snapshots

Another idiosyncratic end-of-term round up of moments currently in my mind:

This afternoon my hands were becoming beglittered as we decorated the Link House Christmas tree. (I missed the morning Christmas cooking session, but have been eating roasted chestnuts since then.)

Speaking of food, during the week beginning 12th November I was served salmon in three colleges when I attended formal halls at Christ’s, Queens’ (with people from Link House and Trinity (MCR exchange hall). Last week I ate a pizza whose best before date was June 19th this year. Thursday this week I attended a meal with my church homegroup with succulent ham and salad and pavlova and puddings of different kinds, accompanying talk of trips around the world (I think every continent got a mention at least once).

I’ve had at least three Christmas dinners/parties: with the MCR, with the Christian Graduate Society and a gathering at Sir Fred and Lady Elizabeth Catherwood’s to which they kindly invited Link House collectively (along with the other 60 or so people who usually come) and where we were treated to a Christmas quiz (poinsettia isn’t poisonous) and carol singing with the accompaniment of a recorder quartet. The Commemoration of Benefactors doesn’t quite count as a Christmas event, but it falls in the same period. This year, in honour of the event coinciding with St Andrew’s Day, we had a Scottish-inspired menu. The whole thing was very pleasant but seemed to go much quicker than I remember it doing back in the days when seven courses followed by whisky was a novelty.

MCR activities have also included ten pin bowling and hosting Professor Melvyn Leffler’s lecture on US foreign policy. Our first year grads this year seem unusually sociable for Christ’s students. Perhaps the college strategic review, which expressed the desire for the college community to be more integrated, is bearing fruit.

We (a few friends from college and from Link House) went to see Elizabeth: The Golden Age. It was an enjoyable evening out, though I can’t say that it’s the most reliable historical chronicle ever. I enjoyed Philip of Spain the pantomime villain with a crazy glint in his eye (I don’t remember him being this wild-eyed in the earlier film). What made it especially fun is that much of it was filmed in Cambridge at St John’s College. Somehow it’s hard to suspend disbelief and pretend the Bridge of Sighs is on the Thames.

The River Cam changes its moods with the seasons. A few weeks ago I went with a Sudanese housemate to try to see a boat race on the river. The race was cancelled because of the wind, which I was glad of in some ways as I think if it had been on we wouldn’t have got there in time. It turned into a leisurely walk out beyond the edges of the town towards the villages. My friend Altayeb had his camera with him and especially appreciated the autumn colours: he pointed out that he could see four contrasting colours within the frame of one photograph. Seasons don’t really happen near the equator. More recently, as I’ve been trudging home from my travails past the backs, the river has had mist settle on it and a dim light with the onset of winter.

Looking out of the window one recent evening I could see layered pink clouds weaving together a sunset.

I’ve long been frustrated by the many variants of the following advice to students – party all night long/tour the world/discover your ‘true self’/get internships in business NOW, before you have to leave the magical wonderland of university and go out into the ‘real world’ and settle down and never have opportunity to do any of these things ever again (well, maybe when you retire, but by then the state pension scheme will probably have collapsed). I appreciate that it’s good to encourage students to make the most of their opportunities, but the overblown rhetoric puts excessive pressure on students to do everything all the time, which is not sustainable, and effectively tells young people “It’s all downhill from here”, which is not a great mindset to motivate people to do thing. I was thus encouraged to read the following in Cornelius Plantinga’s book Engaging God’s World, which some of us have been reading together:

Meanwhile, don’t imagine that while you’re in college you’re in some kind of holding tank awaiting the great day when you’ll emerge into the “real world.” People will speak of college life to you in this way, saying things like, “Just wait till you get to the real world.” Often what they mean is “just wait till you get out here where balancing work and leisure is nearly impossible and keeping up with debts is real headache.” If that’s the “real world,” then you’re already in it.

But jobs, bills, and stress aren’t necessarily the “real world” either, or at least not anything like the whole of it. To think in that way is to think small. No matter what our primary occupation, we can’t let it become a preoccupation. Even now, when we get really focused on cramming for tests and cranking out papers, it’s easy to let the rest of reality fade into the background. Soon the world is no bigger than our dorm room, a classroom, and the sidewalks in between. And that’s not the real world at all.

Someone who lives in the “real world” lives with an awareness of the whole world, because the whole world is part of the kingdom of God. On any given day he may walk no more than a mile, but his imagination will trot the globe.
(Cornelius Plantinga, Engaging God’s World: A Christian Vision of Faith,
Learning, and Living (Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans, 2002), pp. 139-140)