Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

The Pervasive Low-Grade Misery of Neglecting your Dreams

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warofart_bookI am reading The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield about a demonic force called Resistance—which conspires to prevent writers writing, painters painting, composers composers, the overweight exercising… You get the picture.

And here’s another brilliant passage from The War of Art

 Resistance and Unhappiness

What does resistance feel like?

First, unhappiness. We feel like hell. A low-grade misery pervades everything. We’re bored; we’re restless. We can’t get no satisfaction. There’s guilt, but we can’t put our finger on the source. We want to go back to bed; we want to get up and party. We feel unloved and unlovable. We’re disgusted. We hate our lives. We hate ourselves.

Unalleviated, Resistance mounts to a pitch that becomes unendurable. At this point, vices kick in. Dope, adultery, web surfing.

Beyond that, Resistance becomes clinical. Depression, aggression, dysfunction.

Sounds like life I know. It isn’t. It’s Resistance.

What makes it tricky is that we live in a consumer culture that’s acutely aware of this unhappiness and has massed all its profit-seeking artillery to exploit it. By selling us a product, a drug, a distraction.

As artists and professionals, it is our obligation to enact our own internal revolution, a private insurrection inside our own skulls. We unplug from the grid by recognising that we will never cure our restlessness by contributing to the bottom line of Bullshit Inc. but only by doing our work.

 

 

 

Guilt Causes Paralysis, and Christ’s Forgiveness Rescues us from it

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A haunting passage in Carl Gustav Jung’s memoir, Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, describes a woman from whom horses, dogs and people fled, for they sensed dark guilt within her.

“A lady came to my office. It was apparent that she belonged to the upper levels of society. She had been a doctor, she said. What she had to communicate to me was a confession; some twenty years ago she had committed a murder out of jealousy. She had poisoned her best friend because she wanted to marry the friend’s husband. She had thought that if the murder was not discovered, it would not disturb her. She wanted to marry the husband, and the simplest way was to eliminate her friend. Moral considerations were of no importance to her, she thought.

The consequences? She had in fact married the man, but he died soon afterward, relatively young. During the following years a number of strange things happened. The daughter of this marriage endeavoured to get away from her as soon as she was grown up. She married young and vanished from view, drew farther and farther away, and ultimately the mother lost all contact with her.

This lady was a passionate horsewoman and owned several riding horses of which she was extremely fond. One day she discovered that the horses were beginning to grow nervous under her. Even her favourite shied and threw her. Finally she had to give up riding. Thereafter she clung to her dogs. She owned an unusually beautiful wolfhound to which she was greatly attached. As chance would have it, this very dog was stricken with paralysis.

With that, her cup was full; she felt that she was morally done for. She had to confess, and for this purpose she came to me. She was a murderess, but on top of that she had also murdered herself. For one who commits such a crime destroys his own soul. The murderer has already passed sentence on himself.

If someone has committed a crime and is caught, he suffers judicial punishment. If he has done it secretly, without moral consciousness of it, and remains undiscovered, the punishment  can nevertheless be visited upon him, as our case shows. It comes out in the end. Sometimes it seems as if even animals and plants “know” it. As a result of the murder, the woman was plunged into unbearable loneliness. She had even become alienated from animals.

And in order to shake off this loneliness, she had made me share her knowledge. She had to have someone who was not a murderer to share the secret. She wanted to find a person who could accept her confession without prejudice, for by so doing she would achieve once more something resembling a relation-ship to humanity. And the person would have to be a doctor rather than a professional confessor. She would have suspected a priest of listening to her because of his office, and of not accepting the facts for their own sake but for the purpose of moral judgment. She had seen people and animals turn away from her, and had been so struck by this silent verdict that she could not have endured any further condemnation.

Sometimes I have asked myself what might have become of her. For that was by no means the end of her journey. Perhaps she was driven ultimately to suicide. I cannot imagine how she could have gone on living in that utter loneliness.” (Memories Dreams Reflections, Carl Gustav Jung, p 122)

Unconfessed, hidden guilt extracts a terrible psychic price.

