Surprised by Oxford: A Memoir

Surprised by Oxford: A Memoir

by Carolyn Weber
Surprised by Oxford: A Memoir

Surprised by Oxford: A Memoir

by Carolyn Weber

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Overview

When Carolyn Weber set out to study Romantic literature at Oxford University, she didn't give much thought to God or spiritual matters—but over the course of her studies she encountered the Jesus of the Bible and her world turned upside down. Surprised by Oxford chronicles her conversion experience with wit, humor, and insight into how becoming a Christian changed her.

Carolyn Weber arrives at Oxford a feminist from a loving but broken family, suspicious of men and intellectually hostile to all things religious. As she grapples with her God-shaped void alongside the friends, classmates, and professors she meets, she tackles big questions in search of truth, love, and a life that matters.

From issues of fatherhood, feminism, doubt, doctrine, and love, Weber explores the intricacies of coming to faith with an aching honesty and insight echoing that of the poets and writers she studied. Surprised by Oxford is:

  • The witty memoir of a skeptical agnostic who comes to a dynamic personal faith in God
  • Rich with illustration and literary references
  • Gritty, humorous, and spiritually perceptive
  • An inside look at Oxford University

Weber eloquently describes a journey many of us have embarked upon, grappling with tough questions and doubts about the meaning of faith—and ultimately finding it in the most unlikely of places.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780849949319
Publisher: Nelson, Thomas, Inc.
Publication date: 02/04/2013
Sold by: HarperCollins Publishing
Format: eBook
Pages: 480
Sales rank: 128,791
File size: 883 KB

About the Author

Carolyn Weber holds her BA from the University of Western Ontario and her M.Phil and D.Phil degrees from Oxford University. She has been Associate Professor of Romantic Literature at Seattle University; she has also taught at Westmont College, University of San Francisco and Oxford University. Carolyn and her husband share the joy of parenting three spirited children in Santa Barbara, CA and London, Canada.  Find her online at www.pressingsave.com.

Read an Excerpt

Surprised by Oxford

A Memoir
By CAROLYN WEBER

Thomas Nelson

Copyright © 2011 Carolyn Weber
All right reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8499-4931-9


Chapter One

All That You Can't Leave Behind

I was not sleeping, you are not waking me. No, I have been in tears for a long while And in my restless thought walked many ways. In all my search, I found one helpful course, And that I have taken: I have sent Creon To Delphi, Apollo's place of revelation, To learn there, if he can, What act or pledge of mine may save the city. —Sophocles, Oedipus Rex

My arrival in Oxford, England, that early October of 1994 came with plenty of baggage. Anyone who has tried to move a suitcase full of books before will tell you how deceptively heavy such a load becomes. Fortunately I shipped most of my books ahead of time, leaving room for other important considerations, such as fashion. Like any self-respecting girl (especially one about to relocate near the magnificent city of London), I brought many shoes. I had no idea at the time of the significance of all these soles accompanying me. All I knew was that the suitcases were unbelievably cumbersome and that I had to drag them (as they were the cheap kind without rollers) quite some distance before I would reach my college.

Very early that morning, after a long overnight flight, I landed amid the hustle and bustle of Heathrow Airport. The flight had been stuffy, hot, and very long, so I went into the restroom, held my head over the sink, and rinsed my hair in the cool water.

The weather was still very warm for autumn, and though tired I felt refreshed, so I headed in search of the X70—the bus that runs regularly between the airport and Oxford. Again I was directed down another mazy corridor, which wound past the train and tube options. I had no idea that getting to my destination would require such labyrinthine efforts. But then again, I had no idea.

The bus ride was pleasant enough, despite feeling as though we might smash into our death at any moment on the M25 freeway. The rest of the world drives so much faster than North Americans. Here I thought we were manic, and we are in our diurnal living, but on our streets we are sedate by comparison to our global neighbors.

I love buses. You ride up royally high, so you are able to look down into passing cars like an artful voyeur. You also get to people-watch on the bus itself, which is always live theater. I took numerous buses to school and even more to work. Later I drove the old rundown Buick I shared with my mom and sister, the kind of car in which you hold your breath at every stoplight. Will it keep running? Will it start when I come out in the dark? Should it be making that queer sound when I brake? The trunk did not open, the gas tank leaked into the backseat often, and the driver's window was stuck at a crack. Sometimes my brother loaned me his beat-up green Chevy, which we lovingly referred to as the "Tank." It was about as reliable as the Buick but with one major advantage: it was so big that no one messed with you on the road. I hung a little transistor radio from the rearview mirror, since running too many things at once, such as a turn signal, wipers, and the radio, caused everything on the dash to short out. To this day I still feel an exhilarating sense of luxury when I sit in a car built after 1975.

