A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend a retreat at Laity Lodge on the topic of “Attending to God in an Age of Distraction.” Since then, I’ve written a bit about the musical artist for the weekend, Claire Holland, here, and one of the two speakers for the weekend, Alan Jacobs, here. The second speaker for the weekend was James K. A. Smith, whose ideas and writings I blog about often (just search You Are What You Love in the tag section). While I have more to say about the broader content of Jacobs and Smith’s presentations, I thought I’d mention something particular to Smith’s approach first.
Much of what Smith had to say was rooted in his research and understanding of Augustine, one of the most significant thinkers of the early church (4th and 5th centuries AD). (Aside: One of my favorite little moments of the retreat was when, intentionally or not, Smith referred to the saint as his best friend. Because that’s what happens when you spend time with someone, reading their thoughts and insights.) Smith has been working with Augustine for a while now (you get good evidence of it in You Are What You Love) and is looking to publish a book on Augustine’s thoughts next year.
Last year, Smith spent some time “walking in the footsteps” of Augustine thanks to financial support from Calvin College’s Alumni Association. Smith wrote a short article about his travel experience for Spark, the school’s magazine. It is clear both in the 2017 article and the 2018 retreat that Smith sees Augustine as a “saint for our times.” From the article:
Despite being a citizen of ancient north Africa, Augustine was well-acquainted with the demons that plague us in late modern America: the pressure to succeed; the driving ambition to climb social and professional ladders; the disorienting thrill of so-called “freedom”; the anxieties that beset our quests for power and pleasure; and the persistent frustration of foisting inordinate expectations upon our accomplishments and possessions. Like us, Augustine knew the exasperation of looking for love in all the wrong places.
From there, Smith writes of Augustine’s own tension-filled existence of being “on the road” from the City of Man to the City of God, which is a key reason why Smith holds to the image of Augustine’s life (and later biography) as a kind of “road trip” or “quest story.” From the end of the article:
Augustine not only helps us find home, he also helps us be brutally honest about the Christian’s ongoing penchant to run away. “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it” as the hymn writer put it (captured with just the right melancholy tone in Sufjan Stevens’ rendition). Even when we are in Christ, the pull and tug of the mythical “open road” can lull us into thinking the grass is greener elsewhere, that freedom is the absence of obligation, that the goods of creation could be a substitute for the Creator. But Augustine’s honesty about his own continued struggles with ambition and vanity are oddly encouraging. They remind us that we can never reach the end of God’s grace, that the Father is always waiting for us at the end of the road, ready to forgive and throw a feast. His grace is the fetter that sets us free.
Smith had much to say about Augustine throughout the retreat weekend, particularly about the saint’s idea of rest as it relates to joy, focus, and Sabbath. I hope to come back around to at least a couple of his assertions over the next few days, particularly as I prepare for the beginning of another school year.
You can read the rest of Smith’s “travelogue” of his time “on the road” with Augustine here.
(image from frommers.com)
One of the two speakers at my recent Laity Lodge weekend was Alan Jacobs. I’m not quite sure how I first heard of him. I know that I read his wonderful The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction a good while before I knew him as “Alan Jacobs,” if that makes any sense. I did get to enjoy one group meal with him, dinner on the second day, I believe. It was good to ask him about his Harry Potter reviews and to talk movies in general with the whole table.
This past weekend I spent some time on retreat at Laity Lodge outside of Leakey, TX. On the final night of the retreat, the artist-in-residence for the weekend, Claire Holley, played a concert in the Cody Center. Before the concert, though, we had our regular dinner (and by regular I mean consistently wonderful: that night it was steak and a bounty of delicious sides). As can often happen at such a retreat, my friends and I actually got to eat with and talk to Claire. It was a great time talking about music and influences and how the weekend had gone for each of us. I asked her about the content of her upcoming concert, if we could expect any covers. She quickly hinted at two: one with roots in jazz and another reggae song that would probably catch us by surprise. She started with the reggae song: a bare and beautiful rendition of Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.”
Long have I considered myself a zombie guy. The sense of civilization lost, of a rag-tag group of survivors trying to make things right (or at least stop things from going so very, very wrong), the sobering irreversibility of so much lost and nothing gained. Which is why I was surprised to find myself so enthralled by Justin Cronin’s The Passage a few summers ago. Much like the story, I can’t quite call it a vampire story, though that’s exactly what it is. It’s like the movie Contagion but with real blood-letting consequences. I had a daily lunch-date with Amy and Wolgast and their attempts at understanding what was happening to the world around them. It was a story so good that I didn’t feel any need for a sequel (even though the story of Amy obviously begged for one). Then came The Twelve. It moved the story in an interesting direction, not-the-least-of-which was a jump in time to a frontier-like picture of life after the virals all but conquered North America. The novel’s climactic conflagration cemented in my mind Cronin as a master of plot and timing. Then came The City of Mirrors. I bought it as soon as it came out but couldn’t get into it. And so I put it aside . . . until last week.
Scratch the surface of the 96% Rotten Tomatoes approval rating for First Reformed and you’ll find frustration and discontent from those hoping for a more faith-filled movie about a small church pastor trying to make sense of the ever-bleaker world around him. 
Space Enough, and Time 