Anita Mathias | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

The Stunning Mosaics at Monreale Cathedral, Palermo, Sicily

A guest post written by my husband, Roy

We had a peaceful afternoon exploring Monreale Cathedral and the adjacent 12th century Benedictine Cloister with its 200 twin columns each with intriguing individually carved capitols. Monreale Duomo is a 12th Century cathedral with some of the world’s best mosaics. The mosaics are far more extensive than those in St. Mark’s in Venice. I have only shown a few here.

The mosaic of Christ Pantocrator is 20 metres high (Monreale Duomo)

Here is the full view of the apse

Altar and Apse (Monreale Duomo)

There are several rows of mosaics, retelling events from the Old and New Testaments. Here is the section for Noah’s Ark (not usually seen in church art), the tower of Babel and the beginning of Abraham’s story

Noah’s Ark (Monreale Duomo, credit)

and a detail of Noah releasing a dove and a raven eating drowned people

Noah releases a dove. (Monreale Duomo)

Here is Jacob’s dream of a ladder to heaven:

Jacob’s ladder. (Monreale Duomo)

Here is Paul being lowered out of Damascus in a basket.

Paul lowered in a basket. (Monreale Duomo)

Perhaps the most interesting are the artist’s view of heaven.

Angel's offer praise around the throne. High above the altar. (Monreale Duomo)

Angels (or winged creatures?) offer praise around the throne. High above the altar. (Monreale Duomo)

The apse also has mosaics of the Virgin, and saints

The north transept is rather different, being decorated in marble.

Decorative pillar, north transept. (Monreale Duomo)

Crucifix behind the altar in a side chapel off the north transept. (Monreale Duomo)

Here’s Jonah (a little indistinct) being thrown overboard to the whale

One sees the Arab influence in the floor mosaics

Geometric designs showing Arab influence. (Monreale Duomo)

Monastery cloisters are generally very peaceful meditative places, and Monreale’s is no exception. There main attraction are the twinned pillars, each pair has individually carved capitols. Unlike the mosiacs in the duomo which display the progression of Biblical history, there appears to be no pattern in the capitols, each is a surprise.

Choistro dei Benedettini. (Note Arab influence)

Of course, Adam and Eve were there, but not in any special position:

Adam and Eve.

and here is Samson (identified for us)

Samson

but most of the capitol sculptures were more obscure scenes of battles, real and mythological creatures

Capitol showing a variety of animal heads.

An acrobat. (This position, also shown on the body of some of the pillars, clearly signifies something)

A hapless creature trapped when one of the columns was being positioned

A assortment of columns in the corner with a fountain.

A final view of the exterior of Monreale Duomo

Monreale Duomo (exterior).

The Stalingrad Madonna: Life, Love, Light at Christmas

By Anita Mathias

The Stalingrad Madonna (credit)

Translation: Christmas in the Cauldron (German term for Fortress Stalingrad).Light, Life, Love.

Writer Mark Stibbe blogged about the worst moment of the battle of Stalingrad, when 300,000 troops of the German Sixth Army were trapped in the destroyed city of Stalingrad, without adequate winter clothes, almost out of food, fuel and ammunition. The attackers became the besieged; the Red Army surrounded them by Christmas 1942.

At the darkest hour, the soldiers walked into a small underground chamber to pay homage to a picture drawn by Lieutenant Kurt Reuber, Protestant Pastor, artist, staff physician, and Panzer division commander, a friend of Albert Schweitzer who was conscripted into the German Army.

The image, 3 feet by 4 feet, of the Madonna and Child, entranced the soldiers

One of the only 6000 Sixth Army soldiers who survived later wrote this, For me that Christmas was heavenly. I felt there was a bridge that stretched over the entire earth, the starry sky and the moon, the same moon that my family could see in Germany.”

* * *

Kurt Reuber wrote: I wondered for a long while what I should paint, and in the end I decided on a Madonna, or mother and child. I have turned my hole in the frozen mud into a studio. The space is too small for me to be able to see the picture properly, so I climb on to a stool and look down at it from above, to get the perspective right. Everything is repeatedly knocked over, and my pencils vanish into the mud. There is nothing to lean my big picture of the madonna against, except a sloping, home-made table, past which I can just manage to squeeze. There are no proper materials and I have used a Russian map for paper. But I wish I could tell you how absorbed I have been painting my madonna, and how much it means to me.”

“The picture looks like this: the mother’s head and the child’s lean toward each other, and a large cloak enfolds them both. It is intended to symbolize ‘security’ and ‘mother love.’ I remembered the words of St.John: light, life, and love. What more can I add? I wanted to suggest these three things in the homely and common vision of a mother with her child and the security that they represent.

He added I went to all the bunkers, brought my drawing to the men, and chatted with them. How they sat there! Like being in their dear homes with mother for the holiday.

Later, Reuber hung the drawing in his bunker,

When according to ancient custom I opened the Christmas door, the slatted door of our bunker, and the comrades went in, they stood as if entranced, devout and too moved to speak in front of the picture on the clay wall…The entire celebration took place under the influence of the picture, and they thoughtfully read the words: light, life, love…Whether commander or simple soldier, the Madonna was always an object of outward and inward contemplation.

The Madonna was flown out of Stalingrad by a battalion commander who was one of the last soldiers of the encircled German Sixth Army to be evacuated.

Reuber was taken prisoner, and died of typhus in a Soviet prisoner of war camp in 1944. Of the 95,000 German prisoners of war taken at Stalingrad, only 6000 survived, and returned to Germany.

Self Portrait Kurt Reuber (credit)

The Caucasian oilfields of Russia were Hitler’s target, rich and tempting. But it did not make sense to leave a major Russian city unconquered, especially one named after Stalin, whom Hitler despised.

And so Hitler attacked Stalingrad, and, like Napoleon, was defeated by the Russian winter.

Moral: be careful when it comes to attacking others, no matter how much you despise them. Never try to destroy their Stalingrad. Be content with your own oilfields and your own cities, big or little.

* * *

And what when others cast an envious eye on your Stalingrad, and move in to destroy and conquer it?

If you are a follower of Jesus, He has told you what to do. Do not waste time in resistance. “Do not resist one who is evil. If they take your cloak, give them your cloak.”

If they conquer Stalingrad, let them. Do not resist. Do your work elsewhere.

God will not permit evil to prosper for long. Eventually, winter will come. The aggressors will be frozen out and leave.

Normalcy will return, and you will eat the hidden cabbage still fresh beneath the snow in your garden, and go to your secret cellars, to the concealed beets and potatoes, and drink borscht all winter.

And meanwhile, you will have kept doing your work.

The Mental Habit That’s Worth a Trillion Dollars

By Anita Mathias

Grace and Forgiveness

I heard Carol Arnott say that her book Grace and Forgiveness is worth a trillion dollars.

Hyperbole, of course, but (Jesus, forgive this crassness!!) if I were to monetize it, learning and practising forgiveness would easily be worth well over £100,000, perhaps £500,000 in a lifetime. No, more!

Speculative, of course, but that’s possibly the monetary value of the immense productivity which would result from keeping one’s mind free of emotional turmoil and the petty resentments and grievances which so distract and drain one.

And imagine the creativity which would result from stepping into the eternal sources of ideas, the energy which would result from not judging other people, not revolving in your mind the sad old tedious tale of sins they have committed against you, but instead focusing on your own life, goals and purposes.

And of course, one would be SO much healthier physically and mentally if one could forgive, and refuse to judge. Some estimate that 60 to 90 percent of illness is psychosomatic, caused by our negative thoughts. Colds, flu, digestive ailments, allergies flaring up, insomnia, exhaustion—most of us have experienced these after emotional upsets; perhaps prolonged emotional strain could lead to more serious conditions.

* * *

Last week, I got so angry with a member of my family that I took to bed at 9 p.m. so that I would not sin with my words, not crush through a strongly worded expression of anger.

But I tossed and turned as I tried to pray in tongues, and pray the Jesus prayer to mitigate my anger and not judge. Some success, much failure!

Well, anger and judgement are not the best way to get to sleep. I was awake much of the night, my muscles stiff and tense, and slept in till 9 a.m. I would normally have slept for 8 hours.

Wow, how much could I have written in the extra 4 hours?

* * *

Forgiveness as a life-style. Letting injuries go as soon as they surface. I simply must learn it.

For anger is spending your energy in negativity. Judgement is spending our passion in negativity.

If we learned to forgive, we could instead invest that energy and passion in our own lives.

* * *

How do we forgive? The absolute best way is the way Jesus commanded.

We bless the person we are angry with. We pray for them. We ask God to give us a love for them (Luke 6:28) for our sake as well as for theirs, for love is a warmer, lovelier, more energizing thing to have in your heart than prickly, cold hatred.

And “Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.” (Luke 6:35).

As a child, we will have access to the goodness of God’s household: financial provision, unleashed creativity, protection from our enemies, answered prayer.

We will pray with power for the greatest block to answered prayer will be removed. We will have fulfilled Jesus’ condition for the cleansing of the heart even before we pray, “And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them.” (Mark 11:25)

* * *

As Malcolm Gladwell famously noted in Outliers: The Story of Success, it takes 10,000 hours to be a world class expert—in anything.

Prayer takes practice. I pray most effectively (seeing changes in myself, and my life and circumstances) after reading books on prayer and making lists and praying through them. In this respect, the most life-changing books on prayer I’ve read are The Circle Maker and I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes.

Forgiveness too is a learned art. While ultimately, it is a miracle like falling in love, it is also a mental and emotional discipline, which goes through stages, and which we can partly learn from others.

The best books on forgiveness I’ve read are—John and Carol Arnott’s Grace and Forgiveness, and R. T. Kendall’s Total Forgiveness.

* * *

Some things in the spiritual life have disproportionate power; they are the atomic bombs of the spiritual life! Prayer, so quiet, so invisible, makes things happen, in our spirits and in the external world around us. Forgiveness too has disproportionate power.

I have heard Heidi Baker talk about forgiving her daughter’s rapist (an drug addict she had sheltered) and how this forgiveness freed her daughter from nightmares and post-traumatic stress syndrome. If Heidi had not brought herself to do so, she might have continued in ministry, but it would have been a mediocre one, not characterized by miracles and joy as hers is.

For myself, I love it when I come to the point of forgiveness. I love the spiritual power, and the sense of joy and love. And freedom. And best of all, there is a new unleashing of creative power, ideas, stories and blogs!

In Which Stars Make News Viral, and We Can Trust our PR to Him

By Anita Mathias

His birth could not have been more humble, more anonymous–in a manger, for there was no room at the inn.

Of their social network, only Elizabeth, Mary’s elderly cousin, confined by pregnancy, and married to the priest Zechariah who was temporarily dumb, had been told.

But everything was in the hands of God who loved Jesus, his son who would teach us to see differently, to think differently, and to live differently.

And so God splashed a new star in the sky, luring Magi, wise men from the east, astrologers and astronomers to Bethlehem, bringing news of the birth to King Herod. Shepherds heard angels sing of it.

The good news crossed national, ethnic and socio-economic boundaries; it reached the rich and the poor, the wise and the powerful. The King heard of it, the priests heard of it, the army heard of it, the scholars heard of it, the shepherds heard of it. While Mary and Joseph quietly went about their own business, telling no one about their marvellous child.

God brought about all the connections Jesus needed.

* * *

Today, as in the Prophet Habakkuk’s day, “The nations exhaust themselves for nothing.”

We live in a harried world of self-reliance, in which we can feel that everything depends on us.

Our world tells us exhausting things like, “It’s not what you know, but whom you know.”

We are told that new media—blogging, tweeting and Facebook– has eliminated the old gatekeepers; that now anyone can socially network their way into success, fame, and influence.

Right! To the old imperative of doing the work, we’ve added the new imperative to network to get our work out there, to get the word out.

And all this makes us busier and more tired.

* * *

But, oh man and woman loved by God, the one whose birth we are celebrating offers us rest.

Do your work peacefully, and leave your PR in the hands of a very clever God, who used stars and angel song so that, within days, the news of the birth of his son went viral. He will be more creative than you could ever imagine.

Put your hope in him.

* * *

At the end of this year, we cannot do better than to put our work, our lives, and our futures into his hands who promises us joy, peace, and answered prayer.

And to do so is exciting, for he specialises in surprises.

A new star in the sky: who would have thought of it?

I am entrusting my life to him today.

Join me?

My guest post for Share the Hope UK

Wandering through a Deserted Garden in Sicily, I Pray to Build Things Which Last

By Anita Mathias

Abandoned garden surround by a wall topped with grotesque sculptures. (Villa Palagonia)

Villa Palagonia, Bagheria, Sicily

I like wandering around the deserted gardens which sometimes surround palaces and stately homes.

I wandered through the Baroque Villa Palagonia in Bagheria Sicily yesterday, whose grounds host massive grotesque gnomes, giants, gargoyles, mutants, and anthropomorphized monsters.

