Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

Living in a Story Still Being Written

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It can take ten thousand years for the light from the most distant stars in our galaxy to reach us.

And if the speed of light can be so slow, if its story unravels so glacially, why are we astonished when we fail to immediately understand the story of our lives?

* * *

 Joseph, in the well, abandoned, betrayed.

All his dreams of glory—had come to this.

It seemed utterly meaningless–because the next chapter had not yet to be written.

* * *

Joseph in charge of Potiphar’s household.

The shepherd boy becomes the head butler in an Egyptian country house.

Was that the meaning of the well, and the humiliations of slavery at the hands of the hairy Ishmaelites?

Only part of it. The story was still being written. He was a character in a story someone else was writing. How could he understand his own story in medias res?

* * *

The dungeon, punishment for righteousness.

“But, Lord, I thought I understood the plot you were writing. Now WHAT are you doing?”

Utterly forsaken.

* * *

 But the dungeon was the way for the butler of a small manor to meet royalty.

Again, God blessed Joseph. Again, he rose to the top. And once again, apparent failure and humiliation were the means of Joseph’s elevation to an entirely different social, economic and political circle.

Let no one underestimate the creativity of the Master Craftsman of the Universe.

* * *

We cannot understand the story of our lives while we are living them.

We do not understand the significance of each plot element yet. They seem random, inexplicable, and cruel. It takes the retrospective glance to understand.

* * *

And my story? It has foolishness in it, ah so much—money and opportunity and years and talents squandered.

It has sin in it, my sin, and sins against me. It has apparent dead ends, missed opportunities, wastage, stupidity and heartbreak.

* * *

And because a master artist is still working on it, still writing it, it has gold in it, infinite possibilities for redemption.

I do not yet know how God will weave all the plot elements together into an eternal beautiful story, and make it all the apparent red herrings and random plot twists work out for good, but I know he will. He’s that smart.

And I trust him.

 

 

Christian Blogging: Ministering Without Preaching

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Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Christians who are digital natives will, quite possibly, encounter two ministries of the Word each week–the Sunday sermon and Christian blogs.

A bad sermon tells you what you should do. It lays down the law. Your shoulders hunch when you hear you should give more to their pet projects, pray more, read your Bible more, love more. More, more, more.

* * *

Now, who in their right minds, would come to blogs to be told what they should do? Not I.

Like everyone else, I know what to do, you see. The trouble isthe doing of it. As Portia says in The Merchant of Venice

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to
do, chapels had been churches and poor men’s
cottages princes’ palaces. I can easier teach
twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the
twenty to follow mine own teaching.

* * *

 The effective Christian blogger ministers the word, but without overt preaching. She has to.

She does not have the preacher’s advantages: the captive audience, the theology degree, the automatic respect.

And so, she must be winsome. Like the poet of old who beginneth not with obscure definitions, but cometh to you with words set in delightful proportion–and with a tale forsooth he cometh unto you, with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney corner (Sir Philip Sidney. Apology for Poetry).

While our intention might be to bless, trust is not instantly handed to us. Yeats wishes for his daughter,

“In courtesy I’d have her chiefly learned;
Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned.”

 So too for the blogger: trust is not had as a gift, but trust is earned.

How? Paradoxically, by sharing our weaknesses, rather than our strengths.

A blogger could tell us of hours in prayer, scripture study, fasts, watchings, and we will feel tired, one more To Do.

But tell us how the Christian life really plays out: how you can snarl at those who delay you on your way to worship God on Sundays; how you can feel maddened by noise during your lovely quiet times; how you knew someone was gossiping at prayer request time but asked a curious question in the guise of concern; how you medicate yourself with chocolate rather than Scripture, because, frankly, it’s quicker. How you love Scripture and prayer, but sometimes find them boring; how you love Christ and love your children, but, frankly, find this whole Proverbs 31 business overrated!

And because we too have visited those shadowlands, we’ll laugh, and we’ll believe you.

