Question of the Week

How would you describe adventurous living?  How do you distinguish adventurous living from reckless living?  Please log on and share your thoughts.

Thinking.... Now There's a Thought

I've long been amazed at what can happen when groups can enter that creative space called 'brainstorming.'  On many occasions, I've been part of groups that get stuck with a decision or an idea.  Somehow, the group begins to brainstorm.  One idea begets another.  Group members become free to lob out their ideas, regardless of how silly they might be.  Very often laughter is part of the process; it becomes playful, creative and, very often, effective.

I believe there's a sort of a 'personal brainstorming' that's a required discipline for folks who would live adventurously.  The personal space--I like the word 'solitude'--helps me to step outside of the expectations of others, the noise of the crowd, the 'tyranny of the urgent,' to think, really think, about my life, my direction, my deep longings, what I really want.  I like the story about the journalist whose editor required her to do a human interest piece.  Uncertain what to do, she sought out people who would be willing to answer three questions.  Her first question was, "What do you want?"  Folks would often give casual, surface kinds of answers.  She then asked her second question: "What do you want?"  Responses often became more thoughtful, more genuine.  She would then ask, for the third time, "What do you want?"  She reported that her threefold repetition of the question often had the effect of helping people get in touch with their deep longings and their creative ideas for their lives.

I wonder what might happen if a few of us could create space in our lives to think prayerfully about them.  Perhaps we would become more aware of a sense of calling, vocation, life goals that are worthy of our best efforts.  Perhaps we would find the strength to pursue those dreams, even when the desire for comfort, approval or even the expectations of others would pull us back.  If, as I believe, God is a generative God, creating possibility, inspiring creativity and imagination, creating space for prayerful thought might just be one of the most important things you or I could do this week, or any other.

An Open Future

One of my pet peeves is when I hear people say of one who has died, "It must have been her time."   I understand that there is some comfort in that thought.  After all, if I believe that God has numbered my days, or the days of my loved ones, so that even the day and the time of death is pre-determined, something of the fear-factor of life is diminished.  I can make my decisions, even risky ones, and say, "Well, I guess if it's my time, it's my time." 

What troubles me about the 'it must have been her time' mindset is that it assumes that the future is already determined, set in stone and nothing will change it.  Again, I understand how that thought can bring comfort.  The problem, in my view, is that this mindset robs us of one of the richest and most beautiful gifts of Christian spirituality, namely, that we are partners with God in shaping the future.  This is seen again and again in the stories of the Bible.  One of my favorites is the story of Jonah, where Jonah reluctantly agrees to go preach the message of God's judgment of the people of Nineveh.  When the inhabitants of that great city repent of their evil ways, we are told that "God changed his mind (!!!)" about the judgment God had announced.  The pagan people of Nineveh turned their lives toward God in such a way that they changed the future!

I believe that the future is open, and that gives a great sense of meaning and responsibility for how I live out my days.  I believe that we can face the future with hope.  Jesus proclaimed that the time of God's reign has drawn near.  His resurrection signals to us that the power of life has swallowed up the power of death.  God's renewal power is let loose in the world, even now, even in this moment as I write, and you read.   In very broad strokes, it seems to me, we can say that God's work of renewal will win the day.  We can imagine that day even now.  Indeed, I believe we must imagine that day even now.   The book of Revelation says that on that day God will say, "Behold, I make all things new"--the completion of God's renewal project!

That said, I believe that the the hopeful future  is only painted in broad strokes.  Much is left to be determined.  We are partners with God in the shaping of the future.  Our decisions really matter.  If we wish, we can, individually and collectively, resist the power of renewal all the way to the grave.  We can hasten our death or prolong it by the choices we make.  We can live before we die, or not.  The most horrific events in human history do not happen because God has willed them (think of the Holocaust, the contemporary tragedy in Darfur), but because humans, individually and collectively, resist God's renewing power unto the worst imaginable ends.  On the other hand, we can partner with God, give ourselves to God's resurrection power, join ourselves to God's healing project, and contribute to the beauty which God is begetting in the creation.  Such, it seems to me, is the calling of the sacred adventure.

Ten Things.... Adventurous People

I'm working on a list of ten things I think adventurous people must be able to do.  Here's a first draft.  I'd love to hear your 'ten things' as well.

