Winter 2024 - Issue 4
Change
ENJOY THE SUMMER!
Each issue of the Et Cetera has a theme to help prompt conversation. Our final issue of term is on the theme of Change, with the end of the academic year ushering in a season of transition—for some of us, into life beyond Regent.
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!
Steven Gomez, senior editor
Tess Fuller, associate editor
Golden Age
by Stephanie Loli
Carnival, samba, and soccer: these are the things Brazil is known for worldwide. To be honest, I'm not the best person to explain any of these topics, but one thing is certain: when the Brazilian national soccer team is playing a match, the whole country stops to watch. If you're at a bar during a game, it's very likely that the halftime will be filled with samba. This habit has persisted for almost a century, and come rain or shine, when Brazil is playing, the entire country is suspended in time for ninety minutes.
Soccer is the most popular sport on the planet, and Brazil stands out among teams, players, and championships, boasting the most World Cup titles, with five trophies, followed by Italy and Germany—each with four trophies. The Brazilian soccer style has always been a subject of curiosity and admiration. Our players seem to be born already dribbling, and before they take their first steps, they're already kicking balls toward the goal. Over time, Brazilian soccer has transcended the boundaries between sport and art, becoming a worldwide reference for a kind of artistic skill that is hard to be taught, the jogo bonito ("the beautiful game.")
However, the love affair between Brazilians and the national soccer team has faced severe challenges in the last decade. European teams started investing more money, time, and effort in technique and structure, raising the level of their tournaments. Teams like Real Madrid, Barcelona, Milan, Liverpool, and Bayern Munich became the showcase of what's best in the sport. Until the 2006 World Cup, the Brazilian national team had names that inspired admiration and commanded respect from their opponents, such as Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Roberto Carlos, and Cacá. But since then, at every World Cup, the new generations seem unable to carry the weight of our green and yellow jersey.
Although glimpses of the golden age of the Brazilian national team are always present, it's impossible to deny that things have changed. Is the lack of synergy between players who only get to play together once or twice a year the problem? Perhaps the Spanish tiki-taka style and the Gegenpressing of the Germans may be superior to our jogo bonito? At each World Cup, Brazilians fill with hope and excitement, stubbornly insisting that we are still the best. The more we swell our chests with conviction of our victory, the angrier we get when our players fail.
A few weeks ago, the Brazilian team got a new coach, who brought along some young players. New faces that are not yet as famous or well-established. Among them was a boy of only 17, Endrick. After a challenging season, the team gathered for two friendly matches against England and Spain. The whole country stopped. In the newspapers, headlines had question marks about the new coach and his team. However, after the two friendlies, the country breathed a little easier. Endrick and his partners brought us a victory and a tight draw. Two challenging games full of emotion that left us wanting more. The country was left thinking that, perhaps, those new faces, still without signs of wrinkles or the glow of great achievements, could be exactly the change we needed. Some changes are tragic, but not all change is a tragedy.
You might be wondering why I'm writing about soccer. Fair enough. These recent events made me reflect on the danger that nostalgia presents. Looking back with a big smile on our faces at beautiful memories from times in our lives (individual or collective) when things seemed to flow like a dance is perfectly natural. However, if nostalgia conjures up a gray mist over our present or future possibilities, we must take a step back and readjust our vision.
James K. A. Smith once said that dealing with human finitude is not just about facing the fact that things end, but mainly, that things change. People change, relationships change, and so do our bodies, hobbies, presidents, communities, countries, and soccer teams. Nothing stays the same forever. Sometimes, this is good news, but many times, we don’t want things to change. “If it ain't broke, don't fix it,” they say. And why would we?
I turned 29 last week. It's impossible to avoid the feeling that time is slipping through my fingers. Sometimes, I wish I could freeze the calendar pages. Sometimes, I wish I could put gasoline on it and move on faster to the next decade. Time is unavoidable. Or at least that was how I felt when I found my first gray hair over the holidays. I was putting my hair up when I noticed it. That new strand of hair on the left side of my head was surely a testimony that I was changing. As I stared at my reflection in the mirror, time was suspended. Was I supposed to feel sad? I laughed instead, and time continued its journey. I laughed loudly and freely. I quickly decided that I liked this new acquisition. Some changes are painful, but not every change should feel like the end of the world.
