Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

Proverbs 1 7-9 The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of Knowledge. Day 4. Jan 4th.

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Proverbs 1 7-9
7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.


The fear of the Lord is indeed the beginning of wisdom. It puts natural boundaries around us, and safeguards us from much that is destructive–and from its consequences.  The fear of the Lord preserves us from learning about the foolishness and the acrid fruits of sin in the bitter school of trial and error. 


Discipline. Something I have both craved and struggled with all my life. Interestingly, psychotherapist Scott Peck in his perennial best-seller, The Road Less Travelled, talks about discipline–deferring gratification–as the foundation of a decent human life. As parents, we have a dual burden: to discipline ourselves, and to teach self-discipline to our children so that they realize the value of their lives, their time and themselves, and later instinctively practice it. 

8 Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction and do not forsake your mother’s teaching. 9 They will be a garland to grace your head and a chain to adorn your neck.

Matthew 2: 12-23, Matthew 3 1-6, Day 4. Jan 4th, 2011.

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Matthew 2

 13 When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream.
And how can God break through to us with something so absolutely, totally alien to us, almost surreal that we might not be able to receive its wisdom even in our time of prayer? A dream is one way.

“Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”
Stay there until I tell you. Joseph is moving into a highly dangerous, tricky, smoke-and-mirrors situation in which you cannot take people’s words at face-value, and things are not as they seem. Being able to hear God’s voice is of crucial importance to him in this situation. What Moses told his people is even more true here, “They are not just idle words for you–they are your life. By them you will live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess.”
Again God does often warn us of danger through premonitions of it.
How do we know if these premonitions are from God?
The more we hear and listen to his voice, the more we are certain that it is him. “My sheep hear my voice.” It’s probably an art, not a science. We learn by trial and error.

 14 So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, 15 where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”
 16 When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. 17 Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
 18 “A voice is heard in Ramah,
   weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
   and refusing to be comforted,
   because they are no more.”
I love Matthew’s interweaving of ancient Biblical prophecy with the events of Jesus life. God’s protection and blessing over our lives and emotions is a very real thing. Who would have supposed that the carpenter’s child could escape the King’s designs?
It is wise to ask God for protection, and to rely on it.
 19 After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt 20 and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.”
People who have a strong and distinct gift of hearing God’s voice hear it in various ways. I hear it as a clear (though not audible) inner voice, accompanied with a buzz of excitement, like an electrical thunderstorm in the brain, when it says something which delights me, or like a clear, definite fiat when it says something which surprises or saddens me.
Joseph obeyed the first time he heard an angel speak to him in a dream. And so, not surprisingly, he heard the angelic voice more and more. In dreams. If he had disobeyed, he would never again be sure of the voice of the angel was his own imaginings or indeed the voice of God.
On such small acts of obedience or disobedience destiny hinges.

 21 So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. 22 But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there.
Though the great words which angels always speak is “Do not be afraid,” prudence is also a gift of God, and a gift of the Holy Spirit. Joseph is a mixture of one who hears God, and so can take great risks but also has natural prudence, which is the application of common-sense.
So when is fear, fear and when is it prudence? If we do not do the right thing or show kindness because of fear, then it is fear. If common-sense suggests the dangers of a course of action, and so we decide not to embark upon it, that is prudence.
Prudence judges when fear is fear (an irrational emotion) and when it is mere common-sense. To avoid a druggie’s alley after dark is prudence. To never travel to beautiful places because of the dangers is fear.
I tend towards fearlessness and am a natural risk-taker. Teach me sensible prudence, Lord.

Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, 23 and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene.
Joseph’s prophetic gift obviously operated through dreams. To be more aware of our dreams seems to be a commonsensical strategy for Christians.

 Matthew 3

 1 In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea 2 and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” 
The Kingdom of heaven has come near. These are wonderful words. And I believe it is ever coming nearer.
We can step into it at any time. And all it takes is repentance.
Repentance. Metanoia, a change of heart. You are going in one direction. You stop, turn 180 degrees, and go in the opposite direction. That is repentance.
Lord, please show me the areas of my life in which I need to turn around 180 degrees. I can’t do everything at the same time, so please show me just one or two. Thank you.