1.  Laugh at yourself.
2.  Love deeply
3.  Risk failing
4.  Be decisive
5. Change your mind
6.  Disappoint others (by being true to yourself)
7.  Imagine a better world
8.  Live prayerfully
9.  Work hard
10.  Let go

God's Adventure

Does the title of this week's blog--"God's Adventure"--strike you at all as strange?  It seems to me that many people  embrace an idea of a god who is anything but adventurous.  Their god is a rule-giver, a guardian of the status-quo, the distant judge.  This vision of god impresses me as being more controlling than adventurous. When I contrast the rule-giver/guardian/distant judge vision with the life and ministry of Jesus, it helps me to appreciate why his life was so revolutionary.  Jesus came proclaiming that the kingdom of God--the time of God's reign-- has drawn near.  On the cross (as through his entire ministry) he embodied God's vulnerability.  In resurrection, the work of renewal was let loose right here in this world.  All of this has the aroma of adventure!

It should not be supposed that God's adventure is captured only in the ministry of Jesus--far from it!  Think of the adventure that is involved in creation itself, in God's call of a nation named Israel , in the guidance granted mercifully to them in the gift of the law.  Think of the adventure of God as it is expressed in Isaiah 43:

Forget the former thing;

Do not dwell on the past.

See, I am doing a new thing!

Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.

In the story of Scripture, I see a narrative of an adventurous God--a narrative in which God becomes vulnerable to our world's pain and leads us forward in hope.  This, it seems to me, is the ground of our call to live our lives as a sacred adventure.  We worship an adventurous creator who calls us to live adventurously.

The Sacred... And Jazz

First, a disclaimer.  I know next to nothing about jazz.  I am not a musician.  I can't describe with any precision what makes jazz different from other forms of music.  All I can say with any certainty is that, well, I like it.  Miles Davis.  John Coltrane.  Good stuff. 

I'm thinking about jazz today because I just read the responses to the last post and it strikes me that jazz might be a metaphor for the coming together of the sacred and playfulness that each of us was trying to describe.  What is apparent to me, a lay listener, is that good jazz performers are exceedingly serious about their art.  A piece by Lionel Loueke is playing softly in the background as I write (thanks to Pandora) and I cannot help but be aware that years of preparation and practice stand behind this piece. It is carefully crafted.  It's quite clear that every musician knows the score.  And yet, at the very same time, the music darts and moves in ways that compel me to suspect that it is astonishingly impromptu and free.

I want to compose a life-in-community that is like that: serious, in the sense that it really matters, it's important, it's sacred; and playful in the sense that it is creative, free and always open to the gift of the present moment.  And I want to be part of faith community that is like that: serious in that we "know the score" of our Scriptures and we seek to live within the story it tells because it really matters, it's important, it's sacred;  and playful in that we give ourselves to the wind of the Spirit, who blows this way and that and takes us to places that our five-year strategies could not have imagined.  Perhaps there is more of art than precision to the sacred adventure.

Sacred Playfulness

"Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin."
                          Luke 15:9

 I thought long and hard about what I wanted to name this blog before I settled on "The Sacred Adventure."  Although I like this theme very much, I was a bit concerned with the word "sacred."  For many, this word seems to evoke ideas of something that is very serious.  Describe something as a "sacred task" and the impression is given that it is something about which you absolutely must not fail, something to which you must give your most serious attention.  For many, the practice of religion is profoundly serious.

The parable of the lost coin, one of the most familiar of the parables of Jesus, suggests to me a different possibility.  After her ardent search, the woman in the parable exclaims to her friends and neighbors, "Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin!'   I believe the faith of Christians embraces, at its very center, the joy of God in finding us.  I also believe that where this is so, we are free to be a great deal more playful in our response to God, to one another, to the world.    I don't mean to suggest for even one second that our faith is frivolous. I do mean to say that when we enter into the joy of God over finding us, we are free to become more creative, to brainstorm new possibilities for our lives, to dream new dreams.

I have observed the phenomenon at work many times in groups of people:  When a group, whether a family, a committee, a Bible study, a class or a church is overly serious, it sees very few possibilities.  What was done yesterday must be done today and tomorrow.   The group is stuck in its own ruts.  When persons in a group become more playful, on the other hand, the process of brainstorming is let loose, imagination is generated, the group is free to look out and beyond to new horizons, new possibilities, a new day.  What if God's action upon us is a generative action, a power that frees us to be more creative, playful and imaginative?  It seems to me that such a thing is no stretch to children who participate in God's joy over finding them.