Rainy Day Trip to Oxford

There is a wistfulness I feel when looking back over travel of a year ago. A sort of longing for misty city streets and train rides through the countryside. Pubs where we could go and sit for hours with no music in the background, or tea rooms in an old-fashioned cafe with a tankard of tea and cake.

If you read English literature you’ll know they set great stock by their tea. When you visit you know they set great stock by their tea. It is not their religion, but still a sort of sacrament of everyday living. On my first trip to England in the Cotswolds I finally knew why. If, while you are there you do substantial walking on a cold and damp autumn day, this day will chill to the bone, and if you have the good fortune to stumble upon a tea room (and it’s England so you might), you must forthwith stumble into it and feel this delicious warmth such as never before felt. It envelopes you, hugs you as your much-loved and substantial great aunt might. It isn’t a reluctant or creeping warmth, but rather just is — solid, predictable, and hopeful of things to come.

This is the first bliss.

Finding yourself seated at a table about the size of a breakfast nook table you begin to find that to an experienced English tea room, this table can take on the proportions of a dinner table according to the amount of food and tea things you find before you. There will be numerous tea pots, sometimes one per person, with sugar and cream close at hand. If desired the sandwiches and fruit and little scones will arrive. For the extra cold person, a soup, and for the sweet tooth, a cake.

This is the second bliss.

Oxford was not in our original trip plans. With only a long weekend in London it hardly seemed there would be time though more than one of us secretly longed for it. Did not some of our favorite authors come from Oxford?

For myself, I have a hard time finding heroes. I do not know if this is a good or a bad thing, there are simply very few people for whom admiration of that level is engaged. It ought to be more often, but I have never found that part of myself which shuts off at the thought of feeling that way about someone.

Except, for C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. To use a slightly more modern phrasing, I can nerd out over them endlessly. To Lewis I have to give credit to almost all my way of critical thinking about Christianity (though the Apostle Paul gets the foundational kudos). He bridged the gap between sound, critical thinking and a love of beauty and imagination; few people can write these worlds into words, and somehow Lewis did.

To Tolkien I give almost all credit to opening my imagination about Heaven. Before I read ‘Lord of the Rings’ my notion of heaven was almost entirely guided by earth. Now I see places beyond my thought, of shimmering golden forests and waterfalls in houses. Of windswept mountains and the irresistible call of the gulls. Of Grey Havens. Of little holes in the ground where live hobbits. Of cities in England that were the birthplace of these tales which opened my heart and mind.

Of Oxford.

There were occasional bursts of sunshine, you know, other than Rachel’s yellow umbrella.

These house boats on the canal were so clever. Looking inside you would see little stoves and tea pots and comfy chairs. What a life!

… and then the rain returned. We walked and walked through town, stopping in at pottery shops, bookstores, and watching people. Oxford is just kind of soaked in a certain culture, you know? It’s as if the centuries of discussion, philosophies, languages, math, science, theology, writers and artists have created this place of stability and wisdom, but invites questions. As if here you come to find wisdom, and guidance, and to learn from the great minds of our century. It is the birthplace of a good portion of my favorite books, including Sheldon Vanuken’s “A Severe Mercy.”

The collective of writers like Lewis and Tolkien used to meet in The Rabbit Room at ‘The Eagle and Child.’ They were named the Inklings and they would wend their way there o’evenings to discuss and critique their writings over cups of tea. And here, we return to the tea.

Glorious, hot cups of tea. Glorious hot cups of tea after a day of rain.

Enter, The Grand Cafe.

None of this needs to have much written about it. You know the Bible verse, “I was blind but now I see?” In my words, and in a lesser way, it would be, there was my life before Oxford, and after Oxford. That sounds fanciful and possibly dramatic, but after thinking about it, it has directly and indirectly changed my life. As the place where the greatest influencers of my faith and mind lived, studied, worked and drank countless cups of tea, this place is like a geographical hero to me.

To spend the day here with friends was a rare pleasure, and especially now, I do not take any of it for granted. My life is better because of the people in it now, and the people who lived before me who took up their pen to write. It inspires me to do what I can in a more humble, and modest way, to make (if I can) the lives of the people around me, and after me, richer and clearer.

If I can for one moment, help people understand a little better to walk on earth, and to look too heaven, I will be satisfied.

Thanks for the day, Oxford.

L. Raine

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