LETTER—This vacation was cold. It was very cold and the food really was not that great, but for the 80 high schoolers in GS from New York, Boston, Steubenville Ohio and Washington D.C. who attended the East Coast Winter Vacation in Trout Lake PA, it was possible to be free. Over the course of the past presidents day weekend, we sang, played games, had presentations and kept the question alive of what it means to be truly free.

Freedom was presented in two different forms that weekend. One was that of the modernist western culture that you can only be truly free if you have infinite choices. If you limit the possibility of choices you have: you will never be able to choose the perfect meal, the clothes and that is what will make you happy, etc. The problem though, is that the meal is never satisfying enough, or the job we choose is not enough to make us completely happy, which leads to disillusionment with everything and everyone.

The other form of freedom is the freedom of the people of the Underground Railroad and Frederick Douglas, the 19th century abolitionist. They chose the infinite. They looked at the slavery of Africans and instead of choosing to ignore those who suffered, saw what they were made for: everything; to be truly happy. They chose to risk their lives for these people so that they too could choose not just things, but continue their desire for perfect happiness.

What was really beautiful about the whole weekend was the way people spent their time together. At the Assembly the last day, a 9th grader from New York talked about how she was astounded by this. The fact that she was able to have beautiful friendships with those people she only sees three times a year, who were from all over the country. What she realized was that these people loved her not because they wanted something from her, but they loved her for who she was, not expecting anything. A junior from D.C. talked about how he was really struck by the singing during the Assembly. We sang together every night to close the day out, and it was awesome. For him, he was happy to be singing with everyone even though he was not picking the songs. He gave himself completely and participated in the thing that were in front of him; that was freeing for him and it made him happy. The unity of everyone was incredible. There was hardly any free time to just do whatever you felt like, but everyone was happy. The warmest it ever got was 17 F and the food really was not good, everyone hardly slept and was exhausted, but in front of all of this they were free and filled with incredible joy. The circumstances had no bearing on the desire to be free.

On Sunday night Jonathan and Riro, two musicians with a love for the blues, came and played the spirituals of the slaves for us, and the power of the longing for freedom and the recognition of their suffering was incredible. What they were trying to communicate through the music was the need to be free, and how essential it was to be happy. Freedom was their infinite desire, and these people would seem to be insane, like the senior from Kalamazoo, Michigan had travelled 18 hours by train and car to be at the vacation. If he had told others what he was to doing for a three day weekend he would be thought insane. He smiled the entire weekend and was so happy: happy to be in a place where he was reminded to be completely open to happiness, beauty and love in God. Everyone went home to with a new awareness of what it meant to be free and to give yourself fully to the things put in front of you.

Being a senior in high school, this was my seventh vacation. What became apparent was that to be truly free is to love; to love what the person or thing is made for. I’ve never met someone who was able to say, ‘I have forgotten my problems so now I am truly happy’. It is not to not feel pain that I can be happy. To be free you have to affirm the greatness in every moment, forgetting nothing.