Anita Mathias | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Dreaming in Helsinki (A Magical Week in Beautiful Helsinki)

I love Scandinavian summers, the evenings of late, late light, wading in or sitting around the lakes, with their characteristic red cottages on shore. Tuomiokirkko, Helsinki, the Lutheran church, a mass of domes Seurasaari island. The beauty of an island, of course, is the plenitude of beaches. The sunlight shining on the water late in the evening was little short of magical We canoed down the gulf of Finland, loved the art nouveau cottages and log cabins, letting in the light. Would love to rent one of them sometime. I love the way that time is suspended and goes dormant when you are in a canoe on the water. Zoe and Irene are in this canoe. They capsized into the Baltic Sea later that day, but swam to shore.

The Finns speak English with near-native fluency. The accents often sound American, until by the second or third sentence you hear tell-tale Scandinavian vowels.

They shop in perfect silence. We stand out not only by our colour, of skin and clothes, but by the fact that we, horrors, talk to each other in the grocery store.

I love Scandinavia in summer, and have visited Norway in 2009, Sweden in 2011, and Denmark in 2012. The Finns are warmest of the Scandinavians–but it definitely has a Scandinavian feel–a clean, decent, well-ordered, well-mannered, considerate society. When the Scandinavians die and go to heaven, or the Swiss for the matter, they will be surprised to see an improvement on their societies!

Visited Uppenski Cathedral, the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of Finland, which was ruled by the Russians for too long.

Iconostasis in the Russian Cathedral, Uppenski, which as our daughter Irene who is doing Religious Studies for her GCSE told us is a whole wall of icons.

And here are Zoe and Irene before the iconostasis. Then shopping in the outdoor market, where we had a fast good lunch– delicious fried salmon and battered calamari. We walked around Helsinki, photographing some of the Art Nouveau (Judgendstil) buildings, the airy, curved forms taking on a Germanic/Scandinavian heaviness. Nordic Giants, and decorative clock outside the Train Station

The train station was particularly fascinating, as was the Opera House and the National Art Gallery (Ateneum). Finnish National Theatre Ateneum, National Art Gallery Interior of the Ateneum

There was an exhibition of the paintings of Tove Jannson, author of the Moomins at the Ateneum. The daughter of a Finn and a Swedish woman (the prototype of MoominMamma), Jansson was a free spirit. She trained as an artist in Stockholm and Paris, and continued drawing and painting and writing for seven decades.

It was fascinating to watch her art change, from the political (anti-fascist) in the Forties, through the abstract in the fifties, to the more fantastical and beautiful. And, of course, she illustrated the Moomins herself…which helps us know what a Moomin looks like. Like a hippopotamus, apparently!

A long, interesting life of ever-evolving hard work. Tove Jannson was gay and it is not clear if being free of the stultifying role of good-frau-dom liberated her creativity. Or if she had the guts to live as a lesbian for decades because she was a free spirit anyway! Sibelius Park. A monument in his honour– 24 tons of steel tubes arranged like a large, silver Surrealist organ. Sibelius’s giant, dismembered head! Rock Church, literally hewn out of granite–Scandinavian assiduity and ingenuity Loved tiny, magical Philajasaari Island, full of rocks on which to sunbathe, tiny islands connected by bridges, covered with wildflowers, inviting beaches at every turn, views to feed the soul! I loved Helsinki Zoo, on a beautiful 22 acre island. I adore animals, and could watch them for hours. Time feels suspended as I watch them.

We saw the otters at feeding time The snow leopards had cubs, as did the lions. There were large numbers of kangaroos. Kallio Kirke, an Art Nouveau Evangelical Lutheran Church Then to Jarvenpaa, the countryside outside Helsinki, a beautiful drive through fields full of wild flowers, to Ainola, the house of Sibelius (the most famous Finn, well, after the Moomins!) He bought Ainola when he was 38 and lived in for 53 years!! Life is long.

Surrounded by rural peace and the lake, his creativity blossomed–well, until a long, paralysing two decades of perfectionism and composer’s block–when he composed symphonies, and then trashed them. The price, sometimes, of fame achieved too early.