On the east coast of Spain, there is a small town called Finisterre, a peninsula that the Romans believed to be the “end of the earth” (Finisterre, in Latin). From there on and in every direction, human eyes can only see the ocean. Many centuries later, the ships that left the European continent reached new territories. Finisterre was no longer considered the end of the world. Things change. It was also on a ship in the 19th century that a young Englishman crossed the Atlantic Ocean and disembarked in Brazil with a soccer ball, introducing the sport to a group of Brazilian men without the slightest idea of what it would become for those people: passion, art, glory, and part of the nation's own identity.
Brazilian soccer has changed a lot in the last twenty years. Perhaps we are no longer the best in the world. But we couldn't be the best in the world with the same team forever, could we? The players have aged; time has not only happened to them but also in them. However, another generation is emerging, and with it, the hope of ninety minutes of suspense in every game, nails bitten in front of the television, throats leaving the stadium voiceless, countless tight hugs in celebrations, and one more star on our green and yellow jersey. Not every change needs to be resisted. Sometimes, we just need to turn up the volume, grab a cold drink, and let life follow its course. Who knows, maybe in the next World Cup, we'll win. ❡
Called to Wrestle
by Kezia Reinata Cahyadi
March 27th marked the two year anniversary of when I decided to make church:untitled my home church. It was a calling from God that I initially resisted, but then relented willingly at the perfect time.
This story began in 2020 when God was calling me out of Bethany Indonesian Church. I had served there for five years and it was where I first got the courage to serve in the worship team, fulfilling a dream I thought was impossible as a child. It was where God began bringing forth my strengths, chipping through the fear and negativity to slowly reveal my capability to lead. I loved that church, but in 2019 something happened that made it hard for me to stay. It broke me, bringing forth the burnout that came from hiding my burning self-hatred from God. I took a break from serving, but was determined to stay thinking I was doing His will. When He gently prompted me to ask Him what He wants, He told me He wanted me to leave, bringing forth a feeling of both fear and relief.
The pandemic served as a backdrop for my first transition to a different church which had the advantage of hiddenness. However, I was burnt out and hungry for community. I didn’t want to go to a place where I wouldn’t belong.
God brought to mind two churches for me to consider: Tenth Church and church:untitled. Tenth was a relatively big and well-known church, which had lots of courses and events. Their senior pastor, Ken Shigematsu, spoke at a chapel I attended as a UBC student on Christian meditation, which I enjoyed, not only because I got a free book. Church:untitled I knew almost nothing about. I had passed by once or twice as it was situated in front of Granville Skytrain station. Their unusual name and logo, which was an upside down crown, intrigued me. They had a strong aesthetic, dominated by the color black and had a very cool vibe. It was as intimidating as it was intriguing, but for some reason that was the church I felt God was leaning towards.
But I chose to check out Tenth first because their online courses allowed me to catch a glimpse of their community without commitment. I figured that if it wasn’t the right place, God would shut that door. But God swung the door wide open. On the first day of the Roots Course, a fellow Indonesian named Irene reached out to me due to my distinctly Indonesian last name and eventually brought me into the Tenth evening community. As the pandemic waned, I began attending in person and going to her small group, which was a God-send as I eventually got the opportunity to lead Bible study, grow and be affirmed in my gift of teaching. My leaders were former Regent students who introduced me to this wonderful school. So much affirmation happened at Tenth, and healing as I learned the importance of receiving the love of God to love like He does. I eventually started serving in their worship team and embedded myself in this church.
Just as I was settling there, I joined an online songwriting course where I met Cynthia Lok. She is a Christian artist that a God wanted me to befriend, but being socially anxious, I refused to reach out first to a stranger. I told God He had to make her reach out to me if He really wanted us to be friends. A while later she randomly DMed me on Instagram and from there we became friends. She was looking for a church at that time and eventually settled on church:untitled. I was shook, but firmly stood my ground about Tenth. I didn’t want to lose the community I loved even if it wasn’t an exact fit.
