Anita Mathias | Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Shining Faith in Action: Dirk Willems on the Ice

Each time, I hear or recount the story of Dirk Willems, a Dutch Anabaptist hero of the Reformation, I find myself moved to tears. And so I wrote down his inspiring story in a little book, The Story of Dirk Willems. The opening pages are here. And here is the climactic scene:

When Dirk Willems was arrested in Holland in 1569, he refused to recant the radical reading of Scripture which had set his life ablaze with purpose and joy. The Crown confiscated all his property for its own uses, and he was sentenced to be “executed with fire, until death ensues.” Willems was imprisoned at the Palace in Asperen, until May, when he was to be publicly burnt at the stake.

Autumn passed, and it was winter. Looking out of the prison window one December night, Dirk Willems noticed that the moat around the castle had frozen solid.

His heart beat faster. Had the Lord provided a means of escape? Might the Lord Jesus enable him too to walk on water?

Willems ripped his bedsheet, knotted the rags together, tied one end to the window and slowly climbed down, the cloth supporting his body, grown skeletal on meagre rations in the long months of imprisonment.

He tiptoed onto the ice. And it bore his weight.

The stars shone bright in the frosty night. He skidded across the pond, remembering the nights of his youth, skating with his friends who loved the Lord Jesus on the frozen ponds of Rotterdam. He felt as if he were flying.

The Lord Jesus was rescuing him from his enemies.

* * *

“Stop! I command you in the name of the Duke of Alva: Stop!” he heard the palace guard shout, but using his last reserves of strength, Dirk slid across the ice of the moat, the Hondegat.

Behind him, the guard, “the thief-catcher,” raced across the ice, handcuffs in hand, closing in, closing in.

“Lord Jesus, I ask in your name! Help me. Please,” Dirk prayed as he slid across the ice.

And now he scrambled onto solid ground. He kissed the icy earth.

Delivered by Jesus.

* * *

“Willems, help me! Help me, please.”

Dirk turned round. The ice across which he, grown emaciated in captivity, had slid, lithe as a cat, had cracked beneath the weight of the burly thief-catcher. He could no longer see the guard’s body, just his thrashing hands, one of them gripping handcuffs. As the man grabbed at the ice, it shattered into a myriad pieces.

The guard was drowning.

As Dirk paused beneath the starry skies, the words of the Lord Jesus, which he had recited to himself, again and again, through hungry days and sleepless nights returned like distant music.

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who persecute you.

Do not resist evil.

And Paul’s words: Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

“Dirk Willems, help me. Help!” the guard gasped, clutching the ice which splintered as he grabbed it, only his head now visible, and his hand, his hand with the shackles.

Under the silent stars, Dirk halted. Prayed. And then, “I will do it for the love of the Lord Jesus,” he decided in a rush of resolution.

For the love of the Lord Jesus whom he had resolved to obey in all things; for whose sake he had chosen imprisonment rather than pretend to accept Catholic doctrines he did not believe; for the love of Jesus whom he had decided to follow, whether it led to happiness or death, Dirk Willems turned around.

He glided on the ice as far as he dared, and extended his hand to his enemy, the guard. And pulled him to safety.

They stood on solid ice. His voice quavering with cold and emotion, the guard said, “Thank you, Dirk Willems.”

* * *

But the Burgomaster, who stood watching outside the Palace walls, called out across the moat, “Remember the oaths you swore to the Duke of Alva, thief-catcher. You swore to catch criminals and deliver them to justice. I command you in the name of the Duke of Alva, seize the heretic.”

The thief-catcher hesitated. Then muttering, “Forgive me,” he grabbed Willems’s wrist, clapped the handcuffs on him, and dragged him across the drawbridge, back to the castle.

* * *

Willems was now confined to a small, barred room at the top of a tall church tower, his feet cramped in wooden leg stocks. He was tortured. He did not renounce his faith.

On 16 May 1569, he was led out to be burned to death outside Asperen.

* * *

It was a blustery day. A strong east wind blew the flames away from his chest, after they burnt the flesh on his lower body. His suffering was long and lingering. Willem’s loud cries were heard in the town of Leerdam, towards which the wind blew.

“O my Lord, my God,” he called out, over seventy times.

Finally, unable to watch his torment, the supervising judge wheeled his horse around and commanded the executioner, “Dispatch the man with a quick death.”

* * *

Sometimes we walk through a dark forest by the light of a star which had died ten thousand years ago.

Dirk Willems, fool for Christ, you are one of the “children of God without fault who shine like stars in the sky.” Your light still blazes five hundred years later.

We, who are amazed at your goodness, salute you.

