Every Man and Woman Has a Shire and A Ring

     I have often thought that I am a bit like Frodo Baggins at the beginning of The Lord of the Rings. Young Frodo has lived his whole life in the Shire.  It is an idyllic place full of bright green grass, cozy houses, families and friends.  He is comfortable there, and does not have any desire to leave for the greater world beyond the Shire.  But still he dreams of adventure.  It does not occur to him that this adventure is to be found beyond the boundaries of his comfort.  The comfort of home trumps his wanderlust.  The world outside the Shire is the scary unknown. One day, he is visited by an old friend, Gandalf the Grey, who has something of a gift for him.  It small, unassuming ring.  This small ring is a powerful and ancient object that will change his life forever.  It will, in fact, change the entire world as he follows it into a great battle between good and evil for the fate of all of Middle Earth.

     I firmly believe that every one of us is on no less an adventure in our lives.  And we are all faced with the same choice in great and small ways.  I believe that every man and woman has his Shire and ring.  I had thought that I was still in the Shire.  I have been at the same large organization - The University of Michigan's business and finance side, since I was in my late 20's.  I have worked several positions there, but all times spent greater than 10 years in the various departments I have worked for.  I thought that I was too afraid to step out and leave my comfortable Shire.  I thought that this timidity was part of a greater theme in my life: a life of safety.  There is a reason for it. You see, I have a condition that limits my aspirations.  I have dealt with it since my late teens.  I am always fighting this battle for my very life and in many ways, I am so thankful for that battle.  It has taught me such much about the deep inner strength I have bubbling just below the surface.  Time and time again in my life, I have had to dig down deep - deep in my soul and muster every bit of strength that lies there.  And I have found Jesus at the center of this deep well of strength at the core of my being.  Time and time again, the strength that he provides gives me the courage to face even death. And I have had several brushes with death. I don't think anyone knows what they're made of until they've had to stare down their own mortality.  Doesn't this sound like the makings of an adventure?

     So it occurs to me, that maybe my Shire is not where I work or what neighborhood I live in.  It is not my car or my house.  It is the spiritual life that I live. And my cheek was brushed by the Holy Spirit during my first episode of my illness, when I spent the entire three months of winter in the hospital.  When I lost my way and everything I took for granted, there was a great hole in my life that only God could fill.  And years later I can see, in retrospect, Him courting me, encouraging me, inviting me into a life that would take me to places I would never have dreamed.  But those places are not necessarily physical places - places you can locate on a map.  Sure I did brief missionary trips to Ghana and Guatemala, but those brief excursions were not the places I traveled in my spirit life. 

     In my journey, my true path, I have spent countless hours in scripture.  I have spent many more crossing the boundaries of my heart and mind in the writings of hundreds of religious authors, both contemporary and classic.  I have courted a beautiful woman, gotten married, and started a life that now includes the challenges and triumphs of fatherhood.  No, if you don't know that you are already on an adventure, you will look to leave the Shire that you envision is before you. I would run off on a whirlwind missionary journey, or leave my stable job for the high adventure of a life in the unknown. 

     I have come to realize that my great journey is not in some self-imposed pseudo-adventure.  It is in my heart and soul.  For me, the greatest accomplishment I can make in the current stage of my journey is to quit smoking.  Smoking is what robs me of time with my family and the ability to provide for them.  In the light of a false Shire, it would seem like a mundane, albeit  challenging, step.  But in light of the adventure to find my self and dig into my soul for the life Jesus intended us to live, it is another step on the exciting and life-giving journey I have been on.  It is the journey I started all those years ago when I took a world religions class and decided, rather ignorantly, to try to write a paper on who God is in all the major Abrahamic religions.  Failing completely in my ignorance, it was the first step to discovering myself.  It was a brush with the Divine, who had put that desire to seek out God deep in the center of my being.  And that desire is something we are all born with.  The desire to know God is as old as man. And that desire, when we listen to it, will take us on no less of a life changing adventure than Frodo's ring. And our own adventure, it turns out, does in fact decide the fate of the world in the great battle of good and evil.  We are warriors on a journey to change history, each in our own way.  It happens every day in the interactions we have with other people.  They are raindrops in a pool rippling out to change the world.  Every single one of us is a Frodo in our lives and in the greater spiritual world around us.  Don't run away from the Shire you think you're in.  With God, you are already on the adventure of your life.