I woke in a chilly room and lay still and reclosed my eyes for just a moment as I brought to awareness the hazy dream from the recent sleep. I dreamed that I was the lord of the manor. The house was standing in the sweeping plains of central east England, a land that has been farmed and hunted for thousands of years. Since before written history, people have had a tenuous grip on this part of the world. Few have had the ability to claim ownership of this land for very long. The parade of proprietors has included the Vikings, the Romans, The French, the Angles, and the English and now I am the lord of the manor.
I wipe the sleep from my eyes and remind myself that it was a dream and that I am not lord of the manor, but by George, I do live here, if only but briefly. I am living in a magnificent English manor house that was built by a man named Gregory Gregory. That redundancy was not his real name. He was born Gregory Williams. But when he, like the foolish rich man in Luke 12, had accumulated so much wealth that he had to build this house so that he would have a “stuff-place” sufficient to accommodate his stuff ,he also felt the need to be considered less common than his humble beginnings would have allotted him. Thus he changed his name, perhaps to be easily recognized in the same way that Madonna or Cher have one name, Greg, in effect, only had one name. There are few records about the ancestry of Gregory Gregory nee Williams. I figure since Williams was the maiden name of my mother that I probably do rightfully own this property. I wonder where I can make a claim.
As I write this it has been a week since classes began. It seems like months. It had all become so familiar in such a short time. Walking down the hall and turning a corner and being suddenly faced with the Grand Hall with its oak panels and ceilings, odd statues, its great chandelier and the stained glass windows seems rather normal.
One thing that is still normal is the fragile logic and common sense of the 19 to 20 year old college students. Outside our “flat” there is a metal ladder that leads to a closed trap door in the ceiling. We live on the top floor so it seems logical that it leads to the attic. Last Wednesday afternoon I walked out in the hall and there is a jacket in the floor by the ladder. I glance up and the panel had been pushed back and I see a second ladder in the attic which leads to a second higher hole and beyond that is clearly visible the sky. “Hello, who is up there?” I call after hearing voices. The voices grow suddenly mute. I ask the question again with the same lack of response. Penny goes back to call security and I wait. In a few minutes two young men come down “the hall." They say “we confess it was us on the roof.” They had gone out on the roof and into someone’s window. I ask them what they were thinking and they said and I quote “Well, there wasn’t a sign saying we couldn’t go up.” I did not let that one go by saying, “Are you kidding? They do not have to put up signs saying don’t go up in the attic and out on the roof!” I asked them to accompany me to the security office. I don’t know what happened to them.
Classes are going well. Students are responsive and inquisitive and I don’t have that many of them so I think I will like it. That is enough about work. Thursday we had an Irish band and we had a Ceilidh (pronounced KAY lee – Yes and the name of a castle, Belvoir, is pronounced beaver (like the animal) – don’t ask). A Ceilidh is evidently a party with music and dancing. I took pictures and we stayed about an hour. The party went longer than that but since we are located on the other end of the manor we did not hear a thing.
In the first few days of the semester student typically play musical chairs with their classes. It is no different here and I had 3 or 4 students adding or dropping my classes. The ones that drop invariably seem to apologize as if it might insult me if they drop my class. On the contrary, although I try to hide this from the students, I am on the inside secretly saying, “Yea! That is one less set of papers to grade!”
We had an organizational meeting for the Bible study and prayer time on the first Sunday. There were over 20 students who where there and they seemed very excited about worship and prayer. I will jump ahead to last night for a moment and tell you that we had our second meeting on the second Sunday evening after the first weekend trip to London. The three who agreed to lead the worship music were practicing when I came in and very diplomatically suggested that most people were very tired and most also had many pages left to read for the Monday morning British Studies class and that perhaps an abbreviated Bible Study time might be in order. I agreed and we sang, prayed and talked just a bit about Romans which we are likely to study. We also agreed to change the meeting night to Monday to give folks a chance to recover from the weekend.
Ray
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