Archives for 2014

Walking on the Waters, Looking at Jesus, in the Shadow of the Big C (who Must not be Named)

I had a cancer scare two and a half years ago. Fear gripped my heart when I realised the doctor suspected endometrial cancer. Fears of chemotherapy–and, perhaps worse, death. My youngest daughter was just 12. I was by no means ready to die.

And I lay down, and “saw” a vision. Christ walking towards me on the dark waters. And he said, “It is I. Do not be afraid.”

I took that to mean that I did not have cancer, and fear left my heart.

The biopsy results took six weeks to arrive. A friend who worked in that department told me that I would get my results earlier if I called. Roy urged me to call, but I had lost interest. I had seen Jesus and he told me not to be afraid.

When the letter arrived, all was well.

* * *

Oh Jesus, oh Jesus, why did I not revise my life? Change my diet, cut fat and sugars, become active and lose weight. Oh Jesus!

So I reach a state of exhaustion this August, and I keep telling Roy, “I think I have cancer. Nothing else can explain the progressive exhaustion despite a good, good diet.” My short daily walk was exhausting me.

I go to the doctor. I am severely anaemic. I have a colonoscopy. They find a very large polyp. It has been growing for years by the size of it. The doctor looks at it, and says it has a Type V pit pattern, the worst incidentally, correlated with malignancies.

The biopsy results take 23 days to arrive—just long enough for hope to spring up in my heart, hope for a second chance to be healthy and revise my life.

The nurse hears the tremor in my voice, and says the results are “highly suspicious” of cancer. Was she being kind? Oh I prefer the truth, no matter how brutal.

So I am to see a surgeon on November 13^th for another colonoscopy and to plan on how to remove the 6 cm polyp. The nurse thinks it will probably involve major surgery, scheduled for November 25^th or December 9^th.

This dismays me. I have so little energy, and exercise is hard for me, anyway. How on earth will I exercise while recovering from surgery?

* * *

Anyway, when I first got the call saying the anaemia was severe, and I should have a colonoscopy, I was filled with fear, and lay face down on my bed.

And, like the previous time, I “saw” Jesus walk towards me on the waters. And he said, “Take courage. It is I; do not be afraid.” (Matt. 14:27)

And like Peter, I saw myself walk towards him on the waters, and grow afraid, and begin to sink.

And Jesus held my hand, and said, “You of little faith. Why did you doubt?”

So that was the image and the comfort. Not a clear sense of “No cancer,” as last time, alas, but this comfort: Jesus will hold my hand through this. I will walk on the waters of what is to come, holding Jesus’s hand.

* * *

So that’s where I am. You see posters, “I don’t just hope for miracles. I rely on them.” Well, increasingly, that’s the way I live, relying on miracles.

So I am praying for a miracle–that when the surgeon looks at the polyp on November 13^th, it will have shrunk. That God will change the molecules of the polyp so that when they are biopsied again, they will prove not to be malignant. (He IS a molecular biologist. He changed the molecules of water to wine; of bread, so it fed five thousand.)

There are three types of surgery: snaring the polyp via endoscopy, but the team thinks it’s too large for that. There is keyhole surgery, which would remove it with minimal intervention. Or, horrors, removal of that section of the colon, which is what the nurse thinks might happen. NO, Jesus!!

And, of course, cancer is Mordor, the Land of Shadows and Darkness. There are other possibilities which I am refusing to contemplate until I have to.

So, if you are a person of ridiculous faith, please could you pray that the polyp will shrink, that God will change its molecules so that it is not malignant, and that it will be removed with minimal surgery.

* * *

The risk factors for colon cancer are red meat, a high fat diet, being overweight, and being sedentary. Readers, you can be jolly sure that I will not be eating red meat, will not be eating high fat, and will not be sedentary. Oh no, I will not! As for being overweight, if I can figure out what to do to shift my weight, I will. Oh yes, I will.

Fortunately, the things which minimise one’s risk of colon cancer—fruit, vegetables, bran, cruciferous vegetables, onions, are also things that are great for one’s health.

So if I get out of this shadow alive, I am jolly sure I will be a healthier girl. And if you could pray with me that the horror will be minimal, I will be so grateful!!

Charles Duhigg’s “The Power of Habit,” on How to Create or Change Habits

By Anita Mathias

Here’s a potted summary of a fascinating, helpful book, Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit.

“All our life is but a mass of habits—practical, emotional and intellectual—systematically organised for our weal or woe, and bearing us irresistibly toward our destiny.” William James.

According to a study by Duke University—40% of the actions people perform each day weren’t decisions, but habits.

Many of these habits are trivial, but “over time the meals we eat, whether we save or spend, how often we exercise, and the way we organise our thoughts and work routines have an enormous impact on our health, productivity, financial security and happiness.”

Duhigg quotes an army major (who might have been a “methamphetamine entrepreneur” if he hadn’t entered the US Army, “one of the biggest habit-formation experiments in history”): “There’s nothing you can’t do if you get the habits right.

* * *

A habit is a choice that we deliberately make at some point, and then stop thinking about, but continue doing, often every day. It is a formula our brain automatically follows.

There is a three-step loop in our brain.

First, a cue or trigger. Sadness or stress might make you want to eat chocolate. Or perhaps, you happen to see chocolate, or an ad for it. Physical tiredness may be a trigger to exercise—or drink coffee or eat something sugary. Boredom can be a trigger to work on your Big Dream, or mindlessly surf the internet.

“The cues can be almost anything— a certain place, a time of day, an emotion, a sequence of thoughts, or the company of certain people.”

Then is the routine—eat the chocolate. Surf the internet. Grumble at your family, or go for a run.

And then the reward—endorphins from exercise, a serotonin boost from chocolate, adrenaline boost from exercise (or fighting).

Over time this becomes automatic; without thinking, we reach for chocolate when sad (or pray); the internet when bored (or journalling). Nap when depressed (or run). A habit is born.

* * *

Once we associate a cue with a reward, the brain creates a neurological craving for the reward (the chocolate high, let’s say) and creates a routine that satisfies that craving.

Scientists who have studied the brains of alcoholics, smokers and overeaters have measured how their neurology—the structure of their brains, and the flow of neuro-chemicals inside their skulls—changes as their cravings become ingrained. Particularly strong habits produce the responses of an addict so that “wanting evolves into obsessive craving” that can force our brains into autopilot, “even in the face of strong disincentive.”

