Surprised by Oxford

by Carolyn Weber

Donne’s sonnet XIV: Batter my heart, three-personed God; for You As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me and bend Your force to break, blow, burn and make me new. I, like an usurped town, to another due, Labor to admit You, but, oh, to no end! Reason, Your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captived and proves weak or untrue. Yet dearly I love You, and would be loved fain, But am betrothed unto Your enemy: Divorce me, untie or break that knot again, Take me to You, imprison me, for I, Except You enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except You ravish me.

Dr. Deveaux stopped and looked at me hard. He leaned in and whispered, “The rest is all bullshit, Miss Drake. It’s as simple as that. Your purpose here in life is to discern the real thing from the bullshit, and then to choose the non-bullshit. Think of the opportunity that God has given you to study as the means by which to attain your own personal bullshit detector. Sometimes that will be particularly difficult, because those who proclaim to know the truth, well intentioned or not, are spewing the most bullshit. But you will know when you have been properly ravished. And then you’ll see, then you’ll see, how the entire world is eyeball deep in it and that we choose it, and that we choose it every day. But the good news is that, although we struggle with it, there is a way out. Yes, there is a very worthy antidote and option to all the bullshit.”

Your purpose here in life is to discern the real thing from the bullshit, and then to choose the non-bullshit. Think of the opportunity that God has given you to study as the means by which to attain your own personal bullshit detector. Sometimes that will be particularly difficult, because those who proclaim to know the truth, well intentioned or not, are spewing the most bullshit. But you will know when you have been properly ravished. And then you’ll see, then you’ll see, how the entire world is eyeball deep in it and that we choose it, and that we choose it every day. But the good news is that, although we struggle with it, there is a way out. Yes, there is a very worthy antidote and option to all the bullshit.”

I was a really nice person—I am Canadian, after all. Sinner? Yeah, right. I was a good person. Isn’t that all it takes to be a Christian? To not be some kind of sinner?

The onslaught continued for months after this first conversation. I now understand why the words conversation and conversion are evocative of each other, turning toward each other, yet separated merely by where you are “at.” All being said, it was probably TDH’s unwavering tone of patience, respect, and kindness that spoke more to me than all the syllogisms or intellectual arguments put together. All of this, of course, infuriated me. “I would hope a God that I believe in is bigger than I am,” he said one night. I argued that I could not appreciate something if I did not understand it. He held that his appreciation for something only grew if he could not comprehend it fully.

Before I really knew it, stealthily entering St. Mary’s by the side door with my morning coffee became something of a ritual for me. The church always owned a particular hush during the rush of a weekday. Sometimes I would return late in the evenings, too, after the Bodleian closed. I would step out of the chill into the candle glow. I enjoyed the peace, the solitude, the seeming transgression. Purchasing my own Bible seemed too much of a commitment, like getting married. Besides, the church was right across the street from my college, so, as they say, why purchase the cow when you can get the milk for free? I began coming more and more often.

“It’s like a great diurnal and eternal paradox: nothing matters and everything does!”

How was Jesus as He relevant to me as she? I squirmed in my seat. I could not deny the fissures I was feeling. Just stop it, I told myself. You are becoming the enemy.

“Caro, as your heart heals and you learn to fully lean into the reality that God cherishes you, I think you will see that other men who have a personal relationship with God are capable of cherishing you too. And then you’ll enjoy mutual cherishment with God, and perhaps someday, with one very special man.”

Martha answered yes. Then Mary came out of the house and fell at His feet, weeping. Jesus asked to see the tomb and wept, too, joining in their suffering. Then Jesus did something miraculous, not for Himself, but for the benefit of others so that they might believe in God. He raised a man from the dead. Lazarus emerged from the tomb, still wrapped with strips of linen. Jesus then turned to the surrounding gawkers (which surely we all are), saying, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go” (v. 44). I imagine the onlookers agape at agape.

