Beside You?

I am out running on the Katy trail—I sometimes think “running” should be written thus, in scare quotes; I don’t want you to think of it as serious running. The other runners always pass me: I never pass them. Anyway, it is early in the morning, the sun is not quite up, a few birds are singing, occasionally a plane flies overhead; it is rather quiet. Scarce are the runners on the trail.

I am alone and I hear someone coming up behind me. That’s not unusual: as I said, other runners often catch up to me and pass. But this person just stays there, slightly behind me. I turn to look at him or her.

There is no one there.

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It’s happened before—in Denver at Christmas, for instance. I think it’s an illusion of sound slightly muffled by my hooded sweatshirt; maybe it’s my own footfalls that I hear, maybe the rattle of my keys. Whatever it is, I first think that someone has come up behind me, and then that that someone is about to pass me but never does. Then I look, and I’m alone.

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  1. S. Eliot has these lines in “The Waste Land”: Who is the third who walks always beside you? / When I count, there are only you and I together / But when I look ahead up the white road / There is always another one walking beside you / Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded / I do not know whether a man or a woman / -But who is that on the other side of you?

In a note, Eliot remarks upon reading accounts of Antarctic explorers who kept over-counting how many there were in their party. We might also think of the two disciples in Luke 24: it’s after the resurrection, but they don’t know of the resurrection yet. They’re walking home, saddened by the tragic events in Jerusalem, when Jesus comes up beside them. They do not know it is Jesus.

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You might be walking with me, or with someone else. You’re going along, and suddenly the Other One is with you. Where did he come from? How is it that he’s beside you? I don’t know, but I do know that I’m glad he’s there.

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Out & About. Wed., Jan. 30, is the first session of a three-credit Nashotah House course that I’m teaching in Dallas. Any one interested in a seminary-level course in “Christian Theological Anthropology” (Christian teaching about the human being) is welcome to join. You have to sign up through Nashotah; I will be glad to provide a syllabus and a link with instructions. We’ll meet on Wednesdays from 6:30 to 9 p.m. through early May.

The weekend of Feb. 2 and 3 I will be preaching at All Souls’ Church in Oklahoma City. Their Eucharists are Saturday at 5:30, and Sunday at 8 and 10 a.m.

Sunday, Feb. 10, I’ll lead a discussion on Marilynne Robinson’s novel Gilead. If you haven’t read this, it is at once powerful and simple, full of frontier American faith and questions of morals and tradition and family and friends. The seminar, part of the Good Books & Good Talk series, meets at 6 p.m. at Incarnation in Dallas.

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.: