[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.9.2″ min_height=”1132.9px” custom_margin=”-43px||-273px|||” custom_padding=”16px||0px|||”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.9.2″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” min_height=”750px” custom_margin=”0px|auto||auto||” custom_padding=”0px|||||”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.2″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” min_height=”851px” custom_margin=”5px|||||” custom_padding=”0px||2px|||”]<\/p>\n
The two-week summer sunshine jumped between the leaves of the greenest trees you will ever see as the bus followed the wall that marked the boundaries of central Oxford. Earlier in the year, my Oxford English professor had reminisced on a snowy day how majestic the tan stone buildings look when gilded in summer\u2019s golden glow.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI do hope you get to see it,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is one of my favorite sights.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The last few weeks, we had been living in an Oxford none of us recognized. We left for Italy with the brisk wind of England at our backs and returned to summer’s sweet warmth ghosting the air; yet, if anything, we fell even more in love with the city as the cherry blossoms burst from their shy buds. Everything green became impossibly greener in the sunlight. The friends we had made became dearer the closer we came to departure.<\/p>\n One of our last nights there, I walked through Christ Church meadow with two of my friends from Abilene, the setting sun dappling the pathway as it slipped through the trees. Two deer started at our footsteps in the meadow and pranced through the golden grass, and a woman with a tired face framed by grey curls stopped and smiled at them. Across the plain, the spires of Christ Church etched the skyline. I wondered if people dreamed of those spires\u2014 if that’s what they meant by “city of dreaming spires,” if wide-eyed students preparing for their A-levels dared to dream of walking below and working beneath those spires.<\/p>\n But why, Oxford? Why do I dream of Oxford? The dreams there grow flesh and breathe and walk all over the world, stumbling into my American hands and stepping through my American eyes and swimming around in my mind, where I try to keep the American out. Then my dreams are much vaster, more vibrant and strange than they were before. Magic steams from a cappuccino at the Bird and Baby. You can almost smell the jolly laughter and wonder, ancient like the pages of a book you find at Antiques on High Street or Half-priced books, where you can find the same stories. But in Oxford, it is everywhere mixed with the perfume of pollen subdued by the hanging chill throughout nine out of the twelve months until the sun bursts on all the city and the flowers flare, ripe and rich in the long-awaited heat. And maybe it is this beauty, the elegance of nature and city and history and architecture and academia and life that keeps me dreaming of walking to Tesco’s for groceries or all the way to Osney for English and tea in my professor’s quaint study or my runs, exhilarating escapes to Port Meadow, down the two-mile path that ends at the old church with the way to Wonderland, echoing with the bleating of lambs or the lowing of cows depending on the day. There I heard no other sound, saw no other creature and felt a terrifying and yet wonderful liberation as I met my God truly, truly alone.<\/p>\n The baroque buildings petered out, and I recognized the modern area I had only ever seen when we first came to Oxford. I knew that those spires I had been seeing that had been so very concrete for the past four months would now just be dreams, memories. And that sounds sad, but really, how beautiful is it that I have these experiences tucked cozily into my brain on which to reminisce whenever I desire, draw inspiration from, relate with, and learn from.<\/p>\n And I’ve already learned so much. I could never, I could never write a blog big enough, or find the time or the words to write what God taught me, what His creation, His children, each unique perspective and history taught me, or, rather, what they guided me towards. Most times, they didn’t even know what they were teaching me or if they were teaching me at all, but, I can honestly say that from almost every aspect of this trip, I gleaned significance because somehow God cracked open this tiny little American brain that I try to keep un-American and kept my eyes ever open, ever curious and searching, head swiveling so much I was dizzy, dizzy drunk on all the things, all the people, all the beauty,<\/p>\n All God.<\/p>\n Once our train to Edinburgh was canceled when the Beast from the East blew into the UK. The entire island halted with the rushing in of snow so relentless and bitter that the whole of Port Meadow froze over. Most everyone ventured out to slip and slide over the Thames. My friends and I were, of course, saddened, but ever since the Lake District, I had been working on Myself.<\/p>\n We had hiked all through a heather-heaving valley to a lake nestled between the tops of the mountains, and when I crested the final stair, I felt almost nothing. I mean, I admired the beauty and grandeur. Still, I felt so consumeristic, so hungry like I was just walking through this trip devouring every site for my own pleasure, every experience like a check in a box to say I had done these amazing things when I came back to America.<\/p>\n I ran up to the top of the hill adjacent to the lake, my calves protesting at the steepness, and looked over all the scene– the mist hanging over the deep grey lake and above that the peaks of the mountains and everywhere people milling about like the sheep further down the path.