Our driving mantra was, "Just get me there."

Funny how you become what you think.

I dozed, jolting occasionally at the driver's loud pronouncement of upcoming stops. At this early hour the bus hummed along quietly with few passengers, so the stops were infrequent. In the hazy surrealism of predawn, there really was not much to see—what I could make out was mainly countryside, though not what I would call quaint, and certainly no Shakespearean cottages or fairy folk peeping from the trees. I kept an eye out for Oxford University, certain that I would eventually be able to see the campus on the horizon stretched out gloriously like Stanford's, which is so big it has its own shuttle system, or the famously sprawling campuses of Virginia marked by languid trees. At the very least fine towers surely would girdle the campus, like those to my own undergraduate alma mater, the University of Western Ontario. When you met those crested columns, you felt as though you were entering divine real estate indeed, the mother of all gated communities. "All those who enter here will learn."

So you can imagine my confusion at the driver's last call for Oxford. Last call? Only a little while back, we had come upon a pretty little bridge. At that point the architecture seemed more archaic, but this was England, so was everything not supposed to look old? According to instructions I should have rung the bell for the stop soon after passing Magdalen College, but I had been listening for "Magdalen," as in Mary Magdalene, not "Mawdawlynn" as the Brits crazily pronounce it. All my soles and I should have disembarked at the stop in front of All Souls College. Ironically I had missed the call.

As I continued dozing the bus whistled through a busy intersection, jolting me into the realization that I should inquire of our whereabouts. Without warning we took a sharp turn onto Worcester Street, and the next thing I knew those annoying little beeps were sounding, indicating that the bus was backing up. Only three passengers remained, including me. The driver came down the aisle and prodded the one passenger awake, helped the elderly lady collect herself, and shouted at me to come get my luggage. I stepped off the bus with the dawn; the station was still but slowly coming to life. A young man in a rumpled tuxedo slept on a nearby bench. Wow, I thought, the homeless sure are spiffy here. I asked the driver how far a walk it was to Oriel College. His answer did not encourage me.

"Why didnae get off at All Souls, luv?" he asked in turn.

"I didn't know we were in Oxford yet," I replied. "There was no sign. Where's the campus? Where are the gates? The rows of fraternity houses? Where are the pillars? You know, the ones with the crest?"

The driver scratched his head. "I havena idear what you're talkin' boot, miss, but everyone knows that the High Road marks the way inna Oxford."

* * *

The music of the enduring Irish pop band U2 was deemed "alternative," but everyone I knew growing up liked it. Once acquainted with the power of metaphor as an English major, however, I began to see their lyrics differently. On one level they suggested eros, or erotic love; at another level they conveyed agape, or the self-giving love of God. The former beckons the latter, and yet the latter does not need any predilection. Indeed all other forms of love will be healed and function most beautifully when subsumed under agape's rule. However, the intertwining of sex and spirituality has always haunted literature and art, perhaps because we crave the intimate and are most immediately assuaged by the sexual, and so we know of no other more appropriate language.

For their cover to the album All That You Can't Leave Behind, photographer Anton Corbijn photographed the band members in the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. In the background the departure notices read "J33-3," a reference to chapter 33, verse 3 of Jeremiah: "Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and hidden things which you have not known" (ESV). U2 was obviously deeper than I thought.

Before I started listening to U2, a picture framed my life. My parents stand poised on the edge of promise, steps spilling beneath them under the arch of my hometown's cathedral. They look like Grace Kelly and Cary Grant. Literally. It is a bittersweet thing, being the ruddy daughter of a Helen, the filial beloved of a Lear. The wedding was breathtakingly beautiful as though silvered and inlaid, like its frame, with mother-of-pearl.

