Anita Mathias | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

God of the Clanging Cymbal

By Anita Mathias

You are

the God of the noisy gongs,

and you are the God

of the clanging cymbals,

of those who speak in the tongues of angels

and are impatient,

who prophesy

and are unkind,

who understand mysteries

and resent the success of the unworthy,

whose faith moves mountains,

and are rude and easily angered.

Such people are “nothing,” Paul says.

You are the God of those nothings.

* * *

You are God of the wildly generous

And yet self-seeking,

Who surrender their body to the flames

In ardent faith, but remember

every wrong done to them

and are delighted

when retribution overtakes their persecutors

And so gain nothing. Alas!

You see their tragedy. You are their God.

* * *

And when I speak and write eloquently

But am neither patient, nor kind

I still love you,

And oddly, you love me,

Noisy old clanging cymbal.

And when I prophesy, truly

And envy a friend’s success,

And when in a flash of insight,

I fathom mysteries,

And I gain knowledge,

through toil, or your spirit

And tell (okay, boast!)

Oddly, I still love you,

And you love me.

And when my simple faith has moved

Obstacles, and I subtly

Take all the credit for it,

Goodness, you still love me,

And, you know–I love you, Jesus.

When I give far more than I afford,

In a grand gesture I regret for years

But am easily angered

And remember ancient grievances,

And am delighted when my enemies reap

What they’ve sown–at last, at last,

And smile that there’s justice in the universe

Oh Lord, you see and you know,

You shake your head, and you love me.

And I love you.

* * *

I would like to learn to love

A dangerous prayer. And now I

Want to flee from it far beyond the sea,

But will not.

Jesus, I believe in your love for me,

(Most of the time!)

No, truly, I do.

Let the river of that love

Flow through me to other people

Let me follow you

In the most excellent way!

Amy Boucher Pye guest-posts on her writing process and her work in progress

By Anita Mathias

Thank you to Anita for inviting me on the Monday blog tour. Pleasure to be dreaming beneath the spires with you, even if from a sunny garden in North London!

So the game is to share what we’re working on, why we write, and how the process works.

What I am working on

I’m writing and writing but still chasing after that first elusive book. Having worked as an editor in the Christian publishing field for yonks, I find I have to chain up my inner editor when I’m writing, and nowhere more so than with a book-length manuscript. My inner editor voice sees what I’m creating and chimes in with some not-so-helpful comments, “Are you sure you want to write that? You’re a first-time author. What about your platform, or lack thereof? Blah-de-blah-de-blah-de-blah.”

My journey to book publication has been rocky. A highlight was Easter 2013, when I was thrilled to secure a most fabulous literary agent to represent me, Steve Laube. He shopped around my idea of a memoir called Beloved of God, which traced my journey of awakening to God’s love and accepting my identity as his child. Result? Rejection. Ouch.

And so I’m back to the drawing board. I feel a bit stuck, to be honest, for that nasty inner editor can be so vocal, especially when my first attempt did not meet with success. But now that I’ve just finished with a busy season of speaking engagements, I’m going to clamp down and develop the book idea that keeps popping up, wanting to take a life of its own.

Why do I write what I do?

I’ve always loved words and writing. When I was 11, I was first published in the Minneapolis paper in the kids’ page, which I found thrilling. But when some schoolmates mocked me for scoring 104/100 on the poetry project, I started to lose confidence. Working for a great writer in my early 20s further eroded my willingness to put words on the page, as I thought about what I would write and found myself wanting (to be fair on my younger self, that author/thinker and I have very different styles!)

It was only after my world fell in, seemingly, when Zondervan axed my acquisitions (UK: commissioning) editor position that I started to develop my writing voice. I began writing regularly for publication (feature articles, columns, reviews, devotionals), enjoying the buzz of seeing the finished product and the interacting with readers.

One of my most favorite activities is writing devotionals – Bible reading notes. I learn so much by delving into the biblical text and commentaries, chewing it over with prayer and offering it up. I’ve written for New Daylight, Day by Day with God, Inspiring Women Every Day, Closer to God and Living Light. You can read some of my devotional series on my blog.