Cravings drive habits. To overpower the habit, we must recognise which craving is driving the behaviour–for the sugar high, or the numbing or dopamine of the internet. We must be conscious.

* * *

How to Change Habits

We might not remember the experiences that create our habits, but once they are lodged within our brains, they influence how we act, often without our realisation.” However, just by looking at them become visible again.

“Habits can be deliberately designed. We can choose our habits. Every habit is malleable, and any of them can be changed if you know how they function. They can be reshaped by fiddling with their parts.”

A habit : When I experience CUE, I will do ROUTINE, in order to get a REWARD.

Cues, whether emotional or visual, can’t be changed, Duhigg says. When we are hungry, angry, lonely, sad, tired, stressed, overworked, bored, we will desire a reward. The only thing which can be changed is our response to the cue. HOW we get the reward.

Habits cannot easily be eradicated—they must be replaced. “Habits are most malleable when the Golden Rule of habit change is applied: If we keep the same cue and the same reward, and inset a new more positive and helpful routine to get the reward.”

To change a habit, you use the same cue, and provide the same reward, but shift the routine. It helps if you set up a craving for the pleasurable new routine i.e. focus on the endorphins and energy after the run, and the smoothie you drink. “Almost any behaviour can be transformed if we set up different routines in response to our cues.”

So to change a habit:

Identify the cue: What makes you make to indulge in your bad habit, whether it be chocolate, junk food, or surfing the internet? Is it boredom, low blood sugar, tiredness, stress, sadness or anger?

What is the reward you are seeking? The burst of energy from the chocolate, the distraction and numbing of the internet, and Facebook?

Substitute: You break the bad habit by substituting a different routine to get the rewards. Might decaf work instead of chocolate? Would gardening, or a run, or 15 minute of blog reading work instead? Might a nap work instead of the cookie? Or journaling about the emotions that led to numbing behaviour? Or writing a fun blog? Or prayer as a relaxation activity?

Duhigg: “Habits aren’t destiny. Habits can be ignored, changed, or replaced. Habits (good or bad) never really disappear. Once a habit is formed, the brain does it on auto-pilot. They’re encoded into the structures of our brain. The problem is that once you’ve formed a bad habit, it’s always lurking there, waiting for the right cues and rewards.

Unless you deliberately fight a habit, unless you find new routines, you will automatically do what is habitual.”

This explains why it’s so hard to change our eating habits, or our sedentary habits, or our addictions. Once we develop a routine of surfing the internet when bored, or snacking when sad, those patterns always remain inside our heads.

By the same rule though, if we learn to create new neurological routines that overpower those behaviours—if we take control of the habit loop—we can force those bad habits into the background. And once someone creates a new pattern, studies have demonstrated, going for a jog or ignoring the chocolate becomes as automatic as any other habit. The process of change is accelerated when we form good habits to counteract the bad ones.

The simplest way to begin making choices again is to have a plan. Planning your day in detail—what you will do, when you will exercise, what you will eat, makes sticking to a plan easier.

To create a new habit, you need a trigger: When are you going to run? To do your yoga? To write? To pray? Without creating a specific time when you are going to do it, creating a good habit is but a nice intention.

* * *

Keystone Habits

“Keystone habits” Duhigg says spark a series of changes which ultimately radiate to every part of life. (Brains scans, he says in Chapter 1, show that exercising discipline changes the very structure of the brain; also, the rewards of discipline become addictive.)

Good keystone habits start a chain reaction, a process of change that over time transforms everything.

Keystone habits prove that success does not depend on getting every single thing right, but instead depends on identifying a few key priorities and fashioning them into powerful levers.

The habits that matter most are the ones that, when they start to shift, dislodge and remake other patterns.

When people start habitually exercising, even as infrequently as once a week, they start changing other unrelated patterns in their lives, often unknowingly. Typically, people who exercise start eating better and becoming more productive at work; they show more patience with colleagues and family. They use their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed.

“Exercise spills over. There’s something about it that makes other good habits easier.”

Similarly, there is a correlation between eating a family dinner and success at school and work. Making your bed every morning is correlated with better productivity, a greater sense of well-being, and stronger skills at sticking with a budget. Those initial shifts start chain reactions that help other good habits take hold.

* * *

Australian researchers Oaten and Cheng put volunteers onto a two month programme that steadily increased their exercise –weight lifting and aerobics. The more time they spent at the gym, the less alcohol, caffeine and junk food they consumed. They spent more hours on homework and fewer watching TV. They were less depressed.

In the next experiment, they asked people to budget, save, record expenses and deny themselves luxuries such as eating out and movies also drank on average two cups less of caffeine, less alcohol, less junk food, and were more productive at work and school.

Participants in a program on creating study habits showed academic improvement, but also led to students smoking less, drinking less, watching less TV, exercising more and eating healthier.

As people strengthened their willpower muscles in one part of their lives, the strength spilled over into what they ate or how hard they worked. Once willpower became stronger, it touched everything.

When you learn to force yourself to go to the gym or start your homework, or eat a salad instead of a burger, you get better at regulating your impulses and distracting yourself from temptations, and focusing on a goal.

Will power becomes a habit when you choose a behaviour ahead of time, and stick to it when you reach an inflection point at which sticking to it is hard.

Willpower isn’t just a skill. It’s a muscle like the muscles in your arms and legs, and it gets tired as it works harder. So it’s important to do the really important things earlier in the day when your willpower is higher, to put first things first.

Keystone habits are “small wins” that cause widespread shifts and changes. They help other habits flourish by creating new structures. Small wins have enormous power, a disproportionate influence.

“Small wins are a steady application of a small advantage. Once a small win has been accomplished, forces are set in motion that favour another small win. Small wins fuel transformative changes by leveraging tiny advantages into patterns that convince people that bigger achievements are within reach.” In other ways, they create momentum, a virtuous circle.

* * *

Big Business and Habits

Hundreds of companies focus on understanding the neurology and psychology of habits. Most people don’t intend to eat fast food, for instance, but they are unconsciously influenced by cues, and seek rewards.

Every McDonalds has standardized its architecture, uniforms, and what employees say to customers to trigger the often unconscious memory of what you ate last time. “The foods are specifically engineered to deliver immediate rewards—the fries are designed to begin disintegrating the moment they hit your tongue in order to deliver a hit of salt and grease as soon as possible, casing your pleasure centres to light up, and tighten the habit loop.”