We are astonished by your love for Scripture: you did not compromise your understanding of it, even though that meant imprisonment and the loss of your property, your freedom, your health, and your life. We are stunned by your integrity.

But, most of all, we are moved by how you helped your enemy, though it meant your certain death.

We are inspired by how you kept your eyes on the Lord Jesus through the long agony of that barbaric burning.

We believe that, as you died, heaven opened, and you saw Christ standing at the right hand of the Father, ready to welcome you.

And we know you are with him, shining, in the great golden cloud of witnesses, the communion of saints which sweetens the earth.

Dirk Willems, this world was not worthy of you. You did not get to write your story, but you lived a beautiful one.

Thank you.

* * *

If you know someone who might like a copy, it’s available on

Amazon.com (Paperback) and Kindle

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If you’d like to support me by buying a paperback or Kindle book and leaving a review, I will, of course, be very grateful 🙂

The Story of Dirk Willems: The Man who Died to Save His Enemy

By Anita Mathias

I am inspired and moved by the story of Dirk Willems, one of the heroes of the Reformation, each time I hear it, and have written a little book on him. I hope you like it.

Here is the opening section

The Story of Dirk Willems:

The Man who Died to Save His Enemy

The banging shook the old timber-framed house in Asperen, Holland.

“Open in the name of the Duke of Alva,” rough voices yelled. The horses clopped on the cobbled street, their breath rising in impatient clouds.

A slight young man ran down and unbolted the door.

“Are you the Anabaptist Dirk Willems?” the Burgomaster demanded. The mail-clad soldiers surrounding him glared.

“I am.”

“Do you admit that in 1521 at the age of twenty, contrary to the doctrines of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, you were re-baptised in Rotterdam, at the house of one Pieter Willems?”

“I was indeed baptised as an adult after I made a public profession of my faith in the Lord Jesus. For according to the example of the Lord, that is the right and proper time to be baptised.”

“Never mind that. Have you taught that Christians should not bear arms, nor take oaths of loyalty to The Most Noble Duke of Alva?”

“I have indeed taught that. For, in the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord commanded us not to resist evil, nor to take oaths. Mindful of the invisible presence of Christ, our word, spoken to another human being, should suffice.”

“Never mind all that. Have you unlawfully permitted people to be baptised in your house?”

“I have.”

“Will you renounce all your heretical beliefs, teachings, and actions?”

“I will not, for I have resolved to obey the commands of the Lord Jesus as closely as I can. For…”

“Never mind all that. Thief-catcher, in the name of the Duke of Alva, arrest this man,” the Burgomaster commanded.

* * *

During the Reformation, Christianity stretched, and shook herself awake, rubbing sleep from her eyes. It was a Renaissance of the Spirit. Ordinary men and women rediscovered Scripture, reading it for the first time—not in Latin but in their mother tongues—reading hungrily, as if it were news, breaking news, good news.

Martin Luther, then an Augustinian monk, desperately sought spiritual perfection by means of spiritual disciplines, including fasts, which permanently ruined his digestion. If ever a monk got to heaven by his monkery, it was I. If I had kept on any longer, I should have killed myself with vigils, prayers, and readings, he wrote.

Hoping to distract him from his scrupulosity and tormenting guilt, his Superior, Dr. Johann von Staupitz, promoted him to Professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Wittenberg. Luther immersed himself in the Bible while lecturing through it, and was dazzled by its language. He truly believed that he was dealing with the very words of God. God is in every syllable. No iota is in vain, he wrote.

As he understood the Book of Romans for the first time—that God accepts us as his beloved children, not because of our good deeds, but because of our faith in Jesus—Luther declared, “Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise.”

When Martin Luther visited Rome as a pilgrim in 1510, he was appalled by the worldliness, extravagance and cynicism, particularly in the aggressive selling of “indulgences” spearheaded by Johann Tetzel. Buying indulgences promised reduction of time spent in Purgatory; the money was used to fund the building of St. Peter’s Basilica, as well as the exquisite art of Michelangelo, Bramante, Bernini, and Raphael.

Luther was appalled at Tetzel’s saying, “As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs.” Who knows if it is really true? he wondered about this papally-sanctioned doctrine. And with that question, he began, one by one, to question every Catholic doctrine that lacked any Biblical foundation, or was expressly forbidden by Scripture.

In 1517, Luther pinned Ninety-five Theses on a church door in Wittenberg, challenging Catholic practices—the sale of Indulgences, Confession, Purgatory—that he considered unscriptural.

The Ninety-five Theses were wild fire. Within two weeks, they created an uproar throughout Germany; within two months, thanks to Gutenberg’s printing press, they were read and discussed all over Europe.

