Anita Mathias | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

“A New Name,” Emma Scrivener on finding healing from an eating disorder

Emma Scrivener was born in Belfast, but now lives with her husband in the south east of England. She suffered from life-threatening anorexia as a child and as an adult. She now speaks and writes about her experiences at www.emmascrivener.net. Her book, ‘A New Name’ is published by IVP (ISBN: 9781844745869, 176 pages, £7.99), and can be ordered at the Emma’s website, Amazon.co.ukand Amazon.com.

If you’d met me seven years ago, here’s what you’d have seen: a ‘successful’ Christian, newly married to a vicar in training. Leader of a thriving children’s ministry. A talented student with a bright future ahead. Someone who seemed to have it all together.

But there’s one part you might have missed: a young woman gripped by an eating disorder that would nearly take her life.

For a long time I hid my obsession. I threw myself into church activities, missions and teaching. On the outside I looked pretty good – a dynamo, burning out ‘for the Lord’. I even believed it myself. But at the heart of my ‘ministry’ beat a commitment to proving – and saving – myself.

So how did I get there – and what has helped to bring me out?

It started when I turned 13. Up until then I’d had an idyllic childhood: I knew who I was and I knew where I belonged. But almost overnight, that started to change. My grandfather died. I moved schools. My body felt out of control: like a tanker, spilling flesh and hormones. In search of answers, I even started going to church.

The God I heard about was real and personal, and I resolved to follow Him. But in retrospect, we were never properly introduced. You see, my brand of Christianity had space for ‘God’, but not for Jesus. It talked about sin and rules – but less about grace. It paid lip service to his work on my behalf. But, in practice, it was up to me to prove my own worth.

So that’s what I did. I worked hard and won prizes. I resolved to be smart and pretty and most of all, ‘good’. But nothing – whether clothes or friends or money, was ever enough. Instead of finding satisfaction, I was filled with hungers. I didn’t know what they were called or where to put them. What I did know was this: they were too much.

I was too much – too needy, too intense, too messy, too fat.

So I made a decision. Instead of my desires killing me, I would kill them. I would squash my hungers and I would fix myself. I would be thin.

Instead of a problem, anorexia appeared to be a solution. A way of negotiating the world and making it ‘safe’. In reality, it almost killed me – not just once, but twice.

The first time, I was a teenager and professionals forced me to eat. I put on weight – but though I looked better on the outside, on the inside I felt the same. Ten years later, my old habits returned. My husband and I were finishing Bible college and I was overwhelmed by the prospect of a new parish and my role as a vicar’s wife. Unable to cope, I stopped eating. By the end I could barely walk: but this time, I was an adult – it seemed that nothing and no-one could help.

Then came the phone-call. My beloved grandmother had died – but I was too weak to travel to her funeral. That night, faced with the reality of my choices, something in me finally broke. In desperation, I cried out to the God I’d tried to flee:

‘I’ve exhausted my own resources’ I said. ‘But if you want me, you can have what’s left’.

I had always pictured God as a scary headmaster – slightly disapproving and far away. Someone with rights over my soul – but not my body. Someone who wanted me to perform and keep His rules. This God would surely strike me down or turn me away. But there was no blinding flash of light. No smoke or lightning. Instead, I discovered something far more exciting. As I opened my Bible, I found Jesus.

Instead of the God I thought I knew; in Jesus I met the one who knew me. This Jesus confronted me, notas a tyrant or heavenly taskmaster, but as a gift. He came offering himself. On the cross my badness and my goodness were taken away: rendered irrelevant by his sacrifice. Jesus didn’t want apologies, resolutions or assurances that I would do better. He wanted me. Instead of making me perform, he lifted me clean out of the arena. In return, he asked only one question: Would I receive him?

I was the girl who always said ‘No’.

‘No’ to people

‘No’ to relationships

‘No’ to marriage and health and family and food

‘No’ to risk and desire and vulnerability and need

But as I looked at Him – the Saviour who knew me and yet loved me – I said ‘Yes.’