Sibelius’ house pictured below. Sibelius’s house had typically Finnish interiors

Finland was an eccentric choice, perhaps, but our family thrives when we alternate hard work with a complete change–and Scandinavia is so beautiful in the summer, and there is a thrill in exploring a new country and a new culture. I am so glad we went!

How gardening fills my life with hope. And secret garden conversations with God

By Anita Mathias

View of my garden from our bedroom window

I more or less decided to buy our house, after seeing pictures of it online: it had 9 of the 10 things I was praying for. And one of these was a massive garden.

Much to my husband’s annoyance, when we viewed the house, I asked to see the garden first. I fell fast in love, and then only showed (and felt) a cursory interest in the house. The realtor never had an easier sale!

The house I could change–as I have (putting in huge windows in the kitchen and Zoe’s room; building a new 30 sq. m conservatory; knocking down walls between the kitchen and utility room, creating one big sunny room) but the garden!! What luck to find a 1.5 acre garden in Oxford!

I grew up with a one acre garden surrounding our house, a mass of fruit trees, vegetables, and flowers, so many flowers. We gave everyone bouquets, and could not spot the loss.

But when I bought this house and garden what I had overlooked was that we had a gardener who lived on the premises. We also had a live-in maid and a live-in cook, who all helped in that intensively planted garden. My mother spent hours there, dead-heading, grafting, pruning, gathering bouquets of flowers for the house.

The largest garden I had personally worked in was our half acre garden in Williamsburg, which we intensively planted, and which always got the better of us, and earned us frowns from our neighbours, and occasional letters from the home-owner’s association!

* * *

Hosta corner

So….we bought our house 9 summers ago, and the dream garden. But it has always overwhelmed me. England is a gardener’s paradise—the soil is fertile, but it does not have Virginia’s scorching summers or freezing winters, nor deer who feast on hostas and roses.

But we’ve done relatively little compared to the size of the garden. I get overwhelmed when everything turns muddy in winter, or feral in the summer. Then the grass in the orchard grows taller than my children; Queen Anne’s lace and cowslips take over; and I work in the garden more and more infrequently, since it makes me feel cross with myself, and with Roy for letting it go.

* * *

I was exploring these feelings with a therapist as we were exploring ways to have a more balanced life. (Blogs tend to colonize!).

I feel a bit manic in my garden, I confessed. My mind races on to the next project—I want a second greenhouse, a four season one; a patio, since we removed ours for a conservatory; more fruit trees, lots of flower beds, and to replace the grass with perennial vegetables and flowers and fruit bushes. I want to convert my garden to a permaculture garden.

I used to get cross, and stressed about imperfections—weeds, plants that need pruning, and shaggy hedges.

“Why don’t you just thank God for the beauty you do have?” she suggested. “Just praise him in and for your garden.”

And so, slowly, I began gardening peacefully, seeing the beauty I have rather then the beauty I do not have. Looking at and praising each beloved plant, rather than hankering for the perfect combination and arrangement of plants. (Well, most of the time. When I see a perfect garden, I hanker!)

* * *

Being in the garden is a mystical experience for me: the sounds of the wind and birdsong, the fragrance of buddleia, and fresh-cut grass, the earth on my fingers which triggers the release of serotonin in my brain, flowers in their Solomonic glory, the taste of just-picked cherries, strawberries or asparagus.

And gardening fills my life with hope.

We’ve planted 45 hostas this year. I am looking forward to seeing them larger and luxuriant next summer, and then dividing them, as well as the other 20 hostas we have. And dividing our hellebores, and heuchera. Basically getting free plants, my gleeful soul claps. And buying new perennials. And planting more fruit trees (we have apples, cherries, mulberries, pears, plums, quinces, medlars, figs, grapes and hazelnuts which came with the orchard attached to the property). Yeah, I am still driven, (let me say purpose-driven and sound a bit more spiritual)

I feel my garden is anchoring me to the earth, filling my life with hope and anticipation. My garden is a deep joy in the centre of my life.