I’ve also always loved books, and so another joy is to run the Woman Alive Book Club. Every month I choose a book or two to review as well as interviewing Christian authors. We also publish 5 reader reviews. Our Facebook group is a wonderful place for discussion of books and authors; it’s a real community of grace. (Because I’m always in need of books to review for this monthly feature, publishers regularly send me their books to consider. Free books = result!)

How does my work differ from others in its genre?

The more I write, the more I celebrate the author’s individual voice. Made in the image of God, we all reflect his glory, truth, creativity and love in unique ways. That voice being expressed by words on a page (or a screen) to me is beautiful. The more sure I am about who am I am, rooted in him, the more eager I am to write and share and create.

And yes, I’m aware I didn’t really answer the question…

How does my writing process work?

Once I’ve taken the kids to school, I settle down in my hopefully sunny study. After some time reading the Bible and praying, and yep, catching up on social media, I get down to my task. If it’s a blog post or a short article, I take the hint of the idea that I want to flesh out and get down to writing. (I wrote about this creative process recently in a blog.) If I’m writing Bible reading notes, I delight in reading around the passage in commentaries and spending some time in prayer, asking God what he’d like me to share.

My busy family life means I can’t often go away for a period of uninterrupted writing, but those occasions when I’ve hidden myself away for a few days or even a week are blissful hard work. After getting my work space organized just so, I research and write and drink sparkling water and write and look out the window and drink more sparking water and write. Ah for one of those weeks…

I’ve found that any good writing comes after rewriting. And rewriting. And rewriting. Of course, we also have to learn how to stop the editing process too – and finally to finish off a piece before we destroy it – but going back over one’s work with a fresh eye, tweaking here and cutting there, gives stronger results.

To continue the blog tour, I nominate two fabulous Cathys: Cathy LeFeurve and Cathy Madavan. After all, my middle name is Catherine…

Amy Boucher Pye

Carolyn Weber muses on her writing, her writing process, & works in progress (Monday Blog Hop)

By Anita Mathias

I have been tagged by Anita Mathias to join the Monday Blog Hop, which involves a tour of UK/US writers. I am delighted and honoured at the invitation, and enjoyed myself in answering the questions she passed along.

Often stopping to reflect on one’s work brings a respite of clarity – I should do this more often, if I wasn’t so mired in the work itself! It’s a good reminder of the wisdom that re-evaluation brings. “Teach us to number our days, the we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Ps 90:12). Indeed.

I include the questions and my answers below, and then I take the liberty of tagging two faith writers I’ve admired in the blogosphere to join in the same, Rachel Marie Stone and Pilar Arsenec:

What are you working on?

I just finished a collection of poems – like one of my favourite poets Luci Shaw (who also managed to raise 5 children!) I have found poetry conducive to mothering. Perhaps it’s the efficiency of the genre, perhaps it’s the way I have found the world to speak more loudly to me now as a mother (in all sorts of ways), perhaps it’s how I can, with poetry, work drafts and revisions into the nooks and crannies of my day. Perhaps it really is a Wordsworthian overflow of emotion recollected in tranquility when I finally do get to sit. Or a combination of all these aforesaid things. I have also felt so many combined emotions returning to my hometown, and of course I love the natural world, and especially the Canadian landscape. As with authors I enjoy reading, I tend to immerse myself in genres as well when I write. Hence, a lot of poetry lately.

I’m also about to launch a line of children’s books. This has been a project long close to my heart, so do stay tuned! I should have more information up on my website shortly.

And finally, I have been working for some time on a book project about the spiritual discipline of reading. The project has a more academic bent, but I hope to make it attractive to all readers as well as it grows out of my love of literature and two decades of teaching it. I believe words are holy things, and that our relationship to them needs to be upheld and nurtured, especially in our culture today.

How does your work differ from others in its genre?

While I enjoy memoir as a vein throughout most of what I do, I hope that it is malleable as appropriate. As a memoirist, I want to be known for keeping the same trustworthy voice, but approaching different topics with it. I am drawn to the interweaving of stories (I love allusion, and how it opens ideas and associations like Russian dolls, through just one word or phrase), along with history, art, and literature to create other worlds (fictive and creative non-fictive) that challenge us to grow closer to God –with all the terrible beauty that implies.

Why do you write what you do?

