Educated State

Now that I am back in the classroom, after many years in the wilds of administration, I have been able to concentrate on teaching.  And despite having started this gig teaching college students in 1981, I am still learning, and now learning from my younger colleagues. 

Just this last week I was reminded that some of what I have learned is paying off. It’s just past midterms. Students are concerned about their grades and where they will end up. I’m prodding them in each class session to take action. They are meeting with me to think through what they can do to finish strong.

At the beginning of the 2017-18 academic year, a year and a half ago, one of our newer Biblical Studies professors, Dr. Melanie Howard, gave a brief presentation on working with first generation students.  She gave several suggestions, one of which I began to try out, and am still using. I now hold traditional office hours in the coffee shop each week. After my early class I head over to the coffee shop, Charlotte’s Corner (in Alumni Hall) get a drink and hang out, do some work, read, review for classes, whatever is pressing. Students can drop by without an appointment to chat about anything they have on their minds. Sometimes I buy them a cup of coffee.

In the past when I waited in my actual office for students to show up, I met with a handful over the course of the semester.  Now I average 2-3 a week. If I saw six students over the semester in my office, I now see 30+. They stop by to clarify something said in class, check on the topic of an assignment or reading, get help on a paper, ask what they can do to improve their grades, or sometimes just to talk for a few minutes.

Melanie explained that going to a professor’s office can be intimidating.  And it’s out of the way, takes special effort to get over too it.  The coffee shop is easy, on the main footpath, and a safer environment. I still meet with students in my office, especially if they want to go over grades or talk about a personal situation with greater privacy. But those more casual conversations in the coffee shop, even if just for a few minutes, seem to be appreciated and to work for students.

Many years ago, probably about 20, one of our then younger professors, Dr. Tim Neufeld, professor of Christian ministry, gave me a piece of advice that I continue to rely on. He may not even remember it.  I asked him what was important about advising and mentoring for the traditional college age student—the 18 to 23-year-old. His reply was something like this. They want to be able to drop in when they need something—advice, information, or just to make contact with someone. They want to be free to leave, be on their own, and make their own decisions, but they also need someone available. He was more eloquent, and probably had more to say, but this is the gist of what I remember. And so, I don’t press too hard, and I let students set the tone and depth of what they want to discuss. If the chat is 3 minutes or 30 minutes, that is ok. I have been following Tim’s guidance ever since.  

Many tell us that in college advising and mentoring, we need to make sure that students—young adults—make their own decisions. Tim’s advice fits that goal. Be available, offer counsel, encourage, then let them go, knowing they have support but will also be responsible for the decisions they make.

One other new practice has developed, sort of on its own over the last couple of years. One day in class, with a paper due in a few days, I announced that I would read and make suggestions on papers if students sent them to me at least a day before they were due. To my surprise several students took me up on it. 

I’ve developed a simple pattern of making suggestions for things they might consider in the final revision of a paper.  I do not grade them, tell them what their grades might be, revise for them, or proof read.  I simply make suggestions. They range from “you might want to proofread very carefully and make sure your work is grammatical,” to “look at the actual assignment, you do not seem to be addressing it directly.”  Or it might be about the topic: “look at the reading again; have you covered all of the most important points?” I might suggest that they test their logic, that they make sure they include a topic or thesis statement, that their conclusion flows from the body of the paper. I might offer some guidance on the meaning of a term or remind them of the historical context they are working within. I read through their paper and offer a few lines to prod them to deeper thinking, clearer writing (the two go together), and more thoughtful analysis. In a class of 50 students, 5-10% of the students might take me up on it, depending on the pressures of that particular time of the semester.

There is one additional benefit. I remind them often that good academic work is not about dashing off their first thoughts. Good papers and learning are the result of considered thinking and writing, developed and reconsidered over time. This means that they must write a paper, set it aside, go back to it, revise it to make sure it addresses questions and presents thoughts well and deeply, flows logically and reads grammatically. Reading follows the same pattern. We don’t get everything the first time we read it. We have to read, let it simmer in our minds, go back to it and stir again. If a few students plan their work so that they get a draft done a day earlier than they might have otherwise, and then take the time to revise it carefully, that is an added benefit. It takes me an hour or two for each assignment, but it has become one of my standard practices—I set aside time for it. It also makes grading enjoyable. I can see the progress some of the students have made. They seem to be proud of that progress.

So, if you thought that professors mostly just hang out in coffee shops, talk with students, and avoid real work, well, you were at least partially correct! Thanks to Tim and Melanie, and my other colleagues who continue to teach me how to teach. (I’ve revised this piece several times…)

A procession in St. Mark’s Square, Venice (1496)—more information is provided through the link at the very end of this post. We are headed to Italy this June and July, 16 of us so far—alumni and friends of FPU. (You can find out more about the tour on the FPU Alumni web page.) There are many benefits to travel, beyond sheer enjoyment, and being able to go with friends (and soon to be friends).  Part of the fun of it is the anticipation and thinking about what we will see, try and do. As I have turned to the more detailed preparation, I have begun to look at things that the group or individuals might want to consider. We have planned group events, tours, etc.  and have allotted ample free time and days to explore as we may choose. Here are some things I’m thinking about, and others might want to consider too. Our first stop is Venice! Italy Guides has a good overview of sites in Venice.  If you dig into them individually, you will find multiple things. The Doge’s palace is a must! Venice was one of the great medieval and early modern republics. Some brief, history can be found on YouTube and on other sites. (Here is a good history site. There are lots of inadequate and misleading sites, so check on who writes them and what they are for.)  If you do a YouTube search on “Venice” there are lots of other things to look at, some longer, some shorter.  There are travel shows and videos, like Rick Steve’s series, some of which can be found on YouTube. There are a couple of special topics that might be of interest as well. Venice was one of the great Jewish centers in the early modern world, and perhaps the first Ghetto. Jews from central Europe and elsewhere traded there, and Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal in 1492 at the end of the reconquest found refuge in the larger Venetian Jewish community. In 2016, the 500^th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish ghetto was commemorated, one of the events being the first performance in Venice of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the judge in the play’s trial scene. And we cannot leave out some of the art that we will see. The art of each city and building has a story. Some of the art we will see was developed by the “confraternities” of the medieval and early modern world. These were what might be called religious brotherhoods, composed of both clerics and laypeople, usually with a dual dedication to prayer and other devotional practices and to practical forms of charity, mutual assistance or charity. They were patrons of art like the piece that leads this post. You can find some interesting things about them at smarthistory a non-profit educational site that works with museums worldwide. And this is just our first city!

