This And That... And A Theological Lecture, Just For Fun

I've now been in NI for a whole month! It feels longer, but it also feels shorter, because of the time I've spent in class (not sure how that works, but, it does). I've been cooking for myself for a month, wandering around a strange city for a month, listening to people speak all kinds of strange accents for a month. At this very moment I am sitting in the kitchen - it's one of the few places in this house where we can pick up internet - listening to two of the other exchange students toast crumpets and talk to each other in Chinese.

I've also been seeing the first signs of spring. It isn't deathly cold the moment you open a window, for instance, and flowers are beginning to come up.

Just in time for me to finish my knitting project - yes, the "airplane" project:

Knitted wool lace is the funnest fabric to squidge your fingers in. Fact.

I have to find some more wool soon and start another project, because it's maddening sitting in lectures without something to do with my hands. If I don't knit, I take crazy frantic notes, and if I force myself not to take notes, I fall asleep. Knitting is a good thing.

And, just because:

Yes. I now own Harry Potter as Gaeilge.*

Speaking of books, and of general awesomeness, one of the things I did this past week was attend the 2011 Church of Ireland Theological Lectures. These are an annual event at Queen's. They're free, and you can have tea and biscuits if you come early to the Hub (the Anglican chaplaincy cafe). This year, the speaker was Michael Ward - the "Narnia Code" guy. Basically, he is a chaplain at Oxford and a C.S. Lewis** scholar/enthusiast who wrote his thesis on the way the symbolism in the Chronicles of Narnia corresponds to the seven celestial bodies in pre-Copernican cosmology. That is, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe uses Jupiter-ish symbols, Prince Caspian uses Mars-like symbols, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader uses Sun-like symbols, etc. Which was yet another way Lewis was tracing different mythologies, traditions, and so on back to Christianity, if that makes sense (please... if this is interesting... read the book. Don't listen to me).

I found the lectures intriguing, and I think he's probably right - that there's a level of medieval cosmological symbolism in the Narnia books. The idea that they were written to showcase this symbolism (which I think some people may have gotten just by hearing of it) is obviously absurd, and he made a point of pointing this out. But the fact that it's there makes sense, at least to me, because I've read enough by and about Lewis to know that that's exactly the kind of thing he would've done (which is one of the points Ward made, for people who hadn't read the books - yes, there are people who haven't read the books, but who came to the lecture anyway, and of course were confused anfterwards... *sigh*)

This is how I ended up having tea at a table full of Anglican clergy, including a bishop and a retired missionary. Which was fun. The Hub was decorated in "Narnian" style, which meant a plastic fir tree in every corner, and a dorm wardrobe full of faux fur coats at one wall, with a quite adorable little plush lion lounging on top. The walls had papers with Narnia quotes written in marker, and they'd put up white Christmas lights, and put the first movie on the TV screens (which usually show news or sports or whatever).

And, when questions about Tolkien came up, as they do in conversations about C.S. Lewis, guess who was the only person at the table who knew the answers... being a fantasy nerd does come in useful in the real world sometimes.

Anyway, it was Janice and Ron from St Bart's Parish Church who told me about the lectures. I'll write more about them and the church later.

Ooh - just found the Planet Narnia website: http://www.planetnarnia.com/ I've yet to read the book. I bought it - the long version, of course - and he signed it "to Meghan, with Jovial regards." I have it, and an unread C.S. Lewis book, waiting for me once I manage to clamber over the mountain of sociology and history books that seems to have erupted over my desk.

*I think this is right for "in Irish"... but, needless to say, don't quote me on it.

**Who, for those who don't know, was Irish - from Belfast! More about that later, too (meaning, I'll probably take a tour, or wander around on my own, being a total creeper, and take pictures of plaques and statues and things).