One of the problems with resolving to start a new adventure is of course that sudden realization that this is a pretty big deal and that it might involve blood and stuff. Blood can be fun occasionally… as long as it is not coming out of you. That is sort of the opposite of fun; although it makes for great stories afterwards.
But you can never see those stories before they happen, and your mind somehow finds the incredible ability to focus only on the negative aspects of going on an adventure. There is that temptation to just sit and plop down on your front step just after striding out the front door with so many good intentions.
Recently I read through the Hobbit to my little sister as a bedtime story over the course of three weeks or so. In addition to converting her into a Tolkien fan, I also found reading the story to be immensely convicting. Suddenly I found myself more closely related to Bilbo than ever before, his feelings on life the universe and everything. Often times during the day I find myself being sucking into the narcissistic hole of Facebook, watching my “friends” who seem to be living their lives while I... stagnate. And I'm jealous, but not nearly jealous enough to actually go and live my own life and have an adventure. "Horrible, nasty, uncomfortable things... make you late for supper!" the Baggins side of me screams.
I have grown so complacent and soft lately that the Took side of me is all but completely repressed. I no longer listen to it, and now the Baggins side is all depressed anyway, because staying in my Hobbit hole has gotten dreadfully dull. No one visits, no one really wants to since it's so gloomy in here. Every so often someone will come in from the town and make his way up my steps and knock on the door. I don't really want to answer it anymore though. For as soon as I do, they will simply let loose with a tirade of words and platitudes about what I am doing wrong. They will offer advice, books, words, pithy little sayings. None of it will help though. I know this.
The Baggins in me curls up, crosses his arms, sits on the floor and pouts. Not very polite or gracious, mind you, but he does it all the same. It's my father at the door. He wants me to go on an adventure. I continue to glower at him. He has all the audacity and spirit of a Took and all the practicality of a wizard. He is odd and I don't understand him, but all the same I cannot deny that he is a far greater hobbit than I am... sitting here moping and whining.
He's had many adventures, and I am quite sure that he has only told me a handful of all the tales he has been a part of. He's fought dragons and goblins aplenty, been in wars in far off lands, won a beautiful woman and then raised me... a little terror who now refuses to take his advice or even grace him with polite responses.
"Cheeky little sod."
I look around. That was most definitely not my father. He's off in the town planning his next adventure while I sit and sulk. It's coming.... from the Took. He had remained quite for so long that I had nearly forgotten he existed. He starts pushing me… he starts punching and kicking until I pick myself up from the front step and take another. It’s a small one, but it is a few feet further from my doorway.
As I continue to move away from my hole, the steps becoming easier… my stride becomes longer. I start to drop some of the bags I was carrying… I want to walk faster. I want to feel the grass fly between my toes like a smooth, shock-resistant carpet. I want to feel the wind howl by me like a freight train.
It has begun. This Took will have stories to tell when he returns home.
Showing posts with label adventure. Show all posts
Showing posts with label adventure. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Thursday, January 12, 2012
How to Eat Humble Pie (Becoming an Adventurer Part II)
Gaining a taste for adventure, the real kind that actually kind of hurts, did not actually come about simply through me walking into a video store one day. Although that might make for a great joke (A guy walks into a video store…), now if only I could come up with a punch line. My desire for change that led me to view a video store with discomfort and frustration began about two weeks before that. It began surprisingly enough through my own parents.
Coming back from your worst semester of college ever is sort of like coming to anchor after months in hurricane-torn, shark-infested waters. And like a sailor who has spent too much time at sea in a boat, I had to regain some perspective and get my landlegs back. I had to chop off the wiry mane of hair, clean up the language that is more acceptable around rough and ready deck hands, and learn how to act like a civilized humanbeing again.
Suddenly this has become much less metaphorical.
Anyway, I had fallen so far off the map that even though I made an effort to crack open a Bible everyday, I was just flipping pages and gleaning nothing. I had all but forgotten how to study my own Bible. In my self-absorbed stupor I had been programmed to look at anything and everything as a tool that might be able to pull me out of the hole I had dug. It didn’t matter if it was a DVD, a friend or Scripture… things were only of use to me if they were able to make me feel better NOW.
Silly me, I had forgotten that Scripture doesn’t work like that.
Upon returning home for Christmas, it became immediately clear to my parents how far gone I had become and started to take measures of intervention. The first week I was back my dad sat me down for a much-needed verbal thrashing. My mom, however, always the yin to his yang, bought me an 8 week Bible study, so that I would regulate my study time and perhaps regain an understanding of how to study Scripture.
