Anita Mathias | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life: A Visually Splendid, Deeply Philosophical AND Christian film.

I loved Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. It’s the only film that I’ve watched, dazzled—and then immediately watched again.

Terrence Malick, the auteur–who studied Philosophy at Harvard; was a Rhodes Scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford translated Heidegger; taught philosopher at MIT; wrote for the New Yorker; and directed six visionary films–is a modern America genius, apparently as immersed in philosophy as in the Bible.

The Tree of Life is a modern Book of Job, an exploration of why bad things happen to good people, a Miltonic attempt to justify the ways of God to man–and probably the most theological film I’ve seen.

The film explores dualistic ways to live—selfishness and love; “nature” and “grace,” or theologically, as a son of God, entitled to all the goodness of his household, or an orphan who must scavenge, scheme and grab.

* * *

Mrs O’Brien, an ethereal woman,(a luminous Jessica Chastain) opens the film with a close quotation from the Imitation of Christ contrasting the way of nature and the way of love and grace. “We have to choose which we will follow.” The way of “nature” or unredeemed man “finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it, and love is smiling through all things.” “The nuns taught us that no one who loves the way of grace ever comes to a bad end,” her opening monologue concludes.

This belief is instantly challenged through the death of her youngest son, R.L. who represents the way of grace and goodness, in contrast to his conflicted elder brother Jack, who is singled out for his father’s bullying. R. L., for instance, in a pregnant wordless scene, gently and beautifully forgives Jack, who shot him with a BB gun. “I do not do the good I want, but I do the very thing I hate,” Jack explains in one of the Biblical riffs from Job, or Psalms or Romans which punctuate the film.

* * *

The Tree of Life is the story of a mismatched couple, Mrs O’Brien, committed to love, grace and gentleness, and the unpleasant, extremely hardworking Mr. O’Brien (Brad Pitt), who gave up his dream of being a musician to become an engineer, but who is dogged by failure: none of his 21 patents he filed for while moonlighting make money; his business schemes fail.

Such a life makes for bitterness, and bitter he is—especially against anyone who has money or success. Men frustrated at work can be splenetic at home, and so he is. In this little sphere in which he can maintain control, he does—a slammed door has to be reclosed quietly 50 times. Jack, his elder son is upbraided for grass which does not grow in dense shade. Jack must spend his evening turning the pages while Dad plays Brahms. Unsurprisingly, Jack grows up hating his father, praying for his death, sorely tempted to bring it about!

* * *

The Tree of Life deflates the American dream which works for some, does not for most, and for pretty much everyone is simply not worth it. It misses the joy and glory of life in the struggle to get ahead in a race which doesn’t matter.

Mr O’Brien’s rage and bafflement at how his own life turned out morphs into a determination that his boys will be tough, will persist, will win. “It takes fierce will to get ahead in this world,” he says. “If you are good, people will take advantage of you.” “The world lives by trickery. If you want to succeed, you can’t be too good.” “You make yourself what you are; you can take control of your own destiny. “Don’t say ‘I can’t.’ Say I am having trouble; I am not done yet.”

Eventually, Mr. O’Brien loses his job. Broken and heartbroken, in a scene which must speak to many in the Great Recession, he muses, “I wanted to be loved because I was great, a big man, but I am nothing. The glory around us, the trees, the birds: I dishonoured it all & didn’t notice the glory. I am a foolish man. I wanted so much, and what have I got for my life’s work? Zero. Zilch. You boys are all I have. All I want.” He laments, in anguish, the simply glory of the three childhoods which passed him by while he chased chimeral success. Mr. O’Brien has his own Jobian question of the universe: Why? “I never missed a day of work, tithed every Sunday?”

* * *

“What are we to you?” the grieving mother asks at the start of the film when a telegram announces the death of her son. “Do you even care what happens to us?” This is the central question of the film.

When Job questions God, God silences him with his questions, one of which is the epigraph of The Tree of Life.

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?

while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels shouted for joy?

And God’s “show-don’t-tell” answer in the film, as in the Book of Job is a stunning peacock-display of the wonders of creation. Like the ways of God. Fittingly, a sermon from Job provides a lengthy voice-over.

