Archives for October 2012

A Late October Stroll along the Chemin de la Corniche (Luxembourg), also known as Europe’s Loveliest Balcony

By Anita Mathias

Guest Post by Roy Mathias

We started at the bottom of the valley, in a area called Grund – known for its caves carved into the rock.

View of caves and buildings in the rock face

The front door is behind the shrubs!

View along a Grund alley, with St Michael’s church at the very top.

The Alzette river separates Grund from the center of Luxembourg.

View of Luxembourg from bridge over the Alzette

Another view of the Alzette later in the evening

The Alzette in the evening

Some views on the way up to the Chemin de la Corniche

The Chemin de la Corniche is acobbled promenade along the side of a cliff, great view up the hill, and down in the Alzette valley, and the opposite roof tops and viaduct.

Perhaps the best view of the day

Azlette valley, showing vegetable gardens, the river, brider, viaduct with a train, and a glimpse of the Casemate tunnels (top left)

Neumünster Abbey across the Alzette

View of casemate passages from the Chemin de la Corniche

A couple of views of nature on the way

A closer view of the viaduct

Birch bark and green leaves

A couple of view of St. Michael’s church spire

St. Michael’s Church

Inside the church there were several stained glass windows in the traditional colours, as well as this one more unusual one above the baptismal font.

Baptismal font stained glass window, St. Michael’s Church, Luxembourg.

A Raised bay window on the Rue Large (Luxembourg)

It was evening by the time we finished

Germany and Me: How Nations Change their National Character. At His Place, Saarland, Germany

By Anita Mathias

Community Without Walls

When I was a teenager in the seventies, the libraries of the two clubs we belonged to were flooded with World War II novels. I remember, at the age of 11, reading QB VII set in a German concentration camp, Mila 18 about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, The Angry Hills, and Exodus.

Gosh, they scarred me for life, becoming the stuff of nightmares. I watched a few Nazi films with my parents, but very few since; I find them too upsetting. I had a horror of the Nazis, and by extension (and ignorance) a fear of all Germans.

And it didn’t help that my boarding school, St. Mary’s Convent, Nainital was run by German I.B.M.V. missionary nuns. As a new girl, aged nine, I once walked in to make my confession when Sister Mary Joseph was making hers. I stood stunned for a minute. She made her confession, came out and beat me savagely with her umbrella. Sister Secunda told the girls that I brought “the bad spirit,” into the class, and wondered if I were demon-possessed, I was so naughty.

Of course, not all of them were mean. Sister Cecilia lived for music, and I hated singing. I disrupted so many choir practices by singing through my nose or crawling out of the room that she finally exempted me from attending them—the only girl so exempted. However, at the end of the year, when there was the long awaited “Choir Treat,” pastries, Indian sweets, and Hershey’s Kisses her niece sent her from America (which I privately mourned that I’d miss) she told me to come to. Without going to a single practice. Grace, grace, for those who repent at the 11^th hour!!

* * *

When I first came to England 28 years ago, I had a housemate who had done military service in the army, and was German in the stereotype of the World War II novels. But I noticed over the years, that the Germans I met were lovelier and lovelier. I think of my friends, Jan and Karoline Sassenberg—beautiful, lovely human beings. And I’ve met more and more sweet German Christians in Oxford, smiley, kind, mellow, and easy-going.

My first cousin, Margaret, dated a German man, Dirk Burghagen. He supposedly told her that the very best people in the whole world were Germans, and the very worst people in the whole world were Indians. In spite of that, they married each other!! Anyone who knows both nations can guess what Dirk meant. In many ways, the nations are diametrically opposed.

But nations change. The diametric opposite of an Indian is no longer a German, but probably the Swiss, antithetical in every respect. (And no, I am not going to get myself into trouble with either nation by spelling it out!)

* * *

After the Second World War, Jewish survivors and the nation of Israel had an unofficial motto, “Never Again.” Israelis no longer had time for Yiddishkeit, a gentleness, unworldliness, scholarliness, and sense of humour. Israelis call themselves Sabras, after the prickly pear–thorny, prickly, tough on the outside and (supposedly) sweet on the inside.

Well, the Germans have their own version of “Never Again,” their own collective shame and guilt. The vast majority are deeply ashamed of the sins of their fathers and grandfathers, ashamed of the Nazis, and are warm, hearty, decent people, law-abiding, hard-working, and disciplined.

