We Make The Road by Walking: Where did the title come from?

I originally heard “We make the road by walking” as a quote from one of my heroes, Brazilian educator/activist Paolo Freire. I later learned that it became the title of a book that was a dialogue between Freire and another seminal educator/activist, Myles Horton, who was an important figure in the Civil Rights Movement in the US. Freire may have derived the quote from the great Spanish poet Antonio Machado:

“Caminante, son tus huellas el camino, y nada más; caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar. Al andar se hace camino, y al volver la vista atrás se ve la senda que nunca se ha de volver a pisar. Caminante, no hay camino, sino estelas en la mar.”
Wanderer, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more; wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking. By walking one makes the road, and upon glancing behind one sees the path that never will be trod again. Wanderer, there is no road– Only wakes upon the sea. ― Antonio Machado, Campos de Castilla

My original working title for the new book wasn’t very sexy, although it was descriptive: Catechesis. Since most folks either don’t know what catechesis is, or think of it as something pretty boring and negative, it seemed like a good idea to keep searching for a better title.
The chosen title suggests that Christian faith is still “in the making” (as Dr. John Cobb has put it). It continues to grow, evolve, learn, change, emerge, and mature … in and through us. What we will be as Christians in the 21st century, for better or worse, will surely change what Christian faith will be in the 22nd century and beyond. So, with that in mind, I wanted to introduce people to a vision of the Christian faith and the biblical narrative not as a box, set in stone, and not as a parking lot (where we await the ferry to heaven), but as a road … that is extended into the future by all of us, walking forward in the Spirit together.