We see as Anthony Lane writes in the New Yorker, “glimmers of unfathomable light, vast interstellar conflagrations, drifting throngs of stars, planets in their formless infancy, sun and moon occluded by dark storms, energizing jolts of lightning, gulping primordial pools, early plants, early creatures, slow-dancing jellyfish, hammerhead sharks, a dinosaur lounging on the shore, an embryo’s eye.”

The film’s title refers to Darwin’s Tree of Life, of course, to a relentless, but mainly benevolent and beautiful evolution, not accomplished without tears. In a surreal sequence, a dinosaur dispassionately places his mighty paw on a wounded dinosaur’s neck—and then darts off. A meteor eliminates them all. R.L. dies. The ways of God transcend our understanding.

* * *

The Tree of Life is a cinematic Ulysses, ethereal, beautiful, bewildering, using a Joycean stream of consciousness, interior monologues, or whispered prayers, as a broken-hearted, now middle-aged Jack (Sean Penn) and his mother contend with God.

I have never seen a movie in which the characters pray quite so much, except the sublime Des Hommes et Des Dieux, Of Gods and Men. “Mother, brother, it was they who led me to your door. You spoke to me though her. You spoke to me from the sky, the trees before I knew I loved you, believed in you,” Jack says. The film, a passionate dialogue with God, is reminiscent too of Augustine’s Confessions, also a love letter to God.

* * *

The motifs in this allusory film are literary and Biblical, as well as autobiographical. Characters walk through a succession of open doors set in barren landscapes. There are Narnia-reminiscent lampposts. There are many motifs of transition—bridges, corridors–and ascent: elevators, stairways, ladders, domes, spirals. Venetian masks drift away as we will know fully as we are fully known. Oh and the landscapes!–Moab, Yellowstone, Iceland, Antarctica, Niagara, The Great Barrier Reef and its jellyfish: all the gorgeousness of the world compacted into one film.

* * *

The Tree of Life is set in a Fifties America, in Waco, Texas, where Malick grew up, “idyllic” some reviewers say, but in which I am glad I did not live. Boys on the loose during the long summer vacation behave, unfortunately, like boys—frogs are let loose in rockets; bloodied dogs creep away; houses are vandalized and broken into; the crippled are mimicked. Neighbourhood boys follow trucks spraying DDT, dancing in the fumes.

It’s a deeply autobiographical film. The gentle brother who plays guitar recalls Malick’s youngest brother Larry, who went to Spain to study with Andres Segovia, but frustrated with his lack of progress deliberately broke both his hands, and later committed suicide. The boy who dies in a burning house, and the scarred friend represent coded memories of Malick’s middle brother Chris, who was badly burned in a car accident which killed his wife and left him scarred for life.

* * *

The lyrical final sequence takes place on the far shore of the world beyond ours. The middle-aged Jack, stumbles through a lunar landscape of weird rock formations and infinite oceans in which he is reconciled to all those he has loved, adored, contended with and lost—his beautiful mother and brothers, his hurt, baffled father, and even the lost angry boy he once was!

On and on, he sleepwalks through open doors, and bridges, through a landscape a bit like a Greek underworld, through a wandering crowd of familiar people looking for and finding all they have loved and lost. His family discover each other, embrace ecstatically, and walk together through the sea, in “reconciliation, word over all, beautiful as the sky” as every tear is wiped away. And, in the background, glorious Gregorian chant: Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus. Amen.

The mother has the last word, “The only way to be happy is to love. Unless you love, your life will flash by.”

Amen.

The Root of Peace (from Brennan Manning’s “Ragamuffin Gospel”)

By Anita Mathias

Philosopher Jacques Maritain once said that the culmination of knowledge is not conceptual but experiential: I feel God. Such is the promise of the Scriptures: Be still and know (experience) that I am God.

My own journey bears witness to that. I mean simply that a living, loving God can and does make his presence felt, can and does speak to us in the silence of our hearts, can does warm and caress us till we no longer doubt that he is near, that he is here.

Such experience is pure grace to the poor, the children, and the sinners, the privileged types in the gospel of grace. It cannot be forced from God. He gives it freely, but he does give it, and has given it to such as Moses and Matthew, to Roslyn and me.

In fact, there is no one to whom God denies it. Ignatius of Loyola said, “The direct experience of God is grace indeed, and basically, there is no one to whom it is refused.”

In essence, there is only one thing God asks of us—that we be men and women of prayer, people who live close to God, people for whom God is everything, and for whom God is enough. That is the root of peace.

