Sleeper, Awake!

Sleeper, Awake
Christopher Bogart

The title of this posting, “Sleeper, Awake” is from the cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach. This piece of music is based on the parable from St. Matthew’s gospel of the five foolish and the five wise virgins. These virgins are tasked with awaiting the master’s return. The five foolish virgins light their lamps early and fall asleep, so when the master comes, they have to be awoken and have no oil left in their lamps to guide the master home. Like the five foolish virgins, many of us too sleep through our lives, wasting our “oil” and concentrating on what is immediate, whether by necessity or by choice, and therefore limit our world as a result. We, like the minor characters in the poem, “Richard Cory,” by Edward Arlington Robinson,“work, and wait for the light.” However, some of us, unlike those foolish virgins, wake up in time to experience something that, even though it might be a once in a lifetime experience, will alter their lives forever.

I make no apologies for the topic I have chosen to write about. Since I have spoken about this topic and written poetry about it and posted it many times before, my readers, if there are any, must be sick of it by now. But my awakening was a seminal event in my life. I too slept for many years, focusing on what was right in front of me. I am not ashamed of that focus, as it was a necessary focus that enabled me to grow as a teacher, and to help many of the students I taught. Yet, when I was invited to experience something I thought that I would never have the chance to experience, over five years ago, I anguished over the choice for months, walking in the brisk night air of autumn, and listening to this cantata by Bach as I watched the sun set in front of me night after night and pondered whether I had the guts to accept this very special invitation. In the end, I did. And, as Robert Frost said in “The Road Not Taken, “that made all the difference.”

B.J. Ward, a very dynamic and popular New Jersey poet, once asked me what it was like to have the opportunity to present my ideas on education at Oxford University, and my simple response was “It was like academic Disneyland.” He laughed and told me I should use that phrase someday in my writing. I am following B.J.’s advice and using it tonight, for, as simplistic as it might sound, that was exactly what it was like. And so much more. Now, I know you are thinking to yourself. Big deal! It was a unique experience but there are other educators that have had such experiences. And, while I know that to be true, that fact doesn’t detract from the uniqueness of my experience. I am not living their lives, and so I don’t know how it affected them. I only know how it affected me. It was a big deal to me. It was an experience that lives in my memory every day of my life.

So I intend in my next few posts to talk about Oxford and how I found it to be one of the most unique places on earth. I know that this blog was supposed to be dedicated primarily to poetry, but it is also dedicated to writing. To be honest, I really don’t feel like writing poetry right now, or using this experience again as a topic for my poetry. I feel like talking about it through prose, and maybe in the talking, I might be able to work out why it has had such a profound effect on me. It certainly couldn’t hurt. And in the process, if anybody out there is reading my blog, the worst thing that will happen is that you will learn a little more about the oldest English language university in the world and my experience of it. Or maybe you will die of boredom. I hope not. I’m hoping for the former.