Anita Mathias | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

From Babel to Pentecost: God Thwarts Self-Sufficiency Which Excludes Him (but Blesses Leaning)

Tower of Babel (Breughel)

So men decide to build a ziggurat, “with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves.” (Gen. 11:4)

And God thwarts their ambition. Their confident, well-coordinated, carefully-worked-out, imaginative, forward-looking plans.

If they continued to function in this way, these steady, methodical visionaries, making bricks, baking them, using tar for mortar, building a city and a tower, then, “Nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them,” (Gen 11:6) God says.

But would this Godless city bring joy or peace or rest to its inhabitants or to the world?

So God confounds them. Confuses their language, and scatters them all over the earth.

* * *

It was sad. They had everything going for them, had a good plan and the intelligence and ability to execute it—and yet were thwarted

It’s a consistent Old Testament curse, “You have planted much, but harvested little. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.”

“You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away.” (Haggai 1).

* * *

It resonates with me, painfully. I see myself in my twenties, and thirties and early forties, a young woman, then a woman no longer that young–determined to succeed as a writer. I see all that education; all that training; all that practice; all that reading and deep love for books; the drive; the hungry assimilation of the whole world and everything it, and, yeah, natural talent even, a gift of writing that had been early and consistently recognised.

But distraction, lack of discipline, prolonged marital conflict, prolonged depressions after each rejection of a book manuscript, and it all came to nothing. I had the uneasy sense that perhaps I was not operating under the blessing of God. That He was thwarting my tower of Babel.

* * *

Why was it not blessed? Well, I was doing it entirely with my own strength. I chose my path and asked God to bless it. I sacrificed for it: time with my spouse, children, friends, service at church, domestic duties… but these were not necessarily sacrifices God asked me to make. Well, I wouldn’t know; I never asked.

I was on a treadmill, desperate to validate myself, to have something glittery to say when people asked what I did. My husband was a Maths professor; I believed I was just as clever as he was. I resented being stuck with the dishes, laundry, cooking and childcare, while he lived in the ivory towers of stimulation.

And so I wore myself out. I gave up more and more to finish the manuscript, eventually even giving up the saturation reading which helps you work with words swiftly and magically.

I deeply exhausted myself, and ultimately lacked energy and spirit to revise my gargantuan manuscript in line with the agents and editor’s suggestions. My tower of Babel remained incomplete.

* * *

Fortunately, another theme runs through the Bible: God reverses curses. His judgements are temporary. His rods and staffs force us back to him.

God sees that if the men of Babel continue as they had begun then “Nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.” But those dreams would, in Matthew Arnold’s words, bring them “neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain.”

God, the original dreamer, the original visionary, who, in Genesis 1, dreams the world into being, loves to see our dreams come true, but he wants us to pursue them in step with him, wearing his easy yoke, asking him for the power to make our dreams come through.

Jesus reverses the curse of Babel when he says, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, nothing will be impossible for you.” Through him, and in him, and with him.

* * *

The men of Babel say, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves.”

I suspect it is not the making a name for themselves that God disapproves of.

We are the beloved. God did not make any of us insignificant. Listen to the ambition of kindergarteners—they want to be movie stars, Presidents, astronauts, ballerinas, writers, soccer players. None of them wants to be insignificant—and God does not want them to be so either.

In certain fields, writing or blogging or publishing, let’s say, it is necessary to “make a name for yourself,” to get your work out there, to get your work read.

The 80/20 rule applies in the blogosphere. My husband, the mathematician did a quick analysis of my list of leading bloggers and, sure enough, the top 20 in the list had 69% of the readers. Visibility brings a readership.

* * *

So go off and build a tower?

No, but if it takes visibility to get your work read, ask God for a readership. Or ask God for ideas on how to get a readership.

There was nothing wrong with the desire of the men of Babel not to be scattered over the face of the whole earth.

Unfortunately, they did it without God, assuming that God was their enemy out to thwart them, so it led to much wasted, inefficient, scattershot effort.

Look at the unnecessary complexity with which they hoped to achieve their hope of staying together. “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves.”

Why not just ask God not to let them be scattered, rather than make bricks, and bake them, and build a city and tower and make a name for themselves?

* * *

Trying to do things yourself just adds extra, unnecessary steps. Asking God, however, often provides a solution with streamlined elegance.