Look. Taste. Hear. See. God is good. Art is the overcoming of evil with good. Without the ardent pursuit of beauty and truth, we are the living dead, indeed – a fate far worse than death.

How does your writing process work?

This is a question that always fascinates me with other writers. For me, right now at this season in my life, I’m afraid I don’t have any process that “works.” As a mother to four small children yet, I often feel I am living out Emily Dickinson’s maxim: “When I try to organize, my little Force explodes.”

I try to write regularly, i.e. daily, even in some small way, shape or form, but this attempt or even good intention is often subject to circumstance, no matter how hard I try: a child’s illness, an elderly parent’s needs, the toddler crying. It can be frustrating, but it can also be quite humbling in its required re-setting of one’s heart. Then, we you do get to really be with your words, you appreciate the process and the words themselves. Writing becomes a kind of worship.

Sometimes I have the rare chance – or more likely I snap – and hide and write for long periods at a time. This can be quite productive, as I’ve spent a long while “percolating” before hand, even when on the run during my day. One blessing is that I very rarely suffer from writer’s block when I do get to sit by myself with a cup of tea and the page before me!

Carolyn Weber and her gorgeous family

Carolyn Weber: Author of the critically acclaimed memoir Surprised by Oxford, Carolyn Weber holds her B.A. Honours in English from Huron College at the University of Western Ontario, Canada and her M.Phil. and D. Phil. Degrees in Romantic Literature from Oxford University, England. She has been a professor at the University of San Francisco, Seattle University, Westmont College and Oxford University, where she was also the first female dean of St. Peter’s College. An author, speaker and teacher, she currently resides in Southwestern Canada, with her husband and four spirited children.

When Waves of Mercy Crash Over My “If Onlys”

By Anita Mathias

Motherhood.

The land of If Onlys.

* * *

If only I’d been calmer when I was pregnant with her.

If only she’d had a higher birth weight.

If only I had breast-fed longer,

If only I had used better childcare,

Or no child-care.

If only I could have home-schooled,

Or read to the girls for longer,

Or helped them with homework,

Or spoken more positive words.

If only their parents had fought less.

If only, if only, if only, I wish….

* * *

And then, I feel them, from nowhere,

Waves of mercy, waves of grace.

They flood over me,

they pulse through me.

They pour, pour, pour.

And I see.

* * *

It’s clay. It’s all clay.

The deep blue clay of the bitter years,

The black clay of one’s failures,

Clay with streaks of silver tears,

Clay red with one’s heart’s blood.

And the best thing I can do

With my if onlys and I wishs

Is place them

In the potter’s magnificent hands

And watch

As he kneads,

Shapes, forms, moulds.

And I see, amazed,

A glorious vase emerge,

Perfect for its purpose,

In my daughter’s life,

As in my own.

Not what we had asked for,

Not what we had dreamed of,

Not what we had expected.

Something different is being fashioned

With the azure of failure,

The silver streaks of tears,

The red of one’s heart’s blood,

And the black of sadness.

And it is beautiful.

* * *

And so, I will no longer look back,

In regret

At foolish, messy yesterdays.

I will entrust yesterday to your magic

hands, O Potter, and tomorrow!

I will sit today,

Where waves of love

Crash over me,

I will sit

Where waves of mercy pour over my life.

Chasing the Wild Goose of the Holy Spirit: In Praise of Retreats

By Anita Mathias

Is God more present in one place than another?Does it make sense to leave the comfort and familiarity of your daily surroundings to seek God in places—retreat centres or pilgrimage spots– “where prayer has been made valid,” in T. S. Eliot’s phrase? Where God was rumoured to have shown up in the past, or to be currently showing up?Does it make sense to go to conferences to listen to other people’s deep, life-changing experiences of God rather than stay home and experience him quietly for yourself?

For most of my life, my answer to these questions was No.

I wanted to experience God in my daily life, amid the wear and tear of marriage and parenting and housekeeping and writing and church.

I was wary of seeking mountain-top experiences which would fade once I got down to the valley simply because they often had, leaving me discouraged. Far better to experience God little by little in the valleys, and have this experience permeate my whole life.

I guess you could say I was not really hungry.

* * *

It’s the rare person who’s hungry for God while you still hope that your life can work very well, thank you, without God.

