Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

The Faith of Children: Adventures in Bringing up Christian Children

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Irene at 4 in Switzerland, thanking God for the waterfall and Zoe behind her.

Once, when we were travelling in Switzerland with Irene aged 4, she needed the loo in a mall. The lady who left the loo held the door open for her, and she entered, omitting the 25 centime coin you pay to open the door.

Well, outwitted by the Swiss! If you enter a loo without the coin, the door won’t open when you want to leave. I was frantic. Somehow found the receptionist, after some delay, who came and opened the door.
Oh, Irene–she had been alone for a while, locked in a loo.
And when the door was opened, we saw a curly headed cherub, sitting on the toilet seat, smiling. 
“Aww,” said the dour Swiss lady, in spite of herself.
“Irene,” I asked, “Weren’t you scared?”
“Well, yes, at first,” she said. “Then, I prayed, and I wasn’t scared.”
The faith of children!
All that holiday, she spontaneously joined her hands and prayed thanking God for the bears she saw in the pit in Berne (which means Bear), the bears in Berne Cathedral, and for her own stuffed bear she called, “Bearly.” Thanked God for the waterfalls, and the flowers and the Alps and the snow and the high passes. It was as spiritual a holiday as my own, and I couldn’t have been prouder of her.
                                             * * * 
  I often tell the girls that prayer immensely improves one’s IQ, and one’s thinking. Now the answers one gets when one prays are not necessarily logical, may seem crazy or quixotic, but hey, they work. And as one obeys directives received in prayer, you trust the internal voice of God more, and your family trusts you more when you say you have received inner guidance as to a business or family decision.
When Irene played chess, she would frequently bury her face in her hands and pray when she either didn’t know what the best move was, or when she hoped her opponent wouldn’t see what the obvious best move was. (She was very good, ranked among the top two female players in her age group, but she has very sadly given it up.) And often, the inner voice would suggest moves, and she would startle us, by winning against far older players with far higher rankings.
                                     * * * 
Irene at 13 has developed into a serious minded young lady, who takes her studies very seriously, loves them, and excels at them. Her Mother’s Day card was in three languages–Chinese, which she is learning at School, French and English. (Zoe’s was in Latin, Greek, French and English. Their school, Oxford High School, is linguistically strong.)
And so, she often wants to skip church to do beautiful homework.
And I don’t let her skip church. She is fit and strong, friendly, and clever. But, if she does not develop the fourth dimension of her personality, her spirituality, she might well “limp” in life. And, so we insist in active involvement in church, and youth group—and once she gets there, she enjoys it.
I remember the excruciating boredom of church. I went to a Catholic boarding school and had to go to Mass 5 days a week until I was 16; to 2 choir practices a week; a hour of Benediction every Sunday, an additional hour of contemplative prayer, “Adoration” every first Sunday; Blue Army in Middle School, Catechism 5 days a week…Oh, I am sure there was more.
Like Irene, I have a freak verbal memory. Both of us can memorize poetry or well-written prose very easily, almost without realizing that we are doing so. So I emerged from all that forced religion knowing the Gospels almost by heart. (This helps in learning other languages; when I read them in French or the original Koine Greek, it’s easier, because I pretty much know them by heart in English.) I know the Psalms almost by heart, and Proverbs because I heard them read out every day in my childhood, and of course, have read them, and listened to them on tape often as an adult. 
In times of stress, and crisis, and emotional need, comfort came to me in the words of hymns I learned as a child; psalms I had unconsciously memorized as a child; or the words and actions of Jesus when I knew so well. Wisdom, guidance, comfort, peace.
And so, I believe there is some value in requiring children to go to church, because of the repository of wisdom they absorb!
                                     * * * 
Irene, however, does know her Gospels very well. We play them in the car on family trip in a variety of translations, and frequently read a chapter after dinner.
When the girls were younger, we attempted some of the family devotions suggested by Dick Woodward the pastor emeritus of the church we attended, Williamsburg Community Chapel. He suggested family prayer and Bible reading.
Well, Irene was 2 and Zoe 6. Irene completely confused God and her parents, which was rather flattering. She bowed her curly head, joined her hands, and asked, “Please may I have some mukie (milk)?” “No, no, Irene, don’t pray for milk,” we said
.
She frowned, closed her eyes, bowed her head, joined her hands and tried again,
 “Then, please may I have some joocy (juice).” 
Irene’s next prayer attempts were, “God please hep Zo-Zo no poosh me, no peench me, no puuul my hair!”
Zoe prayed earnestly when it was her turn. Dick Woodward however suggested an hour for family devotions, which was an awfully long time. Finally, Zoe burst out exasperated, “I wish God had never invented those Woodworks!!”
                                         * * * 
So, will my kids grow up to be Christians? You know, I believe they will. When all my attempts fail, I oddly relax, and try what I call the nuclear option, soaking the situation in prayer.
 I told Irene, “If you show no interest in anything spiritual, I am going to start praying that God will grab you, and he may need to do something dramatic to get your attention, and you may not like that.”