And, ironically, the nation which destroyed Europe twice in the last century is keeping the European Union together, contributing a disproportionate amount to the European Union’s budget!!

Ah, hope! If nations can change their self-definition and national character, how much more can individuals!

* * *

We are visiting His Place, a lovely guesthouse run by the Community Without Walls, Saarland, Germany.

It was founded by Wayne and Irene Negini, who felt a call to carry on the reformation Martin Luther began in Germany, restoring the emphasis on the grace of God.

The Negrinis began to take people into their home in the tiny, rural village of Wehingen, Saarland and care for them physically, spiritually and psychologically. More and more people moved there with their families, and they gradually formed a Christian community, friendships growing into lifelong covenant relationships.

His Place, the community-run guest-house, is quite a unique experience. The Pastor lights the fire. The worship leader takes your orders. The worship team serves the food.

The Guesthouse is German. Well, it’s what I expected a German guesthouse to be–beautiful, detail-oriented, sweet-smelling, efficient, hearty and welcoming. Love it here!

And the food is a delight. Pea soup with coconut milk cream; stir-fried chicken, sweet potatoes and veg; and an almond cake for dessert. Heavily fruit and veg based, no sugar, hardly any carbs.

Physical health is too little emphasized by the Western church, but now that I have started to restoring my health through running, reducing sugar and carbs, and increasing fruit and vegetables, I am so enjoying the increased vitality, and energy. I have increased my writing hours by 50% with the increased energy, concentration and focus that feeling and being stronger, and sleeping better is giving me.

* * *

We attended the morning service at the church. I enjoyed the worship SO much. The fact that the worship was in German, which I barely know, helped me to switch off my analytical linguistic mind, and just enter the presence of God. Interesting worship—some familiar English language songs translated into German, some original German language worship songs, and some sung in English. Wow, Europeans are SO linguistic!!

The founders of the community, Wayne and Irene Negrini are currently on a cruise, and the ship is stalled because of turbulent weather somewhere in the Mediterranean. Well, perhaps it’s just how it was translated, but we, the church community, stood up, extended our hands and commanded the Mediterranean to be calm.

“Roy, are we commanding the Mediterranean to be calm?” I whispered, half-amused, half-impressed. Indeed, we were! I stood up, extended my arm dramatically with the rest, and had great fun commanding the wind and the waves. “Greater things than these shall you do, because I go to my Father.”

And now to check the weather report!

“The Past is Never Dead. It’s Not Even Past.” When Painful Memories from the Past Intrude

By Anita Mathias

“The past is never dead. In fact, it’s not even past,” Faulkner famously writes in Requiem for a Nun.

Throughout my thirties, I read memoirs, hundreds of them. And many of them, not surprisingly, deal with hardscrabble childhoods.

Tobias Wolff writes of his barely educated, itinerant childhood with a single mother, and an abusive stepfather in This Boy’s Life. In An Angel at my Table, New Zealand writer, Janet Frame describes extreme poverty, and extreme shyness, which got her incarcerated in a mental hospital in Dunedin (to be released when her first novel, written there, won a prize).

V.S. Pritchett writes of a childhood with a fantasizing, self-indulgent father, and a subservient mother, “a marriage of rich and poor.” Always evicted, always moving–hence his memoir A Cab at the Door. (It turns out later that his father had a secret second family; his half-sister wrote her own memoir). And in the most elegant memoir every written, Vladimir Nabokov describes his charmed Russian childhood which was shattered by the Revolution in Speak Memory. The Liar’s Club, Angela’s Ashes, the list goes on.

Ah, how pointless many of these long, barren, unnourishing patches must have seemed to the memoirists, and to us, reading them. Such waste. Full many a flower is born to blush unseen/And waste its sweetness on the desert air, as Thomas Gray wrote, in An Elegy in a Country Churchyard.

But the past was not really past, not dead, not wasted. It gave those memoirists a story, a career; it made them who they were. Tougher, more resilient, more realistic, well-acquainted with the shadow side of human beings, and with more of a preserving sense of humour than if they had spent pampered childhoods in a hothouse.

* * *

The past, which seemed senseless, meaningless, oh, one big screaming “Why,” revealed its meaning in the future.