One of the first verses that I stumbled upon in the study was Matthew 6:33, “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.” And suddenly it dawned on me that I was going about the whole operation backwards. I had spent all my time seeking MY kingdom and MY righteousness and hoping that all the “God things” would be added unto me later without all that nasty business of actually pursuing God.
Well that methodology had been working out GREAT for me so far. And by great I mean that it had driven me into one of the deepest depressions that I have ever known.
Aristotle was right, we are all looking for happiness, and the first 9 books of his Ethics are correct in deriving that happiness from relationships. But then Aristotle contradicts himself in book 10 where he all but denies the previous 9 books and says that man derives true and lasting happiness from sitting and being a thinking being like “god.”
This makes sense in a Greek mindset, because there is a disconnect in Greek philosophy. The world that they see around them is relational, but the god that they worship is a thinking god, not a relational one… so there is that tension woven into their very worldview.
But my worldview is NOT that way. I should know better. God has from the beginning of time been a relational God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He knows what true joy really is. And here I was denying that He could REALLY know what true joy was. Because I wasn’t happy, I thought that He must not have known what He was doing.
It should have been a bit obvious what the problem was. I was not living as a relational being in a relational world, of COURSE I wasn’t happy. On top of this I was choosing my own will over the will of the ultimate relational being. Talk about dumb, huh?
It’s a bit humbling realizing that you’ve become the villain; that you’ve become one of those Pharisees who knows the Scriptures inside and out and yet derives absolutely no joy or truth from them, but only seeks to twist them to your own ends.
Plato’s analogy of the cave is very apt. After spending so much time in the dark of one’s self, coming out into the light of fellowship with God and other people really is like stepping out into the bright noonday sun after years in a cave.
And what you see in the sunlight, that is perhaps the most surprising thing of all.
Coming back from your worst semester of college ever is sort of like coming to anchor after months in hurricane-torn, shark-infested waters. And like a sailor who has spent too much time at sea in a boat, I had to regain some perspective and get my landlegs back. I had to chop off the wiry mane of hair, clean up the language that is more acceptable around rough and ready deck hands, and learn how to act like a civilized humanbeing again.
Suddenly this has become much less metaphorical.
Anyway, I had fallen so far off the map that even though I made an effort to crack open a Bible everyday, I was just flipping pages and gleaning nothing. I had all but forgotten how to study my own Bible. In my self-absorbed stupor I had been programmed to look at anything and everything as a tool that might be able to pull me out of the hole I had dug. It didn’t matter if it was a DVD, a friend or Scripture… things were only of use to me if they were able to make me feel better NOW.
Silly me, I had forgotten that Scripture doesn’t work like that.
Upon returning home for Christmas, it became immediately clear to my parents how far gone I had become and started to take measures of intervention. The first week I was back my dad sat me down for a much-needed verbal thrashing. My mom, however, always the yin to his yang, bought me an 8 week Bible study, so that I would regulate my study time and perhaps regain an understanding of how to study Scripture.
One of the first verses that I stumbled upon in the study was Matthew 6:33, “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.” And suddenly it dawned on me that I was going about the whole operation backwards. I had spent all my time seeking MY kingdom and MY righteousness and hoping that all the “God things” would be added unto me later without all that nasty business of actually pursuing God.
Well that methodology had been working out GREAT for me so far. And by great I mean that it had driven me into one of the deepest depressions that I have ever known.
Aristotle was right, we are all looking for happiness, and the first 9 books of his Ethics are correct in deriving that happiness from relationships. But then Aristotle contradicts himself in book 10 where he all but denies the previous 9 books and says that man derives true and lasting happiness from sitting and being a thinking being like “god.”
This makes sense in a Greek mindset, because there is a disconnect in Greek philosophy. The world that they see around them is relational, but the god that they worship is a thinking god, not a relational one… so there is that tension woven into their very worldview.
But my worldview is NOT that way. I should know better. God has from the beginning of time been a relational God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He knows what true joy really is. And here I was denying that He could REALLY know what true joy was. Because I wasn’t happy, I thought that He must not have known what He was doing.
It should have been a bit obvious what the problem was. I was not living as a relational being in a relational world, of COURSE I wasn’t happy. On top of this I was choosing my own will over the will of the ultimate relational being. Talk about dumb, huh?
It’s a bit humbling realizing that you’ve become the villain; that you’ve become one of those Pharisees who knows the Scriptures inside and out and yet derives absolutely no joy or truth from them, but only seeks to twist them to your own ends.
