Duke Revisited in Spirit

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389 miles from Marietta GA to Durham NC
September 9-30

Arrival at Duke on my virtual bike tour coincides with an assignment for a church class (EfM) to remember spiritual development during a certain period of years.

I lived in many worlds at Duke during the years 1977-1981; learning to integrate them was my education.

World of Religion: ImpactAs Duke's West Campus centered on the Chapel (see photo), my world centered on faith, afloat on books by C. S. Lewis and friends in dorm Bible study. But there was an undercurrent of fear for failing to evangelize the sinners around us and we were (maybe) feeling some sinful temptations ourselves.

So I made easy prey when the roommate lottery matched me with someone more fundamentalist than I. He used scripture to show that my faith was incorrect, insufficient, and I was going to hell. Saving me from my roommate's efforts to save me, my friend Kendrick uttered the highest-impact single sentence of my life. See how in Theology Outside the Bible (07/2013), two-thirds through the article.

World of Theatre: Sustenance, GrowthDuring years when my faith shed its hard shell of judgmentalism, the world of theatre sustained me. Some drama people were religious, some were gay, and all were pot smokers. But my sinful theatre friends were warm, funny, insightful, and earnest about their art.

Dr. John Clum, founding head of the Drama Department, helped me to see that literature doesn't have to be about good people doing nice things in order to speak truth that a Christian would (or should) recognize. I learned how to act a character, not just perform lines, through empathy and imagination, salient traits of Jesus. The world of my religion was expanding. See Dr. John Clum, Writer, Dramatist, Scholar (11/2015) and Good Actors Make Good Company (06/2011).

World of Intellect: Challenge to Go DeepIntellectual depth challenged my faith and presented a challenge, period. When Professor DiCorcia remarked in passing during History class that "your brain is dead if you still believe in five years what you believe today," I retreated to Duke's chapel after class to pray about that. In the dim stained-glass light, I re-built my faith up from the feel of the grain of the wood in the pew ahead of me to the Creator.

In my junior year, retired general Professor Irving B. Holley taught me to respect how much there is to know about anything, and to confess the corollary, how little I know about anything. See The Essence of Education (09/2013). He advocated an education both broad and deep. As I looked for depth in all my classes, my grades declined a bit but my enjoyment shot up. When I met the work of Henry James, whose prose was a struggle to read, I committed to the challenge of reading all his novels for a two-year independent study. See The American: Henry James Lite (12/2011).

God's Presence in the Medieval and Renaissance WorldThe first classes I took at Duke introduced me to literature of the Medieval world, where God was a palpable presence, not something you "believed in" or argued about.

My last class at Duke was a deeper dive into that world's successor, the Renaissance. With an overflow crowd of students lining the walls, Professor DeWitt taught class like a Sunday-night camp meeting, pacing, calling out, with lots of perspiration and inspiration. My experience of those faith-soaked worlds has remained an ideal for me. See Church was Made for Waiting (11/2011) and a more personal article A Jung Man's Dream (01/2019).

Grace on a Plate: My Eyes Open to the WorldMy last college roommate Andréas shook up my world. Like everyone else, I called him "Andy." He'd seemed like a naive kid from Philly who'd needed my guidance, but our roles reversed when I heard him speak French on the phone to his mom and Italian to his father: he was a cosmopolitan Italiano and I was the naive one. Preoccupied with lit, drama, and music, I'd never questioned my US-centric views; Andréas was amused by American food, resentful about America's meddling in the world. I resisted, and we argued.

But a couple of years after graduation, when I chaperoned kids to France, a taste of Andréas's world was like grace, and my eyes were opened. See My Spiritual Encounter with French Asparagus (09/2018)

[I recently ran across this quotation from Andréas in a journal, where I remembered him as a great influence on my life: I'm no longer your little pet freshman, and you can't stand it! He was a truth-teller.]

The Rings of a TreeLooking back on those years, I see how my worlds had expanded like the rings of a tree, each one wider to encompass the others. I'd experienced what Professor Holley preached, both breadth and depth.

←← | ← || → Use the arrows to follow the entire bike tour from the start.