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Blog 540 – 02.09.2017

The Adventure Of A Lifetime

On February 9, 1950 Alene Florence Davidson and James Clifford White were married in Rossville, Georgia. A little over nine months later the adventure of a lifetime began for me. I am grateful for my parents, my family, my friends, and the wide variety of experiences I have had in this life and as far as I am concerned the best is yet to be. Many of my peers, those that have not checked out already, talk of retirement, grandkids, and the weather of all things, but I started writing that great American novel yesterday and figure if I play my cards right that I have maybe forty good productive years yet to advance that writing career that I have dreamed about most of this life. There is a great line in the book of Esther, “Who knows if you were not born into the kingdom for such a time as this.”

There was a television series when I was a boy created by James Michener called Adventures In Paradise. It was sort of a Star Trek of the South Pacific and shared the adventures of the captain, the crew, and the guests on the Tiki III a small vessel making ports around the beautiful South Seas. My life has been thus far an adventure in paradise. I did spend eleven months in the tropics of sunny South Vietnam once and though I only spent a two hour stop in Honolulu, Hawaii while the plane refueled this adventure isn’t over yet. Hawaii, Australia and a host of ports tropical an otherwise are yet on my bucket list. While I do plan to have a writer’s cabin in the mountains someday I am not planning a hermit’s life and intend to keep my passport current and my bag packed for more adventures far and wide.

Many of my Christian friends marvel that for someone who knows the Bible so well that I no longer believe as they do. I recently remarked that I think that all religions start out as a door but quickly become a box. Jesus, once remarked, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” There is no freedom in boxes only in open doors. When life is no longer an adventure it becomes just a waiting for the adventure to end and hopefully for a newer, better one to begin.

So many people’s take on Heaven sounds to me like some really well apportioned assisted living place. And I am not ready for that and don’t think I will ever be. Don’t get me wrong if I should end up in such a place I would try to make the best of it but I do not plan to go quietly into that good night nor to rage against the darkness but to burn as brightly as I know how till this candle burns out. I have a feeling, a notion really, that these lives we live are meant to be adventures in paradise where we experience the good, the better, and the best. And that how we experience it has a lot more to do with how well we are tuned in than the music that is playing. Life is, I think, a lot like a dance. If you sit at a table by yourself nursing a cup of punch you just might miss the experience of a life time. It is never too late to join the party. “If you can’t find a partner use a wooden chair… let’s rock.”

Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White