The Way

After reading “A way of proceeding” by the author James Martin. He stated that their’s six paths to God, which are the path of belief, independence, disbelief, return, exploration, and confusion. Which is a diversity of different paths to follow, fortune to an understanding it more with a character from a movie. The character of Tom from the movie “The way” by Emilo Estevez. It symbolizes a lot of James Martin the different paths to God. The movie is about an American ophthalmologist doctor name Tom. He received a call from France saying that his son passed away. The news was devastating to hear especially his son was the only one left in his family, which lead him in the path of disbelief. After arriving in France he founds out that his son died while attempting the pilgrimage to Spain’s Santiago de Compostela. In the beginning, Tom was going to return his son’s body home, but Tom recalled how his son loved to explore and to discover different places. Therefore, that was the starting point of the exploration path for Tom resolves to take the journey by himself, to understand his son’s reason to perceive this journey. 

Throughout his exploration, Tom meets Joost, Sarah, and Jack. Joost is from Amsterdam who says he is making the pilgrimage to lose weight for his brother’s wedding. Sarah is from Canada who says in the beginning that she is walking the pilgrimage to quit smoking, but then that she is doing it to escape an abusive husband and terrific memory for losing her unborn daughter. Jack is from Ireland and he is doing the walk to comprehend the experience of pilgrimage life to writer’s articles. n the opening of the movie, they were so many conflicts between them due to their different background and the reason why the doing the pilgrimage but later on they couldn’t any extra distance without each other along the way. Along the walk, they all experience what it means to be a pilgrim and explore a new side to humanity and spirituality. 

The reason why I picked Tom character is that it follows many of the path of God that the author James Martin mention. Tom was very determined to follow his son’s footsteps while there were many distractions throughout the way. Which is the independence path, “though they keep their distance from the church”(pg 33). Yes, Tom was in the disbelief path while he heard about his son’s news but he wasn’t still rejecting God. And the proof that is when he meets the priest throughout his journey he was willing to accept the necklace cross from the priest. His disbelief path was a mechanism of denial of his son’s death.  

At the beginning of Tom told the policeman that his doing the pilgrimage for his son. But the policeman answered him and said “you only walk the way for yourself” and he directed Tom in the right direction of the starting of the walk. Tom started the journey and Daniel (son) appears to him from time to time, in visions or imagination, as Tom rethinks their relationship. As Daniel reinforced to his father that he is on the right track until he made it all way to the church and that was a very touching scene. Because it was like the son finally delighted that his father understood his passion. By the end of the movie, Tom confessed to Daniell and said “I don’t know what to do now” Daniell answered and said “you know what you need to do” as Tom should return to his beliefs.  

It was an interesting movie because it was to enrich with a different important feature of life that every individual should obtain to find peace. As a family, friends, spiritual, exploration, and etc, these things are the most valuable possession a person could gain.