Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires
Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art
As the family’s resident expert baker, Irene insisted on making her own cake
Four layered strawberry filled cake with candles.
It tastes even better than it looks–the butter cream and the juice from the sliced strawberries soak into the cake to produce a luscious result.
with the first slice removed
She gives detailed instructions of how she did it on her blog. To celebrate we also found 14 pictures from her younger years.
Irene, as you can see, has always loved cake
“Berlin seemed far away, but that was an illusion; for years I would pick fragments of it from my skin as though I had wallowed among shards of broken glass:” the historian Peter Gay writes about his boyhood growing up Jewish in Nazi Germany. (My German Question: Growing up in Nazi Berlin.)
Reviewing Gay’s memoir, the critic Frank Kermode writes “When his anger erupts, and he wishes some ancient enemy disgraced or dead, the effect is particularly surprising, as if such sentiments had no place in the story, though of course they have, and were the main reason for its being written.”
* * *
I have been looking through probably hundreds of pages of often reduplicated notes I’ve typed over the years, deciding what will make it into my memoir of my Indian Catholic childhood.
And sometimes, anger erupts, fierce and scalding, and I realize, “Ah-ha, an unhealed memory. Forgiveness work must be done.”
* * *
There are several dark characters in my story. There was Sister Hyacinth, who made us kneel on gravel for tiny infractions, and when she fell out with other nuns, in an abuse of power, would drag their favourites out of bed into the verandah, pull their pyjamas down and hit them with a brush on their bare bottoms (first-hand experience!). She was probably slightly crazy, I now think.
There was Sister Ancilla who hit me, with a ruler, each time I made the sign of the cross with my left hand (I couldn’t tell left from right). German Sister Mary Joseph who, when I inadvertently entered the confessional when she was there, thought I came to overhear her sins, and clobbered me with her huge black umbrella. The socially insecure wicked Miss Marie Fernandez who mocked my naughty boy shoes, and the pinafore my mother sewed for me. Oh stop, memory!!
Ah, abusing children–who probably will not tell, who will not be believed, who are powerless. It’s the easiest form of abuse.
* * *
Did the cruel nuns and teachers get away with it? (And there were many many more kind nuns and teachers, I am delighted to report).
Yes, of course, they did.
No, they did not, not really.
I don’t believe people really get away with things.
Who we are shapes our lives. It’s a law inexorable as gravity. Who we are affects the thoughts we think, the words we speak, the books we read, the work and leisure activities we choose, the friends we make, the way we parent, the life-choices we make. We reap what we sow. We reap what we are.
The universe is governed by a just judge. If we do not reap what we sow directly, we do so through the corruption of character which is destiny. Our mean actions shrink, and shrivel and warp character; they change it. We bear traces of the things we have done, the life we have lived, in our faces, our demeanour, our body language. And like attracts like. A noble person attracts lovely people, whereas the disaffected, perpetual grumblers, internet haters and trolls, and mean people attracts the like characters to them, the like behaviour, the like events, and that is punishment enough.
Also, actions become habit. One might get away with one mean thing, but one tends to repeat it until, one way or another, one is tripped up.
* * *
Macbeth is sorely tempted to kill King Duncan, and become King himself. As he hesitates, he muses, strangely, that if there were eternal punishment of this murder, but no temporal punishment, he could deal with it. But we pay in this life, directly or directly, for the evil we have done. And so do our enemies.
If it were done when ’tis done, then
Here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We’ld jump the life to come. But in these cases
We still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poison’d chalice
To our own lips.
When I read English at Oxford, a frequent exam question was, “Is character destiny? Discuss with relation to Macbeth. Or Hamlet or Lear.” Would Macbeth’s ambition, unscrupulosity and weakness have destroyed him, even if events had turned out differently. Would Lear have been destroyed by his pride, his wilfulness, his childishness, his hastiness, his poor judgement, his bad temper, even if all the dreadful and heartbreaking things that happened to him did not happen? Most of us said “Yes.”