And then, when you tell us of prayer, visions, revelations, high altitude glories, we’ll believe you too, because you have earned our trust when you told us of the muck and mud, the shame and breakthrough which are all part of the Christian life.

While the preacher shares the conclusions, the QED of the theorem of faith, the personal Christian blogger, the confessional blogger, shares the process—the falls, the slipping backward, the rare raptures.

* * *

Above all, she tells a story. A story unique in that no one–not the author, not the readers–no one but God himself, knows how it going to end. And as she tells it, she understands it better: the story of her own life.

And this story has multiple narratives, mirroring the four quadrants of human personality:

1.    The things we know about ourselves, and everyone else knows.

2.    The things we know about ourselves, but no one else guesses, and we would die rather than confess.

3.    The things which are glaringly obvious to everyone else, but which we are oblivious to. Bloggers, despite themselves, make these dreadful revelations about themselves—unwittingly revealing their emotional contours, their prejudices, their fears, their secret patches of pride, shame and sensitivity.

Many personal blogs can be decoded by an alert reader. Anyone who chronicles the ongoing story of their personal or spiritual lives on the web makes these unconscious revelations, and must make peace with this.

4. The last quadrant, is the vast, deep submerged world of buried potential–the heights of love and nobility to which we are capable of rising; the depths to which we are capable of sinking; talents and abilities unguessed at, save by the Creator, who alone knows how it is all going to end, and, I like to think, reads the unspooling account of our spiritual and actual lives on our blogs with interest, tenderness, and not a little amusement!

(Edited archive post.)

If you find yourself lacking enthusiasm, explore your childhood passions once again

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Rachkam_Arthur_Children_By_The_Sea

Children by the Sea, Arthur Rackham

Isaac, son of promise, whose name meant laughter, didn’t do very much. His main contribution: “Isaac dug again the wells of water that had been dug in the days of his father Abraham; for the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham,” (Gen 26:18).

Redigging ancient wells which have been blocked by the enemy of one’s soul. Recovering old dreams and enthusiasms. Recovering whom one truly is. It resonates with me.

The beloved Christian writer, Catherine Marshall, in Beyond Oneself, goes back to childhood dreams as tries to discover God’s will for her life. One of her earliest dreams, she reads in her childhood diary was to be “a pretty lady with lots of perfume. And a writer.”

* * *

 I am enjoying Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project.  When Gretchen decides to have more fun, she realizes that because her work has been so absorbing, and because she has been so driven by ambition, productivity, and the ideas of what a serious, “legitimate” (her word) intellectual should do, she no longer even knows what she finds fun. Pure fun–something which cannot be leveraged, or double-dutied to serve one’s career or ambitions!!

A friend tells her, “What you enjoyed as a ten-year-old is probably something you’d enjoy now.” She starts reading children’s literature.

I too after decades have begun to both read and write fairy tales again, thank you, Jesus!

* * *

As I choose books to read, or future writing projects, I am reflecting on childhood enthusiasms.

I loved fairy tales, Grimm, Andersen and Perrault, which I must have read dozens of times.

And I loved mythology above all things. My grandfather had given me a book of Norse Mythology, and I loved Odin, Freya, Thor, Loki, Balder and the Ragnarok.

I read every scrap of Greek mythology I could find, putting mythology books on birthday wish lists. I kept a notebook when I was 11, with a page I’d dedicated to every character from Greek mythology. I devotedly recorded every scrap of information I discovered there. I guess I was constructing an encyclopaedia.

When I was even younger, I loved The Mahabharata and The Ramayana, which with their themes of honour, love and family devotion, betrayal and tragedy stir deep wells of anger, sadness, “if onlys,” and “what ifs”.

I loved Arthur, the decency, gallantry, the nobility–the brief golden age with darkness hovering at its edges; the Holy Grail floating above the table; the doomed triangle of Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere, all three of whom tragically love each other; noble Percival and Gareth; and the dark figures of Morgan Le Fay  and Mordred, whose very name is ominous.

* * *

I started reading poetry young, because both my father and grandfather loved it, could easily recite poetry from memory, and gave me poetry books. I have always read it, with a desperate love, whether I understood it or not. I’d love to begin writing poetry again.