When we start seeking something besides him, we lose it. As Thomas Merton said in the last public address before his death, “That is his call to us—simply to be people who are content to live close to him to renew that kind of life in which the closeness is felt and experienced.”

Remember the Poor

By Anita Mathias

Image: Francis of Assisi in Franco Zefferelli’s gorgeous film, “Brother Sun, Sister Moon”

“All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor,” Galatians 2:10

Jorge Bergoglio, Pope Francis describes how, during the conclave, as it became evident that the voting was swinging his way, Cardinal Cláudio Hummes of Brazil, “a great friend, hugged me, he kissed me and he said, ‘Remember the poor!’ And that way the name came into my heart: Francis of Assisi.” The saint who loved the poor.

Canadian songwriter and church planter David Ruis, whom I heard speak at a New Wine Conference has a tattoo on his arm which says, “Remember the Poor.” Except it starts at the wrist, and travels up his elbow, and his shirt covers the last letter, the joke goes.

* * *

So how do we remember the poor?

Well, we share our wealth. How much? The Old Testament figure of 10% remains a good yardstick, in my opinion, though this sum should be governed by grace and the spirit, not law.

Just 10%? Not “sell all you have and give to the poor?” (Matt 19:21). Well, I have noticed both when I lived in small town Williamsburg, VA and in Oxford, that God places Christians at every level of society from the highest, right down. In the Gospels, the people attracted to Jesus included rich members of the Sanhedrin like Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus as well as fisherman.

At my evangelical church in Oxford, my small group and spouses includes two Principals of Oxford Colleges, ministry heads, doctors, professors and successful business people. To be realistic, if these people did not dress, drive cars, entertain and live in houses that befit their “station in life,” to use a Catholic phrase, they would be written off as weird and different, and their ability to be the fragrance of Christ, to present Christ and faith in him as attractive would be severely compromised. For that is one way of winning people to Christ—lifestyle evangelism, being the fragrance of Christ, attracting people long before important conversations ever take place.

* * *

Hmm. So remember the poor without necessarily giving away so much money that you are one of the poor. How do you do that?

Here are some ways I can think of, which I mostly practice.

1 Give. Of course. Many (most?) Christians in the first world could increase their giving without feeling the pinch, I suspect!

2 Even if the money you saved is not necessarily given away, and even if you are not yourself poor, act in your choices as if you remember that you live in a world in which there is extreme poverty.

Don’t necessarily treat yourself to the best of everything, even if you can sometimes afford to. It’s a small way of maintaining solidarity with the poor.

Some practical ways:

a) Restraint in clothing—not buying too many clothes which are overpriced, will rarely be worn, or are whimsically fashionable and will soon date—even if one can afford to.

b) Restraint in food choices—not necessarily buying the most expensive items in the store or in a restaurant menu, even if one can afford to. Being content with simplicity

c) Interior decoration. I used to upgrade when furniture looked a bit worn, but now I often say, “So what? It’s a bit old and a bit worse for wear, but so what?”

d) Not having the best you can afford in things which tend to be status symbols (houses, cars, holidays) frees you from caring what people think, or how they assess your income or net worth.

For instance, we bought our family car, a Chrysler Town and Country minivan (called a Dodge people-carrier here, in the UK) in 2001. It’s now 13 years old, but is running well, and so we haven’t replaced it!

e) On the other hand, avoid false economies whenever you can afford to. These waste both time and money. Though, of course, you will pay more at the outset, buying high quality furniture, clothing, appliances and cars which you can use for many years makes perfect sense even in a world of poverty (rather than buying cheap computers, shoes, toasters and clothes which you will always be replacing).

* * *

Oh, I am just a novice at this. What is the best way to “remember the poor?”

7 Quick Takes: Kew Gardens, Wisley, Leighton House, Univ. Parks, Oxford,Daughters, Progress on NY Goals,

By Anita Mathias

1 We are taking a walking course in London, with Joanna Hall of The Walking Diet.

With her walking technique, I am walking faster—much faster—and, more importantly, really, really enjoying it. I am walking about 4 miles a day around London, when I am there, and Oxford.

2 Leighton House

Frederick, Lord Leighton was a Pre-Raphaelite artist who was immensely rich privileged and never needed to work for his living. Unlike othesr born to his happy state of affairs, however, he did make something of his life.

