Fall 2023 - Issue 2
HELLO FRIENDS!
Each issue of the Et Cetera has a theme to help prompt conversation. This issue’s theme is Friendship, since right now many of us are making new friends or have recently said goodbye to long-time ones. We hope you enjoy this month’s offerings. Please let us know what you think, or better yet, let the writer know and start talking about any thoughts you had in response.
If you’re wondering what kind of content we accept: Most kinds of prose (fiction and non-fiction), poetry, or visual art is welcome. Prose pieces should be 1,000 words or less. These can include anecdotes, book reviews, movie reviews, thoughts spurred by your academic studies (no actual assignments, please), things you’d like to talk about with the community...et cetera! Visual art must be submitted in a digital format; printing will be in black and white, so do keep that in mind. Priority is given to students, staff, and faculty of Regent College.
All submissions must be sent to etcetera@regent-college.edu. Publication is not guaranteed. All submissions are subject to proofreading edits and may be returned for more substantial revision. Views expressed in the Et Cetera do not necessarily represent the views of Regent College, the RCSA Council, or the Et Cetera staff.
We can’t wait to read what you write this year!
Steven Gomez, senior editor
Tess Fuller, associate editor
Permanence
By Tess Fuller
When I was three years old, my two best friends moved away. We had been inseparable for our whole lives, and then they were gone. I remember them packing up their house, and I was going to say goodbye, but I found that they had already driven off on their way to Northern BC. For weeks afterwards, my eyes would inexplicably water at random moments, and my mom would ask if I was crying. I would get mad and say that I wasn’t crying, and I was pretty sure I was telling the truth. Looking back, I think that my grief was just too big for my tiny self, to the point that I couldn’t even identify it.
There is a plague in Vancouver, and I don’t just mean COVID. It is a plague of people treating each other as temporary. We go through life with the assumption that everyone is going to move away eventually, so why even try to invest in people? I see it in churches, where people cannot break through the most superficial conversations, and in schools, where every relationship comes with a time limit. I see it in the simplest interactions between people on the street, everyone averting their eyes from each other and avoiding all but the most necessary exchanges. Why be kind when this person will cease to exist (to me) a minute from now? Treating people as temporary means treating them as disposable, contemptible, unworthy of our time.
The truth is that there is no such thing as a temporary person. We know this, we know that each random stranger we meet is destined for eternity, so why do even Christians join the culture of walling people off? Is it because we are all traumatized by the loss of friendships? Is it because when people leave my church they never say “goodbye”? This fear is not what we were made for. We were made to love our neighbours, not act like they’re unreal or disposable. Even if our time together is brief, love is something without a time limit. We can be unafraid, knowing that there is nothing really temporary about the people we love.
I have a lot of hope, still, for alleviation from this plague. Why am I hopeful? Well, after 25 years of long-distance friendship I know that love carries on. It turns out that moving to the other side of the province was insufficient to break up me and my friends. We’re pretty different now, maybe because we’re not toddlers anymore. I asked my friends whether they would ever move back to Vancouver, and the answer was a resounding “NO”. They asked if I would ever consider small-town life, and my answer is also “NO”. Does this mean that we will stay separated for another 25 years? 50 years? That thought makes me sad, but not really scared. I know that some things are permanent. ❦
Finding Friends The Old School Way
By Sean Beckett
In my very first semester at Regent, I somehow snuck into Cindy Aalders’ legendary “Spiritual Friendship” seminar. The eight of us dove into the heady mix of historical analysis and spiritual reflection, alternating between prying into the psychology of our primary sources and mining our own experiences of affection and loss. I wasn’t quite ready for the amount of laughter, tears, or footnotes.
The class deeply disturbed my ideas about friendship. Throughout history, many, many folks have fostered dramatically close friendships– friendships with unity and commitment that far surpassed the majority of marriages, but without any appeal to sex or romance. Pairs took friendship vows on the steps of churches, were buried together, and referred to each other as part of their own soul. While lots of these people had ordinary friendships, too, they raised the bar dramatically with a special friend, lifting the concept of friendship to a divine realm. Friendship explored heights Hollywood hasn’t touched yet.