The villa was the home of Ferdinand, Prince of Palagonia, a hunchback, who took revenge on his wife’s lovers by cruelly satirizing them—often depicting them as hunchbacks!!

Hunchback (Wall around Villa Palagonia)

* * *

Oh full of passion and pride and ambition, they built these palaces and gardens, how intensely they lived, and now their gardens are just the habitation of stray cats, and the birds which sing sweetly and loud.

Cat on the wall of Villa Palagonia

Cat in the garden of Villa Palagonia

All dead. Him who hated and satirized; him who was hated…

Hating. What a waste of a life!

Walking through the garden, I felt eager to align myself with what matters, for one day through our empty gardens too, stray cats might stroll, and birds sing loud and sweetly, unmindful of all our pride, passion and ambition.

People, despite their wealth, do not endure;
they are like the beasts that perish.

Their forms will decay in the grave,
far from their princely mansions.
¹⁶Do not be overawed when others grow rich,
when the splendour of their houses increases;
¹⁷for they will take nothing with them when they die,
their splendour will not descend with them.
¹⁸Though while they live they count themselves blessed—
and people praise you when you prosper—
¹⁹they will join those who have gone before them,
who will never again see the light of life. Psalm 49

A row of grotesque figures adorns the wall of Villa Palagonia.

Figure on wall of Villa Palagonia.

Crowned figure guarding the gate of Villa Palagonia.

I thought too of Shelley’s “Ozymandias.”

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away”.

I am building things. I have built a small business which now solely supports our family. I am building a book. I am building a blog. I am building a platform on Twitter and Facebook so people read my blog. I am building a family life, and friendships, and a network of warm relationships here in Oxford, and with other writers elsewhere.

* * *

Arch crowned with grotesque figures. (Villa Palagonia)

But…

If the Lord does not build the house,

In vain do the builders labour.

In vain is your earlier rising

Your going later to bed. (Psalm 127)

I want to know what the Lord intends me to build with my life, and I want, oh how desperately I want, to build with Christ, to be aligned with his flow of ideas as I build, so what I build, whether books or a family business or blog may last longer and be more life-giving than the deserted books and palaces and gardens which litter our globe.

Hall of Mirrors, Villa Palagonia.

Formal Entrance to Villa Palagonia

The Words Which Change Everything

By Anita Mathias

Words which take the hard shell of the present

When it feels devoid of nourishment, just hard, just hard

Take it and crack it,

And reveal the sweet meat within it:

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.

Though my day is not panning out as it should,

Though my work is not panning out as it should,

Though my nerves are fraying,

And energy and love leaks from my heart,

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

For your goodness endures,

For the sun rises painting the sky,

For the sun sets, making it blaze,

For the mind you given me to praise you,

For the people who love me,

For the people I love,

For this world so full of beauty,

Though all is not as I want it to be,

Thank you.

You take the hard shell of your cantankerous heart,

And with the nutcracker of thanks split it open into joy,

Giving thanks for the glad moments and the hard moments,

For there is nothing He cannot redeem.

Thank you that this world is full of goodness.

Though much is taken,

And much may never be as I want it to be,

Much goodness remains,

And for that:

Thank you!

Thank you Jules Middleton for hosting on your blog, Apples of Gold.

Why I live in a yurt, off the grid, on a mountain in Idaho. A guest post by Esther Emery

By Anita Mathias

My yurt

Do you know anybody who lives off the grid? Well, now you do. I do. I live in a yurt, which is a kind of a wonderful round tent, on three acres of wooded Idaho mountainside, with no power and no running water.

Mine is a rich life, full of wild and beauty. It is a planted life, connected to our sloped bit of dirt and all the rhythms of nature. And it is a conscious life, each day revealing the true cost of human existence: what it truly takes to feed us, keep us warm and sheltered, clean.

But I’ll tell you what my life is not. It isn’t easy. Or secure. Or safe. Or glamorous.

Truth be told, I probably wouldn’t do it if something didn’t make me.

It’s too hard. And it’s too hard to justify! Keeping the kids out of school, bathing only once a week, living all in one room – the five of us! Also the cost to relationships, when I have to go to a friend’s house just to make a simple phone call, not to mention how it makes my friends feel that I openly and publicly reject the most basic principles of modern life.