But my interest for church:untitled didn’t go away and was aggravated further through my conversations with Cynthia. I finally decided to visit one of their worship nights in December 2022, which felt like drinking cold water on a hot summer's day. I went to one of their services in January 2023 and gained a lot from the sermon, which spoke to my heart. I lived downtown so it was a lot nearer to me and had services in the morning, which was what I preferred.
And yet I still refused to leave Tenth. I continued wrestling with God, partly due to fear of change and uncertainty of belonging, but also because I was determined to know God’s will. I have to feel called out of a church to leave. That is not negotiable as I don’t take leaving communities lightly. I had to be sure it was God’s hand and not just great worship and preaching that moved me. I eventually decided to attend both services for a few weeks before finally receiving the confirmation from God. Again, He did not explicitly tell me what to do, but asked what was stopping me from moving after church:untitled announced their version of a small group. I realized then that it was now only fear that kept me in Tenth and so began my transition out.
It was a long and laborious process that could’ve been easier, but I regret nothing. What I gained from the wrestle was worth the time and energy needed for me to obey willingly. It exposed what I truly valued and rooted them deeper into my heart. It allowed God to know and care about them, and showed me He honored them through His explicit confirmation which then gave me the strength to remain when I at first struggled to belong.
Are we perhaps called to wrestle with the Lord? Is that why He named His holy nation Israel? What are we doing as we wrestle with Him?
We are holding Him close. We are refusing to disengage even when it is painful. We are intentionally exposing our desires to God, letting Him into our deepest and darkest parts and bring them into submission. We are refusing to engage in false piety, fighting for true authentic relationship with Him. We are trusting in His ability to win, as nothing can make a dent in His unchanging will. We cannot manipulate Him into doing our will as much as we can’t ever lessen His love for us. We are also exercising our free will, a freedom God does not wish to take away. Through this intimate engagement, we give way for our will to be conformed to His.
We are created to change and grow and may we do so authentically through constant engagement with the Triune God, whether it be through an uncompromising wrestle, a joyful dance, or simply resting in His love. ❡
The Surprising Power of Poetry
by Sean Beckett
I sat with a dear friend as she wept her heart out.
Meanwhile, I felt numb. It wasn’t only that I didn’t know what to say or do. I lacked any real emotional response. Fortunately, another of our friends was there. He entered into her pain, cried with her, and spoke words of life and encouragement.
I knew something was wrong.
I know I’m not alone in feeling incapable of appropriate emotion at key moments. Christina Rossetti, in her poem “Good Friday,” describes feeling emotionless even when contemplating Christ’s sacrifice. (Read the full poem if you have the chance!) In the opening stanza she writes,
Am I a stone, and not a sheep,
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,
To number drop by drop Thy blood’s slow loss,
And yet not weep?
We serve an incredibly emotional God—a God who in the Old Testament is pleased, angry, heartbroken, jealous, affectionate, protective, and joking. Jesus shows the full spectrum of human emotion. In the Gospels he is amazed, annoyed, pleased, furious, and grieved. Jesus connects deeply with people in both their celebration and their suffering. We are called to be like Jesus, to rejoice with those who rejoice, and to weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15). Yet many of us struggle to feel the right things at the right time. If you want to get stronger physically, you can go to the gym. If you want to get smarter, you can go to school. But if you want to have the right emotions at the right time, what can you do?
This semester I have found hope in an unexpected place. Doing a guided study on 17th- and 18th-century English devotional poetry with Dr. Cindy Aalders, I’ve discovered that people in that time period regularly expected to be able to grow emotionally through…wait for it… reading the right poems. In his short, sweet book, The Devotional Poetry of Donne, Herbert, and Milton, legendary Wheaton professor Dr. Leland Ryken quotes both secular and sacred poets in describing how the process of reading poetry can teach a reader to think or feel more effectively. During that time period, the term “affection” was used to describe mental states and emotions. William Wordsworth wrote that “the affections are strengthened and purified” by lyric poems. Percy Shelley wrote that “the good affections are strengthened” by a good poem. And John Milton said that the really great spiritual poems could “set the affections in right tune.” Ryken claims that the best devotional poetry in particular can “lead to a deeper understanding of God and his truth and a richer feeling towards it….A devotional poem guides us in a process of thinking and feeling that increases our devotion to God and Christian truth.”
