"Give me liberty!"

July in America glows with patriotic memories. Americans love to celebrate the incredible willingness of 18th century colonists to declare their independence from an irksome dispiriting government even if it meant waging war to secure their liberty. Awe-inspiring bravery? Oh, yes! Did our holy spirit have to help men and women find such bravery? You bet!

The scene is the Virginia House of Burgesses meeting in convention at St. John's Episcopal Church in Richmond Virginia; March 23, 1775. The majority of delegates and onlookers hold strong anti-war sentiments because they are afraid of losing their ego-vested interests: their properties, their families, the bodies of their sons and daughters. Guided by these fears, they have little interest in looking deeper and listening to their spirit.

Against the enormous pressure of this ego-infested majority, one man inspired by the deepest depths of his holy spirit, has dared to stand and invite those present to open their eyes and see that appeasing an oppressive government could only produce a most fleeting surface illusion of peace ... the lackluster peace of spirit-stifled slaves.

The message of his speech was echoed 200 years later in Jesus' A Course in Miracles: "Our understanding is so limited that what we think we understand is but confusion born of error. We are lost in mists of shifting dreams and fearful thoughts, our eyes shut tight against the light; our minds engaged in worshipping what is not there." (Lesson 192)

Minds were boggled to silence as this speaker uttered his now famous closing words:

"It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace-- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

Patrick Henry saw with utter clarity what many people refuse to see: peace without liberty is no real peace at all.

In this respect he was a great teacher of God, a teacher of the universal and timeless teaching of Jesus which tells us that true peace, joyous inner peace, is only achieved by inner liberty, and ... the world we see "out there" can only come to peace if men and women are experiencing freedom.

Like Patrick Henry, no true teacher of God or advanced user of A Course in Miracles would pray for world peace without praying even more intensely or at least equally fervently for total liberty for all. Not stated in Patrick Henry's historic speech, but clearly implied, was the other side of the equation: liberty must be given at least equal priority with peace because when liberty is achieved, peace is the result. Peace in a world of government-imposed slavery is a contradiction.

These days President Bush is groping for the same understanding when he declares that world peace will be the result when all countries are democracies. The President has a well-intentioned idea but he would do well to substitute the word "liberty" for "democracy." He is missing the point that many democratic countries offer sham liberty and therefore bogus peace ... and are miserable places to live. By worshipping democracy but not liberty, such countries have succumbed to a tyranny of the majority, surely the worse kind of tyranny.

Democracy itself does not produce world peace anymore than socialist dictatorship produces world peace. World peace is the natural reflection of individuals enjoying the freedom to listen inside and follow their inner spiritual guidance unhampered by government interference. If government regulations and rules do not allow us liberty to do as our holy spirit directs, peace is impossible. Liberty and peace are inseparable conditions.

But it all starts inside oneself, doesn't it?

"Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me," transmutes into: "Let there be liberty on earth and let it begin with me." Jesus tells us it cannot begin anywhere else.

Continuing with Lesson 192: "Who can be born again in Christ but him who has forgiven everyone he sees or thinks of or imagines? Who could be set free while he imprisons anyone? A jailer is not free, for he is bound together with his prisoner. He must be sure that he does not escape, and so he spends his time in keeping watch on him. The bars which limit him become the world in which the jailer lives, along with him. And it is on his freedom that the way to liberty depends for both of them."

If the above words from Jesus were to be heard quickly out of context they could almost be thought to apply to governments taxing and regulating individuals and their lives. Neither the taxer nor the tax payer is free. The regulator and the regulated are equally lacking in liberty. Although such an out of context perceived meaning is very much a logical extension, Jesus focuses way down at the root: it all starts inside. Individuals who have achieved freedom inside will produce a free society. Individuals enslaved inside by fears and lack of trust will produce a gloomy backbreaking socialism, whether it be a dictatorship or a tyranny of the majority.

This point is illustrated very astutely in a thought-provoking fiction series entitled "Sparrowhawk," by Edward Cline, a five book novel dramatizing the intellectual and spiritual conflicts leading to the American Revolution. Here is Cline's own excerpt:

"The brightest and most fiery flambeau burned in the Virginia House of Burgesses, spread to the other colonies, and imparted a new color to the flames that roared up in those venues of the Empire. The ferocity of the conflagration took both England and its loyalists in the colonies by surprise. Parliament counted on familiar docility in the colonials; the colonials counted on recognition of injustice and an admission of their appeals to reason. Neither was forthcoming. The result was a test of wills.

While Europe percolated, the American colonies were about to smolder, and later burst into flame. Except to a very few discerning observers among them, the hand that lit the flames was as invisible to the English and the Continentals as the modest colonial capital from which they rose. The hand had a name: Patrick Henry."

Did Patrick Henry know he was serving his holy spirit? We imagine so. He most certainly would have read the words of the Apostle Paul in the Bible: "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." (Galatians 5:1)

In our strange convoluted world, the novelist Edward Cline, quoted above, professes to be an atheist. Yet you can bet he is in touch with his spirit. Does our holy spirit use atheists for divine purposes? Listen inside and hear the answer.

Even if speakers and authors were to have little understanding of the spirituality of the cause they have served, let us give thanks as we celebrate this July for our certainty that our holy spirit is, and has been all along, lifting and enlightening all of who we think we are ... and our entire world.

"Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away. Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." (2 Corinthians 3:16-18)

And while we are giving thanks, let us declare the prayer which Jesus had really implanted in the depths of Patrick Henry's being: