“I believe you,” he said, facing me again. “And I really do appreciate your saying that. I guess I’ll be praying in my own way too.”
“You will?”
“Yeah, you know. I’ll keep my hopes up. I’ll think positive thoughts. All that stuff. I’m not against your beliefs or anything. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, of course. You’re very open minded. It’s just—”
“I went to a monastery once when I was traveling through Spain.”
“You did? How was it?”
“Peaceful. I like you Christian types.” Oh yeah, peaceful. That’s what we’re supposed to be like.
I stood there not sure what to say, or not say, next. I looked at him intently. His face said he genuinely respected my beliefs, but he also genuinely did not desire to believe in it for himself. He was content. Really, genuinely content. In a way, more content than I was.
I had this understanding at the time, something I picked up from somewhere at some point, that my Christian faith made me different and that others would notice the difference and wonder what caused it. Then they would be drawn in by that difference and want what I had that they seemed to lack.
I think I secretly hoped the people I met in Oxford felt this way about me, as if my aura were irresistible. We’d go to coffee and they would look at me and say, “Andrea, there is something so different about you. Tell me what it is.” And the door would be opened for me to share the gospel, and we would cry and read Scripture, and then someday I would write a book about all the people I helped bring to Christ in Oxford.
This is not what happened to me. In fact, as I noticed with Erik, I think I had the opposite effect on people.
“This is concerning.” (I’m talking to Cranmer’s statue again.) “I should be the content one, right? I’m the one who has the peace of God in me. I’m the one who lives by faith through grace, and yet, here I am with these people who are completely capable of feeling joy, sadness, and worry like I am, and those emotions don’t make them wonder where they came from. Tough seasons don’t make them want to turn to something greater for help. They don’t feel the need. They don’t have the desperation. It’s like they’ve just accepted that life is life. If God is real, that’s good. If he isn’t, that’s fine too. And you know what the real kicker is?”
Silence.
“I’m jealous. I’m jealous of their disinterest toward God.”
It’s true. I was. With Erik, and with a few others I knew during that time, I realized that instead of growing more fervent for others to see and believe and understand, I grew more understanding of why they didn’t see or believe or understand. I began to want what they had.
If I could accept the lack of answers to my ever-growing list of questions about Scripture and the story of Jesus and who he is and was, if I could feel content with not being sure whether or not there was a purpose to this whole thing, a designer, an Adam and an Eve, a tree in a garden, a story about a Savior that’s been told and retold until it trickled down to me. Oh, if only I could feel content. How the complications would fade, how the restless nights would soothe themselves into complacency.
“I know this sounds terrible, Cranmer, but I don’t want to introduce people to the confusion of Christianity. I want their complacency. I see why they don’t want to see.”
Silence.
Right around the corner from where Cranmer and I are “talking” is Broad Street. And on Broad Street is another memorial. It’s embedded right in the middle of the pavement—an unassuming collection of white- and slate-colored bricks that form the shape of a cross. They’re laid neatly, even with the street. This cross marks the actual spot where Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were burned at the stake.
It is the opposite of the St. Giles Street memorial in every way. A small, plain, low-to-the-ground, blink-and-you-miss-it little sight. Typically, people walk right over it or right past it, but occasionally, a tourist pauses beside it—reading his guidebook—nods and moves on. It doesn’t take long to inspect. It’s a cluster of bricks.
No one is going to hang out Spanish Steps–style around the memorial on Broad Street. No one calls his friends and says, “Meet you at the Martyrs’ Memorial, the one on Broad Street.” That would be like saying, “Meet you by those weeds growing on the side of the road.” No one would really know what you were talking about. Where? Which weeds? Is there something special or noteworthy about these certain weeds I’ve been overlooking all this time? And then you would just call your friend back and say, “Can we meet at the Martyrs’ Memorial, the one on St. Giles Street instead?”
When I was studying abroad in undergrad, we visited both memorials during one of my Oxford Through the Ages lectures. (The same class that taught me about the haunting ghost of Saint Frideswide.) It’s interesting. Despite the obvious physical disparity between the two memorials—one a seventy-three-foot, beautifully crafted structure, and the other bricks—I only recall visiting the Broad Street memorial. I asked some friends who took that class with me which memorial they remember. All of them remembered St. Giles Street, and none of them remembered Broad Street. I suppose for the exact reason it is so often overlooked, it stuck out to me that semester as one of the more remarkable Oxford sights. Such a tiny, seemingly insignificant spot that marks such a tragic and historical moment for Protestantism and the church.
When our professor gathered us around it on Broad Street, I felt like I had been let in on a secret of some kind. Here we were standing in the middle of a busy road staring at the ground as people passed us by. We were looking at basically nothing, but we were discussing martyrdom, dying for the cause of Christ. Something like that, when you think about it, can never be paid tribute in full. No statue, no matter how grand, could be enough. The memorial where Cranmer stands on St. Giles Street was a grand gesture, but the memorial on Broad Street, in my opinion, is a truer one.