When he declared his intention of becoming an artist, his parents opposed it, unless he became a preeminent artist. And so he assured them he would become one of the preeminent artists of his generation. And he did—becoming the President of the Royal Academy.

Leighton, who was probably gay, never married. His gorgeous house is dedicated to beauty. There are beautiful Moorish rooms much like the Alhambra and the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, all tiles, and gold mosaics and fountains. The light-flooded enormous studio is to die for!

And, in line with the aesthetic movement, beauty for beauty’s sake, he has a mishmash of lovely things from throughout the world in every room—peacock fans, Japanese vases, inlaid ivory Ottoman chests!! There is even a Narcissus room, after the Narcissus room in the just-discovered Pompeii. His bedroom, oddly, is a near-monastic cell amid all this magnificence.

High stained glass window in the Arab Hall, Leighton House.

Dome, the Arab Hall, Leighton House.

Tile panel, the Arab Hall, Leighton House.

3 Britain’s glory is her gardens. The ponds with wild ducks, the spring bulbs, soft birdsong—oh, exploring them in early spring mid-week with all the retirees is an otherworldly, almost mystical experience.

Here are some images from Kew Gardens

Huge Chestnut, Kew Gardens.

A variety of water birds (Kew).

A drift of Crocus, Kew.

Squirrels are everywhere in London parks.

and the Oxford Botanic Garden

Crocus under a mossy tree, Oxford Botanical garden.

Crocus under a mossy tree, Oxford Botanic Garden.

Tulips planted at the base of a tree, Oxford Botanical Garden.

Tulips planted at the base of a tree, Oxford Botanic Garden.

Banana flower, greenhouse, Oxford Botanical Garden.

Banana flower, greenhouse, Oxford Botanic Garden.

Moored punts, filled with rain water, by Magdalen Bridge, Oxford Botanical Garden.

Moored punts, filled with rain water, by Magdalen Bridge, Oxford Botanic Garden.

A view from Christchurch Meadow.

4 And Wisley Garden in Surrey

Garden sculpture, Wisley. (iphone)

A colorful crocus drift, Wisley. (iphone)

With, equally colorful ducks. (iphone)

Miniature narcissus gazing into the water, Wisley. (iphone)

5 We walked yesterday through a flooded University Parks in Oxford. What a strange half-watery, other-worldly place it was—familiar fields under water, the river and ponds having burst their banks, the meadows now the habitation of swans, ducks, coots and glebes. There were very few people around, and it felt like a thin place, other worlds very present.

Flooded fields by University Parks. (iphone pic)

The small duck pond has been engulfed by the flooding river (University Parks, Feb, 2013, iphone)

Hopkins felt that about Oxford

Towery city and branchy between towers;
Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmèd, lark-charmèd, rook-racked, river-rounded;

Yet ah! this air I gather and I release
He lived on; these weeds and waters, these walls are what
He haunted who of all men most sways my spirits to peace;

He wrote that of Duns Scotus. I feel like that about him.

6 My daughters

Irene, 13, now has a blog, Life Among the Cupcakes. I begged her to have a blog about books, since she reads a lot and writes like an angel, but she sagely explained that she must be herself, and not me, and her passion is baking!! Humph!

Other Irene quotes—I think everyone should be a Buddhist. Even if they are a Christian.

Irene stayed home one day to work at our family business (a publishing company). It was a “take your daughter to work day,” but we work from home. And the phone kept ringing. The doorbell kept ringing. She was disgruntled and disgusted. “People don’t realize how important I am. They don’t realize I have stayed home from school just to work!” Work said with utter contempt compared with the sublimity of school, which she loves!

Zoe is doing a lot of talks at her school’s Christian Union which she runs, and at the Pathfinders (10-14) group at Church. She has been voted as “Most Likely to be the First Female Archbishop of Canterbury” for her school’s yearbook. Studying theology at Jesus College, Cambridge, however, is a more immediate item on her agenda.

7 New Year’s Resolutions

I now wish I had followed Zen Habits sage advice, and made just one resolution a month. Next year.

However, here is my progress on my resolutions.