And that was when my life and recovery began.

Thin Places: Where the veil between the physical and spiritual worlds is almost transparent

By Anita Mathias

The High Cross at Fflad-y-Brenin

sunset_calf_sound_7 Celtic Christians prized “thin places,” where the boundaries between the spiritual and physical world are almost transparent. Where we can sense shimmering in the physical world the just-as-real, invisible, supernatural world, charged with the glory of God, with hills ringed with angels in chariots of fire.

Could God really be more present in one place than in another? I wondered until I slowed down, calmed down, and began to experience thin places.

* * *

Thin places—near mountains, rivers, streams, meadows, the sea—are, in fact, often places where people have worshipped and sought God for centuries. Benedictines and Trappists often built their monasteries in such places.

Is it fanciful to suppose that places in which thousands have prayed would attract the spirit of God—and angelic presences?

Perhaps what happens in a pilgrimage spot is not that God descends to earth in a shower of radiance and the earth ever after exudes his fragrance. Perhaps it is we who sanctify spots of earth when we bring our weary spirits, our thwarted hopes, the whole human freight of grief, and pray—our eyes grown wide and trusting; our being, a concentrated yearning. Perhaps that yearning, that glimpse of better things, attracts the spirit of God, and traces of that encounter linger in the earth and air and water so that future pilgrims say, “God is here.”

* * *

I felt that when we visited Ffald-y-Brenin. There was a peace and holiness in the air. I could sense the presence of God in the stillness and especially around the high cross, placed on the highest hill of the retreat centre towering over the countryside.

I gave up analysing it after a while. I surrendered to the peace. As Eliot says in “Little Gidding,”

You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid.

That peace, a sudden clarity of thinking and creativity? I guess I could call it the spirit of God.

Healing hung in the air. Looking back at my post written there, I see I was praying for healing from self-induced adrenal fatigue. Well, seven months later, it was completely gone, and I was gulping down books again, and writing a lot.

***

Just being by the ocean, watching it, listening to the roar of the waves quietens me, reminds me of immensity, of God’s infinite power, and opens me up to his spirit. I suddenly find myself praying in tongues. I pick up God’s guidance and directives most clearly on beach walks.

And, as all cultures at all times have noticed, mountains are specially charged with the presence of God. They are places for peace, serenity, and elevated thoughts. In the mountains, my thoughts instinctively gravitate to God.

* * *

And, of course, in our own homes and lives, places become thin because we often pray there.

I pray face down in my bedroom, soaking prayer, and the accustomed place and posture probably more quickly tunes my spirit to peace.

I also enjoy walking and praying in the fields around my house for I live in the country. Again the accustomed routine of walking and praying makes me feel happy and exhilarated and, within a short time, I find myself praying in tongues.

Thomas Merton writes about cultivating routines of prayer at the same place, and at about the same time, “My chief joy is to escape to the attic of the garden house and the little broken window that looks out over the valley. There in the silence, I love the green grass. The tortured gestures of the apple trees have become part of my prayer…. So much do I love this solitude that when I walk out along the road to the old barns that stand alone, delight begins to overpower me from head to foot, and peace smiles even in the marrow of my bones.”

* * *

Just we can feel stressed and uneasy by subliminal triggering memories of past trauma in certain places, or in the presence of certain people, our spirits can also swiftly be tuned to peace in places in which we have often experienced God’s spirit, on a particular seat in church, or on a particular country walk.

Working in my own garden is a thin place for me. Sooner or later, joy returns. Sooner or later, I find myself praying, often in tongues.

Another thin place for me is tidying up. I restore my soul as I restore my house. My body works, and feels happy working, but my mind is fallow. Clarity comes as I work, ideas. Peace returns, and I find myself praying…

* * *

How about you? What are the thin places in which you most powerfully experience God’s spirit?

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“Thin places,” where the boundaries between the spiritual and physical world are almost transparent. From @anitamathias1

Discovering your Unique Voice as a Writer or Blogger; Or, who’s afraid of C.S. Lewis?

