Fall 2023 - Issue 1
WELCOME BACK!
Many of you have eagerly awaited the return of the Et Cetera this term, and although we’ve kept you waiting we trust this issue won’t disappoint. There will, however, be some changes in this new season. The first and most obvious is a new release schedule; we will only be publishing four issues per term. We hope this will allow more students to contribute amidst their busy school schedules, and that we’ll have even more substantial, thoughtful, and light-hearted content every month.
Each issue will also have a theme to help prompt conversation. For our first one of the year, we’ve chosen the topic Beginnings and Endings, recognizing that right now many of us are beginning new seasons of life—which can also mean moving on from something else, letting go of what we’ve been holding in order to move forward. I 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.
I can’t wait to read what you write this year!
Steven Gomez, senior editor
A Dream of September Spring
By Stephanie Loli
Winter arrived when the last magnolia flowers fell to the ground.
The seasons are less distinct in the land near the Tropic of Capricorn. Summers are long, and winters are short. Spring and autumn are shy visitors. The sun, however, is a constant presence.
A year ago, when I boarded a plane and crossed the Americas, one of the things I looked forward to most during my stay in this part of the globe was the opportunity to experience the four seasons. Back home, I had never been a fan of long summers, so I eagerly anticipated the increase in the number of days I could wear sweaters and scarves each year. What I couldn't predict is that my internal calendar wouldn't adjust to the geographic change.
In the weeks leading up to Christmas last year, I remember looking out the windows and smiling, even though the landscape that penetrated my eyes was filled with dry trees and gray skies. While the world around me prepared to hibernate and shed everything unnecessary in order to withstand another winter, inside of me, the sun shone brightly, as in the blue skies of Brazilian Decembers, where our Christmases are celebrated with long days at the beach, barbecue, games, and sunburns.
In 1943, Uruguayan visual artist Joaquín Torres García created a powerful symbol of Latin American identity in his work América Invertida. In this work, García challenged the Eurocentric traditional notions of North and South (where Southern countries are mere repositories of Northern knowledge and are expected to develop by looking to the North and following its standards and example). But if the “North” is synonymous with orientation—the measure by which we locate ourselves and determine where we are and where we plan to go—García suggests that for Latin Americans, the South should be our “North.” Our land, culture, and history should be our guide. "The South is our North": it is to the South that our internal compasses point. I, who have always delighted in cultural and political studies, had never experienced this inner compass screaming so loudly within me.
It was this past summer when I realized my compass still points south. Not only ideologically and culturally, but temporally as well. If I was bathed in sunlight from the Brazilian Atlantic during the Canadian winter, this summer in Vancouver brought the cold of São Paulo to my soul. Between June and August, even though the gardens around me were overflowing with life and nourishment, and the sun worked late into the night, my internal weather forecast indicated a period of drought and icy winds that chilled my bones. Amid the stresses of student life, the pains of voluntary exile in a land that is not my own, and the weakness of a body that seemed to be fighting against me, winter found me, even in the midst of a beautiful summer.
In How to Inhabit Time, James. K. A. Smith asks: “What if the first eighteen years of your life were an Arctic winter? What if all the sunlight in your life comes late, at an oblique angle? What if the sun cyclically disappears from a life for nights that seem like they'll never end? (...) Some years are longer than others.” (53) But why do some parts of the Earth receive so much sun and the others so little? It almost seems like the sun has its favorites! And it does, since the incidence of solar radiation depends on latitude. The Southern Hemisphere receives more energy during December (southern summer) than the Northern Hemisphere does in June (northern summer) because Earth's orbit is not a perfect circle, and Earth is slightly closer to the Sun during that part of its orbit. In São Paulo, regardless of the season, the sun always finds a way to reach us. But I am no longer in São Paulo.
A few nights ago, I went to bed after watching a video on the history of bossa nova. That night, I dreamt of singing a Brazilian song in the atrium, and the entire community followed along with the lyrics and melody. I woke up feeling very Brazilian: full of energy and vitality. This dream provided a missing piece for me to continue putting together the puzzle that has been navigating my Brazilian and South American identity in North America and, more specifically, at Regent College.