In Switzerland, the influential reformer Huldrych Zwingli went further than Luther, only accepting those doctrines and practices that had a firm Biblical foundation, and ignoring every Catholic doctrine without it–such as a celibate priesthood, the veneration of saints, the Pope’s power to excommunicate, the damnation of the unbaptised, hellfire and, especially, tithing.

* * *

At the same time, however, there were wilder, dreamier men and women, dubbed the “Radical Reformation.” They dreamed not only of a private, internal reformation, but of communities in which each member obeyed the voice of the Spirit within them, obeyed the indwelling Christ, and obeyed scripture.

They publicly confessed their faith in Christ, repented of their sin, and amended their lives. And then they were baptised. Again. And so, they were scornfully called “Anabaptists,” or “re-baptisers”—a label they rejected since they believed that infant baptism, not being a conscious choice, was no baptism at all. However, the mocking monicker stuck.

The Anabaptists believed that the Holy Spirit still spoke directly, and that God still gave some men and women the gift of prophecy. They were egalitarian, treating both men and women, rich and poor, as equals in their close-knit communities, modelled on those in the Book of Acts. They practised simplicity—in their food, dress and speech. They were honest, gentle and peaceable; even their harshest critics said so.

Their faith set them ablaze. They resolved to obey the Sermon on the Mount, their “Bible within the Bible,” as precisely as possible. To experience the blessings promised in the Beatitudes to those who choose the way of meekness, mercy, and peace-making. To refuse to quarrel and contend. To love their enemies and pray for their persecutors.

They believed in pacifism, oh yes!—in turning the other cheek, and letting the aggressor seize both coat and cloak. They believed Christians should never bear arms, despite the threat to Reformed communities from the Turks in Austria and Germany, and the Catholic armies in Reformed Northern Europe.

Their Schleithem Confession read: “Therefore there will also unquestionably fall from us the unchristian, devilish weapons of force—such as sword and armour, and all their use either for friends or against enemies—by virtue of the Word of Christ: Resist not him that is evil.”

* * *

They were persecuted–of course, they were. By Catholics; by Lutherans; by Zwinglians, all of whom were offended by the Anabaptists’ desire to re-baptise the baptised. The Anabaptist attempt to create communities of “true Christians” within Christian cities like Zurich provoked outrage. Also, since refusing to bear arms or to take oaths to rulers or magistrates meant self-exclusion from civil or military service, the Anabaptists threatened the established order!

Anabaptism was made a crime, punishable by death, in European country after country. Some Anabaptists were flayed and had their tongues torn out. Others were drowned with deliberate and ironic cruelty, after the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I sardonically called drowning “the third baptism, and the best antidote to Anabaptism.” Many Anabaptists were beheaded, tortured to death, or drawn and quartered. Still more were burned at the stake.

* * *

Read on on:

Amazon.com (Paperback) and Kindle

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If you’d like to support me by buying a paperback or Kindle book and leaving a review, I will, of course, be terribly grateful 🙂

On Checking In Before you Fly

By Anita Mathias

Thingvellir National Park, Iceland

I am (slowly!) learning to slow down, and say, “So, what should I do, God?” or “What should I do, Spirit?” or “What should do I do, Jesus?”

And often enough, clarity comes, out of the box. I do not send the email I was about to. I change the time on my alarm clock. I re-arrange my day or my schedule or my commitments in a joyful, health-giving, and, often enough, productive way. The Spirit generally guides me in the way of subtraction. In the ways of quietness, by still waters. In returning and in rest you shall be saved, in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength. (Isaiah 30:15). It has ever been so for me.

Does God always answer my frequent question: “What should I do?” Or does my unconscious provide answers? I don’t know, I lean towards the former. But there have definitely been directions in which I thought I heard God lead which have not been fruitful in the way I thought they would have been. But they have been learning experiences, sometimes baptisms of fire!, which led on to other fruitful things.

It’s a good practice to check in with the Spirit before we act, even if we get it wrong sometimes. We learn by practice in every area of our lives… and our spiritual lives are no different.

Thomas Merton has a beautiful prayer on this subject.

My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,

though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though
I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

The Spiritual Practice of Bible-Walking

By Anita Mathias

A neglected corner of my garden

I have loved the Bible for most of my life. When I skip time at play in the fields of the Lord, skip time with the Bible—that fresh, startling way of viewing reality—for even a week, I miss it. My life feels a bit flat and wearisome.

I knew the Bible well even as a child in a Catholic boarding school in the Himalayas run by German nuns, and I have learned it better since. Learned it in the way of a scholar—concordances, word studies, study Bibles, commentaries… I have led many Bible studies and been in many more.