The following little interchange comes from a Dilbert comic that was printed this week. I read it and laughed. Guy with a goatee, “Hi. I’m very smart, but I don’t know how to do anything.” Dilbert, “Where did you get your PH.D?” Goatee, “I didn’t say I have a PH.D.” Dilbert, “You kinda did.” I suppose I found it funny because I’ve heard it before, I’ve experienced it, and its kinda true. It reminded me of one of the stories told multiple times about C. S. Lewis. He finished his Oxford degree, and his family supported him for an extra year to study an additional subject, English literature, while he looked for a position as a fellow at one of the Oxford colleges. He struggled to find a position teaching philosophy, and his family worried that if he did not find a position, there was nothing else he could do to support himself. He finally found a position in English, but never earned a PH.D. The story still is applicable. His first academic book became a classic that graduate students working on Ph.Ds. in medieval literature still must read, an “eroding classic” as one of my graduate professors, himself a student of Lewis’s, called it. Several Lewis’s students went on to earn their own doctorates and became prominent as scholars. Lewis didn’t need one. Those of us who have been through it, understand the Dilbert cartoon, even if we don’t like it. But there is something deeper here that we and our students must come to grips with. I’ll try to explain it from my experience and from working as an academic administrator with a couple of dozen professors who have finished their doctorates while working at FPU over the last two decades, and other large group hired with new degrees in hand. It may well be true that those with the PH.D are not the most practical of people. That is for the simple reason that they are deliberately trained not to be.  The final part of their academic program is the dissertation. They must essentially write a book, where they focus on a narrow topic that no one has worked on before, resolve a problem, dig out all the relevant evidence, test or apply theories with which they are working, develop an original solution, and defend it against any and all challenges. This is enough to train one to think, “I’m very smart.” And for others to think and sometimes say you “don’t know how to do anything.” The deeper issue, it seems to me, is not either of these responses, however.  It is rather that the work we do in earning a typical doctorate is in itself intellectually destabilizing. We learn to focus intently on a very small problem. We zero in on the evidence and look for every bit of it possible to find. We interpret the evidence in multiple ways. We argue as strongly as possible to defend our thesis. We may apply a particular theoretical perspective and argue that it is the appropriate and most correct, or only correct theory. And we are trained to defend it—if we can’t defend it, the degree is not granted. In addition, by the time we are done, we may have spent several years thinking about it. We’ve been absorbed in it so long, and so intently, that it has become such a part of us that it has taken over our way of thinking and seeing. We loose balance and might sound like we think we are experts in lots of other things. Or we sound like we are so narrow in our understanding that we are of no practical relevance. In my experience, it sometimes takes up to five years to regain balance, to see it all in a broader perspective and recognize that it really was small thing in the great scheme not only of life, but even of our subject matter. I have watched numbers of our professors go through the pattern of over-concentration, exacting thoroughness on a relatively minor issue, intense defense of their work or claims, to arrive after few years at a more balanced perspective, appreciative of other conclusions and perspectives. I should be transparent and say that after I finished my dissertation, I put it aside for about 5 years out of fear that it was probably not worth much, and because I was frankly tired of it. I read it after that and thought that the argument still worked,  but that there we several sections that needed revision before publishing it, even sections I was earlier ready to defend without reserve. I was relieved that it still seemed generally to make sense. I read it another fifteen years later or so and discovered that there was one section that I wasn’t sure I understood and was pretty sure I had muddled up. It’s after those five years, or whatever it takes, that we really become creative teachers and scholars, and perhaps we learn to do something. Our students learn to put up with us. They recognize our enthusiasms. Where else can you find people who are intrigued by problems that others have not even thought of, but which might have relevance, continuing importance, and offer insight to students? If we are sometime a little eccentric, laugh with us. We recognize it. It is, in my experience, an occupational hazard. I haven’t mentioned how all of this plays out in university meetings, the attempt to formulate a policy or plan, and to get agreement on practical solutions to problems. But you can find this addressed in a number of comic novels set in universities. They will make you laugh. I, for one, am happy to be the source of your enjoyment. I laugh too.

It happens often. I am asked what I do maybe in a store, or a Dr.’s office, or at a restaurant. Who knows where? All of those have happened this fall. I tell them I am a history professor at Fresno Pacific University. Or an alum comes by the university, and we chat for a while. If they are, let’s say, mid-thirties or older, I often get this response. “I really enjoy history now. I didn’t get much of it when I was in college.” An alum might say it a little differently, “…when I was in your class. But I really enjoyed it!” Good recovery. History seems to make more sense after we have gained a little experience in the world. Much of what we do with undergrads is try to open eyes to what is happening in the world around, and in broad strokes explain how the world we live in got to be what it is, for good and bad. The next question is sometimes “do you have any good history books to recommend?” Since I have been asked recently, several times, here are a good handful of titles that might be interesting or thought provoking. The 500-year anniversary of the Reformation provoked much rethinking of the Protestant heritage. One that has sparked a lot of discussion, and that I have used in the revision of Medieval and Early Modern Civilizations (which I have been teaching on and off (mostly on) since the early 90s, is Brad Gregory, Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts that Continue to Shape the Our World (2017). The subtitle explains its subject. Well worth it. On the nature of European and American civilization, and especially the influence of Christianity in our long and turbulent history, Larry Siedentop Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism (2014). This one has a complicated argument, but it rewards sticking with it. It goes back to the New Testament, discusses the medieval origins of the modern focus on human rights, and the unique ways in which Christianity has contributed to our understanding of the individual and the ways we relate to churches, governments and society. One that has come out of my research work, that uncovers our deep roots is Eric Nelson The Hebrew Republic (2010), an exploration of the influence of Old Testament on the formation of republican governments from the 16^th-18^th centuries. Along with this narrower subject, a broader work might be added to, David Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry, A New Cultural History (2010), a topic and people that has much to teach us. One that I am just now working on is Camilla Townsend, The Annals of Native America: How the Nahuas of Colonial Mexico Kept Their History Alive (2017). My students said I need to learn to read the Nahuatl language, but I will settle for the translations of the histories of and by the Nahua as they narrated the explained their traditions after the conquest of Mexico. Two others are more philosophical, or at least develop the history of ideas and their influence. First is Gertrude Himmelfarb, The British, French, and American Enlightenments (2004). I hear more nonsense about the Enlightenment, positive and negative, than I can keep track of. Himmelfarb, who is always thoughtful and pointed, offers a dose of good sense. Finally, John Rist, in a series called Reading Augustine, writes On Ethics, Politics, and Psychology in the Twenty-First Century (2018), explaining what St. Augustine would have to say to us today. It ends with a radio interview of the 5^th century Bishop, who has been transported to our very day, and recently traveled through Germany, Italy, and spent some time in Oxford, reading and studying. Perhaps needless to say, he finds our world a bit odd. Who would have thought St. Augustine could be funny?

I am very hesitant to say anything about the confirmation hearings of Judge Brett Kavanaugh for the supreme court, especially regarding the allegations against him or anything, for that matter, that is going on in Washington right now. I have seen it reported that very few people expected anyone to change their minds because of them. I suspect that things will calm down after the elections in November. But I am teaching the history of political theory this semester, and our readings may have something to say. Reflecting on current controversies is one way to see the implications or importance of what we are teaching, studying and learning. One of the works we read emphasizes that politics is always and irrevocably partisan. We see that in the hearings and Washington right now. We recognize our own interests and these conflict with others’ interests.  