Veritas Conference 2025 Reflections

 

Abel Mutsinzi

What’s something that touched you on a personal level?

One of the highlights for me was the panel discussion on how to approach people who do not share our beliefs, particularly atheists. The panelists emphasized the importance of genuine curiosity and empathetic listening. They encouraged us to ask questions to understand how others arrived at their beliefs, especially if they had been hurt by religion in the past. This approach resonated deeply with me, as it aligns with the Christian call to love our neighbors and meet them where they are.

Another key takeaway was the idea of starting small, like a mustard seed, to grow into something much larger. This metaphor reminded me that meaningful conversations and relationships often begin with simple, sincere efforts. It’s not about winning arguments but about showing love and understanding, which can eventually lead to deeper connections and opportunities to share our faith.

The Veritas Forum Conference in Boston was an enriching experience, filled with thought-provoking plenaries, engaging breakout sessions, and meaningful discussions. One of the highlights for me was the panel discussion on how to approach people who do not share our beliefs, particularly atheists. The panelists emphasized the importance of genuine curiosity and empathetic listening. They encouraged us to ask questions to understand how others arrived at their beliefs, especially if they had been hurt by religion in the past. This approach resonated deeply with me, as it aligns with the Christian call to love our neighbors and meet them where they are.

Another key takeaway was the idea of starting small, like a mustard seed, to grow into something much larger. This metaphor reminded me that meaningful conversations and relationships often begin with simple, sincere efforts. It’s not about winning arguments but about showing love and understanding, which can eventually lead to deeper connections and opportunities to share our faith.

The conference also reinforced the importance of loving the places we are in—our campuses, workplaces, and communities—as a way to love our neighbors better. This holistic approach to faith and life was both challenging and inspiring. Overall, the Veritas Forum was a wonderful opportunity to learn, grow, and connect with other Christian students and professionals. It was a reminder that our faith is not just personal but also communal, and that we are called to engage thoughtfully and lovingly with the world around us.

 

Andrew Dao

What was your favorite plenary or breakout session? Why? What is something that touched you on a personal level? 

 It’s a testament to the thoughtfulness of Jeremy Begbie’s talks that I find myself grappling with his ideas long after the Veritas Weekend. I attended his lecture on reductionism and its danger, where he criticized the tendency of our modern society to only see things from one perspective—to reduce a complex thing to one single feature of that thing. He had an especial distaste for the phrase “nothing but,” which seeks to explain a whole in terms of its parts, effacing in the process the complexity of its totality and the unique relations among each of its individual parts. I wholeheartedly agree with him. Contemporary work culture, with its emphasis on productivity and efficiency, ensures that a thing has no meaning outside of its being an instrument for a particular goal—that is, its essence is reduced to its functionality. 

Indeed, as Jeremy notes, the appeal of reductionism is that it gives us a sense of control—that it lures us into the false equivalence between reachability and controllability: since we know something about a thing, we must be masters of that thing. “What human beings seek to learn from nature,” Adorno and Horkheimer hauntingly remark all those years ago, “is how to use it to wholly dominate both it and human beings” (Dialectic of Enlightenment, 2002). 

 

Given what you learned this weekend…what is one hope you have now that you took from the conference?

What then must we do? Embrace our Christian worldview, of course. As Christians, we posit the existence of the supernatural, and thus are more resistant to a mechanical view of the universe. According to Jeremy, Christians treat the world as if it’s an artwork, and thus we see infinite significance in everything. I don’t think, however, (and neither did Jeremy, probably) that this is an excuse for us to indulge in fetishization. It’s one thing to admire the complexity of an object, and it’s another to impose onto said object a “transcendental” value. Admittedly, it’s a fine line to walk between contemplating the spiritual side of the world and fighting the temptation to be enthralled by such contemplation, but I believe that we, with the grace of God, can all do it.

 

Daniel Son

How can the Bible help us rethink our approach to resting and working? What’s a current/modern topic or issue on campus or the world at large that could use some of this reconfiguration?

 Revelation and discovery through hard work do not contradict each other. Rather, we must study the order of the universe to understand God.

Symbolism, art, and festoonings display truth that is uncontainable and inexpressible. The Gospel of John ends with the note that the books cannot contain the words to describe the truth.

“You have wearied the Lord with your words. But you say, ‘How have I wearied Him?’ By saying, ‘Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delights in them.’ Or, by saying, ‘Where is the God of justice?’ (Malachi 2:17).

My weekend in Boston stirred up the three identities that I had as a Christian scholar. As a student, the first responsibility I uphold is to study the order of the universe. Creation is beautiful, and the beauty manifests itself in bizarre phenomena and miraculous pieces of algebra that hold themselves together with perfect balance. Yet, the Bible teaches the fear of the Lord and his righteous anger to those who have forsaken his commands.

To live out a life that satisfies all three realms is a challenge. Subtly, each aspect of life speaks against the other if one of them is taken to the extreme. As a consequence of being human, we are commanded by God to work for six days and keep the sabbath day holy. A charge is given to us to partake in the work of creation planned out by God. But yet, work is not supposed to govern our lives. We move our hands and feet and speak to our fellow workers to sow the seeds and plow the ground, yet the work orders descend from God. God speaks through the Psalms to be joyful of his works with our eyes and give praise to his name.

The work of a scholar is to maintain a narrative and direct discourse. A researcher in the natural sciences is compelled to draw boundaries to what is exactly correct. Take, for instance, the principle of proof by contradiction. A hypothesis is stretched to the extremes until an absurdity is detected, by which one rejects the hypothesis. Upon careful inspection of many plausible arguments, most of them are rejected. After this painful process, one enters the realm of abstract reality. Nonetheless, the researcher is confounded when asked about anything that belongs outside the drawn boundary.

A writer from the humanities is aghast at the restrictive view. Rather, the writer will argue on the grounds of common sense and plausibility to tackle the pressing views of life. “What is the purpose of life?” “What is love?” “How do we distinguish good and bad?” For the writer who strives to answer questions of greater importance, one must begin with subjective realities that are not necessarily verifiable.

A student sitting beside both the researcher and the writer is confused. The student would daub one approach and the other, discovering partial beauty but also the inherent brokenness of the entire process. The strife for beauty will keep the student up at night and compel one to make questionable decisions. One’s teachers will speak only about the things that they understand; the researcher about science, the writer about philosophy, the preacher about sin and forgiveness. Meanwhile, the world is filled with chaos and wickedness is overflowing in the world. Time does not seem to wait for a response from the student, but rather requires an answer to the question:

So, how do you want to lead your life?

