freedom

The post about Judith Kerr has sparked a conversation here. You've all made me think.

I've grown up with freedom, and I expect most of you have too. People have different ideas about freedom. There are those who complain because they're not free to get drunk in public places, use obscene language in any and every situation, or drive at fifty in a thirty zone. There is a much longer list, but you know what I mean. Perhaps when they've got over themselves they'll try to understand the difference between liberty and licence. Soldiers didn't die so that you could throw up in a bus stop.

I thank God for freedom, not often enough. Here we are in the House of Stories, free to read what we like and discuss what we like. I can go out without a curfew. I can go to church without being blacklisted. I can say what I think about the government without being arrested. (By the way, this is the UK in 2013. If they arrested everyone who has a go at the government they'd have to make prisons out of Wembley Stadium and the Royal Albert Hall.)

Shortly after Judith Kerr's family escaped from Germany, her father's books were publicly burned. There was a price on his head 'dead or alive'. He was most offended because he said it wasn't enough. You may like to read the books of Corrie ten Boom - she and her sister smuggled Dutch Jews out of Holland during the war, and were arrested. She, too, was a shining woman.

So we need to know our past. As Jonny said, those who forget their past are doomed to repeat it. We need to know how dearly our freedom was bought and how precious it is. As the Scots said in the Declaration of Arbroath (early 14th C)

'It is in truth not for glory nor riches nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom, for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself'.