#35 - The Road vs The Pathway {Reflections}

What is up?

Everybody?

My name is Ryan and I'm the pastor at Central.

Welcome to our Reflections podcast.

This is the fourth take of the intro.

I don't know why I kept goofing up the intro, but anyway, what is up?

Hey, a couple of actually two years ago, I discovered this American essayist and poet named Wendell Berry.

You probably have heard of him and, if not, google him.

He's incredible, but he writes a lot of different things Again poems and essays and books.

Anyway, he wrote an essay called A Native Hill in this book.

The book itself was called the Art of the Commonplace and there's a whole book of essays by Wendell Berry and they're awesome, but one of them is called A Native Hill and in this essay I actually ended up writing a paper on it in my doctoral work.

But he writes about the road versus the path.

He writes about the road versus the path.

So imagine a road.

By road he means like a road you would drive on, that's paved, that is more or less straight.

So he describes that.

And then the path A path, rather than this straight, paved, flattened thing you drive on, a path is something you walk on that oftentimes will follow the natural sort of geography of the land or the trajectory of you know.

It sort of follows the landscape and you walk on a path that's usually smaller, more narrow, and it follows the natural curvature of the area.

And so here's what he writes.

He says a path is not destructive, it's the perfect adaptation to the land through experience and familiarity of movement, to pace.

It obeys the natural contours, such as obstacles, as it meets, and it goes around them.

So a path, yeah, it follows the natural contours of the land, even the obstacles, and it might come to a giant boulder.

You have to walk around the boulder.

A road, on the other hand, he says, embodies a resistance against the landscape.

Its reason is not simply the necessity of movement but haste.

So hurry, you're trying to hurry on a road.

Its wish is to avoid contact with the landscape.

I mean, roads are often, they're like plowed and things are paved over and the landscape is sort of torn up or demolished or flattened, and so its tendency, he writes, is to translate place into space in order to traverse it with the least effort.

So he writes again about the road it's hurried, it's flat, it's usually destroyed or demolished or flattened, the natural landscape, and the whole point is to get from point A to point B.

So think about the last time you were on a road.

Maybe it was today.

I mean, how would you describe it?

Oftentimes it's hurried, it's utilitarian, meaning it's just to get from here to there, not to really be enjoyed.

I don't know the last time I was in the car and I thought, oh, look at the beautiful landscape around me, unless I was driving through.

I don't know northern Minnesota or the mountains in Colorado, but usually I'm not really acknowledging or even seeing the landscape around me.

But it's flat and paved and it doesn't really reveal at all the beauty of the landscape.

It's oftentimes sort of, you know, bordered by shopping malls or, you know, billboards or neon signs.

But think about the last time you were on a path.

How would you describe a path you were walking on?

I don't know, maybe it was more of a slow experience, just walking, and maybe even wandering or meandering on the path, going up hills and then down hills and around obstacles that are in the way, and you're following the beautiful landscape.

Well, maybe it's not that beautiful, but usually it's a path that's sort of in a nicer area in terms of the natural landscape.

But the road, I think and this is what Wendell Berry's point is.

The road, and the whole thing of the road, reveals our modern obsession with busyness and clutter, haste and expediency.

And really he says it bears no relation whatever to the country it passes through, it's pure abstraction.

And the road, it doesn't just permit speed but it encourages speed and, I would argue, disconnection from our attention and it places our focus on the outcome of the task, like just get to the end.

So, like most road trips I don't know we try to enjoy them.

We're like, let me just get to the point.

Or think about your commute to work, like just get me there.

I want to be done with this actual trip.

I'm not there to enjoy the trip, I just want to get to the end.

But the path, and walking on a path, it often rebels against this type of obsession with busyness and clutter and it makes us slow down and wander or meander.

Now, often, of course, we could be on the path and just try to rush through it, but generally the path disallows you from getting there quickly because they're this winding and wandering thing and it's almost like a meandering stream that you might find in the wilderness.

That kind of goes where it goes and it takes the time it takes.

So he actually writes about the stream as well does Wendell Berry.

He says the stream.

He says there is indeed a music in streams, but it's not for the hurried, it has to be loitered by and imagined.

I love that.

I'll read it again.

He says there is indeed a music in streams, but it's not for the hurried, it has to be loitered by and imagined.

When was the last time you or I walked near a stream and just listened for the music in it?

Not to hurry or to get something done or to get to point B quickly as possible, but just to slow down and listen and loiter by the stream and use our imagination?

There's this other writer named Cal Newport who says that we in the modern Western world are suffering from an epidemic of chronic overload.

I mean, it doesn't take an expert in psychology or even sociology to understand that we are busier than we've ever been.

In fact, all these inventions or technologies that have sort of come into our lives, that were supposed to make our lives easier and slower, they've definitely freed us up and created more time, but we've just filled that time with other things.

So we have an automobile now that we drive to go to work, which saves us a ton of time because we don't have to walk to work, but we just work longer now.

And so it's the same thing with many of these technologies, and our lives have become filled with distractions and busy work and, I would say, a lot of meaningless activity that leaves us generally unproductive and unfulfilled in our lives.

And so Cal Newport writes.

I love this.

He says the volume of obligations on our proverbial plates, such as vague projects, offhanded promises, quick phone calls and small tasks it continues to increase at an alarming rate.

We're busier, and busier, and busier every day.

There was a time, he says, not too long ago, when the standard response to the question hey, how are you?

Was back then an innocuous I'm fine.

But today it's rare to encounter someone who doesn't instead respond with a weary I'm busy.

And it's like busy is a badge of courage.

Now we're just so busy.

And, look, I'm not immune to this.

This is an excellent reminder for me.

But today, then, I want to invite you and myself to take the path.

How can we slow down?

Even look, I know we can't go from 100 miles an hour, which is the speed at which our lives are going down to one mile an hour.

But maybe today you can just take like five minutes and walk on the path instead, or dial it back a little bit and find a path.

Slow down at least a little bit today and listen for the sound of the music in the streams and loiter by them, with your imagination turned on and fired up.

Resist the urge to hurry and to take the road instead.

Take the path today, all right, love you guys.

Peace.

Hey, if you enjoy this show, I'd love to have you share it with some friends.

And don't forget, you are always welcome to join us in person at central in elk river at 8 30, which is our liturgical gathering, or at 10 o'clock, our modern gathering, or you can check us out online at clcelkriverorg.

Peace.