 

Harper Treschuk

 The plenary session “Attending Together: Christ and the Big Questions in the University” in tandem with the breakout session “Resisting Reductionism: Theological Resources for Intellectual Abundance” spoke to a set of questions that I had posed in my journal two years ago as a prospective psychology and philosophy major discerning my intellectual and practical vocations:

“Right now, I feel called in my Williams education to find the intersections between philosophy and psychology. How can [philosophy], a field that thinks in very abstract terms have concrete impact? And how can a discipline that often focuses on the self [as a unit of analysis]—self-actualization, self-knowledge, introspection—interface with philosophies of religion that teach us to surrender ourselves for others? And can the space between these two disciplines accomplish anything useful or offer any clarity on some of the issues that I see in the world: education lagging behind technological changes, declining measures of mental health among youth populations….?”

 Warren Kinghorn, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Duke University, picked up my question about the intersection between mental health and faith by framing mental health care as “wayfaring.” Evidence-based interventions such as psychotropic medication are often necessary but not sufficient for individuals utilizing mental health care. Reducing mental health care to methods of symptom reduction does not leave space for questions that these people may be asking on the level of their integrated, mind-body-soul selves: “Do I matter? Am I loved? Who am I?” The image that came to me as Professor Kinghorn was speaking is that of Hagar when the angel of the Lord asks Hagar, “Where have you come from and where are you going?’ (Genesis 16:8).

 Professor Kinghorn’s perspective during the plenary session dovetailed nicely with Professor Begbie’s diagnosis of reductionism. Jeremy Begbie, Thomas A. Langford Distinguished Professor in Theology at Duke Divinity School, explained that reductionism has its limits in describing the parts of capturing the slices of reality that are “beyond our control.” Psychology uses the reductionist frame of mind when, in Kinghorn’s words, mental health treatment is a “practice of symptom reduction.” This is a useful model. But the reductionist level of explanation may lead to intellectual arrogance, in thinking we can grasp a system that is greater than the sum of its parts.

 In my coursework on clinical psychology while at Williams, I have observed that there is often a delicate tension between acceptance and motivation to change for individuals utilizing mental health care, as expressed in the Serenity Prayer. This acceptance of where one is, alongside committed action to where one can go, is a crucial realization in wayfaring. I am grateful for the opportunity to learn from Professors Kinghorn and Begbie at the Veritas Weekend, as I discern the habit of mind (or lens, as it is) to bring to the intersection of psychology and philosophy in my studies and future career.

 

Jason Rivera

Where is the brokenness of campus and where are the traces of God’s glory worth fanning into? What do you think God has to give you to share with campus?

 Perhaps the biggest idol in my life has been work. Well, work as I thought it was. In reality, wanting to be a hard worker was my justification for pursuing success at all costs. Well, not even success but recognition. I wanted to be the best and for others to know that I was the best. And it was fun: for the most part, I did succeed.

This game that I have been playing started in the fourth grade when my friend and I started competing in everything. We consistently placed first and second in math competitions and instrumental solo competitions, and were always awarded with the “Most Likely to Succeed” class superlative. This transient and seemingly benign pleasure did not prepare me for the pain that it would cause later in my life as it destroyed my conception of work. Flash forward ten years later, and I’m up at night freshman year of college, anxious about the possibility of receiving an A- in one of my classes.

God has been challenging me to stop worshipping this idol for quite some time now. It has been a struggle, but I definitely have become more willing to accept “failure.” However, I still lacked a conceptual understanding of what my work was, if not to garner accolades, and how to approach it. This is why I was so impacted by the Sunday morning plenary session titled “Resting Together: Sabbath, Play, Uselessness, and Other Gifts for the University,” specifically when Andy Crouch, a partner for theology and culture at Praxis, described rest as “joyful contemplation of work well done.”

After all of my self-serving toiling, I finally realized that there can be joy in the work itself, and not just in its outcomes, because it has a purpose to God. I can joyfully rest in His validation of my work as useful to His kingdom, even if it does not make me “the best.” This concept also connects to Justin Hawkins’ breakout session, “Augustine and the Healing of Attention.” In this session, he stressed that attention can be framed in the context of the beatific vision, in which we will gaze upon the Lord for all eternity, constantly discovering new things about Him which we can praise. In this way, I can attend to my work by trying to see the Lord inside of it and how it connects to His beauty. If I can’t, then I know that I am trying to see myself inside of my work and I know that I have once again put my success as the object of my worship.

These new conceptions have really helped me to be at peace with the amount of work that I am doing here at Williams, and to make sure that I am resting by joyfully contemplating what I have accomplished for the Lord each day.

 

Jessica Kim

What was your favorite plenary or breakout session? Why? What was something that touched you on a personal level?

 I appreciated Professor Begbie’s plenary session with violinist Sarita Kwok. At first, I was slightly put off by his methods of audience engagement—harmonizing with hundreds of other students outside of a choir context felt odd. But as he soon revealed, it was more an exercise in listening than anything. Professor Begbie’s talk completely shifted the way I think about listening to music and to other people. What resonated most strongly with me was his argument that the advent of recorded music has completely shifted how we approach listening to songs. Live music used to be a medium for artists to communicate their feelings, worship, and create a shared experience for everyone present. Today, recorded music has made song into a commodity like everything we consume—something that we lean on to affirm our own thoughts or chase a feeling that we desire. He urged us to all consider the implications of this shift on our own lives and to consider approaching conversations and music with a posture of listening rather than asserting. 

 I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to have attended Veritas Weekend—it was an eye-opening experience that gave me space to introspect, build community with students from other college campuses, and wrestle with hard questions that are easy to avoid in the busyness of college life. Two speakers’ messages resonated with me most deeply: that of Professors Seth Freeman of New York University and Jeremy Begbie of Duke Divinity School.

Professor Freeman challenged us to engage in conversations about topics traditionally considered more controversial or difficult to navigate. In providing us with a framework to guide our interactions with others, Professor Freeman empowered us to confidently approach tough discussions with an empathetic heart and open mind. Throughout the workshop, we practiced his Paraphrase, Praise, and Probe protocol with other students. Although it was certainly a learning curve, we all felt much more comfortable with the framework by the end of the workshop. In today’s world, where reactionary attitudes sometimes seem all too prevalent, I am grateful to have had this opportunity to learn how to respectfully and warmly dialogue with my peers about challenging or uncomfortable topics.

