Distractions and Delays in Identity (Confessions, Bk 5-7)

Inevitably to speak about identity, one often hears of “journeys” and “roads”. It is an apt image to a point.

We’d all like to think our identities are going somewhere.

We’d all like to think that there is some kind of a path, or at least some sign posts pointing us in the right direction. Such imagery conjures up open roads and exciting horizons, something akin to “Route 66” , where you drive on a clear and open road as Rascal Flatt’s “Life is a Highway” blares endlessly on repeat.

Yet in my own attempts to navigate the overwhelming and bewildering landscape of 21st century life, I have rarely sense the destination to be clear, or the roads to be “ well traveled” at all. Instead, it feels more like being dropped in the middle of a forest in a valley. You have little perspective on where you are, it takes a lot of work to clear the tree lines momentarily, and when you do, what you see doesn’t often help you when you find yourself back among the trees.

For that reason, I am comforted to know that Augustine did not march along some clear and providentially ordained path, that traversed through the trees of identity in a straight line to sainthood.

Instead, Augustine chronicles the many distractions and delays in searching for his identity.

His own bewilderment at where he was, what he was doing, and why nothing he tried seemed to be helping. This window in Augustine’s life finds him at his most successful and most promising, but also at his most miserable. He is nearing the summit of success and yet he still can’t find that happiness he’s been looking for.

It’s enough to make anyone despair.

But God has been calling, and Augustine for all his distractions keeps picking up the sounds of God’s voice. This episode will contain the main scenes that Augustine recalls now as pivotal. The moment he meets Ambrose. The beggar on the street who disrupts his vocation. The failed attempt at sustained revelation through his practice of meditation. Each scene offers something for our own journeys.

They are the sign posts we’ve been looking for if we can listen to Augustine.

They, in their own way, have reverberated down through history, and continue to call out to us today with the voice of God that Augustine himself once heard. There are certain paths, if we follow them, that will wreck us. There are certain ways, subtle and sometimes difficult to see, that can lead us out of the trees, if only we pay attention.

This is our final episode before we’ll take a couple week hiatus for Christmas, but we’ll look forward to finishing Augustine’s journey in the new year.

Thank you as ever for listening and journeying with. We’ll see you again in 2022!