To me the first question is easy. The most important thing about freedom to me is that people appreciate it and do not take it for granted, for the greater good. One of the episodes last week, Jack implied that people dont really want freedom. By living in a neighborhood with a homeowner’s association, by caring about what their neighbors are doing, etc we take away our own freedoms voluntarily.

The application questions are always harder. They require analysis and action. My toolbox fallacy kicks in. It is really this time writing that is my thinking and analysis time. One thing for sure that we are going to do to honor our freedom is celebrate the Fourth of July. Maybe that was intentional?