Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

Inkheart: The Movie

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We watched this movie–part of Irene’s Christmas present–tonight. Faster moving than the book, and satisfying to those who have read the book. It’s like watching how someone else’s imagination has conceived and incarnated the book.

Having enjoyed the books, I loved seeing Dustfinger, Farid, and the scene in which Meggie calls forth the shadow. Was delighted to see Fenoglio. I loved the scenes set in the Italian countryside.
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I loved too the central conceit: the power of the imagination and words to make things seem real. A wonderful celebration of the power of the written word and of the imagination. 

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The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

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It’s one of my very favourite novels, which I have loved for most of my life.


I first encountered it when I was very little in an anthology my grandfather gave me, and instantly identified with Maggie of the rough unkempt hair who cuts her hair off when she’s criticized. I was so taken with the Apocrypha she mentions that I put it on my birthday wish list, not realizing that the Apocrypha was in the Bible.


I really loved the Mill on the Floss when I was 15 and 16 and read it several times. I so identified with Maggie, tortured, sensitive misfit, too clever, too unusual for her small pond who grows into a beautiful and intelligent woman. Her hot-headed father loses his temper, his health and his fortune, and the family is reduced to poverty. 


She find relief during this period of poverty in spiritual adventure. She reads The Imitation of Christ, and becomes a withdrawn pietist, finding real thrill in prayer and scripture study and meditation. Which, oddly, and perhaps this is a romantic idea, makes her attractive to men, especially since she blossoms into a beauty. 


I remember crying over the scene in which Stephen Guest, a rich young man, who is engaged to Maggie’s rich cousin Lucy falls in love with her. They row downstream, losing track of time, and spend the night together (in separate rooms, which no one believes.) When they return, Maggie is ostracised. Stephen begs her to marry him, but she refuses. I was full of admiration for Maggie. Most young women in her place would have escaped poverty with a young man they were fond of. 


Her beloved, narrow-minded unimaginative brother Tom also shuns her. Maggie dies rescuing him during a flood. 


The characters are so vividly drawn that they will stay with me forever. Her weepy Aunt Pullet, her pushy, stingy Aunt Glegg, her scaredy cat mother, her pompous brother Tom, her hot-headed doting father, her first lover, Philip Wakeham, her unbelievably sweet cousin, Lucy.


A wonderful novel, everyone, every girl in particular, should read. Somewhat autobiographical in both the period of religiosity, and the period of shocking society as George Eliot had a long and happy “marriage” with a married man. And this was the Victorian era!! 
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Christmases Past and Present

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We’re having an Oxford Christmas today and like Scrooge, I am thinking of Christmases past.

Oxford  and Christmas. Both words come to me freighted with so many associations, memories, traditions, books, films, experiences.

Our family said that we would go to the Christmas Day service at our church, St. Aldate’s which usually does all things well (barring the occasional high decibel-osity of the worship music). But somehow none of us believed that we would really go.

We keep Christmas Day as the one sacred family day, and though I love having people over, the children would rather not have Christmas guests. (I am planning to invite people over on Christmas Eve next year, as our church is running a program to open your home to internationals over Christmas).

In our house, it’s a do as you like day. Christmas presents opened in pyjamas. The roast–duck or goose or turkey–put in still in pyjamas. The kids being very loud without being hushed.

The aromas of the roast bird filling the house. A slow meal. Christmas cake. A family game. A family DVD perhaps (Inkheart today).

It’s a day to relax and decompress, and those are the associations it has for us, a long day of resting, relaxing, family fun and decompressing. It’s like a Sunday without homework, or church or any housework.

We enjoy it so much that when travel over Christmas, we used to have a Mathias Christmas Day a week before. We’d have presents, turkey, Christmas music, rest, relax and have a family day on Dec 6th or 12th or 19th, whenever the postman had delivered the last present.

And then, around Christmas, we travelled. Sometimes California or Florida. Or Mexico, Costa Rica, Madrid, Barcelona. What struck me in these Spanish-speaking countries was that Christmas was was not an indoors private event as in English-speaking countries. Whole families went out into the public squares. When it was really, really crowded, they walked in curvy crocodiles, arms on each other’s shoulders, whole extended families together. They looked at the crib. They bought Navidad goodies. They celebrated together.