By Anita Mathias

Thomas Merton

I enjoyed Michael Ward of Planet Narnia’s lecture on C. S. Lewis at Wycliffe College’s Summer School.

Rilke faced with the Archaic Torso of Apollo, with sheer beauty, feels he has wasted his life. His poem ends “You must revise your life.”

I feel like that when I consider that the richness of Lewis’s writing sprang from a lifetime of reading of poetry, myth, literature, the Bible. A life in books.

But then I remember that the world already has a Lewis. That the way for me to find my unique contribution as a writer, “be it less or more, or soon or slow,” is to be myself, to be the woman called forth by the unique circumstances of my life.

* * *

Thomas Merton writes that many writers fail to be really great for the same reason that many Christians fail to be really great Christians. They imitate other people’s poetry or spirituality instead of being the woman called for by all the unique circumstances of their lives. They compromise their integrity.

Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves. They never get around to being the particular poet or the particular monk they are intended to be by God. They never become the man or the artist who is called for by all the circumstances of their individual lives.

They waste their years in vain efforts to be some other poet, some other saint.

They wear out their bodies and minds in a hopeless endeavour to have somebody else’s experiences, or write somebody else’s poems, or possess somebody else’s spirituality.

There can be an intense egoism in following everybody else. People are in a hurry to magnify themselves by imitating what is popular—and too lazy to think of anything better.

Hurry ruins saints as well as artists. They want quick success and they are in such haste to get it that they cannot take time to be true to themselves.

( Thomas Merton, Integrity, New Seeds of Contemplation).

· * *

It’s all very counter-intuitive. In the blogosphere, one is tempted to write in the same way and on the same themes as bloggers who are succeeding.

Sometimes, I come across several bloggers who write in the same distinctive style, and on similar subjects. And while fitting in with the cool kids in style or subject matter will give you short term success, it will affect your long term success, because you will be suppressing the real you—your unique take on the world, your beauty and ugliness, the secret little experiences, obsessions, preoccupations and convictions which are shared by no one else.

If I had heard that lecture on the literary influences of C. S. Lewis when I was younger, I would have left on fire to read more and write more. And these are good, but now I do not exhort myself to do these particularly. Burnouts and middle-age have left me eager to work in a slow and steady sustainable way. I want to finish the work God has given me to do by the end, not necessarily the middle of my life.

So the counter-intuitive way to success as a blogger or writer is to read the great writers, let your thinking be transformed by them, pick up their themes if they resonate deeply with you, but, above all, be yourself.

If you are a kingfisher, flash fire. If you are a dragonfly, draw flame.If you are a writer or a blogger, be yourself.Be the writer or the blogger called forth by all the circumstances of your life. Write in the way that comes naturally to you, about the experiences your life gives you, and your interests and preoccupations. And, to your own surprise perhaps, you will have stumbled upon the secret of originality, even uniqueness.

* * *

Let me offer you a favourite passage from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet.

Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.

This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your while life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse.

Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose. So rescue yourself from general themes and write about what your everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty – describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember.

If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world’s sounds – wouldn’t you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attentions to it.

Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. And if out of this turning-within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. For you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it.

When your Theology makes you Cry: Your Theology is Too Small!

By Anita Mathias

From the early Catholic monks who established Oxford’s oldest colleges; to John Wycliffe, the Morning Star of the Reformation; to Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley burnt at the stake; to John Owen and the Puritans; to Wesley and Whitfield who launched England’s Evangelical Revival from Oxford; the Catholic Oxford Movement in the 19th century; and finally the Inklings, Lewis, Tolkein, Charles Williams in the 20th–Oxford’s social and political history has been intimately allied with the theological struggles of her citizens.

As has the history of England. Or Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Sweden, or Norway, or pretty much any European country.

That is because theology deals with the most important questions. Is there a God? Are we infinite, spiritual beings having a finite experience or finite beings having a finite experience? How can I be happy? What is a good life, and how can I live it?

* * *

But sometimes, our theology makes us cry. ‘Dr Houston,’ who I met last week was convinced of, though troubled by, the fact that all the good Jews, Muslims and Hindus were going to hell while he was going to heaven because he believed the right things. “Don’t be too sure on either count,” I wanted to say.

Rachel Held Evans explores this moral repugnance.

She sees, on CNN, a woman tortured and killed by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

“Twenty years of Christian education assured me that because Zarmina was a Muslim, she would suffer unending torment in hell for the rest of eternity. How the Taliban punished Zarmina in this life was nothing compared with how God would punish her in the next…the idea that this woman passed from agony to agony, from torture to torture, from a lifetime of pain and sadness to an eternity of pain and sadness, all because she had less information about the gospel than I did, seemed cruel, even sadistic.”

And so Calvinism makes her cry.

* * *

This is the second course I’ve taken in Christian history. And I realized afresh that all denominational theologies are compilations by powerful, dominant, brilliant people–Augustine, Aquinas Luther, Calvin, John Owen or Jonathan Edwards–of their sincere readings of Scripture. And the different interpretations and emphases owe something to these individual’s biographies, psychological cast, characters, and the period in which they lived.

Now these clever men could not all be right when they hold differing opinions. Probably all of them are right about some things, and wrong about others.

SO… Do we get lazy and just take Luther or Calvin or Piper’s or Aquinas’s or Nicky Gumbel’s reading of Scripture as absolute truth? Or do wrestle with it ourselves, and let the Spirit speak to us, and highlight in gold marker the truths he wants us to learn–the truths which will be important in our own lives?

* * *

I chafe against the harm done to talented women who have not been allowed to teach, preach or lead because of sentences Paul wrote to 1st century women. Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. These sentences certainly sound misogynistic to 21st century ears, and indeed, in most Western democracies, such attitudes or employment practices are, rightly, illegal!

I do not see that angry, dismissive, contemptuous spirit in Jesus. I asked Are the words of Paul and the words of Jesus equally important?

People commented, “You cannot have a salad bowl approach to Scripture. You cannot pick and choose. The Bible is what it is, not what you would like it to be.”

However, every denomination, including new ones like Calvary Chapel, the Vineyard or the Assemblies of God are based on someone else’s picking and choosing.

So the question is: Do I lazily choose the salad bowl that traditionalist conservative Anglicans, or Chuck Smith at Calvary Chapel or Terry Virgo at New Frontiers have assembled, reflecting their own fears, insecurities, prejudices and scriptural readings? (New Frontiers, for instance, has no women leaders or preachers or teachers. What a waste of talent and spiritual gifts!)

Or do I engage with Scripture as a mere Christian? Not accepting a denominational position—someone else’s salad bowl—but allowing Scripture to speak afresh to me with its own majesty?

And if I should read Scripture wrongly? Well, salvation is not an IQ test. And honest intellectual error is not a sin. Laziness, however, is. I believe Christ will commend me for seeking him in the pages of his word, even if I get some things wrong.

* * *

So what should we do when Calvinism makes us cry?

We turn to Scripture. We turn to the merciful Parable of the Sheep and the Goats in which the righteous are judged on the kindness they showed, not on the basis of the kindness they did not show. We should read God “will judge to each person according to what he has done.” Romans 2:6.

We should remember that Jesus is the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29) not just the sins of those who have made a Reformed profession of faith.

The cosmic significance of Christ and his sacrifice is vaster, deeper and larger than we can comprehend. In him all things hold together!

”See, see where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament!
One drop would save my soul—half a drop! ah, my Christ!—

The precious, redemptive, atoning blood shed for more than Calvinists, Presbyterians or the Reformed. Shed for all men. And women!

The efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice might stagger us. As a friend said recently, when Calvinists shut the door of heaven in men’s faces, Jesus will run and open the windows and back doors.

* * *

When we hear five points of Calvinism–total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, perseverance of the saints–perhaps alarm bells should ring. It’s clever, but is it Christianity?

Jesus never spoke in language which requires an education to decode. His message could be understood by the children to whom he said the Kingdom belonged, while its riches delights theologians.

