Perhaps my favorite activity we pursued during our stay in Santa Fe was our trip outside the city limits to visit the campus of St. John's College, which is a tiny liberal arts institution, the curriculum of which consists of set rigorous four-year study of the classics, starting with Homer and the Ancient Greeks, and progressing forward in time. Years ago as a young man I had thought of going to St. John's for this very reason, but I had rejected it because they did not accept transfer credits--one had to start from the beginning with everyone else. When I went back to college, I went to a similar tiny liberal arts college (in Oregon) with the specific intent of designing my own St. John's curriculum, which turned into my becoming a physicist.
I had never been to the campus in Santa Fe, even while visiting Santa Fe ten years before during the height of free-styling digital wanderings in the Bimmer. Perhaps it was awkward then, as I would have been going out of nostalgia, wallowing in the past of a decision I had chosen long ago, wondering what might have happened, and regretting not having learned Ancient Greek as I could have. It would have been a backwards-looking visit, and in 2013 I was not backwards looking anymore, for once in my life, but as much in the moment as I had been in my adult life. I was making my way back home to see my parents who were still in good health in their living years. Now I am nostalgic for 2013, not 1985. Loss is part of life.
Instead the visit to St. John's was joyful and forward-looking, because I personally know a young man who is a freshman there--the eldest son of two of my high school friends who married in 2003. He was born soon after. I didn't see much of him growing up, but we have visited Fort Collins several times in the last few years and have met up with my old friends, and thus talked with the young man in question as he came and went during the adult conversation, up into high school, meeting his friends and girlfriend, as one is meant to do at that age.
He had chosen St. John's at a time when he was still a secular Libertarian. He was very much a believer in the principles of Ayn Rand. His father had been so in high school, but in a relaxed curious way without dogmatism. He is too easy going for that, which is why we still get along, even though he voted for the other guy in the last election, and knows who I voted for.
From his mother he gets his fire. She is Finnish. Her grandfather was a Finnish sniper in World War II. She is full of grit.
At St. Johin's, however, the young man I mention found a home through the ministry of the local parish of an Eastern Orthodox church. Several months ago he told me about his conversion, after having read Plato in his first semester. He was recently baptized during the Orthodox Easter.
He was at St. John's that day, as it was spring break and most of the students had decamped elsewhere, as students should do. For his spring break, he had gone to Arizona, swapping states with us, to stay at an Orthodox monastery about a hundred miles south of here. Later he said he plans to return there each year. His conversion has been worrying to his mother. I am pleased to feel like I am encouraging him to explore Orthodoxy, and to have converted. I think he will lead many souls to Christ by his evangelism.
My young friend out of town was probably for the best. I did not want to drop into his life at that moment. Perhaps next summer, when school is out of session.
We settled for a delightful snow-day adventure to the campus, the four of us, where we went inside the student center and into the campus bookstore, which was a glorious place to visit, especially on a day with the snow coming down outside.
I relished going to the back of the store to see the wooden cubby-holes with the photocopied packets of the seminar materials for the the freshman through senior classes. There was the curriculum, laid out completely. I read every label, taking it in as a glance. I purchased a small volume of physics essays by Max Planck in the used section by the counter, where the pristine color-coded Loeb classics in Greek, Latin, French, and Sanskrit sit on shelves directly next to the painkillers and toiletries found in the college bookstore I remembered from 1983. Alma mater.
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