Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

Martin Luther didn’t say that, did he? Yes, he did!

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“You have as much laughter as you have faith.”

“The dog is the most faithful of animals and would be much esteemed were it not so common. Our Lord God has made His greatest gifts the commonest.”

“Be thou comforted, little dog, Thou too in Resurrection shall have a little golden tail”

“If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write.”

“Whenever the devil harasses you, seek the company of men or drink more, or joke and talk nonsense, or do some other merry thing. Sometimes we must drink more, sport, recreate ourselves, and even sin a little to spite the devil, so that we leave him no place for troubling our consciences with trifles. We are conquered if we try too conscientiously not to sin at all. So when the devil says to you: do not drink, answer him: I will drink, and right freely, just because you tell me not to.”

“A unjust law, is no law at all.”

 “I know not the way God leads me, but well do I know my Guide.”
Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly.”
Spare the rod and spoil the child – that is true. But, beside the rod, keep an apple to give him when he has done well.” Martin Luther
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.
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.
God writes the Gospel, not in the Bible alone, but also on tree, and in the flowers, and clouds, and stars.

 Work, work, from morning until late at night. In fact, I have so much to do that I shall have to spend the first three hours in prayer. – Martin Luther

What do you want? John 1:37

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What do you want?

Image Credit

What do you want? John 1:37
And no-nonsense, getting down to business,
the first thing you ask us.
in this most beautiful of books.
is a question.
What do you want?
I am today ashamed of the smallness
of my desire.
But here it is.
I place it in your hands.
Please grant it.
But if you transform it,
or deny it,
still, be thou blessed.
Just give me your joy.
Give me yourself.

What Do You Really Want? (John 1:37)

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Image Credit

What do you want? John 1:37

 

And no-nonsense, getting down to business,

the first thing you ask us,

in this most beautiful of books.

is a question.

What do you want?

 

I am today ashamed of the smallness

of my desire.

But I must be honest about it.

Here it is.

I place it in your hands.

Please grant it.

 

But if you transform it,

or deny it,

still, be thou blessed.

 

Just give me your joy.

Give me yourself.

 

A Famine of the Word of God

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Sweeter than honey; stronger than a lion (Image credit)

11 “The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign LORD,
“when I will send a famine through the land—
not a famine of food or a thirst for water,
but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD.
12 People will stagger from sea to sea
and wander from north to east,
searching for the word of the LORD,
but they will not find it. Amos 8
I was immersed in Scripture until July this year, since I was attempting to Blog Through the Bible.
I had gone through a rough time emotionally last year, and turned to Scripture to put myself together. I was inspired by how Martin Luther was delivered from his religious perfectionism and guilt by lecturing through the Bible as a Catholic seminary professor at Wittenberg University (thereby stumbling upon the great truth that a man is saved by grace, through faith alone).
Scripture rescues him again from adrenal fatigue, nervous exhaustion, fear and depression–what we would today call a nervous breakdown–through his project of translating Scripture in the Wartburg.
I probably went at my Blog Through the Bible project too whole-heartedly, and was exhausted by July. My nerves needed a break from the project, though I didn’t realise the break would stretch to four and a half months!
For the last three months, I have felt an almost physical longing to be soaked in scripture. I have been feeling famished for it. We’ve been playing it in the car, and in rooms I tidy.
It’s the longest time I have gone without daily study of scripture in my almost 23 years as a Christian.
Well, it’s Advent, the start of the Church Year, and I am celebrating it by blogging through the Gospel of John–just looking at the words of Jesus. I will be sharing it on this blog, and here’s the first post.

 

Decluttering: An Easy Way to Start a Virtuous Circle in Your Life

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Vermeer, Music Lesson,

 

Until 2008, one of our greatest sources of sadness and irritation was the fact that we were rather messy and disorganised. And, as for the girls, well, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

But we have gradually changed. If you show up unannounced, or better still, with 15 minutes warning, you will find an acceptable house, not immaculate or even particularly tidy, but not disgraceful either.

* * *

 What changed? Partly getting a cleaner which motivated us to get everything in the right place for them to clean. And going through the house, tidying every room, once a week, motivated us to begin getting rid of things.

And space and order is addictive. Once you start decluttering, it becomes a habit to ask “Do I really need this? Is it beautiful? Is it useful?”

And how old were we when we finally got our acts together, and became tidy grown-ups? Mid-forties!!

Which shows it’s never too late to change.

* * *

And, interestingly, the last five years have also been a period of blessing and productivity for us, in many ways.

Messy, disorganized people will never achieve as much as they could, though they may be achieving enough!

* * *

 One of my inspirations was Marla Cilley, Flylady. Marla in her mid-forties was depressed, overweight, in debt, and surrounded by chaos, mess and clutter.

“Enough,” she said, one day. There was too much clutter and mess for her to clean it all up in a day, or a week, or a month, and, besides, she was depressed! However, she shone her sink, and resolved that she would continue shining her sink, if it killed her. Gradually, she began picking up the dishes around the sink, sticking them in the dishwasher, and order and beauty spread outwards.

She attributes her success at becoming a tidy, organised home-dweller to two things—consistency and persistence.  Anyone she says can run a tidy, organised home, if they work at it with consistency and persistence.

Her website flylady.net is full of practical ideas. She will email these to you if you would like to follow her way to domestic order and peace. She has worked out where to start to get out of chaos, and the most leveraged first steps. Her way definitely works!!

* * *

 Which of her tips have helped me?

1)  Anyone can do anything for 15 minutes at a time. So when a room gets messy, or when there are rooms I have never tidied properly, like the library or the garage, or the barn, I set a timer for 15 minutes. I never do more than 15 minutes on a room, so there is no risk of boredom setting in.

