Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

Archives for 2012

An Autobiography in Blog Posts: IV. Oxford Redux.

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A picture of our house from the back garden



And here’s the last installment

So we left to England, ostensibly for 9 months, but I had plans and schemes and dreams… and hoped never to live in America again. We were all excited, including the girls who loved and laughed and wept and thrilled and chilled over Harry Potter.
We went to Manchester in 2004, where Roy was a distinguished visiting fellow at the University of Manchester for a year. It was a lovely interlude. We arrived with 8 suitcases, and so housekeeping was easy. Then Roy visited America, and returned with 2 suitcases–housekeeping a little harder–and then, the shipment he’d sent arrived. Never again got on top of things. Lesson: Declutter, declutter, declutter—and housework is easy. I still have weekly decluttering sessions—as I have been doing for the last four years!!
We lived in Didsbury, Manchester, and found a good welcoming church, Ivy Manchester, and a good school, Didsbury C of E: an oasis of a year, friendly, open people, and lots of reading and writing.
And then Roy got another dream fellowship—an inter-disciplinary fellowship from the US National Science Foundation, to study a new discipline, anywhere he liked.
And well (of course) we picked Oxford—the Mathematical Institute at Oxford University, where he studied Mathematical Biology.
And then he was offered a chair, a Professorship of Applied Mathematics at the University of Birmingham in 2006.
And I flatly refused to move to Birmingham.
I had found a dream house where we still live, in Oxford, which I love. “Have no interest in Birmingham, won’t live there,” I said, dreading another 12 years in a place in which I’d rather not live. So, Roy sadly shrugged and agreed to commute.
                                                                 * * *
And so I buy the dream house, though, after using the proceeds from our house in America as a down payment, the mortgage was six times Roy’s then salary. And we put both girls in an expensive all girls’ private school, Oxford High school.
And so I guess for the first time in my life, I needed to work to finance this expensive life-style we had committed ourselves too.
So, were these two financial decisions, the too expensive house and the too expensive school errors?
Lol! I don’t know if I would recommend them to anyone else. But as Roy will tell you with great sorrow, I can be a bit of a holy fool where money is concerned. You see, I truly believe that God owns the cattle on a thousand hills, that he is a loving father, that he will release money for the home which is just right for a family; the school which is just right for children. (Yeah, maybe you shouldn’t turn to me to me for financial advice. Or, perhaps you should!)
* * *
I am convinced that God has a sense of humour. He always has the last laugh.
In Williamsburg, where I was bored and lacking stimulation and full of self-pity, I was able to read and write (albeit not very much since I was depressed). In Oxford, one of the most literary cities in the world, for the first 3.5 years in business, I was not able to read or write, because I was consumed by business. Yeah, have done more reading and literary writing in Williamsburg, Virginia, than in literary Oxford, England, irony of ironies.
(Come on, Lord, this is not humour. This is irony! What are you trying to teach me? To rely on you alone for the fulfilment of my dreams?  And well, if heartbreak be the pencil to teach me that, then heartbreak is worth it. )
 I did however join Writers in Oxford, a social organization founded by Philip Pullman, yeah, 140 writers, and went to fortnightly drinks parties and social events, including one he hosted. Met several interesting, stimulating writers. Going there reminded me that I wanted to be a writer—ontologically wasa writer–and sometimes made me cry that I was not writing.
Ironically this September, I decided to focus on my blogging and writing, and so each evening became precious, and I dropped out. “Mum, why have you dropped out of Writers in Oxford now that you’ve become a real writer?” Zoe asks. Yeah, one can never get conceited in this family!!
    * * *
I didn’t think I could raise the kind of money I needed in a salaried job, and since I needed serious money, I decided to start a business. We are natural entrepreneurs, and have always been toying with ideas for businesses. I thought having a bookshop would be so cool, so I founded an online one, selling antiquarian books.
Well, the romance of books never died for me, even over that exhausting 14 months, though my hands quite literally gave out with all that typing, pricing and repricing.
Eventually we transitioned from working hard to working smart. I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad (which stresses the importance of creating assets which keep giving, rather than working for a salary, which gets spent up and needs to be re-earned). And The Lazy Man’s Guide to Riches which stresses that the way to work smart in business is to leverage your time, your money, your talents, or your products (create books or iPads which sell millions of times over through third parties, rather than sell thousands of Apple’s iPads…)
So I decided to found a publishing company and publish the best of the antiquarian books I was selling. Okay, founding business #2, while running business #1=exhaustion. I would talkabout my life, and cry, like a silly weepy woman, which I then was.
My predominant thought in the maelstrom of the complexities of publishing was, “I just want life to be easier” though I knew it should be “I just want Jesus.” That was the greatest period of stress I’ve ever known–financial stress, work stress, and health stress, since my immune system unhelpfully buckled, and I developed a stress-related illness, now cured. It’s given me a great understanding and sympathy for other people in financial stress.
* * *
Yes, yes, it’s getting high time for this dire tale to have a fairy tale ending, and thankfully it does. 15 months into publishing, we got our break with an author which did well, and we paid off our business loan, and were well into profit.
We thought we would stop publishing and go back to Math and writing, but in early 2009, a hugely popular BBC serial, The Victorian Farm kept mentioning a poetic, long out of print Victorian Farming manual called The Book of the Farm. I read that every second-hand copy available was snapped up even as the credits rolled on the first evening.
Roy said, “Let’s publish it.” I said, “But we have retired from publishing. We are going to be a writer and a mathematician again. Remember?” Roy who, like me, is an entrepreneur at heart, said, “Let’s publish it!” And so we did.
Magical days! I had been praying for a conservatory since October. We were quoted £21,000 for a classy one. Didn’t have a penny extra, but still prayed faithfully. We published this three volume book in mid-Jan, sold hundreds, then thousands of copies, and signed a contract for that 30 square metre, sunny, four season longed-for conservatory in February. It is my favourite room, my proof that miracles do happen.