Money grew tight, but it was not always that way. We used to live in a large home in a comfortable neighborhood with luxury cars. We enjoyed a sailboat and a cabin cruiser and a lakefront summer retreat. My father played Santa Claus to the neighborhood children, bought them all gifts, took entire Little League teams regularly out to dinner. My earliest memories involve his extreme generosity and indulgence. I breezily did the sort of things normally denied children, like sitting on my father's lap while driving golf carts or eating lobster dinners in darkened restaurants with fussy waiters. Dolls from all parts of the world decorated my room. As a challenging toddler I liked to throw things away, such as my father's expensive items, and then pronounce them "all gone." A fishing rod over the side of our boat, or a putter through a sewer slot. My father would just chuckle and buy replacements—another for himself and usually a smaller version for me. He winced a bit when I flushed his Rolex watch down the toilet, but still laughed good-heartedly at my mother's admonitions. He was handsome and tanned and smelled wonderful, like a mix of the ocean and fresh-cut grass, except when he smoked his pipe, which also smelled wonderful, as how I thought wisdom must smell, when it curls about your head.

Winters enveloped us in a fun flurry of sledding, skating, and coming home to hot cocoa. We huddled together, watching old movies in quilted succession by the fire. My mother sang all the show tunes. I would bury my face in her apron, resting against the bump of my sister and soaking in her scent of all things comforting and good. Often at night I would creep into bed next to her, just to be encircled by it. Anyam aug in Hungarian, my mother's first language, conveys the nuances of a "mother's bed."

Summers gleamed alive in sunshiny memories filled with splashing in the pool or lake and eating ice cream at the park. Tepid evenings relieved muggy days; black velvet nights were filled with points of light, either boundless fireflies or, on long weekends, fireworks and sparklers. After dinner, my father and I picked still-sunwarm cherries from the tree in the backyard, popping them into our mouths and spitting out the pits while sprawled together in our lawn chairs.

At age six I took my first piano lesson. I never took my second. A week later the piano was repossessed.

A freak storm hit that winter complete with thunder and lightning. Our beloved cherry tree sat on a blanket of snow, magnificent, glazed with ice. Like Jane Eyre, one night I awoke to a violent crack. When I looked outside, the iced cherry tree had been smitten almost perfectly in half. It looked back at me, bewildered, broken, smoking from its lightning hit, frost hissing. I never forgot the paradox.

Shortly afterward, we lost our first house.

These were the early days of the Great Fear, to be followed shortly after by the Confusion Era. My mom became efficient at packing and unpacking. We learned not to answer the door, to ignore the strange questions. My little sister cowered, and my big brother clenched his fists. Holding hands tightly, we walked home quickly from school, ignoring the cars that followed us or the phone calls late at night that made my mother's hands shake when she came in to check on us and we feigned sleep. Whenever it came time to move again, Mom kept us busy. Eating fried chicken and singing songs, I would sit on the counter, swinging my legs to her singing as the men went by with our things. Mom always filled the house with music, poetry, and books. Regardless of what poured out, she poured beauty back in. Somehow she managed dance and skating lessons for us and the occasional magical treat of a ballet or opera. My dad now remained absent, but no one spoke of wheres or whys. Of such things no one spoke at all.

I learned that things did not matter. Nor did homes. Things came and went. Houses changed. Stuff was just stuff. It was yours one minute and not yours the next.

* * *

"Are you sure you donnae want a cab, miss?" the driver asked, looking concerned.

"No, thank you, I'll manage," I smiled. Besides I did not have enough British currency on me for purchasing the cab fare. While I knew that Oxford consisted of thirty-eight self-governing colleges and six permanent private halls, I did not fully understand how these comprised the campus, which was thereby embedded within the city of Oxford itself. You could walk the city streets and admire, of course, the magnificent architecture of the more public common buildings, such as libraries, museums, and churches. But a college could easily be passed by undetected. Only once you entered through its deceptively humble portal did the college reveal itself in its entire serendipitous splendor.

Then it was as though you had entered another world in another time, and yet one that remained timeless, evocative of castles, palazzos, columned walkways—magical places of learning, some dating at least as far back as the eleventh century. Fountains danced in the midst of pristine lawns; rosy arbors offered peepholes into luxurious grounds; worn wooden benches nestled in miniature English country gardens. And the color! Lush green ivy embraced ashen stone; lavender blew against tea-stained brick; copper reddened in the sun against true blue sky. Gargoyles. Angels. Grottoes. Secret gardens and yellowed paths. The effect evoked my childhood haunts, like Narnia after the thaw.