Plato’s analogy of the cave is very apt. After spending so much time in the dark of one’s self, coming out into the light of fellowship with God and other people really is like stepping out into the bright noonday sun after years in a cave.
And what you see in the sunlight, that is perhaps the most surprising thing of all.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
FEED ME! (Becoming an Adventurer Part I)
I spend a lot of time in video stores. I have probably spent hours upon hours in them; perhaps even as much time as a stay at home parent might spend at their local grocery store. This never struck me as abnormal until a day ago.
After 3 fun filled weeks with family and friends, the last week of my winter break was upon me and my family had all but returned to their everyday routine. Dad was back at work, the girls were headed out of town and my mom and her own dad were headed on a short holiday to DC. For the first time in 3 whole weeks I was going to be on my own again. Naturally I didn’t want to spend the majority of the next 48 hours alone in a big empty house, so I hit the town.
In between lunch and heading to a movie theater, I stopped in an FYE (For Your Entertainment). It is one of the largest I have ever been in, and I used to frequent it when I was a permanent fixture of the Hampton Roads area. Upon walking in I stopped and felt suddenly overwhelmed. It might have been that I was tired, or maybe I have just been hypersensitive about entertainment lately; but for whatever reason, when I walked in the door, I lost all desire to look for individual items, whether they were movies, music or video games. I was suddenly looking at the store as a whole, and all I could say was:
“Why?”
Why do we need stores that have as large a variety of movies as we do of food? In fact, there was probably a larger variety of sitcoms on DVD in that store than there are kinds of produce at the Farm Fresh around the corner.
Dizziness overwhelmed me as I realized that I had been part of this. I suck in movies often without thinking. Sure, I keep up a veneer of holiness to hide how much I am consuming, but that is something akin to a man who is 200 pounds overweight telling you that he only eats so much because he wants to tell you what kinds of food are good. He is not a cook, he is not demonstrating that he has actually learned anything about good food or how to make it… only that he enjoys eating and he does it with disregard to how it is effecting him.
The scary thing is that in America the way food and movies are sold and consumed is not so different anymore. A shiny, glossy cover can make a tidy little profit whether it’s carrots or Caddyshack. People buy Ho Hos and porn for the same reason… they taste good, even if they both make you feel like you want to vomit an hour after consumption. What is scarier is that an HBO show can now become “critically acclaimed” simply by containing gratuitous amounts of violence and sex, causing it be suddenly be “edgy” and/or “gritty,” even though underneath all that it is just another soap opera. This has already begun to bleed over into the world of food, with foods that are absolutely crap for you to eat getting actual stickers that proclaim that they have received awards like “BEST TASTING” or “CHIEFS’ CHOICE AWARD.” Yes… things are getting that ridiculous.
Just today I was returning some things to a Best Buy around the corner from me and got suckered into that very “ooh! Shiny!” syndrome that we all fall into so easily in the internet age. Do I not know that Satan is the Prince of Light? Do I not know that covers deceive? “That sin looks so hot!” one might say. And Mark Driscoll might retort: “Yeah… but so is hell.”
Anyway, I had all this money from the returns, so my consumeristic self decided that I show blow the money immediately. On what? Is always the next question. Well, it was new release Tuesday. (Yes, I am so consumed with my need for new stuff that I know that in the USA new movies, music and books are always released on Tuesdays.) The new HBO show Boardwalk Empire had just been released on DVD and a free preview of the show Game of Thrones came with it for a limited time. The covers looked pretty, Steve Buscemi was in it, it had won 8 Emmys. It must be good… right? RIGHT?
Well, I bought it and took it home, only to look up the content rating in IMDB. The show was filled with foul language… more than most R rated movies contain, full frontal nudity (male and female), and buckets of blood and brain bashing. On an HBO show? No way? You’ve gotta be joking! (/sarcasm)
I promptly went back and returned the DVD set and got the movie Moon instead, which I had actually been looking for for months and which was nowhere near an impulse buy. It still might have been better had I simply returned Boardwalk Empire and walked right out of the store, but there you have it.
And now I’m sitting here still thinking, “Why? Why has this been so important to me? How on earth did I let my standards drop so much? I almost exposed myself to… ick.”
And then I think a little bit more and I realize that I have been living vicariously through storytellers… like many of my peers have. We are too afraid to have our own adventures, so we watch other peoples’. And suddenly I come to a simple and yet monumental conclusion: it is time for me to have my own adventure.