Well, Irene has great faith in my prayer, since we’ve seen so much change and changed around once we started praying seriously. Her little face grew troubled, and earnest and dark. 
“If you think God might let sad things happen to get my attention and convert me, why should you pray that I would become a Christian?” she asked.
Why indeed? Because life truly does not make sense without God. Life without God is like a very long, complex equation, the sort of thing Roy would work out, covering half a page, which never ever finds a solution, a logical, satisfying answer.  

Some links to blogs you might enjoy

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22 Words: The little dog smiles to himself at his friend’s troubles.
1 Ann Voskamp—The Happy Mom Manifesto
The only thing that has to be written in stone is when to pray.
If one’s not praying regularly, it’s only because something else is regularly loved more than God.
 5. Why be afraid of anything —  when our God is using everything?
7. This is always a choice: You can erupt — or pluck.  You can be an Erupter — or a Plucker. You can choose.
(Pluck a feather from your mother duck breast to warm your nest & nestlings)
10. Happiness isn’t when the house is perfect. Happiness is when His Word and your walk are in harmony.
I, (Anita) often pray, “Don’t let my blog grow faster than I grow spiritually. Don’t let the growth of my blog outstrip my spiritual growth.” It was lovely to see that one of the world’s most successful Christian bloggers prays this too!
 I (Anita) have been unsubscribing from people who cause me to sin (because I find them irritating or unrelentingly show-offy) but am now doing it with more rigour!! Also unsubscribing from school, college or old church friends whom I barely remember. And so my Facebook is far more interesting!!
(An old one I’d bookmarked)
“Our greatest need–my greatest need–is the daily presence of the Holy Spirit.”
These topics, the interior spiritual life are less popular than writing from the Church or other Christians, but so much better for our soul.

“There are so many layers to the healing of the soul. One practice that has brought incredible healing is the taking of a Sabbath. Now when we read the word Sabbath, most of us think that the real issue behind the Sabbath isn’t which day of the week it is but how we live all the time.
I decided to start taking one day a week to cease from work. And what I discovered is that I couldn’t even do it at first.
I would go into depression.
By the afternoon I would be so . . . low.
I realized that my life was all about keeping the adrenaline buzz going and that I was only really happy when I was going all the time. When I stopped to spend a day to remember that I am loved just because I exist, I found out how much of my efforts were about earning something I already have.
Sabbath is taking a day a week to remind myself that I did not make the world and that it will continue to exist without my efforts.
Sabbath is a day when my work is done, even if it isn’t.
Sabbath is a day when my job is to enjoy. Period.
Sabbath is a day when I am fully available to myself and those I love most.
Sabbath is a day when I remember that when God made the world, he saw that it was good.
Sabbath is a day when I produce nothing.
Sabbath is a day when I remind myself that I am not a machine.
Sabbath is a day when at the end I say, “I didn’t do anything today,” and I don’t add, “And I feel so guilty.”
Sabbath is a day when my phone is turned off, I don’t check my email, and you can’t get a hold of me.
Jesus wants to heal our souls, wants to give us the shalom of God. And so we have to stop. We have to slow down. We have to sit still and stare out the window and let the engine come to an idle. We have to listen to what our inner voice is saying.”

