Archives for December 2013

In Which Stars Make News Viral, and We Can Trust our PR to Him

His birth could not have been more humble, more anonymous–in a manger, for there was no room at the inn.

Of their social network, only Elizabeth, Mary’s elderly cousin, confined by pregnancy, and married to the priest Zechariah who was temporarily dumb, had been told.

But everything was in the hands of God who loved Jesus, his son who would teach us to see differently, to think differently, and to live differently.

And so God splashed a new star in the sky, luring Magi, wise men from the east, astrologers and astronomers to Bethlehem, bringing news of the birth to King Herod. Shepherds heard angels sing of it.

The good news crossed national, ethnic and socio-economic boundaries; it reached the rich and the poor, the wise and the powerful. The King heard of it, the priests heard of it, the army heard of it, the scholars heard of it, the shepherds heard of it. While Mary and Joseph quietly went about their own business, telling no one about their marvellous child.

God brought about all the connections Jesus needed.

* * *

Today, as in the Prophet Habakkuk’s day, “The nations exhaust themselves for nothing.”

We live in a harried world of self-reliance, in which we can feel that everything depends on us.

Our world tells us exhausting things like, “It’s not what you know, but whom you know.”

We are told that new media—blogging, tweeting and Facebook– has eliminated the old gatekeepers; that now anyone can socially network their way into success, fame, and influence.

Right! To the old imperative of doing the work, we’ve added the new imperative to network to get our work out there, to get the word out.

And all this makes us busier and more tired.

* * *

But, oh man and woman loved by God, the one whose birth we are celebrating offers us rest.

Do your work peacefully, and leave your PR in the hands of a very clever God, who used stars and angel song so that, within days, the news of the birth of his son went viral. He will be more creative than you could ever imagine.

Put your hope in him.

* * *

At the end of this year, we cannot do better than to put our work, our lives, and our futures into his hands who promises us joy, peace, and answered prayer.

And to do so is exciting, for he specialises in surprises.

A new star in the sky: who would have thought of it?

I am entrusting my life to him today.

Join me?

My guest post for Share the Hope UK

Wandering through a Deserted Garden in Sicily, I Pray to Build Things Which Last

By Anita Mathias

Abandoned garden surround by a wall topped with grotesque sculptures. (Villa Palagonia)

Villa Palagonia, Bagheria, Sicily

I like wandering around the deserted gardens which sometimes surround palaces and stately homes.

I wandered through the Baroque Villa Palagonia in Bagheria Sicily yesterday, whose grounds host massive grotesque gnomes, giants, gargoyles, mutants, and anthropomorphized monsters.

The villa was the home of Ferdinand, Prince of Palagonia, a hunchback, who took revenge on his wife’s lovers by cruelly satirizing them—often depicting them as hunchbacks!!

Hunchback (Wall around Villa Palagonia)

* * *

Oh full of passion and pride and ambition, they built these palaces and gardens, how intensely they lived, and now their gardens are just the habitation of stray cats, and the birds which sing sweetly and loud.

Cat on the wall of Villa Palagonia

Cat in the garden of Villa Palagonia

All dead. Him who hated and satirized; him who was hated…

Hating. What a waste of a life!

Walking through the garden, I felt eager to align myself with what matters, for one day through our empty gardens too, stray cats might stroll, and birds sing loud and sweetly, unmindful of all our pride, passion and ambition.

People, despite their wealth, do not endure;
they are like the beasts that perish.

Their forms will decay in the grave,
far from their princely mansions.
¹⁶Do not be overawed when others grow rich,
when the splendour of their houses increases;
¹⁷for they will take nothing with them when they die,
their splendour will not descend with them.
¹⁸Though while they live they count themselves blessed—
and people praise you when you prosper—
¹⁹they will join those who have gone before them,
who will never again see the light of life. Psalm 49

A row of grotesque figures adorns the wall of Villa Palagonia.

Figure on wall of Villa Palagonia.

Crowned figure guarding the gate of Villa Palagonia.

I thought too of Shelley’s “Ozymandias.”

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away”.

I am building things. I have built a small business which now solely supports our family. I am building a book. I am building a blog. I am building a platform on Twitter and Facebook so people read my blog. I am building a family life, and friendships, and a network of warm relationships here in Oxford, and with other writers elsewhere.

* * *

Arch crowned with grotesque figures. (Villa Palagonia)

But…

If the Lord does not build the house,

In vain do the builders labour.