* * *

And guilt, unconfessed, unforgiven can lead to terrible paralysis, literally or metaphorically.

Which brings me to Jesus’ fascinating encounter with the paralytic (Matt 9: 1-8). He says, “Take heart, son. Your sins are forgiven.”

Challenged by the Pharisees, he turns from the root cause to the manifestation and says, “Get up, take up your mat and go home.”

And the man does so.

* * *

A healthy spiritual life requires the daily practice of confession and receiving forgiveness. “Forgive us our sins,” the Lord’s Prayer teaches us to say. And, equally importantly, he teaches us to extend the self-same forgiveness to others.

Otherwise, terrible guilt we have not confessed and asked forgiveness for, or terrible sadness and anger at the effect of others’ sin upon us can leave us “paralysed.”

* * *

Paralysed? There are many 21st century manifestations. A deep sadness or depression or anxiety, that renders it impossible to move on, to pursue meaningful action, to pursue dreams. These mental disorders affect 26.2 of the US population in any given year, according to the National Institutes of Mental Health, and 25% of the British population every year, according to the Mental Health Foundation (to look at stats from the two countries I’ve boomeranged between for the last 29 years).

Eastern State Hospital was a massive psychiatric hospital at the edge of Williamsburg, Virginia, where I lived for 12 years. A Christian psychiatrist, who worked there, famously said that if people would accept God’s forgiveness, and so be absolved from their guilt, Eastern State would be almost empty overnight. I believe it.

 

* * *

I recently was overwhelmed with sadness and guilt over my actions. A member of my family had wanted something very badly, and I did not support them fully, partly because I was sure they would achieve it without my active hovering, and partly because I was absorbed and abstracted by my own work. And their big break did not initially work out.

I was so sad, so paralysed by guilt and sadness for a few days. Tossing and turning in the night, I “heard” these words, “Your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.” (Isaiah 6:7). (One of the benefits of stocking your mind with Scripture is that it surfaces in your hour of need!)

I sighed with relief. My guilt had indeed been taken away, and my sin atoned for by Jesus, wondrous but true news.

I had to accept this complete forgiveness, akin to the forgiveness a father offers a toddler who smashes a crystal goblet or scribbles on an antique first edition. I had to accept it from God, and from the individual.

And after, again, expressing my sorrow to God and the person whom my actions had affected, it was time to “get up and walk,” smiling as one whose guilt had been taken away and sin atoned for.

Thank you, Jesus.

In which Manipulation Backfires (in the long run). Not so seeking God’s Blessing!

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I am reading the story of Jacob in Genesis. God tells Rebecca who was pregnant with twins, “The older will serve the younger.”

When we meet the twins in Genesis 26, Esau, “a skilful hunter,” comes in famished, and wants Jacob’s red stew. Jacob, “a quiet man, staying among the tents,” driving an exploitative bargain, demands Esau’s birthright, traditionally a double portion of the inheritance, in exchange for the bowl of lentil stew.

Isaac was “very wealthy. He had many flocks and herds and servants.” (Gen 27:25). So Esau is asked to give his extra third of all this to Jacob for a bowl of aromatic stew. In his impulsivity, he agrees.

* * *

A cruel bargain, but not a deceitful one. What is cruel and deceitful is how Jacob later takes advantage of blind Isaac, and pretends to be Esau to steal his blessing, wearing Esau’s clothes, passing off choice young goats from their flock, skilfully prepared by Rebecca, as game caught and cooked by Esau.

And despite his misgivings, “Your voice is the voice of Jacob,” Isaac blesses Jacob with the blessing he had intended for Esau

“May God gives you of heaven’s dew,

and of earth’s richness—

An abundance of grain and new wine.

Be Lord over your brothers

And may the sons of your mother bow down to you.”

Jacob no sooner leaves than Esau enters, with game he had killed himself, tastily prepared.

“Isaac trembled violently, “Your brother came deceitfully, and took your blessing. I blessed him and indeed he will be blessed.”

Esau “burst out with a loud and bitter cry,” ‘Bless me—me too, my father. Do you have only one blessing, my father? Bless me too my father.’  And Esau wept aloud.”

His father answered him

“Your dwelling will be away from the earth’s riches

And you will serve your brother

But when you grow restless,

You will throw his yoke from off your neck.”

* * *

And then what happened?

* * *

God did not allow this trickery to prosper.

Blessing comes from God. Parental blessings are only prayers to God to bless children. As such, there is power in them. But not magic. If our blessings of our children determined their destinies, the world would be full of Einsteins, Leonardos, Shakespeares, Michael Phelps and Bill Gates.

Furious at his deceit, Esau plans to kill Jacob, and Jacob flees, living in exile for 20 years, as a hired man, serving Laban.

Esau, meanwhile, built up his own wealth, staying home as a rich man’s son. “I have plenty, my brother,” he tells the returning Jacob (Gen 33:9).

And Esau uses family wealth for the bride price of his three wives, whereas Jacob worked as a hired man for fourteen years for his two wives, one of whom he did not love or want.

“Be Lord over your brother and may the sons of your mother bow down to you,” was the blessing Isaac meant to give Esau, and Jacob “stole.”

However, when he returns, it is Jacob who bows to Esau and calls him Lord–always the blessing Isaac had intended for Esau.

“Jacob bowed down to the ground seven times as he approached Esau.” (Gen 33:3). He introduces his children, “They are the children God has graciously given your servant.”

He sends Esau a gift of “two hundred female goats, and twenty male goats, two hundred eyes and twenty rams, thirty female camels with their young, forty cows and ten bulls, and twenty female donkeys and ten male donkeys.” The servants are to say, “They belong to your servant Jacob and are a gift sent to my Lord, Esau.”

Jacob insists, “Please accept the present that was brought to you.  They are to find favour in your eyes, my Lord.” (The Hebrew word berakah means both blessing and gift or present.) “And because Jacob insisted, Esau accepted.”

So, in a sense, Jacob returns the stolen blessing and birth-right and Jacob now bows to Esau, and the wealth he has gained goes to serve his brother, which were the blessings Isaac had intended for Esau.

And Jacob gets the blessing/curse that Isaac sadly gave Esau.  “Your dwelling will be away from the earth’s riches ( he was a hired man for twenty years). And you will serve your brother (which he does with his massive gift). But when you grow restless, you will throw his yoke from off your neck,” as Jacob does by refusing to follow Esau to Seir but instead  settling in Succoth and later in Hebron.

* * *

What were the result of Jacob’s attempts to manipulate Esau’s birthright and blessing away from him?

He had to run away from his home. He never saw his mother again. Deceived, he worked seven years for an older daughter he did not love or want, and another seven years for the beautiful daughter he did. He worked for 20 years as a hired man, frequently cheated (Gen 30:35-36; Gen 31:7). He gave a good portion of his wealth to Esau.

God did not allow his trickery to prosper. Esau got the blessing Isaac mistakenly gave Jacob. He gets earth’s richness and abundance; Jacob bows down to him and calls him Lord. Jacob gets the “blessing” Isaac sadly gave Esau—he lives away from the richness of Canaan for 20 years, his labour serves his brother, and he eventually shakes him off.

* * *

However, just before meeting Esau again, Jacob is blessed by God in a dramatic encounter by the Jabbok River which left him limping and in no doubt that blessing comes from God, not from our intrigues, manipulations or even hard work.

And he enters Canaan, the land of blessing, once he is “broken.” He now limps, leaning on Him who had always intended to bless him, and would have done so far more rapidly, had Jacob not tried to help him out with his own manipulations.

And from that second blessing, the blessing of God, not the stolen one, all subsequent goodness in his life would flow.