2)  She has cool suggestions for crisis cleaning–if guests are due, for example. Work on 3 separate rooms for 15 minutes each, take a 15 minute break. Repeat.

3) She also suggests focusing on hot spots—you know, where clutter gathers all by itself. We don’t have these any more, since we work on them weekly.

4) Most useful of all, perhaps is the concept of baby steps. Your house didn’t get messy in a day, and won’t get tidy in a day. Take small, but consistently maintained steps to get it all tidy again.

The confidence she gained in getting her domestic act together spilled over into a writing ministry. She next tackled her overweight body, “cluttered” she called it, and wrote a book about that too.  She got out of debt.

It’s amazing how confidence breeds confidence. For instance, I’ve noticed this syndrome in several people, and have sunk into it myself (except for the debt): sleeping in, a messy house, being overweight, and substantially in debt.

How to get out of it? The answer is: Start anywhere. Start with what bugs you most. Getting your house tidy or waking early will give you the time and confidence to lose weight. And the discipline and organizational skills and confidence you gain in one area will spill over to others.

* * *

For myself, getting our family business into profit gave me the confidence to get the house together (and helped pay for the cleaner) which gave me the peace and mental space to launch a reasonably successful blog, which gave me the confidence and drive to wake earlier, which gave me extra time, and I am now working on the weight, and have lost 16 pounds! You see, a virtuous circle!!

Anyway, have a look at Flylady.net. You will be entertained, and perhaps educated!!

 

The Nasrid Palace at the Alhambra (Granada, Spain)

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Detail from a courtyard wall at the Alhambra (stucco above, tile below)

(Thanks, Roy Mathias, for all your help with photographs and writing for this post.)

Click, or right click, on an image to see a larger version.

We have had wanted to visit the Alhambra for many years, and this dream came true in December 2010, while Granada, and the rest of Europe was enduring its coldest winter for years.  Granada is a rugged mountain city with steep winding roads.  The Alhambra is at the top of one of these, and is a large complex including a place, mosque, fort and extensive gardens.

Nasrid Palace (Palacios Nazaries)

The Nasrid Palace is the star attraction.  One enters through a rather disappointing entrance and into a dark hall with a carved wooden ceiling and plaster work.

However, one soon sees the real Alhambra. Here is the first courtyard

and one walks through courtyard after courtyard (details shown later)

Alcove at the Alhambra

(I never did find out what the white bowls were for.)

Water played an important role in Moorish architecture.

Alhambra (Harem courtyard)
Same view of the Harem courtyard at the Alhambra from furtherback.
Alhambra stucco work

Apparently the Alhambra was designed to be renewed and redecorated by successive rulers.  Much of the decoration is plaster, and in parts, which naturally I didn’t bother photographing, on can see it in a state of decay.  The patterns were a combination of geometric patterns, as well as Islamic inscriptions.    For example “The is no Conqueror but God”, the one time battle cry of the Nasrids, is repeated over and over again on the walls.    Here are some details.  One is surrounded by these and can spend a whole day studying the patterns, if if one can’t read the inscriptions.

larger scale view of the same

The top of a pillar — one can see remiains of blue paint.
A little hard to see, but this is a ceiling
Wooden ceiling

Towards the end of the tour one comes to the Courtyard of Lions.  Unfortunately it was undergoing repairs and we saw it only through scaffolding.  These pictures are from the web

A long day pleasant day, with only a few places to sit.

“All I have left is a nuclear bomb”

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My good friend, Paul Miller says, “People say, ‘All I have left is prayer,’ as a euphemism for ‘There’s nothing I can do.’ “ But that is like saying, “All I have left is a nuclear bomb.”
In fact, because of long experience of trying to do things by my own strength and failing, and also experiencing the power of prayer I rather like getting to the point at which I can honestly say, “All I have left is prayer.”
It’s then that I feel excited, hopeful. As long as what I am praying about is in God’s will (i.e. I am not hoping to compete in the Decathlon in the 2012 Olympics, or win the New York Marathon) I feel that once I say, “Done what I can, out of energy, out of inspiration, out of talent. Over to you, God, Please help,” then things are going to get really interesting.
And that’s when I can really relax. Because I believe that if what I am praying is in God’s will, He is, sooner or later, going to hand over the plutonium for a nuclear bomb. Or the bomb itself.
I have numerous examples—my biggest business breakthroughs, elegant and simple but geometrically lucrative ideas came after desperate prayer (which, sadly, followed plodding, exhausting, arithmetical effort).
The idea of breaking my long writers’ block (causing by 4-5 years in business) by blogging came from God too.
One thing I like about blogging is that, well, I need to do it by prayer so much.
Writing is one thing. Getting a finite piece as finished, as perfect as I can.
But blogging is about a whole lot more than writing well. And none of these are my strengths. There is the physical appearance of the piece, for one.
Initially, one needs to network to find readers—which has never been a particular strength of mine. I don’t even like the word: networking. And the way you get known and read in the blogosphere, as advocated by blogging gurus—by leaving comments on other blogs to alert them to your existence, well, I just don’t have the time and energy to do much of that. And then those other building blocks of a successful blog— being blog-rolled, linked to, the appearance of social proof–well, they are given to you by other people. There is nothing you can do to get them.
And so, when stats stall, and my blog does not excite or interest me deeply, leave alone anyone else, well then, it’s time for the nuclear option. To pray for blessing, breakthroughs, wisdom, inspiration, ideas. Insight on how I can do what I do better, more quickly. Ways for my blog to be more of a blessing. I ask that God may bring me readers whom my blog might be a blessing to. And I even pray for some of the specific ingredients of a successful blog—and am surprised at how quickly those prayers are answered, in a small way.
So I suppose the secret is to pray continually as Paul advocated, not just when my stats stall.