The Garden

You want to be free, but what is freedom for?

You are roaming the world. You are drinking in this freedom, your heart flaming with life on the pinnacle of a mountain. But your heart yet yearns, for you are searching. Searching, searching for something, your heart driving you onward.

And then one day you discover a little gate in a stone wall. Your heart, which has been beating wildly all the while that you’ve roamed, suddenly is quiet in your chest. You lean against the gate and peer through.

You glimpse something beautiful, something more beautiful than anything you’ve yet seen. How is this, when you have traversed jungles and rivers and caves? You think you may understand: the world never belonged to you, but this—this is the place you have been searching for. And yet—there is a lock on the gate. And you do not have the key.

Suddenly, there is the warmth of a presence beside you. It is another—and when he opens his hand to reveal a key, you realize he is your other.

Together you enter into the hidden place beyond the wall. Here, in the secrecy of a garden, you discover that there is always something new to be found under every leaf, behind every rock, and even in the coolness behind the little waterfall. It is not nearly as vast as the world outside the garden, but in its smallness you realize something: the freedom that you knew before was only ever to carry you to this place where you and he are discovering, day after day, the intricate beauty of the garden that is yours and yours alone.

You realize that freedom exists for love.