Adventure (another late night post)

I've been thinking about adventure. Spurred by authors Donald Miller and John & Stasi Eldredge, I've been exploring the ideas of living versus existing. The common language to describe this abundant life is the metaphor of adventuring--of striking out of the safe and familiar comforts of home and entering new territory.

I've done that. In February I visited country #30, and I have plans for #31. I've lived in two foreign countries, gone to graduate school 2,000 miles from home. I've studied abroad; I've traveled to 5 of the top 10 countries on the US government's "do not visit" list.

I've adventured, and now I'm back in California and people assume that I'm here to settle down. I can't blame them for the misunderstanding: I told them that that was my plan.

But I'm not ready to settle down in the way they think. I'm ready to deepen friendships and make new ones. I'm ready to become more and more at home here. But I'm not ready to settle down.

When Patrice and I lived a few miles north of here, we had a hanging grape ivy that exploded with growth and obscured one of our windows. After a year of flourishing, it started to droop. Upon investigation, I discovered that it had become completely root-bound. I tried to re-pot it, but it was too late. It never recovered.

I have no intention of becoming like that grape ivy: I will not settle so firmly that my own roots choke me.

Many people (and, in my experience, they tend to be male) equate adventuring with geographic travel, and that is certainly one type of adventure. But my friends who don't take trips have lives no less adventurous than mine. Adventures abound in their jobs, homes, friends, neighbors, ministries, education, marriages, and babies. I have friends starting new businesses, going back to school, pledging to love each other until death parts them, and these are all major adventures.

These events make the heart race. They require guts, courage, and strength and are not boring! It takes far more strength to live a "settled life" with spirit, compassion, intelligence and grace than it does to bungee jump, or climb a mountain, or drive a beater van through a desert.

"Adventure" and "settled living" are not mutually exclusive experiences, and there is a time for everything under heaven. Robin and I drove from Oklahoma City to Orange County in one straight shot. Jen and I shared a hostel room with six Ukranian sailors. I once found an unexploded grenade sticking out of the dried mud beneath my feet. I've fallen asleep to gunfire, and watched military jets fly back and forth above my head on repeated bombing missions. These kinds of adventures are thrilling (to the outsider who has a plane ticket out of the warzone) and the memory of them can seduce me once I'm back home. But each of my adventures was a taste of someone else's everyday, "unremarkable" life. And in most of those places, the locals thought that my life in California must be full of celebrities, sunshine, and unending wealth and comfort. They couldn't fathom that I or anyone I knew could ever be bored.

Life is not a choose-your-own-adventure book. We don't always get to take the road trip when we want, or start the new friendship when we want, or attack the new job when we want. Life is about finding your adventure--seeing it around you, and daring to take the scary trail when it presents itself.

Whether life is dull or passionate has nothing to do with how many scars you have, or how far you've been from the town where you were born. I truly believe that life lived in one small town can be adventurous if the person doing the living is willing to follow God through the scary places: the physical roads, the mental paths, the emotional by-ways, the spiritual tracks--most of which are narrow from lack-of-use.

Stop being bored. Stop fearing boredom. But realize that passionate, unadulterated living is HARD. Adventure leaves you battered and often weary. Don't expect climbing a mountain, or earning a promotion, or potty-training a child to be easy. It's not. It won't ever be.

And don't assume that your future adventures will look like what you've had in the past, or that they'll imitate someone else's adventures. That's why we have metaphors about greener grass.

In C.S. Lewis' The Last Battle, the world--all worlds--are coming to a close. In Narnia, a great battle rages between the followers of the Great Lion Aslan and the evil god Tash. Slowly warriors find themselves backed through the doorway of a shed. When the warriors are Tash-followers, Tash appears and eats them. When the warriors are lovers of Aslan, the great lion calls them "further up, and further in" where they enter the True Narnia, the Kingdom of Heaven.

Then there are the dwarves, who deny the existence of both Tash and Aslan. All they see is an empty, dirty, musty cowshed: no Tash, no Kingdom. When other characters offer the dwarves the luscious fruits of Eden, the dwarves slap the food away and believe they are being offered trampled straw.

If you are a lover of God, a follower of Jesus, then you are living in the Kingdom of Heaven. Don't slap your life away, thinking it is moldy straw. Don't miss all the adventure that God has for you, simply because it doesn't come in the package you expect. Have the eyes to see. Have the ears to hear. Have the courage to accept, and follow the adventure God has for you today.

End of sermon.