Our family is somehow immune to the craziness of Christmas. I used to send Christmas cards and letters to friends and family. I hated the task, and it was a pall over Christmas. Now I don’t send any cards or letters at all. I call my mother, and get together with close friends. I even gave up the Christmas letter, because I didn’t quite see the point of it.

When we were first married, I read a stress reducing tip for Christmas. Go to Christmas parties and events, but don’t have your own. Everyone is over-stretched anyway, so enjoy people without adding a stress to anyone’s calendar. And so we hibernate, making the most of all the social events, though we often have a day of cookie making, and invite the girls’ friends over, which they seem to enjoy.

Presents have gradually been retired from our Christmases. I personally have reached the stage where there is no particular material thing I really want. So I’ve sort of said “no Christmas presents” to Roy, or if I see something extravagant, like a sequinned shawl in a peacock pattern made to a Victorian pattern in the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition in the Ashmolean, I tell Roy he can buy it for me early. Actually this year, he wanted something. A fleece or two, and a pair of clogs. And by telling me he wants them for Christmas, he can get out of the dread task of shopping which he hates.

Presents for children are something else. We used to give them just a few things until they went to school (in America) where for weeks before Christmas, the little children talked about what they were getting for Christmas. I guess, being young myself then, I didn’t want my children to feel sad when they inevitably compared notes.

So I got catalogues, and clicked and clicked. Each year of Christmas presents was more extravagant than the previous one. Though the girls were thrilled with their presents,saying’ thank you Mum and Dad,’ and giving us each a hug  began to be an effort. By the end of the Christmas bling, everyone’s cheeks hurt. The last year that we were in America, we gave them 14 presents each, and spent $1600 on presents.  Because we had ten for Zoe, and nine for Irene, then bought 1 more for Irene, and saw 2 lovely things, then had to buy one more for Zoe, but bought two more. It’s like trying to cut hair perfectly straight. Too much. Too, too much. None of us are tidy people. Where to store all these things? Which to play with first? How to keep parts together? A mistake! We overwhelmed those little girls with presents.

And then, we moved to England, where houses are smaller. The first Christmas here, we gave them £50 each in lovely golden shiny pound coins, and 50 pences, and 20ies, tens and fives and 1s. We scattered these all over the house. Irene, who was five woke up, saw them, and stopped spell-bound, picking them up, and playing with them quietly in the corridor. When Zoe woke up, she said in awed tones, “Zoe, there’s MONEY in the house.” She had had a head start, but they raced around for ages, finding money in the bathtub, corridors, stove, every possible place. Some was never found as is the case with treasure hunts!!  They remember the surprise of their treasure hunt as a magical memory.

We had one extravagant Christmas in England, when we left shopping till Christmas eve, and then scoured the shops, spending something like £1000 trying to find the elusive perfect gift. Some of the presents bought in that panic of exhaustion, the girls have not worn very much. Some they love.

No more. Now we just give them one or two things on Christmas Day, and then give them a largish budget for the sales afterwards, to get the year’s wardrobe. I sometimes go with them, sometimes not. I really, really hate crowds and sales, and would rather pay more to get the perfect item than snap up things because they are cheap. However, it must be said that things are seriously cheap in post-Christmas sales.
 There are several inches of snow on the ground. We often have a Christmas Eve ramble but this year, I don’t know if I am going to summon up the gumption to leave my house.
What a retrospective ramble. Since this is my first year of blogging, we don’t yet have a family policy of whether blogging is okay on Christmas Day while the turkey is being prepared for the oven.. That is Zoe and Roy’s job. I have never learned to cook well–and have given up on trying to learn to cook decades ago. Within the first few months of our 21 year old marriage actually. There are some men who never cook, which is deemed okay. Why not have some women who never cook? Yeah, I think blogging is okay on Christmas Day.

 

Evolving English: One Language, Many Voices

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British Library

British Library


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The British Library is hosts the first ever exhibition exploring the English language from Anglo-Saxon runes to regional dialects and modern day rap. This will explore the English language– one of the most talked and talked about languages in the world– in all its national and international diversity.
Evolving English will place iconic books and manuscripts–the  only surviving manuscript of Beowulf, Shakespeare ‘quartos’, the King James Bible, Dr Johnson’s dictionary– alongside everyday texts and media to show the many social, cultural and historical strands from which the language has been woven.