We are sensitive to questions of justice and disagree about what is just in particular cases.  When personal, economic, familial, regional or cultural interests are involved, and when justice is at stake we are bound to conflict and we become partisans, and often passionately engaged partisans. But this is not all that is involved, if that were not enough. How do we make it through the partisan conflicts that are a permanent part of politics to produce just laws and a good social order? And how does one provide for a stable political order so that interest doesn’t simply override interest, and some approximation of justice is provided for all? For the last couple weeks, we have spent some time in class with Aristotle’s Politics. This week we will turn to an Aristotelian, one of the most prominent and wise of Aristotelians, St. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274).  Aristotle argues that the good political leader is characterized by “practical wisdom,” and “political wisdom.” Practical wisdom is experiential and rational knowledge of how to lead and achieve a successful and good life. Political wisdom is practical wisdom applied to the complexities of the larger political world. Aristotle’s own work is an example of such political wisdom, as is the work of his followers like St. Thomas. In book V, section 8 of the Politics in a section discussing “methods of preserving a constitution,” Aristotle says this about wise leadership: “An endeavor should also be made, by legislation as well as by personal action, to guard against quarrels and factions amongst the notables; and watch should also be kept in advance on those who are not yet involved, before they too get caught in the spirit of rivalry. Ordinary people cannot see the beginnings of troubles ahead; that requires the genuine statesman.” Our senators, it seems to me are supposed to be our statesmen and women, and can be described as “notables.” They look out for the good of the nation as a whole, and for the long term as the writers of The Federalist explained (see numbers 62-63). They are insulated from elections every two years, from the passions of the day, unlike members of the House of Representatives. They confirm supreme court nominees and treaties—actions with long-term implications for the welfare of the United States, its citizens, and all who live within its borders, and in some cases for the world. What might happen, we should ask, when the “spirit of rivalry” and “quarrels and factions” are evident “amongst the notables?” Might we not expect more “troubles ahead?” I suppose we cannot expect news reporters, or social media posts to reflect practical or political wisdom. (Aristotle himself was not optimistic about the stability of democracies, and thought they degenerated into tyrannies through demagoguery.) But even among good but imperfect systems of governance, we might hope for some measure of practical and political wisdom. We might hope to see, occasionally, the wisdom of a “genuine statesman” or stateswoman. Aristotle implies that without this it is difficult to preserve a constitution. He implies as well that our notables have a personal responsibility to guard against the rivalries and factions that are so powerfully evident right now. Aristotle illustrates the importance of reading works that reflect with depth on our experience, and of pursuing wisdom, especially in an age that glorifies passionate engagement. I hope that through our teaching our students are encouraged and inspired to look for leaders of practical and political wisdom and to become those kinds of leaders themselves as they enter the public arena. “Wisdom” is one of the qualities that we say reflects an FPU education (along with faithfulness and service). Perhaps one day, when we are engaged in yet another crucial appointment, caught up in passionate interests and sure of the justice of the position we take, one or two FPU grads will remember something about a class, or a reading, and recall that there may be something more to consider. We professors have no special wisdom that stands above the political conflicts of the day. We do not have special knowledge to solve the problems or resolve all the conflicts we witness in political life. But sometimes those old books we read might offer some insight into our present troubles.

