Prayer is the place where we sort out our desires and where we are ourselves sorted out by the desires we choose to follow.
Barry and Ann Ulanov
Facing our desires demands courage. It is in the end self-defeating to deny our desires – even our desire for the wrong things. Our desires are the key to the journey of the spirit. How else can we wean ourselves off attachments and compulsions which are illusory, destructive and unsatisfactory?
Look at some of the things you’ve wanted over the years –
and realize how strong desires can be – and how deceiving.
Ask yourself now: what is it I really want?
What will really satisfy me?
The images in this post are from American sculptor Zenos Frudakis. This sculpture in bronze is called the Freedom Sculpture. Frudakis says of this work:
“I wanted to create a sculpture almost anyone, regardless of their background, could look at and instantly recognize that it is about the idea of struggling to break free. This sculpture is about the struggle for achievement of freedom through the creative process.
Although for me, this feeling sprang from a particular personal situation, I was conscious that it was a universal desire with almost everyone; that need to escape from some situation—be it an internal struggle or an adversarial circumstance, and to be free from it.
Although there are four figures represented, the work is really one figure moving from left to right. The composition develops from left to right beginning with a kind of mummy/death like captive figure locked into its background. In the second frame, the figure, reminiscent of Michaelangelo’s Rebellious Slave, begins to stir and struggle to escape. The figure in the third frame has torn himself from the wall that held him captive and is stepping out, reaching for freedom. In the fourth frame, the figure is entirely free, victorious, arms outstretched, completely away from the wall and from the grave space he left behind. He evokes an escape from his own mortality.”
For more information go to Zenos Frudakis.
For a printable PDF of the text of this meditation please click on the link below.
