Explorers' Club

Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old.  Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?  I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.  – Isaiah 43:18-19

There is always going to be tension between tradition and process.  Tradition is of great value.  We can live full lives in keeping with tradition.  Those who came out of Egypt kept the memory of the Passover, of the crossing of the Red Sea, and the giving of the Law.  Joshua had each of the tribes bring a stone from the bed of the Jordan to commemorate that miraculous passage.  The history of Israel told of the trials and triumphs of King David and of the wisdom of Solomon.

Religious tradition anchors us in the same way the past anchors us.  We have to be careful about the past, though, for while it provides us with a firm foundation, it can also become a trap for us.  We should not allow it to obsessively control our actions in the present or so tightly restrict and define us that we cannot adapt to new circumstances.  I see that danger in myself as I grow older.  My best days have already been, as far as this earthly life is concerned.  Yet I have no choice except to look forward. 

God did not stop working miracles when the last Apostle died.  He did not stop pouring out His Spirit after Pentecost.  He did not stop building the kingdom when the Church was born.  History rolls on.  Lives are transformed every day.  Every day, we must rise to face new challenges, and some of us feel compelled to seek out the new trail God is blazing through the wilderness, to advance the kingdom and claim new ground.  The place where you and I meet the Lord, where Christ has brought us may not be the land to which our fathers in the faith lay claim.  We are always pushing the frontier – or we are holding the fort. 

I think there are legitimate Christian settlers.  There are those who are meant to people the settled lands, to live more in the security of tradition.  I’m not criticizing them.  They are, as far as I know, doing their job.  I’ve been attending church with them the past few weeks.  I need them.  They may not need me, but that’s all right.  I’ll keep quiet about some things.  You start talking about Unknown Friends, Raccoons, and Upper Tonga, and people start looking at you funny and remembering jeeps they have to re-primer. 

I am in no way better than these brothers and sisters.  I am simply not of that kind, though I thank God for them.  They offer us stability in unstable times.  We can go out into the desert places in search of the new things God is doing because they hold the ground behind, because they offer a secure retreat when we are exhausted and weakened by our ventures.  We ought to recognize and appreciate them, and if they make us smile from time to time, that is part of their work as well.  We are all in this together.

There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.  But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift (Ephesians 4:4-7).

Packages With No Return Address

Thus says the LORD, You shall not go up or fight against your relatives. Return every man to his home, for this thing is from me. So they listened to the word of the LORD and returned and did not go against Jeroboam.  -- 2 Chronicles 11:4

This thing is from Me.  It is critical to know when something has come from God.  We can take the attitude – and it’s possibly the best default approach, that everything is from Him, that there are no “second causes”, that God is in control of everything and nothing can happen without His permission.  In an overall sense, this is true.  He’s God; He does as He pleases.  That’s pretty close to what the Bible often seems to tell us. 

Even when something is instigated or incited by the Lord, our response is not necessarily supposed to be the same in every case.  In the passage quoted, the Lord, because of Solomon’s foolishness toward the end of his life, had decreed that the kingdom be divided.  He raised up a rival in Jeroboam and left only the tribes of Judah and Benjamin to the line of David.  Through a prophet the word comes that the king of Judah and those who follow him must accept this turn of events. 

Conversely, we sometimes see God sending enemies against His people that those enemies might be defeated and punished.   The Lord did not, in those cases, desire passive acceptance but rather aggressive and active resistance.  “Que Sera Sera” is not a Christian song.  Life really is an adventure for us.  Routine and formulaic responses are of minimal use to us.  Sometimes we fight; sometimes we surrender.  Sometimes we have to fight a while before we surrender, or surrender a while before we fight.  I wish I had a rule of thumb or a guide or something to tell me which scenario I’m in this time. 

We do have a guide, but it’s not a thing, it’s a Him.  That is the work of the Holy Spirit.  He is here, with us and in us, giving us peace about what is happening and how we are responding.  When it runs contrary to our old natures – whether that’s because we’re naturally passive or naturally aggressive – we have to deny ourselves.  That’s what it means to die to self, to crucify the flesh. 

