The Real Adventure

Daniel 7

Genesis 32:22-32

I was recently accused by someone close to me of being boring. I found this very odd at first, later I found it funny and as I reflected on it more I found it satisfying. The outward appearance of the journey I am on may be one of the mundane...my life may appear boring. But from the inside it is anything but.

When I meditate, start to fall asleep, or dream, all my moral struggles come to life...literally. My long-standing struggles with lust, pride, and anger; my attempt to discern Gods Will and live out his call; what the world may see as the "smallest" of concerns...these manifest themselves in spiritual ways I experience directly. I fight demons, traverse realms sometimes holy sometime malevolent, fly on angels wings and swim through the oceans of chaos. The experiences can be disturbing and painful or uplifting and empowering, but they all have direct effects on the decisions I make and on my character.

William James spoke of the danger of over-belief. I am blessed to be reflective enough not to take these experiences to have a simple one-to-one relationship with the external world. But I am hesitant to say unequivocally that they have NO relationship to that world. They are primarily about my own struggles, but they put those struggles...to trust love or not to trust love, to maintain discipline or not, to mute the ego or not...in a cosmic context that gives them meaning and me motivation. I completely abandon such a context at my peril.

But the real point I want to make is this: this is the most exciting life I have ever lived! Who can be satisfied with a return to everyday life when they have slain dragons and chilled with fairies? Yes, the experiences can be as horrible as they are wonderful. But horrible or wonderful, they hardly make life boring. I saw this CBS Special once about these Orthodox monks who live on this island nearly unchanged for a thousand years. All they do is work and pray. The interviewer asked one guy if life ever gets boring. He told the guy 'no, because of the war'. 'What war?' 'The eternal war, the one I'm fighting against satan.' Yea, it is kinda like that. 

I said I wound up satisfied with others' view of my life as boring. I realize that I often council against this modern message that somehow 'normal' is evil. That to stick out, to be distinct, to be first, is holy and that the ordinary is unholy. I talked about this here: http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2012/12/be-differentbe-ordinary.html?m=1

The fact that I was hurt by this accusation betrays the fact that I'm infected with this same "special-itis". But I have always taught that Gods Incarnation in Jesus blessed the ordinary. So being thought of as boring is sort of a blessing. Find an extraordinary life within the boring is just the kind of joke God likes to play in the world. 

I want to end with a quote from the super-being Q on STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, which sums up my feelings on what life is really about:

"For that one fraction of a second, you were open to options you had never considered. *That* is the exploration that awaits you. Not mapping stars and studying nebulae, but charting the unknown possibilities of existence."