San Damiano Cross, Basilica of St. Clare, Assisi Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist and philosopher, is amazingly popular these days.  I first heard about his YouTube videos, and then from friends reading his books. One friend recently sent me this link to one of his videos about travel, European art, and beauty. (Jordan Peterson on beauty and travel.) He focuses on what can be found in France and Spain, and is critical abut Canada’s lack of appreciation for beauty. He could easily have said the same about Italy and the US.  He describes great art as a “window into the transcendent.” (I will use that in class.) He makes a good case about the benefits of travel, and how we feed our souls with beautiful things. That case can be expanded, but I think it is best made through experience. One has to be awakened to certain kinds of beauty, and for that to happen, one must allow it to happen.  We will do some of that in Italy next summer on the FPU Alumni and Friends tour—Venice, Florence, Assisi, Rome, Ostia-Antiqua, and a few other places as well.  We will experience ancient, medieval, renaissance, and modern Italy.  Where else can you find all of that so profusely? The creations above are just one example. Consider joining us for the tour. (There are discounts available through Oct. 14.) We have kept the cost low, balanced as well as we could free time and group tours (avoiding long waits at popular cites).  See more about the tour on the FPU website or at GoAhead tours.

I was invited by some friends to meet with them to discuss C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce. They have been reading it as part of a practice of Bible study and spiritual reading they have done together for a number of years.  There questions were very perceptive. I thought I might review a few of them here, with them some possible answers and directions. The Great Divorce is not a difficult book to read. It is a story with a number of conversations between “ghosts” (unsubstantial souls) on a trip, a little holiday, from Hell to Heaven, or as Lewis puts it, from the “Valley of the Shadow of Death,” to the “Valley of the Shadow of Life.” It can be read on a number of levels, and has some delightful as well as some harrowing scenes.  It is a fictional dream, not intended to portray Heaven or Hell as they might be in reality, but to use the trip, the setting, and the discussions to portray the nature of our souls, the choices we make, and how those choices make us. One of the questions they asked was what is happening with the souls who travel from Hell to Heaven? Why are they taking this trip? The story includes some theological discussion, appropriately sandwiched in the second half of the story (chapter 9 of 14), on topics that may have arisen in the reader’s mind as the story has progressed. The Great Divorce is a simplified Divine Comedy. The narrator is someone like Lewis, a fictionalized Lewis, and his theological mentor is the Scottish novelist and theologian, George McDonald. Unlike Dante’s story, however, souls are not fixed in Heaven or Hell, but those in Hell are offered the choice to pursue goodness and God, to pursue the love of God over the love of self. Most, sadly and tragically, sometime humorously, choose themselves.  As McDonald explains, there are two kinds of souls, those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, “thy will be done.” The souls on their trip are greeted by those whom they knew in life, who have come down a mountain which they have previously climbed toward “Deep Heaven,” to encourage and fan into flame, any “spark” of selflessness, goodness, true love, as opposed to selfish desire masquerading as love.  The travel down the mountain is a sacrifice for the substantial, “solid souls,” of Heaven, a sacrifice of love for those, the ghosts (unsubstantial, see-through souls) who have taken the holiday from Hell. They are drawn to love, and love impels them back down to the ghostly souls who may make the choice to follow them, and lean on them as they travel up the mountain. As in Dante, the souls we know in life who have chosen to follow God and his love, are the agents of God’s grace, we must lean on them, learn from them, trust in God’s goodness and not our own. What are the souls doing? This is the central question that story asks us to consider. We see something like catalog of selfish souls, and their responses to genuine love. One of the sobering elements of the story is that only one soul, in addition to the Lewis character, chooses to move up the mountain from the Valley of the Shadow of Life up toward Deep Heaven.  That soul is tormented by a “red lizard” that sits on his shoulder and whispers in his ear. The lizard symbolizes lust, lust which is never satisfied, and which becomes habitual. The ghostly soul finally consents to allow the substantial soul to kill the lizard, which then is raised to the form of a stallion on which the soul rides up the mountain.  Contrary to the (sometimes deserved) misconception that Christianity is a religion that fears the body, Lewis, like Dante, sees the entrapment of the soul by lust to be a lesser sin, that can be more easily overcome than others, with more dramatic results. The other ghostly figure who moves up the mountain, the Lewis character, does so slowly and hesitantly, leaning on the arm of McDonald, asking questions, and noticing, or eavesdropping (as one of the members of the group put it) on the conversations of others and wondering who they are and what brought them to their current state. Most of the other souls suffer from some form of a desire to dominate others and to be known or recognized for their brilliance or understanding. Lewis portrays the difference between our desire to correct people, make them into our image, to justify our own selfishness, avoid vulnerability, and live with the uncertainties and difficulties of this life, and a courageous love that risks allowing others to experience the love of God, a God who offers all the choice to live in fullness beyond themselves, or to suffer the contraction of themselves as they pursue their own ways of protecting themselves from God’s love. That love requires a response that risks losing control of themselves for a greater goodness. These high themes are developed out of everyday situations and relationships—between parents and children, husband and wives, bosses and employees, teachers and students, creative artists and their work. Why is the landscape hard on the ghostly souls? And where is Hell compared to Heaven? Lewis dips into a very old tradition, one of deep understanding and a recognition that our world is not the final or most true, lasting world. He recognizes that our situation calls for a greater good, and that desires and seeks a more complete and fuller existence. As souls choose against the true good or God, they become smaller, and more wraith-like, ghosts. Hell, a city millions of miles wide and long, ever expanding as the souls there seek to move away from each other, away from friendships, relationships and community, is contained in a small crack in the dirt of Heaven. As the flying bus takes souls from it to Heaven, they fly out of the crack, and grow in size so that they can be seen.  As one soul chooses against truth and goodness, it shrinks until it cannot be seen.  I liken the place of Hell to the cracks we see form in the dirt in Fresno, as it dries in our very dry heat. Heaven meanwhile is pure being, large, full, green with plants and life, flowing with water. Souls pursuing goodness, selflessness, God, and love, become substantial, gain bodies, and beauty. I enjoy meeting with friends to discuss ideas and literature. The desire for knowledge as well as what is good and healthy is infectious, a good infection (which unfortunately our contemporary culture seem to  try to inoculate us against). If God is, as our tradition says, the origin of and characterized by truth and goodness, how can we not seek him? There are great resources for that pursuit in Christian literature. Lewis and his works are friends to share with friends. I have only touched on a few of its themes and characters of The Great Divorce. I hope you enjoy reading it.  