* * *

I know the only sure foundation for hope is the goodness of God, and the love of God.

But the hope my garden gives me, and the optimism it fills me with is somehow tied up with my faith in a good God–and so shall I shall rejoice in autumn’s blazing palette, winter’s austere one, spring’s rainbowed one, and all the mature and variegated greens of summer.

* * *

Beans

We have 10 raised vegetables bed in our vegetable garden, and grow our own asparagus, courgettes (zucchini), beans, tomatoes, pumpkins, potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, strawberries, and armfuls of herbs.

I garden using Ruth Stout’s No Work Gardening method, using thick mulchs of grass clippings, garden shreddings, and shredded paper, so that there is no need for weeding, the soul is never exposed, and there is a minimal need for watering.

We shred all waste paper in our paper shredders (£35 each), and I have bought a £149 wood chipper to turn all overgrown shrubbery and hedges and volunteer plants into mulch. When I run out, Roy cuts the grass, and prunes, then chips the prunings. It’s a closed eco-system, all waste becoming soil.

Roy sometimes just wants to go and buy £20 bags of mulch rather than make our own with the wood-chipper, but I think it’s more cost-effective in terms of money and time to just convert all garden waste and untidiness to mulch rather than haul it to the compost heaps, where twigs and branches which can take years to break down.

I chat to God, explaining the financial and practical brilliance of my plan, and explaining to him why he should definitely endorse my ideas, and not Roy’s. (“Thus said the Lord:” it’s a great trump card!!)

* * *

The clay soil is dry. I can see fissures. But underneath, life teems. There are hundreds of flower bulbs which will flower in season, guinea hen orchids and arum italicum which will delight us.

What is essential is invisible to the eye. For nothing is as it seems.

* * *

And there’s a niggle at the back of my mind. “Oh God, will I become the writer I want to be, the blogger I want to be?”

I ask God this question in the silence of my vegetable garden.

He asks me a question in return.

“Anita, will it be okay if you never become the blogger you want to be, the writer you so want to be?”

“Hmm,” I say, suspiciously. My heart beats faster. I sort of hyperventilate.

It is better not to give pat answers when the Lord God asks you a question, “What do you mean by okay?” I ask.

“Will you be okay? Will you still be happy? Will you and I be okay?”

I think a long time, and come back to him the next day, as I work in the vegetable garden.

“Yes, if I never become a successful blogger, I will be okay. And if I never become a successful writer, I will be okay.

“I will learn to thank you for what I do have as a writer, not what I don’t have. I will be happy about all the lovely things in this world so full of richness. My heart will still be full of joy, because you will pour your Holy Spirit into it. I will still be overflowing with thanksgiving.

And yes, of course, you and I will be okay.”

And he says, “Thank you. That’s all I wanted to know.”

* * *

And somehow the niggle most writers have at the back of their heads, the yearning for a crystal ball to tell them if they’ll make it or not just lifts.

I turn the worry about my writing over to him. It’s now his worry.

We will be okay, my Lord and I.

I rather wish he’d speak lovely prophetic words about my blog or my writing into the silence of my heart and garden, but he does not. He has spoken to me about them before, and God is as economical as the closed eco-system in my garden. What he has spoken before, he will not repeat, for he knows I have hidden it in my heart–though when I am tired, I often doubt it.

When Sarah snorted, but God had mercy on her, anyway

By Anita Mathias


	Arent de Gelder 1645-1727

Three white-clad men walk out of the desert, out of the shimmering sands. Calm holiness. Abraham, the Patriarch, “very wealthy in silver and gold, sheep and cattle and camels and male and female donkeys, menservants and maidservants” runs to meet them, bows low to the ground, and offers him his most lavish hospitality: a freshly slaughtered calf, yogurt and milk, and bread from the finest flour,

It is a theophany; Abraham sees the pre-incarnate Christ. (And some theologians suggest, the trinity: The Father, Son and Holy Spirit). In other words, Abraham sees God.