He told us that God was our father. A father who is loving, and fair, and seeks every means to advance his sons. Theology that consigns the majority of the population to hell is flawed, simply because it conflicts with the loving, seeking Fatherly heart of God as revealed in Scripture (while delighting its professors with the delicious sense of belonging to an inner ring).

The saved in Revelation cry, “Just and true are all your ways.” We are made in God’s image. If we find the consignment to hell of those who have never compelling heard of Jesus unjust and repugnant, if the unfairness makes us cry–perhaps this theological doctrine will be equally repugnant to God’s great heart.

How much more. If we care, how much more will God care: Scripture consistently uses this argument. If Jonah grieved for a plant–Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?” Jonah 4:10.

Similarly, Jesus tells us that God yearns over the lost coin, the lost sheep, the lost son. And so the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost (Luke 19:10).

* * *

I do not yet have a fully developed theology of hell. But I am uncomfortable with the unchristian haste to consign the world God loves to hell. Let’s focus on the positive, the carrot—Christ; not the stick, the negative: Hell.

When our theology makes us cry, our theology is too small. We need to return to Christ, and return to Scripture, and read it with a humble, open mind.

Let’s have a more generous Catechism.

Who takes away the sins of the world?

Christ, the Lamb of God does. (John 1:29).

Whose sins does the Lamb of God take away?

The world’s!

Write, first and foremost, for the joy of it: Lessons from the life of John Owen

By Anita Mathias

A lecture in the course I just attended on Oxford’s Christian history was on John Owen, the Puritan divine who was Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University. Read John Piper’s eloquent tribute to him here.

Owen, despite ill health and personal tragedy (all his 11 children died before him, and only one survived childhood) was unbelievably disciplined and driven. Whether the drive came from the love of God or personal ambition or, most likely, a combination of the two is not clear.

From the age of 12, he disciplined himself to sleep for just 4 hours a night, staying up and studying and later writing late into the night. His health was affected, and later in life, when he was often sick, he regretted the hours of rest he had missed as a youth.

He wrote 22 books. The most famous are The Death of Death in the Death of Christ and The Mortification of Sin in all Believers.

Few read him today. His prose has become impenetrable to the modern ear, unlike his friend and contemporary, John Bunyan’s!

* * *

Was it worth it? All the late nights, the ruined health, the long labours for books which are barely read today.

I personally don’t believe that Christian writing written solely to edify, preach to, or enlighten others is worth it.

Writing should be undertaken first and foremost for the joy of it. Writers should write as birds sing, for joy, and because that is how they were shaped and put together. We write as we work out our thoughts, we write to create shapely and beautiful things, and yes, if others are blessed by it, we rejoice!!

Our writing should edify–build us up–as well as our readers. I suspect Owen was developing and working out his own theology as he wrote, and his writing probably brought peace and light to his own soul, as well as influencing many theologians, such as Jonathan Edwards, John Piper, Sinclair Fergusson, J I Packer, and Simon Vibert. He is predominantly a theologian’s theologian!!

* * *

I felt a bit melancholy listening to the lecture on John Owen, all that labour, the 22 books researched and written over 65 years of just 4 hours sleep a night, and few of them read any more.

And I just hoped he enjoyed the writing of them. Because if he did, then the labour was not entirely wasted—if he found joy in it.

Solomon, reputed to be the wisest man who ever lived, condenses wisdom partly into finding joy in one’s work. A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. Ecc 2:12

So I saw that there is nothing better for a man than to enjoy his work, because that is his lot. Ecc 3:22.

If, or how long, we will be read, we cannot control. So, let’s work for the joy of it, let’s work because we are followers of Christ, and because, gloriously, mysteriously, he has called us to write, and, in peace and serenity, let’s leave the results of our work in his hands!

* * *

And here is a wonderful story, taken from John Piper’s essay on Owen.

King Charles II asked Owen one time why he bothered going to hear an uneducated Tinker like Bunyan preach. Owen replied, “Could I posses the tinker’s abilities for preaching, please your majesty, I would gladly relinquish all my learning.”