Irene’s (in red) 12th birthday party in our conservatory


It’s flower-filled here after my birthday party!

The business grew rapidly!! “It’s like being on a fast-moving train,” a friend who worked with us said. We got a group of 12 friends from church and Oxford to work with us, some full, some part time. And in July 2010, Roy at last retired from mathematics–obsessive, consuming work so incompatible with family life (so much like, err… err… serious writing!) and decided to run the company, and the home, and the children, and well, me, if he could! And I gradually stopped working in the business.
                                                      * * *
Taking up writing again was not easy. I had got out of the habit, had forgotten what was in my book.
I had “churts,” church-related hurts at church, which talking to other friends who’ve left (okay, not a reliable control group) was indeed toxic for them too. I had led three Bible studies there, and while leading one fell out my co-leader and the Rector’s wife, and was unfairly and sadistically untreated. The sadness and anger caused a kind of creative paralysis, and so, unable to start writing again, I mechanically went on working in the business and making money, past the point at which we needed it to pay bills.
The sadness of not using that one talent which is death to hide was affecting my health. My wonderful GP referred me to an NHS therapist who thought she could break the writers’ block in 5 sessions. In fact, it took 4.
I realized that the unforgiveness over the way I was unjustly and cruelly treated was creating a block in my creativity and my spiritual life and my happiness, I went through the hard work of forgiving and asking blessing on those who harmed me.  And the streams of creativity began flowing again
* * *
On a walk on a beach in Royan, France, I felt God calling me to blog, and I have always felt God’s blessing on it, though I don’t know what he is going to do with it.
And, not fully aware of how many people in that church were following my blog through our facebook friendships, I wrote a series of satires on church leaders who are ambitious, cynical, manipulative, ego-driven, neurotic, insecure, concerned with growth over shepherding. It was called “The Screwtape Lectures,” and Screwtape advises his acolytes to do the very things I had observed.
“You are saying we run the church as the Devil would advise?” the priest asked me in shock. Well, actually, Screwtape was (and satire needs exaggeration to work). I am told not to blog about the church if I want to stay, even in the form of allegory!!
And so three years after I should have made that decision, I decide to leave.  A vicar I know through blogging wrote to me, “à la Elijah, ‘You’re likely to starve there. Time to move on to somewhere safe.’
I moved to a normal healthy church, St. Andrew’s, Oxford .
I found a lovely supportive group of kind, intelligent, educated,  successful women, a group I am now co-leading. I felt happy in both this group and our couples’ group. And desperately wished I had left that unhappy toxic church three years earlier. Though I do believe in the value of desert experiences, and being in the wrong place at the right time.
Who is this who comes out of the desert leaning on her beloved? (Song of Songs 8:5).  My desert experience in that chaotic, badly run Charismatic church deepened my relationship with Christ. I spent more time with him in the anonymous quietness of the desert, and got to know him and hear his voice far more clearly.
Challenges ahead: Creatively, to learn to combine blogging and literary writing. Physically: by exercise and healthy eating to recover the physical health which has been compromised over several sedentary, stressful years. Emotionally and spiritually, I am happy after several turbulent years, and for that I am grateful!!

Incredible, Edible Todmorden: The Yorkshire Town in which you can pick your five a day on your walks (A Guest Post by Joanna Dobson)

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Incredible Edible Todmorden

The first time I arrived in the west Yorkshire town of Todmorden, I saw something rather remarkable on the station platform. Planters full of herbs. And, sticking out of the compost, a little sign saying ‘help yourself’.


The idea is that commuters on their way home from work can pick just what they need to finish off a delicious meal. The sign also suggests that if you are just hanging around waiting for a train, you could perhaps do a spot of weeding.
Those planters are still there today, and if you take a walk round the town in the growing season, you will see more and more evidence of this innovative approach to growing. There are runner beans in the cemetery, tomatoes along the canal path and broccoli stems at the bus stop. You can pick your five a day from the fruit trees outside the health centre, or pop round the back to find some more herbs in the apothecary’s garden.
Even the local bobbies are in on the act. The raised beds outside the police station boast some splendid sweetcorn, along with many other fine crops. And no, they won’t arrest you if you take some; they’d actually rather like it if you did.

Planters with sweet corn and other vegetables outside the police station in  Todmorden.

