Today Mount Shoop quotes Alfred North Whitehead - I think it is wonderful
Alfred North Whitehead asserts that without adventure civilization trivializes religion and will eventually perish from its fear of what might be. He describes the nature of religion as follows:
Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind, and within, the passing flux of immediate things; something that is real, and yet waiting to be realized; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts...something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest.... The worship of God is not a rule of safety - it is an adventure of the spirit, a flight after the unattainable. The death of religion comes with the repression of the high hope of adventure.
Mount continues - Religion and piety are not the quest for control or certainty, but they are the embodied trust of holy mystery. Dispositions of adventure are open to the ambiguity of God's mystery.
This is as dynamic of a quote as is needed for this conversation on adventure. Adventure is to be 'in play' with the world as it is engaging us. Faithfulness is the backbone to such a willingness to move into that which is ambiguous and yet know for certain that what will unfold will be a part of the procession of faithfulness through time. I know that I am often one who wants to pin something down and say "this is it." And yet, that which I am trying to pin down is never 'it.' Rather, it may be a piece of what will unfold next. Too often, we can be led astray before that which is next is allowed to engage us and we to engage it. Fear and anxiety often find ways to rule us and turn us into idolatrous people set on security rather than faithfulness. Therefore, we need those people around us who continue to draw us into mystery so that questions never cease and faithfulness blossoms in ways we may have never anticipated.
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