However, most people, most women, through the four millennia that we’ve had books of the Bible, have been illiterate, and yet the Word has survived and borne fruit. It’s the WORD, as powerful when spoken and heard as when written.

Over the last few months, since Easter, I have been primarily engaging with the Bible as if I were illiterate, engaging with my ears rather than with my eyes.

The fields just outside our house

This is my new spiritual discipline: prayer walking, or Bible-walking. Four chapters a day (which means I’ll listen to the whole Bible in a year), listened to on my phone (without headphones, for I walk in lonely places), listened to slowly, with a pause to meditate on anything that speaks to me, and to pray it into my life. To repent, to revise my life, to praise, to thank, to expand my mind, to be happy. To learn wisdom from Jesus.

I love this new spiritual practice of prayer-and-Bible-walking. It is a new way of engaging with the Gospels, through the ears and muscles rather than through the eyes. I am constantly finding new depths and wisdom in a text I have known all my life, and it’s changing the way I think… and even, slowly, the way I live.

Will I do it forever? No, because we are commanded to love God with our minds. The bookish and scholarly are to love God in their bookish, scholarly and boffinly way for that’s how we are made.

But we are quadripartite beings; our emotions, minds, spirits and bodies are all important. And my body is the weakest part of me. And so I need to pray and walk, listen to Scripture and walk, until the Word becomes flesh and muscle and sinew in my body and life as it did in Israel all those centuries ago.
I am building the physical strength I need, even as I build spiritual strength, and the mental and emotional strength that comes from contact with Jesus’s startling mind and with the vast, astonishing love of God.

Links (Affiliate)

People have asked in comments and on FB which apps etc. I use.
Well, I use Audible https://www.audible.co.uk/ or https://www.audible.com/

And I love David Suchet’s narration of the NIV (Amazon.co.uk) or on Amazon.com. He’s an English actor with the most gorgeous voice.

And, of course, I love Eugene Peterson’s Message. On Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk.

Deep peace in times of political turmoil

By Anita Mathias

The Deep Peace of Wild Places (Iceland, August, 2019)

I consciously (though sometimes unsuccessfully) try not to invest emotional energy in politics, just as I try to invest no emotional energy in sports, including the Olympics or the World Cup. Why waste energy on things whose outcome I am unable to influence? (Of course, an individual CAN influence politics, but it takes a calling, and a massive amount of energy, and the time to build a politically-oriented platform… none of which I have.)

British politics is going through a particularly interesting and turbulent week… one of the many particularly interesting and turbulent weeks we’ve had over the last three years.

For all my desire to not be emotionally invested in politics, I had very strong emotions and opinions at the time of the EU Referendum in 2016. I was one of the polarised in this currently polarised country. But over time, I, like many other British citizens, I suspect, found myself mellowing. Many of us began to see the other point of view.

And now, what I now truly believe is best for me, for my family and for the country is the exact opposite of what I thought was the best for the country, and what I really, really wanted to happen three years ago.

And so, I am watching the political circus with a detached interest and, I admit, some amusement. What will happen? You know, I don’t hugely care. I have left it in God’s hands. I own a small business, we export, and for all exporters, Brexit, deal or no-deal, and the consequent weak pound, in the short run, is financially beneficial. However, I travel frequently, and for frequent travellers, EU membership is great… health insurance when we travel, seamless borders, cheap mobile coverage, cheap airfares, the ability to easily take our Golden Retriever, Pippi, and Labradoodle, Merry, their pet passports with us to Europe… So I am going to wait and see, without any emotional intensity.

And I wonder, is this what living with trust in God looks like?

Jack Miller of World Harvest Mission, now Serge, used to tell his story

Tom walks down the street and meets Dick, who is smiling delightedly.

Tom, “What are you so happy about?”
Dick, “Well, I’ve met a man who promised to do all my worrying for me for $60,000 a year.”
Tom, “60,000 dollars a year! How are you going to get that?”
Dick, grinning, “That’s HIS worry

None of us learn this level of care-freeness naturally– the carefreeness of the lilies whom Jesus commends, who are relaxed in the natural beauty of creations of God, and so fret not about clothes or whether they are blossoming, flourishing or withering; the carefreeness of the birds who live songfully day by day, and the Father keeps them alive as long as he wants them to sing… To live carefree, trusting God, takes a constant effort of trust and surrender.

What does living like a lily mean? Jesus said it in the context of clothes. Do not worry about clothes, he says, because you are a child of God, made by him, and who you are, the beauty of your smile and personality, is more important than what you wear. So sally forth as a beloved and unique creation of God, and don’t worry about clothes or how your appearance compares to the other lilies of the field.

