They gave me chocolate and Origami birds…so sweet and totally random. It is the essential whimsy that I love about these women! Ladies, you are now ready to fly. I am so proud of you all! Good luck!

When: 23-26 November 2011

Where: The Isis

Who: The always amazing and fabulous Green Templeton College Women Novices

Results: Day 1 – Win, Day 2 – Lose

Pictures:

A few years ago, I saw an advertisement for this when I was passing through London. Funny, that years later it is still touring and happens to be in the city I live.

The Ghost Forest Art Project ‘is a major art installation of 10 primary rainforest tree stumps which were brought to Europe from a commercially logged forest in Western Africa by the artist Angela Palmer. The work is intended to highlight the alarming depletion of the world’s natural resources, and in particular the continued rate of deforestation. Today, a tropical forest the size of a football pitch is destroyed every four seconds, impacting on climate, biodiversity and the livelihoods of indigenous people. The trees in Ghost Forest – most of which fell naturally in storms – are intended to represent rainforest trees worldwide; the absence of their trunks is presented as a metaphor for the removal of the world’s lungs caused through the loss of our forests…The trees are intended as “ambassadors” for rainforest trees throughout the world’.

Oh, but wait. They are more ‘my kind of people’ than I let on. Regent’s is the one college most people asked me if I was joining before I came here. Why? Because Regent’s is the Baptist house. Yep, they began as the London Baptist Educational Society in 1752, then moved to East London, then into Regent’s Park where it acquired its name. They finally moved to Oxford in 1927 and became an official Private Permanent Hall in 1957. The founders wanted non-Anglicans to have a place to study theology and prepare for the ministry and alas, they still do. Today Regent’s accepts Baptists and non-Baptists and houses the Oxford Centre for Christianity and Culture and Oxford Centre for Baptist History and Heritage.

This was an interesting college for me to visit. Most college have the looming portraits on the walls of strangers and bookshelves filled with titles I have never seen. I walked into Regent’s and saw old friends frozen in frames and memorialized in building names. Books lined the shelves that I have read or had conversations with the authors. Maybe with a moment of nostalgia I can say, “Baptists, you loved me, baptized me, educated me, trained me, and ordained me. I will never forget you even if I must distance myself from you now. You have been a beautifully tragic aspect of my life. You have stood for the rights of people in the past, reclaim that heritage and choose the right choice, even if it is the hardest one. Choose what is good and not what is politically savvy or financially economical. Choose people over polity and love over theology. Say your sorry. Be brave. You only have this moment. Be what I know you can be. Live into that hope.”

St. Benet’s Hall, as mentioned above, is one of the few remaining single sex halls at Oxford. The last women only halls became co-ed in the 1990s, but there are a few all male halls left. They are centred around a specific Roman Catholic monastic order, such as the Benedictine and Cistercian for St. Benet’s. The halls actually models the original Oxford college system with a group of students gathering together around a Master of Arts. This does keep the halls small with approximately fifty students, but there is a greater sense of community and the hall boasts a strong vertical peer group that many of the large colleges do not have.

The Hall was founded in 1897 so the monks of Ampleforth Abbey could read for degrees at the University. The Hall still has monks in residence and it focuses studies in the humanities area. If you are curious, they do have female fellows (professors, because undergraduate education is done through in colleges/halls). Their student’s study: Theology; Philosophy and Theology; Theology and Oriental Studies; History; History and Politics; History and Economics; Philosophy, Politics and Economics; Classics; Oriental Studies (Egyptology, Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Hebrew Studies, and Jewish Studies only); and Classics and Oriental Studies.