Shakespeare, I was introduced to through Lamb’s Tales, which my grandfather must have given me. When I went to boarding school at nine, to St. Mary’s Convent, Nainital, my classmates often asked me to tell them a story, and I would tell them Shakespeare stories, which I knew almost by heart from the beautifully written, lyrical Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare.

 

I began reading unabridged Shakespeare when I was 11 from my father’s massive Complete Works of William Shakespeare, which he brought back from England. I started with Julius Caesar,  memorizing “Pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,” and Macbeth from which I memorized, “Is this a dagger I see before me.”

Reading, fiction in particular, imagined universes: that was the greatest delight of my childhood.

My other great joy and delight was losing myself in my garden. I basically spent the day there, reading in trees, or in a chair on the front lawn of our high-walled garden. And all these joys I am recovering in middle age!

And what a delight it is to re-dig ancient wells, and explore these ancient sources of pleasure again in this slower season of life.

My Fitness Adventure in 52 Habits (Week 3)

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I started this because I had to do something about creeping weight gain—17 pounds since I moved to Oxford eight years ago!!

Obviously, if I do not do something, it could reach the point that I could no longer go on long walks easily, or explore easily on our travels. Or worse, have less strength for long hours of reading and writing!

* * *

In addition, exercise helps creativity. I am now writing fairly intensely—doing 800 words a day on my memoir, and getting those words polished enough to share them on my blog. And also, writing and publishing a 500-800 blog post.

So much intense reading, thinking and writing has the potential to affect perspective, clarity of thought, mood (and perhaps even mental health!) unless one’s life is balanced. And mine is. I live in a family of four. I get together with friends twice a week—with the women’s group I co-lead once a week, and I schedule a one on one coffee, or a couples’ dinner once a week.

But I also need the dissipation of writing tension, and the fresh air, endorphins and runner’s high of exercise in between writing sessions so that my day really feels like two days, and I can come fresh to my second writing session.

And so exercise is a godsend. I am increasing my daily steps, week by week, and have, this week, reached 6600 steps a day, as measured my Omron pedometer. However, the optimal number of steps to be truly physically fit is 10,000. 34 days to go since I am aiming to increase my steps by 100 a day.

I am planning to lose weight and to get fit by adding in a new dietary habit weekly, and increasing my exercise weekly, until I am exercising for 90 minutes a day. Why 90? Well, my sister-in-law, Dr. Kaaren Mathias told me that numerous studies showed measurable health gains with increased exercise up to 90 minutes  a day. After that, the health gains taper off. So, once I reach 90 minutes, if it’s necessary for continued weight loss, I will weave physical activity into my day in the form of gardening or housework.

I read, “if we make the time to exercise, it makes us so much more productive and leads to such improved creativity, cognitive function, and mood that the time we need for doing it will open up and then some–making us so much happier and better at the art of creation, to boot.”

* * *

And diet? Well, I would like to transition to a diet that is largely plant-based, and hope to do it slowly over ten weeks by adding a new habit a week.

Now obviously, the weight loss is not going to be as dramatic as if I went on Atkins and South Beach. On the other hand, the changes I am introducing are so slow that, with luck, I hope to be able to make them permanent habits.

I  lost a pound. In the past, I would have thrown up my hands in despair…but I know I am stronger, fitter, healthier, with a better immune system—and so I am going to keep rowing, while adding in a couple of different metrics: waist measurements, and body fat percentages as measured by my Tanita electronic scale.

 

 

 

 

Loose Change in God’s pocket; a puppet on a string, or? What’s your metaphor for your relationship with God?

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I was listening to a Vineyard CD of Songs of Surrender, and reflected on how I have been indirectly blessed by John Wimber, a man I’ve never met. Through Vineyard music; through his wife Carol’s moving biography of him The Way it Was; through the Toronto Blessing, which was launched in a Vineyard church, now called “Catch the Fire,” where my daughter Zoe is currently at the School for Ministry; and through ministries launched after a meeting with Wimber, like Harnhill Christian Centre.