After 3 fun filled weeks with family and friends, the last week of my winter break was upon me and my family had all but returned to their everyday routine. Dad was back at work, the girls were headed out of town and my mom and her own dad were headed on a short holiday to DC. For the first time in 3 whole weeks I was going to be on my own again. Naturally I didn’t want to spend the majority of the next 48 hours alone in a big empty house, so I hit the town.
In between lunch and heading to a movie theater, I stopped in an FYE (For Your Entertainment). It is one of the largest I have ever been in, and I used to frequent it when I was a permanent fixture of the Hampton Roads area. Upon walking in I stopped and felt suddenly overwhelmed. It might have been that I was tired, or maybe I have just been hypersensitive about entertainment lately; but for whatever reason, when I walked in the door, I lost all desire to look for individual items, whether they were movies, music or video games. I was suddenly looking at the store as a whole, and all I could say was:
“Why?”
Why do we need stores that have as large a variety of movies as we do of food? In fact, there was probably a larger variety of sitcoms on DVD in that store than there are kinds of produce at the Farm Fresh around the corner.
Dizziness overwhelmed me as I realized that I had been part of this. I suck in movies often without thinking. Sure, I keep up a veneer of holiness to hide how much I am consuming, but that is something akin to a man who is 200 pounds overweight telling you that he only eats so much because he wants to tell you what kinds of food are good. He is not a cook, he is not demonstrating that he has actually learned anything about good food or how to make it… only that he enjoys eating and he does it with disregard to how it is effecting him.
The scary thing is that in America the way food and movies are sold and consumed is not so different anymore. A shiny, glossy cover can make a tidy little profit whether it’s carrots or Caddyshack. People buy Ho Hos and porn for the same reason… they taste good, even if they both make you feel like you want to vomit an hour after consumption. What is scarier is that an HBO show can now become “critically acclaimed” simply by containing gratuitous amounts of violence and sex, causing it be suddenly be “edgy” and/or “gritty,” even though underneath all that it is just another soap opera. This has already begun to bleed over into the world of food, with foods that are absolutely crap for you to eat getting actual stickers that proclaim that they have received awards like “BEST TASTING” or “CHIEFS’ CHOICE AWARD.” Yes… things are getting that ridiculous.
Just today I was returning some things to a Best Buy around the corner from me and got suckered into that very “ooh! Shiny!” syndrome that we all fall into so easily in the internet age. Do I not know that Satan is the Prince of Light? Do I not know that covers deceive? “That sin looks so hot!” one might say. And Mark Driscoll might retort: “Yeah… but so is hell.”
Anyway, I had all this money from the returns, so my consumeristic self decided that I show blow the money immediately. On what? Is always the next question. Well, it was new release Tuesday. (Yes, I am so consumed with my need for new stuff that I know that in the USA new movies, music and books are always released on Tuesdays.) The new HBO show Boardwalk Empire had just been released on DVD and a free preview of the show Game of Thrones came with it for a limited time. The covers looked pretty, Steve Buscemi was in it, it had won 8 Emmys. It must be good… right? RIGHT?
Well, I bought it and took it home, only to look up the content rating in IMDB. The show was filled with foul language… more than most R rated movies contain, full frontal nudity (male and female), and buckets of blood and brain bashing. On an HBO show? No way? You’ve gotta be joking! (/sarcasm)
I promptly went back and returned the DVD set and got the movie Moon instead, which I had actually been looking for for months and which was nowhere near an impulse buy. It still might have been better had I simply returned Boardwalk Empire and walked right out of the store, but there you have it.
And now I’m sitting here still thinking, “Why? Why has this been so important to me? How on earth did I let my standards drop so much? I almost exposed myself to… ick.”
And then I think a little bit more and I realize that I have been living vicariously through storytellers… like many of my peers have. We are too afraid to have our own adventures, so we watch other peoples’. And suddenly I come to a simple and yet monumental conclusion: it is time for me to have my own adventure.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Storm
School is closed. This never happens in Moscow, ID... especially not to my school. The last time my school closed was the winter of 2007/2008 when 5 foot drifts piled up against the sides of the building. The only reason school was closed was because people couldn't get in. If the building had been accessible, and the roads complete trash school would have still been open. I am quite sure of this.
I left the UofI library at about 10PM last night, and the wind was starting to pick up. Gusts wiped across the bare sweeps of sidewalk and open spaces between the buildings. At the time I thought to myself: "oh, this is nice. It kind of reminds of of Winnie the Pooh and the blustery day." Oh, how little did I know.