Brazilians take great pride in their rich musical tradition. The ethnic mixture in our country (a result of native peoples, centuries of Portuguese colonization, African culture that resisted many years of slavery, and 20th-century immigration that brought Italians, Spanish, Germans, Dutch, Japanese, and Lebanese) has created a beautiful tapestry of rhythms. In Brazil, living well means being surrounded by music and musicians. My people go through life singing and dancing - even when surrounded by pain. When life gets tough, I always find myself listening to bossa nova. The delicate chords and lyrics that exalt the simplicity of human life, the beauty of Rio de Janeiro, and the colors of the Atlantic Ocean transport me back to the South. Bossa nova always casts a spell that takes me back home.
At home, the calendar has a beginning, middle, and end: January, July and December. Here, there are three of each. The year starts in January but restarts in September. The year officially ends in December, but it also ends in April. And summer sits awkwardly between! Time seems more fragmented and passes us by at a quicker pace. A beginning and an end every three months—my clock moves a bit slower, and perhaps that's why my internal compass still points south. This calendar may never make sense to me.
Nevertheless, living between worlds has its own beauty. The Northern spring, which passed too quickly and took the magnolias in April, has finally arrived in the Southern Hemisphere this September. And over there, the Ipê trees must be budding and coloring the streets of São Paulo in white, yellow, and purple. Every end is a new beginning. For every winter, a spring—here or on the other side of the world.
And even though the leaves are starting to dim, I can smell the blossoms carried on by the Southern wind, a dream of bossa nova. ❡
América Invertida
Joaquín Torres García
Uruguay, 1943
Public domain
Source: https://smarthistory.org/torres-garcia-inverted-america/
Flowing Downstream
By Zella Christenson
My dearest friends, I hope this article finds you with a warm cup of tea and a moment to pause and settle into God’s presence. You are so deeply loved.
Many days (weeks, months…) I affirm God’s love as a theological truth without letting it get in my bones. I spend far too many hours living functionally as if I didn’t actually believe that God is trustworthy, loving, or good; these past few years of life and ministry and inelegantly following Jesus have made me increasingly aware of that reality. When God seeps into my soul, however, he doesn’t leave me the same. This has been one of those summers.
Through all the excitement, change, and expectation of starting seminary last year ran an undercurrent of anxiety that I couldn’t shake. I came to school holding a fistful of loose threads that God repeatedly promised he was weaving together into something beautiful, but my spirit thrashed around much of this past year in the discomfort of not being able to see the pattern. I asked over and over for clarity, for a peak at the blueprints, for something to reassure me my life is going to amount to something. By the end of spring term, it felt like Jesus was asleep in the boat as I sunk deeper into constant worrying, crying out, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” (Mark 4:38)
Before the summer term began, I had the remarkable opportunity to spend three weeks rafting the Grand Canyon with an eclectic crew of family and strangers. I’ve never seen water so wild and ravenous. A few days into the trip, the boat I was riding in flipped in a rapid, and I was plunged into the water beneath the boat. Our crew of family and no-longer strangers pulled together, and all people and possessions made it safely to camp that night. But after all the excitement died down and people crawled off to their tents, I still couldn’t sleep. The eternity of those five minutes in the river embodied all the fears I had been drowning in for months. I went and sat on the beach, taking my place among the small and insignificant grains of sand cowering beneath the canyon walls, and wept in the fetal position before God. Nothing felt worthy of confidence anymore. Not my faith, not the oxygen in my lungs. All I had to bring before God was a spirit that had been thoroughly and finally crushed by fear.
As the weeks surged on, God’s response echoed through the canyon in the roar of the river itself. As I meditated on the current writhing around the boats and the waves gnashing their teeth at us, my soul was drawn into deeper wonder of the God holding the river in its place, humbling the arrogant waters at his command. God addressed my relentless cry for answers in the same way he responded to Job:
“Who shut up the sea behind doors
when it burst forth from the womb,
when I made the clouds its garment
and wrapped it in thick darkness,
when I fixed limits for it
and set its doors and bars in place,
when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt’?”