The past is never dead, never past, as Faulkner says. What seems dead and inert can come to life in surprising ways. A 2000 year old Judean date palm seed, recovered from excavations at Herod the Great’s Palace in Masada, Israel was germinated in 2005. A 1,300-year-old sacred lotus recovered from a dry lakebed in northeastern China was geminated in 1995.

And so, in fact, the years and opportunities in our past which seem squandered through our folly, through sins against us, though our fault, our fault, our most grievous fault, are in fact just inert seed-corn, which germinate and sprout in our present, giving us maturity, experience, a sense of humour, and gifts of perspective and wisdom to share.

* * *

So what do we do when painful episodes from the past bubble up in memory?

We remember that we were not alone when we went through those events; Christ was with us. He stood behind us in those incomprehensible moments, his arms around us, protecting our hearts and spirits from worse harm.

And though we were puzzled, scalded, heartbroken, angry beyond words, we were still, in a way, preserved. We were “hard pressed, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Cor. 4:8).

And we take the painful memories of the past very carefully—knowing that God was with us through them, and can and will work them together for good–and place them in God’s big strong hands, and close his fingers over them. And there we leave them.

And we pray.

We pray that as God’s powerful nurturing hands work with the pain of the past, he will bring beauty from the ashes.

We pray that the same power which raised Jesus from the dead, and can do immeasurably more than all we can ask or dream of asking will take those painful years of strife, of depression, of wasted talent and squandered opportunity, the years of sin and the years of sorrow, mix them, and shape them, and make of them a new thing,

such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium

Off to “His Place,” a Christian Retreat Centre in Saarland, Germany. “He Restores my Soul”

By Anita Mathias

We are on our way to Germany to stay at His Place, a guesthouse, owned by a Christian community, Community Without Walls, where Rolland Baker was healed from dementia, and Carol Arnott was healed and taught the ten minute worship revolution which has helped me a lot on the days I remember to use it.

We are hoping to explore a bit of Germany, and Luxembourg and France, for Saarland is nestled between them, but also rest, and pray and walk.

I have had an amazing half-term. (For non-Brits, English schools have three 12 week terms, with a precious half-term week off between each 6 week half term, and 3 weeks off for Christmas and Easter, and 7 weeks in the summer. It’s a less gruelling model than the American system).

The British school system suits my own rhythms. I like to read and write for six weeks with increasing focus and intensity, and then have a week of mainly travel and exploration, or pure rest at a retreat centre, and catching up on sleep. And then return, as good as new.

After a wonderful talk on writing, and prayer for the anointing of writing by Mark Stibbe, I wrote at full heat for several weeks. I am now tired. I guess in any spirit-empowered thing one needs to keep one’s eyes on Jesus, or you can sink like Peter, once you stop relying on God’s power, and instead start doing things on auto-pilot.

I am often astonished by the extent I run on adrenalin—you know, got-to-write, got-to-blog, got-to-run, got-to-pray. As we leave on holiday, in our motorhome, I lie down on a bed, and am fast asleep until we reach Dover. Wow, had I really been that tired, just running on green tea, excitement and enthusiasm? As it drains out, I realize how tired I actually was.

I’ve read that when one goes to an unscheduled retreat, the first thing one wants to do is to sleep for long hours. We work—or play!!—for unnatural hours, long into darkness; we wake with an alarm, before we have slept out all our sleep. We live with a constant sleep lag, mild sleep deprivation in some cases. Oooh, why do we do this to ourselves?

According to His Place’s literature Natural silence, majestic views, natural forest gardens and fields, valleys and canyons, rocks and rippling steams can all be found here. Hiking is always fun – at least in Saarland! Germany’s best hiking trails can be found here. Saarland, nestled in between France and Luxembourg, was tailor-made for hikers. It offers both excellent cuisine and a diverse landscape.

The premium hiking trails are circular routes that have been carefully chosen to include the most beautiful landscapes in Saarland.

And yeah, I am looking forward to exploring them!

Here is the link to His Place–http://www.hisplace.eu/hisplace_en.html

Stephen King’s Immensely Helpful Book “On Writing”

By Anita Mathias

Stephen King (2007) credit

King’s short book, On Writing, figures in many writers’ lists of the best books on writing. And deservedly so. It has motivated me to get my writing shoes on, and get writing.