What really shook me, though, was the way some of these ancient friend-heroes picked their friends. Probably like most people, my “Friendship Finding Formula” looked something like this:
Serendipitous connection + magical sense of chemistry = potential friend
In short, you meet someone randomly, you click, the conversation flows, and you become best friends.
But reading ancient literature on friendship torpedoed this strategy. Some of the most influential thinkers on friendship—gals and guys like Cicero and Aelred of Rievaulx—warn strongly against letting your affections get ahold of you while picking friends. Instead, they advise looking for specific virtues, moving really slowly, and rigorously testing friendships before moving onto the higher stages. Their formula looks something way more like this:
Stable + loyal + discreet in speech + similar in character/disposition + correctable = potential friend
We look for connection, they look for character. We look for charisma, they look for virtue. Who is right? Judging by the quality of the friendships some of these old school writers described, they do.
Choosing one’s friendships based on virtue can, at first glance, look heartless or judgmental. But the idea flows out of the desire to form friendships far deeper than many have dared to imagine, friendships where literally everything is shared in common. With such a friendship, it only makes sense you would want to test a friend deeply, because you are trusting them not just with your life, but with your very soul. Reading about these friendships was a humbling experience. I quickly realized that not only had I never committed so fully or connected so deeply with another human. But I also realized I lacked the kind of virtues I would need to be that kind of friend for another person. After all, I could fairly be accused of being talkative, proud, and quick-tempered, the kind of vices they warn heavily against in a friend. It was a sobering, but empowering lesson. Aelred, after all, reminds us that if we lack any virtue, we can ask, seek, and knock for it according to Matthew 7.
Reading about how these heroes of the past formed such deep friendships, based on character, reshaped my thinking. They pointed out that people do a better job of checking out sheep and cows before buying them than they do in finding friends, and, alas, the same could be true of me and my technology purchases (or, sometimes, what brand of olive oil I buy). It seems cold at first, but it can quickly lead to a healthy self-examination, which can lead you to become a better homo sapien, and, hopefully, a better friend.
All to say, there’s more to finding—and becoming—a friend than a shared interest in the cheapest hummus recipes and English devotional poetry. But if you do happen to like either of those things, let’s grab coffee.
For more information, check out Aelred of Rievaulx’s Spiritual Friendship, a quick, humorous, and deeply engaging read. ❦
By Sandra Park
A Friendship-Filled Summer
By Gracie Roorda
What are you doing this summer?” I received this question on a daily basis this past spring.
“I’m working for an organization, called Friendship Ministries Canada, that supports churches all across Canada ministering with people of all abilities; helping them grow in their faith, build friendships, and create a space of belonging,” was the answer I had said a few too many times before and had completely memorized by June. While, yes, I agree that this is meaningful work, I feel as though this scripted answer offers only a glimpse into the identity of Friendship Ministries Canada and the significant work that it does.
Fortunately, for me, this summer I was able to observe and take part in Friendship’s good work. I had the chance to speak one on one with many dedicated church group leaders, hear their stories, and discover why Friendship means so much to them. I helped create a new Biblical curriculum for groups which will spur on faith formation in participants across Canada. I spent time with Friendship friends, those living with differing abilities, and witnessed the freedom and belonging they experience within a group where they are deeply known.
This internship continued to open my eyes to the importance of all God’s people finding a place of belonging in him. For all God’s children were bought at the highest price, as loved individuals, each one under his steady, tender care.
As I finished my internship and left Niagara, ON, for Vancouver, BC, I earnestly thanked Friendship’s church group leaders, mentors, and friends. I learned so much from all of them and admired their genuine heart for one another. It was and still is my prayer that Friendship Ministries Canada and my new friends all across this country might continue to “grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and forever!” (2 Peter 3:18).
If you would like to know more about Friendship Ministries Canada, please come find me or visit their website at friendshipministries.ca. I’m more than happy to chat about my role at Friendship this past summer. ❦
Dear friend,
Your last letter brought hearty laughter to my lips. Here, the season of rain has unfurled its watery embrace. I’ve spent the day gazing through my window, lost in reverie, your image a constant companion. I wanted to invite you for coffee, to go for a walk in the park or to have cheese and wine for dinner while we admire São Paulo’s night through the enormous windows of my apartment. But you’re now on the other side of the ocean, and I haven’t lived in that apartment for ages. I know, I know, you’re always just a phone call away, but the thought of picking up the phone makes me tired. And then I get stuck in this eternal loop of thinking about you, remembering that you’re away and continuing to work on whatever I was doing when it all started.