Character is destiny. No one gets away with anything.
* * *
Our universe is held together by paradoxes—day and night, summer and winter, sea and land, earth and sky.
In the internal logic of the narrative of the Scripture story set in motion in Genesis, Christ is the perfect and mysterious combination of perfect justice and perfect mercy. He paid the punishment for the sin of the world. There is justice; there is mercy; mercy triumphs.
So too in life, people don’t really get away with things. Their character tells the tale, and character is destiny, like inexorably attracting like.
But no one, neither me nor you nor our worst enemies, gets exactly what they deserve. Else who could stand? We reap what we sow, but mercy triumphs.
In John’s vision in Revelation, the redeemed sing
“Great and marvelous are your deeds,
Lord God Almighty.
Just and true are your ways,
King of the nations.”
* * *
God’s ways are just. No one gets away with anything. But mercy triumphs. For those who have sinned against us. For those we have sinned against. For us.
So peace be on you, dragons of my youth. I forgive you. I chuck into the healing waterfall of God’s grace, and leap in after you.
There is peace there. It feels good.
14 years ago, I was furious with my husband Roy for some just-discovered crime or misdemeanour, and since he was teaching at the moment (in those pre-mobile phone days), and I couldn’t call him, I called our pastor. (No, I am not joking!)
Had Roy been at the end of a phone, it would have gone somewhat like this: I would have yelled, explaining all the things he had done wrong, exaggerating his wrong-doing, my very words making me angrier. He would have answered in kind, raking up my past wrong-doing, an eye for an eye, his very words making him angrier.
If the row had had shades of Armageddonish, the nearest object might have become a projectile missile—and occasionally did!
* * *
So, I tell the pastor all about that now-forgotten, but I am sure absolutely heinous offence—his messiness; something he’d said he’d do but did not; lack of adequate and suitable domestic help probably. I express my rage.
And he says, “Okay, you’ve told me. No need to tell him too.”
I, “But I am still so angry. What can I do if I don’t express my rage to him?”
He, “Don’t tell him. Tell Jesus.”
* * *
Cheesy, huh? Except this particular man was a cool Midwesterner, and the opposite of cheesy.
And over the years, I realized that that is, probably, the best way to deal with anger.
Tell Jesus.
* * *
Biochemically, anger is a build up of adrenalin. The fight-or-flight response says “Fight.” We have to do something about this build-up of adrenalin. Somehow discharge it. Many women clean when angry, apparently. (Effective or not, you, at least, get a clean house!)
When I am sensible, I walk when angry, getting times among my personal best. I mentally compose withering, scathing emails on my walk and when I come back, I am so calm, I’m like: “Now what was that I wanted to say?” My fury has dissipated.
* * *
But having a walk-and-talk with Jesus is the best. Express your anger. Don’t minimize it. Anger is like a red light on your car: “You’re out of gas,” it says. “Stop. Refuel. Change the oil, perhaps.” It can be the impetus to overdue changes in our lives and relationships. We ignore this powerful emotion at our peril. Ignore it, push it underground, and it surfaces as depression, or as the sudden fit of rage and irrational actions which trip us up (Prov. 4:19).
Having expressed it your rage to Jesus: Go to his healing fountains. Let them flush out and cleanse your soul.
Call out as desperately as the man who wakes his friend in the middle of the night, “Jesus, you see my soul. You see how angry it is. Send your Holy Spirit to soak, drench and saturate it. Maranatha.”
And if you can get calm enough to pray about the sources of your rage, sometimes words are given you to resolve the problem without all the shouting, all the sin. When you speak the words given to you by Him who is the Word, they achieve more than hours of fighting which, in general, achieves precisely nothing (positive).