When I was a very new Christian, I said to the woman who was mentoring me, “I want to marry X (who wasn’t a Christian) because he will earn enough for both of us, and I will be able to stay home and become a writer

She said, “Why not just pray that you can stay home and become a writer?”

I stared. Hadn’t occurred to me!

Asking God for his guidance will always give us the simplest, most elegant, efficient and imaginative way of doing things.

* * *

Gradually, I learned to lean. Without any business experience, without, even, as I supposed, the temperament of a businesswoman, I founded a business which supports our family. I had to lean and pray, lean and pray, for it to work.

And then I began to blog. There are tens of thousands of Christian blogs worldwide. How can one’s voice be heard?

Leaning. Leaning. Asking God’s creative spirit to flow through you and give you ideas and tell you what to say and how to say it. Asking him for favour and breakthroughs—so much more efficient that any scattershot networking one might do.

* * *

In God, curses are reversed.

Pride brings division in Babel. People speak in many tongues, and they cannot understand each other.

But when the Spirit comes, in the great era inaugurated at Pentecost, he helps us sing a new song, speak in elegant, exuberant new languages that cannot help but charm, and be understood by those who also have the same spirit and so hear us tell, in our new spirit-inspired language, the wonderful works of God.

Pareto’s Law, The 80/20 Rule (and My Progress in New Year’s Goals)

By Anita Mathias

AFTER My book shelf, Jan 7, after housework.

BEFORE My bookshelf, Jan 1.

I am reading Tim Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Work Week with absolute fascination, partly because Roy and I have independently stumbled upon and are practicing many of Ferriss’s ideas and principles. (I plan to review the book later.)

Ferris discusses Pareto’s Law or the 80/20 principle.

Pareto, an Italian economist (1848 to 1923), realized that, in virtually every area of life: business, investing, creative work, social life, gardening, 80 % of benefits will come from 20 % of one’s time and efforts.

And conversely, 80% of one’s unhappiness or unproductive activity or self-thwarting will come from 20% of one’s actions.

Some applications of 80/20 or “The Vital Few and The Trivial Many.” [Read more…]

“I Don’t” Lists Make Possible “I Do” Lists. You Must Revise Your Life.

By Anita Mathias

raphael saint john baptist preaching NG6480 fm

John the Baptist Preaching (Raphael)

Two fiery, uncompromising men—John the Baptist and Jesus– invite us into the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom within us (Luke 17:21).

And their message is remarkably similar:“Repent for the Kingdom of heaven is near. Make straight paths for the Lord,” John says.

The first words Jesus speaks to people (as opposed to the Devil) in the Gospel of Matthew are “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” (Matthew 3:2)

“Repent – Μετανοειτε, metanoia. The verb μετανοεω metanoia, which means turn around, turn your direction 180 degrees.

“The word may be derived from μετα meta after, and ανοια, anoia madness, which intimates that the whole life of a sinner is no other than a continued course of madness and folly: and if these are evidences of insanity: to live in a constant opposition to all the dictates of true wisdom; to wage war with his own best interests in time and eternity; to provoke and insult the living God; and, by habitual sin, to prepare himself only for a state of misery–every sinner exhibits them plentifully. It was from this notion of the word, that the Latins termed repentance resipiscentia, a growing wise again; or, according to Tertullian, restoring the mind to itself.” (Clarke’s Commentary on the Bible)

* * *

Prayer formulas have been devised to cover the essential elements of prayer, TRIP—thanksgiving, repentance, intercession or praise, or ACTS—Adoration, Contrition, Thanksgiving and Supplication.

I actually enjoy the daily discipline of repentance. It’s like moulting and shedding the baggage of sin and silliness. It feels like going through low, narrow golden gates into the presence of God, shedding the encumbrances of stupidity, submitting my mind which can so easily wander from the path of wisdom to an inrush, a golden shower, of divine wisdom.

* * *

Some Christian make straight paths for the Lord by creating “I Don’t Lists” to free time to seek God instead of being “crazy-busy.” Check out Shauna Niequist’s or Mary DeMuth’s or Ann Lamott’s.

These lists, which can seem prideful, have humility at their heart. You recognise your limitations, you recognise that you are not going to be able to do what God has called you to do if you try to do everything. You realise that, like most people, you can, at most, do one or two things well, and so you focus.

* * *

Here is my list, formulated through trial and error, through doing the opposite, and wearing myself out.

What I Don’t Do

1) I barely cook. I have never learned to. I am an hit-or-miss cook. And a messy one. Fortunately, for me, too, my husband Roy is an excellent cook.

