Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

Can people shift on the Extroversion/ Introversion scale

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I wonder if people’s personalities change through the decades.

I was definitely an extrovert when I was younger, but after two decades of marriage to an introvert find I am changing.

Though I enjoy people, getting to know people, talking to people, I also find a lot of energy, and happiness, even bliss from being alone, reading, thinking and writing.

Each time I take the Meyers-Briggs, I find I am further on the introversion scale.
So I guess one strand in a happy life is to keep the right balance between introversion and extroversion for your temperament.

Characterization which somehow gets the essence of a person.

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Look at this passage from A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

 “There was undeniably a feline quality to my mother–never in the sly or stealthy sense of the word, but in the word’s other catlike qualities:a clean, sleek, self-possessed, strokable quality.  In quite a different way from Owen Meany, my mother looked touchable; I was always aware of how much people wanted, or needed, to touch her. I’m not talking only about men, although–even at my age–I was aware of how restlessly men moved their hands in her company.  I mean that everyone liked to touch her–and depending on her attitude toward her toucher, my mother’s responses to being touched were feline, too.  She could be so chillingly indifferent that the touching would instantly stop; she was well-coordinated and surprisingly quick and, like a cat, she could retreat from being touched–she could duck under or dart away from someone’s hand as instinctively as the rest of us can shiver.  And she could respond in that other way that cats can respond, too; she could luxuriate in being touched–she could contort her body quite shamelessly, putting more and more pressure against the toucher’s hand, until (I used to imagine) anyone near enough to her could hear her purr.”

A new favourite form of relaxation

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I am generally someone who finds doing something relaxing, and “relaxing” by doing nothing stressful. However, as the busyness of my life increases in lock-step with my age, I keep discovering new ways to thoroughly relax.
Here’s one: Come in from a busy day, have a nap while thinking myself to sleep, wake up thoroughly refreshed, read papers online, think, blog. I find random desultory thinking, writing and blogging deeply relaxing.

Another thing I find very relaxing is google. I love following stray ideas, and keeping on learning more and more and more about odd and stray things.

My favourite form of relaxation, however, is prayer!

Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now, A.E. Housman

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File:Newark cherry blossoms.jpg

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now,
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands above the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

Spiritual lessons from gardening

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Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. NIV

So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up. NLT
Galatians 6:9

My garden has sprung to life, weeds and all. Gardening teaches us a lot about the right and proper season. It is virtually impossible to imitate the lushness of spring and summer in the winter, no matter how one tries. One still works in one’s garden, of course, but mainly tending to the health of plants, or starting seeds indoors for the spring.
Then everything comes to life around May.
So while gardens are better for steady work through the year, it is also good to wait for the appointed time of growth and harvest.
So too with our prayers, dreams and desires. Work steadily, sow, sow, and sow, but wait for God’s proper and appointed time to reap your reward.

Spring and the English

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I enjoyed my intensive French course this weekend. We were asked what our favourite season was. Interestingly, all the English people (and I) chose spring.

All the foreigners (from Columbia, Spain, Japan, South Africa) chose summer.
The English grumble as much about summer as about winter. Extremes don’t suit them.

Spring is a very English, very Anglican season if you like, not too hot, not too cold, nothing to grumble about!

The glories of a complex sentence, Janet Frame, To the Is-land

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I LOVE this sentence from Janet Frame, so rich in ideas and experience. There are 23 clauses, 23 little details in this single sentence. Of course, no one is going to read it carefully, take in all she is telling us, but I suspect she was writing for herself, saving her precious memories, and yes, Janet, we do get the flavour of it. 

“Now, having our new friend, Marguerite, we had a chance to tell again the story of our adventure, reliving the water rising, the escape, the magpies, the water biscuits ( a whole tin of water biscuits!) the salmon eaten around the camp fire, crossing the bull paddock to Langley’s farm for milk, all the grizzels, the laughs, and the nights lying on our bed of straw, playing games of pretend, listening to the river sound, daring each other to touch the canvas to see if what Dad had said was true and finding that it was, fighting and making up, planning, dreaming, comparing our past, our glories, our bodies; then, outside again, gathering manuka for the fire, trying to make flutes out of willow, trying to divine water, staring dreamily at the river and the swirling branches and the occasional dead sheep or cow flowing down to the sea. “

George Herbert–The Collar

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¶   The Collar.

        I Struck the board, and cry’d, No more.
                                             I will abroad.
        What? shall I ever sigh and pine?
My lines and life are free; free as the rode,
        Loose as the winde, as large as store.
                     Shall I be still in suit?
        Have I no harvest but a thorn
        To let me bloud, and not restore
What I have lost with cordiall fruit?
                                             Sure there was wine
            Before my sighs did drie it: there was corn
              Before my tears did drown it.
        Is the yeare onely lost to me?
                     Have I no bayes to crown it?
No flowers, no garlands gay? all blasted?
                                             All wasted?
        Not so, my heart: but there is fruit,
                                             And thou hast hands.
                     Recover all thy sigh-blown age
On double pleasures: leave thy cold dispute
Of what is fit, and not. Forsake thy cage,
                                             Thy rope of sands,1
Which pettie thoughts have made, and made to thee
        Good cable, to enforce and draw,
                                             And be thy law,
        While thou didst wink and wouldst not see.
                                           Away; take heed:
                                           I will abroad.
Call in thy deaths head there: tie up thy fears.
                                           He that forbears
                    To suit and serve his need,
                                           Deserves his load.
But as I rav’d and grew more fierce and wilde
                                           At every word,
        Me thoughts I heard one calling, Childe:
                    And I reply’d, My Lord.