* * *
Sometimes, we need scripture to flush out the darkness of our soul. Once, in a dark November, when a fellow Christian was annoying me, I put on I John and James on repeat on my ipod, and listened to it, again and again, grace rushing through my soul, calming it, sweetening it.
* * *
Sometimes, we just need a little bit of sanctified intelligence or Jesusy thinking to deal with our anger.
On my travels, I sometimes encounter rudeness, or snootiness, or dishonesty or attempted or successful scams.
And I am cross. And for years, I have been telling myself the same thing, “Why should I let their bad behaviour, their sinfulness, rob me of my peace?”
I tell myself that often. “Why should I let X’s sinfulness deprive me of my peace? Use your brains, Anita. You are not without sin. Why should you expect other people to be blameless? Anita, just release the rascal into the waterfall of God. Step into God’s waterfall of grace yourself.”
* * *
Yes, sanctified intelligence and faith help us deal with our anger.
Think of the greatest injustice you personally have experienced. Which made you the angriest?
God know that was going to happen, from the beginning of time. That event, that injustice is just seed, neutral raw material in his hands, from which he can, at any time, bring something beautiful.
* * *
I have another solution to anger. Remember God.
Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? 7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? (Gen 4:6)
Have you been cheated, defrauded?
Who creates wealth? Creates the world and everything in it. Bestows wealth on whom he pleases. Cannot God give you at the snap of his fingers far more than you’ve been cheated of? Forgive.
Have you been betrayed, slandered, lied about, back-stabbed? Tell God. If God is for you, who can be against you? (Romans 8:31). No one can block a career or a vocation which God ordains.
Have people wasted your time, used your energy, used you to further their own agenda?
Goodness, girl. Who created time? Who can stretch it, infuse eternity into it, so that you are astounded at how much you got done in an hour, a day? Who can ensure that the work of minutes is read for centuries, like Pascal’s Memorial is?
God can give our work wings.
* * *
Hey, whatever is annoying you, the sheer annoyingness of the person, the situation, the injustice, it’s all in God’s hands.
He may have deliberately put that person into your life for you to learn the one thing which all the law, and the prophets and the teachings of Jesus come down to: Loving kindness.
* * *
Much anger is selfishness, stemming from blocked self-centred goals and desires. And then we need a heart-transplant. We need repentance, literally metanoia, to change one’s mind.
We need God’s magic: grace to change, soften, and convert our souls.
Grace alone, which God supplies. Strength unknown, he will provide.
Yes, Grace: God’s magic. Flood my soul with it. Maranatha, come Lord Jesus.
So, around 1987, when I was reading English at Somerville College, Oxford, Salman Rushdie read from Midnight’s Children at the Oxford University Majlis, the Indian society. And I stay up all night reading Midnight’s Children, transfixed. At least 95% of the novels, plays, poetry I had read until then had been written by British, American and European authors. Unconsciously, I thought of their countries, their lives, as the proper subject of literature.
Rushdie’s India was 15 years older than mine, but definitely recognizable. So all lights blaze: the moment many writers describe when they realize: “I can make literature out of what I know and have experienced.”
I quickly write about 25 pages in a green felt pen. I must dig them out.
* * *
I move on to America, to a Master’s in Creative Writing, in Ohio State University, 1987-1989 and I choose to specialize in, not memoir, but poetry, the form in which, like many beginning writers, I instinctively wrote.
So, it’s all poetry: courses in poetry, reading it, writing it, in the interstices of taking classes, and teaching Freshman composition. And then I go on to a Ph.D in Creative Writing at SUNY Binghamton in 1989–taking classes, teaching classes, writing papers, grading papers, a romantic busyness: lots of reading, thinking and a little writing, but still…all I want to do is write.
I quit my Ph. D to get married, and suddenly get to write full time, as I had always wanted to. We wander around the US–to Cornell, New York, where Roy did a post-doc; to Stanford, California, another post-doc; and then to William and Mary, where he teaches. And I write poetry full time! And then I realize I’ve written through all the poem ideas I have, and am running dry.
