On the hottest days, I make it a point to visit the sheep, who gather in the pole barn, lie down, and are still.

I want to ensure they are okay, but I also want to soak up the spiritual vibrations of their stillness.

This is how they preserve themselves until the sun goes down and they are comfortable grazing.

They simply go still.

I hate to see the sheep struggling under the heat; there isn’t much we can do for them other than offer them shade, cold water, and a breeze. I wonder if they are praying.

I was thinking about the idea of liberty while standing out in the pole barn.

I  had just been reading the writings of one mystic who wrote that perfect spiritual freedom is the total inability to make any evil choice.

When everything I desire is good (I’m not there yet) and every choice seeks to do good but achieves it, I will be spiritually free. But that seems so difficult to achieve.

I am not the judge of good and evil for everyone, only for myself. I believe I know good from evil, and I think I choose good and reject evil.

I can’t say what I would do if my loved ones or I were threatened with death or torture if I didn’t do something evil when asked.

I know what I hope to do; I can’t say I know for sure what I would do.

Life is not black and white; there are all kinds of shades of grey. But evil has no shades, and I believe I recognize it when I see it if given a choice to choose.

I am responsible for those choices.

Hannah Arendt, the great moral philosopher, said that good and moral people cannot do evil, and immoral people can. She said that in our hearts, all people know good from evil.

I see this playing out in our modern lives with the drama of Liz Chaney, who has captured the imagination of people worldwide by her inability to condone or join in something that was, to me, evil.

She simply knows what is right and refuses to do what is wrong. There is no equivocation, rationalization, or lying.

She is one of Hannah Arendt’s moral people. It doesn’t matter what her politics are in the run. In that way, she is heroic to me.

She chose good, even at the cost of real sacrifice, when forced to make the choice. She will almost certainly lose her congressional seat this month, punished by people in her own party for following her conscience.

If Democracy survives, as I believe it will, her likeness will one day grace a statue in the Capitol.

What happened on January 6 was not an ambivalent or fuzzy thing. There aren’t two sides to much of it.

Stomping a police officer to death and blinding him with bear spray as he lies choking on the ground is evil.

Hunting down political opponents with guns in order to threaten or vow to kill them is evil.

Choosing to vote for Donald Trump for President or peacefully support him is not.

What Donald Trump did on January 6 is evil, and people must make their own choices about it.

They must decide for themselves what is right or wrong, or good or evil. No one else can make it for them.

In many ways, people who love Donald Trump are in a tough spot morally.  They must choose between their values or their conscience.

Thus, January 6 has become the great moral issue of our time. In one way or another, it defines all of us and will keep historians hopping for generations.

My mind is clear.

I am not and will perhaps never be spiritually pure; I am all too human. I hope I will never do something that is evil, but I too often do something that is not good.

I like the idea that freedom is not about choosing the equal balance between good and evil but the complete acceptance of what is good and the complete rejection of what is evil.

I believe we all know in our hearts what is good, and we all know what is evil. Many shades of gray are in between, but not at the ends.

The choice is always there, and so is the light and promise of perfect spiritual freedom.