And so it begins.
I'm speaking, of course, about my experience with the World Race. Now that I am official and have my own fancy blog (it's got my NAME in the address!), I must really be a part of the WR team. This is the metaphorical tipping of the giant stone boulder that will rumble ominously and roll screaming through the cave of our lives, chasing the proverbial Indiana Jones of meaning and fulfillment.
Please don't be confused by the bizarre, Harrison Ford-inspired metaphor. It's just that I don't really know how else to describe this journey we call life except through the lens of my experiences. I've watched a lot of nerdy movies and TV shows. I've played some sports. I saw Paris when I was an eighth grader. I've borrowed a lot of jokes from VH1.
And that's about it.
I mean, I didn't even come up with "And so it begins." I just heard it on an episode of Space Ghost: Coast to Coast when I was a kid.
The fact that my experiences, my participation in the colorful and vibrant planet Earth, consist of primarily movie and TV quotes troubles me. I mean, I know I have done other things. I have friends; I went to college; I have a family that harasses me lovingly and a house full of roommates that daily teach me the one-ninth of the Fruit of the Spirit that keeps you from harumphing passive aggressively when someone doesn't replace the toilet paper, for instance.
But my whole life has been so much about me, about what I do and the things that I want and the things that I think. I've spent twenty three years and change stuck inside this head, endlessly cogitating and analyzing, never moving into action with anything but a slow crawl of anxiety masquerading as "preparedness" and "caution."
And now I stand on a precipice, gazing out upon a view that demands the swiftness and conviction that only an instinctive, gut-feeling type of reaction can provide. To make it in the World Race, to travel across the world and see the pain and anguish of need and strife existing simultaneously with the beauty and richness of community and giving, I must live outside my own brain. My heart must become Christ's, and my brain must become not a probability generator, but a video camera.
Out there, I'm going to see more than hunky archaeologists gallivanting across Nepal and I'm going to hear more than Hedbergian one-liners. But I'm not sure what it's going to be. I have no context to predict the sorts of experiences through which the Spirit will lead.
So I want to be prepared to record and remember every little moment, so that when it comes time for me to write a story that really means something, that will really change someone's life for the better and nudge them just the tiniest bit closer to the truth of Our Lord, I'll have more to rely on than Space Ghost and "I Love the 80's."
Come along with me, why don't you. I imagine this is when God will start to show me a story worth telling.
