I’m lounging here at the tail end of a good long day.
Our suitcases are all propped up before me, waiting to be zipped up again for another drive tomorrow.
The husband is tending to business back home.
I’m surrounded by wallpapered floral walls and matchy-matchy thick curtains. It’s a floral print that sends you back to another century.
It’s so English.
The days journey was a display of color.
The greens in the landscape here are so, so green.
The yellow fields of rapeseed are neon.
The lilac flowers that spill over old stone walls are solid and sure in their color.
And the tulips!
They look fake they’re so fine.
It appears to me that God used a highlighter to create this place.
And the people….
I’m surprised by this thread of sweetness that runs through so many of the personalities I’ve encountered here.
It isn’t loud.
It isn’t giddy in your face.
It’s calm and steady – this underlying warmth in the hearts of people… that I wasn’t expecting.
Perhaps London will be a different experience on this front.
But the folks that are found out in the villages and towns of this island have been sincerely obliging.
There was a strange spirit about Oxford, and it’s outskirts.
I still can’t put my finger on it and call it a name…. but the gut feeling I got around that place was one I haven’t felt before.
There was no eye contact. Very few lifted their eyes.
And there is somewhat of a void heaviness that surrounds.
But the buildings…..the structures that stand around that campus – they are breathtaking.
We took communion at Christ Church early, early in the A.M.
There wasn’t much going on spiritually inside the building, if I’m being honest. At least not for me that morning.
But the architecture was alive and brilliant.
Standing inside….thinking about who all has stepped foot in that place….kings, prime ministers, religious leaders, literaries – it was moving.
We then headed out west – and the landscaping is prettier there than all the postcards I’ve ever seen put together.