What would praying like a lily or like a bird look like? Prayers like this, perhaps…

“I leave Brexit in your hands, and I trust you with it. If it happens and turns out to be financially beneficial for my family and the country, thank you. And if it isn’t, I trust you to lead us to new levels of creativity, ingenuity or simplicity.”

“I place my latent and unused talents in your hands. I will trust you for the time and energy and wisdom to use them well. To have finished the work you have given me to do before I die.”

“I place my body and my health in your hands. Please help me make wise choices so I may be full of energy to serve you and fulfil your call on my life.”

“I place my children, my finances, my creativity, and my future into your hands, and that is a very good place for them to be.”

Difficult prayers need to be re-prayed daily. I try to remember to surrender myself and my day to God every day… and repeat that surrender through the day. When I am stressed, I want to live empty-handed, with all I hold dear in God’s hands. I sometimes take these things back and worry about them myself, instead of letting God do the worrying. Instead of letting go and letting God. But God knows that. He is a Father after all. And then, I just need to take my niggles and worries and put them back in God’s hands… and just keep trusting my Lord.

(P.S. There are times when Christians cannot be passive in politics, but I see Brexit as a political rather than as a moral or Christian issue. I believe, for instance, that American citizens should add the weight of the snowflake of their voices to a snowball of opinion against the inhumane treatment of migrants from the Americas to the US, just as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the White Rose group, and Otto and Elise Hampel did the little things they could to oppose the inhumanity of the National Socialist regime during the Second World War.)

And here’s a song I really like

And what, what if I believed in Your power
And I really lived it
What, what if I believed Christ in me…
I would lay my worries down
See these hills as level ground…

On Returning Home to yourself, and The Things you Love More than Yourself.

By Anita Mathias

So.. I listened to my first TED talk ever today. The amazing meditation course Roy and I took encouraged us to do something emotionally, or intellectually, or spiritually or creatively nourishing at least a couple of times a day, and this was my nourishment for the day (in addition to yoga, meditation, and a bit of writing!)

Why do nourishing things daily? Because in times of stress and busyness, either work-related, or financial, or just life, the nourishing things we love are sacrificed first… and then we slip into “an exhaustion funnel.” It takes us longer and longer to do simple things… and we burn out!

Doing nourishing things a couple of times a day, mini-non-caloric treats, is also something I decided to do after reading an excellent article by Joshua Becker of Becoming Minimalist: How to Craft a Life You Don’t Need to Escape From. We’ve followed a boom and bust circle for years… pushing ourselves too workaholically and then travelling and doing no work at all. It isn’t really sensible, though I love and adore travel: it makes me come alive. In 2018, I see looking at my calendar that we went on 10 short trips the highlights being Dubrovnik, the South of France, and Berlin. This year, we have been on 5 trips already… Cordoba, Krakow, Poland, and Iceland’s Ring Road being highlights, and still have trips we’ve booked to New York City, Porto, Portugal and Malta.

But I need to break the excessive travel habit, because it is disruptive of good routines and good habits, not to mention creative work. And it’s expensive! So we are building in daily “nourishing things” and a weekly day of adventure in Oxford, or London, or the many fascinating surrounding towns–and fewer short breaks in Europe. TED talks and New Yorker articles are on my list of nourishing things.

So in “Success, Failure and the Drive to Keep Creating,” Elizabeth Gilbert talks about how great success, financial, creative, academic, whatever, has this in common with great failure… it divorces you from yourself, takes you into the dark hinterlands of the psyche. And then what you have to do is return home. She defines home as returning to the one thing in the world that you love more than yourself. And then you have to build your house on that rock. For her, home was writing.

What the poet Rilke calls, “the things that will not ever leave you” also form a home–sunrise, sunset, cirrus, cumulus, and cumulonimbus clouds, the ever-changing panorama of nature, the starry night sky, the quiet patience and dignity of animals, the people who love you, and the inalienable love of God. Opportunities to read, to pray, to meditate, to sleep, to walk, to awaken your body with exercise, to love, to rest and rejoice in the love of God.

As I listed what I love more than myself, I—I am sorry if this sounds goody-goody or pretentious!—realised that the biggest of these was God. I know this because I have often taken decisions which have cost me money, time, energy, and work and dream setbacks, because I heard God calling me to them. And, of course, building my life on God is both safe… and the great unknown, because God is not a tame lion. I do not know every chapter of the story He will write in my life… but I do know it will be a good one.

Every Prison has a Door… (and We Usually Have the Key!)

By Anita Mathias

From Practice to Mastery Image Credit: https://guitarsquid.com

So, not being a super-disciplined person, I’ve struggled all my adult life with a few things, surprisingly common struggles for those for whom discipline is problematic.

