At the Real Crossroads — Inheritance, Calling, and the Blues

Today, I found the “real” Crossroads. I stood there for a while. Yeah. Nothing happened; no one showed up.

In rabbinic Judaism and biblical thought, HaSatan is not the devil but the adversary, the force that introduces tension so growth and transformation can occur. Later Western Christian imagination turned HaSatan into the Devil. That distinction matters to how I hear the Blues.

A nice Jewish boy from Minnesota, the Freewheeling Robert Zimmerman, saw Highway 61 as a challenge to tradition. In Highway 61 Revisited, Bob Dylan frames the Binding of Isaac to explore God, his father Abe, and himself. The Delta Blues grew out of that same road.

At the crossroads, Robert Johnson does not meet the devil. He prays, “I went down to the crossroad, fell down on my knees…

Asked the Lord above, ‘Have mercy now.’”

The crossroads are liminal space—between safety and danger, past and future—where inheritance and calling collide.

I once wrote in my high-school yearbook: I chose the road less traveled and I made all the difference.

I guess maybe I did.

You don’t leave the crossroads redeemed. You leave carrying the weight, and learning how to sing it.

Where have your crossroads been?