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

The Change We Don't See

When I moved to New York City to go to seminary, I learned to use the subway. In those days the fare was sixty cents, paid for by a token bought from a clerk. The cars were dirty and graffiti-encased. The announcements were unintelligible. You could be standing on the platform for five minutes, then ten, then fifteen, even more, and not know whether your train was coming or not. The lack of information was immense.

A couple of decades later, returning to the city, the fare was two bucks, paid for by a card you bought from a machine. The cars were clean, usually, and the announcements were clear and intelligible, usually. Electronic signs were in the process of being installed; these signs would tell when the next train was coming, which train it was, and how long it would be. Information and technology, fueled by increasing wealth in the city, had turned a Dantesque picture of the Inferno into something useful and, well, somewhat pleasant.

The subway was also, in those halcyon days, a refuge from the new smartphones. Phones did not work underground: the cell towers could not be reached through the metal, stone, dirt, water lines, and everything else that lay below the ground but above the trains. This has now changed. I did nothing to my phone on a recent visit to New York, but nonetheless it was able to pick up email and load webpages during most of my underground trips. 

And of course, I looked at it.

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It is so easy to do, to pick up one’s phone and see if you have any messages, to check the latest news, to do all the things we do now to fill in the times that used to be empty of activity. What did I do in the old days of waiting for a train, or riding one? I read something: a magazine perhaps, a newspaper (people were adept at folding the paper to make it readable while sitting in a narrow seat), a novel. I remember once reading a Hemingway novel through to the end on a particularly lengthy subway afternoon (as I recall, I had many rides that day).

The change in the subway is a figure that reveals much about the change that has happened to us. Go back, and we’ll see difficulties in the life without technology. Move towards our present day, we’ll see its benefits. Look squarely at where we are, we see lots of problems. People aren’t reading through longer things, nor are they thinking through larger matters. Reactions are quick and shallow. We are always picking up the pocket thing, the smart device that makes us dumb.

Two lines come to mind. First is from T. S. Eliot, who describes us as “distracted from distraction by distraction.” Second is from an older book: “Be still then, and know that I am God.”

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Readers Write. Last week’s blog about theology on the diamond brought some interesting replies. One person sent me a layout of the field from the viewpoint of a little league coach: the toughest kid, for instance, is catcher, and the best kid is shortstop. Another worked out a theology that ended up leaving earthly baseball behind: Jesus is the umpire you plow over on an unsuccessful attempt to steal home; despite his bleeding, he still makes the call in your favor—despite your undeserving character! In this (eschatological?) baseball everything turns out to be stacked in your favor, and all you need to do is accept it.

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On the Web. My latest blog post for the Human Life Review is “Against Usefulness”: https://humanlifereview.com/against-usefulness/

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Out & About. This Sunday, June 18, I am preaching at St. James’ Church in Dallas at 8 and 10 a.m., and at 9 a.m. I am teaching a class on grief and loss. 

Sunday, June 25, I am preaching at St. Matthew’s Cathedral at 9 and 11:15 a.m.

Please note the date (and start 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. There is a thread here, in that apparently one of baseball's many statistics is known as the index of self-destructive acts.

 

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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