I listened to it read by King himself on my iPod, while running—on pedestrian country footpaths, and, so far, with more luck than King whose lower leg broke in nine places, spine chipped in eight places, right knee split, right hip fractured, ribs broke, and scalp lacerated during a dreadful car accident while on a muse-wooing walk.

And in “the apocalyptic pain” after this, he continued writing, and writing proved a way back to life for him.

Here are Stephen King’s answers to universal writerly questions.

How much should a writer read?

King does not bother about being cool in this book on writing. So he will tell you prescriptive things that cool writers wouldn’t.

Read a lot. How much is a lot? I have kept lists of the books I’ve read each year since I was 12—and the most I’ve ever completed in a year was 62 (not counting academic books, which one reads rapidly, selectively). And probably another 25 or so on tape, on a good year for audiobooks. Of course, I am a promiscuous speed-reader, and buy many books (non-fiction or spiritual) with the intention of ripping the heart and marrow out of them, rather than reading every page.

Well, Stephen King reads or listens to 70-80 books a year, including about a dozen audiobooks.

King: “If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write. It’s as simple as that.”

“Reading is the creative centre of a writer’s life.”

“The real importance of reading is that it creates an ease and intimacy with the process of writing. Constant reading will pull you into a place where you can write eagerly and without self-consciousness.”

How much should a writer write?

How many words a day? Another uncool question. Well, King aims at 2000 words every morning, with revisions and reading in the evening. Some days he’s done by 11.30 a.m., some days by 1.30 p.m., and sometimes, rarely, it takes till tea.

“For me, not writing is the real work. When I’m writing, it’s all the playground, and the worst three hours I ever spent there were still pretty damned good.”

He keeps fit with long walks–well, until recently.

On Criticism

His teacher asks him about an early attempt at Sci-fi, “What I don’t understand, Stevie, is why you’d write junk like this? You are talented. Why do you want to waste your abilities?

“I had no answer to give. I have spent a good many years since—too many—being ashamed about what I write. I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his God-given talent. If you write (or paint or sculpt) someone will try to make you feel lousy about it.”

On Revision

“When you write, you’re telling yourself the story. When you re-write, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.”

“Stopping a piece of work just because it is hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes, you have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you’re doing good work when it feel like all you’re managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.”

He does three drafts, the first getting it all down fast; the last one closer to polishing.

He uses this rigorous and enormously difficult formula:

Second Draft= First Draft -10%.

Other Writing Tips

“The biggest aid to regular writing is working in a serene atmosphere. It’s difficult for even the most naturally productive writer to work in an environment where alarms and excursions are the rule rather than the exception.”

Write with a locked door, no TV, games or internet. “Eliminate every possible distraction.”

Secrets of his success: “I stayed physically healthy, and I stayed married. The converse is true: My writing and the pleasure I take in it have contributed to the stability of my health and home life.”

“Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.”

“Skills in description, dialogue and character development all boil down to seeing or hearing clearly and then transcribing what you see or hear with equal clarity.”

Do you do it for the money, honey? he’s often asked. Answer, “No. Don’t now, and never did. I did it for the buzz. I did it for the pure joy of the thing. And if you can do it for joy, you can do it forever.”

And he discovers, after his debilitating accident, “Writing is not life, but sometimes, it can be a way back to life.”

Ah, and let me quote his beautiful last paragraphs,

“On some days, the writing is a pretty grim slog. On others, I feel that buzz of happiness, that sense of having found the right words and put them in a line. It’s like lifting off in an airplane: you are on the ground, on the ground, on the ground… and then you’re up, riding on a magical cushion and prince of all you survey. That makes me happy because it’s what I was made to do.

“After my accident, writing has continued to do what it has always doe: it makes my life a brighter and more pleasant place.”

“Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting laid or making friends. It’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over.”

“Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.”

“This book is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you are brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink.”

Drink and be filled up.”

“Five Years have Passed!” : When a Retrospective Glance Consoles

By Anita Mathias

Five years have past; five summers, with the length

Of five long winters!

Wordsworth writes, as he revisits Tintern Abbey, musing on how he has matured over the last five years.

For nature then

To me was all in all.

But now, he sees something else in it. Dare he say it—God?

And I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man….

