The King James Library in St. Mary's Divinity School

I’ve been really blessed to have taken some excellent theology and philosophy courses here at St. Andrews.  Studying abroad as a junior has been ideal because in the UK system I am taking classes which allow me to explore issues in more depth than I would if I had been taking them in America.  That’s not to say that one system is better than the other; there are different strengths and weaknesses in both, as I’ll discuss below.

In the American system, a student leaves the university with a solid understanding of their major subject as well as a foundation of math, science, literature, and history, to name a few general education requirements.  As a student who has come through this system, I really enjoy being able to converse with scientists about what they’re doing because I feel like I have a general knowledge of how basic scientific principals work, even if it’s only a rough outline.  It’s nice to be able to appreciate the work that students and scholars are doing in other disciplines.

However, one of the draw backs of the American system is that sometimes these requirements can divert a student’s attention away from what she is interested in in the interest of fulfilling a requirement.  For example, next year, as a senior, I’ll still be fulfilling my math and science requirements as opposed to other courses.  Now, to be fair, I’m taking these courses now because I opted not to take them earlier, that’s how the cookie crumbles.

The benefits of the system also extend into a student’s major.  The system here is organized so that students can take courses on a wide variety of subjects within their discipline.  This was really great for me because it meant that I could take a smorgasbord of different classes to see what I really liked.  I didn’t enter college expecting to be a biblical studies student.  Instead, I discovered this, if you will, by taking these classes and finding out that this was what I liked to do.

After all’s said and done, I appreciate the strengths of the American system and breadth of knowledge I’ll have when I leave.  It was really nice being able to visit the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and understanding the astronomy exhibits and photographs.  Whereas the American system emphasizes a breadth of knowledge, the UK system focuses on depth of knowledge. The difference here is in emphasis.

In the UK system, you enter university having already decided what you want to study.  This allows you to focus in on your area of interest at a very early point.  By the time you get to be a fourth year student in divinity, for example, you take two classes a semester (just TWO!), but the catch is that you do a LOT of work in those two areas.  Once you start taking two classes a semester, you’re expected to do thirty hours a week for each class, to give you an idea of the amount of work you’re expected to do.  A divinity student comes out of St. Mary’s with a very thorough understanding of the Dead Sea Scrolls, or theological anthropology, for example. This means of course that you can study fewer topics, but that you really learn the topics you do study.

I think that I’ve been able to get the best of both worlds.  I have the benefits of taking a broad amount of courses at Eastern, which means that I’ll leave with a pretty good understanding of a whole boat load of stuff (that’s the plan, anyway J ).  I’ve also had the excellent opportunity to study at St. Andrews during my third year.  This means that I’ve had the opportunity to pursue biblical and theological topics to a degree that I would not have been able to do in the United States.  I think that this way of studying has worked particularly well with my study of contemporary theology and the Book of Revelation, both of which were composed of an intensive amount of independent reading.

I hope this gives you an insight into some of the key differences between the American and UK system.  Of course, the American system gives graduates a great education within their field, I’m not saying otherwise. I would not be a biblical studies student if it wasn’t for the excellent classes I’ve had at Eastern.  I also don’t want to say that the UK system doesn’t turn out well rounded scholars.  It’s a difference of emphasis.  Both systems are effective at reaching their goals.

It’s hard to believe that February has found us again.  I am happily back in my cozy corner of St. Andrews after some adventurous trips through the Highlands.  With several weeks between the end of exams in early January and the start of the second semester this upcoming Monday, a friend and I decided to explore the breathtaking beauty of the Highlands and Islands.

I felt like Bilbo Baggins setting off on a grand journey, wanting to see mountains, but always with the domestic comforts of a pocket handkerchief.  Be forewarned any traveler to the islands, though these places beckon with natural beauty, like the songs of the sirens they can lure you into rather tricky places.  The islands have a dooming tourism industry, in the summer.  But in the winter, many of these places bunker down until the spring thaw.

My companion and I did not realize this when we happily set off on our merry way.  Our first destination was the Isle of Iona.  We set out from St. Andrews to Edinburgh where we caught a train to Glasgow.  From there, we were able to travel up through the Highlands to the port town of Oban were we caught a ferry taking us to Mull.   From Mull, we caught a bus taking us to the small town on the other end of the island where we caught a ferry taking us the last leg ofthe journey to Iona.

This is when we first started to realize how remote some of the places we were heading to actually were.  Providentially, there was one other person on the Mull bus with us.  This person, being more knowledgeable about traveling in the islands than we, had prudently booked the ferry.  The ferry runs during the day, but will only run if booked after a certain hour.  As the three of us boarded the ferry, we left the world I knew behind as we got closer to the rugged coasts of that small windswept island.