“But since we often don’t recognize these habit loops, we are blind to our ability to control them. But if we observe our cues and rewards we can change our routines.”

* * *

Alcoholics Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous and Habit Change

Alcoholics Anonymous is one of the largest and most successful attempts at large scale habit change. It is a giant machine for attacking the habits that surround alcohol use, changing habit loops, and shows how almost any habit, even the most obstinate, can be changed

The Core of AA: “Realise you are licked, admit it, and get willing to turn your life over to God.”

Attacking the behaviours we think of as addictions by modifying the habits surrounding them is one of the most effective means of treatment.

The Golden Rule of Habit change used by AA, use the same triggers or cues, gets the same rewards, but teaches new routines in response to the old triggers to provide a familiar relief.

“Once you recognize how your habit works, once you recognize the cues and the rewards, you are half-way to changing it. The brain can be reprogrammed. You have to be deliberate about it.”

Alcoholics Anonymous also depends on faith. Admitting there is a higher power in one’s life, admitting one’s powerlessness.

For habits to permanently change, people must believe that change is feasible. “You do need to believe that you can cope with the stress without alcohol.” A group teaches individuals how to believe.

“There something really powerful about groups and shared experiences. People might be sceptical about their ability to change if they are by themselves, but a group will convince them to suspend disbelief. A community creates belief.”

When people join groups where change seems possible, their odds of success at changing habits go up dramatically

Rick Warren and Saddleback Church

Rick Warren tried to teach people “the habits of faith,” by breaking down discipleship into Christian habits. “Once that happens, people become self-feeders. They follow Christ because that is who they are.”

Everyone in Saddleback belongs to a small group which makes small group attendance and church attendance a habit. Faith becomes an aspect of their social experience and daily lives.

Rick Warren: “If you want to have Christ-like character, then you just develop the habits that Christ had. All of us are simply a bundle of habits. Our goal is to help you replace some bad habits with some good habits that will help you grow in Christ’s likeness.”

Giving everyone new habits has become a focus of the church. Every Saddleback member is asked to sign a “maturity covenant card” promising to adhere to three habits necessary for spiritual growth. 1) daily quiet time for prayer 2) tithing 10% of their income 3) membership in a small group.

* * *

Habits allow us to “do a thing with difficulty the first time, but soon do it more and more easily and finally do it semi-mechanically, or with hardly any consciousness at all.”

They can be designed and changed—and that is the real power of habit.

The Power of Habit available on Amazon.com

The Power of Habit, on Amazon.co.uk

When God says “Go,”

By Anita Mathias

Franklin Graham, ““When we truly pray, we do not move God to ourselves, but ourselves to God. A small boat nears shore, and a man throws a rope and anchor toward a sandy beach. He, then, when the anchor has bitten into the sand, pulls on the rope and draws the boat up on the beach. The shore did not move out to the boat–the boat is drawn up onto the beach.

God answers all prayer. He does not answer our selfish, materialistic begging. He does not move into our sinful situation. He moves us out of our sinful situation into Himself. God sometimes moves slowly. Sometimes we don’t lack faith, but patience. Wait patiently for HIm, and He will give you your heart’s desire.

1) if the request is not right, He will answer, “No.”

2) If the time is not right, He will answer, “Slow.”

3) When you are not right, He will answer, “Grow.”

4) When the request, the time and you are right, God will say, “Go.”

That’s when miracles happen.

That was written on May 16th, 1970, the day that Dr. Bob first caught hold of the vision to start Samaritan’s Purse. What miracles we have seen year after year, as God has worked in mighty ways.”

In which Rest is an Essential Part of the Creative Process

By Anita Mathias

The first chapter of Genesis explodes with creativity!

God creates sun, moon and stars; banyans, baobabs and butterflies; macaws, mice and mastodons from a smile in his brain.

He creates the world in exuberance because that is his nature. He is a Maker, a creator.

And all of us are inherently creative, because we all have shades of the Maker in us. Our houses, gardens, outfits, meals, work, and budgets, all betray hints of the original artist’s creativity.

* * *

Any creative person’s work will be enhanced if they align themselves with the master artist.

Not all of us will be Michelangelo or Fra Angelico, Milton or Hopkins, Handel or Bach (who were all Christians incidentally). However, spending time in the presence of the original creator, divinely enhances and super-charges us.

We become thoroughly ourselves, yet our work will shimmer with the presence of the Master. Which creative has not had the experience of the blog or the story basically writing themselves, of an electricity beyond ourselves racing through our fingers?

I used to think of writing as an art and a craft, a matter of reading, study, and conscious and subliminal absorption. And, of course, it is all that.

But what I rely on most now is alignment with the Master Artist. Before I write, I try to align myself with God, and get in touch with him, ask for his streams of living water to flow through me. I write best and fastest then, with surety, without excessive self-criticism.

* * *

God’s account of creation ends with a vital and overlooked part of the creative process.

Rest.

Isn’t that lovely? Though God was effortlessly creative, his creativity flowing from thought to word to product, yet, on one day out of seven, he came to a complete halt, the inspired author of Genesis tells us. He rested from “all the work of creating” (Gen. 2:3).

God made things to last. Though dodos, passenger pigeons, woolly mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers have gone extinct, creation “in all its vast array” still glows. It’s a still a wild, wonderful world.

And God is still creating through us. Down the waterfall of the mind of God tumbles nascent ideas for Macbooks and iPhones with access to all the knowledge of the world in our pockets; blogs and stories, symphonies and comedies.

And if we like God want to produce fruit that will last as Jesus commanded us to, if we want to continue creating all our lives, then we too need to pace ourselves, to come to a complete halt, once a week, and rest from all creating. We need to let the Spirit reset us.

* * *

How? Since God did not spell out how to keep the Sabbath holy, we can interpret it personally and honestly. I like to worship in community, but when I am exhausted, physically or emotionally, I send my children (since I consider that my Christian duty) and I spend that time praying alone. Reading my Bible. Or in lectio divina.

On Sunday, I do not create. I sleep in. I garden. Or walk. Or nap. A lot of napping. If ideas come, I jot them down, but do not refine them. I resist any work that will make me better-off, or better-known, or more successful. Or thinner! I just rest.

Sunday is a day God blessed, we are told in Genesis. A day to step into another economy in which resting is an activity, not a cessation from activity. In which magically a day in which one does nothing but rest is holy.

