Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

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Archives for 2011

The Righteous will Live by Faith. The Book of Romans

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And now, deep breath, I tackle Romans.

The Gospels give you a ground level view of Jesus. There have been quiet seasons in my life, 2003-4, and this year, when the first thing I have done in the mornings is read a short Gospel passage.
And it is as if Jesus strolls into my room, full of energy, full of love, interacting, healing, blessing, teaching.
The Epistles give you a meta perspective, a grand-stand view of the action. You see Jesus from a distance, and see the loving friend in his cosmic role, “He was before all things, and in him all things hang together” as Paul writes in Colossians.
Romans is Paul’s theological masterpiece, but also a graveyard of preachers. Many have attempted sermon series and books on it; many have not finished them.
As a non-professional, I am bravely tackling Romans for the good of my soul in what has been called exegetical blogging. 
The Righteous will Live by Faith, Romans 1 1-17
Paul reveals a new way for the righteous to live–by faith.
What does it mean to live by faith?
Some thoughts:
How do we face our worries? Do we take them to God?
How do we deal with our hopes and ambitions for our future? Do we prayerfully take them to God?
How do we deal with our hopes and ambitions for our children’s future? Do we prayerfully take them to God?
How do we deal with these things?
Fears.
Hopes.
Dreams
Ambitions
Plans
Do we discuss them with God, ask him for his wisdom and perspective on them, follow his directives, and leave the outcome in his hands?

 I am aware that I am just scratching the surface. What else does it mean to live by faith?

Romans 1

 1 Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus,
called to be an apostle
and set apart for the gospel of God—
Gospel, euangelion in Greek, means good news. It includes not just a call to initial saving faith, but Paul’s entire message about Jesus Christ, and how Christ’s saving activity transforms all of life and all of history.
Servant, Doulos, or bondservant.

2 the gospel he promised beforehand
 through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures
3 regarding his Son,
NIV The central figure of the gospel is Jesus, in and through whom the history and promises of the Old Testament are fulfilled.

 who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David,
4 and who through the Spirit of holiness
 was appointed the Son of God in power
 by his resurrection from the dead:
Jesus Christ our Lord.
NIV The resurrection was the authentication of Jesus’s divine nature, the climax of his earthly ministry, and the focal point of the apostolic proclamation.
5 Through him we received grace and apostleship
to call all the Gentiles to the obedience
 that comes from faith
 for his name’s sake.
 6 And you also are among those Gentiles
 who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.
 7 To all in Rome
who are loved by God and called to be his holy people:
   Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Grace, God’s unmerited favour. Peace, echoes the OT concept of shalom, where a person’s life with God and with everything else is in ordered harmony, both physically and spiritual, and “all is well.”

Grace and Peace is the initial greeting used by both Peter and Paul in their letters. It combines the traditional Greek and Hebrew greeting, but links them with the only true source of “grace,” (God’s unmerited favour, esp. that which comes to sinful humanity through the work of Christ on the cross) and “peace” (the total well-being and security that only God can provide. The greeting is echoes in the conclusion of Peter and Paul’s letters so that they stand framed in what amounts to an apostolic benediction on those to whom they are addressed. 
See blog on the greeting Grace and Peace.

ESV Notes–

This is the longest introduction of any of Paul’s letters.  Paul goes into more detail here because he had never been to Rome, and he wanted to summarize the Gospel for the Roman readers. 

Interestingly, many of the themes mentioned here also conclude the letter in the final doxology, Romans 16 25-27.
8 First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world. 
A pattern of prayer. First of all, thank God for the person.

God, whom I serve in my spirit in preaching the gospel of his Son, is my witness how constantly I remember you 10 in my prayers at all times; and I pray that now at last by God’s will the way may be opened for me to come to you.
Pre-evangelistic work. Pray for the person.

 11 I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong— 12 that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith. 
As the spirit transforms him, Paul becomes honestly loving and caring.


