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Sunday, March 05, 2006

Sun, 05 Mar 2006 23:46:01 GMT

The afternoon air was light, but the street, crowded with skepticism, managed to suck every ounce of whimsical romanticism from my veins. I whispered something about simplicity and the marrow of life. He would have known what I meant. But he couldn’t hear me from the grave, and you wouldn’t see me from your ivory tower. I walked faster, hoping that maybe, just maybe, when I was eventually forced to turn around, your magnanimous structures of the late middle age’s academia would no longer be there. A row of gondolas by the water’s edge awaited the certainly soon-to-come crowd of passers-by, or tourists, as we called them. What a perfect place to set up shop. They come by the droves you see. They come to sit in your office at your feet for one or two stimulating moments and then traipse down the hill for a gondola ride. Do you cry when they leave? I think that I would. If only someone . . . no, this is the life you chose. I’m sure that’s what you think as you watch them go.

The bridge’s age showed clearly through the cracked bricks and discolored capstones. A gondola passed beneath. This is England, I thought smugly, which I suppose is all one can do. Do you know that they’re charging now just to enter the grounds? I heard that two quid is the going rate, and you even have to stand in a queue. The courtyard is beautiful, but that’s not why they come. Do you know that they come to see your desk? They come to see your books. People will pay to see anything. I watch the way they look around enviously at those who live here. If only their longing eyes knew how much we envied their freedom. My card of membership gives me what they all think they want, but I have never even been in that courtyard, let alone the building. I looked through the wrought iron gates and . . . it was time to turn around.

I paused, looking across the bridge and up at your window. It was all still there - the lovers in gondolas, the old stone buildings, your ivory haven. It was all still there, but something was different; I understood now. No one on that side of town knew me, so I walked, I walked and I cried – for you, for me, for this present evil age. Everything about this city is ominous - examination schools, Queen’s, University, All Souls, then around the Rad Cam, through the alley between Lincoln and Exeter where our homeless friend sits and sings, down Market Street, through the Centre, onto Shoe Lane where a man with a banjo and another with a brown bag bellow out an old British bar tune, and into St. Michael’s Hall, our brick, third-floor flat where the baneful darkness lingers yet the faint light remains.

(written 3.4.06)

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Tue, 22 Nov 2005 02:18:33 GMT

I’m not enough of what you need, and I’m too much of what could be the death of all of us. My words don’t meld and float like cracked leaves on an icy, cold river. They fall hard to the ground like rocks crumbling off a cliff, reminding us of gravity but not inspiring us to greatness. You sing a melody that I once knew, but it rests painfully on ears that appear, more often than not, to be unable to hear. Nonetheless, I’m not the only one who can’t seem hum to this song quite like it was written. Hopkins, Eliot, Auden, and Lewis all displayed the same melodious perpetuity of struggle. Perhaps I’ll wear white, flannel trousers and let the awkwardness of this age present itself unabashedly. Thomas Stearns and I would have been brilliant friends – he in his tweed, three-piece suit and horn-rimmed glasses, and I with my white, bare, braceleted arms. We would have been quite the pair. Would he digress do you think? I don’t know. Those days are gone, but were it not for his laments, I wouldn’t know that I’m not alone. But while Eliot reminds me that I was meant for a different place, and Auden sings the songs of pain and compassion, and Lewis profoundly asks the questions that I am afraid to think, it is Hopkins who raises his voice best above the loud clamor of the streetcars and pedestrians this night. He brings to my mind the melody that, only moments ago, seemed inaudible under the refuse of my heart. "The world is charged with the grandeur of God," and "He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him" (from God's Grandeur and Pied Beauty).

Sunday, November 13, 2005

Sun, 13 Nov 2005 04:09:57 GMT

"Ahoy," said the grandfather,

like the clock on the wall,

this ship, it sails on and on,

rough and rolling,

fighting with every beat

of his heart -

the hearth and mantle

that no ship owns -

and a seagull squawks

and the time laps on and on

with red skies warning

and starboards mourning

to the rhythm of his years,

steering toward a beacon

that most don’t see

and fewer reach.

