Freedom Is Not Free
Words can grab your attention, drive you, move you and possibly change you. That is what the above images writing has done for me.
On a recent trip to the capital of this incredible country that we call America, I experienced many moving moments, images and feelings. I don’t know if could truly
put down in writing that which I felt while visiting places like the Viet Nam Veterans Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the Holocaust Museum, the World War II
Memorial, Arlington Cemetery and this place the Korean War Memorial.
Every where I turned there was a symbol, as statue, a memorial to the price of freedom and a reminder that truly Freedom is not Free. The men and women that
shed their blood and gave their lives to pay the price which buys us the liberty of expression, the opportunity to pursue a life of freedom payed the ultimate price,
and we as a nation are forever indebted to them. And me as a man I’m also indebted to them. Without their sacrifice I couldn’t possibly experience the richness of
the life that I enjoy today.
It had been 40 years since I had visited Washington D.C. And in that time many things have come and go in this country and in my life. College, Marriage, Births,
Mexico, and Christ have molded me, shaped me and turned me into the man that I’m today. And yet through out those milestones in my life I never truly understood
what an incredible blessing it has been to be able to grow up in such an amazing place like this country is. Yes many times I have heard of the soldiers, and
the stories of what they did but sometimes things need to bite you where it hurts for you to awaken to the reality of your life and those things that bring it to
existence. That in a sense is what happen as I walked among the names of fallen boys no older than my own sons. As I walked in the dark rooms of the Holocaust
Museum reading of the atrocities that the fascist, demonic nazis carried on innocent men, women and worst children, while the speakers shouted the speeches that
drove so many to follow an abomination to humanity that should have been aborted in his mothers womb. Entering that stock railroad car that would have been
used to transport hundreds of living, innocent people to a place where they would be treated like rats needing extermination.
Looking back at that first visit years ago to Washington only the great monuments where there except for Arlington Cemetery. It was a naive visit, of a young man
without understanding. A tourist with his family looking at the museums without any deep thought of what was truly there. Yet in those days the gut wrenching
memorials where still in the mind of artists, not yet carried out and placed in a permanent state of visual expression. I was not ready then but I was ready now to be
moved, to be touched both mentally and emotionally. My God! It was all I could do to keep myself from crying as I read about the twins from the Roma couple that
where used for experimentation at the Holocaust Museum. I definitely feel changed, desiring to help my fellow man more than ever before. I’m inspired,
stirred and with a new sense of desire to create, to explore and to live with a full understanding that I must use every minute that has been bought for me by the
sacrifice of others especially and above all Christ.
We this hunger to fulfill my purpose if it could be called that I feel that my work needs to change, be transformed and taken to the place of true artistic expression.
Pure in purpose, pure in motive, and leaving superficial monetary gains totally by the way side. No longer will I pursue the gaining of a payment without a
sense of emotional and intellectual gain.
This will be a year of Strength, a year of Knowledge and a year of Gain.
Freedom Is Not Free.