Back in the alley, Erik got on his bike and looked back at me. He was ready to leave, and I was ready to let him.
“See you, Andrea. Thanks for the prayer.”
“See you, Erik. Anytime.”
I hopped on my bike and rode down all the familiar streets. The road looked the same as it always did. It was not colored in the light of saving souls, but it was colored in the light of having been a truer version of myself. And who’s to say being yourself isn’t its own type of evangelism anyway?
In his book The Pilgrimage, Paulo Coelho details his experience on the renowned Camino de Santiago, a five-hundred-mile walk through France and Spain that takes about thirty days to complete. At one point his mentor, Petrus, tells him, “We are always trying to convert people to a belief in our own explanation of the universe. We think that the more people there are who believe as we do, the more certain it will be that what we believe is the truth. But it doesn’t work that way at all.”*
Maybe all this time, in his silence, Cranmer had been trying to point me away from himself and toward something else. I had been wasting my time here with him. I needed to round the corner to Broad Street, kneel down, and consider the bricks. When I get there, I crouch down and touch one of the bricks. It is cool and smooth. Many feet have been here.
The trek from the St. Giles Street memorial to the Broad Street memorial is 0.1 mile. I don’t know that a tenth of a mile is worthy of the title “pilgrimage,” but what if it takes one year to travel that 0.1 mile? Surely that is a worthy pilgrimage. When the way there is crooked and winding, it requires more time. More nights of wine and darkness and hope and laughter, the entire time being led, quietly, by someone bigger, stronger, and more all knowing than you on a pilgrimage you’ve unknowingly set out upon.
The crooked way is not the bad way. In fact, I think the crooked way is the only way. Detours, nooks, turns, and dead ends house the places where we learn, grow, and are strengthened, where our weak beliefs turn into something stronger, sturdier, and less wavering. In the crookedness is our true tale and our real selves—things we would ne
ver find on the straight and narrow.
Simple bricks, tall statues. Aren’t we all made up of the same stuff in the end? Materials laid carefully, differently but purposefully. Sometimes we are quiet for entire seasons, entire years. And sometimes we are loud and bold and want others to see his glory. Maybe no statues have been raised in your honor in the towns that you’ve left, but why can’t footprints be enough? A tennis shoe imprinted in the mud. Fingertips brushed along an old cement wall. Dirty dishes in the sink. Worn-down bicycle tires. Your scent left floating in the air as you walk from room to room. An “Andrea was here” scratched in the bathroom stall. A movie stub that fell from your pocket and others stepped on. Words said and unsaid. Perhaps we can leave our marks without actually leaving a mark.
I smiled as I left Erik that day, not because I had been a successful evangelist, but because I realized that such an honest and raw me did not exist a year earlier. I cared too much about what everybody thought, and I doubted too much what I was saying. As I pedaled home the ice dripped off my shoulders and splashed to the ground beneath me, revealing what had been lying in wait, frozen. And I liked what I saw.
I rode down all the familiar streets with the romantic-sounding names. Magdalen Road turned onto Iffley Road. Iffley Road turned onto Donnington Bridge. And Donnington Bridge curved into home. Like it always does. I hopped off my bike, pulled it around the back of the house, and locked it up. I went in the back door and made myself a cup of tea. The kettle rattled with the boil, and I tipped it over into my small mug to turn the water a murky brown.
I don’t know where all the people are now whom I met and knew so briefly in Oxford. Life has rippled on for me as it has for them, but I hope we remember the brief moment in which our waters took an unexpected turn, met each other, and then parted again.
* * *
* Paulo Coelho, The Pilgrimage: A Contemporary Quest for Ancient Wisdom (HarperSanFrancisco, 1995), 92.
12
Pillars
In many ways Oxford is the not real place. Time feels suspended there. Everything around you looks dreamy. The old buildings, the churches, the colleges. Surely none of it is real. Surely nothing that old is still that beautiful. Surely the grass is not that green all year round. Surely the quaintest of trails in the most obscure of parks does not sweep you up into another time, another era. But it did, and it does. Oxford, the not real place.
I met Biceps, as I will call him, close to when I was due to move back to the States. It was well after Jisu, after the river conversation, and after another conversation Jisu and I had at an ice-cream shop—a setting much too cheerful for the discussion at hand. It was after I had given up hope of bringing home a British husband or having a chance encounter with Prince Harry.
I met Biceps at an interesting time, and just in time, but also when I was running out of time. Time, though, for whatever reason, suspended itself for us, me and Biceps. After I met him and in the weeks following, days seemed to slow down, stretch out, elongate. Time lifted us out of its rushing waters for a little while. In summer, the British sun takes its sweet time before setting each day. We told ourselves to not worry about the future. The future was not allowed to bother us, not just yet. We were protected inside Oxford’s walls, inside time suspended.
