Our readings today have a disturbing ambiance to them. Everything is shifting and chaos seems like the only thing on the menu! When I read these passages, I can not help but think of the line from the New Zealand Prayer Book which says, “It is but lost labor that we haste to rise up early, and so late take rest, and eat the bread of anxiety. For those beloved of God are given gifts even while they sleep” (NZPB, “Night Prayer”). When the one main constant in life is change, it is our cultural default to rush to consume the “bread of anxiety” either by consumption of readily available toxins like alcohol, or simply by doom scrolling. Anxiety, speaking as someone who feels anxious all day long, is a reminder that we need to embrace the life of faith. And what is the life of faith? What is the liberating message of our sacred readings? In a word, adventure. 

When I was a kid, I would shy away from doing scary things, and for good reason. I was a very sickly kid. However, I always enjoyed storytelling because it taught me not only the art of self expression but also the beauty of life when it flows in unity with the soul’s yearning. A great example of this was in high school when I was a freshman. We had a woman come speak to our entire school about peacemaking. In her talk, she shared the risk she took, as an act of faith, to fulfill the Prophet’s call to “turn swords into plowshares” (Isaiah 2:4). She walked onto a military base and planted corn on a US missile silo then was promptly arrested. This woman’s name is Kathy Kelly, a longtime Catholic peace activist, who I share a birthday with! Her witness to the Gospel call of justice, compelled me to begin exploring the world around me, especially as the struggle of the human family began calling to my soul and demanding I answer. Our vocation of adventure is our souls prompting us to dive deeply into this life and engage with it. Adventure allows us to stand flat footed on the ground and look at the horizon with extravagant wonder! But adventure also demands of us a sober reckoning with the delusions that distort our vision; keeping us from the work of peace, justice, and reconciliation. 

This is an era of revelation where beauty and truth end up in a love dance with justice and freedom! Therefore, leaders today must be adventurers; people who align their life with the purpose of minding and mending the gaps that separate us from the dream of God. This is the instruction we receive when we read, “the wise will shine like the bright heavens, and the leaders of justice like the stars forever more” (Daniel 12:3). I wonder how in our daily lives we can engender this teaching from Daniel. Does this vocation to adventure and our call to shine bright like the heavens or the stars, beckon us into the love dance between justice and freedom, truth and beauty?

Written with assistance from Ben Stegbauer.

I would like to invite you to use the song “Tide and the River Rising (Oars)” by Cindy Kallet, a song that showcases the ethos of a “vocation of adventuring.” I would invite you to especially reflect on the verse:

Some live and change the world with grace

And vision and a strength of mind

Some rise from trouble, some lend a hand

And some keep trying to find

How can we keep trying to find and keep our sense of adventure and change amidst the great anxieties and crises of the world? How can we embrace the risk that is living to search for the depths of God in our world? How can we still find the grace to lend a hand when the tides and rivers seem to be roaring?

Some wisdom from the spiritual architect of the Civil Rights Movement, Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman; mystic, theologian, and activist:

“There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.”