Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

Revivals, Chalk Circles and Me

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I have heard of the English Evangelical Revival when at the preaching of Whitfield, miners wept, their tears making white lines on their coal-black faces.

I have heard of the 1904 revival in Wales, when the Spirit of God fell powerfully on meetings, and people forgave their enemies.

I have heard of the revival Lonnie Frisbee brought to the Vineyard, with thousands of youth spirit-filled in a day, baptizing their mates in hot-tubs and swimming pools.

I have heard of the laughing revival in Toronto.

I have heard it reached Oxford, and students walking down High Street or having tea with friends in student rooms suddenly fell silent, stooped under the heavy weight of God.

I have heard that there have been more revivals in England than in any nation on earth!

§ § §

Me? I have never seen a revival. Never seen the spirit fall en masse as at Pentecost.

But I would like to.

All the prophetic people are talking of a revival coming to the UK. I heard Heidi Baker say, “Revival is coming to the UK. Of course, it is. You know that, don’t you?  Everyone knows that.

§ § §

Ah, my eyes want to see the glory of the coming of the Lord.

                                                                                                                         § § §

Gypsy Smith, the British 20th century evangelist, preached to audiences of hundreds of thousands.

A delegation came to ask him how they could experience mass revival as he had.

And this was his reply, “Go home. Lock yourself in your room. Kneel down in the middle of the floor, and with a piece of chalk draw a circle around yourself. There, on your knees, pray fervently and brokenly that God would start a revival within that chalk circle.”

§ § §

And that is how revival will come to the UK.

When there are thousands of chalk circles drawn through this land. When thousands of people pray within them to be filled to overflowing with the spirit of God, the prayer which is always answered (Luke 11:13).

When the Spirit descends on thousands of people with power, and blows through this land like a mighty wind, sweeping through it like an overflowing stream.

I hear the winds, Lord, gaining power. I hear the first sounds of a heavy rain.

May my eyes see this glory of a great revival, oh Lord. And let it begin in me.

When Should we Quit Praying? Or, How to Pray for Impossible Things.

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Nik Wallenda performs a walk on a tightrope during a training session in a wind-driven mist at Niagara Falls, New York, on Monday.

Nik Wallenda performs a walk on a tightrope during a training session in a wind-driven mist at Niagara Falls, New York, on Monday.

 Image Credit

I’ve know a lovely man who, a few years ago, fell off a ladder, and broke his back, severing his spinal cord. As a result of that tragic minute, he became a paraplegic, wheelchair bound. They have been told the spinal cord damage is irreversible.

This has been near impossible for his loving wife, in particular, to accept. Prayer for healing has consumed their lives. Going to healing prayer centres, getting people through the country to pray. They have found it hard to be in home groups, because most members lacked the faith to continue praying for complete healing, which, is, apparently a medical impossibility.

But faith that he will be healed has shaped their lives. When they remodelled their kitchen, they put counters at the usual level, not handicapped accessible. She galvanized everyone to pray for healing in time for their daughter’s wedding, so he could walk the bride down the aisle, but, alas, that did not happen.

But she remains convinced her husband will be healed.

* * *

I salute her faith.

However, I have long been on prayer ministry teams, but do not pray for things I lack faith to believe will happen. When a much childless older woman asks me to pray for a baby, I think biology and fertility and inexorable facts, and try to get someone with more faith to pray for her.

To my shame, I lack faith to pray for healing when people in wheelchairs ask me to pray that they will walk again, or near-blind people ask me to pray that they will see. Technically, I believe in miracles; practically, if I can’t “see” it happen, I don’t want to toy with their faith, and damage it further. To pray for something I do not have the faith to believe will happen feels almost like mocking God, and so I get help.

Heidi Baker says the blind have seen and the lame have walked when she has prayed for them, and I believe her. These miracles have been attested by eyewitnesses from many nations.  But that is her “anointing,” what she has faith to believe will happen, and so what she sees happen, again and again.

My faith, far weaker than hers, is strong in different realms.

* * *

There is a saying in Charismatic circles: You must see it to receive it.

I frowned the first time I heard that;  it sounded as if it came from a productivity book. But I now think it’s true.

Secular people would call it “creative visualization.” Perhaps, you must somehow “see” it happening in the spiritual realm to be able to believe it will happen –and then to later see it actually happen in the physical realm. And so I never pray with people for things I cannot “see” happen or believe will happen.

