A few days ago, my son left home to begin his third year of college.  It's a bittersweet moment.  Though I know that he wants dearly to return to his collegiate life--and I am happy for him to do so--I still will miss having him around.
     It's a funny balance, really, this powerful divide between wishing for freedom and desiring presence.  But it's part of being human.  We are free to do as we please, yet those whom we know are equally free to wish for our presence.  Freedom is integral to humanness, yes, but community is, too.  Our challenge is to find, over and over again, the best mix of the two.
     Larger picture, we can view existence and its meaning in this way as well.  The cosmos is free in ways we cannot possibly imagine--and we are caught up in its freedom--but we wish for stability and anchor, too.  Our lives are balancing acts of the two.
     As I ponder the absence of my son, I wonder as well about this delicate interplay of freedom and presence.  I also wonder about the nature of freedom itself and how integral it is to meaningful existence.  Most of all, I marvel that such things as freedom and presence exist, that we are here, here to be free, ensconced in the freedom of God.