This makes a lot of sense. We learn almost everything by imitation. A good lyric poem (defined as a short, personal poem focused on a meditation on a thought or feeling of the narrator) allows us into the thought process and heartbeat of another human being. Having trained ourselves in this way, we then may become more capable of the right attitudes, feelings, and affections ourselves.
If you, like me, have sometimes felt disturbingly indifferent to the love of God and to the people around us, there is hope! And it lies—surprise!—in poetry.
Want to know more? Come out on Wednesday, April 17th (tomorrow!) at 12:00pm to Room 100 and learn more about the unexpected power of poetry to shape our emotions with life-transforming impact. I’ll be presenting insights from my guided study, we will read some key poems, and some special guests will share about the soul-shifting impact poetry has had on them. Don’t miss it! ❡
Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.
“What Are You Passionate About?”
Jean Pierre Nikuze, first year representative on the RCSA Council, has been asking first-year students this very question these last two terms. Below are the last two responses. Welcome, first-years! We’re delighted to get to know you better!
Jegan:
Something I can say I have been passionate about ever since I was a kid is music.
Which is interesting because ever since I finished music school all I want is quiet. All I want is silence because music has now become noise, like a clanging cymbal. This is a shared feeling among those who have recently finished studying music.
I majored in flute performance at UBC, but here I have in mind, not necessarily performing music, but being able to play music with my friends. Part of this is because music allows me to connect with my friends in a special way. It's like speaking or having a conversation without words. Music has also had a very special place in my life because it's one of the few things that I can go anywhere in the world and it'll still be with me. I don't need an instrument to engage with music. I don't need another person to engage in music. All I need is myself and I can have music with me wherever I go.
One of my favourite ways to appreciate music is by listening to vocal works, but not just any vocal work. It has to be a beautiful vocal work. I really enjoy the ambient sound of voices in a concert hall, where no words are said. Where it’s just pitches. Because to me that's what it must sound like in heaven. This is the natural human voice with no words. No words need to be spoken for something to be beautiful.
The second thing I am passionate about is coffee. Back when I lived at a community house, I had set up a nice espresso machine and everything, and I would make coffee for anyone interested. People would just come in and out, helping themselves to the free coffee. I was involved in this exchange where I would make them a cup of coffee and while they were waiting, we would just have conversations and I could be like, how's your week going? How are you doing?
In the faculty of music, I was one of a handful of people in my cohort who were explicit about our faith. One thing I realized from this time was that a lot of people have been hurt by the church. Most of those studying music are part of the LGBTQ community. And so, when they hear that this person's a Christian they automatically put walls up. Luckily, over a delicious cup of coffee the walls would usually come down. I would just ask about their experiences and give them a chance for their voice to be heard by someone who's from an institution that has hurt them. I think it brought a lot of meaning to those conversations.
Through these conversations, I got to know people in a deeper way. It also allowed for vulnerability and I really liked getting to know people like that. If someone needed prayer, I would pray for them just there. If all they needed was a listening ear, I was happy to provide that as well.
Jesse:
The thing I'm most passionate about in life is provoking curiosity in people, and creating spaces for people to ask questions. Partly why I like encouraging others to ask questions is because I feel like I grew up in a space that was pretty narrow in terms of what I was allowed to ask and how often. And I was not allowed to explore any doubts I may have had concerning my faith. This was how things were at home. But even when I went off to college, that phase held its own challenges.
I started my undergrad in the sciences, specifically in astrophysics. I found that there were a lot of questions that we were asking about the world and about life, really big questions about existence, the origins of the universe, and the future of the universe, all of which theories, math, and equations couldn't explain.
That's when I switched to religious studies in my undergrad because I realized that I was looking for certain answers in the wrong place. This was at the University of Alberta, and religious studies there was a very interesting environment. The department of religious studies was completely secular. Most of my professors, although they weren't really allowed to say, seemed like they were either agnostics or atheists. So, it was a very interesting and unusual education, that yet, enabled me to think critically about my own beliefs and my own faith.