So it took a period of brokenness—of a manuscript being rejected; of having to totally lay my writing aside to found a business to pay for private school for the girls; of being purified in the crucible of marriage—for me to want to be filled to overflowing with the Holy Spirit, and his gifts of love, joy and peace more than I wanted to be a successful writer.

And this God-longing is revealing itself in my use of time.

* * *

The ancient Celtic symbol for the Holy Spirit was a wild goose.

If the wild goose did not grace your backyard, you searched for him in places where he was last rumoured to have been.

And so when I run out of energy, of love, of joy, of a steady sense of shalom and the presence of God, I am happy to take time out, to seek the wild goose of the Holy Spirit once again.

* * *

And spiritual quests, luckily, are not the quest for the Holy Grail, where you either find the Grail, or you don’t. They are not all or nothing.

They are like treasure hunts in which one might pick up one gleaming golden feather one time, or a fistful of them the next, or bits of delicate down. And each of these makes your life more beautiful.

And finally, you chance upon the shimmering wild goose itself

* * *

Healing comes layer by layer. Revelation and clarity and guidance come layer by layer.

The Holy Spirit like water floods the soul of the seeker, sometimes in a trickle, sometimes a stream, sometimes a mighty flood.

I like the way the ancient Israelites constructed a cairn of stones to remember significant spiritual encounters.

* * *

Here are some of my cairns:

Learning soaking prayer at a Catch the Fire Conference with John Arnott, and somehow catching a deep awareness of the Father’s love for me, through the week-long conference, and through the practice of soaking prayer they taught. Receiving healing from adrenal fatigue at a healing prayer session. Receiving partial healing from emotional eating at Cwmbran and Harnhill Retreat Centre. Beginning to radically change my diet after a visit to His Place, Saarland, Germany, a holistic Christian retreat centre.

* * *

If you feel stuck in your personal life, or goals, or relationships, or feel the need of physical or emotional or mental healing, or would like to experience more of the presence of God who is energy and joy and peace, I would highly recommend going away for a retreat, personal or guided, or a conference with speakers with an attested track record of fruitfulness and integrity (I find Bill Johnson, John and Carol Arnott, and Heidi Baker worth listening to.)

Why go away to experience God when God is everywhere?

1 God honours the humility it takes to inconvenience ourselves to seek him.

Namaan the Syrian has leprosy. His slave girl tells him about the prophet, Elisha in Samaria who can heal, and off he goes pompously with chariots and horses and silver and gold and clothing to be healed.

But Elisha merely send him word to bathe seven times in the Jordan.

Namaan is furious: “Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?”

His servants tell him, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!”

So Naaman bathes in the Jordan, and is cleansed.

Sometimes, God heals us in response to our own prayers, and, sometimes, in response to other people’s prayers. Both happen in Scripture— the second far more frequently. Who knows why? I think God honours the humility it takes to ask for prayer.

It also ensures that we cannot position ourselves as some sort of super-prayer-warrior who can cure all our own diseases and ailments, physical, mental and spiritual by our own prayers.

2 We hear God better when we set aside time to do so.

Mark Batterson in The Circle Maker: Praying Circles Around Your Biggest Dreams and Greatest Fears has a formula

Change of pace + change of place=Revelation.

Come on, be realistic. Home can be a talking-to-do list of duties and distractions. And there’s the phone, and mobile phones, and the internet. A good retreat centre will infuriate you by cutting wifi, thereby ensuring that you hear God rather more than you bargained for!!

If we struggle with making time and space and silence for God in our daily life—but feel the need for clarity, peace, blessing, healing, guidance—it makes sense to go away and seek these things.

3 God honours the sacrifice of money, time, convenience and career advancement that we make in seeking him.

4 Going away to seek God has been built into Judeo-Christianity from the very earliest days when the Jews went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem three times a year. A kind of holy-day, exercise, community and God all thrown in.

5 It is generally so worth it.

I was talking to a woman who had spent thousands of pounds last year on a forthnight in the Bahamas, and came back with no more peace or joy than she had before.

Then she went on a weekend retreat at Waverly Abbey, and came back glowing, couldn’t stop talking about it, felt spiritually full and somehow different.

I love travel—it energizes me. However, etymologically, the English word travel is derived from travail: trouble, sorrow, suffering, hassle. It’s not always a spiritual experience for me (though it often is).

A silent retreat however clears my mind of all my whirling thoughts and worries, gives me clarity, and fills me again with the spirit of Jesus. It’s a great investment of time.

* * *

Bird watchers are amazing. All they want to do is to see the bird—the kingfisher, the toucan, the macaw or the albatross and the penguins which I saw in New Zealand.

And I want to similarly seek the wild goose of the Holy Spirit until I have all of him, and he has all of me, and says, “Okay child, I have seen your heart. I will make you my dwelling place. I will come and fill you, and you will be my Anita, and I will be your God.”

I Asked You to Guide Me

By Anita Mathias

I asked for guidance.

You answered

Pillars of cloud by day.

Pillars of fire by night.

The red sea parted.

Staffs turned into snakes.

Asses spoke.

The ground was dry

but the fleece was wet.

The sign I asked you for.

The fleece was dry,

while the earth was drenched.

The sign I asked you for.

It was as if you strolled into the room

and I could see you–

when I asked you for guidance.

* * *

I asked for guidance.

Silence.

Absolute.

So I navigated,

by ancient arts:

Common sense,

the north star,

the panic azimuth,

the sun rising from the east,

Not in a blaze of illumination,

but like dawn on the peaks

of distant mountains that

shine out of the darkness,

until we see the snow on them.

We see them.

Image Credit

In Which I Tell You about My Memoir-in-Progress and My Writing Process (Monday Blog Hop)

By Anita Mathias

I have been tagged by Claire Musters to write about my work in progress, and my writing process.

What I am working on

I work on my blog, Dreaming Beneath the Spires, on the principle of the Minimum Effective Dose. What is alive grows, so I post just enough to keep my blog growing, month on month. About 2-3 posts a week.

I am wrapping up a memoir—Mind has Mountains which I have worked on sporadically since 1991, but abandoned for months, and sometimes years at a time!!

However, I have a first draft of the entire thing with several chapters published, anthologized even, winning several prizes (including a $20,000 NEA!)

I have had leading editors and agents interested on both sides of the Atlantic, but things fell apart at the stage of the proposal. They did not feel the ones I wrote were saleable.

A savvy New York agent showed a savvy New York editor the book, and they commented, “It’s as if Anita is at odds with the material. She is fighting the story.” Interestingly, though both were secular, they felt I was fighting the spiritual memoir that my life and spirit were demanding I write so as to write the literary memoir I wanted to write!

I wanted to write a memoir of an Indian Catholic childhood, ending at 18, a memoir inspired by Mary McCarthy’s Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood and Patricia Hampl’s A Romantic Education. It had three sections—

I My life as a Catholic child in the Zorashtrian company town of Jamshedpur up to the age of 9 when I was expelled from the local school because of my mischievousness.

(And holidays with grandparents in Catholic enclaves of Bombay and Mangalore).

The Chapel at St. Mary’s Convent, Nainital

II Boarding school in St. Mary’s Convent, Nainital in the Himalayas, a boarding school run by Irish and German nuns at which I was rebellious, and an atheist.

III Working with Mother Teresa for two years, after an abrupt religious conversion at 17.

I wanted to write a series of essays on passions and experiences and people, like Vladimir Nabokov’s great memoir Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited but the world has changed, and speeded up. People want story, not literary essays. (Not that I greatly care about literary fashions. I truly believe that self-publishing, in the first instance, is an option for sui generis books, provided one can do some marketing—which perhaps I can with God’s help.)

But I think God loves story–and created us to love good stories. The whole Bible tells a shapely story, of our simultaneous craving for God and desire to do our own thing, and how we needed a Saviour to change our hearts from within, and bear the horrid consequences of the crack in our natures.

The editors and agents who have looked at it had a point. I was stopping the story mid-story.

I talked a bit about my book to editor Amy Boucher Pye last week, and we thought about what the story of my life really was.

I suddenly realized that for me to write a solely literary memoir like Nabokov’s Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited or Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, ending at age 18 would be at odds with my story. It would leave out the two most important directional decisions of my life–deciding my life’s path would be that of a writer (aged 21) and a decision (aged 27) that I was going to align my life with Christ.

Most days I do live in Jesus, am hidden in Jesus. The story of my life is a spiritual one.

So I need another three chapters: being an undergraduate at Oxford when my faith wobbled to extinction. Doing an MFA in the US when I tried to do life without God, making a religion of poetry (and achievement), a la James Joyce. Recommitting my life to Jesus, aged 27, when I realized that I realized that I really, really hadn’t made much of my life in the last six years without Jesus.

So the memoir would have more mess, more complication, but also more truth.

While talking to Amy, I came up with a new working strapline: A rebellious girl finds peace in Christ. Ah-ha!

And I thought of another model, C. S. Lewis’s Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life which takes Lewis up to age 32, when he became “the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England,” (but what creativity and joy his conversion opened up for him!).

So I found a meta-narrative for my story. A full circle narrative: a thoroughly rebellious Catholic believer ends as thoroughly “mere Christian,” at peace–a narrative winding through the Zoroashtrian town of Jamshedpur, boarding school in Nainital; Mother Teresa in Calcutta; Oxford, England; Columbus, Ohio…

How does my work differ from others in its genre?

Well, I am a restless writer and everything I have published is in a different genre.

Wandering Between Two Worlds: Essays on Faith and Art traces my life and the evolution of my faith and struggles in the form of essays. It deals with dichotomies—East and West, Writing and Prayer, Domesticities and Art, Roots and Wings.

Francesco, Artist of Florence: The Man Who Gave Too Much, which has sold the best of all my books, is a children’s book, dealing with art, Florence, The Renaissance, beauty, good-heartedness, weakness, and the importance of forgiving oneself.

The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth is a reflection on that Beatitude, theological writing for everywoman.

The Church That Had Too Much is an odd book, the record of a dream , and I found myself writing it in the shape and rhythms of poetry.

And Mind has Mountains, of course, will be a memoir!

Why do I write what I do?

I write on whatever grabs my interest, and my writing is a way to work out my ideas or share whatever fascinates me.

How does my writing process work?

My writing process with a blog: dictate it to my iPhone when I get the idea. Think out my post. Write it pretty close to its final form. Revise it a couple of times on screen. Print it out. Re-arrange and cut paragraphs. Try to cut at least 10% of the words. Do five iterations from first draft to final draft. Hit publish.

For the memoir, I have been writing thoughts and memories as they surface in thematically organized chapters. I choose the chapter I am longing to write, and then write up episodes in the order of desire to tell about them. I revise each chapter eight times, taking less and less time at each iteration, tightening it each time, cutting a minimum of 10 %, and entire paragraphs which are of interest to me, but perhaps not to you.

I post chapters on my blog as they are done.

When I finish the entire book, I suspect I will revise it another 5-8 times at least until I have shaken off every word I can, until the prose feels as inevitable and flawless as poetry, or least is as good as I can make it.

I am taking the liberty of tagging Carolyn Weber, Amy Boucher Pye and Michael Wenham to answer the same three questions.

Dear Diary—What I have Done, Learnt, Enjoyed. At El Palmeral Retreat Centre, Costa Blanca, Spain

By Anita Mathias

1 In which Michelle is encouraged by how ordinary I am—“ A year ago my sister, Janae, told me to follow this lady named Anita Mathias on Twitter. My sister is cool, so I did what she said. And I’m glad I did. Anita has been a dependable source of refreshment and peace on my otherwise maniacal Twitter feed. Her writing is filled with spiritual insights and joy — but what I love the most about her is how ordinary she seems. We’re so used to following these wildly hilarious and profoundly daring personalities, none of which are very much like me. That Anita is just herself gives me hope.”

Oh and read on for Michelle Schmidt’s review of my first children’s book, Francesco, Artist of Florence: The Man Who Gave Too Much

Tuesday May 6th

1 Walked yesterday in the Curate’s Garden in Elche–full of date trees, the foundation of many economies from Morocco to North Africa. Apparently, Arab sailors took dates on long sea voyages for vitamin C (as the seaman from Genoa took pesto!).

Amazed at the varieties of cactus plants–God’s beautiful abundance scattered in deserts and mountain valleys whether there is anyone to appreciate them or not.