What could be better than having the assignment to read, reread and talk about C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and other Christian writers of England? That is what I have been doing and preparing for over the last several months. I can't read everything they wrote, but I am through The Hobbit (much, much better than the movie version), and Lewis's That Hideous Strength (not his best, I, and many others, think—Perelandra and Out of the Silent Planet were better—reread those last year). Tolkien's essay "On Fairy Stories," (which doesn't refer to what the title might think it refers to…) set out their agenda for the creation of other worlds. I've been working on Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, one that critics think is not her best, but which reveals her Christian sensibility more broadly than others. And with along with Austen, I've been reading some of the writings of Samuel Johnson I haven't read before; Johnson was one of Austen's favorites—she knew his work in depth. Johnson shares something of the spirituality of Lewis, his good sense and his rational approach as a moralist. And I am running through Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare. You can almost not run through Chesterton. He keeps you going, and the subtitle hints at why you might want to keep running. But I have been more intrigued in this reading than in the past by the depth with which he addresses the culture of his and our age in this little tale. Lent is coming up—T.S. Eliot is a natural for this season of discipline: Ash Wednesday, the Four Quartets (I have them on DVD for listening to while traveling), and Choruses from the Rock. And perhaps some of George Herbert and John Donne, whom I always associate with Eliot, perhaps because he very consciously turned to them for models for both writing and Christian sensibility. I will take one of my classes through The Wasteland (which they will not necessarily appreciate) but which tells us something about how Christians have negotiated through our age. Lewis did not appreciate Eliot, though they became friends late in life working on revisions of the Book of Common Prayer. Lewis is something like Proverbs. Eliot is more like Ecclesiastes. We need them both—the attitudes they represent are both part of our Scriptures. But what could be better than this? Going to Oxford, Salisbury and Bath, London and Canterbury where they lived, worked, wrote. Seeing their sights, and many others. Traveling with friends with common interests—FPU, love of travel, Christian writers, England, London, and much more. This is the destination for our Alumni and Friends Tour this June. You can see the details about it at Reformation Tours, or on the Alumni Tour page of the FPU Website. If you would like more information give me a call at 559 453-7155, or contact me at steve.varvis@fresno.edu. We'd love to have you join us.

What did a manor house look like to Jane Austen? What was the setting for C. S. Lewis's science fiction trilogy? What was London like in G. K. Chesterton's novels and journalism? And on what bridge did T. S. Eliot portray his tired souls walking across in The Waste Land? English Christian writers have influenced and encouraged millions of readers in the 20th and 21st centuries, none more than C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. In June 2018, we are heading out to Oxford, Salisbury, London, and Canterbury to explore the stories and sites of Christian writers of England. We begin with C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien and their work in Oxford. We have planned for some intensive days, some special events, and some time for each on their own to explore.

C. S. Lewis memorial, Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey (a brief explanation can be found at the (BBC website). At FPU we seek and work to learn, understand, imagine, and live thoughtfully and faithfully. This year's tour for alumni and friends of FPU (and friends of friends of FPU) brings all of these desires and goals together. You can find the tour itinerary, price and other information at https://reformationtours.com/package/rsv18/. If you have any questions, I would be happy to speak with you: steve.varvis@fresno.edu or (559) 453-7155.