British Evasion #8, August 5, 2015

British Evasion #8

Today I want to take a bit of a break from my reflections on place and give just a snippet from one of the courses I am taking while here at Oxford.

The course is taught by Revd Dr Cally Hammond and is on the life and theology of St Augustine, the person who has had perhaps the greatest intellectual influence on Christianity aside from St Paul.

Augustine is most famous for two quotes -- both from his memoir "The Confessions".  The first comes as a kind of prayer of confession to God right at the beginning of the book and foreshadows for the reader what a wandering journey Augustine's journey will be: "Our hearts are restless, until they find rest in you."  The other comes later on, when the foreshadowing is past and the reader has some real sense of what a cad Augustine really was. It too is a prayer, he said he prayed along the broken road to faith -- "LORD, make me chaste -- but not yet."

For that prayer Augustine is extraordinary.  He is extraordinary, not so much for having prayed it, for many people have prayed the same; but for having had the guts to admit it, for very few would dare to do that. I know I wouldn't -- if I were ever to have prayed such a thing.

It's the guts of it, and partially the prurient curiosities of its readers have made "The Confessions" a classic.

Two images from Dr Hammond's class capture the Augustine journey -- or at least what we have projected on to it. One is from I don't know where, but is a little trashy and comic book heroic, showing Augustine tanned and presumably toned and with very blue eyes -- strange for an African. Dr Hammond compared this image to that of James Bond, who Raymond Chandler once said is the man every man wants to be and every woman wants to sleep with.  That's all mythic, of course, whether it be about Bond or Augustine; but it's part of the allure. And the allure with Augustine is the fact that his memoir leaves just enough unsaid that we can and have filled in the rest with all the seediness our prurient minds can possibly imagine.  We do this, then we say, "If someone like this can grow up and become a saint, then perhaps there's hope for me yet." 

And I suppose that was basically Augustine's point.

The other image Dr Hammond gave us comes from another time, another (and much better) artist, and is a depiction of another, much later moment in Augustine's journey toward sainthood.  The painter is Sandro Botticelli and the work is his fresco "Saint Augustine" painted in 1480.  This is the Augustine grown up, settled down, surrendered to faith in Christ, and now become a bishop -- Augustine of all people.  He is in his study, his mitre rests at his right elbow while books and other instruments of learned knowledge surround him.  These are artifacts from the journey, signposts of knowledge (scientia) which led him to wisdom (sapentia).  His right hand caresses his bosom; this too has meaning -- perhaps the ultimate meaning for Augustine. His heart has finally found rest, and found it in God.  Now he gazes upward toward whatever else is to come, toward the beautific vision.

The prodigal son has come home.  The old man, once young, is dead; the new man, now old, is made new.  This is the arrival of the life of the saint. And I want to leave it right there -- frozen in the beauty of Boticelli's depiction.

Yet, something nags at me deeply, something a close female friend and someone who always brings an interesting light to things said to me a few weeks back when I told her I would be taking this course on Augustine while in Oxford. "Augustine," she said, "did you know there is a novel written from the perspective the woman he dismissed -- his son's mother."

She was talking about Augustine's mistress and the mother of his son Theodatus, a woman who Augustine clearly loved, but who he felt he ultimately had to leave behind in order to go on to become a Christian. And no, I did not know that.  Well, maybe I had heard something about it, but I had never really paused and given it thought. Never read it.  Never read her account. Never heard her story. In fact, I don't even know her name. I don't know it because in all the pages of "The Confessions" Augustine never once mentions it -- never once mentions the name of the mother of his only child.

It unsettles me. It bothers me that I have never heard what she had to say about all that Augustine confessed, about all that God is said to have done in his life, about all that God is said to have done or not done in her own.  Like I said, it nags at me. I want to know why Augustine left her name out.  Out of shame?  Out of protection?  And whose protection? I want to know.  And most especially I want to know it from her perspective. I want to know what she has to say.  But that is not possible -- not really, but only in fiction like the novel my friend spoke of. No, the woman herself, whoever she was, is silent.

So, tonight I am thinking it is proper to add one more image to those Dr Hammond gave to us of Augustine. This is an image, not of him but of her, the woman who loved him and gave birth for him but was turned out for the sake of the church. This is an image of her.

And what is that image, how is it possible to have it since we don't know who she was or even what she was named?  The image I have chosen is simply an empty niche, a placeholder, a vacant reminder that she belongs in this story also, and that she has something to say to us also -- even in her absence.  Perhaps especially in her absence.