Old tricks for new dogs

I just finished the second week here and amidst my terrific time, I am now suffering a bit of depression. Only one week left at Oxford. The time is going by way too fast.

However, I am learning something that I should have learned earlier in life. Isn’t that always the way it is? When it gets too late to use it, you find it.

I took three classes here. One Shakespeare and one Creative Writing class, which were classes that grow out of my past. Both the Writing and the Drama were things that were a bit more than a little familiar. And they are turning out to be, and perhaps to do, just what I had hoped they would.

However, the class, which may teach me the greatest life lesson, I added on a whim. That is the class called “Restless Bones” it deals with Shrines, Relics and Pilgrimages in Medieval England. I have no real idea why I chose this class. Before the class I knew absolutely nothing about the subject

In fact, I was expecting something completely different from what the class turned out to be. As there was a trip planned I though that at the worst I would be able to get some great photos. Perhaps shots that most tourists never get to see. At the best, a lot of photos.

On the first day I found out that we were going on a field trip to St Albans Cathedral. That was when I discovered that I was in an archeology class and we were going to be talking about brick, columns, doorways and old bones.

The plan was to talk about different kinds of Cathedral structures, who had whose bones, and how they got them. We were going to be more interested in the bones themselves than why they ended up bones. Or, even more to the point, we didn’t care what did they to become martyrs, or in what horrific manner they died. Just whom had the bones, what kind of building did they build to keep the bones in, and who took those long difficult trips to pray to the bones?

As I said to another class member at lunch the first day, “a door, is a door, is a door. I don’t really care about the door, I want to know who came through the door and why.”

Jump ahead.

This has been a terrific class and I’m lucky to have stumbled upon it. The tutor is completely in love with his subject and he manages to translate that love on to the students. He is a well-known Archaeologist, who has been consultant to some of the major digs and reconstruction of churches here in England.

I knew absolutely nothing about this subject when the classes started, and even now I won’t be giving any lectures to anyone. However, it did turn out to be pretty nifty, delving into something with which I was completely unfamiliar.

This has been a fascinating experience. I wonder how many times I have come across something that was new and strange and therefore not worth my time? I worry that I have been closed off to things in my life that would have brought greater value to my life.

What I am taking away from this is something that not only was unexpected, but perhaps it will be something that I can incorporate into my workaday life. That would make this trip worth the price of admission.

I would like to come back here next year for some more classes. If I do, I plan to sign up for something else new to me a see what happens.