Ten lessons from the life of Samson

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As often in Scripture, Samson’s divine destiny is underscored by the fact that he was an unlikely candidate–he was born to a sterile mother of a subject people, after an angelic visitation and promise.
He is “special” from his youth. “He grew, and the Lord blessed him, and the spirit of the Lord began to stir him.”
The Spirit descends on him unpredictably, enabling him to destroy the lion, for example.
People who are sometimes spirit-empowered can have significant weaknesses: Girls, gold or glory in Bill Hybels’ phrase. Samson’s is girls. He cannot resist the pleading of his Philistine fiancée, and tells her the riddle of the lion and honey to his own monetary cost.
God is still good to him, almost “covers for him,” and when he finds himself obligated to give the Philistines 30 sets of garments, he’s enabled to swiftly slay 30 other Philistines, and take their garments.
Samson is a “tragic hero,” to whom bad things happen because of a mixture of his own lack of judgement, and other people’s treachery. However, God does not desert this tragic hero, and when he is handed over to the Philistines, the Spirit of the Lord comes on him, helping him to accomplish feats of superhuman strength, such as killing a thousand Philistines with a donkey’s jawbone!
Despite his weaknesses–his anger, his hot-headedness, his weakness for women–God continues to show him favour, as when he opens up a spring in the desert to satisfy the thirsty Samson.
His attraction to women repeatedly overcomes his better judgment. Sadly, he is still not capable of learning from his mistakes. He falls in love with another Philistine woman, Delilah, and continues trusting her, despite repeated proofs of her treachery toward him. He cannot resist female cajoling!!
The Spirit of the Lord stays with him through many errors of judgement, and hot-headedness. Finally, when he risks the symbol of his consecration to God—his long hair—which Delilah shears, we are told “the Lord left him.”
However, the Lord does not entirely abandon his flawed servant. His hair grows again. His heart turns towards God. And in response to his prayer, “O Sovereign Lord, remember me. Oh God, please strengthen me just once more,” he is given superhuman, supernatural strength once again, and pulls down the pillars of the temple, killing three thousand Philistines—and himself.
Samson’s story explains the phenomenon of the flawed man of God who is still a brilliant writer, preacher, administrator, or leader, while lustful, greedy or obsessed with fame or power.
And for them, for Samson, for us when we mess up, there is this consolation: God loves us. His spirit does not rapidly depart from us even when we prove ourselves unworthy of him. And when it does, we can still implore him to return, with our repentance and renewed surrender. And then, he mercifully shows us his face once again, and fills us again!

Ninja Blogging versus Stream of Spirit Blogging

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Painting by Fitzy

Rachel Held Evans and John Piper are Ninja bloggers. Pretty much every post is well and carefully written, and appears to have gone through multiple drafts.

I sometimes wonder if I should blog that way–producing the best writing I am capable of in every post, even if I have far fewer of them.
                                   * * * 
I produced carefully written, much revised and rewritten work for years. And also developed writers’ block–was so self-critical that writing became anxiety, self-doubt and work rather than play for me. It lost its joy.
For me to try to blog that way would be the sure way to stress and writer’s block. 
For me blogging is a way to psychological, spiritual and emotional health, as I keep current with what I am working out intellectually or spiritually or emotionally. It is deep play.
So, I have made peace with being good-enough rather than consistently excellent in my writing on this blog (as in all other areas of my life).
                                  * * * 
One of the most empowering writing teachers I had, Charlie Sugnet at the University of Minnesota, would give us really low-bar, low risk of failure assignments. I did the best writing of my life that term. (See this  or this published in my first book, Wandering Between Two Worlds).
 
