How do I enter through the narrow gate?

 

I live a free life here―no more care―the laws that bind me are like a chain of flowers, I do not feel their weight. I come and go like a bird when I will―where I will. I enter my neighbour's dwelling without knocking. The houses of earth are like glass or straw to me―I see through the cracks and crevices clearly. I am discovering that evil is only the result of circumstances.

The flower that is kept in the cellar cannot bloom and he who would develop his highest nature must be like the flowers and let the sunlight—the air—and the winds of heaven reach him from all quarters. 

How I would like to take with me some stiff, austere, old, puritanic brother through my garden of flowers on this Sabbath day! 

How shocked the narrow religionist will feel when he enters this world of flowers. 

Will he hunt for strawberries do you think? on the Sabbath day as I do, and thankfully enjoy Nature as God made it―or will he refuse and turn from the spirit-flowers and ripe fruit, vainly seeking rest as now―outside of God and Nature?

― Spirit Fanny Fern