Biceps wasn’t British. He was American and a coworker of Lizzy’s. He had been a member of Oxford’s power-lifting team and it showed, in a good way, hence his nickname. I noticed his biceps right after I noticed his eyes, which was right after I noticed his smile. I met him at Lizzy’s birthday party where we had a nice little candid conversation about faith.
We were at a bar where you sit on cushions on the floor and lamps hang occasionally from the ceiling. The room was dark and covered with Persian rugs. I chose a cushion beside Biceps because, you know, biceps.
“So how did you end up living with Lizzy?” he asked.
“I saw her ad for a roommate on my church’s website.”
“Oh, so you go to church. You’re a Christian like Lizzy?”
Annnd here we go, I thought. “Yeah, I am.”
“Cool. I grew up going to church.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. Baptist. Southern Baptist.”
“Oh. I haven’t met many Southern Baptists over here. Where do you go to church in Oxford?”
“Not really anywhere. I haven’t gone to church in a while.”
“Oh. Sorry, I just assumed you might. I shouldn’t assume everyone who grew up in church still goes to church.”
“It’s okay. My theology has changed quite a bit since I’ve lived here actually.”
“How so?”
“I came here five years ago to study just that, theology. I went to Regent’s Park”—I knew Regent’s Park. It was Oxford Oxford and known for its courses in theology and philosophy—“and as I got into it…I don’t know. The more I studied it, the less it made sense, so I started experimenting.”
“Experimenting? With what?”
“Theology.”
“Oh.”
“I was an agnostic for a while. But now, now, I’m more of a liberal Christian.”
“A liberal Christian? What does that mean?”
For some reason this made him laugh.
“I guess it means I like Jesus. I like what he taught. He was a good teacher, and I want to be a good person, like he was.”
“Hmm.”
I wasn’t sure what to think of this “liberal Christianity” he spoke of. It sounded like a way to follow Jesus without believing in him, and I wasn’t sure what the point of that was, but I was intrigued.
Biceps and I kept seeing each other after that night. When I think about our time together, some of our moments were so stupidly perfect they could have been in a movie. Our own movie, set in Oxford, the not real place.
FADE IN:
INT. A BURRITO RESTAURANT—NIGHT
Biceps and Andrea have empty plates in front of them. They are sitting across from each other at a table.
BICEPS
So where is this big publishing job you’re off to when you get back home?
ANDREA
It’s not a BIG publishing job. I’m just going to be an editorial assistant.
BICEPS
I’m sure it will become a big job.
ANDREA
(Laughs) I hope so. It’s in Nashville. I’ve only been there a couple of times and once was for the interview. I don’t know anybody there. Is it kind of crazy to move somewhere for a job you don’t know how to do in a place where you don’t know anybody?
BICEPS
Nah, that’s how life works half the time. You didn’t really know anybody in Oxford when you moved here, right?
ANDREA
Yeah, that’s true. Have you ever been to Nashville?
BICEPS
Yeah, I’ve been there a lot actually. My hometown is just an hour and a half away.
ANDREA
No way. It is?
BICEPS
Yeah, we used to go to the big city all the time on the weekends. It’s a fun place. You’ll like it.
ANDREA
I hope so. What is your hometown like?
BICEPS
My hometown? It’s hardly a town. It’s farmland. Everywhere you look, land, cattle, corn.
ANDREA
That sounds nice.
BICEPS
I guess so. If you like that sort of thing. Biceps picks up his glass and pauses before taking a sip.
BICEPS
I might be moving back actually.
Andrea, who is about to take a sip of her water, freezes, her cup midair.
ANDREA
Really? You might be moving back to the town that’s an hour and a half from the town I’m moving to?
BICEPS
I know. What are the odds, right? I might have an opportunity there. I thought I would stay in England a while longer, but now, I don’t know. Life might be taking me back home.
They sit at the t
able for a long time, talking. When people begin sweeping the floors around them, they reluctantly stand up to leave.
BICEPS
Do you want to ride our bikes home or walk?
ANDREA
Let’s walk.
EXT. THE BURRITO RESTAURANT
It’s nearly midnight now. The streets are wet. It had rained while Biceps and Andrea were inside. At midnight under streetlamps and where everything is shiny with damp, the city looks ridiculously romantic.
CAMERA ZOOMS OUT TO AERIAL VIEW
Andrea and Biceps pass St. Mary’s Church and walk their bikes along Magdalen Bridge. They wonder how they had possibly come to meet each other, here, in Oxford. Where they had both traveled so far to come.
They stop at the street where Biceps lives. They stand with their bikes between them.
BICEPS
This was fun. We’ll have to close down the burrito place again sometime.
ANDREA
Yeah, I would like that.
BICEPS
Good night, Andrea.
ANDREA
Good night, Biceps.
Biceps pushes his bike and hops on the seat while it’s still moving—a seamless, athletic move that impresses Andrea. She watches him ride away.
English Lessons Page 14