I’ve made a decision lately that’s been a long time coming, I suppose.

I’ve decided to consciously make a focus shift…to begin clearing some clutter, make some space. Start collecting fewer things, and focus instead on collecting experiences.

When we lived in Oklahoma, we knew a young couple who very deliberately lived in a small home and very deliberately lived a simple life in order to fund their real passion. These two twenty-somethings wanted to see as much of the world as they could. They wanted to cram in travel experiences that were wide and wonderful…off the beaten path in terms of both geography and humanity.

Oh my goodness.  Name a place you’d like to go and they’ve probably been there. They were young and fearless and lived with an ever-increasing frame of reference because they experienced an ever-broadening view of the planet.  I was so envious of them! Not only because of the experiences they were having, but also because of the anticipation that went along with it all. I wondered at times where their vision had come from… Maybe they had parents who both figuratively and literally pushed them out the door, saying “GO! See it all!”

Or maybe they were dreamers who had a spark of wanderlust…living with one foot in the real world of house payments, FedEx deliveries, and dry cleaning; while the other longed to find the Roman world of Macaulay…where men rode forth to avenge the ashes of their fathers and the temples of their gods.

They went everywhere and I wanted to run out, buy gear and go take on a mountain right along with them.  “Maybe someday” weren’t words they were very well acquainted with. Those two were all about “next time.” My list of places to go would be different than some of theirs, but the spirit of adventure would be exactly the same, I think.

I even made a list of the places I most wanted to go:

• Ride the Trans-Siberian railway, with a stop at Russia’s sacred sea.
• See the Matterhorn.
• Touch the Great Wall.
• Watch the Northern lights from somewhere outside of Reykjavik.
• Sit on quiet beaches and let waves of gratitude wash over my feet at Omaha, Sword, Juno, Utah, and Gold.
• Look up at the Milky Way from San Pedro de Atacama in Northern Chili.

Don’t those just sound amazing?

Maybe it’s the new year, maybe it’s the goodbyes I’ve said in the last year to some of the ways I’ve always done things,  but I’ve decided to make an effort to approach life with a little less emotion, and a little more deliberate thinking. I think a little deliberation will suit itself well to the work of the soul I have in front of me.

Do any of you remember “The Partridge Family”? It was a television show popular in the ’70s and while I was too young to experience it in prime time, I do remember it being in syndication when I was in high school. Actor David Cassidy played the lead singer of a family music group and the show was centered around their experiences. In any case, David grew up, the show ended and after a career in entertainment, he sadly passed away last November. His death took people by surprise…he really wasn’t very old. In an interview a few days after his death, his daughter shared the last thing he told her before he died…” so much wasted time.”

Those are sobering words…and we’ve heard them before, haven’t we? I thought at the time that David’s words illustrated for us the necessity of clear thinking about the time we’re gifted with. I think time is a commodity…every bit as precious as the funds in your bank account or any gift that you possess.

Remember Luke’s parable of the talents? The master gave his stewards money, yes, but they were also all granted the same interval of time.

That kind of thinking should inform our daily decisions and it makes me want to deliberately fill up my time; to put purpose to these minutes, hours, days and years.

At the end of every day, I want there to be a tangible difference to it because I was alive in it.

Somebody is the happier.

Some life is the richer for having been around me.

Someone has an easier way forward because their path crossed mine.

And that somehow, over the course of those 24 hours, my own soul grew and stretched and became more beautiful.

And just in case any of you might think that last wish sounds selfish…I don’t mean it that way. It’s not self-serving at all…not if you believe as I do, anyway.

An exquisite Someday is coming where we’ll all be joined in an ageless, radiant place of uncreated Light; where every soul’s growth and beauty is shared by each and every other one.   We’ll all be the richer for the time we invested in adding knowledge and grace, mercy and kindness, joy and yes, adventure! to our own soul story.

That’s community in its richest sense. In light of that kind of future, making sure our own souls aren’t neglected becomes an incredibly important endeavor.

I guess what I’m realizing is that it’s time for me to put off some of the conventional beliefs I’ve always held and look more at what the real goal is for my ‘here and now’.

While my list of places to go see is awe-inspiring (and there’s nothing wrong with a wish list like that), it serves to point me to another want, another deeper and more substantial desire. One that gets me to more lasting possibilities, more weighty potentials.

This secondary wish causes me to ask; do I want to just lead a good life? Or do I want to lead a real life? There’s more to the morality and decency that we are called to embrace than meets the eye. These moral decisions that we make are by-products (often hard fought for by-products) of what we got when we found Him, when we found the “way in” so to speak.

And of course, who are we kidding? The finding itself is a gift…the Eternal One seeks and finds that which is lost, and then begins to fit His prodigals for His unimaginably kind purposes.