When we arrived on Iona, it was completely dark, without any street lights or neon signs that normally light even small American towns.   The commercialism and materialism of my modern world is absent from Iona, which is made up of a small, but close community of sheep crofters.

My companion and I had booked our hostel, but had not received an answer.  In fact, we were not even sure where we were going.  We very much appreciated the kindness of our friend, the same one who booked the ferry, who let us use her phone to call the hostel.  Because the island community is so closely knit, she knew the house number of the hostel owner.  He was glad to know we’d arrived and set out to pick us up.  I was relieved (and not a little surprised) that we had in fact made it all the way to the Isle of Iona.

St. Columba sailed to Iona from Ireland in 563 and founded a monastery there.  Through this monastery, Christianity spread through the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.  The monastery still attracts tourists and pilgrims.

Nine had all the trimmings of a Las Vegas Christmas extravaganza with all the rhinestone studded bells and whistles.  Whatever else can be said about this film, it wasn’t lacking in talent.  Daniel Day-Lewis, Penélope Cruz, Judy Dench, Kate Hudson, Sophia Loren.  These movie legends proved that quality doesn’t come with quantity or even proximity.  Push a bunch of stars on stage in expensive costumes, and you have, well, a bunch of stars on stage in expensive costumes.  You can’t take a fashion show and expect a story to evolve to fill in the space between the acts.  The weak story collapses before your very eyes under the boas, sequins and tiaras.

Just to be clear, the movie does have a plot.  The film stalks a famous director as he works on his next lavish undertaking.  The world idolizes him.  His talent, reputation and mystic make him the ultimate sexual conquest for the film’s many leading ladies, his suffering marriage notwithstanding.  A restless celebrity, a deteriorating marriage and a profusion of alluring women set against the romantic Italian coast.  His professional career and his personal life slide in and out of each other as he tries to find himself, whatever that means.  I think you get the picture.

“Flashy” doesn’t necessarily translate “bad.”  But, you take a story pinned together with strings of mesmerizing choreography and sex, you’ve still only got a more grown up version of Fantasia meets Entertainment Tonight.  Where’s the beef?

The biggest problem is that there is no heart in this movie.  There are no transcendentals: none of the true, the good and the beautiful, even with all the beauties.  I left the theatre thinking, what’s the point?  There wasn’t anything in this film I hadn’t seen before on screen: dancing girls, idolized Hollywood filmmaker and an underdeveloped divorce subplot, just in time for the holiday season.  Even the grandiose cast of stars, one of the film’s redeeming elements, didn’t pull its full weight in salvaging the film because none of the characters received enough time for any significant development.  In short, the film suffered not from want of money, name, fame or glory, but from lack of substance.  Just goes to show the movie can’t manufacture humanity.  This point was made just as strongly by this movie’s failure as it was by Susan Boyle’s runaway success.

My mom got Boyle’s debut album this Christmas.  Since then I’ve listened to it half a dozen times and found in marvelous.  Out of curiosity I looked up Boyle’s audition for Britain’s Got Talent on Youtube.  As of today, that video alone has been viewed more than 82 million times.  That should have given me a clue.

As Boyle walked out onto the stage she was greeted with critical eyes of the audience who saw a forty-something, unemployed woman without any makeup.  The camera captured the sarcastic smirks and prejudice of the audience as Boyle stood on stage as the panel of judges asked her a few preliminary questions.  An audible snicker rippled through the crowd when she said she wanted to be a singer.

The disbelieving judgment was written all over the faces of everyone watching.  Doesn’t she know you have to be sexy to be a singer these days?  Everything changed when she sang the first few bars of I Dreamed a Dream. Since then, she’s become the surprise underdog musician of the year.  Her album has sold more than 2 million copies since November, making it a number one best seller.

Looking back at the last couple of weeks, it is Boyle who is making headlines and turning heads.  People don’t have much to say about Nine.  It fails to offer anything deeply human to audiences.  On the other hand, Susan Boyle challenges the norms of pop culture every time her rich voice carries over the airwaves.  Society likes to be neat. Beautiful people should have beautiful lives.  But every once in a while, someone comes along who doesn’t fit the mold (or the dress).

I think that’s why Boyle’s CD has met the record success.  People want hope.  People identify with imperfection, with the messed up stuff, not the airbrushed idols.  Ultimately, people know about their own imperfection, they know that they can’t be perfect.  When Susan Boyle sings, she proves that your appearance doesn’t dictate who you are.  Life isn’t as neat as Hollywood likes us to believe, nor is it as simple.  Not all that glitters is gold, not all who wander are lost.