* * *

Ah, Sunday. One day in seven in the divine economy. One day to acknowledge that we do not ultimately own our lives or our careers. We can not control them, not really. We cannot make ourselves rich or successful or famous or beautiful, or else the world would be full of super-rich, super-famous, beautiful people. Why even true art is beyond our control, or the world would be awash in it. And in this world of polluted food supplies, even our health is partially out of our control. Cancer strikes gourmets and gluttons; foodies and fast-foodies; billionaires and bankrupts. It’s as impartial as death!

In a world in which we control so little—not the date of our death, not the cells in our bodies, not the outcome of words, our stocks, or the fruit of our womb, what a sublime idea to take a day a week to rest, to let go of interminable striving, and enter another economy. On the day of rest, we enter the economy of the powerless who seek power from God, the economy of the tired who seek strength as they wait upon the Lord; the economy of the unconnected who seek God to connect them; the economy of the creatives who one day a week silence their words to make room for The Word.

And perhaps on that blessed, holy day, the spirit of God shall hover over the still waters of the quieted mind, shall wake in them words and visions which shall last.

* * *

Ah, we lose our way; we become functional atheists in Parker Palmer’s phrase, when we believe that nothing will happen unless we make it happen.

But there is another way consistently recommended in Scripture, the way not of might, nor of power, but of God’s spirit.

What might that look like for me? It would mean that if I want to get a book commercially published, I must seek the Spirit about how to do this. Perhaps he will connect me to the right literary agent and publisher without my doing anything about it. May it be so!! Perhaps he will clarify whom I am to contact. It may well be a process as streamlined and efficient as the process of creation, (unless for my character as for Joseph’s and Job’s, he chooses to prolong a sojourn in the desert).

For my blog, the way of might and power is no longer sustainable. I am too weary for it. I must now do it by the way of the Spirit. Seek the Spirit for what to write. Seek the Spirit for how much to write (currently 5 posts a month, so I have time to work on a book). Seek the Spirit for how to share what I write.

He is The Spirit. He is not human. His ways, his strategies will be greater, more surprising, more out of the box than anything I could think of. And because he loves me, his strategies will be practical, sustainable, and not exhausting.

Roy and I need to seek the Spirit in our family business, for cleverness, for strategy, for thinking out of the box, because, again, time and energy are in short supply. We need his ideas, not our own.

I need to seek the Spirit for how to shed the extra weight that puts me at risk for colon cancer. Cancer seemed a far away thing that happens to other people. However, I now await the results of a biopsy. Being overweight increases the risk of colon cancer, as does being sedentary, or eating red meat, or too much fat. Yes, yes: Guilty as charged. Losing weight has never been easy, or else I would have done so. I have lost 21 pounds over the last 2 years, but my weight loss stopped around Easter. So how do I lose this pesky weight? I must seek the ways of the Spirit.

There are gurus who will tell you all this—how to grow your blog, publish your book well, grow your online business, and lose weight. It makes sense to skim their books; I mean why waste time reinventing the wheel?

But Michael Hyatt writes on Platform, but I daresay none of his readers have a platform like his. Jeff tells us how to get 10,000 subscribers; do any of his readers have that many? Dr. Fuhrman has a brilliant, but unsustainable way of weight loss.

These things worked for them. Each of us must seek the Spirit who loves us for what will work for us. My daughters love giving me advice, and I sing out in reply, “But I am not you. I am me.” So it is with other people’s strategies; they may not work for me for I am not them. I am me.

I must seek the streamlined way of the spirit, the way of minimal wasted effort. I think again of the intricate interlocked efficient universe in which nothing is wasted, created in the mind of God, spoken forth into existence over six… aeons.

I hear the voice of the Spirit when I am still and listen for it. I hear it when I wait and just hang out with him. I hear it in rest.

And on the Sabbath, the day I set apart for haunting his paths, I greatly increase my chances of hearing the wise, astonishing, loving voice of the Spirit.

* * *

Tweetables

Rest is an intrinsic part of the creative process NEW POST from @anitamathias1

On seeking the way not of might or power, but of the Spirit. NEW POST from @anitamathias1

Alignment with the master artist supercharges our creativity NEW POST from @anitamathias1

Over to you

Have you experienced walking in the ways not of might, nor of power but of the Spirit?

How do you experience Sabbath Rest?

Visiting: When People Were Entertainment (From My Memoir-in-Progress)

By Anita Mathias

The latch on the green steel front gates clanged, heralding a visitor; and we children and the dog ran to the verandah to check them out; and the cook or ayah ran to open the gate for the car; and my mother ran in to change out of her “house-coat,” a buttoned dressing gown which most Mangalorean housewives wore all day, into a saree.

Visits were unannounced. To say you were coming was considered rude. The host would then be expected to stay home, and provide respectfully nice snacks for you to eat, whereas if you just showed up, you would be served a tray of delicious food which the hostess would present, apologetically, as if she had just rustled it up.

Most upper-class women did not work. “Our wives don’t work,” my father said flatly, when I inhaled feminism, and insisted that my mother (and we) would be happier if she had a job. For a woman to work implied that her husband had failed, and could not adequately provide for his family–so my father and his brothers believed.

Domestic help was available and affordable; our three servants for a family of four, was lavish, though not terribly unusual. So women had time for sociability and gossip. On an impulse, housework supervised, they jumped into the car, with their children in the mornings, or their husband and children in the evenings, to see who was in. If their friend was engaged on a similar errand, they tried another house, and another. There was no television in Jamshedpur. People were the entertainment.

If we were bored, or liked the visitor, my sister and I sat in the living room during the visit, reducing the women to sharing information in a code of widened or rolled eyes; innuendoes; “you know who’s”, and “You know how so-and-so is…” (and if one did not know before, now, of course, one did). My sister and I listened with heightened attention—our first stories, first introductions to the adult world.

“I sat behind her in church,” Lulu said, “and poor thing, poor thing, you could see dirt behind her ears!” “Who?” I asked. “Nobody,” both ladies said, hastily and improbably.

* * *

The latch clanged. My mother darted in for lipstick, saying, “Oh I do hope it’s not Mrs. Domingo,” a plump, kindly, good-natured woman, my mother’s best friend. “She stays forever.”

Well, well, guess who it was?

My mother emerged smiling, fresh lipstick, fresh saree. “Oh Marie Domingo!” she said, “How lovely to see you. I was hoping it was you.”

