A Message of Hope

Straight from the lips of Jay-Z: 30 is the new 20






In roughly 12 hours and 11 minutes, I'll be hitting Jigga-Man's proverbial 20 myself, and Van has come to Oxford for a few days to help celebrate. We spent most of yesterday on a long country walk. It was chilly but bright. Spring has come early in England and the trees are full of blossoms and singing birds. We tried to find a drink in two different pubs, miles apart, but both are only open mornings and evenings, so we settled for cokes from the Greater Milton convince store/post office/bakery.

We walked back to Cuddesdon for dinner and had a drink at the Bat and Ball pub in the village. When we got back to college, a group of my female classmates were in the common room inexplicably wearing sombreros. These apparently had something to do with their girl’s night out, but the connection remains unclear.

Graffiti War

My college has become the battleground for an ecclesial graffiti war. Someone has been chalking a Medieval German, Epiphany house blessing on our doors for the past month or so, which was already pretty mysterious. The other day, someone responded, also in chalk, (which has now been partially wiped away) with what appears to be '... Christ Suck'. Can this be another theological student with a particularly low Christology? An Arian dissident within our midst? Richard Dawkins himself? I’m on the look-out for the next chalk message…

Last night my friends Daniel and Julia took me to Mass at the deceptively named Magdalene College, where, unlike the rest of the English speaking world, Magdalene is pronounced 'Maudlin.' This is not, I'm told, because it is assumed that Mary Magdalene's tears were the product of a generally morose disposition, but because the college retains the Middle English pronunciation of Magdalene, from which our term maudlin is derived. It was a very solemn mass in a 15th century chapel, with a boys choir angelically singing Britten's strange, discordant music.

A good time was had by all.

Country Livin'

The Eponymous Castle






My college is seven miles outside the center of Oxford and Sundays and Wednesdays I come back late from Hertford College. Cuddesdon has no nighttime bus service, so I take a bus to the village of Wheatly and walk a mile or two to Cuddesdon. The other night the fog was so thick that I couldn't see more than a few feet in front of me. As I walked along I could hear animals moving in the woods, and restless birds in the trees. It was creepy.




I am happy to say that the fog is rare, and several days a week, evenings look more like this



Last week workmen came and cut back the hedges which line the road to Cuddesdon. There are grassy banks on either side of the road which serve as sidewalks, but the hedges were so over grown that it was much easier to walk in the road than to navigate the sharp branches, especially in the dark. Now the hedges are mangled, but better them than me.




My Window.

Ox-Town

The last term and a half have flown by so quickly. England now feels both totally foreign and like my home. I'm going to miss it here. I've taken so few photos of this phase of my life, but last Wednesday I forwent my usual library studying time to take some pictures of Oxford. These are the results.




This is the aforementioned library: the Radcliffe Camera, home to the Bodleian's Theology library, where I spend a lot of time. This photo was taken mere moments before I decided to shirk my responsibilities and not go inside.














The University Church of St. Mary the Virgin - I know the church flower lady.





This is the Sheldonian Theater as seen from beneath the Bridge of Sighs, the bridge which join one half of Hertford College (the half with the chapel) to the other (the half with the bar).





Looking the opposite direction. One evening I spent a good ten minutes under this bridge waiting out a rain storm.




Queen's College doesn't normally look this Wiemar.