^“Then one of the men said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son” (Gen 18:10).

* * *

And Sarah, listening at the entrance of her tent, out of sight, snorts.

Same old, same old, same old promises. The son, descendants, more of them than the stars in the sky and the grains of sand in the seashore.

Well, God, that sounds wonderfully poetic, all those promises, but you know, as for me, here, in space and time, time is passing, time has passed, and well, I could do with just one child. I have waited so long. I have hoped so long. Is that too much to ask? Well, yes, apparently so!

I am weary of these promises. I am weary of hope. “After I am worn out and my lord is old, will I now have this pleasure?” she thinks. (Gen 18:12)

And Sarah snorts!

* * *

Then the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child, now that I am old?’ ¹⁴Is anything too hard for the Lord?” (Gen 18: 13-14)

But perhaps the Lord also thought, “Yeah, I get Sarah. I have tried their hope and faith and patience for long decades. Perhaps too long. I have given them a good life full of richness. I have blessed them in every other way, but I know their longing, their heartbeat. It is for a son. It is for Isaac.

I waited so long so that they would never doubt that Isaac was mine, and not theirs. So that they would never fail to see my glory in this baby, Isaac. Never doubt Isaac was a miracle baby, my miracle ancestor, pre-figuring when I too would enter human history as a miracle baby, the greatest miracle of all.

But it is now time. Time for their miracle. Time for Isaac.”

“I will return to you at the appointed time next year, and Sarah will have a son.”

Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, “I did not laugh.”

But he said, “Yes, you did laugh.” (Gen 18: 14-15)

* * *

Ah, Sarah, how you blown it. Snorting at a theophany! Snorting at Christ and his angels! You’ve lost hope. Bitterness snakes around your heart. You no longer have the energy, the courage to hope, and who can blame you?

And then you lie! You lie to the Lord, who sees your heart.

But are you zapped, turned to a pillar of salt, as Lot’s wife was?

No, the Lord understood your longing, your disappointment, your frustration.

And despite your snort of laughter, your spontaneous lie, He reiterated his promise, no longer vague, but definite now, at last. “I will return to you at the appointed time next year, and Sarah will have a son.”

And He did, and you did, and you called him Isaac, which means laughter. Your snort of derisive laughter was redeemed; it became the laughter of joy at your miracle baby.

* * *

Sometimes, our dreams seem ridiculously enormous, and it seems very unlikely that they will ever come to pass, our faith wavers, and the years pass, but our dreams, the promises we heard God whisper to us, the destiny we are born for, has not come to pass, and when we verbalise our dreams, we almost snort.

And how can you, Lord, bless someone who has so blown it?

And you see us, you know our frame; you know we are but dust, you have compassion on our flagging faith amid our thwarted dreams. And so though we do not deserve it, you come to us; you bring the destiny you have promised us to pass, though it may not look like what we had dreamed of. Seeds beneath the desert soil burst into desert flowers.

You give us the fruits of your promise, whose name is laughter. You enjoy the pun, artist that you are, transforming our snort of sceptical laughter to laughter like a running brook.

Through Scoundrels and Scallywags, Ruffians and Ragamuffins, the Kingdom Advances

By Anita Mathias

So Bill Gothard, who taught 2.5 million people his 32 hour Bible course, is widely accused of sexual harassment, but wealthy Christians attribute their family and business success to him.

2.5 million people study the Bible for 32 hours! Despite him, above him, around him, and quite possibly through him, the kingdom advances.

Joyce Meyer’s finances perennially raise eyebrows, but, on a blogger’s trip to Cambodia, I meet a young man who became a Christian after listening to her on TV for 3 months, and then converted his whole village.

And the Kingdom marches on.

And so I suspend judgement on all morally ambiguous preachers—lest I find myself fighting against God.

For somehow above them, around them, perhaps even through them, still the Kingdom advances.

* * *

The Lord gave the word; great was the company of the preachers (Psalm 68:11). Ruffian and ragamuffins, saints and scoundrels, great was their company.