What’s Paris like? Are you enjoying living in the most romantic city in the world? Do you miss the countryside? The last time we spoke, you were worried about cycling through Parisian traffic. I hope you’ve got used to it and that no car dares to come too close to you. I swear I’ll get on a plane and kill whoever kills you.
I watched Past Lives recently, and I think you’d love it. When the credits came up, I closed my eyes and imagined you sitting next to me, your eyes full of tears, as always happens when you watch something beautiful. As I write, the rain has gone from mild to wild, and it’s impossible not to remember that day when I made you walk home with me in the middle of a tropical storm. You were desperate, but I laughed it off, calling it an adventure.
But back to the movie, there’s a scene in which one of the characters tells another character that for him, she’s the one who always leaves, however, for her husband, she’s the one who stays. That movie alugou um triplex na minha cabeça. It got me thinking about who are the people in my story who are destined to be my ghosts and who are the ones who remain. The kind of people who grab you by the arm and, like Ruth, tell you: “Where you go, I go.” I think you’re one of those people. It is as constant as the ticking of the clock that is working as the soundtrack as I write to you.
Oh, how I wish I could spend a whole day with you! We could wake up early, have a slow breakfast while we discuss the latest adventures in our love lives (or the lack of so!), and then walk around the city aimlessly. The world here is on fire. These trees know all too well what it means to “not go gentle into that good night.” One last significant act before they die for another winter. Priscila told me the other day that she’s enjoying fall in Norway for the first time in I don’t know how many years. Can you believe it? Soso is getting married next year. Olivia is growing so fast, and Alice is on the way. My heart gets heavy and drops into my stomach when I remember that I no longer get to see these events firsthand. All the stories of the people I love most come to me through my smartphone’s small, cold screen.
I’ve been listening to a lot to the playlist you made for me. I always smile when Los Hermanos starts to play. There’s so much of you in me. How much of me is there in you? Do you still remember my favorite gelato flavor? Or have the last few years thrown these little tidbits of information into the attic of your memory? I’m afraid to know the answer. Don’t tell me. It’s pistachio! Remember how in Rome you kept asking for stracciatella, and I was always going for pistachio? How dare you forget that I love pistachios? Don’t forget it, please.
I was reading that book of letters that Clarice Lispector sent to her friends between 1940 and 1960. Boy, she used to write as if she was living in an eternal autumn, with elegance and pain going hand in hand in each of her texts. The questions she asks her friends are so mundane yet so human that every letter brings me a tear or a laugh and makes me want to ask you the same questions: What do you do at 3 p.m.? Have you been eating enough? Have you been sleeping well? What book are you reading now? Tell me everything, all of it.
When you come to visit, I’ll take you dancing. I know it won’t be like in the old times - we’re not 21 anymore, and the parties here end early. But don’t you think it would be poetic for us to pretend, for one night, that time hasn’t passed? That we still live in the same city, that the following morning we’ll find ourselves in the same classroom, with swollen faces, and that the future stretches out like a carpet of infinite possibilities before us? Can you promise me we’ll go out dancing? Let’s get into that time capsule!
I’m sorry for the myriad inquiries and the melancholic undertones of this letter. I woke up today dreaming of the past and craving bread on the grill with requeijão. But wait, I think I’ve got the dates and stories mixed up... By now, you’ve moved to Berlin, haven’t you? And I don’t believe you were with me on that rainy day... and it was actually Estevão who sent me that playlist. Sorry, it’s Tuesday, and Tuesdays are long around here. Well, perhaps this letter must be sent to more than one address.
Nonetheless, write to me. I want to hear from you. Write me a seven-page letter, double-sided. Use all the words you have and all the ink in your pen. I’d devour a dictionary if it was written by you. But if you only send me a paragraph, I’ll smile just the same.
I miss you - more than that! I have saudades of you.
Steph ❦