Socrates in the City - Oxford version

Sheila and I had a bit of time during this 2nd seminar week to head into town for one of the Socrates in the City events being held by Eric Metaxas.  Info is here.  We attended the conversation with Peter Hitchins, which was pretty fun.  At one point, Eric said, "You are a contrarian."  Peter's answer: "No I'm not."  :-)

At the end, Eric asked the audience how they had found out about the event.  Sheila raised her hand and said that her husband brought her, because she had been wanting him to take her to a Socrates in the City event in New York.  :-)

This is the sanctuary of St. Aldate's set up for the Socrates in the City event.  Sheila is the lady in the hat in the third row from the front.

Summer Seminars are upon us!

The two weeks of summer seminars, held here almost every summer by the Foundation, begin this Saturday, the 11th.  You can read about them here.  Sheila and I have been getting ready for them, while still tending to scholars-in-residence and tours.  We've been very busy, arranging transportation, planning entertainment, and getting the house ready.  

We've had a lot of interesting visitors lately.  Logan Sekulow and his father, Jay Sekulow, with family and friends visited.  Logan is working on a movie about C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien.  We had a group from the C. S. Lewis Institute to visit - mostly from the D.C. area - and they had Michael Ward over to the house for a lecture.  Then there have been college groups from different places.  

One fellow was by here this week with his wife, who grew up on Signal Mountain and went to Red Bank.  In fact, he was the captain of their football team in 1971, when my highshool team, Brainerd, was State Champs!  Got to rub that in a little. :-)  Such a small world.  

In two weeks we've got a big group coming from the C. S. Lewis Society in Florida, and Douglas Gresham is going to be here as well.  That should be fun.  Towards the end of the month, we're having a dinner here with Eric Metaxas and friends.  We are going to order take-out Indian food!

Speaking of Indian food, my stomach has been better.  As I mentioned before, I'm taking a PPI to see if that helps, and so far so good.  I went to a men's retreat in a little village north of here this morning, called Horton-cum-Studley.  Don't you love these English village names!  It was a group of guys from St. Ebbe's, Headington, where we attend Sunday evenings.  It was such a blessing.  We had a British army general talk to us about King David.  Anyhow, they fixed us the "full English breakfast" and I took a bold step and ate it.  No problems!  So glad! 

There is no news about the immigration situation, and there probably won't be for a while.  We'll see how that goes.  We hope to be home the next-to-last weekend of August.  Initially we will stay with our friends Tom and Linda Waddell, and then move to a house a friend is loaning us that is only 5 minutes from Paul and Rachel.  That will be nice!  We'll fill you all in on what's going on when we see you.

In the meantime, we need strength and the grace to keep all the things to be done in the Lord's hands.  I've been thinking a lot lately of how important it is to have the graces of faith, hope, and love evident in our lives.  As Paul tells us at the end of I Corinthians 13, these are the chief virtues for believers - love being the greatest, of course.  There is a sense in which the Christian life can be viewed in a very simple fashion: keeping our eyes on the Faithful Shepherd, taking up our daily cross, trust and obey, be thankful, have faith-hope-and-love.  But the simple things of God are the most profound for us; they reach far and wide.  Thankfully, the Lord has given us His Spirit to guide us in these things - and to bring us safely home in the end.

Not sure I'll be able to post much here over the next few weeks, but be sure to check out our Twitter feed: @TheKilnsOxford for quick updates on what's going on over here.  

The Lord be with you!