//

By this point, the comfortable window of time before our flight was starting to shrink.  We flight was scheduled to leave in two hours and we were still in the middle of Paris, standing by the Arc de Triumph were we had exited the subway the first time.  We raced back to the subway cursing ourselves for not realizing you couldn’t fit an airport in a city.

We mapped out our route and checked every stop to reassure ourselves that we were heading in the right direction.  It’s bad if you’re lost and the clock is ticking, it’s even worse when you know exactly where you are.   The stops ticked by one at a time as our window of time was closing.  After what seemed like an eternity, we burst out of the train and ran madly through the airport.  Both of us stood in rapt anxiety as we waited through security.  It didn’t help that I looked so suspicious that the staff decided they needed to pat me down.  By this point the plane was boarding and both of us felt like we were honestly going to throw up.  I got out of security first and made a mad dash for the terminal (terminal 70: it was a long run).  By another act of providence our flight had been delayed an hour and a half (several more delays would follow, but we certainly had no complaints).  We boarded the plane with nothing to report except that the stewardess said she needed to search my carry-on luggage and pat me down (for the second time) because of “random” searches.

Amanda summed up the whole experience as a series hectic rushings around followed by long periods of waiting.  Our plan at this point was to get to Boston where we had a five hour layover before our last flight back to Philadelphia.  Five hours sounds like a safe window, but if we’d learned anything during this trip, it was that nothing is safe.  Our flight was delayed a total of three times, removing the “safe” from our “safe window.”

The flight was (thankfully) eventful.  During the last hour the stewardess moved us up to business class so we could exit the plane as quickly as possible to in order to catch our final flight.  This sounded like a good idea.

The plane landed and we were off.  However, we had to collect our baggage.  So we made burst out of the plane, scrambled through customs, and then just stood there at the baggage claim with everybody else waiting for our luggage come out on the conveyor belt.  During this wait, we heard our names called on the PA system.  We found out that our bags had not even made it on the plane.  Ok, this was good; this meant we could catch our next flight.  This sounded like a good plan, until we found out this flight was also cancelled.  By now the ridiculousness of our whole experience in Boston was unmistakable.  We had been moved up to business class in order to get off the plane as fast as possible to collect our (uncollectable) luggage with everyone else in order to run off to a (canceled) flight.

Still, we were unperturbed.  We were in the United States, things were looking up.  By now we both knew the drill and had taken up our post in the next line to wait in.  In this line I heard a man making the last call for any passengers on the flight to DC.  I live in Maryland, so getting to DC is even closer than Philadelphia.  To make (another) long story short, we made it onto this (also delayed) flight.

Amanda and I arrived in DC on time and back at my house sooner than we would have if we had made our original flight into Philadelphia.   Home at last!  Amanda got home in the early afternoon the next day.  God is good!  We certainly had practice trusting God and sure enough everything worked out.   Traveling mercies to anyone else traveling over the Christmas holiday.  Merry Christmas!

My traveling buddy Amanda and I made it onto our flight in Edinburgh, with only one minor hitch, a hitch that ended up making a world of a different 48 hours later.  Amanda had some trouble getting her boarding pass to print.  Another boarding pass was printed for her by one of the receptionists.  We didn’t know it then, but the receptionist had made an error on the boarding pass that would mean another line to stand in and eventually our return to the United States by Sunday evening not Christmas Eve.

As soon as with touched down in Paris, Amanda and I took off running through the airport to catch our next (cancelled) flight.  Somehow the cancellation took everyone by surprise, including the airport staff.  When I finally reached the top of the first queue, I got up to the desk and handed the receptionist my boarding pass. She informed me that this plane had already left.  If it had left, I would have been on it. No, sadly this plane was not going anywhere.  Thus began a long day of standing in one line and then another.  Some seven hours later Amanda and I were still standing in the airport.

I had made the earliest reservations possible back to the United States: Christmas Eve.  Everything else was booked up and down the East Coast.  Record breaking snow storms had cancelled scores of flights and displaced hundreds of people.  Because of the error on Amanda’s boarding pass, the receptionist couldn’t make her new reservations.  Nerves weren’t the only thing running high by this point; so was my fever.  Amanda headed off for another line and I made a bee line for the airport medical center.

Half an hour later I was on my way to the airport pharmacy armed with three newly written prescriptions: antibiotics for the ear infections in both ears, some steroids for my throat, and the French equivalent of Tylenol for the fever.  This was the best news I’d had all day.  I was so grateful for the medicine!  The airport medical center was a huge blessing.  I don’t speak any French and the prospect of trying to find a doctor in a foreign country was rather intimidating.  I filled my prescription, took my first dose, and set off to find Amanda.

