Still walking, still on the road… I haven’t yet arrived” (s. 169).

I’ve been walking with St. Augustine now for quite a while. I started back in 1995 when I started full-time teaching in the Core Humanities Seminar Program, introducing all Villanova first year students to the life of the mind for a college student, and especially the Augustinian mission of Villanova.

Curiously enough, it was not something I quite encountered as a VU student in the early ‘80s; I had heard of St. Augustine, but I had never read him. Luckily, by 1992 the University had wised up to its treasure of the thought and role model of St. Augustine, and all freshmen were now encountering him through the new seminar program for incoming students, the Core Humanities Program. As a returning new Ph.D., I had the chance to teach in this program as a postdoc. So, in a way, I was getting on the road with St. Augustine.

As a new young teacher, I discovered Augustine to be surprisingly good company to walk with. He cared about teaching, effective rhetoric, language, and questions, lots of questions. As a new Ph.D. in literature, I was thrilled to discover that he seemed to know about deconstruction (trendy in the nineties!) by talking about signs in language, and their importance in comprehension (De Doctrina Christiana). Needless to say, he felt surprisingly modern to me!

The more I read Confessions, especially with an eye to how best to introduce it to freshmen, I found him to be walking alongside my students. Like them, he was bright but not always eager to study, ambitious for success, and concerned to please his parents. He went to shows and cried at the sad bits, hung out with the wrong crowd sometimes, and even changed his major (imagine the phone call home, I say to my students, “Hi Dad, I think I want to change my major from business to philosophy!”).

Like them, he wanted to be happy, and imagined success would make him happy; and was then surprised to discover that it didn’t make him happy. He became less happy and more anxious than a drunk beggar on the street (conf. 6.6.9-10). That feeling made him try a different path. It is a feeling the students understand as well. They understand the tolle lege moment too—the mysterious voice chanting in the garden air, and the weepy young Augustine following its directive, as our curious young students likewise hope for a voice or sign to know which way to go.

When my daughter transferred to VU, we encountered a wonderful Augustinian phrase that the Admissions office had started to use: “Become what you are not yet.” It comes from Augustine’s sermon 169. Imagine my own amazement as I discovered Augustine the road buddy, exhorting his readers to “keep on walking” (s. 169.18). If you focus on the past, you’re stuck, he says. “Remember Lot’s wife” (Luke 17:32).

Our new students decorate their dorm rooms with so many photos of the past they left behind in coming to college—once again, they understand when he warns them about “going sluggishly” and “getting stuck” (maybe they don’t quite envision themselves like Lot’s wife, a pillar of salt!). They know the dangers and melancholy of too much looking backwards; they understand when he urges them, “Always add some more, always keep walking, always forge ahead” (s. 169.18). And despite the slogans of self-confidence and self-pride that their schooling has inculcated, they are excitedly challenged by his exhortation to “Always be dissatisfied with what you are, if you want to arrive at what you are not yet” (s. 169.18).

At the age of sixty, I had agreeably arrived at a certain satisfaction with what I was. I was a decent person, a committed teacher and scholar, and a loving parent. I was happy enough to put my students on the road with St. Augustine, but not looking to be on the road myself. So imagine my surprise this past October when I awoke to find myself in a hospital bed, unresponsive in my arm and leg, sluggish and stuck, and surrounded by pleasantly surprised people, surprised that I was awake and moving more than I had for a month, or simply surprised I was alive.

Oddly enough, it happened, apparently, on the road—a tree and a collision I still don’t remember and a branch through the windshield that left my brain and my chest reeling from what hit them. When I woke up, approximately a month later, I was informed by nurses, doctors, and my husband that it was a miracle that I was still alive.

As I awoke and started piecing events together, and started physical therapy on my sluggish leg, I once again found Augustine walking beside me. Around the time of his birthday in November, I seemed to hear him urging me to “keep walking,” even as my leg and shoulder buckled in protest. As I contemplated what I used to be able to do so simply and easily, I found him whispering: “don’t stop on the road, don’t turn around and go back, don’t wander off the road…” (s. 169.18). With a wink, he reminded me of the tortoise and the hare, except now it was the “lame man” (the role I was stepping into) and the sprinter who goes off the road and loses ground.

The obvious challenge then is walking, especially for a person facing a huge loss in terms of walking and moving. However, Augustine, my road buddy, had thrown in the real challenge: “Always be dissatisfied with what you are, if you want to arrive at what you are not yet.” There is no surprise that I was feeling dissatisfied with what I was: largely confined to a bed or chair, little ability to move independently, waiting for meals to arrive that I still had challenges eating.

But the real challenge lay in the “become what you are not yet” part, especially since all my visitors were so busy telling me what a miracle I was. What perplexed my mind was how does one act if one is a miracle? What is my purpose—what should I do? I had survived. Was that enough? And Augustine, walking solidly beside me, said no. “If you are thinking about the things that are to come, forget what’s past, don’t look back at it, or you may stick there where you turn to look back.”

In the same sermon, Augustine spends a bit of time thinking about the roles of Martha and Mary in the Lazarus story in the Gospel. As I have puzzled over my new life as a miracle, I have particularly fretted over how I should now be useful, since all the usual usefulness seemed shut off to me. Thanks to Augustine’s insight, I suddenly realized I was much more of a Martha than I thought. The time will come, he notes, when the dishes will all be done, and the eating will be finished, but Mary, as Jesus points out, has chosen the better part: “she has chosen to contemplate” (s. 169.17). So once again, Augustine is walking beside me at this crazy time. He’s telling me don’t fret if I can’t be a Martha as usual, but channel my inner Mary to contemplate instead. Become what I am not yet: a phrase which takes on a hopeful, curiously encouraging tone at this time when I am not as I was and it’s not clear what might be possible! But it is clear it is not about simply going back. I, with St. Augustine’s guidance, am being called to something greater.

And his tone is not one of acquiescence – sitting down and resignedly accepting my new limitations – but one of hope and challenge. If I am “thinking about the things to come,” the road may not look the same, but I am on the road, nonetheless. It’s what I need to hear. The dissatisfaction means I am not ready for simple resignation, that I haven’t given up.

So often, my students and I marvel at the vitality of Augustine’s writing, which shows a lively mind at work. Augustine reminds us: “keep walking, we’re not there yet,” and I feel now my mind working alongside his. Keep walking indeed—to arrive at what I am still becoming. Thank you for that reminder, Augustine, my road buddy!