This simple but radical action of growing food in public places for everyone to share is transforming Todmorden. It began when two local women, Mary Clear and Pam Warhurst, became convinced that a food crisis was looming – one that would directly affect their children and grandchildren.
They were determined to take action but suspected words like ‘peak oil’ and ‘transition’ would make people switch off rather than get involved. On the other hand, everyone is interested in food. Food could be the catalyst that got people thinking about what they could grow and what that meant for their whole environment.
So Mary did something drastic. She knocked down the wall that separated her garden from the street. The garden was full of roses, a passion of hers, but, as she likes to point out, ‘you can’t make jam from roses’. So she dug up the flowers and her husband Fred built some raised beds instead. They planted salads and herbs, fruit trees and vegetables.  And they put up a sign saying ‘Help Yourself’.
That got people talking. Mysteriously, more and more vegetables began to spring up around the town. Propaganda planting was taking off. 
Eventually, a public meeting was held and the volunteer movement that is Incredible Edible Todmorden  was born. Now every primary school in the town is growing some kind of food, and the secondary school not only has a vast polytunnel overflowing with organic veg for the school dinners, it’s even building a fish farm with a grant from the lottery. 
There are cookery courses for everyone, a campaign to make ‘every egg a local egg’, and another to encourage more beekeeping. Farmers are reporting an increase in sales and have been inspired to create new products such as cheeses, and sausages from rare breed pork. Recently, volunteers transformed a large piece of donated land into a centre to train people in the skills of sustainable food production. There are also plans for an edible ‘green route’ through the town.
Of course I only ever go to Todmorden as a visitor and cannot know the inevitable tensions and difficulties that arise when a change of this nature is underway. But the evidence that this is working is everywhere, from the children who no longer think carrots come in plastic trays to the social housing tenants who are opening their homes to be used for cookery classes.
Incredible Edible Todmorden emphatically does not fly under any religious banner. However, as a Christian, I find it challenges my faith. I see the transformation that began when someone was prepared to give up their rights to their own garden produce for the good of the whole town and I ask myself whether I would have the courage to do the same. I fear the answer is no, despite the fact that the Bible is bursting with instances of God urging his people to be generous with what they have, and especially their land.
I also think that IET’s attitude to growing is prophetic – and by that I mean that it’s a clear demonstration of a right approach to stewarding land (which is not the same as saying that they have all the answers). Many of us Christians have been very slow to grasp the urgency of the environmental crisis that faces the world, let alone take any action. In Todmorden I see a group of people who are not prepared to sit back and let things go from bad to worse, leaving their grandchildren to cope with the consequences.
What should this say to those of us who claim to worship the One who created the environment in the first place? 

*******

Joanna Dobson

Joanna Dobson is a mature student, writer-in training and mother of three who lives with her husband Julian in the wonderful city of Sheffield. Aside from books and her family, she loves walking, knitting and growing things and is always looking for ways to live more sustainably. She blogs at http://joannadobson.wordpress.com/

I will restore to you the years the locusts have eaten (Joel 2:25): A Guest Post by Penelope Swithinbank

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I can remember how it felt – that walking across the Square, arms stretched long with shopping bags.
I can remember how it felt  – that looking at our church, heart stretched hard and cold with unbelief.
I can remember: before coming to that church the years of losing everything – the business I had started, homes and cars and income, all lost; the worldly stuff I had held so dearly, gone.  Taken by God, vindictively it seemed. 


But then came this church.  Its large draughty  Victorian Rectory. My life turned upside down and not in the way I wanted. For I had enjoyed my status: 20th century vicar’s wives did not usually head up their own nationwide company. Gone. All gone.

I was tired, so tired of it all.
                                                           * * * 
But then I remember: that clergy wives’ conference, days after crossing the Square. The reluctant going, the fear of being thought an abject failure, the hesitancy in case someone uncovered my unbelief. A speaker – who was she? And what did she have to say? Lost in time. But then, oh then, another speaker, who spoke creatively, humourously, and who then asked us to stand so the Lord could minister to us.
STAND? My hesitation – what was this about? My desire to melt away and not be part of this. And then finding myself standing, pulled by the Unseen Presence. His Light, flooding the room. His Warmth enveloping me in ways I could not comprehend. His Voice, unheard, speaking into my poor stretched heart: I am here, I am true, I am your strength.  I AM.
Their prayers for me, surrounding me. My tears falling.  Shaking with the overwhelming sense of His being with me. One stood back, pondered, allowed Him to speak through her voice. 
“I wonder,” she said, “if this verse might be for you? Somewhere in the Old Testament I think. Words from the Lord.  I will restore to you the years the locusts have eaten.”
They prayed some more. He took those words deep into that cold stretched heart. He promised restoration, things that would replace what was lost, devoured and devastated. A swarm of things new and above what was lost.
So I clung to that verse over the years that were to come. Years with ups and downs, but years of fruitful ministry just as He had promised. A book was published, an international speaking gift confirmed, a ministry ordained. The years lost through unbelief were more than made up for. Always I remembered that verse. He had restored the years the locusts had eaten – and more.
                                                                  * * * 
And then.
Seventeen months ago, my mother died. Swept away. One moment she was there, a feisty ninety-year-young who cared ceaselessly for others, drove old ladies to church, talked non-stop on the phone to her friends and family whenever she could.  Prayed for us all, every day.
And the next she was gone, swept away under the wheels of an out-of-control car.
And I stood there, frozen, helpless. Stunned from having been hit by the same car just a few moments before. Deafened by the shouts and screams and sirens. Deafened by the silent scream inside. And my tears turned to ice and my scream frozen deep within.
She was gone.
I stood at her feet and I tried to pray for her, aloud.  Tried to thank God for all she was and had been to me and others; tried to ask Him to take her to Himself; committed her to the One who loved her the best. And the paramedic had tears in her eyes.  “I’ve never heard anyone pray out loud before,” she said.  “Would you like her teeth? And her watch?”
I took the watch and turned to thank the paramedics and the police and the passersby.  People were so kind; so very kind.
But I was frozen.
For seventeen month now, I have been frozen. Unable to work or to play, to read or to write. Lost, barren, devoured by locusts.
But now. A slow greening of tiny shoots again.
A decision to be grateful in the brokenness.*
A monthly Happiness Project.+
And confirmation from He whom my soul loves, that what has yet again been devoured by locusts will be restored to me. 
The verse remembered.
That decision to have a monthly project – for March, to write again.
He promised.  And there was the verse, my verse: on Anita’s tweet. Her invitation on February 29 to write a guest blog.  And on March 1st an offer of a freelance writing project – very small but it’s writing and it’s paid! Unsought, it brought with it His Voice of Promise: I will restore to you the years the locusts have eaten.
Confirmation that my ministry years are not over, as I had feared.

