Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

Our Family Dinner was Punctuated by These Cries

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Somewhat like their mother, my girls use any new word or scrap of information in their conversation or writing within 24 hours (this is Roy’s observation!).

Dinner yesterday was punctuated by calls, “Mum and Dad, chastise Zoe!”

“Mum and Dad, chastise Irene!” (Zoe adds that they said “chastise” because if they ask Roy to tell their sibling off, he annoyingly says, “OFF!”

She also adds that SHE knew chastised ages ago!

Hiding the Evidence of a Crime!

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 I finally got fed up of waiting for Roy to do it and painted two rooms myself, in an amateurish way, staining my clothes, spilling paint, very uneven! But it was so satisfying.

I was insufferably pleased with myself. Roy said, “Well, if THAT’S painting, why do people charge so much for it?” 

But there’s no one right way to paint–or do anything else!

“It’s as if we’re hiding the evidence of a crime!”– Zoe’s comment as we tidy our house before friends visit!

Jake, my Collie Dog

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Lovely run today with my collie Jake bounding beside me, his tail wagging with joy.

We have much to learn from dogs: joy, love, forgiveness, living in the present, revelling in movement.

I love seeing dogs leap & fly over the fields near our house, just delighted to be alive.

C.S. Lewis amusingly declared that while we may not have dogs in heaven (but we will!, we must!) we will at least have “the essence of dogness.”

I was amused to see statues to Collies in the hill country of New Zealand. Apparently, that part of the country would not have been settled without collie dogs.

Life is short & we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those we love

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“Oh, do not let us wait to be just or pitiful or demonstrative toward those we love until they or we are struck down by illness or threatened with death! Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are traveling the dark journey with us. Oh, be swift to love, make haste to be kind!” Henri Frédéric Amiel September 27, 1821 – May 11, 1881) Swiss philosopher, poet and critic.

I didn’t marry you for cleverer or stupider.

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I (successfully) tried to get the lean, muscular Roy to go to the gym with me.

Exasperated, he said, “Anita, I married you for better or for worse, richer or poorer. I did not say “for stupider or cleverer.”

Irene listened with furrowed brows, then whispered, “Mummy, what does he mean? Who is getting stupider? Could it be Daddy? It couldn’t be you; or does he mean both of you?”

Well, it’s certainly not little Irene!

Prayer Revises the Plot

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Revising the plot!

When our lives seems to have run into the desert sands of barrenness, and we wonder if we’ve lost our way, constant prayer can bring a surprising plot reversal–beauty from ashes, streams in the desert–rescuing one from inexorable cause and effect; sin/weakness and its consequences.

It can rewrite the direction and story of one’s life. This has often happened to me, and may it happen again, and again!

The great reversal, restoration: it’s always a theme running through Scripture, a promise foreshadowing the time beyond time when Aslan shall make all things new.

Provide for those who grieve in Zion

— a crown of beauty instead of ashes/

 the oil of gladness instead of mourning,/

 and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair./

Isaiah 61:3 The desert and the parched land will be glad;

 the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.

 Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom;

 Water will gush forth in the wilderness

 and streams in the desert. Isaiah 35.