<\/p>\n I isolated myself from everything else to focus my mind on appreciation, on humility, a distance and integration of myself into the creation, the narrative God was writing, had written into this landscape so reminiscent of the Scottish Highlands; I had since I knew almost the entire country boasted wild mountain terrain and golden glens of grass and heather, desired above almost every other place to sojourn there and run wildly in the hills. I had imagined the country rising up like a dream before me, like a child dreams about Candyland and sledding through dunes of ice cream and getting lost in candy-cane forests. There’s something about endless, endless country and heather–I wanted to feel what heather was like. I wanted to see wild horses, imagined myself watching a band of Garron’s fly up and over hills, imagined myself laughing in just the purest joy\u2014the kind that makes you look like a fool to fools but is truly the ecstasy of living in complete abandon, liberation.<\/p>\n But I sat on that hill drawn into myself and felt more like a pair of boots than a person.<\/p>\n Maybe this is supposed to be a lesson for everyone; maybe we don’t realize when it happens until the most organic beauty surrounds us, and we are not as we expected to be\u2014we aren’t looking at the world with eyes that see truth because that is beautiful, those are beautiful hills, but all we see are hills.<\/p>\n I knew I wanted to adjust my vision before I went to Scotland, and God gave me just that time to come back to him, to say in earnest.<\/p>\n Be thou my vision, Oh Lord of my heart\u2026<\/p>\n So when I went to the Highlands, God granted my heart be his, and how much more did I smile when the sun peeled through the clouds and drowned Glencoe in gold! How but by surrendering my eyes to his truth did I truly feel merriment bubbling over in my heart as I sped across an Irish countryside, wanting more than anything to fly as high as my spirit shot over the wandering green?<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honorscollege\/files\/2021\/07\/Glenco-Scottish-Highlands-1.jpg” title_text=”Glencoe, Scottish Highlands” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”-34px|||||”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” min_height=”387px” custom_padding=”||0px|||”]<\/p>\n I smiled at his faithfulness still as all the golden spires faded. We drove down the last rode and breathed our last open-air breath of English oxygen, which so many I\u2019ve read have breathed, laughed, and sang, as the plane urged me off the ground. I felt my body going back and forward at the same time, to the next chapter, they say.<\/p>\n \u201cHow are you feeling about all this, Cas?\u201d my friend asked as the English coastline shrunk out of the plane window. And really, really God has shown me more than ever that I can, that I should. I should look at America like I look at Europe. I\u00a0should look at Abilene like I look at Oxford and dwell in the curiosity of creation, wondering and wandering about the world around me, excited to know more deeply and experience more vividly the kingdom God gave me, because everything good and beautiful points back to him like mountain peaks lead our eyes and our feet to the heavens.<\/p>\n So, yes, I suppose I came back bitten by the travel bug and giddiness strikes my heart when I see pictures of Manarolla, Cinque Terre or the Eiffel tower or Stonehenge or the blue domes of Santorini, Greece and I want to keep this wonder alive because it is such a beautiful, liberating way to live. [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”||0px|||”][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.9.2″ min_height=”430.9px” custom_margin=”-43px||-1856px|||” custom_padding=”16px||0px|||”][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_2,1_2″ _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”-47px|auto||auto||”][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honorscollege\/files\/2021\/07\/Killarney-National-Park-Ireland.jpg” title_text=”Killarney National Park, Ireland” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][\/et_pb_image][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honorscollege\/files\/2021\/07\/Cinque-Terre-Italy.jpg” title_text=”Cinque Terre, Italy” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][\/et_pb_image][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_2,1_2″ _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”-49px|auto||auto||” custom_padding=”||0px|||”][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honorscollege\/files\/2021\/07\/Gaisberg-Alp-Salzberg-Austria.jpg” title_text=”Gaisberg Alp, Salzberg, Austria” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][\/et_pb_image][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honorscollege\/files\/2021\/07\/Easedale-Tarn-Grasmere-Lake-District-England.jpg” title_text=”Easedale Tarn, Grasmere, Lake District, England” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][\/et_pb_image][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The two-week summer sunshine jumped between the leaves of the greenest trees you will ever see as the bus followed the wall that marked the boundaries of central Oxford. Earlier in the year, my Oxford English professor had reminisced on a snowy day how majestic the tan stone buildings look when gilded in summer\u2019s golden glow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20655,"featured_media":4672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"2880","footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[570,571,22861,496],"class_list":["post-4654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-italy","tag-oxford","tag-oxford-study-abroad","tag-study-abroad"],"yoast_head":"\n
American or not, all books smell the same.<\/p>\n
I heaved my carry-on, jam-packed with souvenirs, onto my shoulder and shoved it inside the overhead compartment, thinking of, actually craving the stifling heat of Texan summers and iced tea and never-ending highways. \u201cYou know, I\u2019m actually feeling pretty good, like this isn\u2019t the end and all that, and its just time for the next adventure.\u201d She smiled. \u201cYeah, you can go on an adventure anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
I want to live like God has curved streams into smiles and sent me real butterfly kisses on the wings of monarchs because he has.<\/p>\n