I also appreciated Professor Begbie’s plenary session with violinist Sarita Kwok. At first, I was slightly put off by his methods of audience engagement—harmonizing with hundreds of other students outside of a choir context felt odd. But as he soon revealed, it was more an exercise in listening than anything. Professor Begbie’s talk completely shifted the way I think about listening to music and to other people. What resonated most strongly with me was his argument that the advent of recorded music has completely shifted how we approach listening to songs. Live music used to be a medium for artists to communicate their feelings, worship, and create a shared experience for everyone present. Today, recorded music has made song into a commodity like everything we consume—something that we lean on to reflect our own thoughts or chase a feeling that we desire. He urged us to all consider the implications of this shift on our own lives and to consider how we might approach conversations and music with a posture of listening rather than asserting our own perspectives. While there is certainly a time and place for both, it was a timely reminder that I much appreciated.

Many thanks to the Telos and Veritas teams for organizing such a wonderful conference.

 

Tegra Illunga

What was your favorite plenary or breakout session? Why? What was something that touched you on a personal level?

One particular breakout session that struck me was by Seth Freeman, a Professor at Columbia University, titled “How to Talk about God, Christ, and Other Easy Topics.” I emerged from the session more adept at articulating my thoughts and sharing my faith with a close person without necessarily entering conflict and debate mode. The technique shared by Seth was straightforward—when approached by a friend who critiques your religion or faith as a Christian, you need only to “paraphrase.” Here, you do not challenge them violently. Next, you “praise” them and finally “probe.” This now becomes an opportunity to share your reasons. However, if you find yourself in a situation where you do not have much information or the talk escalates into an argument, you can simply change the subject abruptly. As followers of Christ and persons encouraged to make disciples for Him, one particular lesson I took away from this session with Seth was that one needs to “seek the heart to be able to win one’s mind.”

 The Veritas Forum Conference in Boston was a weekend well spent, through the plenaries, breakout sessions, small discussion groups, and trying the many Boston cuisines, among other activities. It was wonderful to see a community of Christian students come together, and I learned a lot from both them and the other professionals—the panel presenters. One particular breakout session that struck me was  by Seth Freeman, a Professor at Columbia University, titled “How to Talk about God, Christ, and Other Easy Topics.”I emerged from the session more adept at articulating my thoughts and sharing my faith with a close person without necessarily entering conflict and debate mode. The technique shared by Seth was straightforward—when approached by a friend who critiques your religion or faith as a Christian, you need only to “paraphrase.” Here, you do not challenge them violently. Next, you “praise” them and finally “probe.” This now becomes an opportunity to share your reasons. However, if you find yourself in a situation where you do not have much information or the talk escalates into an argument, you can simply change the subject abruptly. As followers of Christ and persons encouraged to make disciples for Him, one particular lesson I took away from this session with Seth was that one needs to “seek the heart to be able to win one’s mind.” Overall, the forum was a blast, and it was just so nice reconnecting with friends we met at different earlier Christian conferences or forming new ones through high school mates. The world is surely small for people to constantly run into each other!

 

 

 

Walking

Don’t look me in the eye,
stay by my side.

Don’t nod your head,
follow my tread.

Jesus doesn’t show his face,
yet footsteps shuffle in his place.

So let’s go walking.

Amongst us he first stands,
in temples made by human hands.

Then he says he’ll not depart,
when he dwells within our heart.

How can he walk if he’s stuck to me?
Fixed to my present infirmity.

He pushes me out of the door.

Something changes as we wander about,
only I talk yet he eases my doubt.

The presence I say that I adore,
becomes reality and more.

Take me back to the garden of old,
or the glory of the city of gold.

For we are walking.

 

In the Silence, I Hear Your Voice

In the tender hush—
the silence within silence—
stillness unveils presence:
not marked by time,
but wrapped in it.

An ever-present God,
eternal,
unfolding,
Alpha and Omega—
not beginning,
not end,
but the luminous hush
of now.

Just this.
And this.
And this:

the rustle of one leaf’s descent,
the ripple that startles a still pond,
the falling blossom’s wordless prayer—
each echoing the sacred
and the vast.

In the heart of stillness,
where emptiness cradles fullness,
each breath becomes a hymn.
Each step, a psalm.

Everything I’ve done
remembers you—
whispers
your
name. 

This poem is a quiet meditation on divine presence revealed not through words or doctrine, but through silence, stillness, and the unnoticed rhythms of nature. It speaks to God who is not confined by time but is intimately present in each fleeting moment—a falling leaf, a ripple, a breath. In the emptiness of silence, one finds fullness, and in that fullness, a deep remembering: that all their life, every action, has been quietly shaped by and directed toward the sacred. It’s a recognition that the ordinary is holy, and that God is heard most clearly in the hush beneath all sound—a silence so intimate, so profoundly still, it becomes a meeting place. Here, face to face, without distance or mask, the sacred gazes back from within the quiet rustle of leaves, the breath within breath. God revealed not by thunder, but by the delicate whisper of the everyday, each moment an encounter, each silence a communion.

 

Isaac Rivera ’26 is a Biology major from Denver, Colorado. He is drawn to the quiet space between Zen and Catholicism, where presence becomes a form of prayer. He enjoys long runs at sunset, slow conversations over mezcal with friends, and writing about land, identity, and spirit. After graduation, he is discerning between teaching, military service, and humanitarian aid—seeking a life rooted in strength, stillness, and service.

 

In the Trees 

I followed the winding path a ways from our campsite—Bible, journal, and pen in one hand, water bottle and headlamp in the other. I had traversed this same path about an hour ago to get water, which was now boiling in the comically large pot over the fire. The roots wove up and down through the dirt. When I was younger, I used to mistake them for snakes, jumping back in fright, but no longer. I swerved around the roots with ease and hopped down the “stairs,” larger rocks shoved into the steep embankment by some kind-hearted trail volunteer that opened onto the pond. 

Pond wasn’t quite the right word for it. The word pond conjures the image of a small body of water, muddy, filled with frogs, and surrounded by tall grass. A breeding ground for mosquitoes and all other sorts of pests. No, pond wasn’t the right word. 

I surveyed the seating options and staked my spot on a large rock which slanted gently into the water. It wouldn’t provide much rest for my aching back, but it was flat enough that I figured I could lay down and take a nap should I feel so inclined. I heard rustles around me as the others settled into their chosen spots and then, after a minute, it all went quiet. It was the kind of silence that one can only find out in the wild. Silence that isn’t quite silent, but it cuts deep to your core. Each whisper of the wind through the tops of the trees. Each slap of the water up against the rock at your feet. Each splash as a fish jumps into the air seems to roll over you, attempting to remind you that this is real, you are here. It could almost be a dream, but then a bird caws or a chipmunk rustles in the undergrowth. 

You can’t find that kind of silence in the city, where it never feels like a dream. There is too much action, and there are too many people. Just as you begin to drift into that dreamlike state, a child screams or a fire engine wails and you are reminded, harshly and unpleasantly, of where you are. The silence isn’t the same. 