"Beware, Beware,"

echo the gasps from

the deadly sea’s belly,

as morning breaks

and joy forsakes

this grief-besotted tragedy.

Her lullaby allays the woe

below the deck

in the hold where he holds her tightly

as the tightly-pulled ropes

crack against the sail

and snap, snapping him

to cognizance.

For Tennyson’s fading lady

lay in a boat of silk

and lavender after all.

And Poe’s woeful Annabel

tormented him with the spell

of a lover’s last hurrah.

"Je suis la fille; je suis ici,"

the damsel on the catwalk

sings her song.

"Je suis ton coeur; je suis ton amour,"

says the girl of his dreams

as he dies in the storm.

(written 11.12.05)

Saturday, November 05, 2005

Sat, 05 Nov 2005 02:16:44 GMT

What I Saw From the Bastion

She wept tearless that her heart was lost

in the far away frost of San Francisco.

Cliche and dark as it was,

the grief of the day incited a

brief and loose sympathy,

for my conscience was held by a mystical

ream of foreboding dreams that faded and returned

with the breaks of the provinces,

quite like hers.

She told me that the lions stole her life

as a dead man’s strife tore her bastille.

Professors gave her regiments

and a creed that cures the death

but never seemed to erase

the falling fortifications made from

scraps of origami and cracked glass she loved,

yet penitence would have been a better haven

than her trap of trepidation.

I left my affections floating in an ocean

of deep blue and gray,

like the water of Maine,

too cold to address but too deep to refrain.

Where breath is captured

and anger squelched by lapping and laughing

of children’s hearts raptured,

of hawks eyes from the skies,

of lupines rising and falling and moving gently,

submitting to the breeze

of the early summer’s morning,

beckoning the lost to enter,

promising rest but reckoning tears–

for such paradises only exist in the recesses

of taut minds and longing sighs,

in the books of those with inklings of the tides.

So from this shore

fades the world across the waters,

the jade-colored country, to which I look

and wonder how dreams can seem so real,

when the light of day falters

and the flickering of life on the other side

glimmers in the otherwise black of night.

So slightly the light moves through the air

that I don’t know what it means,

or how it fares,

or where it goes,

as it dances to and fro,

or for whom it moves,

yes, for whom it moves.

I told no one that I lost my heart

in the far away dark of this sad night,

reading Eliot and writing nonsense,

for the bleeding of the day

and the words yet unspoken

did silence my brandish,

for my heart was held by a whimsical

ream of foreboding dreams that faded and returned

with the divisions of the seas,

quite unlike hers.

Please, dear night, might I have

back my heart?

I whisper the trite phrase I don’t mean

against the roaring

waves and thundering graves

of another war’s bounty

that will come and go

on the shore of despondence

and leave me weaker than before

but with life and a conscience,

bound by memories.

(written 9-14-05)

Sunday, October 30, 2005

Sun, 30 Oct 2005 03:05:59 GMT

Solitude on Magnolia Terrace

Darkness rested in the air all around the inside. The shudder-like doors let in a few small streams of light. I wondered if they would give me away. Could he see me through the holes that reached out into the world? Would he know to find me there? I hoped not. The space inside was small, but I soon decided that, if necessary, I could manage there for quite some time. I fit perfectly between the rounded shelves that covered the walls. The mass of clothing adorning those white-washed shelves was warm against my back, and I gasped for a moment, feeling slightly claustrophobic. I wanted to empty one of the top shelves, climb up and pull the clothes over and around me; then I would really be hidden. But I had grown too big for such things, so I stood there in silence, trying to admire the way the slits of light fell on my legs and arms. I had chosen this place carefully. It was, by far, the best fit for me. Every other option I found to be too small, too dangerous, or too obvious. From this vantage-point not only was I closed in, but no one could sneak up on me. My back to the wall and my face to the door, I felt fairly well prepared for any intrusion to my personal haven. Alert and aware, I waited, but he never came. I heard footsteps. I heard voices. Didn’t they know I was ready for them? No one could scare me this time. But they never came. Would they leave me there alone forever? Did they think I really enjoyed my solitude as much as I pretended to? But still they never came. I had picked the perfect spot. Sometimes I hated hide and seek.

