Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

Work: Career vs. Calling

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The difference between career and calling is revolutionary.


A career is relentless: there is always more you can do, always people who are doing more, doing it better, there are random variables; it’s always more, more, more to ascend the greasy pole of fame and fortune and success.

Working at the very same thing because it is your calling or vocation sets you free to work in peace, to do what you can do and leave the rest in God’s hands.

“For me it all comes down to this: Did God give me this desire? If so, my success is not dependent on me, or how my call stacks up against another’s. My success is totally dependent on my obedience to the call.”

Karen Arneson, Secrets of Success

(Archive post from May, 2010)

The Treacle Bible, The Vinegar Bible and The Murderers Bible

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illuminated-bible
There are old Bibles that are famous for their misprints. When Bibles were expensive, only one printing of the Bible was widespread at any given time, and its mistakes became celebrated.
In 1823 when the Old Testament appeared with the verse “And Rebekah arose with her camels” instead of damsels with was known as the Camel’s Bible.
In 1804, the Lions Bible had sons coming forth from lions instead of loins.
In the Standing Fishes Bible, the fisherman must have looked on in such surprise when “the fish stood on the shore all the way from Engedi to Eneglaim.”
There are dozens of these: the Treacle Bible, the Bear Bible, the Bug Bible. In the Sin-On Bible, John 5:14 exhorted the believers not to “sin no more,” but to “sin on more.”
(Barbara Kingsolver: The Poisonwood Bible)
The Vinegar Bible 1717
The parable of the vinegar (instead of vineyard) in the headline about Luke 20
The Printers Bible 1702
Printers (instead of Princes) have persecuted me.
Psalm 119.161
The Place-Makers Bible 1562
Blessed are the place-makers (instead of the peace-makers). Matthew 5.9
The Bug Bible 1551
Thou shalt not be afraid for the bugges (bogies) by night (instead of terror). Psalm 91.5
The Treacle Bible 1568
Is there no treacle (instead of balm) in Gilead? Jeremiah 7.22
The Unrighteous Bible
Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit (instead of not inherit) the kingdom or God. 1 Corinthians 6.9
The Wicked Bible 1631
Do commit adultery (instead of do not). Exodus 20.14. The printer was fined £300 for omitting the word not. All copies were ordered to be destroyed by Charles 1.
The Murderers Bible 1801
There are murderers (instead of murmerers). Jude 16
Let the children first be killed (instead of filled).
(I am indebted to Richard Littledale for the second list)

What are men better than sheep or goats…?

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My father, who loved poetry, recited this passage of the Morte D’Arthur to me a few

times and I have loved it ever since.

And slowly answer’d Arthur from the barge:

“The old order changeth, yielding place to new,

And God fulfils Himself in many ways,

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

but thou,

If thou shouldst never see my face again,

Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer

Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice

Rise like a fountain for me night and day.

For what are men better than sheep or goats

That nourish a blind life within the brain,

If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer

Both for themselves and those who call them friend?

For so the whole round earth is every way

Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.

For what are men better than sheep or goats that nourish a blind life within the brain, if, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer, both for themselves and those who call them friend?

There is so much truth in it, isn’t there? What are men or women without a vertical dimension to their lives, without the underground river of prayer running through their lives and sweetening it? What are men or women without an interior life to retreat to, their own interior castle?

And Tennyson knew, as all praying people know, that it is an absolute fact that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.

What would you like to see wrought in your life, in someone else’s life, or in the world through your prayer?

Working Restfully

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We were created to work out of a place of rest, Sally writes in a beautiful blog post.
Indeed!
These are increasingly red lights for me: Being over-tired, being stressed, over-working, being anxious, obsessing.
Because you see, his yoke is easy, and his burden light.
 
When I am doing too much, am rushing ahead of him, am doing what I am not called to do, or doing more than I am called to do today, I am—no wonder!!—tired.
I love the image of two oxen in tandem, walking together, the experienced ox setting the pace for the younger one, while the yoke they bear makes the shifting of enormous loads relatively easy.
And that is how I want to go through my day, and sometimes do—with frequent rest breaks, prayer breaks, to make sure I am still plodding beside my lovely ox friend, going where he intends me to go—and at the pace he intends.
And here is an excerpt from Sally’s beautiful blog:
I was struck again that humanity was created to work from a place of rest; God rested and took in the wonder of his creation, and he invites us to rest with him. To enjoy being in his company, to revel in our createdness, to be before we ever start to do! I believe that we need to recapture the art of being, not simply the art of relaxing, because quite often relaxing is a form of doing….
We need to be in God’s presence, to be rekindled by the breath that gives us life,to breathe his air, to receive renewal for our souls and minds, spirits and bodies. To remember that we were not created to do anything alone, but rather to be in communion with the one who lovingly fashioned us in his image from the dust and called us his own.
In “Life After God” Douglas Coupland writes,
“Now here is my secret:
I tell it to you with an openness of heart that I doubt I shall ever achieve again, so I pray that you are in a quiet room as you hear these words. My secret is that I need God- that I am sick and I can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me to give, because I no longer seem capable of giving; to help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love.”
I need God, I need God because I can’t do life alone, and when I try I soon run out of steam and find myself incapable of life. We weren’t made to do things for God, God does not want us to do things for him, we were made to live out a life with God, “to live and move and have our being in God.” (Acts 17:28).
As one who was always striving to do more, and to be more, this was and continues to be a deep revelation and challenge to me, and I pray that it will continue to be so. When I am “in” Christ, with God I am freed from the need to perform, I don’t have to do anything for:
“God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.” (Ephesians 3)
So here I am, sick and unable to be a disciple without him, and that is OK, because that is how it should be             