Setting a low bar—being willing to open myself to the possibility of small failures on a daily basis–that is the only way I can see myself maintaining this enterprise of sharing my innermost thoughts with the world on an almost-daily basis without burning out.
* * *
What I am far more interested in could be called, I suppose, stream-of-Spirit blogging.
To hear what the Spirit is saying to me. To record it.
When I don’t know what to write about, which is often, I either look at my drafts folder for the overflow of those creative days when I have ideas for five posts, or I ask, “What is the spirit saying to me? What worry, joy, emotion, idea, insight or epiphany is uppermost in my thoughts?” And then I play with it. And as I do, the germ of the idea frequently develops into a fully-fledged 800 word blog post.
My blog will consist of other posts, of course, but this will be one way for me to maintain my own interest in it. To try to hear what the Spirit is saying to me, and to record it. (God’s ideas are limitless, and by tapping into them, we too find limitless ideas for blog posts.)
“A man’s reach must exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” Robert Browning wrote.

So I guess my perhaps far-fetched ultimate ideal for the blog is that I may overhear what the Spirit is saying to me, and saying to the Church, and record it. Can a blogger or a blog have a sort of prophetic ministry? Who knows? Perhaps!
                                          
(edited archive post)

Still by Lauren Winner, and Other Books I’ve Read This Year

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Another mid-life revision is my two year project to build up to reading at least a book a week. I used to do this, but being on my laptop so much means I do read a lot—but online newspapers, magazines, blogs, social media stuff, rather than books.
So my goal was to complete a book in 30 days in Jan, in 29 days in Feb, in 28 days in March, 27 days in April, and 26 days in May. So far, I have kept to this, but I can see it getting harder as it gets to a book a week (about 45 pages a day), and perhaps having to cheat by listening to books on my iPhone as I walk.
* * *
Anyway, the book I finished this morning was Lauren Winner’s Still which I read because I was sent a complimentary autographed copy. I both enjoyed it, and was disappointed.
I enjoyed the structure: several very short chapters, many of them not meaty enough to be blog posts even, but the majority of them interesting. It was like observing a subject in a refracting mirror from different angles. Winner’s formidable intelligence probably intimidated her editor, as many of the chapters, while charming enough, were slight. Far from being an instant spiritual classic as some reviews said, the book will probably not be read in five years. The pastiche didn’t quite hold together, in my opinion.
It’s thematically problematic too. The classic arc for a memoir is “I once was lost, but now am found.” We need that, we poor benighted readers. Tell us how you found light, grace, joy, God, so we know there’s hope for us too. But the narrative arc of Winner’s memoir is “I once was lost, and now am a little bit less lost,” but the less-lostness is not convincing. Which makes the book less satisfying. “Yes, oh dear, yes, the novel tells a story,” E.M. Forster famously said. So much a memoir!
Winner says she stopped praying, and her spiritual life shrivelled very early in a six year unhappy marriage from which she desperately wanted out—and did eventually leave. Church suddenly seemed very boring. And so she gives up prayer, so she could give up her marriage.
Interestingly, she continued her career as a professional Christian—writing books on “Christian sex” and spiritual disciplines; teaching in a divinity school; speaking at Christian conferences and training for and receiving ordination—while her own spiritual life was dry, desperate and almost dead.
This disjunction between the public image and persona and the inner spiritual reality probably lengthened and deepened her spiritual crisis. She wrote books on Christian sex, when her marriage was withering; wrote books on spiritual disciplines while church bored her, and she could not pray.
The worst thing about living a lie is that it becomes second nature. The mask, the act, become a reality; the situationally right words come so easily that you forget what the true words are. When you are living a lie, when you are a professional Christian with a dead spiritual life, you can begin to forget what a vital spiritual life looks like, or to even believe there can be one. You almost no longer believe in the truth of joy, and peace and being filled to bursting with the Holy Spirit.  Pretending to be what you are not has become second nature–and, for all you know, everyone else is pretending too.
If I were Winner’s spiritual director, I would say: There’s so much more. I would say, “Why not be totally changed into fire?” I would use old-fashioned words: repentance, surrender, humility. But that’s the peril of being formidably intelligent as Winner is. It’s harder to get straight talk, which we all need—for the realm of the spirit is a democracy.
So ultimately, it is a book which outlines a private boredom with, and total breakdown of faith. Towards the end of the book, she is still hanging in there. Still struggling. She has committed to the outward expressions of the Christian faith: it is her job and her writing and speaking career, and she is besides, newly ordained as an Episcopalian minister.
The real gold of the spiritual life—joy, peace, love, the Holy Spirit, surrender, intimacy with God—so far seem to have evaded Lauren, but she is still there, as she tells us. Perhaps she needs a more fiery spiritual director, or perhaps yet another crisis– which tosses old spiritual certainties and truisms aside–to come, perhaps for the first time, to the fire and joy at the heart of the Christian faith.
Writers must write, and Lauren writes well, and so I don’t regret reading her painful narrative of the valley of dead faith and dry bones, but I wish she had waited, figuratively speaking, for a spiritual spring to write it, so that it would have had more nourishment for her readers.
  * * *
Other books I’ve read this year: Roy Godwin’s “Grace Outpouring,” about co-operating with God in the remarkable spiritual experiences at Ffald-y-Brenin.
Ann Voskamp’s memoir 1000 Gifts about discovering God through the process of praise and thanksgiving, “Eucharisteo precedes the miracle.”
A. S. Byatt’s wonderful “Victorian” novel, Angels and Insects, set when Darwin was turning people’s religious convictions topsy-turvy.
And Mary Oliver’s elegant poems. I’ve read a few each day with much pleasure.
Some books on the go: Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle,R. T. Kendall’s The Anointing on the Holy Spirit, and Berniere’s Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.

