Showing items filed under “The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin”

Walking Again

Once you walk the Camino, you start meeting many others who are walking it; I have two good friends who have walked it in the past month, and it’s on my own calendar for April of next year. In fact, I already have my “Credencial de peregrino” (courtesy the American Pilgrims) and a plane ticket! (The ticket is on points and refundable. Crazy I may be, I’m not so crazy as to buy a nonrefundable ticket now for a date in 2024.) 

    Recently I dusted off my backpack and loaded it with about ten pounds of stuff and walked a half-dozen miles. It felt . . . natural. I ended at a coffee shop (creature of habit I certainly am), and remembered, from a couple of years ago at that same coffee shop, being taken for someone for whom Dallas was just a way-station. “No, I live here,” I tried to explain. They looked at my pack. They weren’t persuaded; I must have looked more itinerant.

    Now that I’m preparing for my second Camino, I’m in a position to give myself the advice that I am glad to give to anyone else who might be thinking of taking this pilgrimage.

    1) Keep your pack as light as you can. Last time I aimed for 15 pounds and ended up at 17, which was 19 when my water bottles were filled. It was okay. For clothing, you need only two T-shirts, two pairs of pants, four pairs of socks, two sets of underwear, a fleece, a puff jacket (not needed in the heat of summer), and a rain covering (stuff a lightweight stocking cap and gloves in its pockets). Everyday you walk, you get to your destination, you shower, and you wash some clothes by hand and hang them to dry. 

    You will be tempted to take more. But every extra fraction of a pound is something you will be carrying for several hundred miles. And remember there are stores along the way: if you absolutely must have something you didn’t pack, you will be able to buy it.

    2) Change your socks midday. This gives your feet a rest, and is wonderfully refreshing as you continue on (and helps minimize blisters). I always had an extra pair of clean socks right at the top of my pack. The saying is true and worthy of acceptance: “Take care of your feet and your feet will take care of you.”

    3) Pilgrims help pilgrims continually. One morning I was resting on a flat rock. A fellow came near and offered to help me readjust my pack, passing on a bit of wisdom. Another time, in a small group at supper, a pilgrim was lamenting her bug bites and that the stores were closed. I had an anti-itch stick that I didn’t need, and I gave it to her. (She did me a favor by lightening my load by two ounces! I never needed that and I won’t be packing it next time.)

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    Camino lessons are basic life lessons. God has so constructed this world that our entire lives are pilgrimages.

    1) Don’t carry unnecessary stuff, physical or emotional or otherwise. It will only weigh you down.

    2) Don’t just work. Stop to relax, take your shoes off, and allow yourself a little refreshment before carrying on. Do this every day.

    3) Look for help in others. Look to help others yourself.

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    Out & About. Saturday/Sunday, July 15/16, I am to preach at All Souls’ Church in Oklahoma City: Saturday at 5:30 p.m., and Sunday at 8 and 10 a.m.

    I hope you have noted the date (and started enjoying the book): The “Good Books & Good Talk” seminar will have its first fall meeting at St. Matthew’s (a new location) on Sunday, September 10, from 5 to 6:30 p.m. The book is The Index of Self-Destructive Acts, the most recent novel from the remarkable Christopher Beha. We also have book seminars scheduled for October 8 and November 26, both Sundays at 5 p.m.; titles to be announced. 

    On the Web. By “the Camino” above I mean a pilgrimage that aims to end up at Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain. Although there are many routes, people usually mean the Camino Francese, which in the past decades has seen a remarkable reawakening. There’s lots of information on the Web; one place to start is the American Pilgrims on the Camino: https://americanpilgrims.org/

Posted by The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin with

May the Brain Be with You

On Sunday, I left St. James, Dallas, as they were locking the doors. I unlocked my car and tossed my backpack onto the passenger’s seat when I realized: I had left my vestments inside the church. Since the doors were locked, I tried to phone the rector to let me in, but just then someone exited and I scurried past before the doors closed again. Later I realized I had left my sermon there also, but that didn’t matter: the file is on my computer.

The previous day I had visited my podiatrist—an amazing doctor, recommended to me several years ago by a couple of serious runners amongst our clergy. (If you ever need a podiatrist, I’m glad to recommend him.) He figured out my new problem and made adjustments to my orthotics. Then, sitting in my car and about to drive away, I saw him coming out the door: I had left my extra pair of shoes behind.

Earlier in the week I had flown into Dallas Love Field. The Lyft was quick to arrive, the car clean and sporty, the driver a young Brazilian fellow between other jobs. Apologizing for the racquets in his trunk, he explained he plays tennis. He was friendly, a safe driver with interesting talk—just what one wants in a ride home from the airport. Once he had discharged me at my apartment complex, I went in to retrieve a package. I put my hand into my pocket to get the code—and there was no phone there. I had left it in the car. No more than five minutes had passed, but he was long gone.

Reader, you see the pattern. It raises the question: Is Father Austin losing his mind?

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To lose a printout is no problem: one can always print it again. To lose shoes or vestments is different: that is to lose physical objects, material things in the world. They can be replaced, but only with some difficulty, because they are the products of craftsmanship and skill with real stuff in the real world.

To lose a smartphone, however, is both of these. It is to lose a physical object of deep intricacy, a material thing that connects the world of things with the virtual world of data and such. I wouldn’t say I lost my mind, but I did lose my brain, or something so close that it has become an extension of my brain.

I wrote a few weeks ago about the Kafkaesque character of modern reality. Do you know, if you leave something in a car, Lyft’s response is to use their app to contact them? That’s what I found online once I was home with my laptop. So, I go to the Lyft website, and discover that the only way to access my account is for me to enter a code that they will send . . . to my phone! There is a form you can fill out if you leave something in a Lyft, but on that form you must enter . . . your phone number! 

Eventually I realized they wanted the phone number not in order to contact me but to identify me. Okay. And it worked out: in an hour I had an email from the driver, who told me he had my phone; a couple of hours later he brought it by for me. All was well. 

But let me linger for a bit with those three hours in between. Without a phone I could not make phone calls. (Duh.) I could not access a multitude of apps. My steps were not being counted. I started thinking through the deep complications of being severed from constant connection with the virtual world. It was nothing more than going back about ten years in time. And yet I felt isolated, vulnerable, unclothed even. So much of the world assumes you have a smartphone.

And here’s the truth: for a few minutes I hoped the phone was really lost. I thought: I’d like to live free of this thing.

I thought: I’d like to get my own brain back.

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On the Web. In his blog, “The Path Before Us,” the wonderfully triply-named Matthew Lee Anderson notes the creation of the first synthetic human embryo, with respect to which he recommends (as do I) a piece he wrote three years ago: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2020/08/70313/ . “People of faith have a responsibility to keep alive the memory of a world in which children are received as gifts from God.”

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Out & About. This Sunday, June 25, I am preaching at St. Matthew’s Cathedral, Dallas, at 9 and 11:15 a.m. This will be my first sermon there in my new role as Cathedral Theologian-in-residence.

I hope you have noted the date (and are enjoying the book): The “Good Books & Good Talk” seminar will have its first fall meeting at St. Matthew’s (a new location) on Sunday, September 10, from 5 to 6:30 p.m. The book is The Index of Self-Destructive Acts, the most recent novel from the remarkable Christopher Beha.

 

 

Posted by The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin with

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The Rev. Canon Victor Lee Austin. Ph.D., is the Theologian-in-Residence for the diocese and is the author of several books including, "Friendship: The Heart of Being Human" and "A Post-Covid Catechesis.: 

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