3This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah:
   “A voice of one calling in the wilderness,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
   make straight paths for him.’”
What makes straight paths for God? I would say repentance, first and foremost, and then just the actual simple act of hewing paths for him. Paths of time. This is difficult in a world in which the addictions of cyberspace have been added to our previous busyness in meatspace. I set my timer to hear from God for half an hour a day, after an hour of study of scripture, and spiritual blogging (which I consider a spiritual discipline.) Is it easy? My iPhone summons me, my laptop summons me with its myriad siren calls—blog comments, emails, facebook. And then, we make our livelihood through a small publishing company, so our work world with its news and distractions comes to us through our laptops. It is not easy to make a straight path for the Lord, to have mind and heart still enough to hear him. It is nonetheless an immensely rewarding discipline. I often achieve it, and more often fail to. When I realize that I am too hassled and distracted to have my conscious and unconscious calm enough to hear God should he speak, and to be in tune with God, I do a “stop, drop, repent” routine. Lock my door, lie face down on my bed or carpet and quieten and align myself again. And it is amazing how much more productive the next hours are.
Over-busyness is one sure way for me not to experience shalom, and God’s presence. I must be careful not to fall into that trap this year.

 4 John’s clothes were made of camel’s hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey. 5 People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. 6 Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.
Someone who lives in a radically different way attracts attention. Whereas I don’t feel called to radically different—I eat and dress and furnish my house more or less like other people, I hope my life with Christ has left its mark, and there are subtle differences, not radical ones. The blessing promised to Abraham was that he would be a blessing. That is something I want to be true of me—to be a blessing to my family, friends, and those who spend time with me.

Proverbs 1 7-9 The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of Knowledge. Day 4. Jan 4th.

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Proverbs 1 7-9
7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.


The fear of the Lord is indeed the beginning of wisdom. It puts natural boundaries around us, and safeguards us from much that is destructive–and from its consequences.  The fear of the Lord preserves us from learning about the foolishness and the acrid fruits of sin in the bitter school of trial and error. 


Discipline. Something I have both craved and struggled with all my life. Interestingly, psychotherapist Scott Peck in his perennial best-seller, The Road Less Travelled, talks about discipline–deferring gratification–as the foundation of a decent human life. As parents, we have a dual burden: to discipline ourselves, and to teach self-discipline to our children so that they realize the value of their lives, their time and themselves, and later instinctively practice it. 

8 Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction and do not forsake your mother’s teaching. 9 They will be a garland to grace your head and a chain to adorn your neck.

Matthew 2: 12-23, Matthew 3 1-6, Day 4. Jan 4th, 2011.

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Matthew 2

 13 When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream.

And how can God break through to us with something so absolutely, totally alien to us, almost surreal that we might not be able to receive its wisdom even in our time of prayer? A dream is one way.


“Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”

Stay there until I tell you. Joseph is moving into a highly dangerous, tricky, smoke-and-mirrors situation in which you cannot take people’s words at face-value, and things are not as they seem. Being able to hear God’s voice is of crucial importance to him in this situation. What Moses told his people is even more true here, “They are not just idle words for you–they are your life. By them you will live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess.”

Again God does often warn us of danger through premonitions of it.

How do we know if these premonitions are from God?

The more we hear and listen to his voice, the more we are certain that it is him. “My sheep hear my voice.” It’s probably an art, not a science. We learn by trial and error.


 14 So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, 15 where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

 16 When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. 17 Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

 18 “A voice is heard in Ramah,
   weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
   and refusing to be comforted,
   because they are no more.”

I love Matthew’s interweaving of ancient Biblical prophecy with the events of Jesus life. God’s protection and blessing over our lives and emotions is a very real thing. Who would have supposed that the carpenter’s child could escape the King’s designs?

It is wise to ask God for protection, and to rely on it.

 19 After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt 20 and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.”

People who have a strong and distinct gift of hearing God’s voice hear it in various ways. I hear it as a clear (though not audible) inner voice, accompanied with a buzz of excitement, like an electrical thunderstorm in the brain, when it says something which delights me, or like a clear, definite fiat when it says something which surprises or saddens me.