* * *

 

The Toxicity of Unexpressed Creativity Leads to Physical and Mental Illness, and Addictions

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The-War-of-Art_straight_1024x1024I love this startling chapter “The Unlived Life,” from Steven Pressfield’s great book, “The War of Art.”

The rest of this post is a quote from this prescient chapter:

“Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.

Have you ever brought home a treadmill and let it gather dust in the attic? Ever resolved on a diet, a course of yoga, a meditation practice? Have you ever felt a call to embark upon a spiritual practice, dedicate yourself to a humanitarian calling, commit your life to the service of others? Late at night have you experienced a vision of the person you might become, the work you could accomplish, the realized being you were meant to be?

Are you a writer who doesn’t write, a painter who doesn’t paint, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture? Then you know what Resistance is.

One night I was layin’ down,
I heard Papa talkin’ to Mama.
I heard Papa say, to let that boy boogie-woogie.

‘Cause it’s in him
and it’s got to come out.
—John Lee Hooker, ‘Boogie Chillen.”

Resistance is the most toxic force on the planet. It is the root of more unhappiness than poverty, disease and erectile dysfunction. To yield to Resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be. If you believe in God (and I do) you must declare Resistance evil, for it prevents us from achieving the life God intended when He endowed each of us with our own unique genius.

Every sun casts a shadow, and genius’s shadow is resistance. As powerful as is our soul’s call to realization, so potent are the forces of resistance arrayed against it. We are not alone if we are mowed down by Resistance. Millions of good men and women have bitten the dust before us.

Have you heard this story? Woman learns she has cancer, six months to live. Within days she quits her job, resumes the dream of studying classical Greek she gave up to raise a family. Women’s friends think she’s crazy; she herself has never been happier. There’s a postscript. Woman’s cancer goes into remission.

Is that what it takes? Do we have to stare death in the face to make us stand up and confront Resistance? Does Resistance have to cripple and disfigure our lives before we wake up to its existence?

How many of us have become drunks and drug addicts, developed tumours and neuroses, succumbed to painkillers, gossip and compulsive cell-phone use simply because we don’t do that thing that our hearts, our inner genius, is calling us to? Resistance defeats us.

If tomorrow morning, by some stroke of magic, every dazed and benighted soul woke up with the power to take the first step toward pursuing his or her dreams, every shrink in the directory would be out of business. Prisons would stand empty. The alcohol and tobacco industries would collapse, along with the junk food, cosmetic surgery, and infotainment businesses, not to mention pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and the medical profession from top to bottom. Domestic violence would become extinct, as would addiction, obesity, migraines and road rage.

Look into your heart. Unless I’m crazy, right now a still small voice is piping up, telling you as it has ten thousand times, the calling that is yours and yours alone. You know it. No one has to tell you. And are you no closer to taking action on it than you were yesterday or will be tomorrow? You think Resistance isn’t real? Resistance will bury you.”

You of Little Faith, Why are you so Afraid?

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I

In a familiar, beloved passage, Jesus gets into a boat, and “a furious storm came up, so that the waves swept over the boat.” But Jesus continued sleeping.

The disciples in panic wake him up, “We are going to drown.”

And he replied, ‘You of little faith, why are you so afraid?’ Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves and it was completely calm.” (Matt 8:23-27).

* * *

In The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard comments that Jesus probably invented the term  oligopistoi, “little-faiths,” which would have had a little comic tinge to the ears of his hearers. “Oligopistoi, “little-faiths,” seems to have been a nickname that he invented as a way of gently chiding his apprentices for their lack of confidence in God and in himself.”

* * *

I want to live in such a way that Jesus will never have to say to me

“You of little faith, why are you afraid?” Whatever I am, I do not want to be an oligopistos, a little faith! And it lies in my hands.

 I want to be aware of the flow of my thoughts, any anxiety and fear which bubbles up. I want to capture my fears, surrendering them to Jesus.

* * *

I had a serious shock recently in which something big I wanted, and prayed for, and totally believed would happen did not happen.

Ah, I realised again, “Do not put faith in your prayers. Put your faith in God. Put your faith in the goodness of God.”

Your heart’s desire is a million times more likely to materialise if you pray steadfastly for it, (Mark Batterson says it’s partly because prayer activates the reticular activating system) but focusing on the objects of your prayer can, ironically, be a distraction from focusing on God, the tremendous lover.

And because of his goodness, we will not be afraid, whether all our prayers are affirmatively answered, or not.

* * *

What does living with much faith and little fear involve?

Well, here’s a practical  recent example: At the moment, we are earning enough to live on, and I can plough ahead with my writing which is what I have always wanted to do.

However, I sometimes toy with the idea of a specific (and I think) brilliant business venture which would bless many people (but would take time and energy aware from my writing, could be a distraction and source of annoyance and hassle, and potentially “pierce me with many griefs” in Paul’s phrase).

So though I could rationalise this distraction (Stephen Pressfield of The War of Art calls it the resistance) saying, “Well, interest rates may not always be so low; we should bulk up our savings,” I will instead say: “I will not be of little faith.  The God who helps me now will help me if interest rates go up.”

Do you see how faith is a blessing, an immense time-saver, and frees you to live your life aligned with God’s calling on it?

* * *

When I realise I am afraid, or doubt that God will come through for me, I will not look at my fear; I will look at Christ. I will not doubt his goodness.

And as fear rises, I will ignore it, focusing instead on the face of him who can rebuke the wind and the waves so that all is completely calm.

He will calm every storm he chooses, and will sleep in my boat, peaceful and content, though the others.

And I will train myself to remain tranquil through my storms, for my Saviour is in the same boat as I am.

 

 

“Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it:” How the Best Thing can Spring out of the Worst Thing

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So Jacob, running from murderous Esau whom he has cruelly and unscrupulously deceived, rests at Bethel.

And in his dream, he sees a stairway between heaven and earth, with the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And at the top, stood the Lord, who speaks blessing and encouragement.

And Jacob says, “How awesome is this place. This is the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.”

“Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.”

* * *

Jacob is in a fix. He has stolen Esau’s birthright, by taking advantage of his hunger and weak character. And then, taking advantage of Isaac’s blindness, he pretended to be Esau, stealing the blessing Isaac intended for him. He is now running for his life from Esau. He will never see his parents again, never return home.

And in the midst of this self-caused tragedy, God meets him, and blesses him.

* * *

When are we most likely to be unaware of the presence of the Lord?

When we are in the land of suffering.

I am working through Donald Miller’s StoryLine.

Step 1: We plot out our life to date, as if were a movie script, or the outline of a novel or memoir, assigning a positive or negative value to each event.

Step 2. We try to see if something good, something redemptive has come out of all the negative plot turns.

We make two lists for each negative event. Along with the list of catastrophic things, we make a list of the good things which emerged from the event.

* * *

Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist, founder of Logotherapy, helped thousands of patients heal as he helped them see the good, positive, and beneficial things which came to them or others because of their greatest sufferings.

In fact, once people see the good which has come out of their sufferings, they no longer view it as suffering.

Donald Miller writes, “I now claim what I used to see as tragedies as honest gifts from God. Still painful, but redeemed.

* * *

Doing the exercise was eye-opening for me. I found myself assigning positive values to the most painful, disappointing and traumatic things that happened to me because I now, in middle age, can see the good which came out of them.

Some of the best things in my life have come out of some of the worst things, out of failure, humiliation, shame, and loneliness.

In fact now, there is nothing I assign a straight negative score to, for each of these “plot turns” has led to so much good.

* * *

Here are some of my plot twists:

1) I was “the naughtiest girl in school” in my first school run by local nuns, and got expelled at 8. Who gets expelled at eight? Apparently, I!

As a result, I went to a boarding school, run by German and Iris nuns in Nainital, in the Himalayas, receiving a rather more cosmopolitan education than I would have got in my small Indian town. Boarding school was a calm and very disciplined environment, with set hours for study and reading. I read hungrily and left relatively well-read, having read hundreds of books.