(written 3.21.03)

Monday, October 17, 2005

Mon, 17 Oct 2005 03:18:52 GMT

Huxley, Plato, and Classical Education

I just spent the last couple of hours discussing educational systems from different eras and different countries. I am too tired to relate it all, but I'll give a brief overview, and I'd love to know what you guys think. The conversation began with a discussion of books in the vein of 1984, Anthem, Brave New World, The Giver, and Farenheight 451. We were talking about the fact that all those books present similar pictures of the government creating a society of gingerbread men, cookie-cutter people. In writing Brave New World, Huxley was trying to display the fact that the government forces people to do what the government sees is best and then convinces the people that what they've been given (or forced to have) is what they really want. As a group, we began contemplating the question of whether or not that is what has happened in the American educational system. American students have been taught how to memorize and regurgitate like no others. We have been told that standardized tests are the gauge of intellectual astuteness. Instead of having been taught to think, we were taught to be human calculators - if given the right data, the right word or series of words, we could tell you if the answer was A, B, C, or D. The British university system (not surprisingly, quite similar to the system used in colonial America) teaches students not only the information necessary but also how to think analytically. Their approach is entirely different. For example, when I studied in England, my Philosophy of Religion class could not have been more different from its American counterpart. Once a week, I met one-on-one with my professor. Each time we met, he gave me a piece of paper that had on it a question and a list of six books. By one week hence, I was to have read the books and answered the question in a paper that was to be approximately 15-20 pages. When I met with him, a week after receiving the question, I would read my paper aloud, and he would attack every idea that I had written, making me defend every sentence and paragraph that I had so carefully crafted. We did this once a week for eight weeks (and that was only one of three classes that I was taking at the time). To us, that sounds absurd, but to my fellow British students, that was all they knew. England is producing the smartest, the most analytically intelligent, people in the world. So, here’s my question, why does America simply produce people who can give us what we want, when we could produce people who really think? Why do we read all of the books that people have written about the philosophers, and leave it to the Brits to actually read the writings of Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates? Are we afraid that they would pose a threat to democracy? Why do we not simply dispose of our alphabetical, clean-cut matrix and establish an educational system that is founded on the principles of education that made colonial America (and makes England) such a brilliant world? As believers, all that we do is to be done as unto the Lord – to the best of our abilities for His glory. Is not education a part of all?

Monday, October 10, 2005

Mon, 10 Oct 2005 14:12:27 GMT

We want to be writers. So we're not Lewises or Tolkiens yet, none of us are. But our words are the words of writers. Our diction is that of poets. I was struggling last week with missing Oxford (as I often do) and wondering what I am doing with this life. But I quickly realized that there's little profit in such contemplations. I don't know where I am going to end up or what exactly I am going to do, but no one does. I saw that there are things that I want to do (simply desires) and things that I need to do (things without which I cannot live). I love the Lord and I need to follow and serve and glorify Him in all that I do, and I need to live for the propagation of the gospel. I want to be a writer . . . but if what I need requires me to sacrifice what I want, then so be it. So, I want to be a writer? For now, I'll write. So, I want to travel the world, return to China and England. For now, I'll do what I can to go back there and bring the truth to the dark places. Maybe I'll never make it back to China or England, and maybe I'll never write again. But that's okay, because I've found that my confidence is not in what I can do, and my satisfaction is not in fulfilling all my dreams. I'm an alien and a stranger looking for a heavenly country, a city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God (Heb. 11.10,16).

Sunday, October 09, 2005

Sun, 09 Oct 2005 00:27:59 GMT

So, I've started a new book called "Ireland" (hence the pictures of Ireland). I am hopeful that this one won't contain any of the modern-literature-levity that I so dislike. Between the mediocrity that too often characterizes "Christian literature" and the noxiousness that too often characterizes "secular literature," one can have a great deal of difficulty finding much worth reading these days. I only put the distinctions of types of literature in quotes because the dichotomy that we've created between the secular and the sacred is really unclear, and, generally, ought never to have been established, because Scripture speaks against "men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude; for it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer" (1 Tim. 4.3-5). All of that to say, I know what we mean by the terms, and most of you know as well, so I'll use them anyway, even though the origin is ambiguous and, ultimately, unfounded (see the pre-reformation writings of the catholic church regarding the distinction, and the writings of the early to mid reformation - debates surrounding the iconoclasts, etc.).

