the love for adventure

I always had passion for the old, old things, old values, old ways. It is therefore of no coincidence that I stay in a room called the museum of antiquities. This does not however mean that I am old fashioned whose object of happiness lie solely on the ways of yesteryears. As a matter of fact one of the things I really hate is to be served successively the same food twice. I hate repeats. I feel absolutely no excitement when I do a thing twice. It bores me when I can be absolutely sure of the outcome. Indeed there are things in my life which I prefer doing the old way. But as for the rest I initiate, I innovate and I feel I have not contributed anything if it is not something new. I believe my mind works that way and so does my passion. I would be a liar if I will not admit that new things do not give me goose bumps. But that is precisely the point – the unpredictable outcome is the source of excitement and the rush of adrenalin soothes my arthritis.


I was reflecting on these attitudes of mine last night when I read the gospel today. There are things I would be so conservative about. And there are habits that die hard in me, habits that resist change. I remember the first time I changed my shower time when I begun to tinker with the thought of changing it after years of doing it every afternoon. I got my first taste of a cold morning shower when somebody in the chapel spat on me while I was watering the plants in the garden. That was years back. But that experience made me rethink things, (well at least taking showers) and after several months of trying morning showers once in a while I finally got used to it. I found out it was good not just because you feel fresh early in the morning but also because my body pains were greatly lessened.
Why am I talking about all these? Because the gospel is actually a plea to the pharisees who shut their minds on Jesus and rejected his new ideas. Jesus is condemning a shut mind, people who are afraid of new methods, people who are afraid of an adventurous thought, people who resent the new, people who fear disturbing the status quo. The status quo is security, disturbing it would upset my psyche, it would produce havoc in my routine, it would disturb the convenience I have been so used to. Some of us do not like this, that is why we are afraid at times of probing questions, or of SDs who ask too many questions, or counselors who seek too many answers, or ICs which makes a lot of inquiries. We are afraid because we want things the way it is or the way it was.
I am by now older – older than I was 20 years ago when I was your age. If I have to describe what activities God delights in the most in his relationship with me, it is this - God loves to destroy and to rebuild. He destroys in order to rebuild. That is what he always does to me, which explains why I have this weird feeling that I am always “under construction”. God did this so many times in my life, even in the way I have come to know him, in the way I have come to understand myself, in my relationships and in my desires. Without an adventurous spirit I could have succumbed. Without an interest for exploration, without a curiosity for the new, and an audacity for the novel, I could have given up. But Christianity is a journey, a pilgrimage, and our formation in it is an adventure.
One time a drop of saliva from a seminarian made me change my habits in that simple act as taking a bath at a certain preferred time. You can’t just imagine what God can do when he decides to intervene. To wish for the security of the past may be the most damming thing you can do when he does. To look forward to the future even if it looks bleak and insecure may lead you to a lot of surprises.