Weight

	Weight (lb)	Cum. Loss
Jan 1st	233
Jan 13th	231.8	-1.2
Jan 20th	229.2	-3.8
Feb-29	227.8	-5.2
Mar-20	227.2	-5.8 lbs

Week of	Goal Km	Actually done KM
Jan-07		29.6
Jan-14	33.6	Ice 13.6
Jan-21	14.96	snow 16.4
Jan-28	19.69	23.36
Feb-28	25.69	28.37
Mar-10	31	35km

Linking up with The Conversion Diary–http://www.conversiondiary.com/

and Leigh Kramer–http://www.leighkramer.com/blog/2013/03/what-im-into-march-2013-edition.html

Organising my house

Before

After

After!!

Next week’s challenge

Mar 20 (Before)

Two Cures for Too Much Theologizing

By Anita Mathias

Image credit

1 The Stars

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,

When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Walt Whitman

2 The Living Word

In his famous Christmas sermon of 1522 (600 years ago!!) Martin Luther declared,

“O that God should desire that my interpretation and that of all teachers should disappear, and each Christian should come straight to the Scripture alone and to the pure word of God!

You see from this babbling of mine the immeasurable difference between the word of God and all human words, and how no man can adequately reach and explain a single word of God with all his words.

It is an eternal word and must be understood and contemplated with a quiet mind.

No one else can understand except a mind that contemplates in silence.

For anyone who could achieve this without commentary or interpretation, my commentaries and those of everyone else could not only be of no use, but merely a hindrance.

Go to the Bible itself, dear Christians, and let my expositions and those of all scholars be no more than a tool with which to build aright, so that we can understand, taste, and abide in the simple and pure word of God.”

The Benefits of Optimism (and how Venting Anger makes you Feel Worse)

By Anita Mathias

I have been ruminating on positive thinking, and on particular, on whether it is better to express anger (vent!) or not, and so loved this article in The Atlantic by Emily Esfahani Smith: The Benefits of Optimism are Real.

Here are a few ideas from the article

1 “Having a positive outlook in difficult circumstances is not only an important predictor of resilience — how quickly people recover from adversity — but it is the most important predictor of it. People who are resilient tend to be more positive and optimistic compared to less-resilient folks; they are better able to regulate their emotions; and they are able to maintain their optimism through the most trying circumstances.”

2 Dwelling on anger and anxiety makes you feel worse

“For many years, psychologists, following Freud, thought that people simply needed to express their anger and anxiety — blow off some steam — to be happier. But this is wrong. Researchers, for example, asked people who were mildly-to-moderately depressed to dwell on their depression for eight minutes. The researchers found that such ruminating caused the depressed people to become significantly more depressed and for a longer period of time than people who simply distracted themselves thinking about something else. Senseless suffering — suffering that lacks a silver lining — viciously leads to more depression.”

3 Venting makes you feel worse

Counter-intuitively, another study found that facing down adversity by venting — hitting a punching bag or being vengeful toward someone who makes you angry — actually leads to people feeling far worse, not better. Actually, doing nothing at all in response to anger was more effective than expressing the anger in these destructive ways.

4 In another study, those who try to find meaning from trauma grow wiser, and experienced better health than those who simply vent about it. The stories people told themselves as they searched for a silver lining healed them.

5 Positive people are more resilient physically and emotionally. They a “revealed more happiness, interest, and eagerness” toward solving their worst problems.

“When your mind starts soaring, you notice more and more positive things. This unleashes an upward spiral of positive emotions that opens people up to new ways of thinking and seeing the world — to new ways forward. This is yet another reason why positive people are resilient. They see opportunities that negative people don’t. Negativity, for adaptive reasons, puts you in defense mode, narrows your field of vision, and shuts you off to new possibilities since they’re seen as risks.”

Set Free from Food Addiction Through Intimacy with God (A Guest Post by Lynda Alsford)

By Anita Mathias

Freedom

I used to be a food addict. I love saying that sentence, so please indulge me as I say it again. I used to be a food addict…until Jesus set me free in March 2012.

My journey to freedom has taken many years and in that time I’ve learned many things. One that stands out to me is that in order to appreciate freedom fully, you first have to understand the preceding captivity. In my experience, the greater the darkness the brighter the light seems when it comes.