Thursday, October 06, 2005

Thu, 06 Oct 2005 05:34:58 GMT

I've missed Oxford since not long after I returned to this side of the Atlantic. It's not so much the University that beckons me to return as it is the thousand things that made me call that city home. In some ways, I feel that it will always be my home. Sure, it's true, I only lived there for a brief time, no more than a semester, but for me Oxford is like listening to a song that nearly takes your breath away. You know what I'm talking about, the kind of song you love and could listen to ten times in a row without a hint of monotony creeping into your mind. "Enchanted." Perhaps that's the word for it. I can't say that I know for sure. I am not certain whether I took a bit of that place with me when I left or if part of me is still there, wandering through the often dismal streets. I should think it must be a bit of both. So often, daily I suppose, I find myself walking in my minds eye down Queen Street or Cornmarket . . . heading through the ally past the homeless man (whose name has seeped from my memory) on my way to the majestic Radcliff Camera . . . taking a sharp right just before The Lamb and Flag on the short route to Keble . . . sprinting up and down the field with the other young scholars during a brilliant match of ultimate frisbee . . . walking through the park and gazing back at the gorgeous cityscape . . . sitting in the lecture hall and listening to the informative (and humorous) monologues of Strudwick and Philpot and others whose names escape me . . . wearing a black robe and standing in the long, foreboding dining hall as the professor of choice prays in Latin . . . sitting in the brilliant little Keble library cubical surrounded by stacks of books (the first on the left, that's where I always sat) . . . sitting in The Eagle and Child with my cynical philosophy professor as he rambles on about "process theism" and "reformed epistemology" . . . going outside and dancing in the Oxford snow (with a dear friend from California who had never before seen snow) . . . going to the little hardware store below our flat in search of all kinds of necessities . . . making the weekly trek to Frewin Court for a mid afternoon tea and staying and talking for hours with Sharyn, Paul, and Kevin (a band of idealist philosophers we were) . . . going to the market once a week to buy fresh produce that the brash framers brought in from surrounding villages (I can't tell you how many times they cheated me, because I knew nothing about the pound when first I got there) . . . walking solemnly around the ruins of one old castle or another, more interested in the artistic value and the history than the lectures of my professors . . . walking miles to get to a brilliant little pub on a river far outside the city and eating fish & chips for the first time . . . going out at two in the morning to get chips & cheese from the kabob van as a reward after countless hours of intense study . . . sitting in that little library with my philosophy professor and reading papers aloud to him as I visibly shook . . . going to Blackwell's (termed "Dante's Inferno" by students because of it's seven or eight floors) to buy countless rather expensive books for class (and, of course, to look around for other books I might want to buy and take home - what was it Erasmus once said? "If I have any money, I buy books. If I have any left after that, I buy food and clothes." He would have been proud of me) . . . sitting on the green, shellacked basement stairs of our flat and reading "Reformation Thought," written by our very own Alistair McGrath . . . making and drinking five to ten cups of tea a day (that was another little treat each time we finished a couple of hours of study - from time to time, or all the time, Sharyn and I were in dire need of incentive) . . . preparing and eating stir-fry nearly everyday (and often twice a day) because cabbage was far cheaper than anything else we could find . . . making our weekly runs to Sainsbury’s to buy bread and cheese (I still can't bring myself to throw away my receipts - I guess it's like holding on to a bit of my time there) . . . sitting across the desk from the very red-faced, very Reverend Smail as he told me how certain he was that I knew that Greek word, for I must know it, for everyone knew it (oh, but let me tell you, I certainly did not - much to my chagrin, and his) . . . sitting in the basement of Frewin Court with my team of Reformation Theologians and preparing our debate on original sin (Carolyn and I were to be Augustinians and Kevin and good-old-what's-his-name were to be Pelagians) . . . walking through the streets of Brighton, Hay-on-Wye, Edinburgh, and Stiriling . . . and, as with any good lass, falling hopelessly in love with Scottish highlands and history . . . spending many hours in the basement (for that is where the Theology section was) of the biggest used bookstore in a small Welsh village that boasted thirty-nine such places of business . . . trekking a bit of the stunning Offa's Dyke Path (which runs the whole length of the border between England and Wales) as sheep and lambs playfully chased each other, crossing our path over and over . . . going to a farm of a friend in Scotland and holding a lamb who was only a few days old, nuzzling my face into the new, soft, white curls on its head and back . . . hiking for quite some time and seeing the stunning view from the top of Brewer Falls after a delightfully Scottish lunch at the restaurant below . . . hearing stories of the beautiful history of the glorious Scottish motherland from the dearest and proudest Scotsman, Bill Anderson . . . going to Queen's View and looking out across the great expanse of crystal-like water and heather-covered hills . . . spending hours, days with the Cooke's as the Mr. taught us from the Word and the Mrs. showed us the greatest hospitality . . . watching as Dan (an Oxford Ph.D. candidate) gave every Cooke child he could find a hard time about anything he could conjure up in his imagination . . . listening to him talk about his Ph.D. thesis regarding the use of silence in the works of George Eliot (we often asked him if that meant there would actually be no content to his thesis - it seemed to make sense to us) . . . sitting in the small lobby outside my room with two of the dearest sisters I've known and studying truth . . . sitting here and silently weeping as I think back on a place that I still call my home.