Her hour had not been as productive as mine, having gained only several places in her present line.  I put my backpack down looking forward to the next highlight of the night: taking my next batch of pills.  Another hour came and went and we were finally close to the desk.  It was during this hour that I bought some wireless internet time, called some friends, and was finally starting to see the bright side of a surprise holiday in Paris.  We were in Paris after all.  There were museums, palaces, and cafes to sample.  All in all, Amanda and I figured we could get used to this. After some my internet time expired, I rejoined Amanda back in line just as she was making it up to the desk.  As we were standing there, the receptionist told us two seats had just opened on a flight tomorrow to Boston!  If Amanda’s ticket had not had the error, we would have both made reservations for Christmas Eve!  Amanda and I stood had to stand in line for those extra two hours in order to be at the desk when the cancellations were made.  God is good!  With our wonderful reservations, we hailed a taxi and headed for a hostel where exactly the same thing happened.

We got up the hostel check-in desk and the receptionist told us that due to all the flight cancellations, the hostel was booked.  We asked her if there were any other hostels she could call.  While she was calling, two people canceled their reservations on the internet freeing up two beds while we stood there at the desk!  For the second time that night we were in awe.

Plato’s Republic

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

Augustine’s De Trinitate

Aquinas’s  Summa Theologica

Heidegger’s Being and Time

Lonergan’s Insight

Thanks Dr. Snell!

Richard Foster

Dallas Willard

Henri Nouwen

Mother Teresa

John Chrysostom

Happy Reading!

He writes, “The important thing here, I think, is to make
your acquaintance with key authors.”  Here are recommendations about
where to start:

Augustine–Confessions (try the Hackett edition)
Thomas  Aquinas–Anton Pegis’ anthology, Introduction to St. Thomas Aquinas.
Martin Luther–Freedom of a Christian (in the anthology edited by
John Dillenberger).
John Calvin–Start browsing in the Institutes.
Karl Barth–Start with Evangelical Theology: An Introduction.

Thanks Dr. Cary!

On the bus ride back, I concocted a list of 5 ways to know you’re in St. Andrews.  This list will inaugurate what, I hope, will be the beginning of a series of Top 5s.  I’ve got some good things coming down the pipe so stay tuned.  Here goes:

Top 5 Ways to Know You’re in St. Andrews.

5. Meeting friends and/or professors in Tesco. Tesco is the local grocery store, so in a town this size, it becomes pretty central.  Everybody’s got to eat, so sooner or later you will run into them in Testco. (True story, I first felt like I belonged in St. Andrews when I recognized someone grocery shopping.)

4. Charity shopping. In St. Andrews, the charity shops are better than retail, hands down.  Not only are the prices better but the quality is too, assuming a moderate level of serendipity.  And, if at first you find nothing, just keep popping in, eventually you will hit pay dirt.

3. Academic Gowns.  On Sundays, the bright red academic gowns dotting the streets are a dead giveaway.

2. Chariots of Fire.   Only in St. Andrews can you go for run or a leisurely walk along West Sands, the famous chariots of fire beach.  (I think my friends in Philly understand the feeling; it’s what you feel running up the Art Museum steps singing the Rocky theme song).

1. Golf.  Of course, no list of Top 5s of St. Andrews would be complete without golf, that Royal and Ancient game (which you can play at old course of the same name).

So there you have it.

Cheers, KG

I’m staying in St. Andrews, but before you call me boring, I do have a plan (or at least so far I’ve been planning one day in advance. I’ll take it as a plan).  I’m going to visit local places.    Today I visited Dundee, which is the closest big city to St. Andrews.  I decided I’d mosey on over, ramble down the streets, take in the sights, and stop by the library to pick up some divinity books.  I got three out of four.  I look a scenic bus ride through the countryside to Dundee, got off in down-town Dundee and decided to find the library (eventually).  I didn’t really know where I was going, but somehow I found the University of Dundee campus and from there getting to the library was easy.  Once I got to the library, I realized that there was one little think I’d forgotten to check: University of Dundee doesn’t have a Religion Department.  I realized this when I was found the two shelves devoted to divinity squeezed in between philosophy and the sciences.  Oh well, that just meant it was time for a bit of shopping.

Dundee has some really good shopping, if you’re ever in the area.  Besides all the big name brands, there are also some good charity shops, where you can find some great treasures if you have a spot of luck.

Tomorrow I’m heading over to Anstruther to sample some of their world-famous fish and chips!  I hear it’s really beautiful, so if the weather is nice hopefully I’ll have some pictures to post as well.

Since I have time this week, I’ll also hopefully be getting to do some extra reading that I wouldn’t normally have time to do.  I’d really like to read through Isaiah and let the images and theology sink in.  So there it is, I’ve said it on the internet, I guess that means I better stick with it!