.
if freedom
is nothing more
than being able
to choose
your own cage
as I suggest it is
then perhaps
the fun comes
in being
an escape artist

in recognizing
the cage you are in
deciding how long
you will settle for it
and then
when you want out
seeing how clever
you are at slipping
through a space
in the wire

perhaps
the good life
the full life
is nothing more
than every once
in a while
pulling yourself
through a hole
in the roof
standing triumphantly
looking down
with a "hot damn!"
and then around
with a frustrated
"oh no, not again!"
+++
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.........AFTERWORD — Over the years as I toured universities and colleges I could always count on a student or two coming up after my performance, who obviously enjoyed it but now needed to know if liking what I said was OK. "Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?" they would ask. "Probably not in the way you mean,” I would reply, “but I can tell you that I have found THE answer. Simply put, it is to spend the rest of your life looking for the answer, all the while knowing that you will never find it." At that I would be rejected and departed from. I remember one lad shaking his scuzzy old tennis shoes at me, one foot at a time, before walking away. I asked Billie Barbara what that was all about. “He was just doing what Jesus instructed the twelve disciples to do with the likes of you,” she said. "Whosoever will not receive you, when you go out of that city, shake off the very dust from your feet for a testimony against them (Luke 9: 5).” I remember that boy’s response as the most creative "rejection" I ever received.
.

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