Joseph obeyed the first time he heard an angel speak to him in a dream. And so, not surprisingly, he heard the angelic voice more and more. In dreams. If he had disobeyed, he would never again be sure of the voice of the angel was his own imaginings or indeed the voice of God.

On such small acts of obedience or disobedience destiny hinges.


 21 So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. 22 But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there.

Though the great words which angels always speak is “Do not be afraid,” prudence is also a gift of God, and a gift of the Holy Spirit. Joseph is a mixture of one who hears God, and so can take great risks but also has natural prudence, which is the application of common-sense.

So when is fear, fear and when is it prudence? If we do not do the right thing or show kindness because of fear, then it is fear. If common-sense suggests the dangers of a course of action, and so we decide not to embark upon it, that is prudence.

Prudence judges when fear is fear (an irrational emotion) and when it is mere common-sense. To avoid a druggie’s alley after dark is prudence. To never travel to beautiful places because of the dangers is fear.

I tend towards fearlessness and am a natural risk-taker. Teach me sensible prudence, Lord.


Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, 23 and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene.

Joseph’s prophetic gift obviously operated through dreams. To be more aware of our dreams seems to be a commonsensical strategy for Christians.


 Matthew 3

 1 In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea 2 and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” 

The Kingdom of heaven has come near. These are wonderful words. And I believe it is ever coming nearer.

We can step into it at any time. And all it takes is repentance.

Repentance. Metanoia, a change of heart. You are going in one direction. You stop, turn 180 degrees, and go in the opposite direction. That is repentance.

Lord, please show me the areas of my life in which I need to turn around 180 degrees. I can’t do everything at the same time, so please show me just one or two. Thank you.


3This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah:

   “A voice of one calling in the wilderness,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
   make straight paths for him.’”

What makes straight paths for God? I would say repentance, first and foremost, and then just the actual simple act of hewing paths for him. Paths of time. This is difficult in a world in which the addictions of cyberspace have been added to our previous busyness in meatspace. I set my timer to hear from God for half an hour a day, after an hour of study of scripture, and spiritual blogging (which I consider a spiritual discipline.) Is it easy? My iPhone summons me, my laptop summons me with its myriad siren calls—blog comments, emails, facebook. And then, we make our livelihood through a small publishing company, so our work world with its news and distractions comes to us through our laptops. It is not easy to make a straight path for the Lord, to have mind and heart still enough to hear him. It is nonetheless an immensely rewarding discipline. I often achieve it, and more often fail to. When I realize that I am too hassled and distracted to have my conscious and unconscious calm enough to hear God should he speak, and to be in tune with God, I do a “stop, drop, repent” routine. Lock my door, lie face down on my bed or carpet and quieten and align myself again. And it is amazing how much more productive the next hours are.

Over-busyness is one sure way for me not to experience shalom, and God’s presence. I must be careful not to fall into that trap this year.


 4 John’s clothes were made of camel’s hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey. 5 People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. 6 Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.

Someone who lives in a radically different way attracts attention. Whereas I don’t feel called to radically different—I eat and dress and furnish my house more or less like other people, I hope my life with Christ has left its mark, and there are subtle differences, not radical ones. The blessing promised to Abraham was that he would be a blessing. That is something I want to be true of me—to be a blessing to my family, friends, and those who spend time with me.

Les Nuits de la pleine lune, Full Moon in Paris, Eric Rohmer

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Full Moon in Paris or Les Nuits de la Pleine Lune belongs to Eric Rohmer’s Comedies and Proverbs series. It is based on the proverb “He who has two women loses his soul, he who has two houses loses his mind.” 

Louise is restless with her stable adoring lover, who wants her to stay in and be with him. She feels he is taking away her youth.

She also feel that she is missing out on experience. She has rarely been alone. She has never known the pain of loneliness. She has never loved more than she has been loved.

Louise rents an apartment in Paris to be alone, and revels in the rhythms of solitude. She wins hard -won absences from her lover to be in Paris, to go dancing with her Platonic lovers, and then, despite her assurances to “go all the way” with a man she picks up at a party.

Along the way, she is breaking the heart of her stable, decent lover, who just wants to be a family man in the suburbs. “Have an affair too,” she advises. “I wouldn’t care.”

