Make a New Road

Why should we call

these accidental furrows roads?

Everyone who moves on

walks like Jesus, on the sea

       ~ Antonio Machado (from “I Never wanted Fame”)

Lt. Stamets and Dr. Culber
from the Star Trek Discovery series

Those words by the Spanish poet, Antonio Machado, were echoed in a new episode of  Star Trek Discovery on CBS All Access last week. One of the characters, Dr.Hugh Culber (played by Wilson Cruz) was killed last season in an alternate universe and this season has been “resurrected” through a process of having his being reconstructed by some previously unknown life forms existing in a band of space fabric between our universe and the alternate universe. He is having difficulty adjusting to his new-found existence, with his former life seeming as a memory to which he cannot fully connect. As a result, he no longer feels a connection with his life partner, Lt. Stamets. 

Love is a Choice

In the most recent episode, "The Red Angel," Hugh goes to one of the Star Fleet officers who is also a therapist. He is troubled because he knows that he has loved his partner in the past and does not want to hurt him, yet he cannot just pick up where things were before. As he talks through his personal dilemma, she tells him, “Your experience transcends everything we know about identity.” The officer, in her therapist mode goes on to say, “Love is a choice and one doesn’t make that choice just once. One makes it again and again.” As Hugh is about to leave, she tells him, “The only way to make a new road is to walk it.”

One reason I am highlighting words from a poet today is that next week I will begin celebrating the month of April as Poetry Month. It will be a time to think of ways that poetry enlightens and enlivens us. Antonio Machado is a poet I discovered several years ago when reading some of Robert Bly’s translations of Spanish poetry. I was so taken by his poem, “I Never wanted Fame,” that I quoted it in one of my personal essays, “Form and Substance: How a Sonnet Saved My Life.”

 Make the Road by Walking

A few years ago, I had the good fortune of meeting Brian McClaren who had just written a new book, We Make the Road by Walking (any time you look up Brian McClaren he has just written a new book). I was intrigued by the title and asked him, “Did you get that title from Antonio Machado’s poem?” He gave a big smile and said that indeed he did. McClaren has some fluency in Spanish, so he was able to appreciate the poem in its original version.

I am thankful today for the insight of Antonio Machado. I am also thankful for the way that poetry cascades into our lives in the stories we tell and in the people we encounter. May you choose love today, and may you find a way to make your road by walking it – like Jesus, on the sea.

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