I sat there on the rock for a moment before I began to move again, my body somehow too restless after hiking for 12 hours that day and summiting three mountains to be still. I took off my shoes, my trusty Chacos, first. Then I peeled off my socks and stretched out my aching legs. Only a few weeks into the summer and the z-shaped stripes of pale skin on my foot created by the straps of my sandals were already glaringly white compared to the dark tan around them. This was a result to be expected after many hours spent stretched out in a canoe, the sun beating down on them. Above the line of my socks, my legs were coated in mud, and I shuffled my way down the rock to the water’s edge. I dipped a hand in first to test the temperature. It was perfect—slightly chilled as a mountain pond should be, but the warm summer sun had raised the temperature just enough that I could splash the water over my body without feeling shivers down my spine. 

I splashed the water up onto my face and rubbed, feeling layers of built-up grime peel away. Then I cupped my hands and poured water onto my legs and began to scrub at the patches of dirt which coated them. They slowly began to melt away, turning first to mud, and then with many more layers of water, and then finally disappearing. I lay back on the rock, letting the rays of late afternoon sun evaporate the drops of water off my legs. I crossed my arms behind my

head and closed my eyes. I could feel the sun soaking into my skin, its warmth seeping into the cavity behind my eyes. There was a slight orange glow that I could still see, even with my eyes closed. 

A dragonfly buzzed over my head, and I abruptly sat up. I watched it make its way over the pond to settle on a lilypad, then lift off and fly back over to me. It hovered in the air for a moment and I held out my hand in invitation. It hesitated, then turned its tail and flew in the other direction, back over the pond. I looked up into the sky. The wisps of clouds were frozen in the air like the pieces of cotton ball that used to get stuck to my fingers when I was doing art projects in elementary school. There was always just a little bit too much glue on my fingers to pull them off. The trees were casting their dark shadows over the pond’s surface now and I opened my Bible for the first time. 

I opened it to the passage I always turn to—in pain, in anger, in sadness, in joy. “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory which far outweighs them all.” There was rustling on the rock behind me. I knew if I turned around, I would see Daniel sitting there. But my thoughts that summer had already become too occupied with him, and there were more important things to think about. Like the setting sun, turning the bottom hemisphere of the sky a burnt sort of orange. It wasn’t really a beautiful sunset, not like the ones you see when you google the word “sunset.” It was a calmer, more gradual lowering of that glowing ball of fire from the sky behind the mountains in front of me. Or perhaps behind me. I couldn’t quite tell which direction I was facing and the light that was being cast from it filled the entire sky with an even glow. 

The fish had begun to quiet down. I could still see them swimming below the surface of the water, chasing each other to and fro in flocks. On occasion, one of them would still jump out of the water, much less frequently than before. All of the birds had flown away now, retiring to their nests for the night, and were nearly silent, except for the single confused calls that would pierce through the air every couple of minutes. The ripples on the water had slowed, too. The water bugs laid themselves down to rest wherever water bugs do. I could almost believe I was alone on that rock, looking out over the water to the now dark shadow of the trees on the far shore. I could have let it scare me, the fear of the cold. I was shivering now, so I slowly replaced the layers I had shed before, one by one. The darkness and the thought of the bears which roamed through the forest could have frightened me too, but I knew I wasn’t alone. 

On the rocks around me and slightly deeper into the forest were eight others I had come on this trip with. I could only imagine they’d spent the past few hours in much the same way as I, although I was sure I had snagged the best view. Our counselors were still up at the campsite, cooking a dinner which would hopefully be ready soon. My stomach was rumbling. And of course, there in the trees which lined the pond and in the clouds in the sky and the moon which now shone on us from above and further upward and onward, He was there. 

I’d never really managed to find God out there before in the wilderness. Some part of me believed He was somewhere, far off in the sky, watching over me as I stumbled over rocks, pulled myself over boulders on the trail, and lay myself down to sleep under the stars. When I used to stare up at the constellations in the dark, craning until my neck hurt and I had finally managed, with much help, to find the North star, I wished deep in my heart that I could truly believe He was up there, looking back down at me. I imagined that to Him, I was one of many uncountable stars, each as new and beautiful as the last. 

I’d heard the others at camp the summer before share their stories of how deeply they believed in Him, how He had saved them from kidnapping, from malignant tumors, from depression, and saved their parents from strokes. They were so firmly set in their faith, and I would cry myself to sleep wondering why I, despite all my parents had tried to instill in me my entire childhood, still couldn’t manage to believe. But sitting there beside that mountain pond as dusk turned to night, something finally clicked. How could I be alive in all this, after a day filled with stress and tears? We had almost run out of water on the trail after our second peak when one of the water spouts was broken. I had run up and down about half a mile of trail three times to fill people’s bottles from the small stream of water we had seen running down the side of a rock. Our plan to rest on top of the next mountain had been destroyed and I had barely made it into camp with my wits intact. But here I was and the sun had set just perfectly behind the mountains and I knew that this time by the water with nothing but me and the sky above me couldn’t have been an accident. 

There is a peace that comes with this realization, that you are not, are never, alone. A sense of calm in the understanding that life is not random, that it is not up to us to figure out our purpose. There is a power that comes with the knowledge that we are not the deciders of our own destinies. A power that has allowed me to make hard decisions with peace in my heart, has gotten me through college applications and my Grandpa’s death. To know that He is always there, guiding our footsteps and our hearts. I finally began to understand this beside that pond, and I haven’t gone back. 

I said before that one couldn’t quite call it a pond. For me, it seemed more of a gate, gilded and grand. I didn’t know what was on the other side, but as the sun sank behind the trees and goosebumps began to run up my legs from the cold and perhaps a bit of something else, I felt that I finally saw Him the way they did, just a little. I think He really was there by that pond, in the breeze and the animals, in the rocks and the water that I splashed up onto my legs, and in me.

 

Elizabeth Harris ‘28 is probably going to be a double History and Chemistry major. She is from Brooklyn and enjoys going on runs, calling her mom, writing in her journal, and taking dance classes at Williams. She is very grateful to Telos for providing a space to explore the intersection of learning and her Christian faith.

On Christian Mysticism

On Christian Mysticism.docx

Andrew Dao ‘28 is a prospective English major from Westford, MA. He finds the Scholastics to be wonderful thinkers and is thankful for Telos to have given him opportunities to explore them more. As such, he believes in free will and the existence of the soul (or consciousness), and isn’t a big fan of physicalism. He also enjoys hanging out with friends and watching cheesy movies.