2) I don’t clean. At all. We do have a splendid cleaner, and have weekly four hour cleans.

3) I don’t enter stores!! Roy buys groceries. I buy clothes, books, and everything else I need online. And I shop on a definitely-needed basis (except for books), refusing to look at catalogues or websites unless I am looking for something definite. No frivolous shopping any more. I strictly limit the new clothes I buy, and try to wear out or give away the clothes I have before buying more.

4) I don’t volunteer at my children’s schools. At all. I did some when Zoe was little for the joy it gave her, but I did not enjoy the experience, and would rather relate to my kids one-on-one.

5) I don’t do gyms any more, but use exercise as a secret spring within my body to give me energy when I am mentally tired, or physically sluggish. So I walk or run or lift hand weights or do yoga for quick energy when I am tired between writing sessions.

6) I don’t take meals round for people. I did do that for several women who were ill or had babies, but the sight of the husband lolling with the remote control while we rushed there with their dinner was too galling. Men are not genetically incapable of boiling spaghetti, grating cheese and chopping a salad, and women should not impose on the good will of other women by asking for meals to be brought around in an age of grocery stores with healthy cooked meals and delivery services. Rant over.

6B I resent the trivia churches decide is women’s work. I resist calls on women to serve coffee at church breakfasts, hot cross buns at Easter and mulled wine at Christmas. Men can heft a decanter of coffee or mulled wine as well as I –or better. Flowers, altar linen, laying out the elements—nah!!

7) I don’t “do” Christmas. I treat it as a time for rest.

What I Do Do

1) I do pray every day.

Now, don’t be impressed. Without it (and often, in spite of it) I lose my way, get depressed, forget my priorities, get angry about silly things (notice my rant about meals), waste my time, waste my life.

Experiment with prayer to find how long works for you. Works? Gives you a sense of peace, joy, strength, love and energy. For me, with a monkey mind which takes a while to settle, I like to spend at least 30 minutes resting, “soaking” in God’s presence.

2) I pretty much read or listen to my Bible every day. It is sharper than a double-edged sword, and many small tweaks in my daily life spring from my daily Bible reading. For instance, last term, a friend was getting on my nerves, and the Book of James helped me bite back my urge to confide my annoyance in other friends, and listening to 1 John on repeat helped me to see the good in her, and consider how I could act lovingly towards her.

3 I write every day, aiming for at least an hour,

4 I read every day

5 I exercise pretty much every day as much for mental health as well as for physical health.

6 And I nap almost every day. That’s how I manage to wake up early.

7 We have a sit-down family dinner seven days a week, and family lunches at weekends.

7B I spend time with friends twice or three times a week

8 I garden every day when the weather is good, less frequently in bad weather.

Gosh, how much I had to cut to get this into place, and how much more there is to cut. Anne Lamott again: Every single day I try to figure out something I no longer agree to do. You get to change your mind—your parents may have accidentally forgotten to mention this to you. I cross one thing off the list of projects I mean to get done that day. Am working now on limiting Facebook and Twitter.

How about you? What’s on your “I Don’t list”, and on your “I Do list?”

Blog Through the Bible: Matt 3-4

Jan 2, Matt 1-2 God Comes to Those Who Dare to be Different: Do Not Be Afraid

When the Word of God Can Transform Your Life, and, More, Save It

By Anita Mathias

Full size model of Noah’s Ark, built by Johan Huibers. (Opened July 9, 2012. Dordrecht, Netherlands.

On holiday in Copenhagen, I learned in the fabulous Danish National Museum that Ice Age Hunters could walk from Jutland, Denmark to England. After the great deluge, (probably triggered by the melting of the North American glaciers) described in the myths of hundreds of cultures, it was no longer possible.

In Genesis 6-10, we read how Noah, “a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, who walked with God,” was saved from this natural disaster because he listened to God’s very specific directions for building the ark–see Gen 6: 14-21.

And Noah was saved while his nation perished. The ability to hear the word of God not only transforms our lives—but may save them.

* * *

But there is a price to hearing the word of God “ like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.” Matt: 13:44. Free treasure, but buying the field costs not less than everything.

The Negev Desert covers half of Israel, beneath the snow-covered mountains of the North. Build a massive ship—450 feet long— in the desert?? Noah looked ridiculous. His neighbours must have scoffed! How he must have doubted himself! But he persisted.

How difficult that must have been.

