Weekend Hijinks

Here's a few photos of the weekend. Two good friends came in to Oxford, one from Dublin and the other from Edinburgh, and we met up with three others already in Oxford. It was an absolute blast.

Being touristy in St John's College. 

From left to right: Alice '08 (studying English in Harris Manchester, Oxford) , Megan '11 (studying politics this semester up in the U. of Edinburgh), Jen '11 (studying politics and history this semester in Mansfield College, Oxford), Jes-c '11 (studying all sorts of things this semester in University College Dublin), and moi.

Eating our sandwiches from the Alternative Tuck Shop outside the Bodleian Library (which is my daily lunchtime routine.) Jerry '11 (studying economics and philosophy for the entire year in Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford) was our sixth member.

Taking afternoon tea in the posh Randolph Hotel, across from the Ashmolean Museum.

I was especially fond of the scones, clotted cream (a strange dairy product), and strawberry preserves. What you can't see was the slobbering.

An Oxford Lesson on the Two Hedonisms

. . . for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
(Romans 14:17, NKJV)

I'm no pioneer, and Oxford is no frontier. If anything, I'm comfortably situated in what is one of the great anti-frontiers of the Old World. At its foundations this place is a medieval city, with its cobbled roads taking the same winding paths between walled colleges as they did 800 years ago.

But it's easy to feel sometimes as though Broad Street, neatly trimmed as it is with its old bookshops and pubs and the edifices of the great Bodleian Library, is a kind of Oregon Trail. You wander down its length and find a crossroads at Magdalen and Cornmarket and George. You're forced to make a decision, and all the while you're thinking, "Will I really be able to 'caulk the wagon and float' over that massive puddle I'm about to step into?"

OK, OK, I exaggerate. But it is true, though, that even in a place so grounded in history and so steeped in culture and learning as Oxford you can find yourself trying to reinvent the wheel or fashion a canteen out of cow intestines (which, conveniently, can probably be found in the Covered Market).

(I've gone too far, haven't I?)

Well, my point is, being away from home, and especially in another country entirely, necessitates growth. It inevitably means facing a certain kind of adversity and adapting to it (those are two very Latinate words, and I apologize; though in my defense, I'm not attempting to write poetry here).

As humans, we take varying stances on change. Sometimes we open our arms and embrace it, either by unfolding our once-stubborn arms or just keeping them wide open all the time. Or sometimes we keep our arms folded and forcefully shake our head at change, or maybe even shake a fist at it. Most of the time we do a combination of those things. But it's also human to face challenges by not facing them, by either denying that the challenges exist or self-medicating so that the feeling of change is felt only minimally.

Really, our world is full of promises of self-medication. Coffee, caffeine, alcohol, sedatives, junk food, bad music. We plug ourselves into an iPod, turn up music that is itself likely telling us to self-medicate by other methods, chug our Coke or coffee, eat our comfort food while plopped down in front of a TV that's piping profane and moronic things into our ears and flashing images of sex, consumption, and divisiveness into our eyes. When we're feeling blue, we reach for chocolate, or we turn on a movie. I don't mean to sound like some cultural critic, but I'm just saying that if you look around, and if you look at your own patterns, you see that we're all choosing over and over to sate our hunger and thirst with the products of the world.

This impulse is even stronger, I think, when you're away from home. We do things on vacation we would never do among friends and family. It's the old "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" line. Except that it's not just in Sin City (as if there isn't sin outside of Nevada!). Now, this isn't to say I'm having some wild time in Oxford, doing all sorts of things that I'm ashamed of. But something can be wrong even if it is mild and seemingly innocent.

It's wrong because our sustenance should come from the Spirit. As the verse way up there says, "the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." That means setting down the Cadbury milk chocolate bar (not that I've ever had any...) and picking up the Bible. It means logging out of Facebook and logging in to prayer. It means, ultimately, realizing that nothing man-made will ever sustain the soul.

See, I've gone from sounding like some lefty critic to sounding preachy. I say it only because I've learned it, and at Oxford you haven't truly learned something until you've written it down.


(I'm about to start working through the writings of John Owen, a 17th-century Christian pastor who wrote extensively on temptation -- as soon as I get a chance to bring over the twenty-three volumes of The Works of John Owen from the library. In the meantime, I'm familiarizing myself with John Piper's so-called Christian hedonism, which you can read about here.)