Going into that field, I had a lot of people warn me that I would lose my faith or that the questions I was trying to answer would end up leading me astray, but thankfully, the opposite happened. This experience actually emboldened my faith, and reinforced it to the point that biblical studies—which I am studying here at Regent—became the biggest passion of my life, and I hope to do a PhD in it.
Biblical studies is, for me, an avenue of creating a space that allows people to ask really hard questions about faith and the Bible without them feeling the need to dismiss their reason and logic. Sometimes that may mean coming up with controversial conclusions or solutions. And though there are things about God that will forever remain a mystery, this approach promises a lot by way of discovery.
Haircuts and Growing Up
by Mo Hickman
I keep changing the words on this page, trying to find the right thing to say about ‘change’. I thought about how I don’t think I’ll ever get a tattoo because I don’t want a reflection of a temporary time cemented in ink on the only body I have. (I would have started this by clarifying that I have nothing against tattoos themselves and actually consider them to be a beautiful and highly skilled art form, on other people.) I thought about my favourite season, spring, and how I love that nature changes from death to life, but that beautiful flowers need dark, grey rain to grow. What I am trying to say is that I am changing, and it is hard, but it is very good. I think the story of my hair may illustrate this the best.
When I was about nine, I decided to shorten my name and grow out my hair. For the next nine years, long hair became my defining feature, more admirable than my short stature. My hair made me unique. My hair was admired and envied. My hair made me feel valued and wanted. I was so afraid that if I cut it off, there would be nothing special for people to appreciate about me anymore.
My long hair became a heavy crown. It burdened me, demanding time and attention and constant care. I came to resent it and hid it away in messy buns and braided pigtails every single day. In my last year of high school, I realized that if I didn’t want long hair anymore, I could change it. And because I’m dramatic, I booked my appointment in secret and told no one about my plan to cut off my hair.
When the day came, I needed to borrow my mother’s car to get to the salon on the other side of town. It was midday. I walked through the snow to my mom’s workplace, slammed my hands on her desk, and told her, “I need the keys. I’m not going far. Don’t worry. Don’t ask questions.” Confused and slightly concerned, as mothers must be, she tossed me her keys and I went on my way. The interaction lasted about 20 seconds. When I arrived, the hairdresser had to confirm three times that I really wanted to cut my hair. I assured her enthusiastically, yes. Moments later, I held my prized braids in a plastic bag with my belt-length hair now hanging above my shoulders. The dead weight was gone and I emerged reborn.
I returned to my mother’s desk, slyly covering my head with my jacket. I slid the keys back with a cheery “Thanks!” and casually pushed back my hood. My mother glanced up as she grabbed the keys, and then quickly grabbed the desk to stop herself from falling out of her chair. She gasped loudly, which drew the attention of her coworkers who all poked their heads around the corner. They gushed while my mother stammered, unable to form words beyond “Your hair!” This was the first of many shocked reactions as more people grieved the loss of my hair, but celebrated the new style. Some people who had known me for years did not even recognize me from behind. My transition into adulthood was successfully marked by shedding my childhood appearance. I have learned, though, that no amount of haircutting can cut off my past.
Whenever I want to feel different, I get the urge to change my hair. The past three years, I’ve been cutting my hair shorter and shorter and shorter as if the memories of my past could fall to the ground and be swept away with the strands. As I tried to be a different person, I kept changing my reflection in hopes that people would see me differently. I wanted my hair to announce what I couldn’t say out loud, “I’m not her anymore.” I was afraid that if I let my hair grow long again, I would somehow regress back into my teenage self, and I hated her.
I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but at some point, I stopped recognizing my reflection. Instead of bringing the freedom I craved, it confused me. I didn’t feel brand new or grown up. I felt like an actor in a wig playing a fictional character. Whoever this person was, she didn’t look or feel like me. I needed to change.
