Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires
Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art
A sad and exhausting wrestle with your work is a possible sign that you have chosen something that you should not have, that what you are writing is not right, should not be written at all, or not at such length
I used to go to New Wine in the past, but it was too noisy for me. I needed more time to quietly process what I was hearing, learning, and what the Spirit was saying.
In the past, when I went to retreats, I would come back full of wonderful resolutions to revise my life. To be a better wife, mother, housekeeper, friend, church member, and yes, a writer. Eat well, exercise hard, rise early.
I will…. I will… I will. Not surprisingly, when stitches fell from that shawl of good intentions, I would give up in despair. And feel increasingly suspicious of mountain-top experiences and resolutions, so hard to keep up with or follow through amid the slings and arrows of daily life. And when one fails, your latter state is worse than the first, because you are so dejected and lacking in confidence in your ability to change.
Cantankerous, irritable Martin Luther perhaps because of his very cantankerousness and irritability had priceless insights into the nature of grace. We are caterpillars in a ring of fire. Our only hope is deliverance from above.
I first heard that quote from Jack Miller, the dynamic, insightful founder of World Harvest Mission. Asked what he thought of Richard Forster’s wonderful “Celebration of Discipline,” he replied, “Oh, I am too big a sinner to be fooled by “The Celebration of Discipline.” Amen.
And I am too weary a sinner to follow the path of good resolutions, New Year’s resolutions, self-help, all that good stuff.
Middle-age is a wonderful mellow time. I know now that I can’t change myself. I can’t heal myself. I need the Great Physician. I need a Saviour. I just need Jesus!
So what do I hope to gain from a retreat? That is a question my 15 year old is going to be asking me a lot, and my 11 year old. So, let me be ready to give an answer.
1. I want to read Scripture some more and encounter Christ in an environment free of distraction.
2. I want again to be filled with the Holy Spirit. I increasingly feel that my deepest desire is for God’s spirit to fill me totally.
3. I want to surrender myself again to God and have him work on the deep, secret parts of my spirit, the parts I myself don’t know or understand–healing, rearranging, reshaping, teaching, setting free.
4. And if God has words of wisdom, revelation and guidance, he would like to share with me (and of course He has, and of course he does, he is a giving God, and both word and silence are his native language) I want to be there, still and quiet, to hear them.
Parenthesis, mine.
“Gibson has said that his script for “The Passion” was the New Testament, and that the film was directed by the Holy Ghost. ” Peter J. Boyer, Sept 15th, 2003, The New Yorker.
Hey, let’s take his word for it.
I myself have no doubt that the Holy Spirit can direct a movie, or dictate a book.
Come Holy Spirit, dictate some books to me.
Amen
Merton had a privileged childhood, marred by the death of his parents, and then a superb education, culminating in Columbia. He was a gifted writer. But there was a “god-sized hole” in his heart, and his readings in philosophy and poetry awakened him to the ancient echoes of a truth beyond time.
He sought to find the solution and destination for his restlessness as a Trappist monk in Gethsemani Abbey, Kentucky.
However, his God-given talent enters the monastery with him, and luckily for both Merton’s psychological and spiritual health, and for the reader, an enlightened abbot suggests that he writes the story of his life.
Which he does. He is still a young man, completing it at 31. He movingly writes of the conflict between monk and the writer, the latter always suggesting ideas, projects, essays, poems, autobiographies, novels to the monk, who wants nothing more than to sit still and contemplate God.
He is probably not the first monk or nun who has been wrung by his conflict, but probably the first who has been permitted to have a flourishing literary career, blessing many, even decades after his death, within the confines of one of the strictest Catholic orders.
Spiritually, I have been deeply influenced by “Seeds of Contemplation,” and “More Seeds of Contemplation.” I found the Seven Storey Mountain interesting as a portrait of the man behind the profound thinker–and Christian!
“Let Nothing be Wasted”–what Jesus said after he multiplied 5 loaves to feed 5 thousand, and landed up with 12 baskets of left-overs. (Divine economics in action!)
It feels good to know that that is God’s desire–that nothing be wasted, our efforts, our attempts, our dreams, our work, our prayers.
And what he desires, he has the power to accomplish.
I am someone who curls into a foetal position when I pray intensely. I kneel, or crouch over the seat in front of me if I am seated, shut out the world and its noise. Or I lie flat on the floor if I am alone, or in a free setting. I would look distinctly odd if I prayed like that in a middle of a big outdoor carnival.
We used to go every year to New Wine, a charismatic festival in Shepton Mallet, Somerset–noise, bands till late in the night, radios with sermons playing in the campsite, loud worship with lyrics with not much substance to them repeated, ad infinitum. I had to sit down and shut out the world to try to concentrate in meetings in which everyone else was jumping and waving their arms about.
Part of the beauty of arriving at middle age is that one now knows what works for you, and what does not. No more New Wine (though I have been 4 times.) It is stress for me–noise, queues, long walks to get to places, The crowds, 10,000 plus, the rat race for good seats, the worship, loud, and hyped, whereas I am a choral music, Taize, Gregorian chant sort of girl, though I do love Matt Redman, Michael Card, Rich Mullins, who have verbally rich lyrics, particularly the latter two.
However, there were some remarkable speakers, particularly the amazing HEIDI BAKER who is one of the zaniest, freest, happiest, absurdest, most eccentric and inspiring Christian speakers I’ve ever heard. Her faith is contagious.
But to endure a week of camping, tents, rain, a good half a mile or more walk from camp site to the venues, crowds, even for the good speakers, is something I am no longer going to do.
Different strokes for different folks. I encounter God in silence, solitude, reflection, in Scripture study and private prayer, in nature walks. I find it harder to encounter him in the midst of 5000–10000 other folk–that after all was the recorded size of several of Jesus’s audiences.
But sadly, my kids do. Zoe had an experience of baptism in the holy spirit, and stayed up till 11 at night praying with her friends. Wow. The passion of youth!!
So I guess, she can go to the youth version, Soul Survivor, and I can stay at home encountering God in my favourite way, with a mug of tea, a Bible and journal, or roaming the fields around my home, alone.
My spiritual activity takes place in solitary walks with God, in solitary prayer, in silence and solitude. Just those very words are balm to my spirit–silence, solitude, peace.
So, if I have to take spiritual holidays, I will take them in contemplative abbeys, or out in the wilderness, not in the noise and loud music of New Wine.