Part of my personal darkness was that I didn’t know how to deal with difficult emotions. I would do anything rather than feel them. I ate them away, piling on huge amounts of weight. Once I started eating I could not stop. Food was an anaesthetic and its anaesthetising powers had me imprisoned. It is near impossible to describe to someone who has never had an addiction what it actually feels like to be in the grip of one. The poem below is my attempt to put into words how I felt as I struggled with something that was beyond my control.

Captivity

Unbidden thoughts arise, so sorrowful and sad.
Volcanoes of pain that threaten to erupt.

Searing red-hot lava expands within my chest.
The god of addiction requires his sacrifice.

From somewhere deep within, he cries ‘appease me now’.
‘Appease me now or this pain I’ll surely spew’

This pain, I don’t doubt, will rip me quite apart
So I do what I must do this idol to placate.

At the start of my journey I didn’t realise how dark my darkness was. I thought I could overcome my problem with a little will power. But that was the problem. I thought I could overcome it. But I couldn’t. Eventually I realised I was fighting a losing battle. And that is when I realised just how dark my darkness was. I thought I was worthless and no good. I even made a list of all the things about me that I thought were not good enough for God. I gave God this list, expecting Him to agree with me. But all He did was tell me how much He loved me despite every last thing on my list. I wept that day. I was overwhelmed by His grace and compassion.

I started to seek freedom, hoping rather than knowing it was possible. I tried and failed to rid myself of the unhelpful addiction to food by pushing countless doors. Some opened and helped me take a small step forwards but many didn’t open at all. However, I didn’t give up my search. Jesus said, “Seek and you will find” (Matthew 7:7) so I kept seeking.

“Keep on keeping on” I told myself as I pushed yet another door.

In 2005, God in His mercy caused one of those wonderful God-incidences to occur. I discovered New ID (www.newid.org ), which is a 6 week Christian eating disorders course. It gave me the message that I was not alone and that freedom was definitely possible. I thank God for this course because He used it greatly in my life. However, it was another seven years before I would find freedom.

Ultimately, it was finding deeper intimacy with God that finally set me free. For years, I was seeking healing from my compulsive overeating. But I wasn’t seeking God Himself. I was seeking healing not seeking the healer. In 2009 I lost my faith for a year when I struggled with the devastation of broken dreams. I stopped believing in God but in an unexpected way it was this that set me on the final part of my journey to freedom. You see, I suddenly realised I missed God. I missed Him so much it hurt. And that made me start to seek Him, really seek Him for His own sake. And there is no prayer God is quicker to answer. Just like the father in the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15 at the first glimpse of our turning towards Him He is running with all His might to meet us and hold us in His loving divine embrace.

After coming back to faith in January 2011, I was finally seeking God for who He is not for what He could give me. I longed to know His love. I longed to find more intimacy with Him as Father. I devoured books about the Fatherhood of God. I listened time and again to Christian meditation CD’s that drew me into God’s presence (my favourite is Liz Babbs, A Quiet Place).

One day in March 2012, while sitting in Church, I knew I finally trusted Father God enough to let Him remove my food addiction for good. A wise Christian friend, Wendy, listened to me as I prayed, asking God to take it away. She then prayed for me too. I haven’t binged since then. Not once. The temptation to stuff myself with food still came knocking at the door of my mind occasionally. But when it did I found that if I went to the fridge I didn’t want to eat. It is a miracle!

Over the last year I’ve lost 2 ½ stone in weight without trying, and the weight is still coming off, very slowly but I am losing it. There have been hard lessons to learn as well. I’ve learned to sit with the difficult emotions and feel them rather than eat them away. This first year has been very challenging while I have learned this new skill, but it’s been so wonderful too.

I’ve been a Christian for over thirty years and it is only in the last year that I’ve found freedom from my addiction. It’s been a long painful journey. It has taken patience, dedication and a great deal of hard work but it’s also the most rewarding thing I’ve done in my life so far. The thing that has been so challenging is learning to trust Father God with the very deepest part of me, learning to live in intimacy with Father. Once I did that, He took the addiction from me, because I trusted Him enough to let Him do so. I don’t know what Father has in store for me but one thing I do know. Freedom tastes so very good!

Lynda Alsford

Bio

Lynda Alsford is a Church Army Evangelist and lives in Sussex very near the sea which she loves. She enjoys various creative crafts and loves reading. She went through a major crisis of faith in 2009-2010 when despite being a trained evangelist she stopped believing in God. Her first book, ‘He Never Let Go’, describes how she evangelised herself back to faith once more. She is currently working on her second book, ‘Being Known’, which portrays her struggles with, and eventual freedom from, food addiction through finding deeper intimacy with Father God. Find out more about her and her books at her website and blog.