13 I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that I planned many times to come to you (but have been prevented from doing so until now) in order that I might have a harvest among you, just as I have had among the other Gentiles.
 14 I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. 15 That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are in Rome.
An obligation laid upon him by Jesus.
 16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.
The Gospel saves everyone who believes, saves them from the power of sin, and reconciles them to God.
Because of their lack of size, fame or honour in the Roman corridors of power and influence, Christians might be tempted to be ashamed. But Paul says it is nothing to be ashamed of, because it is a message that comes with the power of God.
 17 For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
Through the Gospel, we are grafted into Jesus by faith. When the Father sees Jesus, he sees us, and vice-versa.
We only have this righteousness imputed to us by  our faith in Christ.

And Paul reveals a new way for the righteous to live–by faith.

What does it mean to live by faith?
Some thoughts.
How do we face our worries? Do we take them to God? 
How do we deal with our hopes and ambitions for our future? Do we prayerfully take them to God.

How do we deal with our hopes and ambitions for our children’s future? Do we prayerfully take them to God?
How do we do these things?
Fears.
Hopes.
Dreams
Ambitions
Plans


Do we discuss them with God, ask him for his wisdom and perspective on them, follow his directives, and leave the outcome in his hands?


What else does it mean to live by faith?

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The Magic Kingdom IV–The Magic Kingdom of Prayer

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This is a longer very personal essay I wrote in 2003, which I am posting in installments, without re-reading or editing (because, once I start, I would edit it into a different essay

  Part I The Magic Kingdom I–The Varieties of Magic
Part II The Magic Worlds of Art and Nature.    

III Deep Magic from Before the Dawn of Time. 

                                                                                                     IV   
                           The Magic Kingdom of Prayer
Still, it was years before I began to learn to live by prayer.  In late 1995, my friend, Peggy Goetz, who teaches at Calvin College told me how her spiritual life changed when she decided to pray for an hour a day.  My own “quiet time” then felt Sisyphean: hefting a boulder up a hill because I had decided to–though I barely believed it changed things, though it brought little joy, peace or transformation.  So I too decided to spend an hour in prayer and scripture study (with, of course, some restlessness and covert glances at the clock) and since “if some is good, then more is better,” appears to be my subliminal motto, I soon increased it.
               After a couple of weeks of this new discipline, my life unraveled.  The manuscript of an ill-considered book project I had worked on for four years was turned down by the well-known editor from Harper and Row and the “hot” literary agent who had been so encouraging, the grief sharper because I had been pregnant and then had an infant for the last two of those years, and writing had been a strain.  I grew depressed.  I had recently moved from the heady, stimulating environment of Minneapoliswith its rich literary friendships to Williamsburg, Virginia, and, for the first time in my life, developing interesting friendships was difficult.  My shattered confidence led to writer’s block; the sadness and stress to frequent illness.  “From before and behind you hedge me in.”  I tried every means of comfort: journalism, teaching Creative Writing at William and Mary, obsessive, extensive gardening; anti-depressants, food, therapy, a second baby, frantic travel (New Zealand, India, England, Spain in a calendar year), frantic social life (nine groups: wine and dine, sit and stitch, book groups, “small groups,” church committees!), all of which aggravated my problem–no time or energy to do the one thing I wanted to: write, and led, in turn, to fresh problems: exhaustion, weight gain, getting hyper on anti-depressants, money flying through my fingers.
               In late ‘96, during a winter vacation house-sitting in Madrid, while trying to read Jeremiah (again), I stumbled upon a clue to my sadness:
                              Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength.
                              And whose heart turns away from the Lord.
                              He will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes.
                              But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.
                              He will be like a tree planted by the water, that sends out its roots by the stream.
                              It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green.
                              It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.
               I listened.  My confidence in my self (that rousing American virtue!) was at a low ebb.  Though I saw my friends save themselves through hard work, discipline, determination, I did not believe I could swing it.  When a bird caught in a net flaps, it only gets more deeply entangled.  It is not the well who need a physician;  it is those who are a total mess.  I now knew that no “chariots and horses,” my own or another’s, could make me happy.  The infinite hole in my heart could only be filled by the infinite.
                                                                                          ~ ~ ~
              