What?

~~~

In Catechism class, Sister Laeticia explained the difference between mortal and venial sins. “White lies” were venial sins, harmless (as opposed to “black lies,” I suppose).

I raised my eyes from Sister Laeticia’s hands, swollen, empurpled, clawed and misshapen with rheumatoid arthritis.

“When my mother says, “I hope it’s not Mrs Domingo,” and then says, “ Oh Marie, how lovely to see you,” is that a white lie?” I asked, still shocked by the abrupt change in the story.

And do you know what that kindly nun did, she who used to smile at me so fondly, and laugh at all my sayings (though I often could not figure out what was so funny)?

Mrs Domingo appeared again. “Be careful what you say in front of her, Celine,” she warned my mother. “She tells Sister Laetica everything. She said…”

Ah, the betrayal, each betraying the other.

* * *

After a polite interval of small talk, my mother excused herself and vanished. If she explained her errand, the guest would insist, “Oh, we’ve just eaten; please don’t worry. Oh stay and talk to us. We’ve come to see you.” So, the guests, abandoned, talked to us children brightly, kindly, until my mother re-appeared with a tray laden with fresh-squeezed lemonade and snacks, which varied according to the status of the guest, and whether it was imperative to impress them—or not!

People who visited us in gratitude for past favours–a job my father hired or recommended them for–or in hope of future favours were served a tray with parthecums, crisp, deep-fried banana chips; chaklees, deep-fried spirals of spiced flour; or, worse, bought food—sev or ghatias, savoury lentil snacks, or ginger biscuits, which none of us liked, and so could be safely reserved for unexpected visitors.

If the visitor was wealthy, or wealthier than us, or uneasily suspected to be classier, or just a really good friend, then oh those trays!! From the recesses of her large walk-in pantry, a windowless room, my mother produced home-made sweetmeats: chocolate fudge that melted in the mouth; russet guava halwa; pink coconut barfi, or bright red beetroot barfi. There were plates of cold meats we’d cured ourselves: slices of hearty beef we called “corned beef;” slices of pink, home-cured pork; delicious salt tongue, served with a little imported Colemans’s mustard and homemade mayonnaise. And little triangular plates of “cheeslings,” tiny airy cheese crackers, expensive, reserved for guests; or salty Monaco biscuits, served with a dainty topping of imported goodies: little black grains of caviar; laughing cow or baby bell cheese, or sliced pimento olives, with their cheerful red core.

A successful recipe made a woman famous— Daphne’s fudge, Mrs Domingo’s Midnight Chocolate Cake; orMrs D’Costa’s nankatis (butter cookies). My mother was famous for her kidney toast: fried chopped lamb’s kidneys with tomatoes, and onions, served with grated Amul Cheese on fried toast. Or her triple-decker sandwiches: a green layer of mint chutney, a red layer of tomato, and a yellow layer of egg mayonnaise.

When guests asked for a recipe, the hostess was hesitant and evasive. My father suspected that the recipes were deliberately garbled in the transmission, so that the imitation never tasted as good as the original, and each woman continued to be famous for her distinctive dishes.

* * *

Coca-Cola closed down its Indian operations in 1977 after the nationalist Janata government required it to be 51% controlled by Indian investors. The government introduced a nationalized substitute in its place, named–after a national competition–Double Seven, 77, commemorating the Janata governemnt’s year of power.

The Catholic housewives of Jamshedpur, believing that they could do whatever their government did tried to duplicate the formula for Coca-Cola; they experimented, shared recipes, experimented again, and once “successful,” guarded their recipes as carefully as the original in a vault at Atlanta.

My mother invented a dark viscous formula of sugar, coffee, vanilla, lime, orange essence, cinnamon, and nutmeg served in soda water. When I arrived home from boarding school in 1977, she asked me and our guests proudly, “Would you like some of my Coca-cola?” It may not have tasted exactly like Coke; there was none to compare it with anyway, but it was good.

* * *

Our hearts sunk when we saw “Masterji” shuffle up the driveway, an elderly, turbanned Bihari gentleman who had taught my parents Hindi when they moved to Jamshedpur, the Hindi-speaking heartland, from Bombay and Mangalore in the South. The second language in their English-medium schools had been French, not Hindi.

One Christmas, my parents offered “Masterji” exquisite marzipan fruits we had handcrafted out of ground almonds and sugar, painting a red blush on the peaches, shading the apples in red, denting the strawberries with toothpicks, completing the verisimilitude with a little wooden stem, and a cloth leaf, bought from a confectioner in Calcutta, and reused each year.

Masterji looked dubiously at the tiny fruits, grabbed a handful, stuffed them all into his mouth, little wooden stem, cloth leaf and all. We watched open-mouthed, collapsing in laughter after he left.

~~~~

Another time, Masterji arrived just as we returned from the market with a huge bunch of leechis, sold freshly plucked off the tree, leaves and twigs included, expensive coveted fruits, which had just entered their brief season. My mother hurriedly put the bunch on a plate, and offered them to him, expecting him to detach a few. My sister and I watched helplessly as he took the entire bunch as tribute as he left, and shuffled out with it. We burst into tears, for we loved leechis. “We’ll buy you more,” my father promised ineffectually.

* * *

Since families moved in packs, children were dragged along on visits; my sister and I most certainly were, since my parents hated anything unusual.

Little spies, we listened in. “Sssh, Big Ears,” adults said as they whispered about the boy-crazy, scandalous teen, Geraldine, though they generally pretended we were the proverbial monkeys who’d hear or speak no evil. Ha! I listened, I listened, decoding, analyzing, mentally recording as I now record on paper.

~~ ~

During dull patches in the conversation, or while my mother brightly told the same stories, we made repeated trips to our hostess’s centre table laden with snacks. When she thought no one was looking, my mother frowned, made her face small and disapproving, and shook her head emphatically, which meant: “Stop.”

Her grimaces, frowns, and vehement head-shakes were swiftly replaced by a smile when the hostess looked her way. She could not tell us aloud not to have third helpings of the fudge, because the social contract required the hostess to both say, “Oh let her,” and then to effusively and forcefully offer it to me herself. Generosity, natural or feigned, was a virtue, much admired.

“Oh, you ate so much fudge,” my mother reproached me in the car. “I am sure she was very sad. You could see her face fall as she watched.”

~ ~ ~

During these visits, parents bragged about their genius children, prodigies all, who could sing, dance, paint flowers on water glasses, barbecue, and were absolutely brilliant (if they would only work harder) and “stood first in class,” each of them, all of them–if the parents could plausibly get away with the claim.