At the movie’s end, he does; she does.

It’s the story of the growing-up of a mixed-up woman.

I like Rohmer’s films because they are slow explorations of the psyche of his characters, and this interests me as much as it does him.

And they are in French. I might possibly get restless if they were English films, or dubbed. But I have been learning French intensively for the last two years, and hearing it, understanding it, that language like music, gives me great pleasure and great joy.

                                                                          * * * 

And here is an interesting obituary of Eric Rohmer who died at 89

Eric Rohmer obituary

Idiosyncratic French film-maker who was a leading figure in the cinema of the postwar new wave
Eric Rohmer
Eric Rohmer in 1985. Photograph: EPA
In Arthur Penn’s intelligently unconventional private eye thriller Night Moves (1975), Gene Hackman’s hero – who finds the mystery he faces as unfathomable as his personal relationships – is asked by his wife whether he wants to go to an Eric Rohmer movie. “I don’t think so,” he says. “I saw a Rohmer film once. It was kind of like watching paint dry.”
Behind that exchange lies a jab at ­Hollywood’s mistrust of any film-maker, especially a French one, who neglects plot and action in favour of cerebral exploration, metaphysical conceit and moral nuance. The Dream Factory, after all, had proved through trial and error that cinema is cinema, literature is ­literature, and the twain shall meet only provided the images rule, not the words.
Of the major American film-makers, perhaps only Joseph Mankiewicz allowed his scripts, fuelled by his own sparkling dialogue, to wag the tail of his movies. While acknowledging the ­brilliance, Hollywood punditry never failed to complain that Mankiewicz characters simply talked too much.
Rohmer, who has died aged 89, pushed even further into this disputed territory. The oldest of the group of critics associated with the film review Cahiers du Cinéma, who launched the French new wave in the late 1950s, Rohmer had (writing initially under his real name of Maurice Schérer) established impeccable credentials for a future film-maker. Among the objects of his admiration were Dashiell Hammett, Alfred Hitchcock (about whom he wrote a monograph with Claude Chabrol), Howard Hawks, and above all FW Murnau, the great visual stylist of the German expressionist era (on whose version of Faust he published a doctoral thesis). As a film-maker, however, he turned instead to such literary-philosophical luminaries as Blaise Pascal, Denis Diderot, Choderlos de Laclos and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
His first feature, Le Signe du Lion (The Sign of Leo), completed in 1959 after one false start and a handful of shorts, fitted comfortably into the early new wave formula of Parisian life, with its tale of a student musician, tempted into debt by a promised inheritance, who lapses into abject destitution after the legacy turns out to be a hoax. In retrospect, one can clearly see in it the seeds of Rohmer’s later work. Showing little interest in plot or action, Rohmer concentrates on demonstrating how Paris itself becomes an objective ­correlative to the hero’s state of mind, gradually metamorphosing from a ­welcoming city into a bleak stone desert as he realises that the friends from whom he might hope to borrow are all away for the vacation.
With Le Signe du Lion failing at the box office, Rohmer retreated into television where, while working on educational documentaries, he hatched his daring conception for a series of Six Moral Tales. Variations on a theme, each film would deal with “a man meeting a woman at the very moment when he is about to commit himself to someone else”. Furthermore, as Rohmer later observed, the films would deal “less with what people do than with what is going on in their minds while they are doing it”.
Made for TV, the first two films in the cycle, La Boulangère de Monceau (The Baker of Monceau, 1962) and La Carrière de Susanne (Suzanne’s Career, 1963), shot in black and white and running for 26 and 60 minutes respectively, were too cramped in every respect to be ­more than clumsy foretastes of what was to come.
Completing the series for the cinema with La Collectionneuse (The Collector, 1966), Ma Nuit Chez Maud (My Night With Maud, 1969), his ­international breakthrough Le Genou de Claire (Claire’s Knee, 1970) and L’Amour l’Après-midi (Love in the Afternoon, 1972), Rohmer found exactly what he needed in the bigger screens, longer running times, more expansive ­locations and availability of colour (actually in black and white, My Night With Maud uses the snowy landscapes of Clermont-Ferrand as a perfect ­counterpoint to its chilly Pascalian thematic). Backed by the richly sensuous role now played by the visuals, the somewhat arid intellectual dandyism of the first two films flowered into a teasingly metaphysical exploration of human foibles.
Le Genou de Claire, for instance, ­perhaps the most accomplished of the six films, is about a French diplomat, on the brink of both middle age and marriage, enjoying a brief lakeside vacation at Lake Annecy in France. Seduced by his idyllic summery surroundings, he begins casting an appreciative eye over the young women on show. Innocent ­dalliance, he assures himself, proclaiming that his courtly fancy has been captured by the perfection of the eponymous heroine’s knee. Deeper down, though, as he comes to realise when a pert and pretty teenager responds to his casual ­flirtation by remarking on his resemblance to her father, lies a less palatable truth: there, but for the grace of God, goes a dirty old man.
Rohmer followed his Six Moral Tales with two similar cycles, identical in style, method and accomplishment. First came Comedies and Proverbs: La Femme de l’Aviateur (The Aviator’s Wife, 1980), Le Beau Mariage (A Good Marriage, 1981), Pauline à la Plage (Pauline at the Beach, 1982), Les Nuits de la Pleine Lune (Full Moon in Paris, 1984), Le Rayon Vert (The Green Ray, 1986) and L’Ami de Mon Amie (My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend, 1987). Then, Tales of the Four Seasons: Conte de Printemps (A Tale of Springtime, 1989), Conte d’Hiver (A Winter’s Tale, 1992), Conte d’Eté (A Summer’s Tale, 1996) and Conte d’Automne (An Autumn Tale, 1998).
In between times, Rohmer also made a number of non-series films, most notably two literary adaptations which are rather different in their visual approach. Die Marquise von O… (The Marquise of O, 1976) adopts a severe neo-classical style in transposing Heinrich von Kleist’s teasing early-19th-century novella about the social furore occasioned when a chaste young widow suffers a pregnancy which she insists can only be the result of an immaculate conception. Perceval le Gallois (1978), on the other hand, toys joyously with cut-out sets and false perspectives to invest his adaptation of Chrétien de Troyes’s 12th-century Arthurian tale with the faux-naif aspects of an illuminated manuscript.
Both remain entirely consistent with the body of Rohmer’s work, a highly original and endlessly fascinating attempt to render the interior exterior by mapping out the maze of misdirections that bedevil communications between the human heart and mind.
Rohmer guarded his private life fiercely – giving different versions of his date of birth and real name on different occasions, so that it is difficult to be certain of the truth. He was married in 1957 to Thérèse Barbet, and they had two sons.