Job 38:8-11
The geology of the canyon found deeper significance as I prayed over the creation psalms:
“He set the earth on its foundations;
it can never be moved.
You covered it with the watery depths
as with a garment;
the waters stood above the mountains.
But at your rebuke the waters fled,
at the sound of your thunder they took to flight;
they flowed over the mountains,
they went down into the valleys,
to the place you assigned for them.
You set a boundary they cannot cross;
never again will they cover the earth.”
Psalm 104:5-9
As untamed as the river seemed, God had corralled it between these walls of stone. In the wild majesty of the Grand Canyon, God was re-enthroned on my heart as Lord of all creation. He did not answer a single question about what my future will hold, but on that river his grandeur seeped into my soul, displacing distrust with awe and renewing my confidence in the mighty hands of the creator who is carving out my life as he flows through it. ❡
Photo by Zella Christenson
An Interview with Dr. James Houston
By Sean Beckett
I had the vast privilege of sitting down with James Houston, the co-founder and first president of Regent College who will soon celebrate his 101st birthday. Dr. Houston was a professor of geography at Oxford University when he felt the call to begin Regent College across the world in Vancouver. Houston taught at UBC and took no salary for several years as Regent gained its footing. The transcript of this interview has been edited for length.
Sean Beckett: What advice would you give for bringing together scholarship and spirituality as a student?
Dr. James Houston: That scholarship is a servant of worship and not the service of oneself.
SB: What advice would you give for someone who's unsure of their mission in life?
JH: Make prayer your first priority in consciousness, to always dwell in the presence of the Lord by day or by night, and then you will get guidance.
SB: As students begin to write essays, what advice do you have for fruitful essay writing?
JH: Write essays that come out from both the heart as well as the mind.
SB: How best can Regent students serve the work, mission, and legacy of Regent College?
JH: They know they have not been sent out simply to be trained academically, but to be equipped in a missional venture of their lives. And their missional venture is that the kingdom of God is everywhere. As for me, the kingdom of God is now having become pastor to those who are dying. So it doesn't matter where you are, there God's mission is. And so do the mission which is next to you, where you see need, whatever it is. In other words, to be a missionary we don't need to go overseas. We can just knock next door.
SB: As students consider their career path after Regent, what advice would you give them?
JH: Whether you serve in the church or you serve in the marketplace wherever you are, recognize the kingdom of God is beside you, and so, you're a missionary in all these areas…
SB: As you look back at your life, what do you most [value]?
JH: I most value the times of affliction, when I got so depressed, I nearly wanted to commit suicide. But God saved me. And now I realize that it was in the doubt, the valley in the shadow of death, that I learned to fear no evil…as we find in Psalm 23. For he is my shepherd. I shall not want. He leads. He guides. He refreshes. He comforts. And so being shepherded by Him, I live.
SB: How would you give advice on growing in wisdom?
JH: Observe and don’t talk too much.
SB: I have a friend that is making a complex decision, about being a parent, about what track to do, about whether to study what he is interested in or what is required… Do you have advice for him?
JH: Yes. We have to select priorities at stages. And the first stage is, if you are a parent, your priority is your children, because progenetically, your future is in their future. That’s number one. Your second stage is your studies because they are equipping you for your own progress. But they are number two, not number one. But even your studies are determined by being called to be a missional…to be a missionary in this most difficult of cultures, which is the relapse and the failure of Christendom that needs to be revived. And so what is urgent in whatever we do is: how does this help to revive the lethargy of worship in this culture? Because nothing is more important, made in the image and likeness of God, that He created us to be his worshippers, to give him praise. And because of sin, we will remain handicapped until we die, and then our potency will be fully released to worship Him in spirit and in truth eternally. And so, as an old man, I have no fear of death. I embrace my death as the opportunity to be fully human. I’m not yet. The potency has still to be fulfilled. And so the Christian comforts the elderly by saying, “Don’t be afraid of death. It’s the gateway into eternal potency as a human being.”
