(Howell Creek Radio address for Nov. 10, 2012 -- ) # The College Last week I mentioned "the college of which my head has always been a student"; I should perhaps better have said, "the college I always imagined myself attending", since that's closer to what I meant. I have an ideal of a college shaped, perhaps, almost completely by movies and books rather than anything real or present or attainable, which I admit somewhat sheepishly. Arlan wrote in a comment to last week's address that college "as a whole should be regarded cynically as self-aggrandizing, delivering less than promised, handicapped by conventions, politics, and greed [...]. Notwithstanding that critique, there are pleasant meetings and novel thoughts to be had within. But neither are these graces confined to academic campuses. In short, I find for myself that mundane uses should be expected of mundane things, and sublime gifts expected not from places but from people." None of this, of course, is lost on me. But it is my belief and hope that the right environments can attract the right kind of people. In the book _A Severe Mercy_, Sheldon Vanauken describes life at Oxford University in the 1950s: > "Meanwhile, we explored Oxford's grey magic, Oxford, 'that sweet City with her dreaming spires'. Oxford and all the country round, sometimes on our bikes, sometimes on foot...Coming back to Oxford, we were always, it seemed, greeted by the sound of bells: bells everywhere striking the hour of bells from some tower change-ringing, filling the air with a singing magic. We explored every cranny of this city of enchanting crannies and unexpected breathtaking views of towers and spires. We were conscious all the time of the strong intellectual life of a thousand years. Despite the modern laboratories, Oxford is still 'breathing the last enchantments of the middle ages': this wall was part of a great abbey; the Benedictines built the long, lovely buildings that are part of one college quad; the narrow passage where we bought tea things has been called Friars Entry for centuries..." All of this is very picturesque, and forms not the least part of what I might call my College of Dreams. In fact, when last year, I saw the Harry Potter movies, and saw the spires and candle-lit halls of Hogwarts, I recognized it as a place I had imagined very often: visually, nothing other than an Oxford for children. But Vanauken goes on to describe a side of Oxford life even more appealing to me than spires and Friars' entries: a lifestyle of substantive conversation. "Poetry was no small part of the magic of the Studio," he writes, "not only the great poems but our own -- the poems we wrote and read to each other and discussed, poems in which the Incarnate God was very much present." In another place, he writes "Indeed, in some of the best discussions on Christian subjects, there would usually be a couple of non-Christians there, too, joining in with healthy scepticism. Our experience of Oxford was that everybody talked about everything." > "One of the societies I, therefore, joined when I was invited was a college dining society, limited to ten members, called the Antler, which twice a term had a dinner somewhere in the Oxford country, such as the Bear at Woodstock or Studley Priory. The dinner and the wines would be painstakingly selected in advance by one of us, we wore dinner jackets, and for half the dinners we invited a distinguished guest. The conversation ranged from good to brilliant; and what we sought, though we did not of course say so, was civilisation." If there's one thing I long for, and which seems to be so hard to find, it is meaningful conversation, which is one essence of the true meaning of that lovely word _literacy_. There's a really long blog post by Venkat Rao called [_Rediscovering Literacy_][rl] which has a lot to say about this: > "Literacy used to be a very subtle concept that meant linguistic sophistication. It used to denote a skill that could be developed to arbitrary levels of refinement through practice. Literacy meant using mastery over language -- both form and content -- to sustain a relentless and increasingly sophisticated pursuit of greater meaning. It was about an appreciative, rather than instrumental use of language. Language as a means of seeing rather than as a means of doing...Today, to be literate simply means that you can read and write mechanically, construct simple grammatical sentences, and use a minimal, basic (and largely instrumental) vocabulary. We have redefined literacy as a [binary] 0-1 condition rather than a skill that can be indefinitely developed." At any rate, returning to Arlan's comment, of course I cannot _help_ viewing the community colleges and online distance courses that are actually available to me with some cynicism when compared to The College of my imaginative ideal. But still: these fragments left to us by Vanauken and others like him, who really did not live that long ago and whose words I have no reason to doubt, convinces me that bells and spires and the sparkling conversation over the dinner table _did actually exist in our own world not that long ago_ -- and might still be with the reach of a lifetime. Synopsis ------------- Radio address for November 11, 2012. I elaborate upon my ideal of a college and the search for a lifestyle of literacy. The title was perhaps given with Sherlock Holmes' "_The_ Woman" in mind; as well as references like this in _That Hideous Strength_ by C.S. Lewis: > "'Of course,' said Merlin. 'And that was how I knew you were of the College. Is it not our pass-word all over the earth?'"[^ths] Mention is made of [_A Severe Mercy_][asm], by Sheldon Vanauken[^sv], and of a blog post called [_Rediscovering Literacy_][rl] by Venkat Rao. Music is [_Anon: Tolling of the Knell_][kq], from _Early Music_ by Kronos Quartet; and [_A Window to the Past_][jw] from the soundtrack to _Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban_ by John Williams. [^sv]: Vanauken, Sheldon. _A Severe Mercy_. First paperback edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1987. Print. [^ths]: Lewis, C. S.. _That Hideous Strength_. First paperback edition. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1965. Print. [asm]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060688246/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0060688246&linkCode=as2&tag=joelsimprpers-20 [rl]: http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2012/05/03/rediscovering-literacy/ "Rediscovering Literacy" [kq]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0018AM1AS/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0018AM1AS&linkCode=as2&tag=joelsimprpers-20 [jw]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0018AT890/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0018AT890&linkCode=as2&tag=joelsimprpers-20