Getting Younger

   It was, I thought, the most important news of the week, which made me wonder why everyone wasn’t talking about it. On Wednesday, June 29, all South Koreans woke up a year or two younger than they had been the night before. What had happened was the government decided to eliminate a special way Koreans had of calculating their age. Under the traditional scheme, everyone was reckoned one year old when born, and on January 1 everyone became one year older. This way of reckoning age can no longer be used on official documents: like most everyone else in the world, South Koreans will now, officially, be born with the age of zero and gain a year not on January 1 but on their natal anniversary.

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   So I ran the numbers. Had my age been calculated in the traditional Korean way, on the morning of June 29 I would have gone from 69 to 67 years old. Not bad. And if, contrary to fact, I had been reckoned 67 in those South Korean terms, I would have awakened at age 65. Not bad at all.

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   At seminary I learned a wee bit about lunar calendars, which are based on the moon not the sun. The Jewish calendar, for instance, is lunar. I remember my liturgics professor paraphrasing something that a Jewish scholar or scribe or government official would be able to say. The problem with lunar calendars is that the lunar month is just 28½ days long. So year after year, the months come earlier vis-a-vis the sun. Over time, a month that used to be part of spring turns into a winter month. This is not tolerable! So what this designated scholar or scribe or governmental fellow was able to say was something like: “The crops have not yet come up and the days are too short and therefore I declare an intercalendary month.”

   That strikes me as real political power: To declare an extra month! 

   Imagine it’s getting close to Halloween, and you contemplate the chores that need to be done before Thanksgiving and Christmas, and you look at the economy and not enough widgets are in stock, and you think of all your unfinished projects of the year—and therefore you just declare it: an intercalendary month! Between Oct 31 and Nov 1, we’ll have an extra four weeks, just to catch up. Hey, I’m on board. President Biden, Pope Francis, whoever—if you can pull it off, you can count on my support.

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   Seriously, how old are we? The now-abandoned Korean system recognized that our life has gone on for about a year before we are born; there is some part of our life that’s already there before we first breathe oxygen. And there are other complications. The philosopher (and Italian scholar, a fluent writer) Robert Pogue Harrison has a little book, Juvenescence, which explores how none of us is any single age. Our biological age is not our psychological age, nor is it our social age. Everyone is young in some ways, old in others. And this is true of cultures, cities, artifacts, everything. Harrison’s judgment is that we are getting younger in many ways, and that is not an unmixed blessing. In any event, mere chronology is just part of the picture.

   How old is the risen Christ? Two thousand years? Thirty-three? A child? A sage? I suppose all those answers are true. And I suspect that somewhere in all this is a way to think through the relation of time and eternity.

   Even if I just keep thinking about being a year or two younger.

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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.

   This fall the “Good Books & Good Talk” seminars will be meeting at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Dallas. There will be three meetings, each on a Sunday at 5 p.m.: September 10, October 8, and November 26. People are welcome to come to any seminar that interests them; they are welcome to speak if they have read the book! For September 10, the book is Christopher Beha’s The Index of Self-Destructive Acts, the latest novel from the (now) editor of Harper’s who gave us What Happened to Sophie Wilder, which I know many of my readers have read. These seminars are unscripted conversations; I pose an opening question (there will be no lecture!) and participants try to think together about what the book means. The general theme of all the seminars is theological anthropology: How should we think about human life in light of Christian faith?


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/

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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.: