In Which All Curses are Broken

By Anita Mathias

The Brazen Serpent by Tintoretto

The Curse!

We feel its weight.

Insecurity, negative thinking,

Sharp-tonguedness, meanness

Fear of failure:

Patterns we observed in our parents

That the Enemy of our souls

Tries to imprint on us.

The things our parents said we could never do,

Our enemies said we would never do,

Mean summations of our character,

Things we no longer consciously remember

Has our Enemy fashioned into steel-tipped spears

Piercing our spirits.

Oh, how prematurely

we defined ourselves.

And so was our destiny shaped

by the malignant words

of the envious and ignorant.

The curse!

We knew no other power source, you see,

Nothing that could shatter the curse.

The times we succumbed to sin

Have left hairline fractures in our psyche.

Can we really keep explosive secrets,

Lose weight,

Control our temper,

Finish huge projects? we wonder.

We fear we cannot break bad habits,

When, of course, we can

If we hide in you,

Connected to your eternal springs.

* * *

The curse…

Can quite literally be one,

from those who would rather we were dead,

The evil mother-in-law, say…

Her prayer for death

Will never be heard by the Lord of the Universe,

But there are evil beings in the cosmos,

Who hear those “prayers,”

And smile.

I feel this chill

across the seas,

and hide in him who is stronger than I,

My strong tower.

* * *

I think of a dream long-deferred.

What’s going on with that?

Is someone cursing me? Said person? Others?

That’s irrelevant.

What am I going to do about it: that is the question.

I am going to hide in Jesus.

Drink his sap, his eternal waters,

Live with his energy powerfully in me.

* * *

The curse

Has no power over me

For I can plug into the mains.

For on a hill far away,

rough wood abrading his lacerated back,

His head pieced and bleeding

His lungs gasping for air,

His hands and feet nail-pierced,

Raising himself to gasp for air,

a man writhes,

Absorbing the toxins,

Of the evil said to us

The evil done to us

The evil we have done.

He absorbs the curse.

He chooses to become the curse

In my place.

* * *

Moses put a bronze serpent on a pole

And whoever looked at it was healed.

Our Jesus writhed in pain,

His form contorted as a serpent’s,

And all who look upon him,

Who are washed in his blood,

Have protection

From the malicious old serpent,

The enemy of mankind.

* * *

The healing flood of his blood

Snaps the curse over us.

He bore it.

He broke it.

It is washed away by his blood.

The evil said to us,

Prophesied for us,

Wished for us,

Feared by us,

Those gates of bronze, those bars of iron

Are snapped

By the blood of Jesus.

We live connected to his power

Which so powerfully works in us.

* * *

Where am I safe from the curse?

In you.

For you absorbed the curse.

You became a curse.

When I hide in you,

My spirit is safe

From the actions of evil men…

You became a curse

So I could inherit blessing

I hide in you,

And absorb life from you, and

I am safe in you.

* * *
And the veil of the temple is rent,

And we step into the most holy place,

Of the open heaven,

Where his power and glory flows to us

And behold, our lips are touched with fire

And we hear a voice say,

“Your guilt is taken away

And your sin atoned for.”

We are filled with a new thing,

The Holy Spirit,

And slowly,

Become a different person

A Spirit-filled creation

The old has gone, the new has come.

Minute by minute,

He gives us the power to be different.

We are released into a new story.

How will it end?

I do not know.

But He is writing it,

And He is a very good writer, indeed.

Woman Much Missed, how you call to me, call to me!

By Anita Mathias

I love this poem, especially its haunting use of repetition!

151. The Voice

By Thomas Hardy


WOMAN much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.

Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,	5
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!

Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,	10
You being ever consigned to existlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?

Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward	15
And the woman calling.













	10





	15

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Genius Grows with Experience. I believe it.

By Anita Mathias

Genius grows with experience

As the John Llewellyn Rhys prize for young writers reaches 65, Derwent May argues that the best writing comes with the seasoning of old age

Poets are usually thought of as youthful figures, inspired by the first, joyous discovery of love and sex. It is not always so, however. Two of the outstanding poets of the past 100 years were inspired to write some of their greatest poems not by pretty sweetings, but by the memory of long-dead wives.
Thomas Hardy wrote some good lyrical poems when he was young, but the most moving poems of all the thousands he produced were a little batch that appeared in his Satires of Circumstance when he was 72. Suddenly, it seems, memories of the youthful sweetheart who became his first wife welled up in him, with an overpowering surge of happiness and grief. And the facility with words that he had mastered over the years, almost to the point of banality, came to his aid.
“Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me” one of them begins, and ends with the wonderful image of “Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,/ And the woman calling”. Another begins in opposite vein – “Hereto I come to view a voiceless ghost… Through the years, through the dead scenes I have tracked you”, and ends with the memory of “when/ Our days were a joy, and our paths through flowers”. There are few more powerful poems in English.
And in our own time, we have Ted Hughes’s Birthday Letters. Again, of course, there were many fine earlier poems. But in this volume, where Hughes finally confronted the reality of his life with Sylvia Plath, and of her death, he found a directness and eloquence that make it the most moving of all his books. Christopher Reid, in his introduction to his edition of Hughes’s letters, suggests that all his voluminous letter-writing over the years helped him to shape these final “letters”.

An Amazing Business Success Story: The Story of Wall Drug, South Dakota

By Anita Mathias

Roy and I drove to Yellowstone National Park and the Badlands about 20 years ago. As we neared the town of Wall, South Dakota, more precisely, as we were about 100 miles away, we began to see signs. 99 miles to Wall Drug. Free Iced water, and 5 cent coffee. And so on, probably 200 signs, every half mile. Of course, we stopped. We sipped, we bought. We marvelled at the Drugstore as big as a town, that employs a third of the town.

The Drugstore was founded during the Depression, when no one stopped in because no one had money to spend. The Husteads had run the store for the 5 years they had given themselves to make money–unsuccessfully.

One day, as they came closer to giving up, Mrs Hustead noticed the continuous stream of cars which drove by–without stopping.

It was hot, she thought, they might be thirsty. So she put up signs offering them free iced water. Free. No strings attached.

The store began to fill almost as soon as she put out the signs. Some bought icecream. Or sodas.

The business took off. It sprawled across the town. It never looked back.

A simple business lesson: Give people something they need, that blesses them, at a reasonable price, even free.

It is in blessing that we are blessed!

The founder sums it up:

Free Ice Water. It brought us Husteads a long way and it taught me my greatest lesson, and that’s that there’s absolutely no place on God’s earth that’s Godforsaken. No matter where you live, you can succeed, because wherever you are, you can reach out to other people with something that they need!

The Law Simply Does not Work. In Marriage or Elsewhere. We need Grace!

By Anita Mathias

In the story of Eden, God gave Adam and Eve all the trees of the garden as food. Except, except–the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And which tree which was the most attractive to them? And irresistible? And eaten?

That is the way of the law. It makes doing what you are not supposed to, and not doing what you are supposed to, most tempting.

It simply does not work.

Like many couples who have been married for nearly 24 years, Roy and I have had a bit of counselling. The less competent counsellors have tried the law. Made lists. Anita will do this, Roy will do this.

Human societies, after all, are based on ground rules, contracts, predictabilities. There is something to that.

But once the law is imposed, and each has their To Do and Don’t List, guess what happens? I personally have never been able to keep to these contracts imposed on me for a whole week. (Though I can be a perfect angel for an hour or two, let me add!).

The law, rules, simply does not work in relationships.

And so, when one simple law didn’t work, God hedged the ancient Israelites in with The Law. Whole books of it. Leviticus, Deuteronomy. Oh incredible tedium.

And could they keep it?

One purpose of the law was to teach man that we could not keep laws, that we need a saviour.

And so, God found a new way.

Jesus came and gave it all, freely, in grace. And asked us to give him our all.

A new model for marriage. Grace, kindness without strings or bartering.

The law and rules will not work long time in marriage just as they did not work for Israel. Grace is what lubricates relationships.

God help us, and Jesus, give us your grace, and teach us grace!

Reading Recovery

By Anita Mathias

A Reading Recovery Plan

Richard Foster said, If you are too busy to read, you are too busy. I don’t read as much as I used to–a book a day. Inspired by a Facebook friend who is reading 50 pages a day, I’ve started a reading recovery project. Start where I am, and add a page a day, until I too am reading at least 50 pages a day. It will be life and mind changing. Started on A.S. Byatt’s “Angels and Insects.” Lovely, rich writing!

