Oxford's Ancient Streams

For 19^th century English Romantic poets, ancient Greece was the illusive image of their nostalgic quest.  For 20^th century American adolescent romantic spirits like me in College in the 1970’s, especially those of us drank deeply from the well of C. S. Lewis and his Circle, Oxford of the 1930’s was our Romantic ideal.  

The Oxford Inklings--JRR Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams and a dozen other Oxford dons and their friends—who met weekly at the Bird and Baby pub on St. Giles, and in Lewis’ academic rooms at Magdalen College, was my ideal of intellectual friendship focused on poetry, pipes and pubs.  

My first trip to Oxford was in 1979 after graduating from college and before starting seminary.  My first book, C.S. Lewis on Scripture (which I had written as my Senior Honors Thesis), was accepted for publication, and I took my $1,000 book advance and spent it all on a two-month backpacking trip to England and Europe.  I read Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings saga on the road, saw the first version of the film in Oxford, and strolled around Addison’s Walk at Magdalen College where Tolkien and Lewis discussed how “myth became fact” in the Incarnation.  I met C. S. Lewis’s companion and friend, Walter Hooper, at the Bird and Baby, and enjoyed tea with Owen Barfield at his home. I imagined myself a graduate student at Oxford University—an illusive, romantic dream. 

25 years later, Rebecca and I took our daughters on vacation to Oxford. One of the highlights of our trip was visiting the Great Hall at Christ Church, which they recognized at Hogwarts’s Hall where Professor McGonagall welcomed Harry Potter and his classmates at the top of the stairs.  Returning a third time to Oxford in 2014 for an academic conference, I took a city tour—in the footsteps of Lewis and Tolkien-- that wetted my appetite for all things Oxford.

Earlier this year, I heard about Oxford University’s Theology Summer School program at Christ Church and applied. Part of my romantic dream come true is being a student again, living in the dorm at Christ Church, and taking two seminars this summer: one on Christian Faith and Modern Though with Professor Keith Ward; and the other on C.S. Lewis and the Christian Imagination with Professor Judith Wolfe.

Both my classes meet in the Lewis Carroll Room (named after the creepy professor who wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland).   

Our cohort of 40 students (including 5 of us with graduate degrees from Drew University) attend classes, study in our rooms, and eat together daily in the Great Hall—the 300-seat pre-Victorian dining room with a hammer beam ceiling and portraits of famous members of Christ Church, including John Wesley.  

I’m totally in awe when a Senior Member at the High Table comes to the lectern, uses an antique gavel to get our attention, and offers grace for the meal in Latin.  

In the middle of Tom Quad, the messenger god Hermes/Mercury seems to have my back. 

Today, the Christ Church crest is flying at half-mast in honor of one of the members of the college or cathedral who has died.

My dorm room is in the relatively new building overlooking Oxford’s oldest pub on Blue Boar Street, and around the corner from the oldest tower in the college where, reportedly, the ghost of a boy with candlelight sometimes is seen in the stairwell.  Tonight’s full moon would be a good time for the boy to show his face…

What a joy and magical experience it is to live and study here this summer.  The former Saxon priory of St. Frideswide (710) was re-founded as Christ Church College and Cathedral by Henry VIII in 1546, finally admitting women as members of the college in 1980. 

Ancient streams flowing into a broader, more modern river...