The other parents listened with broad, admiring smiles, murmured praise, and passive aggressive encouragement. “Anita writes well? Perhaps she will win the Noble Prize.” “Your son can do mental maths. Perhaps he will win the Fields Medal.” “She’s good at Bharat Natyam. Well, she should tour Europe!” they said.

Were they encouraging your ambition or putting you in your place by suggesting unachievable ambitions? Who knew!

~ ~~

And then the dread moment—to all but the parents of the performing child. “Oh Shalini, do you want to do your Bharat Natyram dance for the Saldanhas?” my mother would say. “Yes, dooo,” the victims declared with feigned enthusiasm, “Do!”

And, if we were at home, my sister put on her gungaroos, little belled anklets, poised her legs in the traditional diamond pose, put her hands together, forefinger and thumb joined, other fingers splayed out, and flinging out her arms, danced Bharat Natyam, the ancient temple dance, thaam-thut-thaam; thaay-tut-thaay; thaam-thut-thaam; thaay-tut-thaay; her lips fixed in the large, bright traditional smile; making ritualized seductive eye-movements, pupils swerving to and fro. She danced without music, or music heard so deeply that it was not heard at all.

“Oh Shalini sings and plays her guitar so well,” my mother said brightly, and Shalini took out her guitar and sung “LA International Airport,” or a Paul Anka song, “Every night my papa would/ Tuck me in my bed/Kiss me on my head/
After all my prayers were said./ Your children live through you.”

~~~

Shalini, not having gone to boarding school, had acquired all the feminine accomplishments, painting, batik, singing, dancing, playing guitar. I did not sing, I did not dance and I did not paint, but I did recite. The first Shakespeare speeches I memorized, when I was eleven, were “Friends, Romans, Countryman,” or “Pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,” from Julius Caesar followed by “Is this a dagger I see before me?” from Macbeth, or the perfect iambics of “To be, or no to be.” I recited “If I were lord of Tartary” by Walter de la Mare, “Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright,” and “I wandered lonely as a cloud,” poems which have become part of my inner rhythms, the buried treasure of words within me.

~~ ~

And, believe me, the guests earned every square of their fudge and milk toffee as we in turn earned ours when we listened to them boast about their prodigy children, boasting, boasting until all were busted by adulthood when the golden boy or girl became perfectly ordinary, in Yeats’ phrase, a sixty year old smiling public man.

Parents of only children were particularly galling. Admire Nicolette’s handwriting; read the letters she’d written home; listen to her sing, admire her light skin colouring and her curls… We did so, all the while, secretly suspecting that we were smarter and more gifted.

My father rarely participated in the general showing off. “I’ve achieved much more in school and you never mention it,” I’d grumble. He shrugged. “I just don’t like to show off” he said quietly. His eight years in England had heightened his natural reticence.

When I got bored, I pointedly looked at my watch every few minutes.

“Poor thing, she wants to go,” the hostess eventually commiserated, probably when she was entirely of one mind with me on the subject.

* * *

This is a slow-growing memoir, but here are the chapters I’ve written

In the Beginning: Rosaries and Steel

Jamshedpur: The Steel City where I was Born

I Saw the Moon Rock: The Clubs of my Childhood

The Parks and Restaurants of my Childhood in Jamshedpur, when All was Magical

Polyphemus the Cyclops: A Memoir of My Father, Noel Joseph Mathias. Part 1, My father as an immigrant in England, At Play with my Father, The Things my Father Said, The Eccentricities of my Father

Palaces of Peace and Dreaming: The Libraries of my Childhood

Brutus: The Honourable Dog

My Grandmother, Small Nana, Molly Coelho; My Grandfather who lived by the sea and taught me to love poetry; My Uncle Eustace, The Maharaja; My Uncle Mervyn; My Maiden Aunt, Joyce; Youpee or UP, my Grandparents’ Formidable Landlady; Decembers in Gay Bombay

Travels with my Father; Mangalore: My Ancestral Hometown, Dreaded Family Evening Prayers at my Grandmother’s House; My Great-Uncle Norbert, a Pious Crook, My Grandmother, Josephine, and My Grandfather, Dr. Piedade Felician Mathias, My Father’s Sisters: Ethel the Grand Duchess, and Winnie, the Duchess; Christmas in Mangalore, and Mandatory Visits to All our Nun Relatives; And Mandatory Visits to Everyone Else, My saintly great-aunt Rosie, and her rebel daughter Marie; Arranged Marriages and the Consequences of Small Town Inbreeding.

God Saw the Light was Good, but He Left Darkness Too

By Anita Mathias

In the beginning…

God’s first recorded words in the Bible are “Let there be light.” And there was light. And God saw that the light was good. (Genesis 1:4)

But he left darkness too.

And so it shall ever be. On June 21, we have 16 hours 41 minutes of light in Oxford, England. But we also have 7 hours 19 minutes of darkness. On December 22, however, we have 16 hours 18 minutes of darkness, but we still have 7 hours 42 minutes of daylight.

Some darkness on the sunniest day; some sunshine on the darkest day.

And so it always is, throughout our lives.

John drapes himself on us, heart flooded with love. On the other side, there’s Judas, serpent-heart despite his kiss. But eleven apostles out of twelve proved true. That is life too, and life is good.

* * *

Me, I am still living in summer, tasting the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. I am healthy enough; my family is healthy. My children are doing well, academically, socially and spiritually, and are happy. We are paying our bills to date. I am enjoying my work. I am happy. I am happy.

But I am also allowing myself to slow down, and feel the sadness that God left in the beginning.

It has been an intense month. Jake, our eleven year old border collie, had a vast growth in his abdomen, and inoperable tumours in his liver which makes it uncomfortable to eat. So he stopped. How dreadful to watch a dog waste away. Finally, he could no longer walk, and we put him to sleep yesterday. The vet said it was definitely the right thing to do.

I have been feeling tired, and my blood work showed severe anaemia. So I had a colonoscopy, which showed a polyp. I am hoping for minimal surgery…but I must walk on the waters,, holding Jesus’ hand through that.

We have lost our wonderful cleaner, which has thrown us. He helped with everything—housesitting, chauffeuring kids, picking up purchases, garden work, painting, car cleaning, whatever needed to be done. An almost irreplaceable Man Friday.

Financially, we are still recovering from the burglary in February, of our car and electronics etc. We were underinsured, and so we have to put our nose to the grindstone to replace what we had to “borrow” from savings (earmarked for other bills) so as to replace the stolen things.

Love’s like a hurricane, and I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy, as John Mark Macmillan writes.

Couldn’t God have prevented all these griefs and hassles? I think, crossly.

* * *

In the Old Testament Book of Job, Job lost everything– children, wealth, health and the respect of his friends.

“Does it please you to oppress me?” he asks God (Job 10:3).

His friends insist that Job must have secretly sinned to deserve so much suffering, that he was under the Almighty’s curse—our intuitive (though unspoken) response to other people’s suffering

But Job insists he is guilty of no spectacular secret sin, “Let the Almighty answer me,” he demands (Job 31:35).

And God does. In the infuriating way only the Almighty can get away with, he answers Job in a series of questions.

“Who laid the earth’s cornerstone

While the morning stars sang together

And all the angels shouted for joy?

“Have you entered the storehouses of the snow?”

“Can you bind the beautiful Pleaides?

Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons?

Do you give his horse his strength

Who at the blast of the trumpets snorts, “Aha.”

God has put together this vast cosmos of sea and stars and snow, of lightning and lions and leviathans, ostriches, ospreys and eagles. Job, a very minor character in the complex epic of the universe, does not have the perspective to contend with him, God suggests.

God exists on another plane altogether, able to see the end from the beginning, to contain all things in his mind, to see the whole complex canvas of human existence at a single glance, and the glorious end of each contorted plot twist in our lives. While Job sees but one page, God sees the entire plot.

“Woe to those who quarrel with their Maker,
Does the clay say to the potter,
‘What are you making?’ the prophet Isaiah writes.

God is God. He chooses the plot of our lives, chooses the role we are to play in the cosmic drama. It is our task to play it well.

Job repents of his turbulent questions.

“Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,

things too wonderful for me to know.

My ears had heard of you,

But now my eyes have seen you.

Therefore I repent.”

And Job’s acceptance turns things around. “The Lord made him prosperous again, and gave him twice as much as he had before.” (Job 42:10)

* * *

Darkness, trouble, hassle is a fact of life, seven hours of darkness in our brightest day. “In this world, you will have trouble,” were among Jesus’s last words, though he goes on to say, “But be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.”

When God created a pristine world that he could have shaped any way, he deliberately left a bit of darkness too.

Why?

For the same reason a story-teller leaves a bit of darkness in his stories perhaps. It forces the story to a better, more beautiful, more interesting conclusion. Cinderella had to sleep among the cinders; Sleeping Beauty had to prick her thumb on the spindle; the shard of ice had to enter Kay’s heart for us to have a story.

Artists instinctively know that they must frame brightness with darkness. Possibly God like Van Gogh found as much beauty in a starry night as a sunrise.

Winter strengthens the root systems of trees, sending them delving deep for nourishment. Without it, bulbs would not burst into blossom. Eternal summer can take a toll on mental health; in Greenland suicides are more common in summer. Seasonal Affective Disorder strikes in the summer as well as in winter.

If we had eternal daylight, eternal summer, unblemished happiness, we would not value them quite as much. A period of just-enough makes us appreciate how money can cushion and enrich life; a period of loneliness makes friendship precious; a period of failure sweetens success.

***

God left darkness and winter as facts of life. So what do we do when life does not go the way we want it to?

We fling up our hands and accept it, light as well as darkness, good as well as evil, trusting the one who sends both, light that shines in winter, the selah of darkness in summer.

* * *

We accept it, with thankfulness that our world with all its darkness is still under God’s protection.

The world tilts towards good as it tilts towards the sun.

Because, as we are told in the second line of Genesis, while all the world was darkness, the spirit of God still hovered over the water.

And so we have hope.

I am in a situation of chaos, stress and high emotion, and over me the Spirit hovers.

My dog is dying, and I am overwhelmed with sadness watching him, and over me the spirit hovers.

I want my anaemia to go and that polyp to be benign, and over me the spirit hovers.

Life will bring me light and goodness and joy, but if it presents challenges, I know this for sure: Over me the spirit hovers, always hovers.

* * *

And so I can face the future. And so I can smile.

Because as Gerard Manley Hopkins says,

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out
It gathers to a greatness,

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; Bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell:

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Ah the Spirit’s warm breast, his bright wings. So much love surrounding us, whether we feel it or not.

And so as John Mark Macmillan continues,

Then all of a sudden,
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory

And I realize just how beautiful you are and how great your affections are for me.

And I really do believe, what Paul wrote to the Romans: In all things God works for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28) Because he is super-duper powerful and creative, and so he can. Because he is good, and so he will.

And so I say with Julian of Norwich, “All will be well, all will be well, all manner of things will be well,” because the Holy Spirit broods over us, strengthening us, filling us with joy. He swoops down in light and joy, but something has his “dark descending” as Gerard Manley Hopkins puts it, continuing, surprisingly, ‘And most is merciful then.”