                                                              Ah!  must–
                                                             Designer infinite!–
                                                            Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it?
                                                                                                         Francis Thompson, “The Hound of Heaven.”
               During those years, because I was blocked on every side, because of my great need, because my life wasn’t working, I did life less and less by the power of sweat, worry and calculation, but began to learn to pray.  Gradually, things changed.  The writer Paul Miller led me, over a period of five years, through two lengthy and challenging Bible studies he had written, through which the words of Jesus began to take root in my life.  Lolly Dunlap, a living saint, lovingly mentored me.  I met inspiring writers who had found ways to combine writing with mothering, and, gradually, established nourishing friendships.
                God likes big, brazen prayers with chutzpah, I discovered: “Please wake up.  I know it’s midnight, but I am out of bread.”  “You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”  As I prayed for my husband, a mathematician who helped me, to the utmost, with the house and kids  to get time off teaching for his own research which he passionately loves, he began to get research years in all sorts of improbable ways–a total of six and a half years, in fact.  In seasons of exhaustion and bleak financial years, I decided to pray for money to travel–my primary means of refreshment and renewal–to the places I most wanted to, and felt like “a spoilt bairn of the Almighty,” in Oswald Chambers’ phrase: money appeared almost miraculously, a National Endowment for the Arts award which took us to Venice and Florence; another unexpected windfall which took us to Switzerland.
               In fact, when I do it by prayer, even cleaning up goes more quickly!  And what works in the house, works in the garden.  For five years we tended hellebores, rare expensive beauties–red, primrose yellow, chartreuse, maroon, plums, midnight purples, that flaunt large, magnificent,  flowers, or clusters of bell-like blossoms–and futilely hoped they would reseed.  This winter, I realized that instead of hoping they would reseed, I should pray they would reseed.  I did.  They did.  Magnificently.  Dozens of seedlings under each plant, enough to transplant to all those nooks in our half acre garden that we thought would be perfect if they only had hellebores, enough to share with gardening friends, for God is munificent. When I’d say, “Sister, please pray that I” win, star, shine… Sister Josephine at school sweetly quoted Thomas More, “The things, good Lord, that I pray for, give me the grace to labor for.”  But that was not the lesson I most needed.  The Copernican revolution of the mind I need is this: don’t worry, but turn your worry into a prayer; don’t just hope, turn your hope into a prayer; divert your stream of consciousness, your internal monologue, into a dialogue with God, so that, in time, to think is to pray.  Annie Dillard says moving from poetry to prose was like playing with an entire orchestra rather than with a single instrument.  For me, learning to live by prayer–whether about how to write, crisis-clean, mother, or throw a kid’s birthday party–was like that.
               And what amazes me still more is that, as I pray, the tectonic plates of my soul shift, and its topography alters; my very emotions change.  When my spirit feels empty, or, in fact, dead, I beg for the Spirit’s life to revive my deadness, the Spirit’s fullness for my emptiness, his living bread for my hungers, and his rest for my restlessness.  And he does come, surprising me.  Grace is more than a theological concept, I discovered on the days when Roy and I joke that we will persist in loving each other because Christ commanded us to love our enemies!  When I feel like a toothpaste tube too thriftily squeezed, and pray “for the love of God to be shed abroad in my heart through the Holy Spirit” I do–astonished–eventually feel the ripples of an invisible, inexhaustible Amazon: new energy, new compassion, new perspective.  Prayer can change anything; when I doubted that, I had been Plato’s cave-dweller in the shadows and gloom, assuming this was it, undreaming of a world drenched in golden sunlight, under bright sapphire skies.
               As I prayed, finicky hellebores self-seeded; a college fund to a great university appeared as from a Great Magician’s hat, and when bills abounded, freakily, money abounded.  Can one speak of prayer without the seeming gloating of “I asked and I received; I sought and I found,” that makes the answers to other people’s prayers as tiresome as the glories of other people’s kids, or the horrors of other people’s in-laws, (of whom an astonishing number of my friends have the most difficult in all the world)?
               Yes!  For no one I know has had every prayer answered.  Every surplus pound has not dropped off; a deeply organized and tidy house has eluded me, as has my life-long desire to wake at 5 a.m.!  My writing limps over blocks, exhaustion, distraction, duties.  When I compare myself to my friends, three of whom have published very successful books, I think of Milton’s Sonnet VII–“My fleeting youth flees on with full career, but my late spring no bud or blossom shew’th;” though I can conclude with his acquiescence, “All is, if I have grace to use it so,”–and with Hopkins’ prayer in his echoing sonnet–“Mine, O thou Lord of life, send my roots rain.” 
               Though answered prayers dazzle us, prayer, in itself, is not magic, not an open sesame to the treasure cave of wild, careening desire.  For, of course, there are many answers–“no,” “slow,” “grow” as well as “Go.”  In that comes the great paradox of prayer: magical–“ask whatever you wish”–yet not magic, as the faith, hope, love and commitment we profess in a wild night are real, yet can crumble before the rooster’s crow under the force of that wakeful night, hunger, anger, flu, restlessness, our sin, other people’s sin.
                And the deepest “magic from before the dawn of time,” lies not in the things wrought by prayer that this world never dreams of, but in the One to whom we pray.  And in the magic Kingdom  of Godwithin us.