·      * * *

Faith, however, does move mountains. My husband’s small group has been consistently praying for Tamsyn, the Manic Mum, who is a friend of the leader. As you can read, her husband Alex suffered a minor brain injury playing rugby in France with friends, which through a series of unfortunate medical mistakes, led to brain swelling, epilepsy, blindness, drastically impaired speech and movement. The French doctors delicately said he would be “a vegetable.”  The English doctors delicately suggested she put him in a long-term nursing home, and get on with life.

As Dr. Dean Ornish comments, the speed and even the possibility of recovery from brain injury depends on love, depends on how much time people are willing to invest in helping you rehabilitate.

Tamsyn, a Christian, refused to accept the predictions and has been helping Alex try to speak, move, respond, cross one minuscule milestone after another, as you can read on her blog.

* * *

And the power of faith and prayer should never be under-estimated. A mum in a small group I went to was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, the most deadly kind of brain tumour, and given two years max to live. Most people die within six months of diagnosis.

She got intensive prayer from our whole church, and is alive, functioning and even travelling, four and a half years later, despite some physical and mental deterioration.

I put this down to the power of prayer.

* * *

So how do we pray for impossible things?

I think the only way we can pray for impossible things with peace are the twin prayers Jesus prayed in Gethsemane.  “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

And then,  “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.” 

Ah, how hard, how inexpressibly hard it is to believe in the good story God is writing in your life when it involves pits and dungeons, as with Joseph; dens and lions as with Daniel. The valleys and depths  in which one is prepared for the mountain-tops of glory and spiritual promotion!!

But, hey, ultimately, we are only co-authors of the story of our lives. We need the humility and flexibility to accept it when God appears to be writing a different plot, a different story, than the one we had dreamed of, and hoped for. Accept the plot change, even while we continue to pray for the plot we want.

Oh, this tight-rope walk of faith!! We only get through it without broken hearts because He, whom we love and trust, is our balancing wire as we cross the Niagara Falls of our lives with faith and hope. And a smile!

We only really master some spiritual truths by doing!

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My twenties were an amazing decade. Likewise, my forties. (In my thirties, I had babies!)

In my twenties, besides moving to the UK and then the US, getting married, and earning two degrees, I

1   1)   learned to ride a bike, aged 22.
     2)   learned to swim, aged 25.
     3)  learned to drive a car, aged 29.
     4) learned to touch-type–and fast, aged 29.
Yeah, a late developer.
Generally, I do everything by books. Whether it’s hosting a children’s birthday party, gardening, or running a house, I tend to first buy three books on the subject which I quickly skim-read.
But for these achievements of my twenties—cycling, swimming, driving, typing—no amount of book learning would help. I just had to get in the pool, on the bike, behind the wheel, and do it.
·      * * *
The truly life-transformational insights of my forties have been these.

1   1) That God loves me. That I can rest in his love. That I don’t need to do anything.
     
     2) Learning to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit.  That when I am running ragged, I just need to stop and rest and wait for the filling of the Holy Spirit.   
     
    3) The Spiritual Passive Voice. Waiting. Trusting. Resting. Abiding. Not striving, but resting on the faithful one.
One can’t really learn these transformative spiritual practices from books. Or lectures from those who have mastered them–though these have helped me.
We can only learn them by “doing,”– resting in God, experiencing him, asking him to fill us with his Spirit.
Just hanging out with God.
They have to be caught, from the Father and the Spirit and Jesus—and then practised. They cannot really be taught. We learn them by doing them.
How about you? What has been spiritually transformational for you in the last decade? How did you learn it?


In which I Encounter the Angel of Writing

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Remission

 Okay,  I recently had one of the biggest sermon surprises in my decades of hanging around the beautiful, broken Church of Jesus Christ.

I came to RiverCamp to hear Heidi Baker, as well as Mark Stibbe because I am interested in his message of the Father Heart of God.

But what Mark talked about was—get this—writing!!

Yes, a whole sermon on writing!! Never ever heard one before.

That evening, the preacher Trevor Baker felt God told him he was going to heal someone with secondary cancer. And there was only one person in the huge tent with that. He said, “Well, that’s okay. Sometimes the message is just for one person.”

Stibbe’s message was so apposite that it felt as if it was also just for one person. Me.

* * *

Mark Stibbe spoke of writing as a spiritual gift, an anointing. He had attended a John Wimber conference as an ordinand from Nottingham and everyone else had a spiritual experience. But he did not.