~~~~

Tweetables—

God saw that light was good, but he left the darkness too. Why? From @anitamathias1

Couldn’t God have prevented all these griefs and hassles? I think, crossly. From @anitamathias1

Suffering can force a story to a better, more beautiful, more interesting conclusion. From @anitamathias1

Possibly God, like Van Gogh, found as much beauty in a starry night as a sunrise. From @anitamathias1

Over to you

Have you seen the light shine in the darkness?

Have you experienced the brooding comfort of the Holy Spirit in the midst of the darkness?

This post is kindly sponsored by How to up your health game.

In which Imaginative Literature Stirs the Heart to Conversion (A Guest Post by Holly Ordway)

By Anita Mathias

I am honoured to welcome Dr. Holly Ordway to my blog today.

In which Imaginative Literature Stirs the Heart to Conversion

How could a fierce atheist enter into Christian faith? There are many ways for God’s grace to work; my own story is one that highlights the importance of imaginative literature!

When I was firmly an atheist, I dismissed Christianity as superstitious nonsense, and I simply would not have listened to the arguments that ultimately convinced me that the Christian claim is objectively true. Apologetics arguments were (eventually) vitally important, but as I reflected and wrote about my journey, I recognized the importance of imagination as both the catalyst and the foundation of my rational exploration of the faith.

How did that happen?

Let me give you a little glimpse from my memoir of conversion, Not God’s Type: An Atheist Academic Lays Down Her Arms.

