The Term is Over

“Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.” - Ecclesiastes 12.12

Now there’s a slice of biblical inerrancy that would even rate a rousing “amen” on secular university campuses - at least for the next week or so. Legions of zombie-eyed scholars, their metabolisms operating on the alternative fuels of Red Bull and Monster, would agree that Solomon knew his stuff. (Frat men would probably respect him even more if they discovered how adept he was at scoring with chicks.) I can vouch that the sentiment resonates with our students here at the South Texas School of Christian Studies. And I’ve discovered since entering my new line of work that teachers feel the same way. Sometime in the past fortnight I hit that point where I start quoting lines from Arnold’s “The Scholar Gypsy,” a thing I did midway through fall budget planning when I was a pastor. It’s about a kid who drops out of Oxford when his Pell grant goes bust and instead decides to do a fellowship with a gang of hippies. Arnold imagines his hero as becoming immortal by eschewing “making many books” and “much study,” then adds:

O Life unlike to ours!

Who fluctuate idly without term or scope,

Of whom each strives, nor knows for what he strives,

And each half lives a hundred different lives;

Who wait like thee, but not, like thee, in hope.

By Sunday I was done - all my students had holed out on eighteen and were in the clubhouse. Their final grades - eagles, pars, bogies - all logged on various official forms; I’d graded all the papers and filed all the lectures. I have a summer class to teach, and four lectures on C. S. Lewis to prepare for an “adult VBS,” and a couple of preaching gigs coming up, but for the nonce I thought I’d just catch my breath. So I unleashed my big, shaggy dog Joey and we headed out on the walking trail that skirts the shores of my island. (For insights into why Ward Island is “mine,” a claim that would be news to Texas A&M Univeristy of Corpus Christi, see my blog “Marooned,” November 13, 2006.) We strolled around. I got my St. Francis on, taking in the flowers and enjoying the breeze. Joey shed and drooled and wet on stuff. We had a great time.

I have to admit the idea wasn’t entirely my own. One of our students, David Norman, has been doing a series on his blog (davidnormanblog.com) about how to avoid a “stage-only” faith. He takes his title from the story of a pastor who invited his congregation to prayer one Sunday and suddenly realized that was the first time he’d pinged the Almighty that week. Anyway, David offers several tips to avoid this kind of thing and one of them is “Get alone with the Creator.” David carefully distinguishes this from his previous exhortation, “Get alone with God.”

It sounds like the same thing, and it is the same goal, but I have found great power in getting alone with God in creation. I live in a coastal city, so I go to a remote spot on the beach and just spend time in God’s presence. I used to live in a wooded area and would do the same in the middle of a forest. That could be desert, a park, or any other place that you have found suitable for you to meet and encounter God regularly.

(Sidebar: for insights into why I waited until the semester was over to write this blog, see David’s entry for Thursday, May 8 entitled “Final Exams & Other Reasons to Study.” Poetry and mysticism are fine things in their place but finals week is no time for a professor to go about the place invoking an existential crisis.)

Anyway, as I tromped along the beach taking in one of the native species of the Texas coast - the white-bellied HEB bag - lines from Wordsworth came to my mind. “Expostulation and Reply” and “The Tables Turned,” a tag-team of meditative poetry he punched out in 1798, form a sort of one-two counter-punch combination for those of us who mainlined the Puritan work ethic while still in the womb and like theological crack babies entered this world hooked on hurry. In the opening salvo the poet imagines himself berated by a friend for sitting all morning and staring at a lake. “Where are your books?” this straight-A(nal) interloper demands. Wordsworth explains that he has found companion ways of sleuthing out truth:

Nor less I deem that there are Powers
Which of themselves our minds impress;
That we can feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness.

Think you, ‘mid all this mighty sum
Of things forever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,
But we must still be seeking?

In round two the poet himself begins the conversation. “Up! up! my Friend and quit your books,” he chides. A few lines later he offers his own Message version of Ecclesiastes 12.12: “Books! ’tis a dull and endless strife.” Instead, he argues

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.

Or “Consider the lilies of the field” as a first century scholar gypsy once put it.

I came home refreshed - my body relaxed and my mind humming with Wordsworth and the Word - no mean combination, I believe. A smart woodsman stops to sharpen his ax, Ecclesiastes 10.10 observes. But then again, the purpose of an ax is not to be sharp, but to be used. Wordsworth, after all, also composed the “Ode to Duty,” a sober Valkyrie whom he invokes as the “Stern Daughter of the voice of God!” Meaning it is no longer Sunday but Monday, my ax glistens, and a load of lumber awaits me. Or, to end with another poet:

I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

But what about after that? Beyond the sleep, I mean. John sees martyred souls taking a siesta beneath the heavenly altar but like restless toddlers they whine to God that nap time has gone on long enough and should yield to activity. The Lord assures them that he has work enough to occupy them for all eternity (Rev 6.9-11). The rhythm of exertion and relaxation serves as a tune-up for eternity, for what N. T. Wright calls “life after life after death.” C. S. Lewis, who learned early in life to dislike school and love summer vacation, puts this tantalizing thought in the mouth of Aslan as he declares the end of Narnia and all known worlds: “The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is morning.”

Even so, Lord Jesus, come.

This entry was posted on May 12, 2008 at 10:25 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.