Unravelings

Very early on, I believed. These memories are faint, but I still remember praying aloud every Sunday for a parking spot, at my mom’s request, while my mom drove us around the cramped alleyways of Taipei. I asked God for help whenever I lost something, which I often did. I prayed with my mom before bed. We prayed together when I was diagnosed with a severe case of scoliosis and when we couldn’t find my cat. Although I was never that dedicated—going to church and reading the Bible were never fun to me—I did have faith.

My mother, a devout Christian, raised me in her non-denominational church in Taiwan. It was a thriving and close-knit community, but it might seem pretty unusual to most Christians in the US. We didn’t celebrate Christmas or Easter. Our meetings had no sermons, no priests or pastors, no pews—we all sat in folding chairs, people stood up spontaneously to pray or testify, and people would call on the name of Jesus again and again, with increasing fervor and volume. The adults and baptized teenagers would have grape juice in tiny little plastic cups. They practiced full-immersion baptism in a small bathtub in the basement. 

I don’t remember exactly how or why I stopped believing in God; it happened gradually, so that when I was twelve, I came to the conclusion that God didn’t exist. 

As a child, I understood prayer as a magic spell that was supposed to get me whatever I wanted. I quickly realized that my magic spell didn’t work most of the time, so I largely stopped praying. But I sometimes still made bargains with God when I was really desperate, when I really needed something to happen, rather than merely wanting it. “If you do this for me,” I’d beg, addressing a God I wasn’t sure was listening, “I promise I’ll worship you forever. Give me another chance, and I’ll give you another chance, even though I don’t know if you exist.” God promptly let me down. This sounds silly now, but for a child who was completely sincere, it felt like a serious breach of trust. I felt like God had betrayed me. I don’t think anybody offered me a different interpretation of prayer, one that went beyond asking a distant genie to grant wishes. Since that was my only conception of prayer, and prayer was my only relationship with God, I felt like God wasn’t there at all. 

Apart from this feeling of abandonment, I started asking questions that my mom told me not to ask. I had always annoyed adults with my incessant inquiries, and as I learned more about the world, I developed many questions about our faith. It wasn’t even something as deep as the problem of evil; most of it was inspired by my mom and her church’s insistence that every single word in the Bible was the literal and perfect word of God. As a kid, I probably took that stance even further and more literally than they intended it, thinking that God personally wrote everything in the Bible and completely endorsed it. So when I began to read the Bible for myself, I wanted to know if God really ordered disobedient children to be stoned to death, whether all the people and animals in the world were produced from incest after Noah’s ark, and whether my mom really thought that wives must submit to their husbands (she said she did, even though she was far more assertive than my dad). Apparently, my burgeoning moral compass, curiosity about science, and refusal to accept patriarchal norms got in the way. Adults evaded and dismissed my questions, refusing to have an actual discussion about them. I was left feeling estranged and confused. What was supposed to be God’s writings and teachings began to seem ridiculous. Once I started thinking for myself, my childhood faith became untenable. 

I grew bitter. I rolled my eyes when people praised God or read the Bible to me. I read novels during church, paying no attention to anything I was told. I made it clear that I didn’t want to be there. Even as my mom pressured me to go to Bible study and well-meaning cousins called me to read the Bible, I disengaged completely and inwardly scoffed at everything. In my stubborn pride, I considered myself above it all. 

This was the first unraveling. My faith came apart completely; the belief system that my mom gave me had disentangled beyond repair, and could no longer hold me.

As I got older, I developed an even stronger contempt for God, for religion, and for Christianity in general. In high school, I realized that I was bisexual and fell in love with a female friend who became the first person I’d ever dated. During my honeymoon phase, I was so excited that I almost told my mom about my relationship, hinting at it while leaving myself plausible deniability. But my mom immediately started panicking, saying that she was worried that Satan was luring me into sin. (When I was little, she often shared interviews about how God saved “formerly” gay people from their wicked homosexual lifestyles.) At this point, I had already identified as atheist for years, and my mom’s hurtful reaction to my attempt to share my joy only solidified and intensified my distaste for Christianity. After all, my entire high school friend group was also queer, and I received the message that Christians condemned our very existence as evil. Because I had never been exposed to any other form of faith, I was convinced that all Christians held these beliefs—beliefs that not only made no sense to me, but seemed actively cruel and harmful to me and my loved ones. As time went on, my attitude went even further than atheism, into something that could be more accurately described as anti-theism. Thus, I wove together an impenetrable set of ideas about Christianity, all of which I strongly opposed, since I am passionate about justice and equality for women and LGBTQ communities.

During COVID, something strange happened. I had been stuck in a multi-year rut of meaninglessness and emptiness that only got worse when I started college. I felt lost. Something was missing, something deeper than what my therapists could address, and I was inexplicably drawn towards religious and spiritual life. It’s hard to express just how shocking and surprising this new development seemed to me, considering the deep aversion I held against anything Christian; my yearning for God was completely out of character. You must understand that I was stubbornly atheist to the extreme, having rejected God much more resolutely than I ever believed in God as a child. It pains me to admit this, but ever since my first unraveling, I looked down upon people of faith as delusional and narrow-minded, and I was filled with contempt and bitterness against Christianity. 

I thought I had left faith behind forever. And yet, there I was, nervously setting up meetings with the College Chaplain, Reverend Valerie, meetings that proved to be revelatory and cathartic. One Sunday, I worked up the courage to step into an Episcopal church service, a drastically different experience from the Sundays of my childhood. I emerged stunned and in awe of how much it spoke to my soul. There I was, daring to ask questions again, this time finding myself engaged in refreshingly open and honest dialogue with priests and chaplains. They patiently encouraged my curiosity and demonstrated that I—a queer person who is deeply distrustful of exclusionary religion—had a valued place in the community, and that my faith did not have to go against everything I stood for. In fact, I learned that my faith could bolster and ground my passion for justice and reconciliation. There I was, dismantling my preconceptions about faith with the help of kind peers and mentors, surrounded by people of faith who welcomed me just as I was, difficult questions and all. There I was, somehow feeling God’s loving presence again, as if for the first time.

It felt like healing—from the ways that religion had hurt me in the past and from my own misguided prejudices against faith. It felt like freedom. 