The Lecture War, A Habit of Mind, & Friends

I've had a wonderful morning. Granted, I woke up at 6 a.m. or so (for the second morning in a row) to read several hundred pages on the 16th-century trade in Lutheran books. But then I arrived at my first tutorial and all my fatigue faded. My tutor, who is a very kind Italian scholar, began the session by asking me more about Amherst and its history department and how I'd come to be in Oxford.

Then she asked if I had been attending lectures. Uncomfortable, I stammered a very ashamed "no." She shook her head slightly and then looked up and said, "Well, let's go off to the History Faculty and pick up a lecture list, shall we?"

So off we went, out of the Taylorian, past Gloucester Green, and onto George Street. When we entered the Faculty, there were no lecture lists* to be found. So she walked into the only office with a human inside and asked if there were any lists left. When the guy, a porter, replied that they were all gone, she said, "Well, my student needs one. What about that copy there?" The porter took hold of the 14-page list and, shaking his head, told her it was his only copy and that we could easily access the list online. Ah, but Dr. Dondi was undeterred: "Is there a photocopier?" "No, it's only for postgraduates, I'm afraid." Twitching slightly (she's a faculty member, for heaven's sakes), she peered at him. "Well, I'd like a printed copy, please." "It's a full fourteen pages, Miss." "Well, if you'd show me to a computer with a printer, I'll print it out myself." "There's no printer available; sorry." "Well," she sighed, with a bit of a grin, "I need the list." He got up suddenly and, rushing out of the room, he yelled from the hallway: "Fine! I'll make it double-sided!" She's my hero.

Anyway, after getting the list and watching two adult people nearly break out into a playground fight, we walked back to our tutorial room and she went one by one through the fourteen pages of lectures and pointed out the ones I should attend, skipping over the one about "the linguistic turn" and the few about "gender in such-and-such-a-period" with a smile. When we finished, she told me to compile the list and send it to her so she could keep track of what I was learning. Now I have an advisor.

It was a very nice gesture, and she gave up her hour of teaching time (for which she'd brought early modern pamphlets to show me) to do it, which is incredibly considerate.

So now my task is to really form my Oxford "habit of mind." A weekly schedule of lectures and essays and reading for tutorials -- plus my other routines -- will be a lot to juggle, but I'm ready to try.

But the day's not over. In an hour's time I head to Hertford College for my other tutorial (on Victorian politics) to hear how good or bad my week's essay is. Then I've got a lecture on William the Conqueror at 5, and at 11 I'll head back to Gloucester Green to meet two good friends from Amherst who are arriving from Ireland and Scotland, respectively, for a weekend of Oxonian exploration.



*A note on lecture lists. The University of Oxford, like Cambridge, is organized in a few different ways. Besides splitting students and scholars into separate, independent colleges (I'm in St. Catherine's College), the scholars further organize across colleges into subject "faculties." The History Faculty is the organization of historians in Oxford. Some of those scholars are also lecturers, and anyone in the University at large is able to attend their lectures. The lecture list, then, is the list of all the history lectures for the term.

A Few Oxford Photos

I'm still not sure what is the best way to share my photos, but I always upload them to Facebook first. So I'm going to try out posting the link to the Facebook album (click here) and see if everyone can see the photos there. If not, leave me a comment.

The Stars & Greater Purposes

You can't see the stars here. I've always told myself I could never settle anywhere I couldn't see the full night sky. Something about gazing up and imagining just how far that pulsating light must be traveling, and then immediately sensing the infinite insignificance of your own existence, is such a relief; it's especially refreshing when you've once again managed to get stuck in the tangle of your own anxieties and preoccupations. You imagine what it really means for the universe to go on and on and on infinitely, and you begin to grasp -- and yet, as these things go, not quite grasp at all -- that everything in that universe must be, mathematically speaking, infinitely small. Picture a Google map, for instance, and that little doohickey that allows you to zoom in and out on a given point (a Starbucks around the corner, say). Well, now just imagine that that doohickey allowed you to zoom out forever, never stopping. Try to find the Starbucks after zooming just a few minutes. And that would be you, and that would be me, that little coffee house lost in endless, unrelenting expanse.

