I used this quote by Stanley Hauerwas in a Sunday sermon and revisited it after seeing a “Poop Pumping” sign.<\/p>\n
“Christianity: It’s An Adventure. What we do when we educate kids to be happy and self-fulfilled is to absolutely ruin them. Parents should say to their kids: What you want out of life is not happiness but to be part of a worthy adventure. You want to have something worth dying for. It’s awful when all we have to live for is ourselves.”<\/p>\n
The phrase “worthy adventure” is a helpful quick test for our decisions. I just finished shopping so I’m thinking especially about our consuming decisions. And who can pass up the profound implications of a “POOP PUMPING: Hike at your own Risk” sign?<\/p>\n
Think about all the things you consume — the stuff you buy, the things you eat, the news you listen to.<\/p>\n
Are they moving you into a worthy adventure?<\/p>\n
I have a mixed bag from my own shopping day. The first aid kit and the squirt guns are definitely part of a worthy adventure; the bag of gummy bears might have been an impulse buy.<\/p>\n
News is a consumer item, and I can tell almost immediately what media someone consumes by what they spew. Let me just throw out there that lectures, sneering or arrogant certitude never make for an adventure.<\/p>\n
Curiosity is part of a worthy adventure; ask more questions and listen to a variety of resources. In this time that political ads are ramping up, listen to what they are trying to sell; is it a worthy adventure?<\/p>\n
POOP PUMPING: Hike at your own Risk — I feel like that describes a life of following Jesus. It is the risky journey of trying to figure out what has worth and what is excrement (I used the thesaurus on that one so I didn’t say “s—-” and upset my dad).<\/p>\n
• Tari Stage-Harvey is pastor at Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church. “Living Growing” is a weekly column written by different authors and submitted by local clergy and spiritual leaders.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ask more questions and listen to a variety of resources. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":62380,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,7],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-62379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62379"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=62379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}