SB: You mentioned the crisis of lethargy of worship. How should we as young Christians at Regent combat that?
JH: The lethargy of worship comes from affluence. “Oh, I don’t need to praise God for my daily bread,” which we are taught in the Lord’s prayer…So, if I’ve nothing to be grateful for, I’ve no reason to worship. So affluence destroys worship. And it is gratitude that is the pump of worship. [chuckles] ❡
To Autumn
By John Keats
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
A Season
By Jean Pierre Nikuze
Of old memories of a park far-off where I once saw a squirrel, tail raised wren-like; its head bent over rainwater, not vainly, but for sustenance.
Of new memories to pillow an old life with:
Of grad school.
Of sweet, sweet fatherhood.
Of Japanese green tea only, please.
Of new birthdays—those old belongings of new friends.
Of grace. Which I compare to how I imagine riding in a self-drive car would be. I am seated, awkwardly, of course. My left foot just there. Wondering where to set my right other than on the gas pedal, where to place hands if not on the steering wheel. Far from realizing that I could always just sit back and enjoy the ride...
BREAKING NEWS
Regent Launches Parent-Teacher Interviews
By Dryden Demchuk
It is no secret that Regent seeks to be a place of not only professional and academic advancement, but also of personal growth and community engagement. As part of a larger effort to increase engagement with student spouses and families in the 2023-24 academic year, Regent has begun testing a Parent-Teacher Interview program which will allow the parents of current students to meet personally with Regent faculty. This will help them gain an understanding of their child’s life at Regent, and hopefully work with Regent faculty to create a better learning experience for their children.
Regent began testing this model after being inspired by local primary schools: “we’ve noticed that parent engagement with their child’s academic journey seems to drop off quite steeply after high school,” Regent president Jeff Greenman has said. “We don’t want that to be the norm at Regent—we want to be a place where parents are still engaged with their child’s learning environment even if their child is a graduate student in their 30’s.”
The first student selected to go through a test run of Regent’s Parent-Teacher interview process was local pastor and MDiv Candidate, Brendon Spelding. Brendon was elated to be selected for the program:
“My parents are going to come here?” he asked, seemingly confused. “All the way from Albuquerque? Couldn’t you guys just do a zoom meeting with them?”
We spoke to Brendon again a few days later, after his parents had arrived and met with several of Brendon’s professors.
“I mean, I guess it was nice to see Mom and Dad, but like, this felt a bit juvenile.” Brendon, who just celebrated his 33rd birthday, told the Et Cetera.
Brendon’s parents, Linda (60) and Doug (62) were ecstatic to have been selected for the program.
“It has been such a blessing to see where our Brendon has been studying all this time.” Linda said when she and Doug were brought before a packed Regent Chapel to explain their presence on campus. Doug further expressed their joy in front of the crowd: “I’m so proud of the man that Brendon has become, and I am thankful to all of you for helping shape him into the man of God that he is today.” Confused and slightly embarrassed applause filled the room while Brendon himself made several visible efforts to escape the service without his father dragging him back in.
Brendon did express his discomfort with the fact that his academic achievements as well as failures were being made known to his parents—a fact we were able to confirm with at least one faculty member.
“Brendon is a great guy; I’ve really enjoyed getting to know him through our shared love of basket weaving,” one Regent Professor commented, “but he is like, really bad at Hebrew. I’m not going to lie to his parents about that.”
“I know I almost flunked Hebrew!” Brendon told the Et Cetera. “But c’mon, I was doing the summer Hebrew crash course while my wife had just given birth to triplets and my church was trying to pick a new colour for our pews! Do you know how many emails about pew colour I got yesterday alone? 42! 42 emails! And now I’m unexpectedly hosting my parents for a week as well!”
The Et Cetera reached out to Brendon’s wife, Amy, who declined to be interviewed. She said she was busy. ❡