As I tentatively dipped my toes into a very different kind of faith than the one I had known before, I felt pulled in, deeper and deeper; and the deeper I delved, the more alive I felt. Even though I was filled with wonder, I was also disturbed and perplexed at how this could happen. I was unraveling again; my cynical self was coming apart. If anything, this second unraveling was harder and more destructive than the first, since I was older now and had stronger and more deliberate convictions to untangle. This time, I had to painstakingly unravel the rigid intellectual edifice I had built up against faith for years. It was a long and arduous process, but I had help along the way—I read books that offered a radically different vision of faith than the one I was used to, I actively participated in progressive Christian communities online, and had long conversations with chaplains and priests. I learned that, for me at least, faith isn’t intellectual assent to a set of propositions. It isn’t about having absolute certainty; instead, I’ve found it to be more about trust and relationships and sacrificial love. At my current church, I learned that women and queer people could be, and are, in positions of leadership, bringing much-needed voices and perspectives to the church. I learned a new way to pray using the Episcopalian Daily Office and the Book of Common Prayer, which I have grown to love. I learned about various non-literalist ways of reading Scripture, discovering the vast and wonderful diversity in biblical interpretation and realizing that I didn’t have to shut down my mind and heart when reading the Bible. I learned that participating in my transformed faith, both communally and privately, brought me a special kind of joy and fulfillment that nothing else had been able to give. I learned to make peace, for the most part, with my mom’s expression of faith, even if I did not share it myself. Above all, I learned that God’s love is expansive—much more expansive than our selfish attempts to limit it. And Christ does not abandon his lost sheep. 

As I see it, God called me back. It might be presumptuous of me to relate my experience with Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, but that was kind of how it felt. My old self would probably scoff at my current self in contempt and disbelief. Sometimes, I still ask myself: what have I become? And then I wonder: who else could do this but God? Who else could be the originator of such a comprehensive unraveling, such an unbelievable reversal and transformation? 

Untangling the trappings of my previous worldviews was challenging, and I cannot possibly detail everything that I’ve come to see differently. I’m still changing and learning more every day, and I know I’m never going to have faith completely figured out. But to me, that’s the beauty and excitement of it—I am on a lifelong journey, with infinite possibilities of discovery and renewal ahead of me. This is a well that will never run dry. 

Because I’ve had to unravel my inflexible systems of belief, my faith isn’t as tightly-wound as before. I don’t cling too hard to intellectual arguments about specifics of doctrine. But I do believe that my repeated unravelings made my faith more resilient than it ever could have been otherwise. Because I have already torn everything down, twice, my new understanding of faith is much more durable than anything I’d possessed before. I worked out what was important and what was not; I realized that faith wasn’t about weaving a tight and unchanging web of unassailable beliefs. Unraveling wasn’t something to be afraid of. In fact, it saved my faith. Here, I am reminded of the symbolism of baptism: “Therefore we have been buried with [Christ] by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4, NRSV). I see my departure and return to faith as such a dying and rising—my old self needed to be unraveled before I could discover a new way of life, itself a form of death and resurrection. For me, faith is about transformation. It is an openness to be changed, a willingness to see things differently and to do things differently. And so, paradoxically, the unraveling of my faith has been an indispensable part of my faith. If I may be so bold, I would even say that it has been a gift from God.

 

Abby Shen ‘24.5 is a Philosophy major. In a Record article, Abby shared that making Kant memes is one of her favorite things to do, and she wants everyone to know that her favorite tree on campus is the tree next to Schapiro near the First Church Congregational Parking Lot.

Kingdom Ruins

Athens doesn’t have skyscrapers. Due to strict zoning laws that prevent any building from obstructing the view of the Acropolis, the city simultaneously feels both incredibly open and claustrophobic. There are no buildings looming over you, so you can see plenty of sky, but at the same time, that means all the buildings and sidewalks are that much more squeezed together. But when you do get to some elevation, you can see a whole lot more than in other cities.

One morning during a trip to Greece with my school’s Classics department, we were walking toward the Areopagus, also known as the Rock of Ares, which is a sizable overlook on a hill next to the Acropolis. I opened my Bible app and began to read Acts 17, the chapter where Paul first enters Athens and gives a sermon at the Areopagus to the Greeks. It’s unclear whether Paul actually delivered the speech on or just near the rock, but I liked to imagine that he might have been at the same lookout spot that I was as he prepared to preach.

Luke sets up the scene by telling us that “while Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols.” [1] It’s always comforted me to know that a man as joyful and optimistic as Paul felt this way when looking at the world. Despite this feeling, Paul began by looking for common ground with the new citizens he had observed. “‘People of Athens!’ he opens, ‘I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.” [2] Bishop Robert Barron calls the Areopagus sermon a “masterclass in evangelization” because “moving through the culture of his time, (Paul) assimilates what he can and resists what he must.” [3]

Yet, even with a nuanced sermon being delivered by one of the church’s most famous evangelists, Luke records that while a few people believed Paul, it wasn’t overly effective. In fact, some of the listeners sneered at him, and Paul departed for Corinth shortly after. Athens is then not mentioned for the rest of the New Testament. There’s a good chance that Paul would’ve died thinking that Christianity in Athens would never take root. So reading this narrative atop the Areopagus, I was very moved by just how many churches I could see in the distance. Not just that, but all around the Areopagus there were ancient pagan sites that only remained as ruins, and next to many of them, you could see large churches standing tall. It was very powerful to think that the same idols that caused Paul to feel distressed were now all overtaken by churches that came from the seeds of his ministry, even if he was never around to see it.

It’s interesting how Luke seems to describe the members of the Areopagus as men who just waste their days talking about vanities. Luke’s entire account of Athens is unusually short, so it’s funny that he took the time to include the following description: “All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.” [4] You can almost hear him rolling his eyes as he wrote it. It reminds me of a great quote by St. John Chrysostom, a fourth century archbishop and church doctor who describes vanity in one of the most unique ways I’ve ever heard. “Consider what comes of food, into what it is changed. Are you not disgusted at its being named? Why then be eager for such accumulations? The increase of luxury is but the multiplication of dung! For nature has her limits, and what is beyond these is not nourishment, but injury, and the increase of ordure.” [5]

In isolation, this might be a pretty depressing quote. Chrysostom seems to suggest that much of what we pursue in life, whether it actually be food and luxury or the vain talk at the Areopagus, is in fact a waste of time. Not just a waste of time, but an active multiplication of something bad. It’s like in the movie Inception when characters are described as getting stuck in dreams, where nothing they do matters, and they can become apathetic almost to the point of death. The plot revolves around characters creating little personalized items called totems, something like a coin or a spinning top, that can help them identify what is real and what isn’t. So if so much of what we do is just multiplying dung, what do we focus on to know what’s real?

Later in the same sermon series, Chrysostom says the following. “God made Heaven, and earth, and sea. Great works these, and worthy of His wisdom! But by none of these has He so powerfully attracted human nature to Himself, as by mercy and the love of mankind. For that indeed is the work of power and wisdom and goodness. But it is far more so that He became a servant. Do we not for this more especially admire Him? Are we not for this still more amazed at Him? Nothing attracts God to us so much as mercy. And the prophets from beginning to end discourse upon this subject.” [6]

He tells us to focus on the Incarnation and the mercy that flows from it. By prioritizing that, we can make sure we are spending our lives on what’s real and avoid the pitfalls described by Luke and Chrysostom. Going back to Paul’s sermon, we can see a nice parallel. “In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.” [7] Paul knew what these men were used to talking about, and made sure to center his message on Jesus’ identity and actions.