However, when, on the last day, he went up for prayer, sad and disappointed, his right hand began shaking uncontrollably.

He asked God, “So, what’s going on?” God answers, “What can you do with your right hand which you cannot do with your left?”
“Write.”

And Stibbe said on that day, he received an anointing to write, an anointing, which, in R T Kendall’s phrase in his book, The Anointing, “makes the difficult easy.”

Stibbe then talked about an angel of writing, who would put its great golden wings around him when he was stuck, put a quill in his hands, and say, “Write.”  Some pages from his most recent book, he says, were so “anointed” that he does not remember writing them.

He prayed for an anointing on us. Said part of an anointing is seeing things no one else sees. Seeing things before you write them down.

* * *

And in the course of the next two days, through talks on other subjects, through hours of “soaking prayer,” a vision jelled, clarified and solidified which filled my heart with joy. A re-vision, really. A recovery of lost dreams.

* * *

With a rush of sadness (because of how I’ve forgotten it) and joy (because God’s gifts and calls are irrevocable) I remembered how I began writing.

As a young woman, I had wanted to leave India to study abroad, and looked at several countries, the US, NZ, Australia, aiming low–and not thinking of the UK because of the exorbitant overseas student fees.

And then suddenly, I heard God say, “Apply to Oxford.”

Me, “Okay, I’ll apply to Oxford and Cambridge.” (Roy, now my husband, was then at Cambridge.)

Inner Voice, “No, just Oxford.”

Me, “And how will I pay for it?’

I hear, “You have your pen, haven’t you?”

And poetry came in a flood. Eight poems that evening.

(And the call to writing, and the call to Oxford are somehow intertwined, but in a way I do not understand.  Yet!)

Later that month, I won a national poetry writing competition for a long poem I had written in three hours.

The gift came from God.

·      * * *

But oh, how I have worried it and worried about it, tried to protect it, squeeze time for it, flog it, sinned in relationships to get time and space for it, necessarily and unnecessarily sacrificed for it.

And while—oh, I could cry—all the time it was a gift!!

* * *

As I have often written in this blog, I have two deep failures in my life. One is my failure to control my weight (though I have lost 13.5 pounds, and this   is  a battle I am going to win when the chairos time–is right).

The other is THE book. I had the idea for it in the late-eighties. I started writing it in 1991 and continued, off and on, until 2006, though, on the way, I got distracted and wrote and published essays, book reviews, film and theatre reviews. Oh, and had babies.

Chapters of the book met with success, the $20,000 NEA award, the $6000 Minnesota State Art Boards Award, prizes for the best article in the Catholic Press, many essay prizes, have been published in “Commonweal,” “Virginia Quarterly Review” The London Magazine, and magazines like “Notre Dame Magazine,” which paid $1000 etc. I once added up what I had already made from this unfinished, unpublished book—it was $35, 000.

And, yeah, if you detect a note of insecurity in the last paragraph, you are right!! I need to keep reminding myself there was goodness in the manuscript.

* * *

I took wrong turnings. I really wanted to write a story of my Roman Catholic Childhood in India. A teacher suggested I focus on my 14 months as a novice at Mother Teresa’s Convent. A leading editor and agent were very interested. I finished the manuscript in my life-blood through my pregnancy and the first year of my baby’s life. They turned it down. And in my naivete, I thought that that was the end of the world, instead of shipping it out again.

I then wrote the whole Indian Catholic childhood; again, agents were interested but each wanted changes which I couldn’t see how to make.

I had twisted my original vision of many short topical chapters into what the industry wanted—fewer, more thematic chapters. No wonder it was hard for me to formulate it in a magnetic proposal, write it or sell it. Also, I guess I did not try hard enough it to ship it, but crumbled with each rejection.

Crumbled too soon. Focusing on publication instead of finishing it. Focused on what the publishing industry wanted instead of my original vision. And, then, believe it or not, depressed, I shelved the project

* * *

And started selling antiquarian books in 2006, when I had bought my dream house I could not afford, and put both girls in a dream school I could not afford, either. I then founded a small publishing business in 2007. Which God blessed so much that within 3 years, my husband, Roy, was able to retire early at 47.

Which means I am writing full time, and have domestic support, the lack of which depressed and bedevilled me.

But I did not take up the book of my heart, which I have always been longing to write.

Instead, on guidance from God, I took up blogging!! Which for the last 40 months has squeezed out “real” writing. But taught me a huge amount about writing.