2) After my undergraduate degree in English at Somerville College, Oxford, I was offered a place for a Ph.D in English at Oxford, contingent on getting a First.

I did not, and was overwhelmed with shame.

Instead, I went on to graduate school in the US, earning an MA, and then some of a Ph.D in English and Creative Writing, before quitting that to get married.

I would never have gone to America on my own, but having lived there 17 years, I am as comfortable with Americans as with Brits; have a sort of Anglo-American sensibility; and, psychologically, live mid-Atlantic, which is an asset in the blogosphere.

3) I was so depressed after the rejection of a manuscript in 1996 that I diagnosed myself as “sick,” and decided I needed a physican. I committed to 90 minutes a day of prayer and Bible study.

That practice has changed who I am, and the course and  events of my life more than anything else.

4) After a painful conflict (about a group I was leading), I withdrew for a few years from active involvement in church life and politics (though not from church services), pouring my energy first into establishing a stable family business, then into blogging.

The redirection of energy, away from leading Bible studies which I did for over ten years into writing , proved a blessing to me. And I left that church, SO toxic for me, for a grown-up, emotionally healthy church.

A few examples of “negative turns” eventually bringing many blessings my life.

It makes me more convinced that God is definitely working through my life, working through its plot, bringing good out of all the plot twists.

That He was there in each plot twist, though I might not have been aware of it.

“It will be done just as you believed it would”

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“It will be done just as you believed it would.” It sounds like some New Age, impossible, airy-fairy, feel-good but not true statement, doesn’t it?

But who said it? Our wise and wonderful Saviour (Matthew 8:13).

Earlier this year, I listened to the whole of Matthew on my long walks, and was forcibly struck by this: the importance of faith.

* * *

A question I’ve pondered all my Christian life is this: What makes the difference between one Christian and another? One answer is: their faith. It is their expectancy that God will answer their prayers.

I once had a Charismatic pastor a few years ago who used to say, “If you can’t see it, you can’t have it.” And I used to think, airy-fairy rubbish.

But, he’s somewhat right, I now thing. If we are working for something, let’s say on finishing a book, or developing a blog so that is will gain as many readers as it is capable of gaining, or in developing a business, we need more than a strategy. We have to someone see each part of the strategy, see it working. Else, we will work half-heartedly, at cross-purposes with ourselves, not really believing that what we hope will happen

If we cannot “see” each element of our strategy ( for instance in blog growth, in writing, business, weight loss)  working, ask yourself why. Perhaps you will uncover areas of self-doubt ; perhaps you will uncover your sense that your plan is too grandiose, is a wish rather than a plan, so that you don’t really believe you can do it or it can be done.

This self-doubt, the sense that what we are working with is a dream rather than a plan can paralyse.

Go back to the drawing board. So, you doubt that you will put in the hours walking to lose 26 pounds a year. Okaay, how about a pound a month, twelve a year?

You doubt you will find the hours to write a page of your book a day? How about 250 words.

I am all for dreaming big, but if I cannot see it happening, I settle for a dream I can believe it.

It will be done just as you believed it would. But yet the power is not in our faith, the power is in God. However, I am too old, too weary, too battered to pray for things I cannot see happen (though I still dream big and wild, I assure you.)

* * *

I have just had a HUGE disappointment. Something huge which I was sure would happen—and so did not pray enough about– did not.

Would prayer have changed the outcome? YES, I believe so, for it would have changed my behaviour, and the role I played in what happened.

The good thing that happens when our prayers are not answered, is that all our theological presuppositions get thrown up into the air. And we realize again that we are dealing with mystery.

The power is not in our faith, the power in in God.

The power is not in the faithfulness of our prayers; the power is in the faithful one.  

And while we definitely want to pray in the way Jesus commended, we understand that prayer is talking to God, and He himself is the land of our heart’s desire, more important, more precious and beautiful than what we say to him.