I truly hope that one day I get to explore more of the locations from the Book of Acts, and walk by more of the geography that the early apostles visited as they preached. But in the meantime, as I try to avoid vain talk and multiplying dung, I’ll never forget visiting the Areopagus, and seeing the impact that was eventually had by preaching centered on Jesus and his mercy. Lord, give us the strength to do the same!

 

FOOTNOTES

1: Acts 17:16

2: Acts 17:22-23

3: https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/barron/paul-on-the-areopagus-a-master-class-in-evangelization/

4: Acts 17:21

5: Sermons on 2 Timothy

6: Sermons on 2 Timothy

7: Acts 17:30-31

 

Andrew Nachamkin ’24 is a Statistics and Classics double major from the Hudson Valley, NY. Ever since middle school he has been fascinated by church history and apologetics, and is grateful for Telos for giving him outlets to explore these topics. Outside of school, he enjoys Nintendo games and basketball. After graduation he will move to New York City to work in finance.

As a Child

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways” – 1 Corinthians 13:11.

When I was a child, my parents taught me two moral maxims: “Try your best,” and “Treat others the way you wish to be treated.” I suppose most children learn some variant of the Golden Rule, and for a good reason—it teaches you to share your toys and hopefully later in life to do something altruistic out of your abundance. The other maxim runs deep in the American culture and canon, that the hard work and effort of individuals ought to be rewarded, and it is an invitation that my parents inherited from their parents.

On my mother’s side, my grandfather was once a self-described “rote Catholic,” and he put my mom and uncle through 13 years of Catholic school for its solid formation. My father’s family grew up non-religious. My mother threw off Catholicism like a restrictive garment after high school; my father had never worn religion aside from a few Baptist services. They raised us non-religious until I was about 8 or 9 and they realized we did not know who Jesus was, as a figure in history. So we started attending a Unitarian Universalist Congregation, a quasi-humanist religion that believes in a higher power and that all the other major world religions are equally valid approximations of one God, although it has a historical connection to Judeo-Christian values. While such an inclusive sentiment is politically correct, and some Toronto-area professionals drew inspiration from this religious potpourri for meaningful work and commendable service, it seemed hard to establish a belief system on such shifting or relativist ground. When the only thing you can say about a higher power is that it is everywhere and infinite, you end up worshiping some derivation of my parents’ moral maxims, what C.S. Lewis calls “ethical platitudes” in The Allegory of Love. ¹

To my dad, “try your best” meant continuous self-improvement in the form of to-do lists and Getting Things Done and 10-point plans. My mom gave us sound proverbs when my brother and I left homeschooling and ventured into public high school: put in the work at the start of the semester and your teachers will be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt later on, and don’t cut corners now lest you deny yourself the opportunity to build skills for the future.

As a family, we left the Unitarian Universalist Congregation when my mom felt that our learning there was stagnating, and some of us relocated to a Christian Reformed Church. My mom had a friend who worked there with a feisty heart for God, and she was open to giving a church that could form someone like that a chance. I found myself, a 7th grader, in the company of people older (sometimes) and wiser about God. I began reading the Bible, overcoming my social anxiety to participate in the youth group, and having weekly conversations with the youth pastor. I would ask her questions like, “What does it mean that Jesus descended into the earth after He died?” She showed me the bedrocks of her faith, the creeds and the meaning of grace and baptism, and how she had walked with God through her husband’s early passing. Most of my questions were innocent, intimate, but if I had asked anything profane she would have unraveled and answered those questions, too. 

I felt loved in these conversations, and I felt enough, resting in God’s love. My initial acceptance of Christianity, then, was on an emotional level, feeling that the presence of God abolished my fear and my inadequacies. I cared a lot about what other people thought, and I thought a lot about my “looking glass self,” introspecting my life’s feelings and purpose. The verse from the Gospel of John about Christ offering the Samaritan woman “living water” brought me release from my inner monologues. I was baptized at the end of the 7th grade, shortly before we moved back to the U.S. from a work permit in Canada. My parents were accepting of my choice; my mother felt the religious potpourri from the Unitarian Church had been the training wheels from which my siblings and I could decide the beliefs and principles to guide our lives.

We moved churches again, this time out of necessity. The Christian Reformed Church is known as the Dutch Reformed Church in the U.S., a nationality that (despite the many other European countries in my ancestry), my family doesn’t share, and a denomination that doesn’t have much of a presence in southern Connecticut. By this time, my mother believed that church was a body of people working together to become better people and was looking for something with “a little more of Jesus than the Unitarians.” She opted for the United Church of Christ, a denomination that has as its tagline, “don’t put a period where God has put a comma.” I went to church on Sundays with the family, then to a youth group on Tuesdays at an evangelical megachurch with contemporary rock worship music. I was caught between two churches, with different creeds and different politics and at bottom different dispositions: “come as you are” versus “come to Jesus.” I wondered if these could be different sides of God’s love, the radical inclusion and also the right formation, but my mom seemed to think they were two different incompatible “versions of Christianity,” and the evangelical megachurch was not her version of Christianity, so our conversations in the van ride home from youth groups never got much of anywhere.

When you treat others the way you want to be treated, sometimes you miss the mark; I missed the point of Christianity for most of my childhood and adolescence. Theory of mind is an early developmental milestone but we carry emotional immaturity and the heuristic that the love we need is the longing of the world into adulthood. When we ask the question, “What would Jesus do?” we commit to treating others not the way we want to be treated, or even the way they want to be treated, but in the way that God regards them. The great commandment of my childhood was not wrong, but it got at a secondary perspective to Christianity, like a book jacket that doesn’t do justice to the contents within. When asked, “‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?’” Jesus responded, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:36-39). As Christians, if all we do is look around the world and mirror the love we can give, we miss the primary perspective: seeking God’s face. Perhaps, like the oft-mentioned reconciliation of faith and works in salvation, the relationship is not so much quantitative as it is qualitative. Jesus calls us not to love God more than we love others, since in its highest expression it is the same love, particle and wave, but simply to love God first.

Like our family’s past moves between churches, coming to college jolted me into reassessing some of the things I had taken for granted. I wrestled with my persistent confusion about the kingdom of God and the promise for a “new heaven and a new earth,” that God wants to transform not just the spiritual but also the physical. I wrestled with the vagueness of my idea of God, that I had always seen Him as infinitely perfect, eternal, and the ideal of all virtues, but not always as relational and near. I had to remind myself that I was a child of God, through a debilitating season of depression in junior year of high school, before I could put the ways, the beliefs, of childhood behind me.