He who has promised is faithful and He will do it. Again and again, whenever it is needed:
“I will restore to you the years the locusts have eaten.” Joel 2:25
*  One Thousand Gifts. Ann Voskamp. Zondervan
+ A Happiness Project. Gretchen Rubin. Harper
*******
Penelope Swithinbank

The Revd Penelope Swithinbank is a widely recognized international conference speaker, both for Alpha and for retreats and pilgrimages.   Author of “Women By Design,” she has been involved in ministry for over 30 years, as pastor’s wife, volunteer, and now as a member of the ordained Anglican clergy.  As a young mother she started her own business, “Bumpsadaisy” which she developed into a successful national franchise across the UK, hiring out designer maternity wear.  Later, whilst working virtually full time as a volunteer in the church, she ran a flourishing Bed & Breakfast business to help pay the bills! She has three children and six grandchildren. 


Penelope  and her husband lived in the USA for six years.  Whilst there, Penelope was firstly Director of C2 Ministries (Community & Connections) at The Falls Church in northern Virginia, and then Interim Rector of The Church of Our Saviour, Johns Island in South Carolina. Now based in London, she runs “Ministries by Design” and leads Retreats and Pilgrimages regularly, and is an Ignatian Spiritual Director, and mentor to younger women clergy.


Penelope has a Master of Theology from St Andrews University Scotland, and degrees in both Education and Pastoral Theology from Cambridge University, England. Find full details on the website or follow her on twitter:


www.ministriesbydesign.org
@minstriesbydsgn

When Cambridge Poets jam the Photocopier with Poetry: A Guest Post by Malcolm Guite

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We’re Jammin…’ : a Confession! 

It’s an honour and a pleasure to be invited by Anita to post a ‘guest blog’ here. I’d like to share with you, if I may, some reflections on the ‘genesis’ of a new poem, its first seeds and beginnings, and then flowing from that some thoughts on what it is that a poem, any poem, might be trying to achieve. It’s a story that starts with a confession and takes you on a journey from the apparently ordinary world of an office photocopier, back to a moment of vision in front of a burning bush, a chance to see things anew.

So, first the confession: I am sorry to say that I am responsible for having broken a college photocopier! It happened like this. I was giving a talk about poetry, in particular about how poetry can cleanse and renew our vision, help us see the familiar in a new way, kindle again the hidden light that God put in the hear of all things, and deep in our own hearts, the ‘light that lightens everyone who comes into the world’. Well that was the plan.

As always I was in a hurry and had forgotten to photocopy the poems in advance. Just minutes before the lecture I rushed into the admin office, hoping the kind lady there would help me with the fearsomely complicated photocopier. It’s one of those machines that has so many extra trays, feeders and blinking lights that it looks like a cross between a combine harvester and a spaceship! But the office was deserted; the lady was on her coffee break. In desperation I decided to have a go myself, and just put the sheaf of poetry into a random feeder tray, picked a number, pressed ‘go’, and hoped for the best. Sure enough multiple copies started spewing out the other end, but as I started to gather them, I heard a horrible graunching noise, warning lights flashed, and the whole machine ground to a halt with a clutch of poems halfway in and half way out.
The bell was going for my class! I glanced guiltily around, wrenched as much poetry as I could out of the crippled machine and headed for my lecture. But I had left my jacket in the office and when I crept back to get it afterwards, the door opened, an accusing finger pointed at me and a stern voice said : ‘Your poetry is jamming my machine!’ I was in trouble!

Well I apologised of course, and explained I’d had to rush off, but between us the secretary and I managed to free the jam and remove the crumpled remains of some of my poems from the machine. Just as I was leaving the office I glanced back and noticed that she was unfolding one of the crumpled pages and starting to read…

When I got home and thought about it all two things became clear; first, what a great line of poetry the phrase ‘your poetry is jamming my machine’ would make, why it even scans as a five-stressed line of ‘iambic pentameter’, and second, I owe that Lady something, maybe she would like a poem. The two thoughts coalesced and stirred me on to this:

                                             On being told my poetry was found in a broken photo-copier

 My poetry is jamming your machine

It broke the photo-copier, I’m to blame,

With pictures copied from a world unseen.