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Spiritual Lessons from Gardening

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March 2011 bed in front of our dining room, weeded, and planted. 

Okay, this is our sixth year in our garden, and we are finally making it look nice, a bed at a time.


In previous years, I tried to take it on with secaturs and weeding, but as I didn’t immediately put something in as I took something out, weeds took over.


This year as we remove weeds from a bed, we are putting in hellebores, which are my favourite flower, dignified, low-key, restrained, and blooming between December and April, the months when I most need an incentive to get our in the garden.


We will fill the gaps between hellebores with other shade plants–arum, bleeding hearts, heuchera, cyclamen.


Will try and post pictures of our ongoing progress.
                                                                      * * * 

I think I was stymied before because I just tried to remove weeds and overgrowth, but put nothing in its place.


It’s the same with breaking bad habits and addictions. You cannot get rid of a bad temper, or a reliance on chocolate, say, without putting something in its place–a deepened relationship with God, let’s say, or a taste for Scripture.


Jesus has a parable of an evil spirit cast out of a man. When he sees his former habitation all swept and empty, he returns with seven others, more evil than himself, and so the latter condition of the man was worst than the first.


This perhaps explains why at the start of every diet I weigh more than at the start of the previous one, no matter how much I lost on it!!


The lost weight must be replaced with things to fill the void –muscle mass, or interesting things, or spirituality—otherwise one’s latter state can be worse than the first. 

Overgrown rock garden. Needs colour. March 2011.

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A bed we’ve inherited with hellebores
A bed we haven’t tackled yet. Yeah, lots of work!

Roy’s so proud of this little bed he’s established. 

The Righteous will Live by Faith, Romans 1 1-17

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And now, deep breath, I tackle Romans. 

The Gospels give you a ground level view of Jesus. There have been quiet seasons in my life, 2003-4, and this year, when the first thing I have done in the mornings is read a short Gospel passage.

And it is as if Jesus strolls into my room, full of energy, full of love, interacting, healing, blessing, teaching.

The Epistles give you a meta perspective, a grand-stand view of the action. You see Jesus from a distance, and see the loving friend in his cosmic role, “He was before all things, and in him all things hang together” as Paul writes in Colossians. 

Romans is Paul’s theological masterpiece, but also a graveyard of preachers. Many have attempted sermon series and books on it; many have not finished them.

As a non-professional, I am bravely tackling Romans for the good of my soul in what has been called exegetical blogging. 


The Righteous will Live by Faith, Romans 1 1-17



Paul reveals a new way for the righteous to live–by faith.

What does it mean to live by faith?

Some thoughts:
How do we face our worries? Do we take them to God? 
How do we deal with our hopes and ambitions for our future? Do we prayerfully take them to God?
How do we deal with our hopes and ambitions for our children’s future? Do we prayerfully take them to God?

How do we deal with these things?
Fears.
Hopes.
Dreams
Ambitions
Plans

Do we discuss them with God, ask him for his wisdom and perspective on them, follow his directives, and leave the outcome in his hands?

