Diary of a Theologian

It’s just a chestnut tree, one of thousands of trees on the Camino, but scientists have determined its age to be some 850 years. It takes several people, arms stretched wide, to reach around it. It is old and gnarly, wounded yet still alive and grounded. You see it, you learn a bit about it, and your own life gets put in a new perspective.

The obvious thought is true. This tree, on the principal route and about 100 kilometers out from Santiago, has seen millions upon millions of pilgrims. Our lives, freighted often with anxiety, are but a passing day for this old tree.

It’s in the village of Ramil; Google “Ramil chestnut tree” and it comes up. They say it is as much photographed as anything on the Camino. This is my picture. It seems to me as awesome as anything Job saw when God finally spoke to him.

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On the Web. When I lived in the midst of the crowds of New York City I often wondered over God’s ability to have everyone’s life in his hand. Something similar happened while I was walking the Camino: not that I was surrounded by millions of people, but that I got to know so many people’s stories so quickly. It is a marvel, and I ponder it in a short essay now up on the Human Life Review website. https://humanlifereview.com/god-has-all-of-us-in-mind/

Brief Book Report. Leonard Cohen’s song “Suzanne” has made it into my writing and preaching on Good Friday. Cohen, an alienated Jew, often moved from the erotic to the sacred; so from Suzanne’s “perfect body” (and yours) we go to Jesus’ and his watching from his “lonely wooden tower” which, methinks, can be taken as the cross. In a new book, Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai, Matti Friedman tells a story largely unknown, of Cohen going to Israel and singing to troops in the midst of the Yom Kippur war of 1973. “Who by fire” is a description of God in the Jewish liturgy, and it is woven into one of his famous songs. 

In the end it seems to me that Cohen is an imperfect prophet who nonetheless opens up pathways to deeper faith. He, as it were, takes the Song of Songs with seriousness. And in “You Want it Darker,” discussed in the final chapter of the book, Cohen takes Genesis 22, Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, with dread seriousness. (For the latter, look for Rabbi Jonathan Sacks speaking on the song on YouTube.) You might find this book interesting. You can find it in the Dallas Public Library.

Looking ahead. The next Good Books & Good Talk seminar will be Sunday, September 18, at Incarnation in Dallas. Anyone who reads the book is welcome. What’s the book? A rather obscure title by a reclusive English don, called The Hobbit.

About halfway through the Camino, another pilgrim pondered with me the rush that we saw in some people to get to the end as soon as they could. There were many who wanted to cover maximal ground every single day. They were keen on getting to the end. This other pilgrim thought it a shame. The Camino is not about getting to Santiago, he said; it’s about the journey there.

I learned that if you want to walk, you have to look around. This isn’t natural to me. I’ve written before about how I got lost one day because I was so focused on where I was placing my feet—there was mud everywhere that day, following heavy rain overnight—that I missed a turn somewhere. I had been looking down continually. I should have been looking up and around.

You can learn to notice what’s around. As the sun starts rising, look at the colors change on the ground and the fields. Pause to pull out a camera to capture a flower up close or a panorama stretching to infinity. Open your mouth and say, Good morning, birds! Good morning, cows! 

Walk more slowly, and you can notice how your feet are feeling, and your heart. Those are two very important—perhaps the most important—parts of your body. How is your heart today? And how are your feet?

Stop to drink a bit of water. Take off your pack and put away your gloves and hat. The day warms. Already it is not the day it was just an hour ago.

I went off-trail one day because I saw a church to the south and a dirt road going to it. It meant I would get to my destination later—perhaps even an hour later. But you never know what you’ll find in a church, or what you might want to pray. This church turned out to be locked, but often what you think is your destination is only a means to some other experience. 

So it happened: When I was returning on that banked dirt road, coming towards me were about 30 sheep with a man in front and a man at the rear. There was not room for them and me on the same path, so I went to the side and squatted, to take a picture. The leading sheep saw me and came my way, and all the others followed. I stood up. The leading sheep startled and moved away from me, pushing themselves against the far bank of the road—and all the others followed. They passed by with many a sheep-voice-comment about this strange fellow. Then, with a clear path, I went on my way. 

Recently Father Thomas Kincaid preached it: Jesus is both the way and the destination. Put that in Spanish and you see that Jesus is not just the pioneer who has gone before us; he is the Camino itself.

Don’t think about today as a preparation for tomorrow. Take your life at a walking pace, and who knows? You may run into some sheep.

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Out & About. This Sunday, June 5, is the “Good Books & Good Talk” seminar on Louisa Mae Alcott’s Little Men. We meet at 5 p.m. in room 205 of the education building at Incarnation, Dallas, for 90 minutes. No reservations needed.

There was a glitch for a few days, but the book is back on line: A Post-COVID Catechesis by yours truly. Go to wipfandstock.com and search for Victor Lee Austin. Or just go to Behemoth (i.e. Amazon).