My poem is in the works -I’m on the scene

We free my verse, and I confess my shame,

My poetry is jamming your machine.

Though you berate me with what might have been,

You stop to read the poem, just the same,

And pictures, copied from a world unseen,

Subvert the icons on your mental screen

And open windows with a whispered name;

My poetry is jamming your machine.

For chosen words can change the things they mean

And set the once-familiar world aflame

With pictures copied from a world unseen

The mental props give way, on which you lean

The world you see will never be the same,

My poetry is jamming your machine

With pictures copied from a world unseen

Luckily she liked this poem indeed it turned out that a little more poetry was just what she needed in her life, which in a way is what this poem is about.

We get trapped in what we think is humdrum until something or someone opens our eyes and lets us see the wonder around and within us.

Mount Horeb was just part of Moses’ daily commute, in the humdrum dead-end job he had looking after his father-in-law’s sheep until one day it all changed, one of the scrubby little bushes that dot the mountain side to which he had hardly given a second glance, was suddenly lit from within, alive and dancing with a coruscating light of joy and holiness that illuminated the bush and all around it and yet didn’t consume it, just let it continue to be its own newly glorious self. So Moses stopped, took off his shoes on Holy ground, and his life and our lives, changed forever…
The poet Elizabeth Browning said ‘earth’s crammed with Heaven and every common bush ablaze’, and she’s right, if only we had eyes to see. The priest-poet George Herbert put it perfectly in a poem that we sometimes sing as a hymn:

A man that looks on glass

On it may stay his eye

Or if he pleaseth through it pass

And then the heaven’s espy.

Well that’s my confession; they say it’s good for the soul. I’m happy to say that the photocopier got fixed, and last time I was in there I saw my poem had been pinned above it on the office wall!

Born in Nigeria and raised in Africa and Canada, Malcolm Guite is a poet and singer-songwriter living in Cambridge, where he also works as a priest and academic. He is the author of Faith Hope and Poetry (Ashgate 2010, paperback 2012) and has published poems in Radix, The Mars Hill Review, Crux, Second Spring and Christianity and Literature. He is also a singer-songwriter and is currently front man for Cambridge rockers Mystery Train. His CDs The Green Man and Dancing through the Fire are out on Cambridge Riffs and iTunes. www.malcolmguite.com

 Malcolm Guite Image Credit

 

Becoming a person full of joy, overflowing with thankfulness is a matter of practice!

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Irene, delighted with and thankful for the sash of her new dress! 

About 15 years ago, I was on a women’s retreat at which we were asked to write down what we wanted our lives to look like in 5 years. Along with ambitious, pipe-dream goals which have not come to pass, I included this, which has not come to pass either, but to which I am closer, “I want to be full of joy, overflowing with thankfulness.”

    * * *

Three years ago, at Christmas, we were visiting my mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law in New Zealand at Christmas. They were both depressed and exhausted, so we did all the shopping, cooking and washing up.

So we go to the grocery store, planning to buy duck which is what our family eats at Christmas, but was apparently not what Kiwis eat at Christmas. They apparently do not eat turkey either. So, another spanner in the works.

But then I looked around at all the amazing things they did have–crayfish, paua (abalone) and kumaras, chinese gooseberries, South Island wines–and lamb, lots of lamb, very cheap. It’s the country in which there are more sheep than people after all!

And it was one of those watershed moments. If I were ever going to be full of joy, overflowing with thanksgiving, well, I would just need to start practising right now. Start thanking God for my blessings, in that unfamiliar crowded Christmas Eve grocery store in Gisborne, New Zealand.
* * *

“Full of joy, overflowing with thanksgiving”–that describes a very attractive person, doesn’t it? The sort of person you would love to spend time with, to be with.

And I guess we get to be that kind of person, arithmetically, by just counting one blessing after another.

We become people overflowing with joy and thankfulness by practising, by keeping on thanking God for his goodness, as revealed in our lives, and in creation.

For my new joy in walking, thank you, and for my increasing pace, and very slow and very steady weight loss, and for the very slow and very steady growth in my blog, thank you, and for the girls happily and quietly reading, thank you, Lord, and for being able to taste your goodness in the land of the living, thank you, Lord!
* * *

While physical beauty, like intelligence, is given to us by God according to his plans for our life–the beauty of being a person “full of joy, overflowing with thankfulness” (Col. 2:9) is an equal opportunity thing.

As Jesus said, God sends his sun and rain on the good and evil alike, and gives good gifts open-handedly (though unevenly) to everyone.

So anyone, rich or poor, brilliant or so-so, healthy or infirm, naturally cheerful (as I am) or naturally low-key, can choose to count their blessings, to be thankful everyday for the goodness of God, nature, the world, and people, can become a person, full of joy, overflowing with thankfulness.

Like everything else, it just takes practice!