Recently, I have been reconciling with that teen inside me and giving her much needed empathy. My reflection is starting to look like me again; she is beautiful and wonderful. I feel different, but this time, I am putting down the scissors. I am growing, and I am going to let my hair grow with me. This external sign of my inner transformation reminds me that as a Christ-follower, one of the greatest hopes I have is that I will change. My greatest fear is no longer cutting my hair, but staying the same. ❡
Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills they long have known
The Changing Road of Tradition
by Steven Gomez
When the architects and craftsmen of medieval Europe built their churches, they designed them with names for the various areas and parts and structures. The area reserved for the congregation to gather was called the ship. They didn’t think it a strange name. For centuries, Christian writers had used the image to describe the Church, reaching from the small fishing boat in which Jesus and His disciples crossed the Sea of Galilee, and the ark built by Noah, to their own lives and times; the Church was a vessel of safety, an ordered world in a chaotic storm. And when the laity came to worship, they gathered in what they called the ship.
The Church called it this in Latin, which was still surviving as the language of worship and theology. The Latin word for a ship is navis. In English, however, when describing these same medieval churches and naming their parts, we call the ship a nave. Nave does not really mean anything except “the central area of a medieval-style church.” It’s a word transplanted, and in the transplanting becomes a technical term which some might even think is meant to be traditional. But when our faith ancestors built their places of worship and gave a name to this space, they did not use a technical term or a specialized term or a traditional term. They used a metaphor.
There’s nothing very sinister in this, nor is there any avoiding it; transplanting words from other languages, after all, is how English grew into what it is today. And the process no doubt began when the ordinary worshippers forgot Latin while the clergy kept using it. I’m not a linguist and therefore unqualified to comment on the process (I know I’ve oversimplified and likely gotten things very wrong), but I can at least recognize what we’ve been left with. When you refer to a church’s nave in Latin, you are saying something different than when you refer to it in English. English uses a term, Latin uses a metaphor. And there is a world of difference between a term and a metaphor, because the latter teaches truth to whomever uses it while the former tends to mean nothing except to people already trained; even then the meaning is too specific to mean very much at all.
Peter Wayne Moe, in his book Touching This Leviathan—about whales, but also about knowing the unknowable, and even more importantly about language—reminds us who deal in words that we are heirs to an inheritance: “That is, a writer inherits words and then must compose them, must ask them to do certain kinds of work, work the writer knows these words can do based on how they’ve been used in the past and, too, work the writer knows may stretch the capabilities of these words.” We did not create our language and there is very little, if anything, that we can say which is original. But he also acknowledges that there are ways we can at least try to stretch what we’ve inherited. We may not get to choose our words, but we do have to struggle with them in order to even know them and in order to make them do what we would have them do.
Such is tradition. It is handed down, but it is not entirely unchanged—first of all, it changes hands. The hands which hold it now are not the hands that held it formerly. No small change. We speak a different language, we’ve made a different culture, we know things that they did not know. So when we receive what they give us, we immediately begin the work of sifting and struggling and coming to terms with what we’re holding.
When (as with nave) we inherit a word but not what that word meant, then what are we inheriting?
Perhaps some will disagree, but I think that when we take a metaphor so steeped in truth and make of it a technical term, we’ve lost something that we would have done better to hold precious. No doubt we meant well. Perhaps we thought that was the right and proper name for the thing, that by holding onto the word itself we were also holding onto tradition. But tradition called it a ship, and we no longer do.
I believe instinctually that tradition isn’t a dead thing, or at least it shouldn’t be. Tradition isn’t simply words or ideas or practices that survive unchanged; even if you don’t change it, it changes its place in the world. Tradition is a story still being written—or, if you like, a road that is still the same road even though it runs through different terrains and may even widen or narrow depending on those terrains.
J.R.R. Tolkien tapped into this metaphor for one of the more well-known poems in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It’s formally known as “A Walking Song”:
The Road goes ever on and on,
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
He uses the Road as a picture of adventure, and also of life. But even quoting this song is an adventure in itself and an example of changing tradition because there are multiple versions of it, each one affected by the circumstances in which the characters find themselves thinking of it and singing it. Sometimes it’s about heading out and all the wonderful things that could happen to you when you step out of your door. Sometimes it’s about coming home after all the things have happened to you, and they seem both wonderful and terrible at the same time.
Tradition, like the Road, continues on and on from where it began, takes many turnings, and even connects with other roads. We must recognize that it is bigger than any of us, and that it sometimes asks us to let go of things as much as it asks us to hold onto others. We don’t always get to choose the words we use, but we also inherit more than words. We inherit truth and must carry it in whatever words will hold it. ❡