But there's a paradox (or, really, a half-truth) here, of course. Just as I stand there feeling infinitely insignificant, knowing that if I were just a spot on an infinitely zooming Google map that I'd soon disappear, I know it just can't be true. You see, if you think about it, there's only one being who could ever possibly be controlling that zoom doohickey. It's a being who would have to be sufficiently infinite (that is, infinite) to be outside the map. Ah, here we have a being to whom we owe our purpose. If that being didn't exist, and there was no one to zoom in on us, well, we all really would be infinitely insignificant, and only that. Happily, 'tis not the case.

What does all of this bad metaphor have to do with being in Oxford, you ask. Hm. Well, these past two weeks I've had to keep these things in mind more than usual. The first week of academic work here, for instance, went pretty terribly. I had to hear some very harsh words from my academic (not to mention intellectual) superior, had to endure the scorn and frustration of many who aren't big fans of the States United, and realized in the frigid cold just how lonely studying abroad seemed to be. Draining is a good word to describe that week.

Last week, my second week (it's actually called Week 2, which is handy), went much more smoothly. I still had to take walks every once in a while to clear my head, and I had to buy myself some Cadbury chocolate more than a few times to motivate myself to stay in this country rather than plead for someone to deport me. Just kidding. (Well, not about the chocolate.)

The difference last week, besides a little bit more comfort and familiarity with the city and its rhythms, was that I tried with a lot more gusto to keep that old celestial perspective on life. Coming to a new country alone to study at what may just be about the most intimidating institution of higher learning in the world can easily convince you that you've made a mistake somewhere along the line. "You made a wrong turn, and look where you ended up! Oxford, for heaven's sake! And now you're stuck here and you have to get through it, and it's incredibly hard and no one respects you because you're American and that tutor said such-and-such and my life is coming to an end, isn't it?" That was the general direction of the internal monologue for a while.

But when I prayed and thought -- long and hard -- I started to see my life here in Oxford as something more, or maybe something much less, than a difficult/rewarding/once-in-a-lifetime experience. First, there should be no doubt that I made no wrong turns. That was a hard pill to swallow, but the tap water's not too bad here and it got swallowed eventually. When I really think about it, and as I thought about it last week, I can't say I believe for one second that my being here is possibly incorrect. Any dope who observed this entire business of my getting here would conclude that it was neither by chance nor by unsure steps. But my second realization is perhaps the more important: What we see and what we do and what we say is not the entirety of the story. The maxim is true, after all, that no man is an island. To spend any amount of time mourning your own supposed misfortunes (though that being who controls the infinite Google zooming doohickey might not agree that they're misfortunes at all -- aha!) is to ignore that your life is about more than your own emotions or thoughts or even actions. It's easy to slip safely into a cocoon of self and blind yourself to the world outside your dark hibernation. Hence the refreshment of a stargaze every once in a while.

The fact is, I have not come here, I have not traveled here. There is little of me in this, and less and less by the day. I was brought here. And I have to trust, by my own idiotic metaphor but more importantly by the assurances I have in an everlasting, ever-faithful, living God, that being here, finding myself in rough spots, in moments of isolation and silence and (if it's not too strong to say) persecution, and discovering that I am not at all an independent young man but a frail, highly dependent soul, is to find myself exactly where I'm supposed to be.

After all, God works many things in the desert. And the night sky's not bad either.

City of Dreaming Spires

So it's finally happened: I've finally made it to Oxford. If my math is correct, there have been about sixteen years of dreams which have preceded my arrival.

I was a small boy from a small town when I first fell in love with England. I don't know really where the obsession came from. I for one think that it's my deep respect for the power of the imagination that was, and is, what's propelled me here. Books, movies, writers, wonderlands formed in slightly twisted but always well-meaning minds, -- the English have mastered the art of transcending this dull Earth in worlds beyond, where life is punctuated with tea and made far more interesting than normal terrestrial existence with fanciful battles and meetings with sage old wizards. No one does mythmaking better than the English. For those living life mainly in those dark, mysterious recesses of the mind, then, this is the place to dream of, the nexus of our quiet mental engines.