In vain is your earlier rising

Your going later to bed. (Psalm 127)

I want to know what the Lord intends me to build with my life, and I want, oh how desperately I want, to build with Christ, to be aligned with his flow of ideas as I build, so what I build, whether books or a family business or blog may last longer and be more life-giving than the deserted books and palaces and gardens which litter our globe.

Hall of Mirrors, Villa Palagonia.

Formal Entrance to Villa Palagonia

The Words Which Change Everything

By Anita Mathias

Words which take the hard shell of the present

When it feels devoid of nourishment, just hard, just hard

Take it and crack it,

And reveal the sweet meat within it:

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.

Though my day is not panning out as it should,

Though my work is not panning out as it should,

Though my nerves are fraying,

And energy and love leaks from my heart,

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

For your goodness endures,

For the sun rises painting the sky,

For the sun sets, making it blaze,

For the mind you given me to praise you,

For the people who love me,

For the people I love,

For this world so full of beauty,

Though all is not as I want it to be,

Thank you.

You take the hard shell of your cantankerous heart,

And with the nutcracker of thanks split it open into joy,

Giving thanks for the glad moments and the hard moments,

For there is nothing He cannot redeem.

Thank you that this world is full of goodness.

Though much is taken,

And much may never be as I want it to be,

Much goodness remains,

And for that:

Thank you!

Thank you Jules Middleton for hosting on your blog, Apples of Gold.

Why I live in a yurt, off the grid, on a mountain in Idaho. A guest post by Esther Emery

By Anita Mathias

My yurt

Do you know anybody who lives off the grid? Well, now you do. I do. I live in a yurt, which is a kind of a wonderful round tent, on three acres of wooded Idaho mountainside, with no power and no running water.

Mine is a rich life, full of wild and beauty. It is a planted life, connected to our sloped bit of dirt and all the rhythms of nature. And it is a conscious life, each day revealing the true cost of human existence: what it truly takes to feed us, keep us warm and sheltered, clean.

But I’ll tell you what my life is not. It isn’t easy. Or secure. Or safe. Or glamorous.

Truth be told, I probably wouldn’t do it if something didn’t make me.

It’s too hard. And it’s too hard to justify! Keeping the kids out of school, bathing only once a week, living all in one room – the five of us! Also the cost to relationships, when I have to go to a friend’s house just to make a simple phone call, not to mention how it makes my friends feel that I openly and publicly reject the most basic principles of modern life.

Oh, that Esther, she’s a whole lot of fun to hang out with! Always talking about the cost of our extractive economy, irreversible environmental damage, the profound injustices built into the supply chain…

I can’t help it. I am driven by a ghost.

The ghost was my mother, and in her life I didn’t think much of her. It is the task of adolescent children to fail to take their parents seriously. It wasn’t until after my mother died that I came to know her as having lived a courageous and prophetic life.

Her name was Carla Emery. She was born a farmer’s daughter in Montana, just ahead of the baby boom, and she was born to teach. The way she tells it, she felt sorry for the hippies when they started showing up in rural places with no skills. She wanted to teach them how to get along. In 1974, she showed up at a Seattle craft fair with a self-published manual for living off the land, and her table was mobbed. It was a quick road to celebrity.

But it was a short road, too. By the time I was born, six years later, America had shifted into the dawn of the Reagan era. My mother’s promise of spiritual fulfillment found through animals and muck and laboring to the harvest was more laughable than livable.

America gave up on my mother. But she didn’t give up.

All through the 80’s and the 90’s, my mother was a has-been and a nobody, but still she preached her difficult message to the world. She crisscrossed the country with boxes of books in the back of the van, meeting all her people: tending souls. Where the counterculture had been a forefront press, now it was the fringe of society. All the people on the edges: survivalists, die-hard hippies, drop-outs, and mountain libertarians. My mother met them all. She spoke to them. She gave lectures on “The Modern Homesteading Movement” and “Peak Oil.”

I was mortified. I couldn’t get away from it fast enough. There’s nothing worse than being a teenager whose mom does a public demonstration of how to kill a chicken.

She died when I was 25 years old. It was the year 2004. Like my mother, I am bound to the consciousness of my own time and my own generation. And, lately, we are turning back.

There have been books: in the last decade, a whole genre of exposé revealing the problems with our food supply and food supply chain. There is a deep and underground craving for a better way. Spiritual wholeness. Integrity. Slow food. Resistance to greed and commodification. My mother’s manual for living off the land is popular again.

