Wheatstone Academy

Well, I’m finally home; I say “finally” not as a relief from some long and relentless experience but as a long-awaited, and at the same time feared, sigh that culminates the cascade of beauty that envelops the beholder into a world previously unknown but now only un-apprehended.

I’ve spent the last two weeks in San Diego at the Wheatstone Academy for both the 101 and 201 conferences and the experience was I think life changing. I think I expected I would come to see different things, but I could not have anticipated coming home to seeing the same things so differently; it’s me that’s different, and yet it feels that the world is changed. How can I describe an experience that changes the way I experience all things? What is there to say? I’ve been somewhat taken back, almost startled a little by how unpredictable I now find myself; I am engaging in conversations that I’ve previously shied away from; and my former fears have lost their substance and are beginning to diminish. I’ve always been one to introvert at the first sight of discomfort, but now, now I almost find myself embracing it! Ah! What will I do next?

During the first week I was there, as we were once again taking the long walk across campus from the cafeteria to our dorms, I had the opportunity to talk with Dr. Reynolds (the founder of the Wheatstone Academy and the primary lecturer). The things he said impacted me greatly, and the more I review them, the deeper their meaning. He spoke to me much about courage which at the time I found somewhat odd. I expected he would tell me information about the dialectic and encourage me to “think harder” or something. Instead, what I got was that it doesn’t require intelligence to learn the dialectic, it requires courage. You don’t need to be “smart” you need only to be brave enough to follow the argument wherever it leads. It seems that I thought my difficulty was that I didn’t know what to do; it turns out that, like Frodo, “I know what I must do; it’s just that I’m scared to do it”. I am concerned more with my being right than I am with finding the truth; I’m afraid to be wrong. Reynolds told me to have courage, and reminded me that “there are sins of omission as well”. The spirit of fear is overwhelming; thanks be to Jesus Christ who “disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.”

How liberating is the good news of our salvation in Christ alone! How liberating that I am not merited by being smart or right, but in Christ. How mystical, that in Christ “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge”.

So, what is there to say? Not as much as there is to ask.