 My father had immigrated to English in the forties and fifties to train and work as a Chartered Accountant after which he returned to India, to work at Controller of Accounts at Tatas, one of India’s largest companies. He often told me about the cockney greeting, “Nice day, inn’t ?” and how people called him “my love,” or “darling”. I was delighted to be similarly greeted by total strangers when I moved to England, 30 years after he left it, experiencing the continuity of the English language.
Though the language Chaucer and Shakespeare wrote is still understandable to us today, English is continuously evolving. People are reading more than ever—though not necessarily books or traditional media. Facebook, blogs and twitter mean that a new idea or phrase permeates the collective consciousness in days or weeks rather than years.
As such, English, our most hospitable language has adopted popular phrases such as Stephen Covey’s “Paradigm Shift,” Malcolm Gladwell’s “Tipping Point” or “Outliers,” Nassim Nicholas Taleb‘s “Black Swan Events” or even “the credit crunch,” once an arcane term only used by economists, according to The Times.  I, as the owner of a small publishing company use and see the phrase “the long tail” weekly, though in fact Chris Anderson first used in in 2004. The word “snarky” entered the English language through a Heidi Julavits essay, also of 2004. I write this article for another neologism, a blog, “weblog.”
In fact, each sub-group and sub-culture have their own jargon, which is often incomprehensible to outsiders. See the amusing video How to Speak Christianese http://theoxfordchristian.blogspot.com/2010/12/how-to-speak-christianese.html.
Visit the website. It includes a quiz which I played at the Egghead level, getting 5 out of 6, though I admit some answers were guesswork. Do play it and tell me your score. http://www.bl.uk/evolvingenglish/quiz.html

Here are the facts about the exhibition:

  • Evolving English: One Language, Many Voices opens at the British Library on 12 November and is open until 3 April
  • Cost: free
  • While at the exhibition you can record your voice to add to the collection preserved for future study and analysis.
  • The URL is www.bl.uk/evolvingenglish
  • Tweet using

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The British Library’s Exhibition on the Continuing Evolution of English

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British Library

British Library

Sponsored Post

One of the things on my list for the New Year is to go to the British Library exhibition on Evolving English, which continues until the 3rd April 2011. It has treasures such as the only surviving manuscript of Beowulf, Shakespeare ‘quartos’, the King James Bible, Dr Johnson’s dictionary and recordings of famous speeches by Churchill, Gandhi and Mandela — together with early examples of advertising posters, lists of slang, early newspapers from around the world, trading records, comics, adverts, children’s books, dialect recordings, text messages and web pages.
I speak and write a particularly hybrid English—in an accent to match!!–because of my migrations between three English speaking countries. I began speaking English in India where I was one of the quarter of a million who spoke it as a first language. (Another 232 million speak it as a second or third language). I first came to England as an undergraduate student at Somerville College, Oxford University, and spent three years here in the eighties. After that, I moved to America to go to graduate school, and lived there for seventeen years. I returned to England seven years ago, and have lived here ever since.
What particularly struck me was how much spoken British English had evolved in the 17 years I had lived elsewhere. There was a plethora of new slang. I saw controversial ads for a “Chav-free holiday.”  Chav? What’s that? Wikipedia suggests  the offensive backronym “Council Housed And Violent” or the suggestion that pupils at Cheltenham Ladies’ College used the word to describe the young men of the town (“Cheltenham Average”).  Chavs, in turn, according to my research, have their distinctive vocabulary and world view summarized by the statement, “I ain’t bovvered.”
Indeed, language had evolved as much as fashion had. Slang evolves constantly as yesterday’s vivid terms become today’s hackneyed phrases, and we need new words to express our strongest emotions and hang-ups. In fact, there is probably no better way to track the evolution of English than to compare the Facebook statuses of my young friends in their teens and twenties with those of my generation, people in their late forties. The younger people almost appear to be speaking a different language, more vivid and colourful than our language, which tends to be more static. Facebook and blogs probably contribute to a far more rapid dissemination of slang compared to 25 years ago when slang originated and caught on within one’s peer group.
The overuse of strong words, of course, leads to the watering down of their meaning. “The reaction was immense” people say, when it was mild approbation. “I massively respect you,” “I am desperate to see you,” people say to express rather mild respect or desire. There are new expressions of delight, “Score. Major score. Win.” Another expression I have come across is the present continuous, often modified by so, “I am so loving this.” Though British English seems to be to be drifting in the direction of Americanisms (“how awesome!!”) there are charming British-only expressions adopted from the language of children—“Six sleeps till Christmas” abbreviated to Crimbo, which is a neologism I hadn’t heard a quarter century ago.
Visit the website. It includes a quiz which I initially played at the Easy-Peasy level, getting 5 out of 6, though I admit some answers were guesswork. I then tried the Egghead level, and scored the same!!  http://www.bl.uk/evolvingenglish/quiz.html,