By the time I had reached my apartment, the gusts were turning into rockets of air, shooting leaves off the trees like a cosmic leaf blower. I hurried inside and hunkered down in my room as my roommate played Call of Duty at full volume, drowning out the wind outside.
This lasted all to briefly, however. Soon the winds had picked up sticks and rocks as well as rain and hail and had decided to start buffeting the windows of our small apartment with them. This was made worse when my roommate STOPPED playing video games. I felt that at any moment the entire complex might fall over, either that or one of the trees come through the roof.
Plato being the furthest thing from my mind, I gave up on trying to write my Greek literature paper and tried to go to sleep. Yet another futile endeavor. The whole situation became much, much worse (at least in my mind) when at about 1AM I hear my roommate muse aloud: "wouldn't it be funny if the wind broke one of the windows."
I didn't get much sleep last night...
I left the UofI library at about 10PM last night, and the wind was starting to pick up. Gusts wiped across the bare sweeps of sidewalk and open spaces between the buildings. At the time I thought to myself: "oh, this is nice. It kind of reminds of of Winnie the Pooh and the blustery day." Oh, how little did I know.
By the time I had reached my apartment, the gusts were turning into rockets of air, shooting leaves off the trees like a cosmic leaf blower. I hurried inside and hunkered down in my room as my roommate played Call of Duty at full volume, drowning out the wind outside.
This lasted all to briefly, however. Soon the winds had picked up sticks and rocks as well as rain and hail and had decided to start buffeting the windows of our small apartment with them. This was made worse when my roommate STOPPED playing video games. I felt that at any moment the entire complex might fall over, either that or one of the trees come through the roof.
Plato being the furthest thing from my mind, I gave up on trying to write my Greek literature paper and tried to go to sleep. Yet another futile endeavor. The whole situation became much, much worse (at least in my mind) when at about 1AM I hear my roommate muse aloud: "wouldn't it be funny if the wind broke one of the windows."
I didn't get much sleep last night...
Monday, November 8, 2010
A Beginning, Middle and End
Lately I've been reminiscing, looking back on the many, many adventures that I have had over the course of the past 21 1/2 years of my life. Thanks to a few good friends and relatives, this has been made rather easy. Five places immediately spring to mind:
-Burlington, VT... the place I was born, where my parents met, and where I built and played with many snowmen.
-Chagrin Falls, OH... a sleepy little town on the outskirts of Cleveland (which was once the steel capital of the United States) it is now firmly located in what is often called the "rust belt." The owner of the local hardware store knows my father and grandfather by sight. The ducks in the river probably know me just about as well.
-Lima, Peru... smack-dab in the middle of the driest desert in the world, one day of real rain causes mass landslides and countless deaths. The people are actually rather amicable though... except when they are behind the wheel of a car.
-Virginia Beach, VA... the first real big city that I lived in. This place galvanized me as a Christian and gave me someone the best friends that I have ever had.
-Jacksonville, NC... a military town nestled away in the outer banks of the Carolinas... I have lived there a grand total of four times, each time very different than the last. I have run all over the Marine Corps base there, and contracted many fire ant bites in the process. It's a swamp with bears and bobcats and the occasional gator.
I hope you will see as much of the world as I have one day. The adventures and places and people scream out, glorifying God even if they don't mean to. Because they make up the epic tale that is Creation.
The story continues...
-Burlington, VT... the place I was born, where my parents met, and where I built and played with many snowmen.
-Chagrin Falls, OH... a sleepy little town on the outskirts of Cleveland (which was once the steel capital of the United States) it is now firmly located in what is often called the "rust belt." The owner of the local hardware store knows my father and grandfather by sight. The ducks in the river probably know me just about as well.
-Lima, Peru... smack-dab in the middle of the driest desert in the world, one day of real rain causes mass landslides and countless deaths. The people are actually rather amicable though... except when they are behind the wheel of a car.
-Virginia Beach, VA... the first real big city that I lived in. This place galvanized me as a Christian and gave me someone the best friends that I have ever had.
-Jacksonville, NC... a military town nestled away in the outer banks of the Carolinas... I have lived there a grand total of four times, each time very different than the last. I have run all over the Marine Corps base there, and contracted many fire ant bites in the process. It's a swamp with bears and bobcats and the occasional gator.
I hope you will see as much of the world as I have one day. The adventures and places and people scream out, glorifying God even if they don't mean to. Because they make up the epic tale that is Creation.
The story continues...
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