"To be defeated -- and not to give up -- is victory!"  Revered Polish nationalist Jozef Pilsudski uttered these words to encourage his often beleaguered people to press on, even in the face of insurmountable obstacles and setbacks.  To, above all, as one of my beloved aunts wrote in a good-bye note to her twelve children, "keep trying."

    Pilsudski's words remind me of the battle of Masada, where a group of Jewish people held off a much larger Roman army until, one by one, they died, steadfastly refusing to surrender.  Or how a group of Native Americans, pinned on a tiny outpost of rock overlooking the Illinois River by a band of marauding whites, resisted leaping off the edge into the river, choosing instead to fight until they were either killed or starved to death.  In every instance, these people faced certain defeat--and likely death--yet refused to surrender.

    Those of us in the largely free West often fail to see that however much we treasure our ability to do and go as we choose, the greater freedom is knowing that even if one cannot do these things, she can still be free.  She's never really defeated, for she knows that freedom is not necessarily "being" or even "feeling" free but rather comes from understanding that we live in a world made, with meaning, by God.

    And from this, all else follows.