In the Watches of the Night, I will Think of Thee

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Part of my mid-life revision of life is trying to change tiny, but leveraged, habits, which together change a life.
Everyone, from Trollope, to Hemingway, to Bruce Wilkerson testifies to the power of early rising. However, I have the classic depressive personality, waking slowly, and really getting going much later. I am groggy in the mornings, and tired and brain-fogged all day if I get up too early. In the evenings, I am wide-awake and very creative.
So I have been getting to bed earlier in the evenings. Setting the alarm for bedtime, rather than waking.
Of course, I am often wide awake when the alarm shrills at 10.40 p.m., time to get to bed. But I have been going to bed anyway, and praying.
In the watches of the night, I will think of thee.It’s strangely peaceful, actually, going through one’s life in prayer, putting one’s life in the force-field of radiant light and energy which emanates from God. Letting that light shine on areas of weakness and sadness—weight, disappointing writing productivity, weaknesses in relationships. To pray for family. To bathe areas of my life—housekeeping, my garden, future plans, in the light of God in prayer.
Of course, ideally, I would sleep at night, not pray—but I am getting used to this new early bedtime, and am enjoying the extra time opened up to pray through my life, to submit it to God’s radiation.
I am in a strangely happy phase of life now in which I realize all the things I cannot do. I cannot touch spirits with my writing, unless the Spirit touches me. I cannot lose weight unless the Spirit heals me, and strengthens me. I cannot be a loving person unless the Spirit fills me and loves from within me.
So prayer to me is an incredibly powerful thing—seeking power and healing and strength in areas of woundedness, brokenness, low self-confidence, and weakness. And slowly being healed, strengthened and changed!!
Truly, it’s the most powerful thing I can do!!

The Great Time versus Money Dilemma. “Plain Living and High Thinking.”

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The ultimate economy: Vegetable gardening in the snow!