 I am aware that I am just scratching the surface. What else does it mean to live by faith?

Romans 1

 1 Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus,
called to be an apostle
and set apart for the gospel of God—
Gospel, euangelion in Greek, means good news. It includes not just a call to initial saving faith, but Paul’s entire message about Jesus Christ, and how Christ’s saving activity transforms all of life and all of history.
Servant, Doulos, or bondservant.

2 the gospel he promised beforehand
 through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures
3 regarding his Son,
NIV The central figure of the gospel is Jesus, in and through whom the history and promises of the Old Testament are fulfilled.

 who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David,
4 and who through the Spirit of holiness
 was appointed the Son of God in power
 by his resurrection from the dead:
Jesus Christ our Lord.
NIV The resurrection was the authentication of Jesus’s divine nature, the climax of his earthly ministry, and the focal point of the apostolic proclamation.
5 Through him we received grace and apostleship
to call all the Gentiles to the obedience
 that comes from faith
 for his name’s sake.
 6 And you also are among those Gentiles
 who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.
 7 To all in Rome
who are loved by God and called to be his holy people:
   Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Grace, God’s unmerited favour. Peace, echoes the OT concept of shalom, where a person’s life with God and with everything else is in ordered harmony, both physically and spiritual, and “all is well.”

Grace and Peace is the initial greeting used by both Peter and Paul in their letters. It combines the traditional Greek and Hebrew greeting, but links them with the only true source of “grace,” (God’s unmerited favour, esp. that which comes to sinful humanity through the work of Christ on the cross) and “peace” (the total well-being and security that only God can provide. The greeting is echoes in the conclusion of Peter and Paul’s letters so that they stand framed in what amounts to an apostolic benediction on those to whom they are addressed. 
See blog on the greeting Grace and Peace.

ESV Notes–

This is the longest introduction of any of Paul’s letters.  Paul goes into more detail here because he had never been to Rome, and he wanted to summarize the Gospel for the Roman readers. 

Interestingly, many of the themes mentioned here also conclude the letter in the final doxology, Romans 16 25-27.
8 First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world. 
A pattern of prayer. First of all, thank God for the person.

God, whom I serve in my spirit in preaching the gospel of his Son, is my witness how constantly I remember you 10 in my prayers at all times; and I pray that now at last by God’s will the way may be opened for me to come to you.
Pre-evangelistic work. Pray for the person.


 11 I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong— 12 that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith. 
As the spirit transforms him, Paul becomes honestly loving and caring.


13 I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that I planned many times to come to you (but have been prevented from doing so until now) in order that I might have a harvest among you, just as I have had among the other Gentiles.

 14 I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. 15 That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are in Rome.
An obligation laid upon him by Jesus.

 16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.
The Gospel saves everyone who believes, saves them from the power of sin, and reconciles them to God.
Because of their lack of size, fame or honour in the Roman corridors of power and influence, Christians might be tempted to be ashamed. But Paul says it is nothing to be ashamed of, because it is a message that comes with the power of God.


 17 For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.” 

Through the Gospel, we are grafted into Jesus by faith. When the Father sees Jesus, he sees us, and vice-versa.
We only have this righteousness imputed to us by  our faith in Christ.

And Paul reveals a new way for the righteous to live–by faith.

What does it mean to live by faith?
Some thoughts.
How do we face our worries? Do we take them to God? 
How do we deal with our hopes and ambitions for our future? Do we prayerfully take them to God.

How do we deal with our hopes and ambitions for our children’s future? Do we prayerfully take them to God?
How do we do these things?
Fears.
Hopes.
Dreams
Ambitions
Plans


Do we discuss them with God, ask him for his wisdom and perspective on them, follow his directives, and leave the outcome in his hands?


What else does it mean to live by faith?

  

Deep Magic From Before the Dawn of Time

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       This is a longer essay I wrote several years ago, which I am posting in installments

  Part I The Magic Kingdom I–The Varieties of Magic
Part II The Magic Worlds of Art and Nature.    