But getting here -- to Oxford -- has been much more interesting of a story than that of my obsessions with England. Of course any person can dream of becoming an astronaut or the president, yet who of those dreamers achieves it? Few of them, really -- and usually the ones with some great uncle in NASA or the politics business. But how many ordinary Joes actually end up where their childish minds' eyes saw themselves in the distant future? Sadly, many, many fewer. Thankfully, I've had the truly joyous blessing of teachers along the way who challenged me and goaded me on. They saw a few dull sparks and cut off their own branches of knowledge and wisdom to kindle the fire that has sustained me. They are the cause of this fantastic adventure.

I've walked the snowy roads that weave through this medieval village with this on my mind and heart; I pass by great cathedrals of learning, ancient centers of intellectual life in a world that has so often rejected ideas and books in favor of quick, baseless solutions to problems and general emptiness; and all the while I see cheerful, smiling teachers striding along the footpaths, undeterred by brown slush and falling snowflakes and the inevitable collision with a romping, frolicking undergraduate who maybe does not quite appreciate the dedication of his own tutors to his own formation as a human being.

And everywhere and at all times, too, I think of dear Professor Lewis, whose handsome Magdalen College neighbors St Catherine's. A saint if there ever were one, but a man whose faith and great love of ideas were not always working together or to the same end. He was, at the moment of his rededication to Christ -- in his thirties, I believe -- famously "the most reluctant convert in England." Even though Oxford is now very much the harbor for the atheist academic strains which have left the University (in the broadest, most universal terms) diseased with cynicism, relativism, and, perhaps worst of all, arrogance, the shadows of men like Lewis and Tolkien still dart about, their voices echoing in the libraries and the halls, reminding this place of truths that cannot be overcome, of absolutes and laws and axioms and principles that, passé as they seem to the modern man, still stand, even in the face of millennia of onslaught and assault by the greatest minds. It's among these shadows and echoes that I feel truly welcomed to Oxford, as though in some small way I have inherited a bit of their mission here and in the world. I can only pray that I am to be blessed with a fraction of their courage in standing against what, from one small man's perspective, would seem a looming, overwhelming wave of rebellion against the true nature of Creation and against the will of the Creator.

"When the Night over London Lay"

After arriving last week in London, I've seen quite a bit of the city. Most of my time to explore has been at night. The first night my roommate (from Hamilton College over in New York State) and I sought after Big Ben and took the Tube, the London Underground, for the first time. I couldn't help but imagine the first scene of Prince Caspian when the Pevensie children return to Narnia as a train whooshes through a downtown Tube station.

Since then I've met a lord, seen a show in the West End, met quite a few American students also readying themselves for study in British universities, and eaten at this London McDonald's I'm writing from a total of two (wonderfully tasty) times. I'd say that my first great impression is that Londoners are not the friendliest folk in the world. Sometimes I've wanted to take some of them by the collar after they give me their "Yuck! An American!" glare and remind them that not all Americans are bosom buddies of George W. Bush -- the man the English love to hate.

But aside from the political and spiritual atmosphere here in the UK (best described as hostile), England is, as far as I've been able to see here in London, basically the same place the American impression would lead one to believe. Sure, its mythic qualities are much diminished, and its quaintness is hardly perceptible in metropolitan London. And yes, the scars of air battles have long healed (thanks, I've been tempted to remind, to American dollars), and no one really wears tweed. In fact, as one woman told me, the English wear nearly all black (which is true) because of their deep depression and social shyness. And no one really says "God save the Queen"; some talk about her, with a lot of resentment (though not nearly as much as they reserve for her son and heir), but then again many will eventually admit that they admire the monarchy and the Englishness it represents. But the accents and the exactitudes and the foggy cold all prove to me that I've come to the true England. But what a strange and thoroughly confusing country!

Tomorrow I'm off to Oxford, about an hour northwest from London. There my true adventure begins. I've got a week to settle in before tutorials start in earnest. I've been warned of the indescribable rigor of Oxford study, which has made me nervous. But I trust that I'm here for a purpose deeper than my own amusement or struggle, so none of those cautionary words mean much of anything to me. The banner under which I trudge forward is not my own.

(Oh, and photos of London to follow soon.)