Behind the urban commotion the sanctuary of each college sprawled inconspicuously toward the next.

My scholarship had assigned me to Oriel College, established in 1324 and owning the distinction of being the oldest royal foundation in Oxford. It also sits almost exactly across the city from the bus station. Without a ride and beleaguered by shoes for every occasion, let's just say I was in for a long haul.

* * *

At the interview for my first formal job, I lied about my age so as to dodge the work hour limitations for minors. I easily looked older when I dressed older. From my early teens throughout my undergraduate degree, I followed the same pattern almost every weekday. Got up early and went to school, attended practice or some student council event, then left straight for my job, getting home shortly before midnight, usually to my mom sitting alone with a drink in the dark. After she was safely in bed, I would reheat dinner and then study late into the early morning, catching a few hours of sleep before getting up for class all over again.

While I worked various jobs after school, I most consistently worked at a ballet school, a jewelry store, and a lingerie shop. For anyone who has worked retail, you know that Sundays are not sacred, nor are holidays, so I worked those, too, gift-wrapping like a madwoman for people in more of a foul than festive mood. When I did have the occasional free evening, I usually spent it cloistered in the college library wrapped in the distinctly comforting scent of old books. I spent every moment between classes studying and countless late nights at the computer lab until my senior year, when my mom surprised me with a used laptop that weighed, oh, about five hundred pounds.

My full undergraduate scholarship depended upon keeping straight As across all courses, every year, for all four years. Without that scholarship there would have been little or no chance of getting my first degree. As it was I could barely scrape together enough for supplies and books. I learned that the coffee-and-cookie combo at the kiosk in the college common room could last you most of the day. Any spare cent went toward buying books. I snuck these "friends" along with me to my jobs, clandestinely reading Aristotle, Dickens, and Tolstoy behind the counter. I wonder what Jane Austen would say, herself used to hiding her own writing beneath table blotters whenever someone entered the room, to having had her pages read secretively behind racks of black lace teddies? Or the Brontë sisters to having been smuggled in and enjoyed among silk leopard-print knickers? Romeo's comparison of Juliet's beauty to a jewel hanging in an Ethiope's ear fills your vision when you arrange diamonds on black velvet with the night pressing against the glass of the shop windows.

(Continues...)



Excerpted from Surprised by Oxford by CAROLYN WEBER Copyright © 2011 by Carolyn Weber. Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

Contents

Preface: A Note on the Text and Terms....................xv
Prologue: Doubt Wisely....................1
1. All That You Can't Leave Behind....................11
2. The Father (W)hole....................25
3. Signs, Signs, Everywhere Are Signs....................37
4. The Storm Before the Calm....................45
5. The Poison Tree....................53
6. Shaken, Not Just Stirred....................63
7. Sweet-Talkin' Son of a Preacher Man....................81
8. Jesus, the Great Polarizer....................87
9. The Conundrum of Time....................99
10. Does Love Justify All?....................115
11. Tide Out: Have a Heimlich/Un-Heimlich Christmas (Home, but Not Home, for the Holidays)....................135
12. Tide In: Am I My Sister's Keeper?....................141
13. Tide Out: Forsaking All Others (Including the Self)....................153
14. Tide In: More Than a New Year....................169
15. Book Ends....................183
16. What If Jesus Had Been a Woman?....................191
17. Sehnsucht....................207
18. Butterflies in the Bookcase....................217
19. Professor Von X....................223
20. Throwing the Baby Out with the Baptism Water....................237
21. Psychomachia....................253
22. The Ultimate Valentine....................263
23. Tide Out: Good Friday, Riding Westward....................275
24. Tide In: Confessions of an Introverted Convert....................283
25. Tide Out: Do I Have to Be a LOUD Christian?....................297
26. Tide In: Dance Like a Fish....................305
27. Church Going....................321
28. Looking for the Loch Ness Monster....................331
29. Miss Georgia....................337
30. Bald in the Land of Big Hair....................345
31. Mary and Me....................369
32. Parousia....................381
33. All Joy Reminds....................393
34. Trinity Sunday, Trinity Term....................401
35. St. Margaret's Road....................413
36. Annus Mirabilis....................425
Epilogue: Believe Wisely....................435
Acknowledgments....................443
Notes....................449
About the Author....................457
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