* * *
I pick up memoirs, almost by chance. Patricia Hampl’s, A Romantic Education, describes, with verve and verisimilitude, a family in which food, and eating and drinking were shorthand substitutes for love—much like mine. Annie Dillard in “An American Childhood” describes an intense girlhood in Pittsburgh, a steel city like Jamshedpur in which I grew up. I read Frost in May, and Mary MacCarthy’s Memories of a Catholic Girlhood.
Dostoevsky describes his Prince Myshkin before an epileptic fit
“His brain seemed to catch fire at brief moments…. His sensation of being alive and his awareness increased tenfold at those moments which flashed by like lightning. His mind and heart were flooded by a dazzling light.”
So too mine. About 4 years after the original idea, I saw my childhood and adolescence as a subject over the next few week and months, and hundreds of little memories rushed in. I jotted them down and I burned with the desire to write the memoir. (As I do now).
* * *
And in the providence which shapes our ends, my husband, who had been teaching at William and Mary was offered a postdoc the University of Minnesota. I believed I could write anywhere, so was cool with going to Minneapolis, and my two years there turned out to be absolutely one of the most stimulating and creative periods of my writing life.
The Twin Cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul, had an active literary community, particularly in Creative nonfiction and memoir. I applied to a graduate course in Creative Nonfiction at the University of Minnesota to which I had to turn in a 10 page piece of writing. I wrote my first essay, “The Goblin Market” about the raucous open air markets, magical to a young child, and it won a Roberts Writing Award, $200.
Charlie Sugnet, my writing teacher at the University of Minnesota, and the weekly book excerpts he gave us to read opened the world of creative nonfiction to me. Annie Dillard says moving from poetry to creative nonfiction is like playing with the whole orchestra rather than a single instrument. Indeed.
* * *
Mini-magic happened. I had written two long essays that term in Charlie Sugnet’s class, one about my conversion experience, and one about working at Mother Teresa’s convent.
Within a few months, the two pieces won a Minnesota State Arts Board grant ($6000), a Jerome Foundation travel grant ($1800), a mentorship award with an established writer from the Asian community: David Mura.
Sugnet said that he could see my having a career. He suggested submitting a book about my experience in Mother Teresa’s convent to editors and agents. It was not, however, the book I wanted to write–I wanted to write a memoir of my early childhood. I visualized this period as the last 20-30 pages in it
But heck, I so wanted a published book and so I embarked upon a foolish quest that saddened and poisoned many years of my life–trying to write a book I was not truly in love with, and did not want to write with my whole heart. (Samina Ali, who was in one of these classes with me, described how she wanted to write about her arranged marriage to a Muslim gay man, but was so desperate for affirmation that she almost signed on to write a book called Demon Lover, about an incestuous relationship with her father.)
Lesson 1: Write the book YOU want to write, the one you are in love with, not the one you think might be successful
So I was trying to spin a book out of 14 months of my life, wasn’t whole-heartedly in love with it, and craved validation. I joined a writers’ group with my friend, the lovely writer (and human being!) Erin Hart. Took more writing and literature classes at the University and the Loft, a literary centre, at which I taught a course in creative nonfiction. I submitted my essays to magazines and for grants and prizes and fellowships, instead of keeping just writing, and finishing the doggone thing. Which meant I was always backing up and polishing what I’d already written instead of just writing. Going forward.
And since American creative writing classes are based on the workshop model: much time waswasted reading and critiquing other amateurs work instead of communing with the greats! And this is true, for both teachers and students!
Lesson 2 Get it done, get it down, get it written. Don’t seek validation. Seek mastery.
In my second year in Minnesota I went to a writers’ conference in New England, trying to get an agent and editor and a hypercritical, ungenerous teacher there shredded my work at the sentence and grammatical level (she didn’t like my contorted pretzel-like sentences) destroying my confidence, making me analyse my sentences, instead of just writing by instinct,
I took a course in grammar and editing which I perhaps did not need, but which helped me to write with the left brain too, and write better). More tiredness, more distraction, more time wasted.
Lesson 3: Take the critique of teachers with a grain of salt, assessing them. Avoid mean-spirited, frustrated, bitter ones: tormentors rather than mentors.
I used a tenth of the $6000 State Arts Board grant to work one on one with Carol Bly (ex-wife of Robert Bly!), who could go off on wild riffs of rage about ideas and sentences or grammatical constructions she did not like, or, but was also hyperbolically lavish with praise. All rather alarming for someone who was moving from poetry to prose and was just learning to write beautiful prose. She promised to send it to her agent when I had 100 beautiful pages.
More stress, more backing up and looking over my shoulder and obsessing over each word, each phrase, each sentence instead of looking at the big picture.
I started to write self-consciously, analytically, analysing each word, phrase, sentence, wanting them to be unassailable, joy turning to stress.
Lesson 4—Quit over-analysing. Write freely, write like a river. You will never write perfectly in this life. Why should you? You are not God.
Learn to let things go. Ship.
Knowing my work would be critiqued as it was being written I started getting frozen and blocked. There was a four page chapter over which I got blocked for four months in my perfectionism, which turned out to be–unnecessary!
Lesson 5 when blocked, read, read, read. You might instinctively stumble on a form and language. If you are blocked on a chapter, move on. Perhaps you don’t have to write it.
* * *
In the summer of 1993, I go to the Squaw Valley Writers Conference in California and meet Harper and Row editor, Ted Solotaroff and an agent, Virginia Barber, who express an enthusiastic interest in my manuscript about working with Mother Teresa.
I come back walking on air to Williamsburg, where we had returned despite my desperate desire to stay in Minneapolis.
My husband wasn’t hugely supportive; he was establishing his own career as a mathematician. Life was stressful, lots of battles about who’d do the dishes and the laundry and the cleaning and the tidying. And then we had Zoe, a lovely grinny baby–and writing time and energy was at a premium. I wrote and revised the manuscript through the tired first two years of her life.
When my second revision of my manuscript was rejected by the agent and editor in October 1996, I lay face down on the carpet and wanted to die.
Lesson 6: Never confuse strong enthusiastic interest for a signature on a piece of paper.
(I later met at least three established writers who this editor had expressed a strong interest in, led them on and dumped. Why?
(Post by Roy Mathias)
The Oxfordshire village of Waterperry is home to Rowan Atkinson and the 8 acre Waterperry gardens. We visited the latter.
On the banks of the Thame, a tributary of the Thames.
It was a beautiful clear cold spring day.
New leaves with rain from earlier in the day:
Waterperry holds the national collection of saxifrages. There were well over a hundred labelled specimens in flower.
Helleborus Orientalis, Red Hybrid.
Chionodoxa
The ericaceous border displays a wide range of colors.
Waterperry has an extensive orchard of dwarf espaliered fruit trees.
The Knot Garden.
The “Family Apple Tree” has over 45 cultivars grafted on it. Each branch will bear different apples, and is labelled accordingly. Must return in the autumn!
A oak in the meadow.
Lichen on an apple tree.
A hedge pruned as a wall with a window.
Birdsong everywhere in the Spring. Here is robin on top of a cypress.
And while I worked, I built the most beautiful air-castles, and dreamed dreams, the pleasantest of which was of the time when I should talk like other people, and the thought of the pleasure it would give my mother to hear my voice once more, sweetened every effort and made every failure an incentive to try harder next time.
So I want to say to those who are trying to learn to speak and those who are teaching them: Be of good cheer. Do not think of to-day’s failures, but of the success that may come to-morrow.
You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere, and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles–a delight in climbing rugged paths, which you would perhaps never know if you did not sometime slip backward–if the road was always smooth and pleasant.
Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost. Sometime, somewhere, somehow we shall find that which we seek.
We shall speak, yes, and sing, too, as God intended we should speak and sing.”
Helen Keller “The Story of My Life”
Last summer at RiverCamp, Heidi Baker said, casually, “Revival is coming to the UK. You know that, don’t you? Everyone knows that.” And something like a collective sigh– or sneer!–shivered through the audience.
For in Charismatic circles, people have been talking about and longing for this revival for a very long time. It’s way past its due date, but hasn’t come A) because of God’s sovereign decision. B) because, perhaps, revival begins with one, and was waiting for the one.
* * *
Revival. Why want it? For the same reason, one might fly to Rome rather than walk on the Via Francigena, the ancient pilgrim route from Canterbury to Rome (though I will be walking 71 miles on the Tuscany portion in September).
Because when the Spirit comes, difficult things become easy. There is an infusion of joy. We forgive our enemies–easily. We glimpse the Father’s heart of love. And yes, yes, there are miracles—healings, deliverances, conversions, the spectacular bait which draws people, (but which are secondary to the revelation of the Father’s love and a fresh filling by the Spirit.)
* * *
My blogging friend Jules Middleton of Apples of Gold from Sussex invited me to go with her to the 2013 Welsh Revival in Cwmbran. Me going was a totally crazy idea; heck, I don’t even live in Wales, and am 8 days behind with my book manuscript, but I wanted to go, and rapidly committed to going before I overthought it, and worked all the totally logical and sensible and cold reasons not to go!
* * *
The glorious hymn “Here is Love, Vast as the Ocean” was the love song of the Welsh Revival. The love song of the Cwmbran Outpouring is Just one touch from the King changes everything.
It’s true, isn’t it? The woman with an issue of blood who touches Jesus (Luke 8:46). The man with the withered hand (Mark 3:5). Blind Bartimaeus ( Mark 10 46-52).
It takes just a minute for us to see him with the eyes of faith, seeking his face and not his hand (as Richard Taylor, the speaker, yesterday) said for us to be healed.
If the Cwymbran Outpouring were to be characterized in these early days, it would probably be “the igniting of latent faith.”
* * *
Okay, let me tell you about yesterday. There was definitely an atmosphere of emotional contagion, of expectant faith, which strengthens your own rather atrophied faith.
The church has been meeting every evening since a series of miracles on April 10th. I spoke to the stewards, and to one of the church’s pastors after the meeting, who showed me pictures on his iPhone of the disabled man (whose healing ignited the revival) walking, and then lifting his wheelchair above his head. The pastor pointed to the heavy wheelchair, kept as a trophy by the front door—I could not lift it, Roy could lift it a couple of inches. This miracle ignited faith in other people, and they’ve had deliverances from cancer, paralysis, addictions, hepatitis, etc. (Victory Church particularly caters to ex-addicts).
What stood out most for me was the atmosphere of faith, joy and expectancy, of people coming every night for 13 nights to worship Christ. The worship was good; the preaching was “anointed.”
“Anointed?” Well, when a preacher can look at a familiar passage and see fresh bread, meat and drink in it, and convey this in a way that others too can come and see, and eat and drink with delight—that’s anointing! This cerebral Oxford girl transcribed Richard Taylor’s entire sermon—simple, to the point, and it spoke to me.
And then, ministry time. I sensed the presence of the Lord in the house, and wondered if I should just pray quietly for one touch from the King. But then, the Kingdom of God advances through violence, and the violent bear it away (Matt 11:12).
So I went and received prayer.
* * *
Let me tell now how prayer for healing works with me—and this could be partly because of my lowish expectation. I have been depressed, and have asked for prayer for that. It’s completely gone, but it lifted gradually over weeks and months. I have prayed for healing from adrenal fatigue which is completely gone, so that I can write for long hours. My reading speed is not back to what it was by any measure, so I asked for prayer for that yesterday.