 

Tasting the Goodness of God in the Land of Motor Neurone Disease: A Guest Post by Michael Wenham

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View from the window



Anita sends me a message on Facebook. Would I think about a guest post on her blog: “Perhaps on how you saw and discovered God’s goodness (if you did) amidst the unexpected disability. So it will sort of sum up ‘My Donkeybody’  in a blog post…”? 



And I sit at the table gazing out of the window, wondering, “What have I got to say?” I was diagnosed with a Motor Neurone Disorder in 2002, and expected to go the way of the vast majority of MND patients and to be dead within a couple of years, after a rapid and distressing loss of muscle control.
Of course, I was a vicar at the time and had had a Christian faith as long as I could remember. That meant, according to some people, that it was especially incomprehensible and unfair that this random disease had hit me and, according to others, that I had an unfair advantage over others having the crutch of faith to soften the blow.
As it happened, evidently, I don’t have the usual ALS but the rare PLS (Primary Lateral Sclerosis) – if you like I have the protracted rather than the accelerated form. One of my friends with the same type was unsure which was preferable, a quick dying or a slow one. Personally, I’m glad still to be alive. However, I am 100% dependent on others for my survival. From getting up in the morning to getting undressed at night, I need help; getting fed, using the toilet, having a shower, going out – all require a carer, which in my case means Jane, my wife, unless she breaks her collar-bone as she did recently. Do I enjoy it? No. 


I wish I was able to walk on the Welsh hills with Jane and the dog, to feel the wind and jump the streams. I wish I could chat to my grandchildren without sounding monstrous. In 2010 I wrote a book with a young mum in South Africa, Jozanne Moss, who also had MND (‘I Choose Everything’). Her first section is “I wish…” in which she vividly lists the things that she misses or knows she won’t be able to do in the future: “I wish… I wish…”. In her conclusion she says, “I might not be able to be the mother I always wished I could be, but I am the mother that God intended for me to be for Luke and Nicole, in order for them to know and love Him.” It’s heart-wrenching. She died on 6th February. No, I don’t enjoy the frustrations. I regret what I’ve lost.
In one way, I envy Jozanne now, because presumably she sees clearly what she previously held on to by faith. As I look out through the french windows, the far side of the road is virtually invisible. I can just distinguish the outlines of the estate houses through the fog. But at a quick glance you wouldn’t know they were there. Even the other side of the garden, which isn’t big, is misty. Only the trough right next to the window retains its vibrant colours. As I reflect on Anita’s challenge, which is how it feels (“how you saw and discovered God’s goodness”), it seems as though this view is a metaphor for my perceptions at the moment. It feels as if a fog has descended on my old certainties.
Of course I know that the estate is there. Only yesterday I was winding my way in my wheelchair through its snickets in the warm sunshine to Cornerstone, the café where I’m always welcomed. Nothing’s changed about the estate, but my view of it has changed. 


Some years ago, God came and strangely warmed me. “Falling in love again” isn’t an adequate description for what that did to me, but it left its indelible mark. Perhaps that’s why I don’t doubt that God’s love is there; and yet now it is shrouded in mystery. Lovely friends with MND have died, and I can’t give an answer as to why they had it, anymore than why God who is love permits all the natural catastrophes and any of the personal tragedies which bedevil our world. If “all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well”, which I’m still convinced is true, please don’t ask me to begin to explain how. Thatlove is huger and more mysterious than the measures of my mind.
And yet I have evidence, even in the frustrations and physical limitations of my disease, of that love. A few weeks ago, on Ski Sunday, there was a remarkable interview with disabled skier, Peter Dunning, who lost his legs in an IED explosion in Afghanistan. “People may think it’s the most strangest thing that I’m saying, but I think that getting blown up is one of the best things that’s happened to me. I’m such a different person than I was. Before I was a bit of a lads’ lad; now I’m more focused, more determined, and everything, to achieve what I want to achieve, like getting to the Paralympics, and progressing on from there.” I can understand that. I’d prefer not to have MND. I’d rather not have the prospect of gradual decline and eventual fall. But what a gift to discover, for example, that, as I become more of a useless “burden”, it doesn’t even occur to my family and friends to stop loving me! In fact they want to carry me. And it’s incredibly liberating to discover that my value lies not in what I do, however impressive, but in what I am, warts and all.
I once made a list of where I’d found God’s love in my disability. It began at home with the unconditional love of my family, and continued with the faithfulness of friends and the kindness of strangers; the care of professionals and MNDA volunteers. There’d been instances of unexpected provision over and above my needs. Then I recalled moments of beauty, like dew-bejewelled spiders’ webs, and moments of truth, when the Bible seemed to speak. And crucially the gift of bread and wine received as Christ’s body and blood given for me came to rescue me when my mind staggered and gave up.
I, like Peter Dunning, am a different person from who I was. I’m conscious of the mist, of the mystery that is God’s love. I wouldn’t now insist that everyone takes my route to Cornerstone. There are more paths than I’ve explored. I’ve found his love in unexpected people and paces. In fact, in a profound way, life has become more exciting, more of an adventure. I suppose I focus on what’s within my range, like the flowers in the trough, harbingers of spring, bursting with hope, those eight signs of God’s love given to me. Meanwhile I love Tennyson’s pilot, guiding his boat into harbour, whom he hoped to see face to face, when he had crossed the bar. St Paul spoke of love: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
*******
Michael, Jane, and their friend.
Michael Wenham has a rare form of Motor Neurone Disease (PLS – Primary Lateral Sclerosis).  He is author of My Donkeybody – living with a body that no longer obeys you(Monarch, 2008) and co-author with Jozanne Moss of I Choose Everything (Monarch, 2010). He is retired and lives in Oxfordshire, with Jane his wife.  He has four adult children and three grandchildren.   
He blogs at Diary of a Donkeybody and at Room with a View.

