I regularly hear about how much reflection happens during the spring semester of senior year, and yet sometimes I feel like the only reflections I catch are those of my disheveled appearance, captured in the shop windows of the various Ville storefronts as I rush past on my way to work. Once I arrive at work, the proliferation of tabs in browser windows sings a motley chorus of tales about where I’ve been, what I’ve been doing, and what I’ve been meaning to do for quite some time. Featured in this song prominently are the ding’s and boop’s that announce the arrival of each day’s deluge of emails: some are not worth reading, some are the umpteenth reiteration of a previous note, and yet some, despite being quite simple, tell a larger tale.
One of these emails arrived recently–it was a note asking students to provide their availability for a meeting between the Student Budget Committee and the leadership of all the campus printing organizations. Certainly I take no joy in trying to schedule meetings like this, nor in the financial haggling that occurs within them, but it does symbolize the completion of a goal–an open tab, if you will–that has been on my horizon for quite some time. Alongside this email, I have another tab open with the almost final pdf of the Spring 2023 edition of Peripateo, waiting to be completed and sent off to the printers. Lord willing, before much longer we’ll have fresh copies of the Peripateo in-hand for the first time since 2019. It’s an exciting occasion and an opportunity for some much-needed reflection on my part.
Very early on in my freshman year, back when I still regularly ate Sharples breakfast, I made a regular habit of enjoying the company of Daniel Swanson ‘21. I quickly discovered that among Daniel’s many activities was writing for Peripateo, the Swarthmore College Journal of Christian Discourse. When I asked Daniel what Peripateo did, he responded “We write stuff… usually about faith and such.” I only recall once ever meeting the then-Editor-in-Chief, Tobias Phillip, but one didn’t need to meet Tobias very many times to remember him. I flirted with the idea of writing something back then, and probably even have a couple drafts laying among the many assorted projects that I started while sitting at home during the COVID-19 lockdown of Spring 2020, but nothing much came of it. The next year, Tobias passed on leadership to Daniel, who regularly encouraged people to write for Peripateo, and grew ever larger in my estimation with every passing day. During this year, Daniel and I attended a virtual Veritas Weekend event put on by the Augustine Collective, our parent organization/larger network of journals. One of the tasks assigned to us was to draft a mission and vision statement. Daniel copied over a previous statement which seemed suitable to both of us, but there remained the task of answering “why do we exist?” Rather quickly, Daniel and I arrived at the conclusion that, “We exist, along with the rest of creation, to glorify God.”
It was largely during this virtual conference that Daniel conveyed to me a vision for Peripateo being a place where faith could be discussed around campus, and the persevering hope that Peripateo could and should be a publication commonly read by all members of the Swarthmore community: religious, or not. In the subsequent months prior to Daniel’s graduation, I received the official title of “person who gets things done”, despite not having published anything for the journal. This led to my designation as Editor-in-Chief during the summer of 2021.
Since then, I still have not published any written piece for Peripateo, making this my first written contribution to our body of work. Daniel described the goal of his tenure as passing the torch of Peripateo on through COVID-19 in the hope that eventually all things would be restored. Arguably, mine has been to wave that torch about recklessly in a crowd until it ignited a few other small flames. I much prefer talking to writing, and I’m far better at catching someone outside the cafeteria than I am at catching a run-on sentence. Luckily, campus is not lacking for people who don’t share my particular set of faults.
Amidst this, it seems strangely fitting that so much of my connection to the organization of Peripateo has come through the writing which previous students left behind, and it bears a great testament to the heart of Peripateo that it has been so easy to fall in love with the mission despite having lain dormant for this time. My belief that Peripateo can be a vital publication on campus has only grown over time, and I am more convinced than ever that it can properly address many of campus’s hurts, questions, and bolster generations of students to come.
As my time as Editor-in-Chief comes to an end alongside the end of my time at Swarthmore, I sometimes find myself wishing that I made my home in Peripateo earlier and resided there more fully. It is true that there was much room for greater activity and further impact on my life within its world, but I draw great hope from knowing that others after me may very well explore the possibilities of Peripateo, and reap its fruit, for years to come. Oh that many great years might lie ahead, and that we continue to honor the Lord in all that we do.
– Bryce
Peripateo 