They had affairs; their greed corrupted them; they gave full vent to their jealousies; their ambition was unrestrained.

They preached the word, they prayed, they spread the fire, strange or otherwise.

And despite them, above them, around them, perhaps even through them, the Kingdom advanced.

* * *

And through those who sighed and volunteered to teach Sunday school, and to lead youth groups. Through those who led Bible studies to which people thronged to talk about themselves, and to make friends—but who yet were hospitable. Through those who gave their widow’s mite to churches and ministries which squandered it on a leader’s ego. But on the kingdom too, a little. Oh yes, on the kingdom too.

Through all these, the kingdom advances.

* * *

Despite—or through–crusaders and inquisitors and conquistadors and colonizers with a Bible in one hand and a sword in the other, the Kingdom advances.

It advanced to Mangalore on India’s west coast, when the Portuguese converted the entire town to Roman Catholicism in the sixteenth century, and so Jesus was one the first words I spoke.

It advances through those who are mean about abortion or immigration or gays or women preaching or women bishoping. Who support guns and invasions and bombings and all things Israeli. It advances.

“Gold, girls, glory, power yes; mixed-up motives, yes; but still the kingdom advances.”

It is like a mustard seed, bursting into a tree, which one day shall cover every nation, every village, the entire world, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, and neither shall our shenanigans.

We forget about the Kingdom at times, and seek power and glory, but you, God, are not perturbed.

For you know it’s all yours, the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever, Amen.

On Being Christian with a small c or a big C

By Anita Mathias

Image Credit

Our family was discussing a writer who has done paradigm-breaking innovative work.

“Is she a Christian?” my daughter Irene asked.

“Yes. She’s a Christian. With a small C, I’d guess.”

“What’s that?” Irene asked.

“Hmm… Someone who goes to church, more or less respects Jesus and the Bible, but who does not see the existence of God, and the coming of Christ as the central axis on which their life spins.”

Irene: “Are you a Christian with a small c or a big C?”

Me, “Oh, I am hopelessly Christian. Christian with a Big C.”

Zoe adds, “Except you do not go to church.”

We all laugh.

* * *

This is slander, dear readers; I do go to church. But these splendid summer days often find me exhausted by 5.30 p.m. when it’s time to leave to church, and so I, on occasion, worship God by a long solitary walk through the fields around our house, or a nap, or gardening, or even quietly praying in the empty house.

Having grown up Catholic, there is glorious freedom in being able to skip church without guilt. I, however, truly believe in the value of Christian fellowship and in belonging to an excellent church; I frequently come back from services at our church, St. Andrew’s, Oxford, with peace in my heart, and a smile on my lips. However, a key life verse since my twenties has been “In repentance and in rest, you shall be saved. In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength”(Is 30:15). So when I am tired, I try not to push, not even spiritually.

We talked about the writer’s brilliant book, Daring Greatly which I loved. It is about understanding and developing the self, and about bravery. Saying it’s about being your best self sounds too pop-culturish, but that’s one way of summarizing it. It is an excellent book, just not a Christian book, particularly: it isn’t one that Jesus would have written. Jesus would have said that we find our best selves in losing ourselves, in serving, in washing feet.

Oh Jesus! You do complicate a girl’s life, don’t you? I would be Christian with a small c if I could, but you have stretched my mind and spirit to a new dimension, and so I have to follow you, slow step by step.

When We are Caterpillars in a Ring of Fire, and Need Rescue from Above

By Anita Mathias

Image Credit

I read a striking essay this week.

Two women counsellors listened to my story. I was prayed for very gently. I was encouraged to forgive all the people I felt had done me real or imaginary hurts throughout my life. It took a long time. Eventually, I came to the last thing, and I couldn’t make a sound. I struggled for words, but they would not come out. The only way I can describe it is to say it was like labour contractions in the chest, not the stomach. I struggled to control my breathing, and eventually gasped out, “I forgive.”