An Autobiography in Blog Posts: III. Williamsburg, Virginia, and a Desert Experience

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And so to Williamsburg, we returned, mourning, mourning, mourning.
* * *

It was a wilderness experience.  I once walked in Oxford University Parks on a bleak December, and saw a scarlet macaw hop along. No, not kidding. Well, that’s how I felt in Williamsburg. I could not find soulmates. I was very lonely.

I cried; I was furious with Roy. We were living there because he worked in a very esoteric area of mathematics, and the premier cluster of mathematicians in his area were at William and Mary.
I said, “Please quit, so we can live where we wish. Breed dogs. Let’s buy a farm. A Christmas tree farm. An asparagus and blueberry farm. Train bonsai!” (Yeah, creative, aren’t I?) Anything that will get us out of being chained to this materialistic, house-proud backwater, where everyone looks immaculately groomed, their houses and cars are immaculate, and few have read a book all year. Or written one.
And the latter category, sadly, included me.
* * *
And then, and then, the manuscript which I had sent the New York editor and agent did not interest either of them in the final draft. I lay face down on my carpet, and wanted to die.
Oh, I was so mad at Roy for not providing more help with child care and housework so I could write a good manuscript. The sadness caused weight gain, constant colds and coughs, debilitating allergies, insomnia, depression. The house was a mess.
A desert experience!!
Spiritually, the desert is the most richly blessed of places. I am certain of it. It may not be rich—will not be rich socially, or in terms of approbation, attention, success, friendship, perhaps not even economically.  Ah, but spiritually, you can grow fat when the rest of your life is thin gruel.
I was sick, I decided–spiritually, emotionally, even psychologically, since I was then on high dose of anti-depressants!! I needed the great Physician. I committed to spending 90 minutes a day in prayer in Bible study in 1996. I did not transform immediately, by any means. If anything, this commitment which I fulfilled before writing and which soaked up nervous energy, made me tireder, crosser, more anxious, highly-strung and frustrated in the short, even medium, run.
* * *
I could diagnose my spiritual plight, but was powerless to do anything about it.
  Jeremiah 17 “Cursed is the one who trusts in man,
who draws strength from mere flesh
and whose heart turns away from the LORD.
6 That person will be like a bush in the wastelands;
they will not see prosperity when it comes.
They will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
in a salt land where no one lives.
 7 “But blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD,
whose confidence is in him.
8 They 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 am delighted to declare that verses 7-8 describe me now).
Some trust in chariots and some in horses, Psalm 20:7.I was putting all my hope and faith in chariots and horses. In editors, in agents, in having a writers’ group as I did in Minneapolis, in networking. In living in a place with good theatres, visiting writers, literary festivals. In the stimulation of friends who read and wrote, and the creative exchange of ideas.
I taught Creative Writing at William and Mary with a friend, a writer who lived on a farm in the boondocks, and just steadfastly wrote books whereas I, putting faith in networking and the big break was successfully applying for fellowships to, and dashing around to idyllic writers colonies, the Vermont Studio Centre and The Virginia Centre for the Creative Arts in Sweet Briar. And to writers’ conferences: Bread Loaf, Wesleyan, Chenango Valley, Mount Holyoke. I should have just been writing!!
Just write, just write. Lots of wisdom to that. But I guess I was stuck.
It took a long period of dreams being crushed and broken for me to trust in God and no one else, not even, especially not, myself for the fulfilment of my dreams.
* * *
Eventually, eventually…little miracles began to happen, and my life began to change.
Well, I laid the manuscript aside, and through 1997, writing for an hour a day, wrote a tight, contorted story of early childhood, here and here, which won a National Endowment for the Arts award of $20,000. In this writing I did to take my mind off my stymied manuscript, my writing style came together, became instinctive.
I began to win writing prizes again, fellowships to colonies and conferences, and to publish all over: The Washington Post, London Magazine, Commonweal, The Christian Century, my pieces were picked up by The Best Spiritual Writing annual anthologies. I taught Creative Writing at William and Mary, though did not find it compatible with writing. Well, have never yet found anything that is!!
And life went on. I had two lovely happy girls. We bought a beautiful house in a lovely neighbourhood, Kingsmill, and lived there for 9 years. We travelled extensively—I craved the old world, art, culture, history. We visited Japan, Israel, New Zealand, Switzerland, Costa Rica, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Holland, leaving Williamsburg as much as we could. Roy was earning well enough, and we were doing well enough through shrewd investing!
* * *
And surprisingly, what God used to help me out of the pit when I struggling with marriage, and with keeping up with the basics of running an orderly house (in which I was desperately failing!) was a teaching and speaking ministry.
I was asked to speak at events like women’s breakfasts, and evening banquets! I was asked to teach Bible studies, and taught four long, exhausting Beth Moore studies, which, with their saturation in Scripture, were an important part in turning my life around.
And why should someone struggling herself with the basics of marriage, being an attentive mum, and running an orderly house grow through teaching others? God’s mercy and sense of humour!! A depressed woman sharing her Prozac of the Word of God!
And I was sharing what was most precious to me–my time and intellectual, spiritual, and emotional energy. In return, I was blessed with stability in my life, emotions and faith; good friends; and deepened roots in God’s word.  That is ever God’s way. Share your limited oil and flour, your limited loaves and fishes, and they will be multiplied.
Another way I was blessed by sharing out of my poverty was that Paul Millersuggested an editing for discipling trade. And this discipling over five years was absolutely life-changing. I was also mentored by a retired pastor’s wife, Lolly Dunlap. As a couple they had done 4 or 5 people’s work, running a church, a radio ministry, schools, centres of learning disability, a ranch for youth, but now she lived in Scripture and got great nourishment from it. That was inspiring.
And I started gardening. Planted several fruit trees, thousands of spring bulbs, hellebores, hostas, a rare specimen garden. I so enjoyed watching them come up stronger each year in that garden I had for 9 years that I almost made peace with staying in Williamsburg.
* * *
I went on a retreat in November 2003 to a retreat centre called Richmond Hill, and picked up a book called I Lift up my Eyes to the Hills,coincidentally the same title as the unfinished book I was drafting. I realized that I had found my answer and abruptly left the next day.
It was about praying with faith for every area of one’s life. Praying, not hoping!! Though it was my writing I worried about, old dreams came uncovered. As beached whales long for immense salty seas, so in America, too fast, too new, too scary for me, I longed for ancient, low-key, gentle, literary Oxford, and began to pray about moving there.
I prayed for soul mates; the book suggested that you offer friendship to those God has placed in your life as you wait for the “glorious friends” you might want, and I did just that, made some good friends, and was, I was guess, happy.
I started praying very specifically for creativity like a rushing river, a prayer answered a little later than the other two.
* * *
In God’s time, miracles happen.
Roy wrote a brilliant paper that he worked on off on for 10 years. It won two prestigious prizes, one of them for the best paper in his area in the last 3 years. And finally fellowships and job offers poured in. (Well, just as well he didn’t become a dog breeder!)
One in Manchester.
And one—yay—in Oxford!!
Without desert experiences. one would never learn to lean, rather than run in one’s own strength and exhaust oneself.
Who is this who comes out of the desert, leaning on her beloved? (Song of Songs, 8:5). Yeah, it was me!