* * *

And then, as Mark Stibbe spoke, I clearly saw that the time had come to take up writing the book again.

And I saw the form it should take. Which was, interestingly, my original vision—many short chapters of 2-3 pages each. Roughly 800-1000 words each. In other words, the length of blog posts.

I am going to re-write the entire book, which is going to be so much easier than revising my original version. My style has changed over 40 months of blogging. It is less mandarin, less literary, less poetic, but easier to read. And to write!!

It will be too hard to revise the old manuscript. “Style is the man.” Or woman. It reflects your thinking and sensibility. When you change, your style changes. When you deliberately simplify your style and make it transparent, as one needs to in a blog, you also start thinking in shorter, lucid sentences and paragraphs.

Attempting to revise the old manuscript will be like revising someone else’s manuscript. I am a different woman now.

On the other hand, since much of the work of memory, writing and organizing into chapters is done, rewriting will be relatively easy. And very easy compared to writing it in the first place when I had masses and masses of notes and memories.

* * *

I am going to post chapters from the memoir on my blog as I write them.

I will plan to write 400-500 words of my book each day, posting each finished chapter on my blog as it’s done. 300 pages of 400 words each. 120,000 words. A page a day. And will be done with the book by September 1st, 2014, so help me God.

And that is not an over-ambitious goal because A) the book is written. It just has to be rewritten into an easier and less mandarin style. B) I have been writing 800-1000 word blog posts every day for 40 months, and writing has now become quick and easy.

* * *

And I am so grateful to God for restoring my vision and enthusiasm for finishing my book at just the right time, the chairos time.

(Revised and edited, 31st August, 2013)

 

Back from a Week of Camping by the River of God

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 Some decidedly Pentecostal moments from River Camp.
A lovely little boy bouncing in the mud puddles. Another one cheerfully calls, “Malachi, there’s more water here.”
Malachi. We looked around, startled. One of the themes of River Camp is Sonship and the Father Heart of God (Romans 8:15) so we’ve been hearing Malachi 4:6 rather a lot!
                                                      * * *
Soaking Prayer. As we leave, we heard a lady tell her friends in excitement. “The anointing! It fell on me in the tent. I couldn’t stop shaking.” And she shows them. She is indeed shaking.
I am reading a book called The Anointingby R.C. Kendall, and am very interested in it. I suspect though this lady was using “The Anointing” as a synonym for the Holy Spirit.
Yes, how simply and naturally she spoke of it. “Naturally Supernatural,” indeed.
·      * *
The camper van I bought in July has saved my life once or twice. I wouldn’t have got through this in a tent! Anyway, I look through the camper’s huge picture windows, and watch a woman and a man pray for another woman with the utmost concentration and passion. One kneels, touches her feet. One touches her, the other hand up to heaven. I read, look up, they still they are at it. Praying, praying for the longest time I’ve seen prayer ministry continue.
I feel tearful. Oh, how intensely they are asking. Could God bear not to hear them? I call Roy to surreptitiously watch too, and grow vicariously anxious.
And was so relieved at last to hear the Hallelujah! Hallelujah indeed.
Prayer ministry is my favourite and beloved form of Church ministry—and I felt sad watching them. I lack the love, energy, and faith to press in like that for well over 30 minutes. On the other hand, I believe a 5 minute prayer is heard if you have told your Father everything in your heart, so maybe the extended version is not essential.
                                             * * *
Walking back to my camper at night, I pass a whole lot of 13-14 year olds from the youth group, walking around singing, “Love-Joy_Peace-Patience-Kindness-Goodness-Faithfulness-Gentleness.”
No, I jest not. What am I in? An alternative universe?
                                            * * *
I went bone-tired, mentally, physically and intellectually–and have come back refreshed, full of vigour, and excitement and joy and vision and energy.

We could have gone to Tuscany in our new camper van, and instead decided to soak by the River of God. I wondered if I were being foolish, because I would have loved to wander around Tuscany and Umbria.

Turned out, no, we were absolutely not foolish. 

I have got clear and life-changing direction for what to do in the next year of my life; my kids have encountered God and are talking about him naturally, being naturally supernatural. Irene has had some “life-changingly good” sermons and encounters, and Zoe has gone deeper in her faith, worshipping with the others for long hours. 

And Roy, Roy has had an amazing time, loving the worship, the talks, and soaking prayer to which he went most diligently of the four of us. He definitely enjoyed it the most, as he was least affected by the loss of creature and electronic comforts!


