Apr 14, 2014

Out of Bondage


Chains are curious things. This image, like many who sit until they speak to me, was taken at the end of an old rail passenger car on an abandoned track in the woods outside of New Hope Pa. The old commuter carriage, was in deplorable condition, graffiti ‘tags’ covered most of it, along with the burned out fires of youths who once  found a secret spot to hide from the world. On one end was an open door and this curious chain. In looking at it, I couldn't determine its use in any way, but it must have held something I am sure. They always do and single link by single link they, constrain movement…hold fast.

Having had considerable time in conversation with a good friend who spent a couple of years of his life as a prisoner of war as well as others who have had similar times of incarceration, chains are certainly made to confine. They know this all to well. Those chains…. the ones that held my friend a prisoner are literal and hard and cold, fashioned from steel and iron and are a testimony to mans brutality to one another..

 But there are others, no less painful,  that we construct with our words, behavior, thoughts and actions. Often times in our fears, of others... of ourselves... we chain others in, to do our will, control them or keep them, for the feeling of being alone, unloved…is too painful to us as an immense emotion to confront and behold and there seems to be just no other way to survive... I know that well and the depth of sorrow it delivers. Sometimes it is us that is chained for those same reasons. Other times, we fasten the locks, romantically and beautifully illustrated at the Pont de Arts bridge in Paris, wrapping it up in a language of love and commitment and sacrifice to understand it all, for at heart, we all wish for deep connection, love, and the peace it brings to us in only another. Sometime our confinement is to physical pain, other times emotional… often both, and in such we connect to an ideology larger than ourselves and the precepts of safety and comfort it brings us. We limit ourselves to it... the known, for to hold this same peace. Saddest of all though is when we use the chains to keep others out.. walling ourselves in, restricting access and protecting ourselves from those we don’t want in our lives. I too know this pain as a terrible place to live. Hard chains to break

My friend, after his own experience, once said to me he "never held anyone into his life again and those that love you will stay", for he knows the feeling of lost freedom. With his love for them, he knew that only in their freedom could he truly be loved and allowing them to go meant giving them the choice to not love him in return. As immediate and real his chains of metal were, ultimately they were cut and his healing begun, but the subtle ones of our hearts, those hidden, are the very ones that are hardest to break.

They without a doubt,  leave the deepest marks when they do.

Perhaps in the end, the hardest is the one we bind ourselves to this earth with, holding fast to the familiar afraid to let go fearing the unknown and what might await. We foolishly think our importance is too great to be missed, but if we were really honest with ourselves, would see we are merely the momentary mist God describes us as, held only temporarily in anyone's life like a hair wrapped around a finger, only to be lost again.

I know I have pondered with allot on metaphorical rhetoric today and what this particular chain was made for shown here, swinging and dislodging the paint around it, I will never knowits purpose long passed, but for now, I am tired and so many chains still remain.