Voice of Adventure
The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?
Psalm 27:1
Max Lucado writes in He Still Moves Stones that Jesus says the opinions are clear. On the one side there is the voice of safety. You can build a fire in the hearth, (or turn on the furnace), stay inside, and stay warm and dry for what you don’t try, right? You cannot fall if you don’t take a stand, right? You cannot lose you balance if you never climb, right? So don’t try it. Take the safe route. Or you can hear the voice of adventure-God’s adventure. Instead of building a fire in your hearth (or lighting the furnace), build that fire in your heart. Follow God’s impulses. Adopt a child, move overseas, teach the class, change careers, run for office. Make a difference. Don’t think about the pros and cons, hear God nudging you, calling your name, telling you to get off your blessed assurance!
On a study tour out west, I took the invitation to dance with the Navajos, participate in a sweat lodge and you know, I learned quite a bit about what God had in store for me. Dancing released the depressive thoughts and broke through my walls of depression. One never knows how God will enter the dance or the climb or the sweat lodge. Listen closely for that voice, it is calling you to better things than you ever thought possible.
St Mark’s will be celebrating with Fairborn on trick or treat Halloween night. We thought you might want to know where this celebration originated since it is the second most decorated holiday in the US after Christmas. We will be on the lawn that night to great you. A celebration much like our Halloween, with bonfires and feasting on apples and nuts and harvest fruits, was part of pagan worship for centuries. The Britons celebrated in honor of their sun-god with bonfires, a tribute to the light that brought them abundant harvest. At the same time the Celts saluted Samhain, their ‘lord of death’; who was thought to gather together at last the souls of the year’s dead which had been consigned to the bodies of animals in punishment for their sins. The Romans celebrated the same kind of festival at this time in honor of their goddess Pomona, a patroness of fruits and gardens. Whether the Church ‘baptized’ these customs or chose this season for her feasts of the dead independent of them, their coincidence shows again how alike men are when they seek God and His ways, give praise, use the language of symbols to express the inexpressible. It was celebrated at the time of the harvest, thus the appearance of apples, pumpkins, squash and the like. It was in the eighth century that the Church appointed a special date for the feast of All Saints, followed by a day in honor of her soon-to-be saints, the feast of All Souls. She chose this time of year, it is supposed, because in her part of the world it was the time of barrenness on the earth. The harvest was in, the summer done, the world brown and drab and mindful of death. Snow had not yet descended to comfort and hide the bony trees or blackened fields; so with little effort man could look about and see a meditation on death and life hereafter. Next week, how the word Halloween came into being.
Be a blessing this week. Deacon Nancy Trimble