John Wimber used to say, “I am just loose change in God’s pocket. He can spend me as he pleases.”

* * *

 This summer, I heard Heidi Baker say, “I am a puppet in God’s hands. He can move me which way he pleases.”

And it’s interesting that these two people who have expressed such absolute surrender have also had amazing fruitful ministries, affecting thousands.

When I read of music inspired by God like the Messiah, or poetry or prose almost dictated by God, I long to be “in the vine,” surrendered to him, living in him, so that nothing in me presents an obstacle to the free flow of his grace, power and ideas. So that the channels, the pipeline of communication between God and me remain clear.

* * *

 However, my heart does not quite echo these expressions of total surrender like the Methodist Covenant Prayer.

We do not have exactly the same relationship with any two human beings. There is a slightly different level of trust, familiarity, relaxation, and commonality of interests.

So too, I guess no two of us have exactly the same relationship with God. “A puppet on a string,” “spare change in God’s pockets to spend as he wills” does not quite express my relationship with God.

I believe I would accept God’s dealings with me, whatever…

But I use other metaphors to express my relationship with God—dancing with the Lord; standing in the waterfall or river of God,  an eagle waiting on the edge of its nest for the mounting winds of the spirit before it glides effortlessly into the winds of the storm.

How about you? Which metaphors best express your relationship with God?

The Voices of Two Financial Planners in my Head. And I Choose

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Valley_of_flowers_uttaranchal_full_view

Thus speaks the voice of the world as expressed by Robert Frost’s in this poem,

Provide, Provide

The witch that came (the withered hag)

To wash the steps with pail and rag

Was once the beauty Abishag,

The picture pride of Hollywood.

Too many fall from great and good

For you to doubt the likelihood.

Die early and avoid the fate.

Or if predestined to die late,

Make up your mind to die in state.

Make the whole stock exchange your own!

If need be occupy a throne,

Where nobody can call you crone.

Some have relied on what they knew,

Others on being simply true.

What worked for them might work for you.

No memory of having starred

Atones for later disregard

Or keeps the end from being hard.

Better to go down dignified

With boughten friendship at your side

Than none at all. Provide, provide!

It is the voice of fear. You never know what’s going to happen.  Provide, provide.

* * *

 And then I read the parable of the Rich Fool, Luke 12 13-21 last week. He was somebody who certainly provided well, and yet God, who should know, called him a fool!!

And Jesus suggests an alternative financial planning strategy. If you have not saved, be completely relaxed. In fact, don’t worry about saving. Your Father feeds the ravens, clothes the lilies, has his eye on the sparrow, and on your thinning hair.

* * *

Listen to the voice of Jesus, the wise, startling, contrarian voice of Jesus:

 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. 23 For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. 24 Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! 25 Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life? 26 Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?

27 “Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 28 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith! 

And this precisely why the Gospel is good news. Good news for everyone, especially the poor.

If, like the majority of the world’s population, you have no savings to put in your storeroom or barn, rejoice anyway for Christ promises to clothe and feed you.

And if, like many people (including I, myself) you uneasily feel you have not saved enough, rejoice, for God promises to feed and clothe you.

And if, you are among the small minority who have saved more than you realistically need, rejoice, for you can give some of it away generously, storing treasure in God’s ultra-safe bank.

* * *

So which voice do we listen to? Trusting God in periods of fear and worry and uncertainty can be like going through a dark tunnel in which you hear rat’s feet over broken glass, see spiders loom in their aerial webs, whose urine is said to be so concentrated that a drop could blind you. And you hear voices whisper, whispers of dread.

But at the end there is light. God proves true to his promises.

How do I know? Two ways. Empirically, I have had repeated experiences of God working together everything for God. And through reading the Bible and reading biographies and hearing the stories of faithful Christians.

* * *

And what does not trusting God feel like. Providing, providing?  Relying on uour own effort, sweat, cunning and cleverness?

It also feels like going through a dark tunnel in which you hear rat’s feet over broken glass, see spiders loom in their aerial webs. And you hear voices whisper, whispers of dread.

