Keep Calm and L'Abri On

I walked home from the local pub last night, musing on how I’ve lived half of the year in this quiet English village. It was the kind of cold, late autumn drizzle that slips in as the year wanes, weather you button up against but almost welcome in its gentleness. I drifted noiselessly past cozy houses with windows glowing warmly in the darkness, houses so near the sidewalk that, with a few steps, I could touch the winding roses on the walls if I wanted to. I thought of the way small distances have defined this season at L’Abri. There’s a short walk to the pub on a night off, a small radius of regular steps within the huge Manor House where we do our chores and community life, and almost no space between the journeyers who have paused for a time on this small patch of English countryside to share our lives. Eating, working, discussing, heck, even sleeping stuffed together into dorm rooms! I strain to recall the vast, vacuous space I left back in the States, where life is spread out and the miles are covered in cars, where one commutes for community, for friendship, for family, for everything, yet the journey so often is taken alone.

Playing “telephone” at the No Name Pub. One hilarious night.

At L’Abri, you have to go out of your way to avoid people; luckily, you don’t usually want to. You can retreat for private study or rest, but it’s nice not to have to call up friends and jump in the car when you emerge. Just walk downstairs, and Shelley’s singing showtunes in the kitchen, or a group is getting a house-wide game of Monsters in the Dark going in the black of night. Even the chores are alright, especially if I’m assigned to laundry duty with an Australian who makes me laugh, or I’m on my beloved lunch prep (cue the belting of Les Mis again!). And I never get over the simple joy of carrying the load together—I might clean bathrooms all morning, but someone else cooks me three squares a day. I’m sure I’m getting out much more than I put in. When did this kind of communal living become a relic? Why is it awkward to tell people I’ve been living in a commune of sorts? I suppose we live the height of sophistication in our self-reliant cubes of expensive space, but I could trade all these modern perks for the given, humming health of passive community.

They say L’Abri time is “thick.” We call it Narnia. Full months seem to stretch on in the Manor, while hardly any time passes on the outside. We finally settled on a formula (the Americans needed numbers): one week at L’Abri equals a month of real world time. By this accounting, I’ve spent two years here. I could easily stay two more. (But only if William, my Swedish nemesis, promises not to return. He and I have perfected the art of insulting each other over two terms. He wins for my favorite: I once said, “All women are flowers. And I am a rose with thorns!” And William said, “Really? I’ve not yet seen the rose.”) At the same time, I feel ready to reenter life when the term ends. I’m heading back healthier than the threadbare soul that stumbled in this summer. And I know it’s time to go. A friend and I discussed this walking home from church Sunday: L’Abri is like rehab (L’abri-hab?). It’s a stopgap to get you functioning again. Or like the anesthesia at the hospital, it helps stabilize you for surgery; the point, though, is to get better and get out. You can’t stay forever in a hospital bed, even if it is good drugs.

William and Eve at my favorite pub, The Old Drum. Does he not look like he’s plotting my demise? Nemesis, I tell you!

On the other hand, L’Abri is not merely a drug—it’s the real thing itself, community as it should be. Although most of us will never live with forty other people again, it is in this large group living and learning that daily life feels solid and vibrant, more real even than the “real world.” Out there, life can be reductive and dehumanizing; in here we learn to embrace reality, and learn what it means to be fully human in a fallen world. But the fallen world must be bravely faced; and here you find the strength to breathe deeply, affix your oxygen mask and head back out to ground zero.

Hamilton!

Nothing like watching a musical about the American Revolution in London Town, baby!

As my heart has revived, so too has my mind. The most fundamental shift in my thinking has been the chance to step back and examine the historical context of our modern culture. I’ve surveyed western philosophy since the Greeks, and it has been interesting to see that Christianity has both influenced and clashed with humanistic thinking up to the present day. The most shocking assumption I didn’t know I had, until it was challenged in my studies, is that mankind is not automatically “progressing” as he moves onward in history. Latest is not always best. In fact, many have decried Postmodernism (where we at) as one of the emptiest eras in human history, the most unrooted and disconnected from truth and human values. Yet I’m not sure I was ever taught, even in my small-town schooling, that the prior movements of the Renaissance and Enlightenment were anything but a bold emancipation from religious oppression and superstition. That’s simply not the whole story. Christianity has contributed much more to modern civilization than is credited; broadly speaking, not every facet of the Middle Ages was dark and deplorable, and the Age of Reason and Science is not an unfettered ascent into heroic heights. 

Indeed, I’m surprised to learn that much of the advancement in scholarship and human rights we take for granted in Western civilization arose from a Christian worldview. Try learning that in school! You’d never hear it in Science class (or maybe I wasn’t listening—this is distinctly possible), but modern science was born out of a belief in a rational Creator who established a rational universe, and the belief that man was invited to probe and explore the laws governing the material world. Moreover, our push for human rights, the abolishment of slavery, and even women’s rights have all been deeply influenced by the counter-cultural Christian values of equality and dignity of human life. I’m no longer cowed by the anti-Christian rhetoric of modern culture—I’m more appalled by what I see, myself included, as our widespread ignorance of the actual facts of our history. If anyone rejects the Christian worldview, that’s their call; but I just want to know that all the facts are on the table. I don’t think we know the facts. I’ve been raised in a Christian milieu all my life, and I’ve been mostly unaware of this heritage. The way it seems now, the modern world wants to continue to uphold the same ideals of freedom and equality, but snub the source from which they spring. 

I’m reassured, then, in my faith. Christianity is not merely a religion of myths in a strong, secular age; it’s a viable worldview that gave rise to much of our civilization and offers a reasonable explanation for human history, the origin and nature of the human race, and the presence of evil and corruption in the world. I’ve perused philosophy, world religions and scientific atheism in my studies here, yet it seems no other system of thought quite answers the basic questions of life. The more I learn about Christianity, the more I believe it reveals the truth, not just for “church life” in a corner of culture, but for all of human experience. Anyone is free to reject this worldview if he truly finds it lacking, but I’d at least like to see the Christian worldview get back in the conversation.

Well, there you have it. Six months of community and study, and I’ve only begun to hone my understanding. When I decided to come back to the fall term of L’Abri, I wanted to be intentional about finding my vocation and my next steps. I’m pleased to announce [drum roll, please] that I’ve been accepted to Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis! I hope to start online in January, and I’ll be pursuing a Master of Arts in Biblical and Theological Studies. This degree includes an in-depth overview of the Old and New Testaments, church history, Biblical Hebrew (whee!), apologetics, and hopefully mentoring in ministry and my writing. I’m so excited—it’s stuff I nerd out on anyway, but by the end, I hope to be able to point to a formal course of study and say, “I’ve mastered this.” 

Strangely enough, today marks a year since I stepped off my stairs and fractured my foot. What a year! Thanks to the Lord and this season at L’Abri, my next steps are promising to be a lot less broken.