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What is Freedom For?

Susannah Black
Susannah Black received her BA from Amherst College and her MA from Boston University. She is an editor at Mere Orthodoxy, Plough Quarterly, Postliberal Thought and its journal New Polity, and The Davenant Press. Previously, she was an editor at Providence and Fare Forward. She's a co-founder of Solidarity Hall and The Simone Weil Center, and is on the boards of the Distributist Review, The Davenant Institute, and The Simone Weil Center. Her writing has appeared in First Things, The Distributist Review, Solidarity Hall, Providence, Amherst Magazine, Front Porch Republic, Ethika Politika, The Human Life Review, The American Conservative, Mere Orthodoxy, Fare Forward, Postliberal Thought, and elsewhere. She blogs at Radio Free Thulcandra and tweets at @suzania. A native Manhattanite, she is now living in Queens.

Dear friends,

What is freedom for?

This Holy Week, Joshua Heavin brings us a reflection on the uses and nature of freedom, as refracted through the story of this past winter’s Texas ice storm. It is a timely and moving meditation on what we are to do with the freedom that Christ bought us: Shall we serve others or ourselves? Shall we build responsibly, or shoddily?

This week, the winter seems far away. Spring has come to the Panhandle, and we’re preparing to celebrate Easter. A whole year’s worth of suffering seems soon to be behind us, as those cold, dark days are behind us. We may feel that we can go back to normal: to freedom-posting and to shopping online, to neglecting our planet, our society, the fragile threads that bind us together and that, in a crisis, either hold, or snap. Whether they snap or whether they hold in the winters to come will largely depend on who we serve with our freedom, who we serve in the spring.

As you enter into Easter Sunday, in this very-nearly-post-COVID resurrection season, let this challenge and these words stir you.

Easter greetings to all of you from all of us at Breaking Ground,