Which Wardrobe?

Most people know that I'm very proud of the fact that I'm an official tour guide for Aslan's How - which is my fancy way of saying Dr. G let me help give tours of his amazing house. I got to do the coolest part of the tour where you actually walk through the wardrobe. I got giddy every time. It's so much fun to take people through the house and point out all the fun Narnia items and talk about one of my favorite authors.

I've loved Lewis since I was in first grade when my dad read The Chronicles of Narnia to me (but you already knew that if you read my previous Narnia related blog post). I loved Lewis so much that when I was in high school, Wheaton College was my top choice for school for one simple reason - they are home to the largest collection of works by and about Lewis in the world. Ultimately, I decided that I should probably look at the educational offerings of colleges as well and ended up at a different school.

For the first time ever, I actually got to see this amazing collection when I visited the Marion E. Wade Center on Wheaton's campus. I had some free time and got a couple girls to come along with me to the small museum that honors Lewis and six other great writers. In their one room museum they have a fancy wardrobe (that is not nearly as nice or easily entered as the one at Dr. G's) along with Tolkien's old writing desk. Naturally these were exciting things, but the wardrobe didn't lead anywhere. To the left, however, there was a door that led me into a whole new world.

I entered the reading room, and with overwhelming joy and excitement completed the form to be allowed to take journals off the shelf to read what others had written about Lewis and leaf through extensive photo copies of his personal correspondence. The girl at the desk in the reading room was also a big fan of Lewis and she showed me where all the different journals and dissertations were. I spent the next hour and a half reading abstracts from dissertations of people who thought critically about the works I hold so dear. I even found a great paper comparing Gollum and Grendel based on Tolkien's criticism of Beowulf. There were literary critics looking at Lewis's representation of Cupid and Psyche and theologians examining his soteriology. I could have spent days reading the amazing criticism, but I moved on to skimming the scans of Boxen, the stories about talking animals which Lewis wrote with his brother as a kid. The sweet girl who showed me around had to come up to me after what only felt like a moment to tell me that I had to go because they were closing for the evening.

As I walked back out of the door, it felt like my bittersweet return to Britain from Narnia. For a brief moment, I was in a place where people were excited to engage critically with the ideas of a brilliant writer, and I could listen to what they had to say by reading their dissertations. I crave those conversations, and it was so refreshing to be alone with those texts that had a plethora of interesting ideas. I realized, though, that while I may not ever get to go back to read those dissertations, I'll get to go to a place that looks a lot more like Narnia in just a couple weeks. And Lewis related or not, I'll be able to have amazing conversations with people who are excited about the same things I am.

At dinner tonight, I had a great conversation about literary theory with a girl going to teach in Bolivia. We shared books we loved and talked about the great texts that had made us cry because they were written so well. Not only that, but before I even went to the Wade Center this afternoon, I got to talk about Toni Morrison's character development with another new English teacher at BFA. I am so excited about these people who I am going to be working with in the fall.

[Transition to significantly less nerdy content.]

Some of you may have spent the last few paragraphs wondering why I'm even on Wheaton's campus. Even more of you likely will never make it this far in the blog post because you gave up on me after the first two paragraphs of excessive literary content. For those who stayed strong to get to this events based update, I sincerely thank you. I recognize that I can get carried away with my English nerd excitement, and I genuinely try to reign it in often. In fact, after my last post I joked with a friend about making all of my posts allusions to a work of literature; while this post does, in fact, have a high literary content, I promise not to make every post connected to a book.

Back to the question: Why am I at Wheaton? Well, this week is the TeachBeyond orientation for all new candidates going overseas in the fall. I'm here to learn all about cultural transitions and TCKs and insurance. Oh my! It's been so amazing to meet people going to schools all around the globe, and especially to spend time getting to know some of the people I'll be working with at BFA. I may have seemed excited about going to Germany before, but my excitement as more than doubled after meeting these people and hearing parts of their stories.

I'll be back in Portland on Saturday, and I'll be just a month away from my goal move date. I'm still only at 45% of my funds, so please be praying that the rest of my monthly support will come in quickly.