The end of my stay in God's Own Country.

Well, I made it.

I finished my exams on Friday, handed them in 20 minutes before the due date, and promptly made plans to go to the pub (while still standing at the printer, no less!). After having a few pints, playing some pool, and devouring a delicious meal, I wandered back toward Fulford Rd. with my friend, Philip, who I met through the Minster (and who is a PhD candidate in Nuclear Physics at the univ.). The evening didn't seem to be over, and so Philip produced a bottle of gin and some unopened tonic water, which was the birth of a long and glorious conversation about all sorts of things that lasted well into the night.

I spent Saturday in town, making to Evensong that night, and, exhausted, went to bed (relatively) early.

The following day, Trinity Sunday, I made sure I looked smart and then walked to the Minster earlier than usual in order to make it in time to snag a good seat for David's ordination. The service-- though rather long-- was wonderful, and the party afterwards was great fun. After going through too much champagne, I attended Evensong, got roped into attending choral practice, and then ate a wonderful stew at the House of Trembling Madness before walking back to Fulford with Philip.

I give you this brief (and context-less) rundown of my weekend simply to say that it is because of times like these that I will miss York the most. Spending time with friends in the lantern glow of a pub or having one of the world's most magnificent Gothic cathedrals as the lynchpin of my spiritual life are things that won't travel with me back to the States. I leave them here with a heavy heart.

Because I'm predictable, I expect I'll write an inordinately long post awash in nostalgia reflecting on my time here in York, and I expect I will do this in the coming weeks. But for now I will say only this: I will miss it here.

One of the reasons I respect +Rowan.

From an article in The Guardian written by Nick Spencer:

The archbishop's controversy rests, instead, on his impressive ability to annoy both ends of the political spectrum. Lefties (or most of them) have cheered his contribution to debates on urban poverty, income inequality, criminal justice, asylum and environment, but booed him on issues of abortion, embryology, sexuality, education and the family.

 Those on the right have, predictably, done the reverse. This should be encouraging, if not actually comforting, for Christians. It underlines the idea that the gospel for which the archbishop is such a prominent ambassador cuts rudely across our narrow political mentalities.

I wish the gospel could "[cut] rudely across" America's "narrow political mentalities," too.

Like throwing stones into an empty well.

The past couple of weeks have been a blur: studying for an open exam, taking the exam, packing, hiking in the Lake District for a couple of days, coming back, last week of lectures, preparing for a second exam...

I didn't want it to get too quiet over here. In the bits of spare time I've had, I have worked on a couple of new posts that explore some of the ideas swirling around in my head, and I look forward to getting those finished soon.

For now, I can only sit at my desk, unable to process the set of complex emotions brought on by my last weeks in England.

What a glorious time it has been. I could fill pages upon pages with the ways in which this trip has changed me, has, in every way, changed the very course of my life. It was everything I needed it to be, and even more than I wanted it to be. And I wouldn't be surprised if, as I watch the spires of the Minster disappear into the distance as my train heads for London, a tear comes to my eye for the loss of this wonderful life spent among wonderful friends.

That said, I miss home. I miss my friends, my family, my fiance. I miss my bed and my house and Chicago. I miss Nashville. I miss Franklin. I miss U of I, and I miss-- I hesitate to say-- the bustle of life that it brings.

I could (and perhaps will) write a rather long post on the one thing that irks me about England: I grow tired of nighttime conversations slipping inevitably into anti-American tirades filled with contradictions and often-uninformed accusations. My usually substantial reserve of patience has reached about as much as it can take in that regard. In my quest not to seem contentious, I find that I just bottle my frustrations rather than let my views come out. I let wrong be wrong. Perhaps that's the wrong tack to take.

With a dazzling afternoon of reading about the history of the footnote (yes, I'm serious) before me, I suppose I should bring this to a close. Look for something much more interesting in the coming days.

I'd rather be "enraptured" than simply "raptured."

It perhaps comes as no surprise that I regard anyone who predicts the end of the world as an idiot. Setting aside for a moment the fact that, theologically speaking, I'm not even sure there will be a 'rapture' in the vein of Tim LaHaye, the mere act of prophesying the end times is ridiculous. Jesus wasn't even sure about it. (And, for a Christian, if Jesus wasn't sure about something, then one of us won't be any good, either.)

But I've always wondered: Why do we care so much, anyway? Why does it matter when Christ is coming again? I find that such a preoccupation with future only leads to poor living in the present; it stunts our actions as Christians now. Here. Not in the future, where we have no clue what life will hold, but in the here, the now, this instant-- that's where our focus should remain. Sure, setting goals and preparing for the future are both important tasks, but neither necessitates that we should devote all energies there.

I think about how many resources were wasted in Camping's campaign warning of the imminent return of Christ while children still died of starvation, the poor still suffered, and those ravaged by storms in the southern US still struggled to rebuild. They could have used some attention from the church. But instead, Camping's rapture parade only made it look as if the church cares more about what happens in heaven than what is happening now. I don't agree with that notion, nor do I appreciate it.