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In which I learn not to let my heart be troubled, but to trust Jesus

By Anita Mathias

Image Credit

“Do not let your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. Trust in God; trust also in me.” John 14:1

This is one of my favourite verses from Scripture. Again and again, when I am stressed, I say it to myself, and, literally, by a mental decision, exchange fear for trust.

I do not mean that what I fear will never happen (though most people’s fears do not materialize). I mean that God will help me deal with it.

I remember the moment it became real.

* * *

I have an in-law, who is insensitive, pushy and (diagnosed) bi-polar. She made our engagement, wedding preparation, the day of our wedding, and the day and days after very difficult with random angry phone calls in the middle of the night or early in the morning, temper tantrums, rudeness, randomly showing up at our house at 6a.m. ringing the doorbells, many bizarre and irrational financial and other demands. Totally disruptive!

I thought the very worst thing would be if this person were ever to live in my house, with the chaos and devastation she caused, and that was one of my mental resolutions: She will never come to stay.

Turns out though, that this in-law had organised her life around visiting people, for weeks, a month at a time, visiting anyone who was good-hearted enough, or decent enough, to agree.

We deflected this successfully. She lived “down under,” which helped. And then Roy’s brother moved to the US, where we were living. And I felt sure that she’d visit Roy’s brother, and then either visit us, or slander us if we refused.

* * *

So I was worrying about this visit from this woman who was rude and insulting about me to my face, and would slander me to Roy if she had a minute alone with him. And would absorb my hospitality and then slander me to all and sundry.

I was walking on my treadmill, about 10 or 15 years ago, listening to the Gospel of John when this verse jumped out at me, “Do not let your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. Trust in God, trust also in me.”

And I thought, “Anita, do you really believe this? Can you let your heart not be troubled, and let it not be afraid?”

And then I thought, “Ah, but this woman. She’s nuts. She cares for the good opinion of neither God nor man. She just wants what she wants.”

And then I thought, “But can God manage her?”

Believe it or not, I had to think about it for a while!! Could God deal with someone so closed off to him? And I decided, “I will trust him, whatever she does.”

And I felt peace.

* * *

And, as matters turned out, Roy’s brother, David, did indeed move to the US. But before that, we had moved to the UK.

And she did indeed visit David in the US for a month….

And she had, apparently, as I had feared, decided to visit Roy when she visited David. And so, though we were in Oxford, she bought a US-UK ticket, without telling us, and one day, as we were minding our own business, the phone rung, and she announced that she was in the UK for a surprise visit of 2 weeks.

It was the busiest time of our lives. The school and university term were in full swing. Roy was still a professor of mathematics, with a Chair in Applied Maths, head of a research group, and was spending all his extra time helping me out with our publishing business. We were hideously behind with the latter, with fulfilling orders, customers breathing down our necks, and didn’t have a minute to spare.

Besides, we teach people how to treat us. If I had let her stay, she, diagnosed manic-depressive, would buy a ticket to our house whenever she felt high, without warning, as she had now done. If I had let her stay, I would never have been able to breathe freely, never knowing if the door-bell was her.

She visited Roy for a day in his office, but did not set foot in our house. She stayed with other relatives and tangential connections, and has never paid us another “surprise” visit.

* * *

Do not let your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. Most of our fears do not happen, and the ones that do, God can help us deal with.

The visit I feared as crazy-making, and depressing and boring and an explosion of lies and evil into my life has not yet happened in 24 years of marriage.

And if it had, God would still have protected me, I believe.

It is always safe to trust him, I believe.

Beware of most Writing Workshop teachers. And get a deadline

By Anita Mathias

Here’s a good piece on why most advice from writing workshop leaders should be taken with caution. Caveat Emptor. And on how one’s learns best by deadlines. Even self-imposed deadlines like writing a blog post or two or three a day.

