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Quote of the Day: Adventurous Journeys
“An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered.” — G. K. Chesterton
We live in a culture that loves our conveniences. We’re used to the car starting every time, the water coming out of the pipes, and the fridge keeping everything cold. And heaven help us if a website takes more than a few seconds to load. But for most centuries of human existence, things haven’t been so easy. And maybe, because of that, we’ve been missing out on some pretty important things. Perhaps we’ve been missing some excellent adventures.
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We went to a conference once where the teachers, Paul and Gretel Haglin, shared this quote along with their experience of having their van break down in Minnesota north of Duluth and 50 miles from the nearest service station. Their daughter took her younger brothers for a walk, saying “Let’s see what kind of wonderful adventures God has for us today”. Paul said it was as if the local wildlife were putting on a show just for them.
Dreadfully inconvenient. Couldn’t even go back for his handkerchief.
I approve of this message, so long as I can be assured of having a place to charge my electronic devices.
One of my favorite quotes out of Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle (and there are many):
“Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God”.
My non-negotiable is a hot shower at the end of the day.
Oh, @charlotte, you’ll never know what you’re missing. The real fun and adventure doesn’t even begin until you’re out of sight of the paved trail.
I’ve had some wonderful adventures when unexpected things happened. An extra day and night on a float house in SE Alaska over Thanksgiving when the float-plane didn’t arrive to pick us up. That one involved keeping a small wood-stove fed and usually chipping through the ice on top of the water bucket in the morning and restarting the stove fire. Don’t ask about bathroom arrangements. In another, my car’s water pump started leaking near the end of a cross country drive home from college and I limped through British Columbia and into Yukon Territory filling it up along the way, refilling my water jug and using pay phones in bars and such to phone home until it finally gave out as I crossed over the Nisutlin Bay Bridge and rolled into the tiny town of Teslin, YT on a Sunday evening, where I met a kind off-duty Mounty who recommended I pitch my tent next to the “No Camping” sign instead of in the campsite the other side of the road. He said it would be safer. Several people offered to drive to Whitehorse (about 100 miles away) the next day to get a replacement and then to help change it. People are generally very helpful along the AlCan Highway. Instead, my adopted (not officially) “Dad” and wife (she didn’t like “Mom”) got on the next ferry to Skagway and brought the part to me and fixed it. We made it back to Skagway in time to catch the ferrry back home to Juneau. Skagway to Teslin is about a 3 hour drive. The kindness of good friends and strangers, too. Both of these adventures were before cell phones.
I have a more recent hitch-hiking back from Hebron in Israel story that also involves a kind stranger with whom I’ve maintained contact. Then there are the long friendship adventures that came from striking up a conversation with someone on a train (London), in a van/cab (Jerusalem), at a film (also Jerusalem), at a pro-Netanyahu protest in Tel Aviv. Those lead to further adventures with them and with friends of theirs who become mine, too. Life is one big adventure if you have the right frame of mind.
Every time I see that picture of Chesterton I wonder if Teddy Roosevelt and Red Skelton had an illegitimate son…
The biology wouldn’t have worked out right in those days. Might be different now.
Thanks for this – I am someone who loves an adventure (although mine are usually pretty tame, haha), so this would be a fun way of looking at situations where something unexpected comes up. Especially thinking of them as adventures that can grow my relationship with Jesus!