I am gradually being delivered from my addiction/habit of emotional overeating. I’ve lost 13 pounds over the last months, as this is lifting, but prayed for complete deliverance from using sugar, chocolate and white flour products to raise my spirits and change my mood. That prayer I believe was granted!
So when I go up for prayer, I do go with the expectation that God will answer, that he finds it hard to keep his hands off us when we ask for healing. I am open to instantaneous healings and deliverances (which I haven’t yet received), or to a long process of healing, transformation and deliverance being initiated at the moment of prayer—which is what has happened very often.
* * *
Anyway, last night, receiving prayer for healing was electric, my most powerful experience of the laying on of hands—and I have been a charismatic since I was 17, for 3 + decades! I felt my knees buckle; I burst into deep, soul-wrenching cathartic tears, a mixture of tears and laughter, each time I was prayed for.
“What is it about tears that should be so terrifying? the touch of God is marked by tears…deep, soul-shaking tears, weeping…it comes when that last barrier is down and you surrender yourself to health and wholeness” (David Wilkerson, The Cross and the Switchblade”).
I felt joy, I felt freedom. I felt healing. I felt I had been healed of what I asked for. And then, I just sat there for the 3-4 hours I was there, asking for “one touch from the King,” for the many areas of need in my life. And how many there are!
And I left joyful.
* * *
Should you go? Hmm. Read other reports. Go if you would like to spend a few hours in passionate worship, and have your faith reignited. The preaching will probably be good. The faith displayed will be contagious, and remind you of your first love.
Go if you would like to see a revival in its early days, still full of innocence. The baptism in the Holy Spirit is a baptism of love, as Andrew Murray says in his splendid book, “Absolute Surrender.” You will see much evidence of love, from the congregation, the stewards, and the lovely pastors, mostly big burly men, who pray for you in an unhurried, passionate way while encasing you in close bear hug. How adorable!
And I sure wouldn’t be surprised if you receive one touch from the King that changes everything!
UPDATE: Here are links to two more posts from our second visit to Cwmbran
Comfort Eating, Emotional Eating, Compulsive Eating: Goodbye to All That
and Follow up—On the Cwmbran Outpouring, the Wild Goose of the Holy Spirit and Waterfalls
I was ankle deep in mud, trying to brush away disease-carrying mosquitoes that seemed to be fascinated with my exposed legs, arms and face. I had a 30 pound concrete construction block in each hand, which made swatting at nasty bugs just a little difficult. The tropical conditions on the Philippines island of Bohol were offering me some challenges that I’d never had to deal with before. The bugs were one thing, the daily rain storms that deluged the countryside were another. And then there was the heat — relentless and disinterested in my personal discomfort.
I was on a short-term mission trip to the Philippines with an organization whose purpose was to construct church buildings for needy congregations. Now I’m not a construction guy. I’m a former high school special education teacher who was just trying to do something “good”. The situation I found myself in was surreal. For those of you who have never been in a third-world country before, let me sum it up by saying, life there is truly different.
There was a dining area set up next to the work site. It was a simple affair of a few wooden benches and tables sitting under a very large tarp. It was surly no four star restaurant, but it served our needs. The first few days there were rainy. The mornings weren’t too bad, but part way through the day, the rain would come. Sometimes it was torrential, but most of the time it was just a slow steady rain.
During one of those rainy days, I found myself hanging out under the tarp at the dining area. I wasn’t the only one. A few of the Filipino workers had also come in to take a break from the weather. There was a young man whom I had noticed several times there at the work site. This boy was, in my estimation, of high school age. His name was Raymond. Once I began to recognize people a little better and put names to the faces, I soon realized that Raymond wasn’t just at the work site once in a while – he was there every day.
Raymond
“Raymond,” I asked him. “Why aren’t you in school today?” He smiled and shrugged his shoulders. This was his church and his mom was one of the kitchen staff helping prepare our food. But his shrug wasn’t an answer to my question.
