I am a huge fan of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Anyone who likes the likes of E.E. Cummings is bound to find a familiar mind with Hopkins. Most of the Victorians seem to be Romantics, with rather fixed styles and high language; Hopkins likes to experiment with new forms, unusual combinations of words and sounds, and interesting imagery.

Oh, goodness! Thank you so much, and I'll email you immediately!

Espionage - from a distance. Flying high on a stealth dirigible, or perhaps moving under the radar in a spy sub, I'd be breaking codes and gathering information from the aether-borne communications of the enemy.

What could be more steampunk AND summer related than tea? Growing up in the American South, I've drunk more than my fair share of sweet iced tea, which still seems the quintessential drink for hot summer days (especially in New Orleans). I've also developed a taste for hot tea, particularly Earl Grey or a spicy Chai with plenty of cream and sugar. I've got a daughter, too, who is just the right age for tea parties - I think I need to plan a steampunk tea party.

My favorite place is the ocean!

I think there's a base to start from - academic librarians already work between disciplines and with the public, have the information and the space to work with, are already committed to a life of service, and have an amorphous status somewhere between faculty and non-faculty. I don't think it would be easy, and it would, especially at the beginning, be time-consuming and frustrating. There needs to be a clarification of what the Kingdom is - what it looks like, what it does - as well as how the Kingdom impacts and transforms academic institutions joined to it. There needs to be conversation, which is always messy. I really think the status problem, usually not beneficial, serves in this respect. Librarians are intimate parts of academia, and yet somehow outside, as well. With support from key faculty, and pulling in important non-faculty, as well (students, especially), I think the librarians' strange status actually makes them the most logical mediator for the conversation. I don't think it should start out "formally", either. Getting a core group to meet informally to begin discussions and start implementing small changes would, I believe, naturally grow into large-scale change over time. Convincing the core group of the seriousness of the issue and getting them to commit to working toward a truly Christian university would be the hardest part, I think. I don't know whether the credibility is there - if not, that would be an important problem that needs to be solved for lots of reasons.

It seems to me that one answer to the question resides in the Hauerwas essay you quoted earlier, in which he quotes Oehlschlaeger: "'Maybe there's a role, then, for Christian intellectuals who might mediate among the disciplines and between disciplines and public in ways that would not occur to the market-driven knowledge-producers on today's faculties.'" It sounds like a job for a Christian academic librarian, to me.