Re-opening the Ancient Wells which will Save our Lives Right Now

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Switzerland 2013

In arid ancient Israel, access to artesian wells made all the difference between prosperity, survival, or famine.

And so when God blessed Isaac so that his crops reaped a hundred-fold return (Gen. 26:12) and he became very wealthy, out of envy, his enemies, the Philistines “stopped up all the wells that Abraham had built, filling them with earth.”

Today, there are almost weekly accounts of the Israeli occupation forces destroying Palestinian wells, farms and orchards. Destroying wells, sources of life, is always a very effective enemy action, leaving aridity and poverty.

* * *

 Barbara Brown Taylor popularised this question: What is saving your life, right now?

Prayer and scripture and communal worship is certainly part of it.

But other things are keeping me alive too: long, slow, contemplative walks out of doors with my beloved collie Jake, my body getting into a rhythm of movement, my mind relaxing, still as a pool, until I am no longer thinking, but just being, and then suddenly a golden carp of thought pops up, unexpected and welcome.

And travel, which is complete relaxation. My mind rests from conscious thought, planning, strategizing, worrying. I shrug off my to-do list, and my uneasy Puritan imperative of ambition and must-achieve. I am just am, and am purely happy and relaxed, wandering the streets of a beautifully preserved medieval town like Troyes, France, which we visited last week, just looking, or wandering aimlessly on the alpine meadows of Switzerland, to which we drove earlier this month.

Blogging is saving my life, in that it pushes me to think, to observe, to express, to strive for beauty.

* * *

 But life has blocked up several life-giving wells for me, as for all of us.

And I am opening up these wells.

Before I married, I was a voracious reader. Reading was my escape from the world, and my greatest source of joy, and I felt I needed to be alone to really disappear into a book leaving the world behind me, and I found that hard while living with other people.

I have been steadily reading less through the 23 years of our marriage, though I have recently re-launched a reading recovery programme—reading 1 page more each day than I did the day before, aiming to hit 45 pages a day, or a book a week. Concurrently, as a back-up plan since I have many books on the go, I aim to finish each book in 1 day less–30 days for book 1; 29 days for book 2, etc. This plan gets anyone to reading a book a week in 23 months.

And with reading, I have lost other sources of joy. As a child, I loved myth and legend and fairy tales and children’s stories. Sadly, I have not read much in these genres as an adult, because, well, I was an adult and thought I should be reading serious, grown-up stuff.

It’s strange that I didn’t realize that children’s stories and fairy tales and myths and legends were invented by adults, who were putting themselves back in touch with the sources of joy and delight. And we can step there with them, if we give ourselves permission to.

On holiday earlier this month in Switzerland, Italy and France, it was as if God switched a switch on in my brain, and children’s stories poured out of me, two and three a day. And writing children fiction–ah bliss, gives me “permission” to read it.

* * *

Poetry was something else I loved to read as a child, and the first genre I wrote in as an adult. My masters in creative writing was in poetry.

But then, making the correct or incorrect assessment that I probably would not have a career as a poet, I gave it up in my late twenties. It is something else I would love to resume, first reading it exhaustively, then writing it.

* * *

Our large garden was a huge source of joy as a child. I have a large garden now, even larger than my childhood garden, but in fact, though I write looking at it, it is hard to recover the habit of working in it consistently.

I would like an extraordinary garden, and would love to make time to work in it every day, for an hour, like I used to. But I have made peace with the fact that when it comes to it, I prefer writing to gardening. So, since it is better to take just a few steps in the direction of one’s dreams than none at all—I am gardening just once every few days for now.

* * *

 What will re-open the wells of life and joy for us?

Examine your life. See what you are doing out of duty and habit which is not life-giving for you. (Too much internet usage? On too many rotas at church? Staying up too late doing nothing much?)

Then begin to shoehorn joy into your life, starting small—in the smallest measurable increments, steadily rebuilding

What is saving your life now? Are there wells of joy which have closed for you? Tell us in the comments.