Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

In which Insults Turn to Praise

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I was watching Diarmaid Maccullough’s Christian History documentary, in which he said that early Methodists had a very methodical way of going about their salvation–prayer, Bible reading, fasting, spiritual reading, and reading Scripture in the original languages–and so were called Methodists in mockery, a name which stuck.

I thought of other insults, which through the decades have been adopted as self-definitions, and later became compliments–Impressionists, Pre-Raphaelites, Fauvists (wild beasts!), Quakers, Shakers, Dominicans (from Domini Cannes, God’s dogs, because of their role in the Inquisition).

Gothic, for wild, rude and barbaric was a term used for that noble architecture by Giorgio Vasari.

The term “Prime Minister” was initially ironic!

Don’t be afraid of insults or criticism. Go on doing what you are doing, create the taste by which you are to be enjoyed, and if your work is any good, the insults will turn to compliments.

Family Life–The Mathiases Play Balderdash

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We played a family game of Balderdash yesterday. A bit like pictionary, pick a word, everyone gives a feigned definition while the picker gives a real one. 3 points for a correct guess, 1 if someone else guesses yours.

After a slow start, Irene, 10, got the hang of dictionary sounding definitions.

Scrivello, A antique builder’s tool, resembling a screw. Both parents voted for her. Zoe, “2 points for Irene.”

Roy, indignantly, “Hey, I said builder’s tool”

Zoe, sweetly, “Yes, but Irene wrote it.”

Both parents crowed over Irene’s genius, and apropos of nothing, of course, claimed she took after them.

Then we looked at Zoe, stricken, “You’re brilliant, Zoe. You are a classic late bloomer.”

She shrugged, steadily inching up the leaderboard while we argued over genetics.

And Zoe won!!

The Meek Inherit the Earth

 

 

Depression and exercise

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I remember a nice phrase in Andrew Solomon’s book on depression, “The Noon Day Demon,”  which I first read in the New Yorker. That “exercise exorcised the depression from his body”.

That’s exactly how it is with me. In a typical depressive pattern, I often wake up sluggish and with low mood, and gain in alertness and spirit as the day winds on, ending up wide-awake at night.

The light therapy I am trying is helping.

But running also helps enormously, filling me with alertness, endorphins, serotonin, all that is good.

Yoga too fills me with calm, alertness and a feeling of well-being.

And, it is one of the mysteries of being me that I run almost every day, rather than every day when running makes me feel so good. Ditto with yoga

Writing by Relying on the Lord

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“Moses, “O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.” The LORD said to him, “Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD ? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.” Exodus, Chapter 4.

Am trying to write with less dependence on education, training, previous reading and study, and more reliance on the spirit of God, of creativity. It’s a very interesting retraining of instincts and reflexes, after so many years of relying on the former.

This world’s economic system, and the protection of being in Christ

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I woke up thinking of a friend who was discouraged working hard to sell a hard-to-sell hugely over-priced product. A way out is moving from sales to management, but that might mean pressuring others to meet targets to sell the same product.

Hard, this world’s system. It suck you dry, as we used to suck sugarcane, then spits you out.

Suck, swallow people’s life-force, spit them out when they are used up and dried out.

How much better to be in Christ. You still offer him everything you are and have, but are now in him, inside him, protected by him, and that is a very safe place to be.

I love Hannah Whitall Smith’s vision of a ring of light surrounding Christians, which will not part unless God purposes it to part.

And he will only purpose it to part for a good reason!

“Do you not think I can even now ask my Father, and he will send 12 legions of angels,” Jesus says in Gethsemane. The protection of 12 legions of angels!!

We are safe!

The staggering rewards promised in the Gospels (C. S. Lewis)

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If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

A Walk Through University Parks, Oxford

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Lovely family walk yesterday. (Okay, lovely after dragging out daughters who would rather read, do homework, or commune with their computers).

We walked through the University Parks from Magdalen College to Norham Gardens where I used to live as a student at Oxford. It was a Bridehead Revisted set, complete with amusing poseurs with better sartorial than punting skills.

Everything seemed backlit, tender leaf-green and lush. Willow trees leaning into the stream. Ducks and geese on the waters, Happy punters. Families picnicking. Near perfect weather.
I love living in the same place for a long time, and observing the changes in mood and beauty from season to season.