“Repeatedly when Bunyan was in prison Owen worked for his release with all the strings he could pull. But to no avail. But when John Bunyan came out in 1676 he brought with him a manuscript “the worth and importance of which can scarcely be comprehended” (see note 33). In fact Owen met with Bunyan and recommended his own publisher, Nathaniel Ponder. The partnership succeeded, and the book that has probably done more good, after the Bible, was released to the world—all because Owen failed in his good attempts to get Bunyan released, and because he succeeded in finding him a publisher. The lesson: “Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,/but trust him for his grace;/behind a frowning providence/he hides a smiling face.”

The Best Way to Develop the Virtue of Humility

By Anita Mathias

C. S. Lewis says we develop humility by getting to know God.

“God wants you to know Him: wants to give you Himself. And He and you are two things of such a kind that if you really get into any kind of touch with Him you will, in fact, be humble – delightedly humble, feeling the infinite relief of having for once got rid of all the silly nonsense about your own dignity which has made you restless and unhappy all your life.

He is trying to make you humble in order to make this moment possible: trying to take off a lot of silly, ugly, fancy-dress in which we have all got ourselves up and are strutting about like the little idiots we are. I wish I had got a bit further with humility myself: if I had, I could probably tell you more about the relief, the comfort, of taking the fancy-dress off – getting rid of the false self, with all its ‘Look at me’ and ‘Aren’t I a good boy?’ and all its posing and posturing. To get even near it, even for a moment, is like a drink of cold water to a man in a desert.

(4) Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man, he will be what most people call ‘humble’ nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

* * *

Pride, unfortunately, is an occupational hazard of bloggers. After a couple of years of blogging, you get used to proclaiming your opinions in a magisterial, vatic style. If you have a “nice” online persona (or, better still, are truly a nice person), you will not attract detractors who shoot you down on a daily basis. The majority of the comments on your blog or on your blog on Facebook or Twitter will be positive, usually in agreement, and occasionally praising you.

All this is not the best soil to develop sweet humility. And there is ultimate freedom and joy in humility because the humble person is free from the burden of self—the need to excessively peacock oneself. “Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights.”

* * *

They say pride is like bad breath. You can smell everyone else’s quite distinctly, but are oblivious of your own. Well, I have recently noticed pride, even arrogance in myself, to my own sorrow. Oh dear!! And this is serious. What more certain—and more boring!!—destroyer of joy than pride?

And so I have begun to pray for humility.

Jesus is wonderful. He says he can ask for whatever we wish. And so I am praying NOT to develop humility in the way one usually develops it—by humiliation.

I would rather develop it in the way Lewis points out–by knowing God and enjoying and revelling in God rather than by a stroll through the valley of humiliation (though that, as Bunyan points out, has its own sweetness).

So Lord, please help me to develop humility in the loveliest way—by focusing on you, rather than myself. Amen

John Wesley’s Cry: Let’s Stand Apart from a Generation of Triflers

By Anita Mathias

Here is John Wesley’s scathing last sermon to the University of Oxford

“So many of you are a generation of triflers; triflers with God, with one another, and with your own souls? For, how few of you spend, from one week to another, a single hour in private prayer! How few have any thought of God in the general tenor of your conversation! Who of you is in any degree acquainted with the work of his Spirit, his supernatural work in the souls of men? Can you bear, unless now and then in a church, any talk of the Holy Ghost? Would you not take it for granted, if one began such a conversation, that it was hypocrisy? In the name of the Lord God Almighty, I ask, what religion are you of? Even the talk of Christianity, ye cannot, will not bear. O my brethren, what a Christian city is this!

I have just attended a very interesting talk on Wesley and Whitfield in a Summer School I am attending at the Wycliffe College, Oxford University, on the Christian history of Oxford.

Wesley began to be a serious Christian at the age of 22 after reading The Imitation of Christ. He writes, “I began to see that true religion was seated in the heart and that God’s law extended to all our thoughts as well as words and actions. I began to set in earnest upon a new life.