The most amazing inner change occurred instantly. I have never experienced anything like it before or since. I was aware that a huge burden had been lifted. I realized that forgiveness has its own dynamic…

Wow! I emailed the author, asking for suggestions of books on inner healing through forgiveness.

But even before the reply arrived, I said to my soul, “Be still. Oh come on, Anita. It’s the end of a long academic year. Where are you going to summon up the energy for inner healing, counsellors, reading one more heavy book?”

* * *

I was wondering aloud to my husband Roy about why I have a whole lot less energy this month than when I started blogging four years ago.

And then I looked back at the last 12 months. A retreat alone at the Harnhill Centre in Gloucestershire this week last June; a family camper van trip to France, Switzerland and Italy in August, walking in Tuscany with Roy on a pilgrimage with Kim and Penelope Swithinbank in September; a week in a cottage in Cornwall with Roy and Irene in October; a week in Sicily over December with Roy and Irene; a week in the Loire Valley, France, with the family in February, (and returning to find we’d been burgled), a week in Cambodia with Tearfund in March, a week in Spain on retreat in May (just me).

Whoa! T.S. Eliot has this phrase, “Distracted from distraction by distraction.” I have a horror of living like that. Whereas normally travel increases my mental and emotional energy and my productivity, this year—not so. It has decreased it! Over the last ten years, we’ve evolved a rhythm of working hard for six weeks during the girls’ school term, then travelling over the term breaks and coming back full of bounce. This year, however, had Tuscany, Cambodia, Spain and Cirencester breaks during term which were one-offs (I think!) and too much.

I am going to Helsinki next month, and am not up to any extraordinary spiritual or actual effort until then.

* * *

Martin Luther and his great friend and fellow renaissance reformer Philip Melanchthon had a debate on the nature of grace. Melanchthon says grace is like one parent helping a wobbly toddler across the room to the other parent.

Luther says ‘No! We are caterpillars in a ring of fire. Our only hope is that someone from above will rescue us.’

When I am tired, that’s the kind of grace I need. No more DIY spirituality. Just help me, Lord!

* * *

Who, oh Lord could save themselves, their own soul could heal?

I love these words of Matt Redman’s. I hear them sung, and think, “Of course, of course.” To me, they are full of hope.

In my intense thirties, I used to pray: “Lord, I want to be twice as close to you by the end of the year as I am now.” And my game plan? Well, Bible study (45 minutes a day), prayer (45 minutes a day), giving (10% of our income), small groups, church attendance… I even tried to double up, oh yes, I did! Play the Gospels and epistles on CD while doing housework. I jest not!

(And I probably did grow closer to God because of all my striving, but not dramatically so. And, sadly, that’s because I was following the evangelical method of spiritual growth: prayer and Bible study, ever so diligently, but not the ancient, excruciating method outlined by Jesus: Love. “My command is this: Love one another.” Had I done this I would have been pushed into Jesus far sooner.)

The disciplines advocated by Richard Foster in his splendid “Celebration of Discipline”—prayer, study, worship, service, have some value. They make us more disciplined people!

But they cannot change our hearts.

If prayer, spiritual reading, Bible study, church attendance and giving could save us, we would not need God.

We’d be able to save ourselves.

But when Christians self-destruct—destroying their marriages, their ministries and themselves—it’s because of their hearts. Outwardly, we may be blameless—we read our Bibles, and lead and preach and give. Inwardly, there’s ice in our hearts and vitriol in our veins.

* * *

We cannot change our own hearts.

We cannot make ourselves love our enemies. Heck, we cannot even make ourselves love our family and our friends.

Ha, if forgiveness was a mere act of will, who would heft around the gorilla of grudges and grievances on their backs? We need God’s help to forgive.

We cannot unaided shed the envy that sends its distracting spider tentacles through our hearts; who’d choose that cancer?

We cannot get rid of the spiders of fear than lurk hidden in the recesses of our minds, that crippling rejection-sensitivity. Who wouldn’t want sunlight and bravery?

If self-help could save us, Christians would be the happiest and healthiest people in the world.

