Greetings good people from beautiful Cambridge. We have settled in nicely to our flat which is a mere fifteen-minute walk from everything in the University Center. There are some thirty-one colleges that compose Cambridge University, some founded as early as the thirteenth century. Likewise, there are many parish churches of comparable age. The town is a visual feast with architecture ranging from Romanesque to Gothic… Tudor, Victorian, and modern interpretations thereof. Gardens abound. Really, the city is itself a veritable garden. It is early Spring here, so buds and blooms have just now begun in earnest. Still in muted anticipation. Things grow here in England of which we have no first-hand knowledge. The gardens exude as much mystery as the cloisters of Academic Cambridge.
Perhaps it is a projection of mine, but there is an intense energy here. The stirrings in my soul I experienced in college and in seminary have been awakened once more. I am finding in the library, after cracking the virtual code (the library “ticket,” login to the formidable catalogue, etc.), a richness of resources on Coleridge’s theories on the imagination, which lead to German Romanticism, which lead to Medieval scholasticism… which lead to Plato and Aristotle… In short, I am overwhelmed. I am spending this first week seeking a path, a path yet unmarked, but a path that will show itself in due course. I know it is there for the following.
Please know that I approach this work filled with gratitude for All Saints parish. You have offered me the rarest of gifts… that of being myself. I know my time here will bear fruit, just as surely as the arrival of Spring.
It sounds as though Cambridge is as full of rabbit holes to fall down as Oxford ever did (I’m thinking of Alice and Lewis Carroll)! And to what wonderful paths they are leading your research! Can’t wait to hear more from your wonderland.