And at the end? Yet, another tunnel of fear and worry! For the voices of fear never shut up.  “Perhaps you could lose it all. Inflation, taxation, the collapse of the banks, the financial system, the internet, the West. It’s happened before.” And, no matter the figures on your bank statement, the voice still says, Provide, Provide.

How do I know? I’ve known people like this.  Haven’t you?

* * *

 To the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. (Ecc. 2:26)

Two pills, red and blue. Take the red pill of the world’s reality, refuse to entrust yourself and your money (or the lack of it) to God, and walk on the broad path of self-reliance. But this path narrows, worries never end, for few have the wisdom to realize they have enough.

Or try the blue pill of faith and trust, which few have taken, but has failed few. The road is narrow to begin with.   It’s quieter.

You are trusting God with your career, so there’s a lot less hustling, and a lot less noise. You are trusting God with your income and savings, so there’s a lot less hustling. You are trusting him with friendships, and with your work in the world. You try to remember to ask for his guidance before you act, so everything gets a lot quieter.

But gradually, after you have paid your dues in the valley of obscurity, as you prove to be faithful in small things, life opens out.

You emerged from the narrow, strait, dark mountain path to a sun-bright plain. A world in which you are walking in your Father’s blessing, and seeing his magic. Your Father’s world.

And you love it! You are so relieved that you decided to take Jesus at his word.

 

Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris. And a Musing on what the Arts are Good for

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midnight-in-parisI had a magical Sunday morning in Oxford, watching Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris. I bought the DVD, because it was Woody Allen, without having read reviews.

And so I was particularly enchanted. Here was Zelda, as edgy and high-energy and fragile as Scott Fitzgerald depicts her in Tender is the Night. And charming Scott himself. Hemingway, talking in complex, monosyllabic sentences. Gertrude Stein, a brash, rich, arty lesbian who berates the artists and writers in her circle, comes across just as she does in the oddest autobiography/biography ever written, “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas,” which Stein kindly wrote for her lover and companion, Alice!

T.S. Eliot appears, measuring out his life with coffee spoons. And artists—Dali, Picasso, Degas, Gaugin, and Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, and Luis Bunuel. The magic of a late-career director, free, liberated, confident and playful. Loved it!

* * *

 There were years in my twenties and thirties in which I immersed myself in the arts obsessively—in reading poetry, and novels, and essays, in haunting art galleries, and watching good films and now that my daughters are older and self-reliant I am so enjoying soaking up the arts again.

That’s one of the great gifts of the arts: Lethe. Forgetting everything. Forgetting time, sorrow, failure, undone tasks.

And that’s a great gift, isn’t it? [Read more…]

In which I trace my evolving views on Gay Christians

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lonnie_frisbee

Two years ago, I was in a small group at St. Aldate’s Church, Oxford, discussing Philip Yancey’s What’s so Amazing About Grace?

 Yancey wrote about his friend Mel White who was a Christian gay man, “Mel felt homosexual longings from adolescence, tried hard to repress those longings, and as an adult fervently sought “a cure.” He fasted, prayed, and was anointed with oil for healing. He went through exorcism rites read by Protestants and also by Catholics. He signed up for aversion therapy, which jolted his body with electricity every time he felt stimulated by photos of men. For a while, chemical treatments left him drugged and barely coherent. Above all, Mel wanted desperately not to be gay.”

Mel had suicide attempts, Yancey continues to write, and, like Lonnie Frisbee, “wild swings between promiscuity and fidelity. Sometimes he acted like a hormone-flooded teenager, and sometimes like a sage.”

Finally, “Mel concluded that his options narrowed down to two: insanity or wholeness. Attempts to repress homosexual desires, and live either in heterosexual marriage or in gay celibacy he believed would lead to certain insanity. (At that time, he was seeing a psychiatrist five days a week, at a hundred dollars a session.) Wholeness, he decided, meant finding a gay partner and embracing his homosexual identity.”

 Mel remained a Christian, and even [Read more…]