Perhaps the inner voice was so insistent that it was more painful to ignore it than to listen to it. And his obedience saved his life.

* * *

And God still speaks to us as he spoke to Noah.

A. W. Tozer writes, “God is forever seeking to speak to His creation. The whole Bible supports the idea. God is speaking. Not God spoke, but God is speaking. He is by His nature continuously articulate. He fills the world with His speaking Voice.”

And hearing God, the logos in Scripture, and the rhema, the living word sharper than a double-edged sword, changes your life. It may even save it.

* * *

My most-life changing decisions came to me from left-field, out of the blue, when resting in the presence of God—

a) applying to Oxford University (only!!),

b) becoming a writer

c) whom to marry!

d) starting my publishing company which now supports our family (an idea which came with Noah-like practicality, and suggestions of printers to use, distributors and how to get the books formatted!!)

e) taking up blogging–which I would never have been able to stick to if I had not been certain that it was God’s will. It is so prodigal of energy, and can take a while to pay off either financially, or as the launch-pad of a career!

f) Declining chemo after Stage III cancer.

* * *

How do we hear God’s voice? Tune in to that easily-missed frequency?

Here are some ways I have personally found helpful, and, of course, I am trying to describe nebulous, numinous spiritual experience.

1) God speaks continuously and is not silent. However, the more we listen to him, the more we are able to recognise and tune in to the faint, tenuous, radio frequency of his voice.

Obey him when you hear him speak. You know, that fib you were going to tell to get out of a foolish over-commitment? Stop. Say no. No is a complete sentence.

And that argument. Drop it. Seek peace and pursue it.

Or I might hear God say: “Anita, stop spiralling into the black hole of negativity and unforgiveness; think about the good things about this person and situation, and thank me for them.” And I obey

Passing the practice tests helps me know what that still small voice sounds like. And then I recognize it when I really, really need God’s guidance for how to develop my business or my blog.

If we do not obey God when we hear him speak, we are no longer sure if what we hear is God’s voice or not. We can lose the spiritual sixth sense which helps us hear God’s voice.

2) Make space for him. I love soaking prayer, an agendaless resting in God’s presence. It takes a while to settle down, it can seem, in Richard Foster’s phrase, “not just a waste of time, but a waste of self,” but, then, often, God speaks. And even when he does not, I still feel strengthened, built up, filled, fed just by the experience of resting in his presence.

3) As star differs from star in splendour (1 Cor 15:41) so too our experiences of hearing God will differ. Remember and record them.

Listen to your body. For me, hearing God’s specific guidance feels like electricity tingling through my body. As if I’ve been trepanned and had a pearl dropped into my brain.

Listen to your emotions. I feel excitement, exhilaration, a thrill, certainty. Once I am sure it’s God, I am usually tenacious in doing what I have heard him say.

Listen to your spirit. For me, the signs are joy and peace.

4) Knowing what God sounds like in the Logos, the written word, will help us recognise the still small voice of the Spirit.

Just as we learn to be more kind, truthful, loving, and patient through a two-steps forward, one step backwards process, so too we learn to hear God’s voice, through trial and error.

And sometimes, We will get it wrong.

Francis of Assisi heard the icon say, Francis: Rebuild my house. And he, the literalist, steals bales of cloth from his father and sells them to rebuild the church of San Damiano. Later he senses God say, “No, not your neighbourhood church. For I dwell not in a house built by human hands. Heaven is my dwelling place, and the whole earth is full of my glory. I meant rebuild the Holy Catholic Church which is now in ruins.”

Through trial and error, we learn what God’s voice sounds like. When I hear God myself, or listen to people whose spiritual experience I trust tell me about hearing God, or listen to the way Jesus spoke in the Gospels–well, there are certain stylistic similarities. He speaks simply, often in one-liners, which is why Francis, for instance, misinterpreted him—a common experience, actually, as one reads spiritual biographies.

* * *

R. T. Kendall’s The Sensitivity of the Spirit, incidentally, is a fab book if you would like to explore hearing God’s voice in greater depth.

God Comes to Those Who Dare to be Different: Do Not Be Afraid

By Anita Mathias

And when God chose to become flesh and dwell among us, the angel wisely prefaces his glorious announcement, “You have found favour with God,” with “Do not be afraid.”

You, a “virgin,” will bear a child. Do not be afraid.