Lonnie Frisbee, the Most Influential Gay Christian in the Last Century

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Today at River Camp, this lovely Irish guy called Simon Foster, who looks a bit like Hugh Grant, walks on stage to preach, and something about his bleached blonde hair, his walk, his face, alerts my gaydar.

I whisper to Roy, “He’s gay.”

“Ssssh,” Roy says.

And then Simon sweetly giggles a little bit. Laughs. Says a few sentences, flings his head back, then bursts into song in the most gorgeous singing voice .

There’s an indefinable something…

“He’s definitely gay,” I whisper to Roy.

Roy says, “Sssh. He’s an Elim Pentecostal leader.”

I am chastened. So did my gaydar gave a false reading?

Nope.

And then Simon says, “Well, I was trapped in a homosexual lifestyle from many years, but now am married.”

“What did I say, Roy?” I whisper triumphantly, and now Roy looks properly flabbergasted.

                                             * * *

Simon Foster has told his story here. He was a Eurovision contestant, and came 10th with his band, the Duskeys, and then stepped into a life of show-biz, singing in nightclubs and cruises, drinking, substance abuse and homosexuality, which he gives up after an encounter with the love of God, and after he reads the Bible verses about homosexuality which he becomes convinced is sin.

In his case, the move was definitely a blessing. It released him to a fruitful ministry (prophecy, healing, and preaching) in the body of Christ, which is unavailable to non-celibate gays in most every Christian denomination.

He said yesterday, “All my life I have been waiting for a man to ravish me. And in Jesus, I’ve found him”

What? Several people look affronted, and Simon laughed and said, “Oh, I see your religious spirit rising.”

* * *

This is how Simon explains his homosexuality  “I was set up for homosexuality through circumstances of life. I had a dysfunctional relationship with my dad, which left me feeling unloved and unwanted. My attempt to connect with others boys at school failed which only compounded my feeling that males rejected me. The name-calling and continued rejection left me with nowhere to belong. 

Years of living with this identity problem produced a fantasy life in which I dreamed of men desiring me. The pull to engage with men sexually followed. The father I desired became the man of my dreams and led me to develop homosexual relationships.”

I am sure he believes this narrative of his childhood leading to his homosexuality, but that does not explain how within minutes of observing his face, his hairstyle, make-up, gait, demeanour, speech, voice, laugh, I realised he was a gay man–or post-gay in this case.

It seemed an ontological, as well as circumstantial part of his identity to me.

However, for each Christian gay man or woman who marries and becomes heterosexual, there are many who fail in their quest to do so, to their own heart-brokenness (and their spouses’).

And I thought of Lonnie Frisbee, the most influential gay man in twentieth century Christianity, a key person in the Jesus People or Jesus Freak movement, who unleashed a wave of the Holy Spirit which was instrumental in the founding, and phenomenal growth of  two major Christian denominations, the Calvary Chapel, where he attracted thousands to his Bible Study, and  the Vineyard, which was established after Lonnie Frisbee asked youth, 25 and under, to come forward, then prayed, “Come Holy Spirit.” And those so filled, baptised others in hot tubs and swimming pools!!

Lonnie resisted his homosexuality, to the point of marrying a woman who left him after she had an affair with their pastor; was sad and guilty about his repeated homosexual flings; was rejected by both denominations he helped found and flourish when his homosexuality became obvious; and died broken-hearted of AIDS, yet forgiving those whose careers and denominations he had established, but who ostracised him and almost wrote him out of their histories for a sin he could not shake.

And yet he  was responsible for thousands of people being converted and filled with the Holy Spirit,  and changed the direction of twentieth century Christianity through the millions influenced by the Calvary Chapel and the Vineyard Movement.

God’s blessing and anointing was on his life, perhaps because of his brokenness; perhaps because his unsuccessful struggle with his homosexual longings convinced him he needed a saviour and needed forgiveness, and led him to intensely love the one who forgave him.

* * *

What interests me is that Lonnie partied on Saturday, including promiscuous gay sex, and preached powerfully on Sunday.

I doubt he was a hypocrite. I fancy it’s like the overweight who eat chocolate, and then preach; or those who have a drink too many and then preach; or those who are foul to their spouses and kids and bully their parishioners, and then preach.

And sometimes God blesses their preaching for the sake of those who will listen to them, as he blessed Lonnie Frisbee. Or because we see the one sin and are shocked, but God sees their hearts, the whole man or woman, and sees someone he can use as his conduit of grace.

We see sin on a continuum with abortion and homosexuality at the far end of the spectrum. Jesus did not see sin on a continuum.  One should not murder nor be angry, he teaches. One should not commit adultery nor lust, he teaches. (Matt 5 21-27).

Perhaps Jesus did not see Frisbee’s sin of promiscuous gay sex as worse than the gossip, pettiness, envy and meanness which good church people are guilty of.

Of all the people he could have chosen to unleash the wave of the spirit which reached the nations through the Vineyard, he chose a tormented gay person, Lonnie Frisbee.

Was He perhaps trying to tell us something?

 

A Letter to an Aspiring Writer

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I am writing this for an anthology to appear in October. And here is my first version, which I have decided not to use. I include it here for those who might be interested.

A Letter to an Aspiring Writer
Hi Anita,
So when you were twenty-one, you decided to become a writer.
If you could have looked forward through the mists of time, and seen how relatively little you have written twenty-nine years later, would you still have set your face to become a writer?
* * *
Oh, yes! There was nothing else that really interested you, you see.
You read that Rajiv Gandhi, later Prime Minister of India, said, “I had rather create history than study it.” And you felt like that about literature.
* * *
 Ah, but Anita, how many wrong turnings. I wish I, having discovered my first grey hair, could have counselled you. Many did —and their advice slowed you down—for advice is a double-edged sword.
Not everyone who has failed wishes you to succeed. The successful are not necessarily cheerleaders. There is a fine line between a mentor and a tormentor. Advice can be offered from malice and envy. Remember Iago.
Accept no advice without praying through it. For the most important, the vital, voice you need to learn to hear is your heavenly Father’s.
                                             * * *
Theories abound in quasi-magical fields like writing or creativity or prayer. You must find, by trial and error, the right ones for you.
You learn writing by studying the masters, but, if you have the ear for it, the gift for it, you ultimately learn to write by writing. Reading and practice, that’s all it takes, though good teachers save you time by the embarrassment of their criticism, and the encouragement of their praise!
Did you overdo the education and classes in the days of abounding energy, when you should have been writing?  A BA and then an MA from Somerville College, Oxford; an MA in English and creative writing from Ohio State; Ph.D classes in Creative Writing at SUNY-Binghamton; more graduate classes at the university of Minnesota. Working with famous writers, one on one as with Carol Bly, or at the Loft Literary Centre in Minneapolis, or at writers’ conferences and colonies.                                                                                                          * * *
What was that silly thing you heard? About connections being the third wing of the writers’ life: reading, writing, and connections. That stressed you out, for you were living in small, boring Williamsburg, Virginia. And so you wasted time going to conferences–Bread Loaf, Squaw Valley, Wesleyan, Chenango Valley, Mount Holyoke, hoping to learn yes, but also to meet other writers.  And for magic.
Ah you had a mental script for the writer’s life, which involved a fairy tale–discovery by fairy godmothers: an editor and an agent. And a happily ever after,
But Anita, good writing leaps off the page. It makes its own connections, its own magic.  Write the rabbit for the magicians to flourish.
Christianity is a fairy tale filled with surprises, reversals, redemption, and happiness ever after. And so I believe you will see a fairy tale in your writing, because a good God who loves you and called you to write is ultimately writing the script, not you. And that fairy tale will include an essential element of fairy tales—surprise!
                                                  * * *
You attended writers’ groups for praise and camaraderie, when you should have been holed up writing. Your writing conditions weren’t bad, but seeking validation and the stimulation of creative people you applied for fellowships to writers’ colonies–Vermont Studio Center and the Virginia Centre for Creative Arts.
Colony life is magic, is paradise–lunch brought to your door at VCCA; organic deliciousness eaten with artists at Vermont, and you read and wrote all day, but oh, how you missed your husband and young ones.
And you learnt that, though long uncommitted hours obviously increase the odds of getting work done, art that flows from a life grounded in home, garden, family and friends is more sustainable in the long run.
·      * * *
Seeking validation, you entered essay, creative non-fiction and memoir competitions for cash but more–the glory. And you won some, including a magical $20,000 National Endowment for the Arts award, $6000 from the Minnesota State Arts Board, travel grants and essay prizes.
But all those successful applications for prizes, grants, awards and fellowships to writers’ colonies and conferences meant that the showcase chapters got polished to perfection before the rest of the manuscript was written.
