Focus | from the Editor

This Spring 2024 issue of Parabola opens and closes with the exceptional lives of a man and a woman, both Black, both born in the 1800s, he into slavery in Missouri, she abducted as a child from her African village by Arab slave traders.

Both spent years wrapped in chains—a suffering that brought an understanding of both inner and outer freedom denied to most. The Emancipation Proclamation freed Augustus Tolton from his outer bonds; the girl, Bakhita, brought to Italy by an owner, fought in court and won her freedom. Both then embraced a religious life dedicated in part to obedience, he as the first identified Black Catholic priest in the U.S., she as a nun who would be named the first Black woman saint of the modern era.

Freedom is both as simple as escape from restraint and as challenging as submitting voluntarily to a will other than one’s own. “The truth shall set you free,” proclaimed Jesus, not long before he willingly suffered crucifixion.

Freedom from what, and free for what? Among the personages exploring those questions here are Sufi master Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, American President FDR, and, enlivened here by Professor H. Talat Halman, the freest of all free Zen spirits, the legendary enlightened scamp Ikkyu. There is a refreshing essay by Hilary Smith, who finds freedom in ghostwriting for spiritual teachers; an illuminating look at freedom of the voice by singing instructor Danielle Woerner; from celebrated chef Rabbi Hanoch Hecht, three Passover recipes; and much more, including the exciting tale of how Bön monks escaped from Tibet after the Chinese invasion.

We hope you enjoy this issue, dedicated to the wish that we all awaken to the spirit that concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl wrote of, of how “everything can be taken from us but the last of human freedoms ... the freedom to choose our spirit in any circumstance.”

—Jeff Zaleski