And that’s where convention just doesn’t fit anymore. Remember your philosophy class and the Man or Rabbit essay by Lewis?

Whether or not you’ve read it before, I hope you read this excerpt now. Actually, I would rather you read this more than anything I’ve written today (or ever). It’s just piercing, somehow.

Lewis answers the age old question, “Can anyone live a good life without Christ?” Along the way, he gives us a pretty good hint as to what life is truly about…and what our destination will finally look like. The last three sentences make me catch my breath; they’re so full of hope and promise and “otherness”.

Christianity will do you good, a great deal more good than you ever wanted or expected.  And the first bit of good it will do you is to hammer into your head (you won’t enjoy that!) the fact that what you have hitherto called “good” – all that about ‘leading a decent life’ and ‘being kind’ isn’t quite the magnificent and all-important affair you supposed.  It will teach you that in fact you can’t be ‘good’ (not for twenty four hours) on your own moral efforts.  And then it will teach you that even if you were, you still wouldn’t have achieved the purpose for which you were created.

Mere morality is not the end of life. You were made for something quite different than that.  (The) people who keep on asking if they can’t lead a decent life without Christ, don’t know what life is about; if they did, they would know that ‘a decent life’ is mere machinery compared with the thing we men are really made for.

Morality is indispensable; but the Divine life, which gives itself to us and which calls us to be gods, intends for us something in which morality will be swallowed up.  We are to be re-made.  All the rabbit in us is to disappear – the worldly, conscientious, ethical rabbit as well as the cowardly and sensual rabbit. We shall bleed and squeal as the handfuls of fur come out; and then surprisingly, we shall find underneath it all a thing that we have never yet imagined:  a real Man, an ageless god, a son of God, strong, radiant, wise, beautiful, and drenched in joy.
“When that which is perfect is come, than that which is in part shall be done away.”  The idea of reaching “a good life” without Christ is based on a double error.  Firstly, we cannot do it; and secondly, in setting up “a good life” as our final goal, we will have missed the very point of our existence.

Morality is a mountain which we cannot climb by our own efforts; and if we could we should only perish in the ice and unbreathable air of the summit, lacking those wings with which the rest of the journey has to be accomplished. For it is from there that the real ascent begins. The ropes and axes are ‘done away’ and the rest is a matter of flying.

Great stuff there.

I want to live a life that has as its goal an unhindered eternity…even if I don’t quite know what that will look like. That’s what we’re promised, you know. We won’t be hindered by sins that so easily beset, or the fears that lurk, or the physical limitations of humanity or illness or age.

Can you just imagine?

And please don’t misunderstand. I’m not advocating any ditching of your responsibilities, any “do whatever you want” nonsense. I’m saying look differently at what you’re doing and see how it can be done to serve the purpose for which you were made. I believe our daily actions serve a purpose that we can only see hints of right now.

Right now we’re kind because He asked us to and because our fellow travelers need us to be so. We help each other because we can’t make it through life alone.  We forgive because we stand so often in need of it ourselves. But this only scratches the surface.  Someday…all the sacrifices, the forgiveness, the pushing of ourselves, and the pulling of others up higher along with us…all of this will come, not to an end, but to a glorious beginning.

The page will turn, the curtain lift and we will be where – up until then – our eyes hadn’t yet seen and our ears hadn’t yet heard.  We will know as we are fully known.

The beauty of a life lived with that purpose in mind is that it changes everything. Everything.

It gives meaning beyond mere obedience to every single unselfish thing we do.  We can put our arms around the friend who struggles with heart wrenching illness or fear or pain. We can give time and talent and funds to the poorest of the poor. The work we find to do, we do with our whole heart, for the good of family and friend. We are growing someone else’s soul.

We sit and watch the sunset knowing there are toys to pick up and laundry that’s not even close to finished – and not feel guilty.  We can enjoy a vacation digging our toes in the sand, knowing there is a desk-full of work back at the office – and let the minutes slip by in gratitude and not guilt.  We can read a book, watch a movie, listen to a favorite piece of music – and enjoy each second of it without a twinge of reserve. We are growing our own soul.

I don’t want to mourn for time that was wasted.  I think it’s better to be untethered from the “mere machinery” and concentrate instead on the grand narrative of what it is we’re actually doing here. To know that our attempts to live a good life are springboards to the Divine life He is fitting us for. We are His now, we will be fully His then.
The ‘now and the not yet’ as Amy Grant says.

So enough with convention for convention’s sake.  There are stars to see, Siberean railways to ride, walls to climb and a whole mass of humanity…people who share this same slip of time with me and who are therefore my responsibility – to hold tight to and care for and listen to.

I want to head out there…with Him providing the pulse.