From the Ashes

The subtle breeze carries with it a million tiny white blossoms. They float down from the sky in light showers, then brush along the roads before clumping up at the foot of trees and lampposts. It's a wedding celebration come down from the heavens, a renewal of a wondrously unbreakable vow sealed in a distant epoch with a bright arc of light. And so the long wintry veil has been lifted up to reveal a cool, teary-eyed beauty beaming behind. Her morning dew refreshes a great rejoicing Earth whose hushed hymn sings of a kingly and faithful Sustainer. The prism of evening mist constructs over and over an evolving and infinite stained glass. By day the stony walls that make good neighbors watch as ivy climbs from its brown, obeisant dormancy to join the great song.

Welcome to the English spring.

It's a vision of tranquility which the events of the past week would never have foretold. The clouds of ash spewed from the mouth of an Icelandic volcano spread out across the North Atlantic and left the traveling man and his flying machines utterly paralyzed for nearly a week. But the winds began to change and sent the dark blanket of earthly marrow elsewhere. Deo gratias!

I'm now back in Oxford, just in time for Trinity Term to begin. I would not be entirely honest if I said that returning here and leaving behind the United States once again was an easy thing. Spending time with friends and family for the longest period of time since the summer before college left me craving more. Enjoying the comforts of my American home was highly addictive (think Target, In-N-Out, ceiling fans, free refills). But those things will have to wait, and I've had to pray very, very ardently to be reconciled with that fact. Now is the time to buckle down, to reapply the proverbial nose to the proverbial grindstone (which is a remarkably grotesque idiom, is it not?). It's time to finish what I began more than three months ago.

I have been thinking a great deal about that enterprise, in fact. "Studying abroad" is a term that I thought I fully understood before embarking on this adventure. Yet there is a load of irony in it that I never expected to find. First of all, the learning I'm engaged in is of a much broader character than mere academics. More even than intellectual challenge. It is a full-scale spiritual odyssey. And to progress in that journey--that pilgrimage--I've had to come face-to-face with my doubts. What was nestled deeply is rising to the surface to be seen, to be acknowledged, to be assaulted. I've had to trust in the perfection of the Lord, the perfection of His will and His Word. Reliance, reliance, reliance, dependence, deference, submission, surrender, reliance, reliance, reliance. Not a catchy mantra, admittedly, but these are the things I am really learning about during my "study abroad" experience. History is a fine subject for the mind to play with, to pierce and mull over and explore and sketch. Ah, but even the mind grows weary of its joyful play when the soul is troubled.

And, second of all, the "abroad" half of the term is endowed with its own aspect of irony. Physically, yes, I'm abroad, but being abroad has only convinced me of just how much I love my country and my people. It sounds sappy, and even I, who drips with sap at the mere suggestion of applying pen to paper, am a little uncomfortable with the degree of sappiness, but I just can't deny that my heart is tightly tethered to America. It is not a utopia, to be sure. Evil lurks there just as it does the world over. But it is not a dystopia either. And no matter the state of the garden it is where my roots have taken hold.

Keep a-readin' this here blog for updates. There will be a-plenty. (Forgive me the faults and sap, and thank you, you dedicated few, for reading.)