Roy bought a wood chipper for £150, and is now chipping all the branches and twigs I have pruned, and two ornamental trees in sunny spots which we’ve cut down (heresy?) to replace with fruit trees
Hmm. It would cost us £12 a year for the Council to clear one bin of garden waste a fortnight. But how much to buy mulch? Or compost? And how much time wasted in weeding if we did not not use mulch–which I used to hate for its ugliness and unimaginativeness? So instead, we are putting our twigs and sticks and pruned branches, even ivy and leaves into our chipper, and out comes a fine wood shaving mulch, which we’re putting around our plants to keep weeds out. 
A good investment? Probably. Because the mulch will become compost sooner or later, another economy. 
                                          * * *
When I was a young mum, everyone in my church in Virginia was reading a book called The Tight-Wad Gazette by Amy Dacyzyn. The book promotes frugality so that the mum can stay home with the kids, and the husband retires early.
 Amy’s point of view was that jobs are for dummies, because of the costs of transport, work clothes, lunches out, take-away dinners bought by exhausted mums, stress and consequent disorganization and items bought to replace lost or broken ones; impaired health and immunity. She felt that if a mum stayed home, kept a notebook recording where things were cheapest, shopped for loss-leaders in four stores, and practiced frugality, creativity, and ingenuity, then one could manage on a single salary–and eventually no salary.
 I found the thought that there was no better use of my time than shopping cost-effectively in numerous stores, buying in bulk and being frugal at home deeply offensive. I used to get so incoherently angry at the suggestion that this was the best use of a woman’s time (and time equals life!) that I probably did not make sense to the other mums who were reading and loving that book, and Mary Hunt’s Cheapskate book which was equally popular.
                                             * * *
I find an emphasis on frugality stressful and spirit-cramping. When we decided to put our kids in private school and needed serious money, I started a business, a small publishing company.
I find it interesting and annoying that the literature aimed at Christian women stresses frugality and thrift, rather than businesses which employ leveraging (setting your time, talents, skills and money to work so as to earn the highest possible return on them).
Frugality and thrift, carried to an extreme, cramps my spirit; business I actually enjoy. Entrepreneurship is exciting for me, and creative; seeing opportunities and niches in areas I am interested in, books for instance.
                                          * * * 
However, Amy Dacyzyn had lots of nice ideas which we adopted. She says kids have as much fun getting involved in economically productive activities, like gardening or picking berries, as when playing with toys. In making real jam rather than playdough food. Our older daughter didn’t have much interest in the toys we got her–a dollhouse, a large play-kitchen, a train-set, ride-on toys, seesaws, swings–but loved planting, and harvesting things with us (harvesting flowers and veg. far too early, eating chilis raw, but hey, all part of learning!).
Roy began teaching Zoe to cook when she was under three. At first, she stood on a stool, watching him, and the skillet while he tidied up. And you could hear her squeak, “Booning, Daddy,  booning,” when the entree began to burn. We impressed the importance of not touching hot dishes; she touched them, of course, and after that would warn us with big, wide eyes, “Fire. Hot.” 
Zoe had as much fun cooking and planting bulbs (“I go help Daddy plant glubs,” she’d run up to explain to me) as playing with plastic toys.
She chopped veggies with Roy from the time she was three, occasionally cutting her fat little fingers.  She was able to cook soups and pasta by herself at 9, and elaborate meals (roast duck with potatoes, stuffing and gravy) at 11. At 17, she is a superb cook, who can whip up anything from a recipe, and feels sorry for her friends who cannot cook pasta or muffins. So some of these theories, that fun can be had while learning life-skills, are true.
                                             * * *
To return to that mulcher. Amy had a chart showing two families on a similar income. When there is extra money, one family goes out to eat, goes out to a New Year’s Eve dance, etc. The other family buys “capital goods” –chain saw, mulchers, composters, sewing machines which they use to save or make money.
The life-style of the two families ends up being vastly different. Within a couple of decades, the family who invested in capital goods has foreign holidays, a second home, a swimming pool; the first family, who had more fun in the short run had been riddled with debt all their working life, and landed up with meagre savings after a life-time’s work. 
I saw that all the time when I lived in America, the life-style contrast between the grasshopper and the ant who earn the same income, more or less. And though the life style of the second family seems so dreary, they have more fun in the end. 
                                                  * * *
So I suppose wisdom is the mean between extremes. Our family loves travel, and has been to many countries together, and those experiences have been enriching and educational, have increased our confidence because we’ve had to function in unfamiliar situations and countries, and have taught us much about human nature. Have taught us much about history, culture, and art. Been a source of joy. But one thing I cannot deny: travel is expensive, especially as one gets older, and roughing it is less appealing. 
On the other hand, Roy and I hate waste, and for most of the year, try to find pleasure and joy and stimulation as low on the hog as we can–in walks, in nature, in gardening, in reading, in movies, and theatre and art galleries–and even in work!!  And “the plain living and high thinking” for most of the years pays for these educational explorations and adventures.
                                             * * * 
So what should one value more, time or money?   I think time is always more valuable than money (provided one is not in debt!)  However, there is also much satisfaction and pleasure in creative economy, I say as I watch the coriander, parsley, salad, beans and zucchini I am growing from seed flourish, and the veg peelings in my composter become dark, rich earth. 

