“To rest and refocus the tangles of youth, dreams, and striving…”

The last couple days have been extraordinary for our Study Abroad group. Just as we are starting to feel more settled in Oxford, the world changes. The queen’s death has evoked a palpable collective grief. This weekend is Oxford Open Doors, an annual event that normally has colleges open to the public and special exhibits and demonstrations scheduled across the city. Some of this is still happening, but numerous events have been cancelled. Today, Tara and I made our way to University Church. With the bells tolling across the city, we observed the candle memorial to the queen, one of the innumerable memorials popping up across the country. Walk into a department store, a coffee shop, a monument–everywhere people are paying honor.

Over the last few days I’ve been thinking a lot about an idea first introduced to me by my friend Richard Beck in his book Hunting Magic Eels. Early in his book, Richard speaks about these “thin places” that we encounter around us. Richard didn’t invent the idea; he is borrowing from a concept that has deep roots in Celtic Christianity. Eric Weiner describes these places as “those rare locales where the distance between heaven and earth collapses.” These are places of mystery, or “enchantment,” locations in the world where the disenchantment that defines our contemporary lives diminishes. In these thin places we are better positioned to encounter God. In his book, Richard speaks well to just how disenchanted our lives have become. It’s something I feel profoundly, even at a Christian university where the language of faith is everywhere.

Yesterday, Jacque led our students on an “Alice in Wonderland” walk. We made our way to Port Meadow and then across the River Thames to Binsey. On the journey, we stopped as Jacque shared with us the story of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), a mathematics don at Oxford University. A lover of puzzles and poetry, Dodgson’s friendship with Alice Liddell, daughter of the Dean of Christ Church, inspired him to write a book. We know Dodgson by his pen name, Lewis Carroll. The book he wrote was Alice in Wonderland.

Our group walked to St. Margaret’s parish church via a path once filled with poplar trees that were the inspiration for Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem, “Binsey Poplars“. It was the felling of poplars in this area that inspired the poem by Hopkins. Poplars were replanted, but died more recently. Replanting has begun again. At St. Margaret’s our students walked among the graves, inside the 12th century church, and around an ancient well dedicated to St. Frideswide, patron saint of Oxford.

At the well one of my students, Maggie, shared with me a picture she took of the church guest book. In the book was a message from a woman named Jamie. Earlier in the week Jamie had made her way to Binsey, taking the long path to St. Margaret’s with her husband and young son. Jamie is a former ACU Study Abroad student. Her note eloquently speaks of her experience twenty years ago, walking to the church, “to rest and refocus the tangles of youth, dreams, and striving.” “I often reflect and imagine the path to this place,” Jamie says, “in seasons of trial and stress and find peace meditating to Binsey.” Jacque figured out pretty quickly which former student this was, Jamie Carroll, a 2002 ACU Study Abroad alum. I contacted Jamie on Facebook. She gave me permission to share her letter in full.

St. Margaret’s is a thin space. It’s one of the joys of a Study Abroad experience. Living in community in an unfamiliar place, you study, you wander, and every now and again you find a place that you call your own. The place keeps calling to you, drawing you back, even 20 years later. It’s a place where you draw closer to God. It’s out there, for each of you, waiting to be found…

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