God creates beauty for the sheer joy of it, because that is his nature.

I now blog like that. There is something mysterious about blogging—one cannot predict the response to a piece, and often the pieces we just toss off do the best. If one senses a call to blog, you just continue faithfully, writing down the vision and making it plain, writing what you hear God say to you, and leave the reception of the work to him.

2 I was dropped off at the garden for two hours. It was relatively small and I walked around it several times. I was going back and forth on several issues, but just walking alone, sitting and thinking–it is amazing how clarity came.

I was inexplicably burnt out last month. Burn-out, like joy, picks its own timetable, but walking alone here, in an arid region of Spain is restoring joy to my heart. I find myself thinking more clearly, praying spontaneously and joyfully, in tongues.

Wednesday 7th May

1 I have seen the abbreviation IHS on dozens of Catholics cards and bookmarks, and it was embroidered on the altar cloths of the chapel. It’s Greek. It is the first three letters of the Greek spelling of Jesus, ιησους which is transliterated as “ihsous.” And essentially means Jesus.

2 Paprika, I have just thought of it as a spice, but, apparently, it is powdered red peppers, or chili peppers.

3 Our British hosts told us a chilling story of a car-jacking. They were driving in Valencia, when they suddenly got a flat tire–or so they thought. They pulled to the side of the road, and a couple of men on a motorcycle came up ostensibly to help them. When they got back into the car, her handbag was gone, with her money, credit cards, driving licence, housekeys etc. So if you get a flat in Spain and get help, know where your handbag is.

4 Our host, Julie Jowett, cooks delicious Spanish regional food–which I really enjoy–Patata Bravas, tender Moorish lamb, Cordero Murono, Tortilla Espanola, and Patatas a lo Pobre

4 The Costa Blanca is very much British ex-pat country. Our hosts were British, as were their neighbours who are farming a small pomegranate grove. My elderly seatmate on my flight is farming an orange grove. The water table is 8 feet below ground level, and they have been encouraged not to water the orange trees, but let the root delve deep into the water table.

Thursday 8th

1 On earrings and inheritances.

We were looking at the Prodigal Son who blew his inheritance.

When he gets back, he gets everything his heart needs–acceptance, belonging, lavishness—a home, a rich robe, a ring, a good meal. What he does not get back is the inheritance he squandered. The Father tells the older son, “Everything I have is yours.” The elder son is not stiffed; the prodigal son does not get the older brother’s share of the inheritance, but still gets all that is necessary for his complete joy.

There is truth to that. The years and time we have blown–through sin, laziness, self-pity, anger–we have blown. But if we turn to God, our hearts can still find the fullness of joy.

I share this thought with the group, fiddle with my earrings, and realise I have lost my great-grandmother’s earrings, rubies, with a dangly pearl and ruby bit, which I have worn every day for thirty years and never lost. I am upset and retrace my steps, bedroom

God has a sense of humour and he’s a no-bullshit God. I just said that what is lost is lost, but in God we can still find everything our heart desires. Was it theory or do I really believe it?

Life brings reverses, but I really do believe we get to choose how happy we are, or how sad! After a bit more looking, and a bit of mourning, I decide to join St. Teresa of Avila in her prayer,

Let nothing disturb thee,
Nothing affright thee
All things are passing;
God never changeth;
Who God possesseth
In nothing is wanting;
God alone sufficeth.

A verse which has saved my life a few times is “Do not let your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid,” (John 14:27). And each time I reminded myself of this either what I dreaded did not happen (Mark Twain: I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened) –OR it did happen, and I had strength to cope with it, and good came out of that dark plot twist.

So I decided that I would let nothing disturb me, but continue being happy. And God smiled—and perhaps said, Okay honey, I just wanted to reinforce the lessons I have been teaching you–and soon after that, I found the 3 missing pieces scattered around my large suite. Thank you Jesus.

I had prayed. Yes, and it felt like magic happened. And it would have been magic too if I had felt peace in the loss. God is good like that.

Friday 9th May

We went out for tapas last night—delicious: Fried cubed goat’s cheese, fried mushroom and bacon, grated potatoes and sausage, tender pork, roasted wild garlic…

anita.mathias