Be legendary

I was in the middle of a long train ride into my office a few days ago when I finally stopped looking at my phone to look around at my fellow commuters and whatever else might catch my attention. I was quickly struck by the above advertisement.

I’ve been to about 42 of our 50 states and, interestingly, North Dakota is one of the 8 I’ve never visited. I’ve been tantalizingly close, having driven through South Dakota and also spending a few winter weekends at a cross-country resort in western Minnesota, but I’ve yet to set foot in (searching this now) the “Peace Garden State.” I have a cousin who grew up there, but, other than that, no images come to mind other than cold winters and the movie “Fargo.” I’m sure it’s a lovely place, but “legendary” isn’t necessarily a word I would associate it with. I asked the search engine what states were legendary and it told me that several come to mind like California, New York, Texas, Alaska and Hawaii, but, alas, not North Dakota. But I kind of like North Dakota tourism office’s chutzpah in using the word.

Thinking about this sent me down an etymological rabbit hole to find out the root of the word “legendary.” It sent me to the word “legend” and one definition stated that a legend is “a story coming down from the past.” When I looked for the root of “legend,” it took me through the Middle English (legende) and then the Latin (legenda) and ended with the Greek word logos. This tickled me.

You may know that the word logos is pretty important to Christians. At the beginning of the gospel of John, we read, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” “Word” is translated from the Greek word logos. Countless books and articles have been written about the connection to logos/Word and Jesus. I’m reading a book about Frederick Buechner and Buechner wrote that Jesus is the mot juste—the exact phrase or word—of God. “He is Jesus as the Word that breaks the heart and sets the feet to dancing and stirs tigers in the blood.” All of that sounds legendary to me and out of my league. But then I go back to the definition of legend: a story coming down from the past.

I’m not sure I would be or do anything that stirs tigers in the blood or sets the feet to dancing. But I hope that people will tell stories about me over the years. So I ask myself, What I can do today that will inspire a story? Maybe that’s a question for you, too. We all can, in a sense, be legendary. We can all be North Dakota.