* * *

We are caterpillars in a ring of fire, but we often forget this because we are rather clever caterpillars, all bristle and camouflage and colour and potential.

And if the definition of insanity is to do the same thing we did before and hope for a different result, we are insane caterpillars, trying to change ourselves by the strategies which failed every time.

* * *

But remembering that someone can lift us caterpillars out of the ring of fire is the true magic of the spiritual life.

And the theological word for this magic is: Grace.

* * *

Self-effort cannot save me. If it could, I would have attained perfection decades ago.

But what if God watches all our busy-bee effort to save ourselves with a sad smile, knowing he can put on all the lights in our soul, can change its deep structure, accomplishing in a moment what we have toiled at and failed at through all our decades of spiritual effort.

* * *

In future, I am not going to try to save myself before I have asked for just one touch from the King. He may touch me and change me in an instant, or he may decide it’s best I grow strength through many sets and repetitions.

There is a short-cut between heaven and earth, fingers which can lift the caterpillar out of the ring of fire—or, better still, metamorphose her into a butterfly.

Lord, remind that my first course of action should be to ask you to lift me out the ring of fire in every challenge I face.

Come, Holy Spirit.

On Flawed People, Perfect Art, and Happiness

By Anita Mathias

In Creative Writing graduate school in the US, reading of the scandalous, chaotic and pain-filled private lives of the American poets whose luminous poetry I loved, I naively asked the professor if he thought one needed to be a good man or woman to be a good poet.

(We were studying the “prophetic” voice in poetry, and whether it can be mimicked or simulated. Whether you can sound like a “prophet” without being one. And, yes, it can, and knowing how easily passionate rhetoric can be produced without passion but with a few verbal and rhetorical tricks in your bag, makes me listen to preachers and prophets and some bloggers with slightly narrowed eyes, and a degree of scepticism).

“Hell, no!” he said. “Most of these poets are regular SOBs.”

I no longer wonder if one needs to be a good person to be a good writer. I can echo the professor. “Hell, no!”

But it’s not worth it! Not being a good person is not worth it. Sacrificing goodness for the sake of art is not worth it.

Being a good person when no one is watching (which is one definition of character) is worth it in the long run. And in, most cases, leads to more productivity in the long run.

And it is certainly conducive to that gentle state we scorn in youth, value more in middle age, and which is invaluable in old age: happiness.

The Best Way to Forgive–Bend in the Opposite Direction

By Anita Mathias

Image Credit

Penelope Swithinbank, an Anglican spiritual director and retreat leader, once told me an excellent way to get over the hump of forgiveness.

Like many people, I can struggle to forgive for years, for decades, re-injuring myself in the process–so much so that I am included to think of forgiveness as a miracle God does for us, a surgery he performs in our hearts, rather than something we do by an act of will. But of course, it’s both!

* * *

Penelope mentioned an idea from The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius. Ignatius says that the best way to straighten a bent twig is not to force it into an upright position. It will merely snap back to its former position.

The way to straighten a bent twig is to deliberately bend it in the opposite direction. And then, when it springs back, it will move to an upright position.

* * *

The application: If you are struggling with forgiveness, the best way to forgive is—breathe deeply now!!– to pray to be given a love for that person. The best way to forgive is to bless them.

Yes, request a blessing on them, because the way they have treated you is not the whole truth of their characters. Pray a blessing on them because God commands you too. Pray a blessing on them because that’s the kind of person you want to be, a person who is a blessing.

Bless them and release them, for your own sake, so you no longer have to heft around the gorilla of grudges on your back.

Forgive completely because you are no longer going to sip old stale poison, and hope it kills them.

Forgive because you not going to have any cancer in your heart, no, not even a little. You are going to flush out the toxicity of tedious old grievances and grudges.

Unlock the prison doors, and release the sulky captive who could not forgive, who happens to be you, yourself. Release her into the open sunshine of God’s love.

* * *

Yes, that is the quickest way to forgive. Bending the other way. Hold your breath, jump into the pool of God’s love, and forgive the one who has wronged you. Bless her from your heart, before you think better of it.

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