Someday We'll All Be Free

Either before or after has there been a voice quite like Donny Hathaway, a voice so smooth and soulful, a voice that gets you right there, that unspecified, unspeakable, indescribable place that only you know is there because you can feel it.

It's that need for the kind of freedom that Hathaway sings about in this song. It's a longing for something that's not quite arrived yet. He tells me and you to hang on as the world spins and make sure that the spin doesn't spin you right out of existence, knock you on your ass. Because life is like that, the world is like that.

I feel better when I hear this song. Hathaway's voice is so soothing you want to float away with it to whatever world he is occupying because it has to be better than this. He sings like heaven has got to be.

The song reminds me of a poem by Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie in which she speaks about wanting to "walk barefoot where barefoot has no name/a place where soul on earth is natural." And she finds that the place she has envisioned is already there inside of her.

I think that's where freedom lies. It's not always external. It's not always actual handcuffs and chains that bind us. It's us.

The time in which Hathaway sang this song was one of immense social upheaval. Blacks were fighting for their rights. Protests over the Vietnam War were heating up.

But the song is relevant today because it is centered around how we react to the chaos in our lives. That chaos could be political and social issues we are passionate about. And the chaos could be your own personal life, the stresses we encounter daily that drive us nearly insane.

"Hang on to the world as it spins around/ Just don't let the spin get you down/Things are moving fast/ Hang on tight and you will last." Because the hope is, our faith tells us, that someday we'll all be free. And maybe it's in telling our souls that that we are free already.

Because the truth is you can't be free if you don't think that it's possible. You can't be free if once the chains are cut off, you still act as if you're still a slave. You can't be free if you don't believe you're free, you don't feel you're free, you don't see you're free.

Freedom is not just a physical thing. It's a mental thing. It's a soul thing. As Ekere Tallie tells us, "stroll barefoot" into your lives "leaving behind thieves and tyrants trying to control it."