Get Thee to a Nunnery!

Today we had a small group meeting with a bunch of us Americans and one of the program staff, Dr. Finlay. She's an American who did graduate work here at Oxford and has been working on the staff for 5 years or so. Anyway, one of the girls had heard that Dr. Finlay is planning to enter a convent and asked her about it. So she told us the story. It involved meeting a monk here in Oxford who used to be a juggler. He introduced her to the abbess of the convent she'll be joining. The monk is named St. Augustine and she calls him Gussie for short. Brother Gussie. And for some reason when he's Father Gussie, it will be shortened to "Frog". Brother Gussie, in order to raise money to buy a croquet set (yes, a croquet set) for his monastery (yes, croquet at his monastery), juggled on the streets of Oxford for a while. He juggled a machete, a burning torch, and an apple. He took bites of the apple while he was juggling it.

I felt while I was hearing this story that I had entered some other realm. It was told in the same manner in which I might tell you something funny that someone said in class the other day...except it was a nun-to-be telling about a monk juggling a machete. I don't believe this is a normal thing, even for a place like Oxford, and yet....