In the Bible, when Jesus gives us the Lord's Prayer, he includes the words "...on earth, as it is in heaven." There are whole theologies built around this phrase, and for good reason. These words mean that Christians can't slack off just because we feel our souls are accounted for, nor does it mean our focus should be to care only about making sure everyone elses' soul is also accounted for in the same way; rather, it means we need to consider what it means to make God and his heaven a reality here. How do we accomplish God's work now?

Personally, I could care less about the afterlife. I'm sure it's real great, and as long as I've been living as Christ lived, then I should be fine. I'll get there when I get there. I trust God's got me covered. I believe our eyes should never be more focused on death than on life-- at least, not while we're still alive, anyway.We've got eternity to consider death, but we only have a few short years to consider what it means to really live.

Under pressure.

I've been encouraged by my progress this past week. Though I"m still struggling with some productivity issues, I've managed to make some significant progress on all of my current writing projects, as well as continue churning out new posts for FLP and keep up (sort of) with my schoolwork at York. But I'm also reminded that progress is still not achievement. I still go to bed at night with the stinging feeling that I should have gotten more done, that I could have gotten more done. And so, as I step into the middle of this week, I make it my goal to go to bed every night knowing I did all I could with the time I had.

I'm still absolutely loving my time in York, and I'm realizing more and more how hard it will be to leave this place. It really does feel like a home to me. Whether running down to the pub for a pint or walking the river into town or strolling through the Museum Gardens on a sunny afternoon, I feel at ease here. And let's not forget the Minster-- that majestic building has been the lynchpin of my life here, anchoring my activities and providing a steady rhythm of quiet reflection throughout my week. The relationships I've made at the Minster have truly enriched not only just my time abroad, but my life in its entirety.

And it is in finding how to achieve a wonderful balance that I find my greatest challenge. I want to feel productive, yes, but I also want to enjoy every moment I have here. And it might sound surprising (or not) that these two goals often conflict. I can't write unless I'm at my laptop, and I can't be outside enjoying town unless I'm not sitting at my laptop. I'm sure I'll get the hang of it before the end of this week.

Looking ahead, I'm trying to plan out the last of my travels. My flatmates have planned a wonderful weekend in the Lake District, which will provide a nice jaunt into the countryside. After that, I'd like to make it back up to Scotland one last time, especially because the Jacobite steam line, voted the best rail journey in the world, is now running for the summer season. Just thinking about all the things I want to see makes me a bit stir crazy. Again, balance. I must achieve balance.

Making lists, writing letters.

"We have to reflect our times because we live in ugly times."

An excerpt from violinist Joshua Bell's recent interview with Mother Jones, entitled "Joshua Bell's Virtuoso Reality." You can find full interview here.

MJ: My friend, who is a really good violinist, called it [the "Yankee Doodle Variations"] "showy." How many pros could pull it off?
JB: Delivery is everything. Any student could play all of the notes. We like to categorize things into showy things and deep things, you know, and things that are high music—important music—and shallow music. And I think that's dangerous, because there's often a mix of both. For instance, Bruch [Violin Concerto No. 1], the main piece I played, is for me a very profound work. Because it's so lush and so emotional, some people think of it as being corny. They say that about Tchaikovsky's symphonies. If it happens to be popular to the common people, and accessible, it's often thought of as being not great. It's sort of an elitist thing. In art and music, particularly in the 20th century, there was a big period there where for something to be called profound you had to not be able to understand it.
MJ: Is that still the case?
JB: I think it's swinging back a little bit. But composers say, "We have to reflect our times because we live in ugly times." This I think is the most hilarious thing in the world. We live in the least ugly time in history. If you look at back when Beethoven was writing, half the kids were dying, mothers were dying at childbirth, there were more wars going on then than there are now. People wrote the most beautiful things during the ugliest times. I get on a rant about this because I don't need to hear ugliness in music. That's where I go for beauty.

The internet is ruining my brain.

I've been trying very hard recently to work on things-- to finish my myriad ongoing writing projects, to get my reading done for seminar on Thursday, etc. However, all this has been complicated by the internet, which provides an endless stream of procrastination-friendly activities. It adds fuel to a fire that doesn't need any more encouraging.

Most frustrating of all, I find that all this procrastination has stunted my attention span (yes... just like all those articles I've read for the past few years said it would), and I do not know how to strike a proper balance between online time and off-line time. And while some would say that this balance should not be so difficult to achieve-- and I would typically agree-- my being overseas means that the internet stands as my only form of communication with those back in the States, which in turn means I spend a lot of time on it in order to "stay in the loop."

It doesn't help either that I find myself also churning out posts for FLP, which invariably has also made it hard to focus. Blogs don't produce good writing. They just don't. Short, snappy sentences like those preceding this one would have never come from my fingers just six months ago. I've found I write more in fragments that I used to do, and I've also lost much of my syntactic variety and the ability to string my thoughts together with any sense of elegance. I need to get back in the saddle, I need to write paragraphs longer than three or four sentences, and I need to forget for a time that fragments exist. I need to reclaim my brain from the internet's quick attention-fixes.

My life needs to be more than 140 characters long.