 But the magic of nature pales before the deep magic from the dawn of time.
               I was first struck by its wonder in a train racing through the Indian countryside when I was about ten.  We’d left with our mother to visit her parents in Bombay with the usual flurry and battles about what to pack during which the cook left without carrying the suitcases to the car, and my father carried them.  “Look at the veins bulge on his forehead,” my mother said. “Oh, Pa’s heart; he will die before we reach Bombay.”  The premature death of my father, who was in his late forties when we were born, was an omnipresent specter.
               There were just two people whom I deeply loved then, my father, and an Irish nun at my Catholic boarding school, Sister Josephine, who had “adopted” me, and loved me tenderly, choosing poetry and classics for me to read, discussing literature and theology with me, forcing me to repeatedly recite my elocution pieces to her to master public speaking, and who once claimed with some hubris, “Whatever you are, I’ve made you.”  So I prayed frantically, fearfully, that my father would not die. 
               The astounding, magical premise of prayer then struck me for the first time: that I could sit in a train and think, and a good and mighty God would know exactly what I was thinking, and might give me something just because I asked him to.  I experimentally thought something.  God knew it.  I thought something else.  God knew that too.  And, at the same moment, he knew what the billion other people on the planet were thinking at that very moment.  All through the two day journey, I marveled at that: “You perceive my thoughts from afar.”  If the one who merely asked, received, well then, that was deep magic.  I believed it, I hardly dared believe it, I prayed desperately that my father would not die. (My father, incidentally, is now 87. )  
               “Give me a lever long enough, and I can move the world.”  As a child, that apothegm of Archimedes, like many adult sayings, felt nice-sounding but meaningless.  Actually, that lever, , is prayer.  Ironically, the first “mountain” I moved by prayer was also the largest.  Is “use it or lose it,” “risk or rust” the rule for the muscles of faith as for those of brain and body?
               Restless and bored after my abortive novitiate at Mother Teresa’s convent, soon after graduating from school at 16, I now decided to go to college overseas, and spent a few hours in the libraries of the British Council and the USIS, researching universities in America, England, and even Australia and Canada.  Before I wrote to request application material, however, one odd evening, I heard a quiet, clear voice within me say, “Apply to Oxford.”  I recognized the voice.  “Okay, Lord,” I said, somewhat stunned, “Oxford and Cambridge;” (my first cousin, now my husband, was then at Cambridge.)  “No, just Oxford,” the voice replied.
               Well!  Less than a percent of the far better prepared British population got into Oxford University, I discovered.  It  had two fee structures, modest for British citizens, and exorbitant for overseas students.  And even were I to get in, and find money, I still needed to get permission from the Reserve Bank of India to buy scarce foreign exchange from it, and this was hard to get, especially to study the Arts overseas.  I decided to study English Literature, and, eventually, become a writer.
               One can proceed with doubt and trembling despite a clear directive. But I did proceed–applied to Oxford, wrote my admission essays on Much Ado about Nothing and Marlowe’s Edward II and waited with hope and prayer and anxious impatience.  One heady evening, I opened a letter with an Oxford postmark to find that, incredibly, I had indeed “got in.”  But, as of then, without a scholarship.
               The tuition, a quarter of a million Indian rupees, could buy me an apartment in Bombay, India’s most expensive city, my grandmother, who lived there, repeated ruefully; “you are the kind of fool who goes to Oxford,” she added.  I had prayed before; I prayed desperately now (working out a schedule of prayer seven times a day, like the Psalmist; what’s good enough for him…).  Faith can make of life a fairy tale, but most of a fairy tale, remember, is agonizing; adversity upon adversity, you almost don’t want to continue reading.  But I did continue praying, and money did continue coming in: the Radhakrishnan scholarship for Indians to study anything at Oxford; an Eckersley Foundation grant for anyone to study English at Oxford; interest-free loans from relatives.  One day–after minor miracles–I declared, “I could trust God for ten thousand rupees, but I need a hundred thousand.”  If the fairy tale is God’s favorite genre, irony is a favorite literary device.  That day, along with the award letter, a scholarship check for ten thousand rupees arrived in the mail from an Indian foundation I’d applied to.  “I wish I’d said, ‘I could trust God for a hundred thousand rupees,’” I said mournfully.  Anyway, in drops or showers, all the money I needed came to me.  Even my thousand pound deposit which came due before I got my Reserve Bank permit to convert rupees to pounds was improbably paid by an uncle’s friend in America.  A relative who had impetuously resigned from the Reserve Bank of India in Bombay, went with me to his former subordinates to get the rare, coveted permit.  And the years at Oxford were a happy period of intense growth that, in many ways, made me a different person.         