From my childhood:

Long before I gave any thought about whether Christianity was true, and long before I considered questions of faith and practice, my imagination was being fed Christianly. I delighted in the stories of King Arthur’s knights and the quest for the Holy Grail, without knowing that the Grail was the cup from the Last Supper. I had no idea that the Chronicles of Narnia had anything to do with Jesus, but images from the stories stuck with me, as bright and vivid in my memory as if I had caught sight of a real landscape, had a real encounter, with more significance than I could quite grasp.

And at some point in my childhood, I found J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and that changed everything. Not suddenly. Not even immediately. But slowly, surely. Like light from an invisible lamp, God’s grace was beginning to shine out from Tolkien’s works, illuminating my Godless imagination with a Christian vision.

I don’t remember reading The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit for the first time, only re-reading them again and again… Middle Earth was a world in which there is darkness, but also real light, a light that shines in the darkness and is not extinguished: Galadriel’s light, and the light of the star that Sam sees break through the clouds in Mordor, and the ray of sun that falls on the flower-crowned head of the king’s broken statue at the crossroads… I didn’t know, then, that my imagination had been, as it were, baptized in Middle Earth. But something took root in my reading of Tolkien that would flower many years later.

From my time at college:

The bumper-sticker expressions of Christian affirmation – “I’m not perfect, just forgiven!” “God is my co-pilot!” – and the kitsch art that I saw – a blue-eyed Jesus in drapey robes (polyester?) comforting some repentant hipster, or cuddling impossibly adorable children (none crying or distracted), presented faith as a kind of pious flag-waving. No thanks!

I didn’t know then how to say it, but I was looking for the cosmic Christ, the one by whom all things were made, the risen and glorified Jesus at the right hand of the Father.

The Catholic poet Gerard Manley Hopkins got past my allergic reaction to kitsch because it flowed naturally out of what he saw in the world.

Where his poetry was sweet, it had the sweetness of a perfectly ripe strawberry, or of the very best chocolate, creamy and rich – not the chemical sweetness of a low-fat sugar-free pudding with non-dairy whipped topping.

Where his poetry was bitter, it was bitter with the taste of real misery, the kind that fills up your awareness, squeezes out the memory of better times and draws a blank on tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow – not the faux-sadness of “Jesus died for you!” (so cheer up and get with the program already), the faux-compassion that can’t bear to look at a crucifix (so morbid).

Somehow for Hopkins the sweet and the bitter were not opposed; they were part of the same experience of being in the world, and undergirding all of it was something I didn’t understand at all, never having experienced it or known anyone who had: the reality of God, not as an abstract moral figure or as a name dropped to show off one’s piety, but a dynamic awareness of being in relationship with the Trinitarian God, an experienced reality bigger by far than the words used to point to it.

Years later, struggling with questions of meaning, wrestling with despair, I re-read Hopkins. I had no conscious desire to find God; I thought I knew that He did not exist. And yet something was at work in me, just as Hopkins wrote in “The Windhover”: “My heart in hiding / Stirred for a bird. . .” My heart stirred – for what? For something beyond my experience.

Poetry had done its work. I was ready to listen.

Holly Ordway is Professor of English and Director of the MA in Cultural Apologetics at Houston Baptist University, and the author of Not God’s Type: An Atheist Academic Lays Down Her Arms (Ignatius Press, 2014). She holds a PhD in English literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst; her academic work focuses on imagination in apologetics, with special attention to the writings of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams.

What Children Know: What it Means to Truly Live (A Guest Post by Laura Boggess)

By Anita Mathias

I am honoured and excited to be hosting Laura Boggess today. I am reading her exquisite book Playdates with God with much delight. Do yourself a favour and buy it too–today!!

Playdates with God

What Children Know: What it Means to Truly Live

A few frail drops of rain fall and I sit at the breakfast table, wondering.

My New Testament reading this morning is on the Year of Jubilee and I am thinking of freedom. I am thinking of a broken figure in a hospital bed—one of the patients in the hospital where I work—held prisoner by a body that once was taken for granted.

I am thinking of brave words uttered from cracked lips, of a story telling long torment in an able body, of abuse and addiction, and how his eyes are opened now. I am thinking about what it takes to realize the gifts we are given each day of our life.

Do you feel like giving up?

It is something I have to ask, part of my job as a therapist.

Do you want to live?

I stare out my window and I ask myself this question:

What does it mean to truly live?

To feel each passing moment in my marrow, detect the pull of gravity on my spirit—measure each turn of the earth with outstretched arms? How can I hear a moment call for calm solitude? How to be present in each heartbeat and feel each wisp of breath travel through my nose—move through my body as it is carries life into my unknown places?

Today, I need a map. I am lost—all turned about in this thing I call living.

Yesterday, I asked my two boys, “What if today is the best day of your life and you miss it? What if you miss it because you are thinking about tomorrow? Or the next day?”

We were taking our dog, Bonnie, on her evening walk—our constitutional these autumn days. We missed our promise earlier, so we were walking in the dark—light from neighbors’ windows peeking out at us.

Their moon-faces and shadow-mouths shone bright and under cover of night the tide of their laughter swept over me and I knew. I knew they never would miss the best day of their life.

Children have a way of catching joy and carrying it out into their every day—into their walking around life.

Why don’t I?

The Year of Jubilee came after seven years of Sabbaths. Seven times seven years. In the fiftieth year, liberty is proclaimed. Debts were cancelled; land returned to its original owner, countrymen who were slaves were freed…

I know that Jesus is our Jubilee. He came to set the captives free.

But there are no answers for lost days here. Only questions. These empty eyes, these silent muscles do not know about the arcana of Jubilee. What do we miss in our grown-up lives while we wait for the promised freedom.

Isn’t there freedom now? In each moment, if only I choose to see?

I pray for faith like a child. I pray for eyes to see the holy in each moment.

And the Name, whispered, fills the room.

I feel each passing moment in my marrow; detect the pull of gravity on my spirit—stretch arms to feel the earth turning. I hear this moment call to me—it whispers all that is required. Each heartbeat ticks the seconds, each wisp of breath breathes life.

Do you want to live?

The Jubilee is inside of me. Sometimes I give it away.

Photo of Laura by Fall Meadow Photography.

Author of the newly-released Playdates with God: Having a Childlike Faith in a Grown-up World, Laura Boggess lives in a little valley in West Virginia with her husband and two sons. She is a content editor for TheHighCalling.org and blogs at lauraboggess.com. Connect with Laura on Facebook and Twitter.