If you have made it this far, I do commend you, my voracious reader. I suppose, in some ways, I needed to write this more that you needed to read it. But also, I have just written down a part of my life, a part of my heart that I have so longed for many of you to see and understand. Oxford is (and will be) indelibly emblazoned on my heart. I feel as though there are still a thousand more things that I could tell you, old haunts that I could give away and painful tutorials I could bemoan. However, for now, I must rest with my heart yet withholding a bit of my magical and "enchanting" world. So, why this sudden blast of nostalgia? It's interesting, that word, in the Greek from which it comes, actually refers to a sort of painful homecoming. Which is, I suppose, what this has been. I finished reading "The Poet of Loch Ness" tonight. I read it in just over a twenty-four hour period of time, which is unusual for me. There were a number of parts of it that I did not like and some that I skipped altogether. I read it in hopes of getting a glimpse of the land I once loved (and still do, evidently), of the stunningly breath-taking Great Britain. And what a picture I beheld. While the book itself was tainted by those vile things that so often mar modern literature, the story (minus the parts that I wished to white-out) was incredibly well-crafted and brought me back to another time and another place (especially as the characters gallivanted through the University of St. Andrews, which, in many surprising ways, reminded me of Oxford). So, understand that I do not recommend the book (although much of it was rather moving and brought me to surprised tears), I have simply describe it so as to give you a background for my verbal frenzy. Nonetheless, at this juncture, there is one quote from the book that I feel worth relating to you. The main character, an American by birth who spent her college days at St. Andrews, and has now returned after seventeen years in the states, says, "America isn't my home. It isn't anybody's home that I know of. It is only the holding place for the landless and the forsaken children of wandering parents, the waylaid seed of a vagrant and confused race" (285). To some of you, this quote rings with a sort of ungrateful animosity, but I encourage you to do your best to read between the lines. While I may not share in the brazenness of her comments, I do see and understand the sentiment that her lines are meant to portray. For those who have been there, you know what it means; for those who have not, I do hope that you can someday understand. We are led to communicate such things not out of a lack of respect for the country in which so many of us currently dwell, but from a proverbial "finding of oneself" (which really consists of simply maturing) that seems so often to take place in a country where the history and lore are as deep as the sea that divides our nations. When asked why she had returned to Scotland after so long, the main character said, "I'm running toward something . . . And away from something, too, I think. I want to throw away the conveniences of choice that pass for thought. I came to discover which of my assumptions can hold and make it to port and which will founder under the waves" (229).