At this time last week, I was just meeting the amazing cohort of international scholars with whom I will spend the next month over tea and scones. The English have some kind of magic that they work with cream.

Without further ado, notes from a scholar-tourist:

• It’s not easy to learn a new academic language mid-career. The research project I proposed will eventually explore theodicy through the lens of cell biology. I like to think I know a fair amount about cell biology, but significantly less about theological thinking on questions of suffering. Each of us has been assigned a supervisor who will help us develop relevant interdisciplinary research skills. My supervisor started by suggesting I read several books on the topic from a variety of perspectives in philosophy and theology. This is slow going for me.

• Breakfast is an event. Whoever came up with the “Full English Breakfast” was not messing around.  They loved breakfast food, and may have only eaten one meal per day. As a serious breakfast fan, I am grateful for this person. Most days I’ve had an egg, sauteed mushrooms, roasted tomatoes, tea, and fruit – and pass by the sausages (traditional, halal, or vegetarian), bacon (traditional or halal), baked beans, pancakes, waffles, breads, yogurt, cereals, and other assorted items.

• I will never tire of walking beside 17th and 18th century buildings. Maybe it’s the liberal arts major in me but I can’t help but feel the purpose in these buildings, and that those who built them expected us to still be using them.

• Don’t be afraid of side streets. Have you been to the Minnesota State Fair? Then you know what the streets look like in the historic part of Oxford on a fair summer Saturday. Then add in tour buses, city buses, crazed cyclists, and dozens of languages. Fortunately 400-year-old alleys don’t seem to be on the tour routes, so you can navigate around the crowds pretty efficiently.

• That time I swore an oath to get a library card. We were inducted as readers at the Bodleian libraries this week, during which we took an oath to treat the library materials with respect, to leave said materials in the library, and to leave our fire-starting kits at home.

• Pigeons are not the bottom-dwellers of the avian world. The pigeons here are quite large, and much more flight-worthy than I’m used to seeing back home. They seem to spend most of their time up in the trees or thrashing through shrubbery. You can hear their throaty trills all day long, but they’re especially vocal at dusk.

• The only time I really feel like a foreigner is when I try to cross the street. I’ve pretty much trained myself to look right first when I’m crossing a street, but outside of regulated crossings with traffic lights the only thing I know for sure is that motorists have to stop if I set foot in a zebra (pronounced with a short e, like zeh-brah) crossing. Think Abbey Road album cover. I recommend sidling up to a group of locals when possible.

• Or when I try to use coins when making a cash purchase. One- and two-pound coins are easy to identify because they are two-toned, but the pence slow me down every time.

• I have a new appreciation for tea, and beer. Both of which are simply better over here.

• And a new appreciation for ice. Which appears only infrequently. We had a fabulous meal at an Indian restaurant last night, and I believe it was the first time I’ve had ice in a cold beverage since the plane ride over.

• And air conditioning. Oxford is typically a very temperate city, so very few places have air conditioning. England is also in the middle of a heat wave. I should point out that this present heat wave means that temperatures have been above 28C, or about 82F. This isn’t the humid midwestern heat of home. Even so, it’s quite warm here by local standards. A good strategy is to mindlessly wander the local Tesco (grocery store) when desperate.

• Everyone should have the chance to watch an elimination round World Cup match among people whose “home team” has a legitimate chance. The fans are passionate, we’ve had our fair share of fun with Neymar memes and videos, the quarterfinal match between England and Sweden was fantastic. If England bests Croatia in the semi-finals, the church I visited this morning will be hosting a viewing party next Sunday. Dedication.

• This is a unique place to find beauty. The flora here, in particular, is different enough from Minnesota as to be mesmerizing. Rhododendrons are trees. Rhubarb is massive. Flowers and trees that wouldn’t succeed at home thrive here. I have discovered that I love poplar trees, and delphinium.

• It is an immense privilege to be here. This place. These people. I am among kind and generous scholars. I have more to say about that, but will save it for another post.

What kinds of things do you tend to notice when you travel?

You’ve read the title. Faith in science. Faith and science. Strange bedfellows, these. Maybe you’re wondering where all of this is going. So am I.

The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns. Faith also means reaching deeply within, for the sense one was born with, the sense, for example, to go for a walk.

-Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

Faith means being realistic, feeling the feelings, asking the questions. Which means that faith can live, grow, and change. While there may be certain tenets of faith to which we hold tightly for the long haul, certainty implies an absoluteness, a sense of rigidity that strains under questions and loses sight in the dark. In my experience, certainty is also no friend to science. Without doubt and inquiry we might still believe in geocentrism, a flat planet, blood-letting, or that infectious diseases are caused by miasmas. Instead, science wants us to ask questions, to let the data tell us what they will, and to come back for more in the ever-expanding landscape of inquiry.

If certainty is problematic for both faith and science, it is doubly so for attempts at intersectional conversation between them. When I first started teaching, I engaged these crossroads conversations from my standpoint as a biologist. I brought evidence. Whether the issue was evolution and human origins, vaccine science, or genetically modified plants, I prepared with and provided research articles from reputable, peer-reviewed journals. Clinical trials. Statistics. Well-honed texts and arguments. And I failed. I have stories. I failed because at least some of my audience comes with deeply held beliefs rooted in a lifetime of family and church culture. To them, I’m sure it felt as though my science was a hammer and their faith the nail.

How then do we have any kind of conversation at all?

As the years have passed, I’ve found it helpful to treat these conversations like research questions – gather background information, ask a question, form a hypothesis, make predictions, gather and interpret data, repeat. And most of the time, this works.

To illustrate: I teach a course on HIV/AIDS in which I assign Paul Monette‘s poignant memoir Borrowed Time, the chronicle of his partner’s journey through and death from AIDS in the mid-1980s with urgency, intimacy, and vulnerability. I used to jump right in and assign the book, but many students weren’t prepared to navigate a narrative from the perspective of a gay man. It hadn’t occurred to me that I had done various forms of pre-reading work over a span of years that prepared me to be open to Monette’s writing from the get-go; the question, then, was how to recreate that preparation in the span of days. I tried something like this:

1. Introduce the book. I explain my choice of text to the class. It is helpful if my thought process is transparent to them, and they can understand why I chose a potentially controversial book.
2. Respect gut reactions. We take some time as a class to think, write, then talk about any concerns; I also invite students who wish to discuss any concerns one-on-one to stop by my office.
3. Connect to context. It is helpful if the students can see how reading such a text would fit into their context as university students at a Christian institution, so we often turn to the Bible for reminders and guidance as we approach the individuals portrayed in the memoir.
4. Read and respond.  If we’ve done the prep work well, students are able to recognize and accommodate their reflexive reactions if/when they happen.

In taking this route I release my certainty that the memoir be received a certain way (or received at all). At the same time, students are encouraged to acknowledge and explore their certainties, and to bring a self-awareness to the reading that ultimately enables them to step back and engage one narrative of a terrible time in history for gay men. Some amazing conversations have ensued in which I have watched my students create space to understand perspectives different from their own. It’s one of the reasons I embrace this particular memoir, and continue to seek out and use similar texts.

Have you experienced a dead end because of certainty? How have you navigated these tricky waters?