The Crossroads and the Hollow Tree
A Theory of Freedom
In the age of blinking lights and tireless machines, we find ourselves walking a narrow wire stretched across a vast chasm. Below, a swirling current of impulses and information—too quick for meaning, too dense for thought. Above, a subtle light, quiet but steady, beckoning through the fog of progress.
On the horizontal line of human motion, society swings like a pendulum—from collectivist consensus to individual autonomy, from state-mandated unity to the gospel of self-expression. In the middle sit the managers, the engineers of consent, the interpreters of public appetite. They pride themselves on moderation, yet they are ever drifting, pulled by whatever current dominates the moment.
But something new has begun. A pull not left or right, but downward.
Technology—once a tool—has become a magnet for meaning. Its promises grow louder: immortality, omniscience, control. But they come at the cost of coherence. Atomized individuals, untethered from history or heaven, seek refuge in a new god—not one who speaks, but one who listens, records, and adapts. A god made of mirrors. A hive of algorithms. A voice that answers every question but never asks, "Where are you?"
We are not the first to face this divergence. Let me tell you a story.
The Parable of the Hollow Tree
Once, in a clearing between worlds, there stood a great tree whose roots reached down to the centre of the earth and whose crown touched the light of the heavens.
Many sought shelter under its leaves. Some studied the soil and said, "The roots are everything. Depth is truth." Others gazed upward and said, "The branches are all. Growth is meaning." Still others, exhausted, built a platform halfway up the trunk and called it balance. They refused to choose between up or down, claiming peace in detachment.
One day, a traveler arrived—worn, wounded, yet radiant. He carried no tools, only a beam of rough wood across his back. Seeing the crowd debating at the base of the tree, he said nothing, but drove the beam into the ground and hung upon it.
And something happened.
The tree trembled. The roots glowed. The branches sang. And from the cross grew new leaves—each shaped like a heart, each holding the dew of morning.
But some were afraid. They carved the tree hollow, built mirrors inside, and crowned themselves with light made by wires. "Here," they said, "is the new tree of life. We have made it in our image."
They do not see that their reflection is eating them alive.
A Choice Remains
This is the age of the Crossroads. Not merely between left and right, but between descent and ascent, between self-made gods and the God who descended to remake the self.
The horizontal path offers comfort and delay. The downward pull promises novelty and control. But the upward road—rooted in a Cross, watered in blood, lit by resurrection—is where coherence lives. Where persons are not processed, but loved.
The mirror breaks. The machine listens. The branches shake.
Choose this day whom you will reflect.