The Light and Easy Way of Sanctification or Transformation

By Anita Mathias

I strayed onto an acquaintance’s blog, and started feeling tired.

Oh, it was all so bossy, so prescriptive. 10 ways to be a better wife; 10 ways to be a better mum; 10 ways to lose weight in a Biblical way; 10 ways to read more spiritual books.

It made me feel so tired. I scrolled through the blogs she had blogrolled, even more prescriptive and bossy, and began to feel even more tired.

* * *

18 years ago, when I lived in Williamsburg, Virginia, I had taken a theological course called Sonship developed by the brilliant Westminister Seminary Professor and founder of World Harvest Mission Jack Miller. It was the most heavily theological material I had encountered to date, and gave me a taste for theology!

At the outset, Miller reports someone raving about Richard Foster’s“The Celebration of Discipline.”

And Miller, a big, hearty, larger-than-life man, laughs a big booming laugh and says, “I am too big a sinner to be fooled by the Celebration of Discipline.”

* * *

Huh? I did not understand what he meant then, but understand it perfectly now. Discipline cannot save us. 10 ways to study scripture, fast, give, serve are not going to change our selfish, self-seeking, ambitious, twisty old hearts. If anything they might just make us more self-righteous. For our hearts to change, we need a heart transplant. We need God to pour his Holy Spirit into us and give us a new heart (Ez 36:26).

* * *

We do need strategies—for ensuring we pray every day, spent time soaking in Scripture everyday, and for our own particular battles: eating healthily is one of mine.

But strategies cannot save us. For me at least, lists of food rules, or domesticity rules or spiritual rules or time-management rules get a bit boring and feel like too much of a strait-jacket and I soon drop them. They are the law, a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? Acts 15:10.

What helps me, and fills my days with sweetness is going through my day with Jesus, sharing the easy yoke.

* * *

I do have food rules, as for much of my adult life, I have medicated boredom, low spirits, stress, anxiety, and even happiness with food. So my two rules are: Limit eating what is not a blessing to your body (sugar, white carbs, chocolate). Do not eat when you are not hungry.

I was energized when I first formulated them, but now, especially that I am walking 6 km. a day, I sometimes buy chocolate or pizza or Indian takeaway after a long walk. The law, my strategies, weren’t strong enough to save me. On the other hand, slowing down, and asking Jesus for help and grace and the filling of his spirit does help me to resist things which are a curse to my body.

Slowing down. I wondering if that is a major secret of the spiritual life.

It’s the same with exercise. I know I will be stronger if I do it. I know I will be happier if I break up my writing with housework breaks (pomodoros) but this is very hard for me, for really, I like to work till done—and if what I am working on takes 3 to 4 hours it is quite painful almost for me to leave it and switch gear. So I need Jesus’s help to get up and get moving more than rules.

* * *

Hudson Taylor after continued spiritual failure, and self-excoriation stumbled upon the secret of abiding, which is known as Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret. He writes:

“Not a striving to have faith, but a looking off to the Faithful One seems all we need.”

Here, I feel, is the secret : not asking how I am to get sap out of the vine into myself, but remembering that Jesus is the Vine-the root, stem, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit, all indeed. Aye, and far more too! He is the soil and sunshine, air and rain-more than we can ask, think, or desire. Let us not then want to get anything out of Him, but rejoice in being ourselves in Him-one with Him, and, consequently, with all His fulness.

” I have not got to make myself a branch. The Lord Jesus tells me I am a branch. I am part of Him, and have just to believe it and act upon it. If I go to the bank in Shanghai, having an account, and ask for fifty dollars, the clerk cannot refuse it to my outstretched hand and say that it belongs to Mr. Taylor. What belongs to Mr. Taylor my hand may take. It is a member of my body. And I am a member of Christ, and may take all I need of His fulness.”

Perhaps this is the easy way of sanctification—to see yourself as a branch in the vine of Jesus, and pray, relying and drawing on the wells of his strength and sweet life when tempted to indulge your temper, your gluttony, your laziness, or any of the deadly seven temptations.

anita.mathias