Busy

“Thirty years ago, who would have thought that we’d all carry phones in our pockets but never make phone calls?” —So the line goes. It does seem ironic that we don’t use our phones for phoning. I have a couple of friends who are outliers: they are more likely to ring me than to text first. And generally I like that, but only because I am so pathetic in texting. One used to say, about something one did badly, “I’m all thumbs.” But texting is all thumbs, and I fail to achieve even that level of competence. Waiting at an airport gate, I look at someone near me, her thumbs nimbly moving over her phone as a message is composed. I am in awe of her dexterity. I’m also envious. Her thumbs just dance. 

    So please, don’t text. Send me an email. I’ll sit at a keyboard and write back, although it might be a day or two—or more. 

— 

    One purpose of these weekly blogs is for me, as a theologian and an ethicist, to ponder everyday life and to do so publicly. These posts are opportunities for you to see me muddle through life and perhaps thereby see more deeply what’s going on with (not only me but) a lot of us. 

    So let me tell you: I’ve been busy. I know I’m never busy as most people are. Even in seminary, back in the pre-cell-phone days of the 80s, when New York City phone calls were a dime and public phones were on every corner, even then my friends would say: Victor, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you busy. Okay, so it’s relative. My busy-ness is probably your average daily life. I know I’m blessed that way. Still, for me, it has been busy.

    And it’s my fault. I was invited to preach here, to teach there, to give a talk, and on and on. I love these invitations. They are opportunities to meet new people and to renew old friendships. So I say yes whenever I can. 

But (as another friend would say) “Look it, Victor”: I’ve said yes to a lot of travel in the month before I go to walk the Camino. Duh?! I am about to walk some 450 miles from Roncesvalles to Santiago. Will I remember to pack the right stuff? (Yet, in truth, anything forgotten can be purchased in Spain and at a reasonable price.) I worry that my physical condition is not what it was two years ago: I have this ache and that pain and these medicines. And my spiritual preparation? Pretty much zilch.

    You’re busy, you have to do what you have to do, and other things get pushed down the priority list. I worry at night. I dream about being unprepared. I think I am a fool for doing this. I even start to long for the good-old-Covid-days, when a new variant would raise a zillion red flags and the Whole Wide World would be encouraging (encouraging!) me to put it off, to wait another six months. In six months, I won’t be so busy, I’ll have more time to be prepared, I can get ready for this properly!

    But life, dear reader, as you doubtless know better than I (and you probably learned it years ago)—life is never something we are ready for. Life just happens, ready or not, and usually “not.” 

    I won’t be ready but I am going. I’ll throw myself on the Camino and discover what it has to offer me, unready as I am and unclear as I am what I am going for. I want to take work with me: behold how low I have sunk! I am like the father who brings his family to vacation on the sunny beaches of southern California and takes his work with him! I am that guy who doesn’t really go on vacation! Worse: I am planning to be that guy—I do indeed have a writing project I want to do this year, and I have the idea (the bald rationalization) that I can take it with me and write daily. . . . On the other hand, you know, maybe I can. Maybe in the hours of walking my weak brain will figure something out and my fingers can later type a couple hundred words that are coherent.

    I don’t know about that. But in truth I know I don’t deeply care. What I care about is that, despite all this busyness, I’m going. As a concession to my weak thumbs I’m taking a keyboard. Along with a tablet, that’s an extra two pounds, an extra 10%. If it gets too heavy, there are those schleppers who drive your backpack to your destination (just name it and put five euros in the envelope, thank you). And if my feet can’t take it, there are lots of buses and taxis.

    It strikes me that this is a picture of our life. Things happen that we aren’t prepared for. But alternatives will open up. Jesus the Camino (i.e., the Way) will always be there with us (however stupid-busy we’ve been).

— 

    Looking far ahead: The next Good Books & Good Talk seminar will be at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Dallas on Sunday, June 2, at 5pm, on Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. If you’re interested in questions of AI, whether robots can have feelings and personality, this is a remarkable novel to read.