The Leap Years of My Life

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The Leap Years of my Life
2012—Happy. Blogging happily, in Oxford, England.
2008—Oxford, England. Leading a Bible study with two other insecure, neurotic women (which makes 3). Huge stress.
The first year of running my little publishing company. HUGE stress and insecurity and uncertainty. Am not writing at all, and am very sad.
2004—Williamsburg, Virginia. We are moving to England in April, supposedly for 9 months. I am in total denial and keep writing till a couple of days before, and leave the house a total mess. We had planned to rent it out, and my friend Kathy kindly got it super-pretty and eminently rentable.
2000— Williamsburg, Virginia. The millennium year. Irene is one year old, Zoe starts kindergarten that year.
1996— Williamsburg, Virginia. Zoe is two. I am reading massively, listening to books on tape every chance I get, writing a lot. Rather depressed since my book manuscript was turned down the previous year. Travel a lot—2 weeks in New Zealand, a summer in England, a visit to India, winter in Madrid.
1992–Minneapolis, Minnesota. Ah, that was a memorable year, and happy. I loved living in Minneapolis. On the 29th Feb. we were invited to a posh dinner by Gene Golub, Roy’s post-doctoral adviser at Stanford, who turned 15 on that day, being born on Feb. 29th. We gave him a wrapped present, which began ringing as he accepted it. It was the University of Leuven, Belgium calling on his new mobile phone, offering him a honorary doctorate.
1988—Columbus, Ohio, First year in America. Masters student in poetry. All I talk, live, breathe and write is poetry (not very good poetry, alas).
1984—Oxford, England. Orwell gets his predictions so wrong, thank goodness. And it’s an amazing year for me. I come to Oxford to study English, and love it.
1980—Calcutta, India. Believe it or not, I was a nun then, at Mother Teresa’s convent. I was a postulant, loved my postulant mistress, Sister Ruby, who loved me too, and was, sort of, happy!!
1976—Nainital, India. Good year, enjoyed studying and reading.
1972—Nainital, India. A very naughty ten year old, but with a talent for writing. I would write totally fictitious accounts of prizes I won to visit Paris, and what I did there, and my teacher would ask seriously, “How long did you spend there?”
1968—Jamshedpur, India, Funny year. The headmistress suddenly decided I was a genius, and in the middle of a class, and a year, I and my books were moved up a grade. Academically, I kept pace except in Hindi, where I missed vital steps, and never recovered self-confidence. Fanatic stamp-collector especially of 1968 Mexico City, Olympics.
1964—Jamshedpur, India. The year would turn traumatic with the birth of my sister, but I was an indulged only child then, my first leap year on this earth.
Thanks for inspiration to Emma Major.