Oh, that Esther, she’s a whole lot of fun to hang out with! Always talking about the cost of our extractive economy, irreversible environmental damage, the profound injustices built into the supply chain…

I can’t help it. I am driven by a ghost.

The ghost was my mother, and in her life I didn’t think much of her. It is the task of adolescent children to fail to take their parents seriously. It wasn’t until after my mother died that I came to know her as having lived a courageous and prophetic life.

Her name was Carla Emery. She was born a farmer’s daughter in Montana, just ahead of the baby boom, and she was born to teach. The way she tells it, she felt sorry for the hippies when they started showing up in rural places with no skills. She wanted to teach them how to get along. In 1974, she showed up at a Seattle craft fair with a self-published manual for living off the land, and her table was mobbed. It was a quick road to celebrity.

But it was a short road, too. By the time I was born, six years later, America had shifted into the dawn of the Reagan era. My mother’s promise of spiritual fulfillment found through animals and muck and laboring to the harvest was more laughable than livable.

America gave up on my mother. But she didn’t give up.

All through the 80’s and the 90’s, my mother was a has-been and a nobody, but still she preached her difficult message to the world. She crisscrossed the country with boxes of books in the back of the van, meeting all her people: tending souls. Where the counterculture had been a forefront press, now it was the fringe of society. All the people on the edges: survivalists, die-hard hippies, drop-outs, and mountain libertarians. My mother met them all. She spoke to them. She gave lectures on “The Modern Homesteading Movement” and “Peak Oil.”

I was mortified. I couldn’t get away from it fast enough. There’s nothing worse than being a teenager whose mom does a public demonstration of how to kill a chicken.

She died when I was 25 years old. It was the year 2004. Like my mother, I am bound to the consciousness of my own time and my own generation. And, lately, we are turning back.

There have been books: in the last decade, a whole genre of exposé revealing the problems with our food supply and food supply chain. There is a deep and underground craving for a better way. Spiritual wholeness. Integrity. Slow food. Resistance to greed and commodification. My mother’s manual for living off the land is popular again.

It was several years ago, convergent with my husband’s desire to use his construction skills to build something of his own, that I began to make the shift myself. I began to drop consumerism. I picked up some gardening gloves. I started looking more and more like my mother every day.

So there you go. Now you know somebody who lives off the grid. I am here, in my woods, living my simple life: strange to society, perhaps, but natural in the most profound way. I live with the land, with the rhythms and the seasons of nature. And I raise my mother’s ghost.

Esther Emery

Esther Emery used to direct stage plays in Southern California. But that was a long time ago. Now she is pretty much a runaway, living off the grid in a yurt and tending to three acres in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. She writes about faith and rebellion and trying to live a totally free life at www.estheremery.com. Connect with her on Twitter @EstherEmery.

If You Should Ever Want My Life, Come and Take It

By Anita Mathias

In Chekhov’s haunting play The Seagull, the beautiful country girl, Nina, who dreams of being an actress, writes to the narcissistic playwright, Trigorian, “If you should ever want my life, come and take it.”

He does; oh he does! He comes; he takes it; he casts it away, a poor discarded thing. Nina returns home, broken. She has failed as an actress, playing second-rate roles in second-rate companies in the provinces. Her true love, the play’s protagonist, Konstantin, unable to cope with Nina’s tragedy, kills himself.

* * *

“If you should ever want my life, come and take it.” That kind of surrender to a human being is never safe. All human beings are capable of betrayal–though not all will betray.

To whom is it safe to say–“If you should want my life, come and take it?” Only to the maker of life, the giver of life, the one who can turn our life around in a moment.

To him is it safe to say, “You do want my life. Take it, take it. Make of it something I have never imagined. Take it.”

* * *

“I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God’s hands, that I still possess,” Martin Luther wrote.

I too have worked on plans and dreams and schemes which have come to nothing. But increasingly, I am placing everything I do in God’s hands, and there it is safe.

More and more, I find myself saying, “Take it,” as I feel intensity rise. I think of areas of my life in which I struggle, or which are relatively successful. “Take it. This mess I’ve made. This failure. This ambition. This broken dream. This ancient dream. This delicate shimmering dream. This thing which is inexplicably working. This longing. Take it!”

“Take it and make of it something beautiful.”

“For when my dream is in your strong capable hands which begin working on it, shaping it, moulding it, reshaping it, ah, then it is safe.”

Grateful for being hosted on Heather Caliri’s blog—A Little Yes