It was several years ago, convergent with my husband’s desire to use his construction skills to build something of his own, that I began to make the shift myself. I began to drop consumerism. I picked up some gardening gloves. I started looking more and more like my mother every day.

So there you go. Now you know somebody who lives off the grid. I am here, in my woods, living my simple life: strange to society, perhaps, but natural in the most profound way. I live with the land, with the rhythms and the seasons of nature. And I raise my mother’s ghost.

Esther Emery

Esther Emery used to direct stage plays in Southern California. But that was a long time ago. Now she is pretty much a runaway, living off the grid in a yurt and tending to three acres in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. She writes about faith and rebellion and trying to live a totally free life at www.estheremery.com. Connect with her on Twitter @EstherEmery.

If You Should Ever Want My Life, Come and Take It

By Anita Mathias

In Chekhov’s haunting play The Seagull, the beautiful country girl, Nina, who dreams of being an actress, writes to the narcissistic playwright, Trigorian, “If you should ever want my life, come and take it.”

He does; oh he does! He comes; he takes it; he casts it away, a poor discarded thing. Nina returns home, broken. She has failed as an actress, playing second-rate roles in second-rate companies in the provinces. Her true love, the play’s protagonist, Konstantin, unable to cope with Nina’s tragedy, kills himself.

* * *

“If you should ever want my life, come and take it.” That kind of surrender to a human being is never safe. All human beings are capable of betrayal–though not all will betray.

To whom is it safe to say–“If you should want my life, come and take it?” Only to the maker of life, the giver of life, the one who can turn our life around in a moment.

To him is it safe to say, “You do want my life. Take it, take it. Make of it something I have never imagined. Take it.”

* * *

“I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God’s hands, that I still possess,” Martin Luther wrote.

I too have worked on plans and dreams and schemes which have come to nothing. But increasingly, I am placing everything I do in God’s hands, and there it is safe.

More and more, I find myself saying, “Take it,” as I feel intensity rise. I think of areas of my life in which I struggle, or which are relatively successful. “Take it. This mess I’ve made. This failure. This ambition. This broken dream. This ancient dream. This delicate shimmering dream. This thing which is inexplicably working. This longing. Take it!”

“Take it and make of it something beautiful.”

“For when my dream is in your strong capable hands which begin working on it, shaping it, moulding it, reshaping it, ah, then it is safe.”

Grateful for being hosted on Heather Caliri’s blog—A Little Yes

“Fine, Let Them Judge Me”: The Peace of Boundaries

By Anita Mathias

Several years ago now, I was in a Bible study which had some very assertive people who were often unwell. And so there were endless rotas: to take meals around, clean their houses, do their ironing, or give them lifts.

Now, I was over-burdened myself, but I didn’t want the leader to judge me as a pretend Christian, or a talking head Christian, a chattering class Christian, a “knows the word but doesn’t do it” Christian, or “a puffed up with knowledge” Christian–oh you know the cruel categories we come up with to judge those whose different gifting threatens us.

And so I signed up for rota upon rota. The leader, who had a lowly job in real life, got a real charge and real energy from dominating this church group, mainly well-paid professionals, as if she were our line manager, and we her unpaid employees; these nagging rotas came around even when the group was not in session.

But for all my signing up, the leader did not really like me and I did not really like her, oh the irony!

* * *

And then—last straw– the leader asked one of the unwell Taker ladies, “What more can we do to help you?” And the lady said, “My children would like fresh-baked caked when they come home from school.” And a fresh baked cake rota was passed around. I jest not!

I thought, “This is ridiculous. I have never baked a cake in my life, and I am not driving across town—past exquisite bakeries– bearing sugar and white flour which anyway I’ve banished from my own life.

That’s it. I am going to do the work God has given me to do.

And if the work God has given me to do is to write, then I am going to write, not wake early to chauffeur the woman with mild ME who drives herself to work 4 days a week but is too tired to drive to Bible study. Perhaps she could host it instead, or call in a taxi. I am not going to take my turn of cleaning the house of the lady, who has been feeling too tired to clean, but eats out all the time; she can get a cleaner. I need to stop visiting that negative lady, who said she was lonely and wanted visitors, but depresses me and tears me down. And I am no longer going to drive across town with meals; the supermarkets deliver better meals than I could cook.”

I thought of Rabbi Friedman’s Parable of the Bridge. Whenever you try to fulfull your destiny, they will be people who will insist they are going to drown unless you hold the rope. You can help them up, but you cannot indefinitely hold the rope.