    On the Web. An essay by Rachel Altman, “Barbie vs. Botox,” points to depths in this film, particularly in the choice offered Barbie to become human. To be human means “being confined to a real and finite life,” and she is warned that it can be “pretty uncomfortable.” I was perhaps the last person on the planet to learn that, in the film, Barbie chooses real life. This means getting old and wrinkly; it means changing; it means being mortal. But only in such a life can we thrive. Read it here: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/barbie-vs-botox

Her Departure is Coming

How did she know? I was walking the Katy trail with my backpack—the 38-liter one that I will take to Spain next month. She was a power-walker, elderly (though perhaps not older than I), talking away with her companion. They passed me and then she, without stopping, turned her head backwards to ask: “Are you going to walk the Camino?” I don’t think there was anything obviously Camino-ish about me or my pack—for instance, there was no Camino shell attached to it. But she intuited. As she walked on, her torso twisted to face me, she said she had walked it in a certain year that she named but I have forgotten. I said I was leaving in April. She said it would change my life.

I think that’s true, but I don’t think I’ll ever have the flexibility to walk fast while twisting to talk to a guy behind me.

–

More commonly I get asked, “Are you in training?” Two years ago, same trail, same backpack, a runner who passed me stopped and turned back to ask that question. When I told him my hope of walking the Camino, he was impressed. He knew of the Camino, even as he knew about of a lot of other long walks. He told me he was training (though not at that moment) to walk a wilderness trail in the American West. He would be sleeping outdoors, cooking his own food, and thus carrying a lot more weight than I would or could. It was my turn to be impressed.

For the Camino is not that hard. Rather than the forty-pound pack that he would have to carry, I’m getting by with twenty pounds tops. The Camino—and here I mean the Camino Frances, the French Way, the most popular route to Santiago de Compostela in Spain--has so many pilgrims there is quite an informal support system all along. You just need a sleeping bag: there will be a bed somewhere, and there will be coffee and food and snacks and dinner, and there will be markets and people with food stands along the way. So you just need a change of clothing and some water and a guidebook and a few other things. Twenty pounds, in fact, is a bit luxurious on my part; this time I am planning to take a tablet and keyboard, two pounds’ weight that I did without last time. (This time I want to do more writing along the way.)

–

Departure is drawing nigh, and in that manner my Lent is a sort of feeble image of my Lord’s: he too was walking in training, or at least training his disciples, towards the event that Saint Luke literally calls “his departure”: the cross and all that follows. At the end of walking last time, I sensed I had traveled unknowingly in the shadow of Jesus’ own walking to the cross. So this year, when Lent ends, I launch into another walk to the cross—maybe. Who knows? The meaning this time may be quite different.

I think the closer we get to the liturgical life of the church, the closer its patterns become the patterns of our life. You too, dear reader, are “walking” towards Jesus’ “departure,” which is your own sharing in his life (which was his sharing in our life). It can happen without literal walking, of course. Whatever your life, it is a sharing of a walk with Jesus. Then along comes Easter, the explosion of new life into our old world. But Easter is not the end of walking. Having risen from the dead, Jesus keeps going—for famous instance, on the road to Emmaus with two disciples, walking and talking.

Such happens to us also. After the deprivation-walk of Lent, there is the great fullness of the walk of Easter. Let us keep on with our Lord, wherever we are and whatever the season. 

—

Out & About. What is the purpose of Jesus’ incarnation? It is to restore the possibility of friendship of us with each other and offer friendship with himself. This is the thesis of chapter 5 of A Post-Covid Catechesis, which I will be talking about on Tuesday, March 19, at St. Stephen’s Church in Sherman, Texas, at 6 p.m., and also on Wednesday, March 20, at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Dallas at 6:30 p.m. In each case the talk is preceded by soup—no sign-up required.

Looking far ahead: The next Good Books & Good Talk seminar will be on Sunday, June 2, at 5pm, on Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro.

On the Web. M. Anthony Mills writes: “federal regulation is not always the most appropriate way to deal with the consequences of technological change. Nor is regulation the only option.” He reminds us of President George W. Bush’s Council on Bioethics that, over several years, engaged in “public deliberation about emerging technologies that may contribute to human fourishing but also pose serious ethical questions about freedom, dignity, and even what it means to be human.” He argues that we need something like that today to provide us with “the moral resources needed to grapple with the challenges and opportunities” of Artificial Intelligence. https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/a-presidents-council-on-artificial-intelligence

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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