The Christian’s First Duty: (Surprise!!) Happiness

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George Mueller writes in his Autobiography that the Christian’s first duty is to get his soul happy in the Lord.
“I saw more clearly than ever, that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day, to have my soul happy in the Lord.  The first thing to be concerned about was not, how much I might serve the Lord, how I might glorify the Lord; but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished.
The first thing I did, after having asked in a few words the Lord’s blessing upon His precious Word, was to begin to meditate on the Word of God; searching, as it were, into every verse, to get blessings out of it; not for the sake of the public ministry of the Word; not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated upon; but for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul.
The result of this is, that there is always a good deal of confession, my soul invariably is even sensibly nourished and strengthened and that by breakfast time, with rare exceptions, I am in a peaceful if not happy state of heart.” 
* * *
Luther too treated the lack of joy almost as an emergency. “First, when I feel that I have become cool and joyless in prayer because of other tasks or I take my little psalter, hurry to my room and, as time permits, I say quietly to myself and word-for-word the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and, if I have time, some words of Christ or of Paul, or some psalms, just as a child might do.
·      * * *
I have been reading The Gospel of John this year, (what a rich inspiring book) and have been struck that the Risen Christ’s first words, first commission, to his disciples, who basically had failed their Finals after three years of apprenticeship, was not a task, nothing to do with doing but with being.
“Peace be with you,” he says, and he offers those who failed, those who fled, those who denied knowing him, the friends who vanished, a gift, “Peace be with you.  Receive the Holy Spirit.”
Why did he offer these fickle friends a gift? Oh, he couldn’t help it. Such was his nature!
   * * *
Sometimes our faith is so doing-ey, so active. It can almost feel like a burden!
But it’s not meant to be like that. When Jesus, in the Last Supper discourse, tells his disciples the secrets of the universe, he is concentrating, interestingly, on their emotional states, their inner world. “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God.” “Ask and you shall receive, and your joy will be complete.” “Peace I give you, my peace I leave with you.” He is not stressing doing, but the emotional states in which they are to dwell and linger. The joy, peace, trust and love which would prove that they were his disciples. His last injunctions were not about doing, but being.
I went through a rough period when my children were young. I was exhausted, my writing froze, my marriage was turbulent and tempestuous, and my house was a mess. I worked with a sense of stress, failure, guilt, falling behind, and not achieving goals.
I wouldn’t be able to work or live like that anymore.
Now, if I am upset, or angry, or sad or depressed, I basically don’t work. I pray, either while walking, or gardening, or tidying my house, or I just lie down and pray until sanity returns. Have a prayer-nap—i.e. pray until I drift off for a brief timer-regulated nap. (I know it sounds self-indulgent, and perhaps it is, but having trained myself to pray myself to sleep, it has become natural, and a quick way of returning to peace.)
I was cross and grumpy the other day, and it just took a short walk in our woods with all the birds singing (we are lucky to have a small wood/orchard as part of our property) to restore joy and well-being to my soul. Even Milton, most hard-working of poets, wrote that is an offence against nature to stay indoors studying in May, when nature is so gay!
I love writing, and I love blogging, but I guess it comes second to my own peace, happiness and joy, and when these have leaked away or are threatened, I just slow down and take the time to get my soul right with God before I continue with my day.
And believe me, I am far more productive as a result!