I had started, like some of the rationalist philosophers, with myself as the measuring line and the center. Descartes’ asymptotic view of human perfection in Meditations charts the course I tried to take, on my own terms, a quest of continuous self-improvement to which faith was prefixed. But I could not, and neither could Descartes, see God face to face in the mere negation of my inadequacies, finitude, and imperfection. C.S. Lewis cautions against such an approach to God: “Thus at each step in the process of refinement our idea of God contains less and less and the fatal pictures come in (an endless, silent sea, an empty sky beyond all stars, a dome of white radiance) and we reach at least mere zero and worship a nonentity.”² Living water could only be a generative “mental image” if I focused not on the experience of being thirsty but on the one who wants to give me rest. 

C.S. Lewis summarizes this shift in attention as seeking happiness as a by-product instead of chasing it, seeking God and not our own self-referential states or even our idea of Him as the object of our thoughts. Lewis writes, “My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast.”³ Help me to see you, God, as who you are, not who I think that you are. I needed to unravel the thesis that I was ultimately working toward my own redemption (whether on earth or in heaven) and to come back to the cross; it was not my imperfections but my very desire for perfection that I needed to cast down. I found an interlocutor, another first-year student willing to unpack his own faith history and the reason we both ended up here—at the credo, at Williams. He got baptized last spring and I started observing the Sabbath. What would it mean for our relationship with God to more deeply pervade our lives?

On a recent drive home, my mother wept, saying that in religion you don’t have to worry about and control things so much. The maxims “Try your best” and “Treat others the way you want to be treated” wove our family together in my childhood, but as my siblings and I grow up, and my parents get older, we have pulled on them at the edges. My grandfather, for one, has become more than a “rote Catholic,” and shared with me a worship song that brought him closer to God than he’s ever felt before. I hold those two postures in my mind: my grandfather standing up with his hands outstretched and my mother weeping with her hand on her chin. [Re]formation and unraveling.

“…but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” 1 Corinthians 13:10-12

 

FOOTNOTES

¹ The Allegory of Love, p. 324

² Miracles: A Preliminary Study, p. 73

³ A Grief Observed, p. 92

 

Harper Treschuk ‘26 is a Philosophy and Psychology double major. She enjoys writing longhand in composition books and going on afternoon walks with a voice recorder. On campus, she is a representative in the Honor and Discipline Committee and co-leads a first-year Bible study.

And So I Walked

When I first sat down to read And So I Walked: Reflections on Chance, Choice, and the Camino de Santiago, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’d never heard of the Camino de Santiago before, and didn’t consider myself to be a memoir type of girl. “Just try the first chapter,” I told myself.

I’d planned on reading for only a few minutes—I was meeting friends later and didn’t want to be late. But as the minutes ticked by, I kept flipping through the pages, devouring each word. Soon enough, I was a hundred pages in (and late).

Earlier that month, I’d joined Telos’ Winter Study book club, which is how I found myself reading And So I Walked, the Reverend Anne Gardner’s account of her journey along the Camino—a 500-mile stretch across Spain marking St. James’ historic pilgrimage, now annually traversed by thousands of wayfarers from all over the world.

Gardner, a high school chaplain, was not alone on her journey. She was accompanied by her wife, Beth; a former colleague, Jess; and two graduating students, Sascha and Meredith. Each member of the group entered the Camino with the hope that the walk would illuminate or enlighten that elusive “something” in their life. They appointed themselves with nicknames such as “Just Go,” “Go Slow,” “Ami-go,” “Go-Go,” and “Let Go.” These names represent the purpose of their respective journeys. For Rev. Gardner, taking on the name “Let Go” encapsulates her desire to let go of her need for control and allow God to unravel her plans in favor of His. She and all her companions are searching for the magic of the Camino.

One component of the Camino’s magic is realizing the wonder of others’ love for her. When first hearing about it, she was worried the walk would be a solo trip, but soon found a cohort of loved ones walking not only with her, but for her. Beth, knowing how important the Camino was to her wife, braved the strenuous path out of love and devotion to Gardner. Sascha walked the Camino not from his own interest in St. James’ pilgrimage, but so that Garnder wouldn’t be alone. The unpredictability and stress of the Camino allowed Gardner to realize and appreciate this radical love, and it reminds us to give thanks for our own loved ones. Despite times of unraveling, or rather especially in times of unraveling, love is a constant.

On the Camino, taking a step away from the comforts and chaos of the modern world allowed Gardner and her companions to evaluate themselves and their lives, learn about their strengths and weaknesses, and determine how and where to go forth after ending their journey. I finished And So I Walked the day after I started it. Every page, I marveled at a new joy, ached over Gardner’s sorrows, and simply sat in silence with the story. Gardner’s account reminded me to joyfully embrace the unexpected wonders of life with an open mind and open heart instead of dwelling on what I perceive is the “right” path.

Gardner’s memoir even convinced me to walk the Camino myself. Just kidding. I might have been convinced if it weren’t for the fleas, but alas…

 

Anna Halfman ’27 is a prospective Economics and Art History major who loves dancing, reading, hiking, and sharing baked goods, especially chocolate-y ones. On campus, she enjoys dancing with StuCo and CoDa, and working on Alhambra Consulting and Williams Investment Group.

Laden

 

I. “All you who labor and are heavy laden…

Misunderstood–again.
Heart trampled,
Torn to pieces.

You throw your head
back. A nasally laugh
squeezes past the
roof of your mouth

before you bite down
hard. Clenched teeth,
sharp inhale.

You hold your breath.
Silence as you sit
across from her.

The table, a chasm
between you.

You reach across,
an arm extended.
Your tongue offers
a mending phrase.

But her sharp reply
stings your skin,
and deep you
feel the pain.

II. …Come to Me…

You hear a word
pulled from the deep
recesses of the Spirit:
“Murabeho [1], goodbye.”

Say it to her.

Let her go.

III. …And I will give you rest.”

Goodbye. Not a
clean break but a

steady undoing
of habits and associations
that took years to form.

You held her, dear,
until she began to
burn your fingers.

 

FOOTNOTE

1: “Goodbye” in Kinyarwanda.

 

Sarah Gantt, former Editor-in-Chief of The Williams Telos, graduated from Williams College in June 2023 with a Bachelor’s in Art History and English and a minor in French. She currently teaches English in Kigali, Rwanda as a Fulbright grantee. In her free time, she uses her writing and editing experience to help local arts organizations with various projects.