Psalm 2. The Lord laughs. Day 3. Jan 3rd

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Psalm 2

 1 Why do the nations conspire[a] 
   and the peoples plot in vain? 
2 The kings of the earth rise up 
   and the rulers band together 
   against the LORD and against his anointed, saying, 
3 “Let us break their chains 
   and throw off their shackles.”


 4 The One enthroned in heaven laughs;
   the Lord scoffs at them.
5 He rebukes them in his anger
   and terrifies them in his wrath, saying,
6 “I have installed my king
   on Zion, my holy mountain.”

 7 I will proclaim the LORD’s decree:
   He said to me, “You are my son;
   today I have become your father.
8 Ask me,
   and I will make the nations your inheritance,
   the ends of the earth your possession.
9 You will break them with a rod of iron[b];
   you will dash them to pieces like pottery.”

 10 Therefore, you kings, be wise;
   be warned, you rulers of the earth.
11 Serve the LORD with fear
   and celebrate his rule with trembling.
12 Kiss his son, or he will be angry
   and your way will lead to your destruction,
for his wrath can flare up in a moment.
   Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

When that nations conspire, and the people plot, when the kings rise up, and the rulers band together against the Lord, what does the Lord do.

He laughs. He scoffs at them. He holds them in derision.

Therefore, O Christian, be not afraid when people conspire, plot and rise up and band together against you. Make the Lord your refuge, and you will be blessed. Leave it to him to rebuke them in his anger, and terrify them in his wrath. 

This is one of the Messianic Psalms, traditionally supposed to refer to Christ, the Messiah.