Here are the facts about the exhibition:

  • Evolving English: One Language, Many Voicesopens at the British Library on 12 November and is open until 3 April
  • Cost: free
  • While at the exhibition you can record your voice to add to the collection preserved for future study and analysis.
  • The URL is www.bl.uk/evolvingenglish
  • Tweet using #evolvingenglish

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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,

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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time


We are listening to this in the car with a good deal of pleasure and laughter. It is eerily familiar. Now none of us are autistic or have aspergers. However, we are pretty logical, and intellect-dominated rather than emotion-dominated. For instance, we would probably all be T on the Myers-Briggs for Thinking, rather than F for feeling. 


So we couldn’t help laughing when Christopher’s father tells him that his mother died of a heart attack. Christopher asks, “What kind of heart attack?” His father, infuriated says, “Christopher, this is not the time to be asking that sort of question!” But Christopher wants to know if it was an aneurysm, or embolism, or just a regular heart-attack. We laughed because it is the kind of question that 3 out of the 4 of us at least would ask in a similar situation. 


An autistic savant, Christopher offers a combination of a relentlessly logical mind with very little understanding of how society or the adult work operates. Many children are like this. Most learn; some do not. 
 
Postscript. Now finished listening to it. Though bits are tedious–how Christopher gets to London etc–it is a most moving book.


I like his parents’ care and concern for someone who apparently has no feelings for them, nor any concern beyond himself and self-protectiveness. He does not some ethical concerns like “It is not good to kill dogs” and “one should not tell lies,” but no understanding of love for others. When he describes what love is, for instance his father’s love for him, he says, “Love is when you cook someone’s food, and wash someone’s clothes, and tell them the truth.” His parents are nevertheless fond of him, as one is fond of a totally selfish toddler. Christopher is now 15, but since he has not grown up morally or imaginatively, they are as fond of him as when he was three. 


Interestingly, people who behave like Christopher does would have been institutionalized in the past before they was much understanding of autism. Christopher is an autistic savant. I wonder if tuning out so much of reality enables an intense focus on aspects of it. Christopher is very good at both maths, physics and chess like my husband and one of my daughters. Extreme excellence in one sphere always comes at the cost of other spheres being underdeveloped, I think. The question is how excellent, how underdeveloped.


The book is probably so successful because autism or extreme neuroses are probably on a continuum and many people will find echoes of their own neuroses and hang-ups or those of their family in Christopher. 


If nothing else, the combination of extreme cleverness and extreme naivete does make you laugh.










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Blessed are the Have-Nots

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Blessed are the Have-Nots


When my daughter Zoe, now a sweet 16, was 4, I was obsessed with the Beatitudes. I knew they were true because Jesus said they were true and every other saying of Jesus that I had personally experimented with was true.


But how were they true?


Poor Zoe. I kept on explaining them to her all that year. That was the year she became a Christian. She now takes it for granted that “the meek inherit the earth” which was the most frequent saying in our household in the years that Zoe had to tussle with a strong-willed pre-verbal younger sister. 


 Luke 6
 “Blessed are you who are poor,
   for yours is the kingdom of God.
21 Blessed are you who hunger now,
   for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now,
   for you will laugh.
22 Blessed are you when people hate you,
   when they exclude you and insult you
   and reject your name as evil,
      because of the Son of Man.
   23 “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.

   24 “But woe to you who are rich,
   for you have already received your comfort.
25 Woe to you who are well fed now,
   for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
   for you will mourn and weep.
26 Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you,
   for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.