I executed a resolution which I was convinced was of the utmost importance, shaking off at once all my trifling acquaintance, I began to see more and more the value of time.I applied myself closer to study.”Similarly, when Whitfield was converted, he writes that he “put off all trifling conversation, put all trifling books away, and was determined to study to be a saint, and then to be a scholar.”

I love reading about the effects of people’s conversions, and I love the new seriousness which infected Wesley after his conversion. He shakes off all relationships which are trivial and “trifling,”-insignificant. He values his time. He applies himself to study.

It is as if in taking God seriously, he has begun to take himself seriously. In fact, beginning to read is a not infrequent effect of conversion.

Trifler is not a word one hears in England, but when I lived in the American South, older people would call a slight, trivial, unserious person, “a trifling person.” Funny how words persist across the Atlantic, which have died out here.

Wesley greatly stressed reading for Christians. Without reading, your knowledge of God, your fellow men, the spiritual life, Christian history, the Bible and theology will be limited to your own experience and conversations. If you read however, within a couple of hours you are enriched by, possibly, decades of someone else’s thinking, study and experience.

Here’s Wesley scolding a minister who would not read,

What has exceedingly hurt you in time past, nay, and I fear to this day, is want of reading.

I scarce ever knew a preacher read so little. And perhaps, by neglecting it, you have lost the taste for it. Hence your talent in preaching does not increase. It is just the same as it was seven years ago. It is lively, but not deep; there is little variety, there is no compass of thought. Reading only can supply this, with meditation and daily prayer. You wrong yourself greatly by omitting this. You can never be a deep preacher without it, any more than a thorough Christian.

O begin! Fix some part of every day for private exercises. You may acquire the taste which you have not: what is tedious at first, will afterwards be pleasant.

Whether you like it or not, read and pray daily. It is for your life; there is no other way; else you will be a trifler all your days, and a petty, superficial preacher. Do justice to your own soul; give it time and means to grow. Do not starve yourself any longer. Take up your cross and be a Christian altogether.

· * *

I wrote yesterday about deciding to take up my calling as a writer with new seriousness. And I guess that means saying goodbye to trifling. Goodbye to spending time on what Wesley calls “trifling acquaintance” and trifling pursuits. Instead, facing my life with a new seriousness and focus which will spring I hope from abiding in Christ.

Ah, a new gauge for whether I read a book, watch a movie, embark on this recreation or social activity. Is it “trifling?” If so, is there a better use of my time—and life?

So help me, God!!

In Which I Discover that my Calling as a Christian and as a Writer are One and the Same!

By Anita Mathias

For many years, I felt guilty about having a calling which was not directly compatible with motherhood, i.e. being a writer.

This guilt was fomented by some well-meaning, and some envious people. Samples: “Well, I love baking, but my children need a mommy more.” “You can write after they grow up. Babies need mommies.” “Don’t put the caboose before the train.” “Trust God to give you time to write after you’ve done the housework and met the needs of your kids.” (All these while I lived in small-town America).

But, oddly, when I don’t write, I am not a brilliant mother or housewife either. I need to go into a room and be quiet and think and create for my own happiness. And if mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

I now see clearly that my quest to be a writer and to follow Christ, are one and the same quest. That writing is my path, my calling, my vocation.

When I see Christ in my mind’s eye, when I think of pursuing Christ between the wings of the cherubim, I see a book at his heart. With “The Lord is my light,” or perhaps with “In the beginning was the word,” the current and former mottoes of Oxford University respectively.

For me, diving into Christ, and diving into my calling as a writer are becoming one and the same. Because that is what, inexplicably God called me to be and to do—to write.

And the writing is not an easy calling. For me to write well and prolifically will take dedication, discipline and self-denial.

* * *

Gerard Manley Hopkins writes,

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
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.

What I do is write; and writing is me. Focusing on my writing is following God’s will for me.

And at the end of my life, I’d love to be able to say, like Jesus did, “I have finished the work you gave me to do,” (John 17:4).