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What is the Point of Prayer? Does Prayer Change Things? Matthew 20 29-34

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Jesus heals two blind men on the Jericho Road. (Bruce Marchiano in
Things happen, that would not have happened if we had not prayed. This is my firm conviction.
Would Jesus have stopped and healed the two blind man seated by the side of the roadside if they had not asked him to?
There are very few records of him spontaneously healing people who have not asked him to
                                                                            * * *
Each life has a story, a plot. Blindness was part of the plot of these men’s lives.
However, their persistent faith changed the plot and ushered them into a new destiny.
They asked Jesus for a new story. And he said,
“Yes.”
                                             * * *
What is the plot of your life? Its trajectory? Its givens?
 Are you happy with it? Would you like it to change?
Jesus can change it, if you ask him to.
He asks today, “What would you like me to do for you?”
What is your answer?
.Matthew 20 29-34
Two Blind Men Receive Sight
 29 As Jesus and his disciples were leaving Jericho, a large crowd followed him. 30 Two blind men were sitting by the roadside, and when they heard that Jesus was going by, they shouted, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us!”
A desperate faith.
 
 31 The crowd rebuked them and told them to be quiet, but they shouted all the louder, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us!”
They wanted what they wanted so badly that they were not going to snubbed into silence. 
 
 32 Jesus stopped and called them. “What do you want me to do for you?” he asked.
As he asks us. 
 
 33 “Lord,” they answered, “we want our sight.”
That is prayer. A simple statement of need.
 34 Jesus had compassion on them and touched their eyes. Immediately they received their sight and followed him.
God is a compassionate God

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Japan’s formal, ritual apology

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 Tepco Officials formally apologize for the nuclear accident at Fukushima Daichi.


Japan must be the most fascinating country in the world. It has these formal stylized rituals which are almost medieval. See the formal, ritualized apology of the Tepco officials for the nuclear disaster.


Of course, they were not responsible for a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami, though it is surprising that their nuclear contingency plans did not account for it. 
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My father, a Chartered Accountant, who worked at Tatas, India’s largest steel company, was responsible for bringing in the first computers to Tatas. His official designation was “Controller of Accounts, and Manager of Data Processing.” He frequently travelled to Japan and Pittsburg, as well as Europe. 


Japan’s mixture of refined aesthetics, practical ingenuity, discipline, and a society totally opaque to the foreigner fascinated him, and my chess-loving husband too, who bravely did his final year of school in Japan, in a Japanese medium school to improve his Go. (That’s another story!). 


I was fascinated by Japan, the politeness and decency of the people, and its sheer impenetrability and opacity to the foreigner. I felt I would never really understand these people, and what makes them tick.


But it is a wonderful honourable culture, isn’t it?
                                                                                  * * * 


Interestingly, if honour and saving face weren’t so important, I wonder if they would have been more forthcoming about the disaster.


I am troubled about their kamikaze exposure of their workers to what is potentially “lethal” doses of radiation according to Jazko’s testimony to Congress. They have officially reported 20 to the IAEA as having radiation contamination.


 I wonder what the US would have done? Would she have sent workers in knowing that they would be very likely to die. Or ? Evacuate the environs and declare it a wasteland? However, evacuating Tokyo, where a quarter of the country’s population live , 150 miles away from Fukushima is probably unthinkable for the economy. 


Every so often, in the lives of nations as in individual lives, we come to the limits of what human intelligence, ingenuity and discipline can accomplish. I wonder if we are seeing that in Fukushima.