I then summarized the Beatitudes for myself, and anyone who would listen to me thus: God is the greatest good. Blessed are those who know him, for they can be joyful when there is no visible reason for joy, peaceful when there appears to be every reason not to be at peace, and full where others might see emptiness.


The greatest puzzle of the Beatitudes are that all human endeavour, Christian and non-Christian tends towards being rich, well fed, laughter (happiness), and the esteem and respect of our community. And yet, Jesus says,  “Woe to you,” to those who have these things.


And human beings endeavour not to be poor, to hunger, to weep, to be excluded, insulted and hated and rejected.


But Jesus says that those who are poor, and live in constant need and expectation of God’s provision are blessed. Those who hunger and turn to God and have him on their mind are blessed. Those who are sad now, and turn to God to fill their sadness, are blessed. Those who are hated, excluded, insulted and rejected because they are following Christ are blessed. They are treated as the prophets were treated, and will receive a great reward in heaven.
                                                                 * * * 


On the other hand, those who are rich, well-fed, and at the top of the world now are living in a here-and-now world. They may well be false prophets who are not shouldering the cross, and may well experience woe in eternity.
                                                                * * * 


The Beatitudes grow with us. They mean different things to us at different times, according to the circumstances of our life. 


What they say to me today is:


 Blessed am I when I hunger 
for what I do not yet have. 
For my hunger will remind me to turn to God, 
and he will satisfy me. 
Blessed am I when I weep
–for my tears will remind me to turn to God,
And he will make me smile.
Blessed am I when people hate me
exclude me and insult me
and reject my name as evil
because I have been following Christ.
I just rejoice and leap for joy
I will have a great reward in eternity
Because I am treated as the false prophets were.


But when I am rich and well-fed and laugh and everyone speaks well of me–is there something wrong with this picture? Am I following one whose ministry was fraught with scandal and danger and peril.


And so this is my personal summary of the meaning of the Beatitudes for me: Anita, cheer up when you experience emptiness or sadness or life does not match dreams. When things don’t go as you want. In that emptiness there is room for God, and you will ask him to fill you, and he will.  And Anita, remember God when all goes well, he alone can fill all the nooks and crannies in your soul which friends, or money or success or dreams come true cannot.


Maranatha. Come Lord Jesus! 

God's Protection–Hannah Whitall Smith

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La Cartuja, The Carthusian Monastery, Granada


We are going to spend the next couple of days in the Alhambra. However, since we arrived at Granada at 2 a.m. last night–I know,  bad planning!!–we took today easy, drove around, shopped, and visited the Cartuja, a baroque church and monastery in absolutely terrible taste, meant to be Catholicism’s answer to the Alhambra!!


The first thing which struck me was that it was absolutely too much. It was the church that had too much.


My daughter, Irene, 11, who has been taken to innumerable Gothic Cathedrals in several European countries almost wanted to stay in our Moorish rented house rather than trek out. However, she sat spell-bound by the magnificence, and did not want to move.


“I am so glad I didn’t stay back to read,” she said, “This is the best church I have ever seen!!”


What?!!


Truly, people form their own innate aesthetic and there is nothing someone else can do to foist their loves and hatreds onto them. 
                                                                       * * * 


And God was so merciful to us. We flew out of Gatwick on EasyJet yesterday; today, they announced that they are cancelling all flights between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. because of an ice storm. Dear Lord, let our good luck–or your merciful providence–hold for our return flight.
                                                                       * * * 


I have been thinking about God’s protection recently. Probably the best illustration I know of this is from a book by Hannah Whittall Smith called “The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life.”


Now, I read this in my late teens, which was a while ago, so if I remember it wrongly, forgive me.


Hannah has a vision of the Christian wrapped in a haze of golden light. Nothing could harm her unless the light parted to allow it.


So nothing can happen to us, unless God permits it.


And nothing can happen to us which God cannot work out for good.


Sometimes, even as he closes a door, he opens a window. Sometimes, though, there is a lag.


The Lord is my Shepherd. With him as my shepherd, I am safe. With him as my shepherd I can relax. Sometimes, though “the arrow that flies by night” flies around me, I am not only unharmed by it, but, praise God, I am even unaware that it has been flying near me.


Thank you, God for your protection. Deliver me from evil–evil I might do, and evil others might wish on me or for me. Amen.