Living the letters: Colossians...Continued from page 4

From Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez4

The Intent of Monks

(A carraugh is a long, narrow, and open but seaworthy boat consisting of a wicker like basket frame covered with oak-tanned ox hide and caulked with tallow.)

In the following pages, beginning in a time before the sagas, the notion of a road to Cathay, a Northwest Passage, emerges. The quest for such a corridor, a path to wealth that had to be followed through a perilous landscape, gathers the dreams of several ages. Rooted in this search is one of the oldest of all human yearnings ? finding the material fortune that lies beyond human struggle, and the peace that lies on the other side of hope. . . .

The people who first came into the Arctic had no photograph of the far shore before they left. They sailed in crude ships with cruder tools of navigation, and with maps that had no foundation or geographic authority. They shipwrecked so often that it is difficult to find records of their deaths, because shipwreck and death were unremarkable at the time. They received, for the most part, no support ? popular or financial. . . . Their courage and determination in some instances were so extreme as to seem eerie and peculiar rather than heroic. Visions of achievement drove them on. In the worst moments they were held together by regard for each other, by invincible bearing, o r by stern naval discipline. Whether one finds such resourceful courage among a group of young monks on a spiritual voyage in a carraugh, or among worldly sailors with John Davis in the sixteenth century, or in William Parry’s snug winter quarters on Melville Island in

1819–20, it is a sterling human quality.

THINK

“I took all this in and thought it through, inside and out.” (Ecclesiastes 9:1)

• Compare Paul’s description of the Colossian believers as having a “future in heaven, kept taut by hope” with Lopez’s description of these early explorers as “finding . . . the peace that lies on the other side of hope.”

• Look again at Lopez’s descriptions of the explorers and the conditions they faced. Do you think any of these phrases could be used to describe the early believers in Colosse?

• What about believers today? Do you think the faith of some could be described as less “sturdy and robust” because it comes without great difficulty? Explain.

Copied from Living the Letters: Colossians, Written and compiled by John Blasé,. Copyright © 2007. Used by permission of NavPress, www.navpress.com. All rights reserved.