Oh, the looming scandal, what would people say? How many would have rejected this “blessing,” but Mary did not balk. She accepted the potential disgrace, the disapproval, the whispers. “I am the doulos, the servant of the Lord. Be it done to me, according to your word.” I will not be afraid. [Read more…]

2013 Hopes, Goals and Dreams

By Anita Mathias

I. WRITING

1. Complete “I Lift up my Eyes to the Hills,” a memoir of an Indian Childhood

Strategy—Start with 30 minutes on Jan 1^st, increase time by 5 minutes a day until I am writing 1000 good words a day. (Should take 2-4 hours a day). Work six days a week.

2. Blog Though the Bible

Short posts, relating the Bible to our daily and spiritual lives (rather than exegesis or explication) using this plan, but will alternate Old Testament and New Testament readings. So one post a day.

3. “Little Books”

What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects–with their Christianity latent.” C. S. Lewis [Read more…]

The Insistent Goodness of the Lord in the Land of the Living

By Anita Mathias

Michelangelo, The fall and expulsion of Adam and Eve, Sistine Chapel

A New Year, and I begin again to read through the Bible. I listened to it last year, on my iPod, as I walked, and loved hearing the themes and images swell, gain resonance, repeat, amplify.

There are so many mythologies, so many sacred texts that have come down to us. I know the Greek and Roman Mythology, Norse Mythology and the Hindu epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. The gods are, well, human–rambunctious, vain, vengeful, vindictive, angry, capricious, susceptible to flattery, having favourites. They don’t always play fair; they, well, sin.

While, of course, Yahweh does not come across as perfect to modern sensibilities—we are puzzled by all those commands in Leviticus; we are puzzled by the sweeping genocide he commands—there is an austere beauty, a sense of holiness in the Old Testament, ushering in the ethical and moral sublimity of the New Testament.

* * *

I have just read the first 5 chapters of Genesis with pleasure.

A world of fresh starts and second chances.

God gives Adam a beautiful new world, and a beautiful new wife. Every chance of happiness.

As we have–more often than not. The goodness of God shines insistently on us, and happiness and holiness is within our grasp. We have but to reach out and take it. Decide to be happy in the day and the world that the Lord has made. Decide to thank God who gives us all this goodness—this lovely world.

* * *

Adam’s beautiful world has prohibitions and boundaries. He is free to eat from any tree in the garden, except from that which brings death.

But what brings death is also appealing to the senses, “good for food, and pleasing to the eye.” And it is hard to trust God. To believe he really, really has our good at heart in his boundaries and prohibitions

Eve eats, and they are banished from Eden. As we so often blow it, and have to leave our Edens, the lovely fresh chances offered to us: new friendships, new opportunities, financial windfalls.

We can blow our opportunities, our shiny new chances—but we cannot blow away the goodness of God.

* * *

There are dreadful consequences to Eve’s nibbling—the earth becomes recalcitrant; work will now never be devoid of pain; they are banished from Eden. It is called the Fall, and without the true myth of the Fall, the whole Christian story does not make sense.

And yet, and yet, the goodness of God still trails and shadows Adam and Eve.

Children come. The land produces fruit for Cain, and flocks for Abel, whose careful offering God favours.

Cain enviously kills Abel. And the consequences of homicide—the curse—hang heavy on him. The ground will no longer be fruitful; he will not be able to find a place to settle and be happy in. “You will be a restless wanderer on the earth.”

And, while suffering the disabling effects of his sin on his character, and even his countenance, Cain is not entirely cut off from the goodness of God—he marries, has children, lives under the protection of God (Gen 4:15), protection which, inexplicably, was not offered to the righteous Abel.

* * *

Our first parents bear the consequences of their sin, the land stubbornly yields thorns and thistles which they prune by the sweat of their brows. Eden remains a memory, but still the earth yields its abundance; they enjoy marriage and family life; they get to taste the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living, as we, the flawed, taste it.

The goodness of the God of the Second Chance; the God whose goodness we cannot outrun; the God in whose presence Paul found he could rejoice even in the dank Mamertine Dungeon.

And though we too weed out thorns and thistles by the sweat of our brow, our earth still yields abundance; the daily impressionist painting of skies and stars and seasons continues to stagger; we experience the love of people and the goodness of God from which nothing shall separate us, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation.

Nothing that shall happen in 2016 or 2061 can or shall separate us from the insistent love of God showered on us through Jesus. And for that I am grateful!

Blog Through the Bible Project, Genesis 1-5