Surprised by Oxford

by Carolyn Weber

No, rather, the identification was more akin to the younger, dismayed Wordsworth when he first traveled to the famous range in search of that feeling of infinite longing mingled with wonder, fear, and awe that so captivated the Romantics, only to find out he had already passed through the mountains and missed their glory entirely. Poor Wordsworth and me. All that anticipation, all that effort, and yet, in the end, denied the cigarette.

And the sign said, “Everybody welcome, come in, kneel down and pray.” But when they passed around the plate at the end of it all, I didn’t have a penny to pay. So I got me a pen and a paper and I made up my own little sign. I said, “Thank you Lord for thinking of me, I’m alive and doing fine.”2

“There is nothing as pitiful as a young cynic,” Maya Angelou famously wrote, “because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.”

I realized that I was still caught on the ring road—on that, thank goodness, forgiving ring road—but that eventually, at some point, everyone needs to get off, including me. It is easy to coast and even easier to mock the signs, but reading them, really reading them, and then making the largest decision there is, the greatest decision to which all others defer and are tied back to—to know who we are, what we stand ...

“Why, exactly, is he ‘justifying these ways of God to men’? For whom is he writing? God doesn’t need justification. He certainly doesn’t need us. God doesn’t need anything.” The room stayed quiet. “Yet, it doesn’t make us superfluous or unimportant, the fact that God doesn’t need us,” I rushed on. “Actually, quite the opposite. It’s because He loves us in spite of not needing us that makes His love so, well, awesome.”

“Despair is the greatest sin,” Dr. Nuttham finally responded slowly. “It involves forgetting that God is there. Forgetting that He is good and that all He is and does extends from and works toward this perfect goodness. That doesn’t mean that He allows evil, or creates it, or perpetuates it. That’s our entwinement. Rather, He uses even our evil toward His good. We all need forms of remembering this first great love . . . writing, reading, creating, being.” He paused, looking surprised too. Then he added, “I see,” and smiled at his own inadvertent wording. He continued smiling softly as he rose to make tea.

A sudden bold and unexpected question doth many times surprise a [woman] and lay [her] open. —SIR FRANCIS BACON

could not help but think of Lord Byron’s pronouncement that in life there exists no such thing as a digression.

Chesterton was right when he claimed that ‘the Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.’”

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods.1 —T. S. ELIOT

“The more I discovered of the scientific world, the more it convinced me of the amazing interconnectedness and brilliancy of God’s design. People tend to think of science as being at odds with faith, but nothing could be further from the truth. The one only confirms the other; the one only illuminates its echo, and yet its limitations and dependence in the face of the other.”

If you love that Great Love first, because It loved you first, and then love yourself as you have been loved, and then love others from that love . . .

“Life without faith is death. For life, as it was intended to be, is love. Start loving and you’ll really start living. There is no other force in the universe comparable to that.”

I love you as certain dark things are loved, secretly, between the shadow and the soul. I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom and carries hidden within itself the light of those flowers, and thanks to your love, darkly in my body lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where, I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I don’t know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

“But therein lies the rub,” Dorian interjected. “No wonder Eve’s temptation was intellectual—not sexual, or sensual, or physical, or even, ironically, spiritual, but highly intelligent—a rationalization of her desire, her hubris. Our heads can deceive us just as much as our hearts, if not more so.

of my childhood—so unlike the weary ones among these books. “Prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best,” wrote C. S. Lewis.

The mind is its own place, and can make A heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n.1 —JOHN MILTON

Doubt is not at odds with faith; irony or cruelty does not cancel out beauty or truth.

“This kind can come out only by prayer.”

I turn my back to Thee but to receive Corrections till Thy mercies bid Thee leave. O think me worth Thine anger, punish me, Burn off my rust, and my deformity; Restore Thine image, so much, by Thy grace, That Thou mayst know me, and I’ll turn my face.1 —JOHN DONNE

You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves—like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. The point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.1 —RAINER MARIA RILKE, Letters to a Young Poet

“Drink up!” She smiled warmly. “You’re going to need all the fire you can get if you’re going to be a woman and a believer in academia.” Then, turning her glass in her hand, she added, “If you’re going to be a committed Christian in our world at all.”

when you work from faith, either you will step forward onto something solid, or you will be given wings.”

Don’t underestimate the power and importance of celebration. It should be our perpetual way of life—we shouldn’t be folks too rushed to say hello, or too beaten to bless, but a people recalling joy.”

“Preach the gospel at all times.” Regina waved from the doorway. “And when necessary, use words.”

Dance, then, wherever you may be, I am the Lord of the Dance, said He, And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be, And I’ll lead you all in the Dance, said He.

“Pray to God, but keep rowing to shore.”

This is where the Holy Spirit comes in, I realized. Breathed in and among us, it does the heavy lifting of this world.

Oh, to be bold! To tell those we love, not just strangers at a table, of the glory of God. To go out in the street and sing your heart out, embraced by the beautiful, breathtaking, indescribable Bridge of Sighs.

Remember, Caro, true oppression comes from everyone else but God.”

“Are you singing your heart out? In your life here, now, and always? At the end of your days, will you have loved well, knowing you’re loved so well?”

I am a bow in your hands, Lord. Draw me, lest I rot. Do not overdraw me, Lord. I shall break. Overdraw me, Lord, and who cares if I break!

People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.1 —SAMUEL JOHNSON

Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.1 —ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY

Having my identity in an eternal Father gave me the freedom to explore better how to love best. My