I carry more weight than I should. Okay, I have lost 47 pounds over the last few years as I have changed my diet but I have more to lose. I have romantic ideas of waking with the dawn, but more commonly wake at 7 a.m. I have yet to run a supremely tidy and organised house; probably, half my stuff could be safely given away. And I have rarely been a productive writer. Keats feared that he might die before his pen had gleaned his teeming brain. Me too, me too!

It recently struck me that each of these struggles which I’ve had for most of my married life of 30 years, is to achieve something finite. I don’t have an infinite amount of weight to lose. I could lose it in a year or less! I don’t have an infinite amount of things to declutter; I could do it in six months as Marie Kondo says, or in nine months as Joshua Becker of The Minimalist Home says. If I turn in 5 minutes earlier each day… it’s not an infinite number of days before I will be waking up at 5 a.m. And if the tidying/organising, and exercise, and early rising creates time… who knows, I might even finish the books of my heart.

* * *

In what’s perhaps a metaphor, the enslaved Israelites who escaped slavery and Pharaoh wandered in the desert for 40 years. To walk across the Sinai desert should take 10-11 days, guides say. Similarly, many of the things people struggle with for decades could be dealt with in months or a year: weight, messiness, excessive night-owlness, for instance. Two professional women recently told me that they were chronically late. I struggle with that too… but less and less so. But chronic lateness can be cured–by strategies like adding 50% to the estimated driving time (a tip from Greg McKeown’s excellent book Essentialism), and 50% to your estimated dressing-up time, and aiming to be seated, ready and reading 15 minutes before you leave the house!

These things we struggle with are what Jesus calls the light burden and the easy yoke, difficulties, but with God’s help, not impossibilites. It is possible to be tidy, of course–easy for those who have always been tidy, and hard for those who have never been tidy, but possible for everyone. Shedding unhealthy weight is easier for those who have good eating habits and the physical strength to exercise hard; harder for those of sluggish metabolism, or who are not strong enough to exercise vigorously. But it should be possible for everyone. (I’ve lost 25 pounds over the last 13 months, though a combination of the ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting. I just stopped eating dinner over six weeks ago, and skipping it was surprisingly easy!). Waking early is perhaps possible for everyone, though I have not yet been able to sustain it long-term. And finishing books is possible to everyone God calls to write.

At our last few holidays, Cordoba, Berlin and Krakow (all this year, 2019, yes, we are travelling too much) especially in Krakow, Poland, when we were not eating dinner, we were astonished by how free time opened up in the evenings when Roy and I lived with just a suitcase each, in a hotel suite, and how many loose ends of our family business, our lives and work, we were able to tie up after a full day of sight-seeing. We became wistfully determined to simplify our lives at home for the same sense of spaciousness and peace and extra time.

So, at the moment, I am (perhaps foolishly!) barely writing, but focusing on getting my home tidy and decluttered (especially because I want to move in a year or two). I am focusing on diet (keto!) and fitness, believing Rick Warren statement: if you want to change anything the first thing to do is to change your body to provide the energy for other changes. The decluttering, the spiritual peace and serenity from the order, the brisk walks and yoga to get healthy, the weight loss, the waking earlier, will release more writing time within a few days or a week. I hope so. I pray so. I believe so.

But for now, baby steps.

If you can’t fly, then run; if you can’t walk run, then walk; if you can’t walk, then crawl, but by all means keep moving. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Discipline, short-term suffering is painful for the moment, but it eventually yields what Scripture winsomely calls “a harvest of righteousness and peace.”

It’s what my friend Paul Miller, who discipled me for 5 years in the late nineties, called a J-Curve. The seed has to fall into the ground and die for fruitfulness, as Jesus died to provide the Spirit, and as an atoning sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. The death of Jesus involved less than 24 hours of intense physical and emotional suffering, 3 hours of which consisted of immense, unimaginable physical suffering. However, the fruits of the resurrection of Jesus reverberate on and on in the life of the world, in my life, and perhaps in yours, dear reader.

Jesus strikingly says that we are not worthy of him if we do not take up our cross, and embrace the suffering that a fruitful creative life calls for. In all these things I’ve mentioned, there is a cross, a small death, and much joy at the end of it. The cross I am bearing for the next six months is decluttering my house. It will lead to a resurrection of energy, and focus and time. The cross I am bearing for the next six months to a year is getting stronger and shedding the weight that hinders, which will give me the joy and resurrection of more energy and time. The cross of turning in early rather than surfing the net or desultory reading will add to the joy and productivity of early mornings. The resurrection that these things may bring will reverberate and echo, sweet and magnified, through the rest of my life, and perhaps, if God blesses my writing, though the lives of others too. May it be so Lord, Amen.

