Once I heard a beautiful song. It is sung by an SATB choir, accompanied by a piano and a flute. “Flying Free”, by Don Besig. I consider this song is such a great composition; not only in musicality, but also in the depth of the poetry. The poem is such a powerful life contemplation. There we may find the author’s life journey, in which in the end he told us that he was finally flying free.

Here is the poem:

There is a place I call my own
Where I can stand by the sea
And look beyond the things I’ve known
And dream that I might be free.

Like the bird above the trees
Gliding gently on the breeze
I wish that all my life I’d be
Without a care and Flying Free.

But life is not a distant sky
Without a cloud, without rain
And I can never hope that I
Can travel on without pain

Time goes swiftly on its way
All too soon we’ve lost today
I cannot wait for skies of blue
Or dream so long that life is through.

So life’s a song I must sing
A gift of love I must share
And when I see the joy it brings
My spirits soar through the air.

Like that bird up in the sky
Life has taught me how to fly
For now I know what I can be
And now my heart is Flying Free!

And, if you want to enjoy the music, I’ve found the unique one: sung in TTB, in Korean. Enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgCoCcPuNzY

Well then, as it had been sung, I’ll break this poem up into 3 parts: the first two stanzas, the middle two stanzas, and the last two stanzas. We might named them verse 1; verse 2; and verse 3.

Okay, verse 1! The beginning of the journey. Have you ever been in such a condition that you think that everything in your life is going to crush you up? Everything just make you sick of life, that you wish that you might have another life? You are so hopeless that you want to fly; just fly high enough that everyone won’t find you; every burden of your life would flee and just be gone away? I’ve been. Just like the birds. They’re just flying up and down. Without a care and no stress. To sum up, we are in such a burdenful of journey; and we are looking for an oasis.

Verse 2. The searching of what life is. Surely life is a journey. But what kind of journey? Where is the destination? How would we know what the direction is? Or how would we know that we are in a right or in a wrong direction? The journey is yet never stopped. So what is the oasis of life? Or, is there any oasis? And yet, there is so much pain and sickness we’ve found in life. So what do pain and sickness mean in the journey? Is it the barricade of the journey? Or yet, is it the journey itself? So what kind of journey?

So, in this verse, the author found that the journey always contains pain and burden. Moreover, you could not wait the burden to just go away, in order to continue the journey. The pain, the toughness of life is the part of journey. Then the conclusion is: we do not stop by in any oasis whenever we’ve got any burden. No such oasis. However, the burden is just the journey itself.

Verse 3. So what should we do? And then, what life is? What kind of journey it is? Hey, it seemed that everybody got the same problem. They are also in their own journey. They are also in their own burdens. And how should we interact with them? Oh some of them become the solution of the other. My journey got any progress from my friends’ journey, and vice versa.

So, the author got that life is a shared and sharing journey. All of us have our own journey. But those journeys are somehow connected, in divine sense. We are all connected. Then, my journey should be the ‘oasis’ for some other ones. And some else would be mine. That is why the author said that life is a gift of love which we have to share. Furthermore, the author found that sharing his life to others is indeed so blessing his own journey. He felt just like his spirit soar to the air, the feeling he had wished before to be experienced once he was sick of burdens. He was flying! How could? He never know how could he just fly. The life itself who teach him. The journey bring him soaring just like the birds up in the sky; just like he’d ever wished.

So, what life is? It is a set of flying up or falling down action of journey. How would we fly? That is our choice. How could we fly? Noone knows. Only THE LIFE and ourself who knows how could we fly by our own.

Have a pleasing journey!

 

“but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” Isaiah 40:31