Crossing the Line - part 15
I arrived in Oxford in October 1982 with my grant cheque,
luggage and music – a collection of vinyl & cassettes, a powerful
amplifier and huge speaker bought from my friend Neil who hand-made the speaker
cab himself.
My parents drove me down and we went to the porters lodge
to find out where my room would be. I
was given 8:2 – Staircase 8 Room 2 – and shown where to find it. Most of the staircases were in Old or New
Quad, but staircase 8 was tucked away between the kitchen and dining hall, up
narrow stairs and room 2 was just below the roof.
 |
| The view from my window |
 |
| 8:2 up at at the top |
 |
| My living room with the useless 2 bar electric fire |
The first week was a whirlwind of new experiences.
First, I had to obtain a gown and mortar board for
matriculation (the act of joining the University). Fortunately, there was an easy way to do
this. Every student was assigned a scout
– an employee of the college who looks after you and cleans your room on the
one hand, while acting as eyes and ears for the college on the other. Writing this, I am amazed to find that the
system still prevails today. Gowns and
mortar boards are bread and butter to scouts, and provide a handy income on the
side as they supply second hand ones for a fee.
Gowns also had to be worn at formal dinner each evening, at the main
Sunday service in the college chapel and at exams, so getting one was a
priority.
Students were also required to wear something called ‘subfusc’
to matriculation, celebration dinners and exams. For men this meant a
black dinner suit, a white wing collar shirt and white bow tie topped off by the
gown and mortar board. I felt like a
stuffed penguin from a cartoon. Gowns
were also graded by success and ability.
Scholars and Exhibitioners wore full flowing gowns reminiscent of
teachers in the Harry Potter films.
Commoners wore something which looked like a half-shredded prop extra
for a servant in a Dracula movie. I was
a Commoner, of course.
The Matriculation ceremony itself consisted of being
marched into the Sheldonian Theatre, listening to a few mumbled words in Latin,
and then being marched out again. Was
that it, I thought.
 |
| Class of 1982 |
Brasenose was a fairly small college with about just over
100 new undergraduates arriving each year.
That meant that you came across almost everyone in your year – from the
public school toffs who didn’t much care for anyone outside their social class
to the more ordinary students like me. I
didn’t much care for the toffs and there weren't many, so that wasn’t a problem and I did
discover that money doesn’t always make you objectionable. In my first week, during an evening at the
college bar, I had a wonderful conversation with a final year student called
Henry. He put this naive fresher at ease
and made me feel welcome and listened to. When the conversation came to a
natural end and he moved on, someone else came up to me and said, “Do you know
his father owns most of Hertfordshire?”
I got to know my fellow Maths students. We were a pretty disparate bunch of people
but I formed a lifelong friendship with my tutorial partner Anne. Nick, a friend from Bolton School also went
up to Brasenose and through him I got to know the lawyers who were a much more
interesting group! I signed up for
rowing, much to my regret at 6am on cold winter mornings in the dark. I also joined the college record lending
library which had two categories of LPs on offer – Classical and CRAP
(Contemporary Rock And Pop). I always
borrowed CRAP.
I even started going to Maths lectures, although I gave that up in later years. I found walking into the Maths Institute was a sobering experience; finding myself surrounded by Mathematicians, many of whom were geniuses was quite overwhelming.
The central method of teaching at Oxford is the
tutorial. A couple of times each week,
we would meet with our tutors in pairs.
Our tutor would give us work to do between tutorials which led to
regular all-nighters for me and Anne before tutorials, to get the work done,
fortified by Martini and Death Burgers from the all night van near the
college.
If we had a Monday morning tutorial there was a
problem. Anne’s boyfriend would often
come over for the weekend and catch the early coach back to London for work on
Monday morning. Just after he left, I
would arrive, so Anne and I could get ready for the tutorial later that
day. Invariably, Anne’s scout, Armando would
see her boyfriend leave and me arrive.
He was Italian and although he had lived in Oxford for many years, he
still spoke with a thick accent, sounding like an Italian version of Manuel
from Faulty Towers. After a few Mondays,
he would pull me aside on the way up to Anne’s room and say, “I know sir, itz-a-right,
I know” and tap his finger against the side of his nose as a promise he
wouldn’t say anything! No amount of
persuasion would convince him that he had got it wrong. My scout and I also developed a healthy
relationship during my year in college.
I didn’t mind if he didn’t clean the room that well, and he didn’t mind
if I broke a few college rules.
My biggest shock however, was the way different
Christians viewed and treated each other.
I encountered a culture where Roman Catholics were not seen as Christians;
where people were questioned to see if they were ‘sound’; where there were more
churches and chapels than anywhere I had ever been and yet most tended to
retreat into their own cosy silo, looking down with suspicion or derision on
the other silos around them. I know
that Universities are hot houses of opinion and heated discussion. I know that Oxford is probably one of the
more extreme versions of this, with institutions like the Oxford Union embodying
polarised debate. But this ran
deeper. The latest intake of new
Christian students seemed to be pushed into choosing an allegiance, then called on to defend it against all-comers, and recruiting more people into their religious silo. It was more competing spires than dreaming spires.
I felt caught between silos. I was an Evangelical
Catholic Charismatic Christian and I didn’t want to pick a side or be backed
into a corner. Coming from a year in the
open environment of the Scargill Community where all views were valued and our
commitment was to live together in diversity, I found myself way out of my
depth amidst a clamour of different voices, vying for my attention.
At the end of my first term I returned home for Christmas
and after a few days my father took me to one side. He had noticed a weariness about me and
wanted to know how I was really doing.
As we talked, he said to me “You look like you have lost your first
love.” Knowing the Bible verse in
Revelation, I knew exactly what he meant.
In the visions for the 7 churches, the believers in Ephesus are
commended for their hard work, perseverance and endurance, but then God says,
“Yet I hold this against you;
you have lost your first love” (Rev 2:1-7)
I realised he was right.
While trying to navigate my way through the contesting
voices, I had lost my first love of God.
I was becoming more wrapped up in issues than people. Theological disputes were replacing life-giving
faith. I was becoming infected with a
version of faith where being right was more important than loving others. I had lost my first love and for someone who felt called to be a priest, this was
serious.
Paul’s words to the Corinthian church rung out in my
head.
“If I have the gift of
prophesy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith
that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:2)
Whatever I did when I went back for my second term, I had
to rediscover the love that is at the heart of the Gospel. I had to resist the divisive
intellectualisation of faith which I was encountering. I had to find a way to be counter
cultural. I had to find a way to cross
the lines that were being laid out for me by others.
It felt daunting; I worried that it would be a lonely
road; but I knew it was what I needed to do.