Some resources which I found very helpful, and you might too.

Gary Taubes: Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk

Gretchen Rubin describes reading this book as a lightning bolt moment that changed her eating habits, immediately, effortlessly and permanently. It has been a little bit like that for me.

To quote from Taubes: Carbohydrates are uniquely fattening because they elevate levels of insulin, and insulin signals to our fat cells to store fat, and to our lean cells not to burn it, which inhibits the use of fat for fuel. For a diet to successfully reduce obesity, it has to reduce insulin levels, and restrict carbs.

The Complete Guide to Fasting by Jason Fung on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk.

I found intermittent fasting far easier than I imagined, and I love the mental clarity, the physical energy—and, of course, the weight loss.

The Keto Diet: The Complete Guide by Leanne Vogel on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. More a dietary change than “a diet,” though I’ve never found losing weight as easy as on this.

Marie Kondo: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk

I have some ambivalence towards her ideas, but I can testify to the huge amount of energy in many areas of my life as I began to donate my surplus stuff

Joshua Becker: The Minimalist Home on Amazon.com

I find his blog Becoming Minimalist motivating, and here it is in a convenient form

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk

Strongly recommend. Don’t we all need essentialism?

And if you’d like a Christian perspective on these things, a book by my friend and mentor Paul Miller.

J-Curve: Dying and Rising with Jesus in Everyday Life by Paul Miller. On Amazon.com

and on Amazon.co.uk

The Life-Changing Practice of Meditation

By Anita Mathias

So, a couple of years ago, almost on a whim, my husband Roy and I took an intensive eight week course in Mindfulness at the Oxford Department of Psychiatry! (and at the famous local psychiatric hospital, the Warneford!!)

I didn’t really know what Mindfulness was, but I “knew,” we should do it. You can imagine how annoyed Roy felt!!

As it turned out, it was an amazing course, filled with many new ways of thinking and being. We learned and practiced different meditations such as the body scan, walking meditation, meditations when experiencing difficult things, and mindful movement (i.e. yoga, “yoga is meditation.”) While, unsurprisingly, not many stuck, those that did were life-changing!

I am learning the art of stopping and taking a breath, though the three step breathing space, a four minute meditation. It sometimes feels as if I am too busy, too stressed, too behind, running too late, to stop and take a few minutes to just breathe for heaven’s sake… but doing that settles my mind and then I am so much more effective. In fact, it is a cure for the racing mind, the busy heart, and the slumbering spirit…stop, breathe, calm the mind.

“Sitting meditation” is what I practice most often. Forty minutes, the optimal meditation session, takes you, your mind, body, and spirit to another, generally peaceful and joyful state, and I aim to spend forty minutes a day on meditation, though I do it according to need—sometimes two sets of twenty minutes which some teachers say yields maximum benefits, sometimes four sets of ten minutes which calms me and gives focus before I work, or deal with difficult tasks, thoughts, and emotions.

I found learning meditation so helpful that Roy and I are currently doing a 12 week advanced course in Mindfulness at the Warneford, led by Willem Kuyken, Oxford Professor of Mindfulness; it’s a mind-changing and joyful experience.

So here are some personal benefits I have experienced over the last two years of regular meditation, some of them accidental and unexpected!

1 Better Sleep

I often listen to a guided meditation by Mark Williams or Jon Kabat-Zinn to calm my mind, which usually has a hundred thoughts, questions, and things to resolve. I am calm and sleepy by the end of it and drift off to sleep easily. Meditation for me is a gateway into sleep.

2 Focus and Creativity

I frequently meditate, just for ten minutes, before beginning to write, and it helps focus my mind. It is a brilliant investment of time. I was interested to read that Juval Noah Harari who condensed the history of humanity into Sapiens, 464 bestselling pages meditates for two hours a day, and says he would not have been able to focus on the important themes and events in the morass of world history without the practice of meditation.

If my mind is scattered and distracted, meditating before I settle down to write helps me focus, an essential skill for creative work in this culture in which the internet, with its invitations to distraction, its gratification of idle curiosity, and its addictive dopamine surges make focus more difficult.

3 Weight Loss

This is possibly an accidental benefit, a synergistic, serendipitous connection… though perhaps not. But since I started meditation in May 2017, I have lost 30 pounds, over two stone.

One day, I realised that my Fitbit showed that my weight had dropped for each week I had been meditating, and hypothesized a connection. Then I worked with a health coach, who suggested meditating twice a day for 20 minutes (to lower cortisol, the stress hormone which prevents weight loss) and texting her after each session.

I have now pretty much broken the habit of emotional eating and snacking, and though I have more weight to lose, I am hopeful because your trajectory is more important than where you currently are. And I am trying to eat more mindfully, actually savouring food.

