Thursday, July 14, 2005
Christopher’s Manchester Weblog - Summer 2005 - Monday June 27 - Day 7 - Going to Tyndale
Day 7 - Academic Conference!!!
Well, good news is that I woke up today, so the Codeine and chloroform didn’t kill me. Actually, slept quite well. Ate breakfast and packed my bags. Today I had to carry the small army on my back again, so it was a long walk to the Tube and then to Kings Cross. This time I got to the take the train direct to Cambridge. Nice and easy trip. Boy was the train crowded. I guess there are lots of workers who live in Cambridge and work in London, and many people who just go to Cambridge “for lunch.” Hmmm.
Got off the train and decided, since I had three hours, to do a tour. Had to be a bus tour, since there was no way I was walking all that way with my backpacks. Again, interesting information, not only did the train come late to Cambridge, but, in order for the dons to allow it, they had to guarantee that it was at least 1.5 miles away from city center. And so it is. Very grateful for the tour bus. The tour here is not too grand, at least compared to Oxford. While Oxford has history, Cambridge has…well, more boring history. No great burnings of bishops. No King Charles dressing up as a servant to escape Cromwell. Nothing really. Well, actually, there is one thing. You may have heard of a “pub crawl” where people visit all the pubs in a particular town. The origin of it is from right near my room in Cambridge. King Street for centuries had 12 pubs on it. One of the colleges awarded special status to everyone who could drink one pint from each pub, run to the next, and repeat all without “relieving” oneself. The record is 19 minutes. Most of the people by the time they came to the 9th or 10th pub were no longer running but crawling. Hence the origin of “pub crawl.” At least that was what I was told. Sounds like one of those stories that people in Cambridge made up to make them seem more hip than the folks in Oxford. Cambridge says they have a rivalry with Oxford. Oxford just says, “Cambridge? Is that in England?”
As the day wore on, I hoped off the bus to go to check in my room at one of the colleges here and dump my stuff. Got all the way to the college, checked in, and dropped my stuff on my bed before I realized…I was missing a bag. Yikes…and it has my shoes in it. So off I go, running back down the streets of city, til I find the tour company, and have them get the bag off the bus. Back to the train station, then back to the college, where it is now 4pm and I am supposed to be a tea for the conference. Which is when I realize that the tea and most of the conference activities are at the Tyndale House, which is a twenty minute walk away.
Quickly dressing I dash off for Tyndale. The feet are hot, sore and tired. I am sweating beneath my dress clothes, and kicking myself for not remembering that Brits don’t think much about 20 minute walks (even in a tie). Arrive just after the gathering has opened. Pop into the back in time to hear my friend Karl read his paper on “John Wesley and his Puritan influence.” Just a reminder, Tyndale is the conference I attended last year in Nantwich where everyone of the professors looked like they just dressed wearing their 1970s best, pulled from a suitcase where all the clothing had been ceremonial tossed into a bundle. Also, this is one of those gatherings (I am nominally a member, but wondering if I want to be) where pompousness and one-ups-manship is the subtle game that gets played. Not exactly my idea of the vacation of a lifetime when I am already feeling ill.
Now, I love Karl, and told him so, but after getting very little sleep the past week, walking and running all day, in a room that is stifling hot, well…I promptly fell asleep. Turns out I wasn’t the only one, because someone’s snores woke me. Karl didn’t take it personally. We walked back to the other college for dinner laughing about pouring our lives into work that puts people to sleep. Somehow being a theologian seems more exciting when you are not reading papers to your fellow theologians.
At dinner I told the dinning staff I was a vegetarian. So they pop something on my plate and hand it to me. Now, where I come from a slab of white-meat pork is still considered to be meat. Does that seem to be the case to you? Well, in Cambridge (or at least at Westminster College) to be a vegetarian means you don’t eat cows. All other animals are okay! So, dinner was a light affair (am already working on finding a pub to eat at for tomorrow’s meals). Then off for coffee in town and back for the evening’s last lecture.
This is the big lecture, called the Tyndale Lecture, where the invitee gets to talk about whatever they want. The lecturer’s name is Stephen Williams, a Presbyterian from Northern Ireland. His topic…Hell. Well, the new 4th view on hell and salvation. It was a good lecture. Good question and answer time. But it is now 10pm. Its about 100 degrees in the room, the chairs are painful, and I need to go to bed. So I turn to Karl and tell him that, for Presbyterians, talking about the minutia of hell until the wee hours of the night in a hot room while sitting on painful chairs is actually heaven. I think some in the room thought if we talked just a little more about the topic Jesus would come back. Didn’t happen. So we broke, and now I am writing to you. Not sure how I will sleep tonight, what with the intricacies of divine punishment and divine sovereignty going through my mind. Oh well, I’ll give it a try. Christopher
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