From a practical point of view, when we are in the place of decision, the Lord will meet us where we are.  I think more “advanced” saints need less outside confirmation than some of the rest of us.  Early on, I had a lot of people around me who would give me “good words” that resonated and helped me get going the right way.  It’s like having training wheels on your bicycle.  I really wouldn’t want training wheels on my motorcycle because I couldn’t corner at speed.  Over time and through experience, we are expected to grow and develop our relationship in the Spirit to the point where we can confidently seek Him and know His will in any situation. 

There will always, though, be places where we run out of understanding, where the light seems to fail at the most crucial passage.  Abraham with the knife raised over Isaac, David fleeing from Absalom, Paul wasting his last days in a Roman prison, even perhaps the Lord Himself crying out, Why have You forsaken Me?  In those dark corridors we put it all in the hands of God and walk by faith, not by sight.

Break Light

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. -- Romans 5:18

Adam’s holy fall was the fall of Creation, the separation of perfect, tranquil wholeness into distinctions.  We see it in goodness when God calls Adam to name the animals.  If you read that whole passage from Genesis 2:18 through the revelation of Eve, you see that God is looking for a complement in His creation to Adam:  It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.  Then “out of the ground”, God brings all the creatures before Adam.  Animals and everything already existed, but they were in oneness.  They still are, of course, but man is the instrument God uses for adding adventure to existence.  When Adam can’t find that which “fits” him outside, the Lord goes inside to get Eve. 

At this point, the adventure takes a tragic turn and wholeness collapses into disorder and disharmony.  How could so much evil result from one sin?  Adam is the prism.  Before the Fall, the pure light of reality shines through him to produce a rainbow of truth.  After the Fall, the prism is clouded and the image of reality is shattered and distorted.

When Christ came, He replaced Adam.  The clouded, shadowed glimpses of the light of God that we always saw before were frightening and threatening because it was coming through this distorted vessel, the flesh.  Jesus removes that and through Him the truth is revealed in all its majesty and glory. 

Into the Deep

And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch. -- Luke 5:4

I watched a first half-hour or so of the Tom Hank’s movie Cast Away, again, the other night.  The island on which the character, Chuck Noland, finds himself stranded is surrounded by a reef, over which the surf surges powerfully.  His first attempt to escape and reach a ship passing in the distance  is thwarted by the surf.  Despite his best efforts to overcome the waves' power, he is thrown back.  No matter how hard or frantically he paddled, he could not climb the mountain of water that stood in his way.  After years on the island, having adapted to his situation and developed a new set of skills, he finds a section of a Port-a-Potty washed up.  With this, he constructs a sail on a raft.  Aided by the wind, Noland is finally able to escape the shallow lagoon and reach deep water.

As I have noted before, the exposition of those first verses of Luke 5 was a life-changing experience for me.  The fishermen of Galilee cast their nets at night and scooped up the fish feeding in the shallows near the shore.  There was no point in throwing their nets into deep water – to which the fish retreated as the sun warmed the waters of the lake.  No catch in those conditions would be worth the effort.  Jesus changes the equation.

The conscious, natural mind of man is like shallow water.  A lot gets caught or trapped there.  Some of it is useful and beneficial, but it ends up being a very limited and isolated existence.  If we cannot venture out into deep water, into that part of ourselves that is open to and connected with the infinite, we can’t have much hope.  Our existence will be routine, perhaps even drudgery and imprisonment.  No amount of education or intellectual effort is going to paddle us over the breaker and set us free.  But we can, through Christ, make use of the wind of the Spirit.  He can enable us to go beyond the barriers that have confined us.

Now, of course, deep water or an open ocean can be a pretty scary place.  When there is nothing on the horizon, how do we know where to go?  Some of the well-intentioned souls who risked leaving their island find themselves adrift and lost.  In all that shifting, chaotic water, we need God's word as a compass and His truth as rudder to steer us straight.  Again, we look to Jesus who is always the Way, the Truth, and our Guiding Light. 

We are in Him, but just the same, Jesus said, He abides in us – as within so without.  The Father is accessible to us at every moment, in every situation.  Do not be afraid of the deep. 

Happy birthday, Elvis.

Raccoons are, of course, naturally inquisitive and adventurous, so this somehow seemed appropriate. I particularly cooncur with the idea of wandering out into the countryside and asking some farmer if you can milk his cow. This may be an adventure on several levels.