An Indian Summer and personal catch-up

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An older picture of our house on an Indian summer day. Except we now have a 30 sq. m conservatory in front of the white wall.

 

It’s a gorgeous Indian Summer in Oxford at the moment. I said to Roy, “The weather is so beautiful. I want to go on holiday.”

Roy, who most certainly did not want to go on holiday, said, “Well, go on holiday right here. I am taking a holiday day. I am cleaning out the garage. Join me.”
And so, ladies and gentlemen, I have decided to join him in an Indian Summer holiday. Not in cleaning out the garage, though. (Whoever decided gender roles has generally allocated barbecues, mowing the lawn, and cleaning out sheds and garages as male jobs, and far be it from me to mess with gender roles in this case).
I am going to have an Indian summer holiday at home for a few days–rest, pray, garden, declutter, exercise, and then return to writing fresh and unjaded!! Getting together with friends tonight, Friday and on Saturday, at their homes, which is great, company without cleaning.
Incidentally, holidays at home usually do not work for me–I get magnetically attracted to my laptop and books. But I am going to take 3 hours a day at least off the grid and books to exercise, garden, and do some home-loving.
We have two sets of guests coming over next week–and suddenly I looked at my home and garden critically and dispassionately. Yeah, some work could be done to restore some beauty!
* * *
You know, I always assumed that an Indian summer meant a summer like those in India. Yeah, me and Columbus–quite unimaginative!!
However, I listened to Daniel Boorstin’s brilliant history of America on tape a couple of decades ago. In The Americans: The Colonial Experience he tells us the etymology of the phrase. The brilliant summer like weather in the middle of autumn tempted the early settlers out of their walled encampments to enjoy the surprise gift of sunshine.
And behold, Indian raiding parties came thundering down, on the unwitting settlers soaking in the last bit of sunshine. The summer of the Indians. Indian summer!

Human Sacrifices: “Anything Else You Worship Will Eat You Alive,” David Foster Wallace

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Willa Cather famously said, “The God of Art demands human sacrifices.”

Well, if one sets excellence in an art or science or craft or business as the goal of one’s life, then, yes, it will demand a human sacrifice–your very self.
However, if you set out to create art, or the best art you are capable of within the constraints of time, in tandem with God, then human sacrifice is neither demanded nor necessary.
“Here’s something that’s weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism.
 
There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.
 
And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship–be it Jesus Christ or Allah, be it YHWH or the Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles–is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.

If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth.

Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally kill you.
 
On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.
Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear.

Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.

But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.
 
They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing.
 
And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it.
 
But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving…. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
 
That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.”

God is the most winsome of all beings and His service one of unspeakable pleasure–A.W. Tozer

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Satan’s first attack on the human race was his sly effort to destroy Eve’s confidence in the kindness of God. Unfortunately for her and for us, he succeeded too well. From that day, men have had a false conception of God, and it is exactly this that has cut from under them the ground of righteousness and driven them to reckless and destructive living…

…The God of the Pharisee was not a God easy to live with, so his religion became grim and hard and loveless…

…The truth is that God is the most winsome of all beings and His service one of unspeakable pleasure…

…How good it would be if we could learn that God is easy to live with. He remembers our frame and knows that we are dust. He may sometimes chasten us, it is true, but even this He does with a smile, the proud tender smile of a Father who is bursting with pleasure over an imperfect but promising son who is coming every day to look more and more like the One whose child he is…

from the The Best of Tozer, Baker 1978 edition, pp. 120-122

Certainly not all of the mystery of the Godhead can be known by man–but just as certainly, all that men can know of God in this life is revealed in Jesus Christ! When the Apostle Paul said with yearning, “That I may know Him,” he was not speaking of intellectual knowledge. Paul was speaking of the reality of an experience of knowing God personally and consciously, spirit touching spirit and heart touching heart. We know that people spend a lot of time talking about a deeper Christian life–but few seem to want to know and love God for Himself. The precious fact is that God is the deeper life! Jesus Christ Himself is the deeper life. And as I plunge on into the knowledge of the triune God, my heart moves on into the blessedness of His fellowship. This means that there is less of me and more of God–thus my spiritual life deepens and I am strengthened in the knowledge of His will.

–A.W. Tozer


Thank you to Paul at Thinking out Loud for these lovely excerpts from Tozer’s work.