“Why aren’t you in school?”
“I don’t have a pencil,” was his reply.
“What do you mean, you don’t have a pencil?” I queried further.
Later on I spoke to Raymond’s mother and she confirmed that the boy was not in school due to a lack of basic school supplies. I was stunned. She went on to explain that she had many children. If she had any hopes of the younger ones ever completing the sixth grade, the older ones would have to drop out of school. There simply wasn’t enough money to go around.
I did some research and found that the typical Filipino student could get through almost an entire year of school for around twenty-five dollars. The older students, like Raymond, did have some extra requirements for school, but even then the amount they needed was minimal. I vowed that Raymond would go to school. I would ‘support’ him so that he could finish his education. It’s one thing to chose to live a simple Filipino life, but it’s another to live that life because you didn’t have a choice. It was my goal to make sure that Raymond did indeed have that choice.
The next week, I met several other children who were in situations similar to Raymond’s. I soon learned that nearly 40 percent of all Filipino children are unable to finish elementary school because they don’t have basic school supplies. Nearly half of these kids never finish high school for the same reason.
I had been truly touched by these children and their situation. When I returned to the US, I began a non-profit organization with the primary purpose of providing school supplies to needy Filipino children so that they could at least graduate from high school.
I’ve since returned to the island of Bohol, where I’ve met with several children and their families who need help. One of the communities is an isolated village called Datag. Many of the children who live there don’t even have shoes to wear. Many more don’t have proper clothes, and they surely don’t have the supplies they need for school. School starts in the middle of June, so Educate: Bohol has spent the past several weeks gather clothing and shoes for these children. We’re also collecting funds so that we can purchase and distribute school supplies.
It’s a very emotional assignment for me, but I wouldn’t trade it for any other. The Filipinos are beautiful people who work hard and appreciate God’s blessings. I will be back in June to help with the distribution of school supplies, clothing, and shoes. But there’s another village nearby . . . and the situation there is actually worse. Through God’s guiding hand, I’m ready for the challenge.
* * *
Scott Berry has published Return to the Middle, a non-fiction account of his recent experiences working as a missionary in the Philippines.
“We’ve all struggled with trying to do the ‘right’ thing,” says Berry. “But sometimes not everyone agrees with our actions and we quickly find ourselves in an uncomfortable conflict. Often, that struggle beats us down and, if we don’t take criticism well, we just quit. That’s what happened to me. But God offered me the chance to try one more time. He opened a door. I stepped through it.”
Return to the Middle is the story of how Berry allowed God to lead him through not only a foreign land, but also through foreign places in his heart.
His pastor and close friend, Tom Caffery, spoke of the man he met upon Berry’s return from the Philippines: “Like most who experience a mission trip, Scott was struck at the heart of what we can accomplish for Christ’s mission today.”
Berry founded a public charity, Educate: Bohol, as a response to his visit to the Philippines. He has since returned to the province of Bohol, where he has provided school supplies and other educational needs for over 125 children.
“The need there is tremendous,” Berry says. “We take so much for granted here in America. I wish everyone could have the opportunity to come visit the Philippines with me. I’d love to introduce you to some of the kindest people in the world who work extremely hard every day of the week just to survive. We can send a Filipino child back to school for an entire year for only 35 dollars. An American family spends that much on one fast-food meal that they don’t even remember a day later.”
Berry is a former special education teacher who taught in an inner-city school in Albuquerque. His passion for writing started at a young age and continued on through college. His writing skills were sharpened when he worked as a military historian, writing about the various operations of U.S. Air Force units around the world. Upon retirement from the military, Berry moved to Rio Rancho, New Mexico, just outside of Albuquerque, where he lives with his wife. They have an adult son and daughter and two grandsons.
Here is a link to Scott’s website and blog Educate: Bohol that describes his work further.