* * *

Five years have passed. Looking back to who we were five years ago, if we are Christians, should bring comfort. We should have grown, matured and deepened over the last five years of walking with Jesus because of the working of his mercy and grace on our souls.

About 14 years ago, I was telling my mentor, Lolly Dunlap, that I was frustrated about my marriage which was mediocre then, rather than excellent (and oh, how I hate mediocrity!!) and my temper, which I then hadn’t learnt to control. (But now I have, I am glad to report!!) And my mothering was distracted, and my housekeeping haphazard, and as for exercise…

“Think about 5 years ago,” she said. “Have you improved in any way over the last 5 years?”

I thought. I brightened. I began to tell her how amazing I was in 2001, compared to what I had been in 1996. I was actually showing off about the progress over which I had been so despondent a few minutes earlier.

So if you’ve been a Christian 5 years, think back to what you were 5 years ago, and thank God for how far you’ve come under his loving eyes, with the action of his grace in your soul.

I am not what I ought to be.

I am not what I wish to be.

I am not even what I hope to be.

But by the cross of Christ,

I am not what I was.

~John Newton

Murakami’s “What I Talk about When I Talk about Running”: The Connection between the Creative Life and Exercise

By Anita Mathias

murakami Available on Amazon.com

I am thoroughly enjoying listening to Haruki Murakami’s “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running,” as I am trying to learn to run (using the NHS Couch to 5K app.)

When Murakami began to write full-time, he gained weight. “If I wanted to have a long life as a novelist, I needed to find a way to keep fit and maintain a healthy weight.” He is an introvert, so running suited him.

As he runs, he changes physically–losing all his extra weight, and developing muscle. “Now, after years of running, my musculature has changed completely.)

And he finds the hour or two of solitude as he runs important to his mental well-being. The endorphins and “runner’s high” “heal the loneliness,” of his solitary novel-writing. ‘This is not so much an intentional act, but an instinctive” solution, he says.

If he feels frustrated, he goes running a little further, “to physically exhaust” his discontent. The experience leaves him physically stronger, and he thus “improves himself.”

And as his muscles “groan and scream,” his “comprehension meter shoots upwards, and he grasps things.”

He writes, “Having a body that easily puts on weight was perhaps a blessing in disguise. If I don’t want to gain weight, I have to work out hard every day, watch what I eat, and cut down on indulgences. Eventually, your metabolism will greatly improve, and you’ll end up much healthier, not mention stronger. You can even slow down the effects of aging. Whereas the physical strength of people who naturally keep the weight off deteriorates as they age. If you don’t exercise, your muscles will weaken, as will your bones. So this physical nuisance should be viewed as a blessing.”

He says the most important things for a novelist are talent, focus and endurance—the same traits a long distance runner needs. Running helps him write, and vice-versa. Each of his passions gives him the traits he needed for the other.

* * *

Anyway, I have loved listening to him as I am trying to learn to run, which, sadly, has not been easy.

But, in running, I have found a form of exercise I enjoy and I really look forward to my every second day short run!

The Things My Father Said (From my Memoir: Up to the Hills)

By Anita Mathias

(This is Part IV from a memoir of my Father, Noel Mathias. Parts I to III are:

Shake and Shake the Ketchup Bottle

We were never certain if the stories my father told us were truth or invention.

He claimed he responded to an advertisement in The Illustrated Weekly of India: “All mosquitoes eliminated from your house and garden in a day. Guaranteed to work, or your money back.” He sent in his ten rupees and waited. He received two small rocks. Take the mosquito, read the instructions, place it on the lower stone. Cover with the other stone. Crush mosquito.

Another story: A country bumpkin arrives in Bombay, craning his neck at the skyscrapers. A city slicker marches up, “It’s my building. You have to pay me a rupee for every storey you look at?” The bumpkin hands over fifteen rupees, then conspiratorially confesses to the bystanders. “I gave him fifteen rupees, but actually–I looked at the whole building.”

Yeah, his humour leaned towards the verbal though silly. A man leaves his wife. As he crosses the threshold, she wails, “You said you wouldn’t leave, and you’ve left.” He, “I promised to cleave, and I’ve cleft.”

* * *

“Was that really Professor Mathias?” one of his students asked, observing him joke with us on a train. “I have never seen him smile.” “You can only talk to him soberly on sober subjects,” my cousin Dorothy lamented. However,

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