In this case, none of the people who wanted us to provide cleaning, cooking, ironing, chauffeuring and home-baked cakes would have drowned if I did not provide these services.

All this may be the work God has given the leader to do; it was not the work God has given me to do.

If the leader judges me for not taking my turn on her rotas, she judges me.

Fine. Let her judge me.

So she kept asking me to host fund-raisers, to take my turn providing domestic services (equivalent to a part-time job if I’d agreed to all) and I kept saying No. With a bully as with a toddler and or a puppy, one has to be consistent. No, no, no.

And I was happy with my decision, and I did not sign up to her rotas, and I got even happier.

And I incredibly began to get on far better with the leader, which I did not when I was feeling bullied by her demands, and was simmering with resentment , and she, on her part, felt the uncertainty and restlessness of the bully who scents blood, has been successful in some thrusts, and wonders how far she could go in manipulating people to do things both she and they knew they did not want to do.

I now had boundaries. She knew I wasn’t going to crumble, and that brought some peace to our relationship. Ah, boundaries, they are good for both parties.

If you are doing things which are not the work God has given you to do out of fear of judgement, or to curry favour, just stop. You will not curry favour. You will just place the mark of a easy mark on your forehead. You will just be used and abused. You will just get angrier.

Figure out the work God has given you to do, and do just that and do no more out of fear of judgement.

Fine. Let them judge me.

How liberating that was. The peace of that: To train myself not fear men’s judgements, but only to care for the judgement of the Lord, the righteous judge.

Will We Let Anything Separate God from Our Love?

By Anita Mathias

In Romans, Paul says that nothing neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

No matter what we do, no matter what happens to us, he continues loving us. The love of God always shines on us. The pleasure of prayer remains open to us, and the power of prayer to change us (if not our circumstances).

Can we say the same? That nothing He does will stop us loving him?

That no matter what he sends us, no matter what happens, we will still love him, unconditionally?

Lord, I want to be so in you, so engrafted in you, so hidden in you, that not loving you is inconceivable, for, you and I, we’re one. I am in you, inside your heart, part of you, and you are in me, in my heart, part of me.

In Which We Do not Hear the Cheers of our Invisible Audience

By Anita Mathias

Image by Lize Rixt via stock.xchng

When Beethoven’s Ode to Joy was first performed at the Theater am Karntnertor in Vienna in 1824, Beethoven conducting for tempo, had his back turned to the audience.

There was a standing ovation, the audience tossed their hats into the air; the applause was thunderous, and the aging exhausted composer knew nothing of it.

When the contralto, Caroline Unger, gently turned him around, he saw the ecstatic audience, on their feet, applauding.

* * *

Mr Holland’s Opus tells the story of an American aspiring composer, who marries too young (an accidental pregnancy), and then teaches music at high school for 31 years, all the while longing to complete his opus, his Great American Symphony.

At his forced retirement after music department budget cuts, the students play the glorious symphony on which he had laboured for all those decades. And as he stands, entranced at the music he had never yet heard, and overwhelmed with emotion, they tell him that they, in fact, are his Opus. The lives he poured love and music into were his Opus.

* * *

A writer sows into her little patch of earth, and she does not know who, or how many, her words touch, or how.

We sow, we sow, in our little patch of earth, and we hope our words do some good in the world, touch and change other lives, even a little.

We send our words out into the world, to our invisible audience.

And it’s more than an earthly one.

It is, perhaps, at the end of the performance, at the end of our earthly lives, that God will turn us around and show us how the seeds we have planted have bloomed.

* * *

Always the invisible audience.

The other day, a member of our family got upset with another one, who, though upset too, remained silent, until the angst burned out.

And I said gently, “You thought your self-restraint passed unnoticed. But I am sure Someone was very proud of you, and said to the closest bystander, “Do you see my servant? Did you note the overwhelming temptation to yell back and sin? Did you note the self-restraint?”

* * *

While we live our lives, intensely absorbed in the tempo, we sometimes miss the music our work creates, the reverberations through other people’s lives.

However, when we turn around and see with eternal eyes, we will see our invisible audience, Christ Jesus himself; and the angels among whom there is joy when we repent; joy when we win the little victories no one else notices; joy at what Wordsworth called, “the best portion of a good man’s life, his little nameless, unremembered deeds of kindness and of love.”

Thank you Kelly Belmonte at , All Nine Muses for hosting me.

Archives for December 2013

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