Forget those creative writing workshops. If you want to write, get threatened

And don’t ask me for advice. I’d prefer you to never achieve anything. Ever

- Charlie Brooker
- The Guardian, Monday 16 August 2010
- Article history

Cockroach — Words are like cockroaches – only once the lights are off do they feel free to scuttle around on the kitchen floor. Photograph: Alamy

One of the side-effects of having your work appear in a public forum such as this is that people often email me asking for advice on how to break into writing, presumably figuring that if a drooling gum-brain like me can scrape a living witlessly pawing at a keyboard, there’s hope for anyone.

I rarely respond; partly because there isn’t much advice I can give them (apart from “keep writing and someone might notice”), and partly because I suspect they’re actually seeking encouragement rather than practical guidance. And I’m a terrible cheerleader. I can’t egg you on. I just can’t. My heart’s not in it. To be brutally honest, I’d prefer you to never achieve anything, ever. What if you create a timeless work of art that benefits all humankind? I’m never going to do that – why should you have all the glory? It’s selfish of you to even try. Don’t you dare so much as start a blog. Seriously. Don’t.

Sometimes people go further, asking for advice on the writing process itself. Here I’m equally unhelpful. I’ve been writing for a living for around 15 years now and whatever method I practise remains a mystery. It’s random. Some days I’ll rapidly thump out an article in a steady daze, scarcely aware of my own breath. Other times it’s like slowly dragging individual letters of the alphabet from a mire of cold glue. The difference, I think, is the degree of self-awareness. When you’re consciously trying to write, the words just don’t come out. Every sentence is a creaking struggle, and staring out the window with a vague sense of desperation rapidly becomes a coping strategy. To function efficiently as a writer, 95% of your brain has to teleport off into nowhere, taking its neuroses with it, leaving the confident, playful 5% alone to operate the controls. To put it another way: words are like cockroaches; only once the lights are off do they feel free to scuttle around on the kitchen floor. I’m sure I could think of a more terrible analogy than that given another 100,000 years.

Anyway the trick (which I routinely fail to pull off) is to teleport yourself into that productive trance-state as quickly as possible, thereby minimising procrastination and maximising output. I’m insanely jealous of prolific writers, who must either murder their inner critic and float into a productive reverie with ease, or have been fortunate enough to be born with absolutely zero self-critical reflex to begin with.

As for me, I’m stuck in a loveless relationship with myself, the backseat driver who can’t stop tutting and nagging. There’s no escape from me’s relentless criticism. Me even knows what I’m thinking, and routinely has a pop at Me for that. “You’re worrying about your obsessive degree of self-criticism again,” whines Me. “How pathetically solipsistic.” And then it complains about its own bleating tone of voice and starts petulantly kicking the back of the seat, asking if we’re there yet.

Some days, when a deadline’s looming and my brain’s refusing to co-operate, I’m tempted to perform some kind of psychological cleansing ceremony. More than once I’ve wondered whether I should prepare for the writing process by wishing my inner critic inside a nearby object – a tennis ball, say – which I could then symbolically hurl out of the window before taking a seat at my desk.

It sounds like the kind of thing Paul McKenna would do. He’s massively successful and can probably levitate.

But before I can even get round to it, I’m plagued with doubts. How far should I throw it? How hard? If I toss 95% of my personality into the garden, do I have to go and retrieve it later? What if it actually works? What if I wind up utterly dependent, and need to perform this ritual every time I’m called upon to do anything – even something as simple as asking for change in a newsagent’s – and before long I’m zealously carting a trolley full of tennis balls everywhere I go, violently hurling one into the distance at the start of every sentence, breath, facial expression or bowel movement, and before I know it I’ve woken up screaming in my own filth in a hospital bed until the man comes in with the needle to make it all go away again? What if that happens?

Yes, what if? So the tennis ball remains untossed, and those typing fingers move unsurely and slowly until the deadline draws sufficiently near enough to become a palpable threat; a looming iceberg whose ominous proximity transforms whines of self-doubt into cries of abject panic. And eventually the page is filled.

So then. To everyone who has ever emailed to ask me for advice on writing, my answer is: get a deadline. That’s all you really need. Forget about luck. Don’t fret about talent. Just pay someone larger than you to kick your knees until they fold the wrong way if you don’t hand in 800 words by five o’clock. You’ll be amazed at what comes out.

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