Oh, privilege the first draft. Keep it moving. “First get it down, then get it right,” is sage advice, but sadly you need to get each paragraph—even those you’re later going to jettison—somewhat right before writing the next one. It’s not the most efficient way of writing. But it’s yours!!
And, please learn to outline before you write. It will save you hours in the long run!
                                         * * *
How badly you wanted validation, glory, and general impressiveness to slip into conversation to explain what you spent your time doing.  You yearned to publish a big successful book to prove how special, interesting and gifted you were. Justification by writing!
But how much better to just relax and be yourself, and be appreciated and accepted for who you are, not what you do.  And prolonged failure taught you this.
If you seek validation through fame and success, you will need more and more of it. Instead, as Rilke says,  “Draw close to those things that will not ever leave you.” Learn to find happiness in simple things: ingardening, nature, travel, family, friends, reading, writing and God.
                                                      * * *
Things changed when you learned to soak in the love of the Father, and his love strengthened and healed you, and gave you the validation you needed.
Things changed when you began to love writing for itself, when you were willing to self-publish to get the work out there, when the possibility of self-publishing made failure lose its terror. Your work wouldsee the light.
Perhaps the desperate longing to succeed had to die for you to discover the deep play of writing. To learn you had to write
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.
Whát I do is me: for that I came, Hopkins imagines everything crying. And writing was you, the way you discovered what you thought and felt. Writing was natural and instinctive as breathing.
                                                      * * *
Blogging was the best thing that happened in your writing life.
When your writing stalled, and you despaired of finishing your big book, and despaired of finding a publisher; or readers if you self-published, you heard God suggest blogging on April 10th, 2010.
After trying to write unassailably well for so long, the discipline of daily blogging taught you to write swiftly and to make peace with imperfection. You gained more readers, and made more connections in two years of blogging than in two decades of publishing in magazines, journals and newspapers.
And your first twenty-eight months as a blogger have been full of stimulation, creative breakthrough, increasing confidence, affirmation, connections and new friendships.
                                                      * * *
Henry James famously said, “If one desires to do the best one can with one’s pen, there is one word you must inscribe upon your banner, and that word is Loneliness”.’
And so you passed up church, school and neighbourhood social events. And when loneliness hit—and you remembered the healing power of social support–you went to everything, and then regretted the stiff forced smile, the pretence of interest, the uncomfortable bored encounter when you could have been home, reading and writing.
It took experimentation to learn the right amount of friendship and social life for you. Two intense lunches or coffees with friends per week are ideal. For deep conversation sparks your creativity. Less than that, and you begin to get a bit bored and restless with just family and writing. More than that is distracting, and you enjoy social life less.
Once you have more friends than you can keep up with, as you now have, pass up group events for one-on-one conversations!
                                                   * * *
“Be patient with the seasons,” everyone tell young mums–but no ambitious young mum wants to hear that. You could not accept this necessary slowing down when your children were little, and so worked, and worse, worried yourself into exhaustion.
You refused to wait for time to become spacious again—as it now has. You limped on with your writing while Rome burned. Wrote on amid marital discord and domestic mess. Ah, but one is far less productive under such conditions—and what a psychological price it exerts!!
Far better to put first things first. Now that you are at peace with God and man, words flow easily, like honey.
                                                      * * *
Though you were a Christian for twenty-three of your writing years, how long it took for the Christian and the writer to be one and the same!
To learn to lean on your heavenly Father, and to let his creative power flow through you. To learn to do things through Christ who strengthens you. To entrust your writing to God. The great laws of the spiritual life operate in writing: Do not be afraid. Trust in the Father.  Trust also in Jesus.


Praying in African

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And here’s my funniest moment from River Camp, the Pentecostal Family Camp I’m hanging out at.

  Irene, praying in baby language!

Irene was lying on the floor, trying “soaking prayer” with the adults for the first time ever. A lady came and prayed with her, she said. “First she prayed in English, and then she prayed in African,” said, Irene, 13.

“In African? Was she black?” I asked. “No, blonde,” she said.

I laughed. She was probably speaking in tongues.

We attended a Charismatic church (St. Aldate’s, Oxford) for 6 years, but since Irene went to children’s church, I guess she’s never heard glossolalia, or speaking in tongues, a gift I received when i was 17.

Which, incidentally, can sound beautiful, and exotic. I fancy it sounds like Persian!!