4 Relief of chronic pain

I had crippling, life-affecting pain from sciatica for over a year (and, amazingly, was healed from chronic pain after an Oxford Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery PRAYED for me in church!!!).

I worked with a health coach and got Sports Massages, but then she tried removing the pain without placing her hands on me, but simply by meditating with me… and, lo and behold, it worked.

So I used meditation when pain gripped me. It calmed the mind, it relaxed the body, and, astonishingly, pain left while I focused on my breath. The benefits of meditation for chronic pain have been well-documented by Jon Kabat-Zinn, and in this Atlantic article, for instance.

5 A Pathway into Prayer

For me, meditation is a pathway into prayer. Sometimes, my mind is racing, and my emotions feel turbulent, and I know it would take a long time to settle down to prayer. So I do a ten or twenty minute guided meditation until I am calm enough to enter the presence of Jesus.

I used to calm myself and resolve things through prayer, but prayer for me can be work; it’s conversation; it takes energy, and, at night, it uses the mind which I want to simmer down. Meditation, especially the two practices I use most often, Sitting Meditation, and Lying Down Meditation, calms the mind and body, and creates the necessary conditions for fruitful prayer, which for me happens when I actually “see” the face of Jesus, and am in his presence.

6 Problem-Solving.

I love the “Sitting with Difficulties Meditation.” You get super-calm through breathing, and then face the difficulty…an emotion, task, person or situation. It is a half an hour meditation, and during the course of it, I usually know exactly what I should do about the difficulty, and what the next steps should be. If it is an inter-personal hassle, sometimes I have a better understanding of the person’s behaviour, and more compassion, and forgiveness comes more easily. Sometimes, I just take the difficulty and leave it in God’s hands to do what he wants with it. It functions as a Serenity Prayer, accepting the things I cannot change, and changing the things I can. And it cuts problems down to size. Some annoying situations and random people one can just blow off.

7 Emotional and Mental Health

Meditation helps me calm my emotions, and achieve a (sometimes temporary) serenity from which productivity flows. It gives me space to confront my thoughts and the emotional niggles and dissatisfactions which otherwise would be shoved underground to emerge in a perhaps harmful form. When under stress, a 20 minute guided meditation is a way of checking out, like taking a small boat out to sea, and when I return, I am so much calmer.

Emotional health is not something I have focused on… In my teens and twenties, I focused on my intellectual life, reading, reading, reading; in my thirties and forties, I began to focus on my interior and spiritual life. A health breakdown, almost five years ago, made me begin to take my physical health seriously. And now, I am also trying to be more cognisant of my emotional life, not just interrogating what I think about people, situations, projects, commitments, holiday destinations, but also what I feel about them, for emotions, the iceberg beneath the surface, control more of our actions and behaviour than we realise. Our intuition and emotions carry a lot of wisdom, for perhaps the heart, the gut, the unconscious is smarter than our thinking mind.

8 Connecting with the Body

Meditation is teaching me to reconnect with the body, and its wisdom and signals. Hey, Anita, your stomach is tightening, your breath is constricting, be careful of this person, this situation, this commitment, this demand. Hey Anita, your heart is beating faster, your mind is racing. Stop. Meditate. Slow down. Slow down.

Thoughts create actual molecules in our bodies, raising levels of stress hormones like cortisol or adrenaline, bonding hormones like oxytocin, or “happy chemicals” like the neurotransmitters serotonin or dopamine. Just as bodily tension or pain stresses the mind, the mind causes psychosomatic physical pain and tension. Meditation calms both mind and body, increasing both physical and mental health and productivity through the power of the mind.

9 Learning to be Present

This is something I am beginning to learn, but the practice of paying attention, though practices like the body scan teaches me to come into my body and just be present… for instance, when I am physically uncomfortable or bored in Yoga class, or in social or group situations. It is so rare in our distracted age to either listen or be listened to with full attention that increasingly people pay therapists big bucks to do just that. The practice of meditation is helping me learn to be really present, and really listen to people with my full attention, and, of course, when you do that you learn far more than what they saying, for, unless you are dealing with a practised con-person, the eyes, face, and body speak their own language.

How can you learn to meditate?

I went to classes. However, if you need to learn promptly or haven’t the time or finance right now, I’d suggest

Mark Williams’ wonderful book Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Finding Peace in a Frantic World which has a meditation CD included, on Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.

Or Jon Kabat-Zinn’s great and encyclopaedic book Full Catastrophe Living on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk

Or Jon Kabat-Zinn’s magisterial meditation CDs on Amazon.com or on Amazon.co.uk