If you are married and male, a simple way to have adventure is to do the opposite of what your wife advises. For example, on a routine float trip, we were approaching a narrow channel by a gravel bar. A dead tree on the bank had snapped and fallen from the higher bank across the channel and down to the gravel. My wife in the bow advised to pull the jonboat up on the bar and drag it around the tree. That seemed like a lot of work. I was pretty sure I could squeeze the boat under the high end of the tree next to the bank. My refusal to follow this advice resulted in considerable adventure, including plucking my wife out of a capsized boat with one hand while clinging to the tree with the other. Good thing she's light.

How to Be Adventurous

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

Tired of doing the same old thing? Want to spice things up? There's more to being adventurous than traveling and climbing mountains. The formula for adventure is really quite simple: Novelty + courage = adventure. So what are you waiting for? Read up and embark on your next adventure!

Steps

1. Put a new twist on the same old thing. Come into your house through your window instead of your front door. Take the long road home. Study the kama sutra. Cook an exotic meal. Wear something totally out of character. Go to the movies in your high school prom dress. Learn a new language and whisper sweet nothings into the ear of your loved one, or the hottie at the bar. Whatever it is that you're doing, ask yourself: "How can I do this differently?" Even something as mundane as brushing your teeth can take on a whole new level of fun when you practice a tap dancing routine or belly dance at the same time!
   
2. Conquer your fears. You know what they are, and once you overcome them, that'll open the door to a whole new set of adventures. Whether it's heights, public speaking, karaoke, your mother-in-law...face it. Remember that fear is a biological response to worrying about death. If the situation that scares you isn't life-threatening, there isn't any reason to be scared!
   
3. Talk to strangers. The best way to find new adventures is through new people. Everybody has different experiences and a different background; every person can teach you something new. Maybe that guy sitting across from you at the coffee shop can show you how to climb a mountain. Maybe the old lady in the library can teach you how to preserve fifty pounds of tomatoes. Maybe the quiet girl at the bar can offer you a place to stay with her cousin in Buenos Aires, or Budapest, or Bolivia. Get over your approach anxiety and start talking to people! Who cares if they brush you off? What's the big deal? It isn't going to kill you, right? (Well....see the Warnings below.)
   
4. Try new things. Always be on the lookout for new things to do. Read the local papers, and ask people (now that you're chatting up a storm with strangers) what they're doing in their spare time. Go to a local farm and ask if you can milk a cow. Film a documentary. Take a ballet or salsa dance class. Meditate with Buddhist monks. Whatever it is, approach it with an open mind and a good attitude, and thank people for giving you the opportunity for trying something new.
   
5. Get lost! Explore new territory. Once in a while, spend a day off just driving around randomly and seeing what you come across. (If you have a map and aren't too isolated, you should be able to find your way home.) If you have the means to do so, visit another country. Even if you can't travel, you can climb the tree in your backyard--that's new territory, and you'll probably enjoy the view!
   
6. Make a bucket list. A bucket list is a list of things you want to do before you "kick the bucket". Surely, you don't want to die having followed the same old routine, day in, day out, do you? So write up that list - complete with goals big and small, like skydiving in Peru, and whistling with a blade of grass - and get to it!
   
7. Live in the moment. Adventurers are experts in focusing on the journey rather than the destination. Yes, they usually have a goal in mind, but when you're trying new things, plans always change and your route will, too! You'll need to be resourceful and, more importantly, be a good sport. When things go wrong (which they will, or else you're not pushing far enough outside your comfort zone) don't get moody and distraught; outline your options, pick one, and charge forward with your life. And have fun!
   

Tips

• Get fit. Many adventures require physical exertion, so while you don't have to look like a supermodel, you should be able to climb a few flights of stairs without losing your breath.
  

Warnings

• Don't be so adventurous that you leave your common sense at the door. Don't chat up the biker dude who looks angry and drunk. Don't cliff dive into what might be a very shallow lake. These things are not adventurous, they're idiotic!
  
• Hesitation is the enemy of adventure...so learn how to stop hesitating!
  

Related wikiHows

• How to Be Bold
  
• How to Be Resourceful
  
• How to Live in the Moment
  
• How to Start a Conversation with Someone on the Train, Bus or Subway
  
• How to Volunteer
  

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Be Adventurous. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.