Maybe when it came to prayer, there wasn’t some minimum or quota; some right or wrong way; some preferred pose, volume, tone, words, opportune moment, or ideal setting. Maybe I did not even have to say anything profound. Maybe I did not even have to say anything at all. And neither did God. You cannot have intimacy without relationship, it occurred to me, or without shared silence. Maybe there was something to this prayer thing. Articulating my needs whenever I needed to (and especially whenever I did not think I needed to)? Burrowing into my want and coming through it transformed? After all, rather than doing something for God, maybe prayer did that something for me, and by extension for all of us, lifting me out of my need as I entered the compassion of lifting others. A ladder extended from, extended to, our want of Him.

Shrugging, he allowed himself to wallow in it, at least a little. “Bertrand Russell claimed, ‘So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.’” The Gospels don’t spell out everything, I counterargued in my head. Rather, they are enacted in deeds, principles, or parables. In symbols or syllogisms. Any student of literature knows that metaphor is far more precise than the literal, although there were plenty of both in Scripture. Surely a literary theorist could see it much more clearly than the rest of us. For example I thought of how objectively intelligent, even shrewd, Jesus’ responses were when He was put on the spot. I know I could never think like that—how many could? Especially in the worst viva voce (or Oxford oral examination) imaginable? As when the Sadducees questioned Him about marriage and tried to trick Him by asking Him which husband the wife with seven husbands will have in heaven. Jesus beat them at their own game, trapped them in their own net,

Is it a cop-out to want this? After all, did I love this passage from John because my mom loves it, or because it is beautiful, or because it is true? Are these necessarily exclusive? Is it not okay to love something all the more because someone I love, loves it? And that someone also loves me? And ultimately, does any of this make it any less true? I was not so sure anymore. The push and pull in my heart certainly kept me on my toes.

“Christians often grow world-weary themselves, even God weary. We get ‘used to Him’; we become pretty chuffed with ourselves and our better-than-others supposed stance, our righteous worship, all our perfect acts. It’s a hard habit to crack—especially for an overachiever—that overachieving means nothing in His eyes. And grace is even harder. Accepting it is one thing, but really believing it and living it out—yeah, living in it—is not.

“I feel as if I still, in spite of grace, fall so short,” I said, leaning into her. “Grace takes a lifetime to really grasp,” Regina responded. “And then some. In fact, most of us don’t ever ‘get it’ fully, I think.” She stood up, taking the books and setting them back on the shelf. “But even the crumbs from His table are enough.” She sighed as she lovingly brushed the spine of Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. “Caro, hopefully your time at Oxford will ignite a lifelong cultivation of self-discernment resulting in social service, whether it be to a single child, or a nation full of people. Your education here has included your conversion, or, put better, your conversion has marked the beginning of your real education. Your time here has not only honed your intellect, but hopefully it has contributed to the shaping of your spirit, so that as you now walk off your ‘ledge of familiarity,’ you will also be able to walk with those you meet every day, ranging from their own issues to grave suffering and social injustice. It’s like sharing your last crumb of bread when starving in a concentration camp.” She turned to look at me keenly. “People assume that our dignity only lies in our choices, in what we think we so powerfully will and wield. But it can reside in our reactions, too, in our decisions about how to respond.” She walked over to me and opened the drawer of the bedside table. “But here is what I recommend you read now, to relax and get a good night’s sleep.” She...

Our conversation reminds me of a little poem that I put to memory after discovering one of my professors had been a Christian too. He shared it with me then, and I’ll share it with you now: If only the good were clever, If only the clever were good, The world would be better than ever We thought that it possibly could. But, alas, it is seldom or never That either behave as they should: For the good are so harsh to the clever, The clever so rude to the good.5 “That’s exactly how I see it at times,” I agreed heartily. “Who wrote it?” “Elizabeth Wordsworth,

back. “You know, Dori, I finally began to realize that I could do all the thinking in the world, all the research of a lifetime, drill all the questions great and small, and I would still fall short of the perfect, airtight answer to the meaning of life and the essence of faith. I could set my wits to yours and emerge easily riddled with rhetorical bullets. But what then? A great clashing of swords? Someone else will always have a better argument, a stronger intellect, a sharper tongue, a quicker mind. Someone else will always ace the debate, prevail in the argument, win the jury. Someone else will always have—”