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

On the Camino: April Fools

A plane flight, a train ride, a local bus, and finally a bus that connected the two places once a day, and I was there: Roncesvalles, Spain, at an alberque (pilgrim hostel, this one dating to the Middle Ages) with I guess another hundred or so fellow pilgrims on the Way of Saint James. It was cold and rainy. By supper it was snowing. By morning there had been sufficient snow, and the temperature had stayed below freezing long enough, that there were a few inches of the heavy white stuff everywhere.

It was Friday, April 1, and you know what I thought God was saying.

It does snow in the mountains, of course. But how ironic, and how unusual even to the locals, to have snow at this time of year. It snowed on and off all day. The world was black and white. My eyeglasses, which have transitional lenses, were dark even though the sun did not shine. I walked alone, then in company, then alone. Up and down hill, through villages and countryside, past horse farms and children playing, under branches that dropped their loads on our heads, trying to avoid (since the temperature was close to freezing) the rivulets of water making puddles and mud pits along the way: we walked and talked.

The first or second or third question was always: Why are you walking the Camino?

There was E. from Italy. Her son walked the Camino in 2015. Although I guessed what she would answer, I asked how he is now. She said he died in 2020, of cancer, in his 20s. So she was walking where he had walked, walking in some sense with him. 

There was B. from Germany. She had been in an airplane crash in the late ‘90s. Her husband was killed, she went though years of recovery. Now married with a teenaged son, she was walking to sort things out.

There was H. from Germany. Her partner of many years had announced, just in February, that she was leaving her for someone else. She was walking in tears, in grief.

There was S. from Germany. He had just finished a master’s degree in theology. We enjoyed a couple of days walking together. He has a new job awaiting him after the Camino, but also has things to sort out with God.

And then there was V. from Texas. He always says he’s from Texas, rather than the U.S. or calling himself a “norte americano,” but one hospitalier (the friendly man responsible for the church-related albergue in Estella) said he thought the U.S. was a great country, because it understands the importance of being a nation rather than separate parts. V. may start saying he’s from the U.S., lest he give encouragement to separatism. Why is he walking? He gives different answers: because his wife died close to ten years ago, because he is wondering what God wants from him in the rest of his life, because he wants to learn to trust God even when he does not know where he will spend the night. Mostly, though, it is about friendship. He is learning both to make friends and to turn them over to God. And to do that, he thinks, is at once the simplest and yet the hardest thing in life—harder, in fact, than dealing with sore shoulders and feet blisters.

On the other hand, he thinks that to get a glass of Spanish wine for about two dollars makes everything easier.

 

Catechesis and Training

Ephraim Radner, priest and professor at Wycliffe College and honorary canon of the diocese of Dallas, writing in “First Things” in January: “Catechesis is today the main task of our Christian communities…. Catechesis is the micro-climate of patience, and patience is what opens us to God’s own time and timing, to what God gives.”

I was surprised by how many people told me they had taken a look at one or more of the catechesis videos I mentioned last week. They are here:  https://edod.org/resources/articles/a-post-pandemic-catechesis/   I think, also, that they are good material for study classes, growth groups, home fellowships, and the like.

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He was jogging north; I was walking south with my loaded, 17-pound backpack. “Are you training?" he asked. He had earpods; I assumed he was talking on the phone. But no, he was talking to me. I said yes, that I was going to take a long pilgrimage in Spain. He was excited; he knew about the Camino. “I’m going to walk the JMT,” he said, ”and I need to start training for it.” The JMT stands for the John Muir Trail. I said that his trek would be much harder than mine; that he’d have to take a tent—at which he grinned. “No, actually I’m planning to do it cowboy-style, just sleep on the ground and pull a cover over me.”

His delight and friendliness encouraged me, and I guess I encouraged him in turn. I’ve often thought, though, that none of us is ever just training. The meaning of what we do is never just in the future.

Children, for instance, are not the church of the future. If they are baptized, they are part of the church of the present. Just so, my walking over this fascinating city of Dallas is not only getting ready to walk over a thousand-year-old path in Spain. It is a meaningful thing to do right now.

And Lent is not a preparation for Easter. And this life is not a preparation for the life to come. The value of this life—like that of Lent, and of children, and of walking around Dallas—is here, now, and always.  

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Mr. Michael Ossorgin, tutor at St. John’s College, complained ironically about the highway signs that said, “Courtesy Pays.” He said: “Courtesy is good in its own right.” 

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Also in that January issue of “First Things,” Wilfred McClay writes on the importance of memorization. When, say, a prayer is memorized, it “becomes one’s own, alive in one’s mind and spirit…. It is ours, more fully than the books on our shelf.” And when a prayer is “shared by heart by many” it contributes to forming “the soul of a people. This is why we need to pay more attention to what we are putting into our memories, and those of our children.”

So I thought I would start to include a bit of memorization here at the end of my blogs. This first one is one of my favorite prayers for evening, and it is short. Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of thy only Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. 

Hey, if you memorize it, you can say it while you’re walking.

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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.: