Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

Memories of Half-term: Waterfowl and beaches near the New Forest

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 Well, we’re well and truly back from a restful, creative, contemplative break by the sea. I love the sea, and try to get there as often as I can. It renews me, and fills me with creative thoughts, and perspective. And here are a few more photographs from the break (the last, I assure you:-)

Swans on Sturt pond.

Swan using its wings as a sail. 
A cygnet

Swans feeding?

Sandpiper

I’m guessing this is a little egret.  (Please correct me if I’m wrong.)

It was a truly gorgeous day on the beach, which was almost deserted.

This looks like a young family trying to escape over the desert.    But in fact, they are just returning from Hurst castle on the track along the top of the spit.

The view out to sea

Can 140 characters make anything happen?

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 Poetry makes nothing happen, Auden wrote despairingly. And can tweets, 140 curt characters, make anything happen?

Yes, they can.
* * *
The precious jewels I hold in my heart, which change the way I see and think and live, are all tweetable.
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. Thoreau, Walden (134 characters).
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (135 characters).
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy. Blaise Pascal sums up his deepest spiritual experience (31 characters).
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. Gandhi, (55 characters).
Or Ann Voskamp writing of Hagar, dying of thirst within a bowshot of a well, “There is always a well. All is well.” (38 characters).
Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. C.S. Lewis (66 characters)
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver.”Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.” C. S. Lewis. 132 characters
 * * *
And the ideas of the said King which mean the most to me, and are most life-changing are eminently tweetable.
Anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 63 characters.
He who seeks to save his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake and for the gospel will find it. 114 characters.
Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be measured to you. Edited, 125 characters.
Yet to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. 96 characters.
Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. 125 characters.
Do not let your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. Trust in the Father, trust also in me. 101 characters.
 * * *
Once we have done the hard work of thinking, our brain instinctively sums it up in a tweet, I believe. Mottoes, goals, eureka moments, epiphanies: we unconsciously summarize these in epigrams. Short and sweet. Less is more. Brevity is the soul of wit.
Good politicians instinctively realize that “tweets,” aphorisms are the most effective and best-remembered part of speeches.
I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. Churchill, 61 characters. (I guess that’s what George Osborne’s offering us!)
We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. (140 characters) Churchill, 3rd June, 1940.
And across the pond:
The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. 110 characters Abraham Lincoln, Gettyburg Address
Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country. JF Kennedy, Inaugural Addess, 82 characters
Read my lips: no new taxes.  George Bush, 24 characters
Yes, we did. Preisdent Obama, 10 characters
·       * *
·        
Well, do tweets make a difference? It depends on who you follow. But, I am guessing that a steady drip of tweets of wisdom, encouragement, and a Godward gaze from @nickygumbel, @johnpiper, @annvoskamp, @rickwarren, @maxlucado (to name some prominent tweeters) surely makes a difference to their readers. Or those of @richardrohrofm, whose most recent tweet is
When younger, I praised God as a worthy exercise and song. Now there is a kind of praising that instead–sings me and sings through me.
All these are largely positive tweeters. I wouldn’t follow a largely negative tweeter for long: I can generate quite enough negativity for myself, thank you, and scan tweets for the thought-provoking, true, optimistic, God-saturated, blood-rosy vision, which is just as true as the half-empty glass.
                                                                                                          * * *
Our words count. Thinking hard to condense complex thoughts in a couple of sentences is work–and work worthwhile. Tweeting is good practice for writers. It’s training in Orwell’s maxims for good writing
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. Never use a long word where a short one will do. (104 characters) and in Virginia Woolf’s
Write in the fewest possible words, as clearly as possible, exactly what one means (83 characters).
So be encouraged, tweeters: we can express substantive thoughts, capable of changing the way we (and perhaps our regular readers) see and live and rejoice and trust and love in two or three brief sentences of 140 characters!

365 Project: A walk in the New Forest

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A cheerful breakfast before a walk in the woods.

A New Forest pony causes a minor traffic jam

A lovely leafless glade

Lots of interesting trees

The crown of a single tree

There is plenty of interest in the leaf litter.

A sprig of lichen

Moss growing on exposed tree roots makes interesting patterns.

A wonderful February walk in the New Forest, Hampshire. Well, it was new in 1079, when William of Conqueror claimed it as a Royal hunting preserve!

Elijah: The training of a prophet

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File:Abraham Bloemaert - Landscape with the Prophet Elijah in the Desert - WGA2277.jpg

   

                          Elijah

 

Now Elijah the Tishbite, said to Ahab,

“As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives,

whom I serve,

there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years

except at my word.” 1 Kings 17

 

The Lord exalts his prophets to the court of princes.

He tells him what is to happen:

knowledge which can make him seem crazed.

 

And how does he equip his prophet

for the burden

of the certain knowledge of what is to come,

the burden of being thought a fool

which can belong to those who hear the word of God?

 

After seasons of great visibility,

He moves him to hiddenness.

* * *

 

Then the word of the LORD came to Elijah: 

“Leave here, turn eastward

and hide in the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan.

 

“The Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan, Lord?

But I heard you call me to the court of the King

I thought that was my vocation.”

 

“You did.

I did.

It was.

 

But I now call you to something different.”

 

“But the Kerith Ravine is barren,

It has no sources of food.

No one lives there.

 

I have heard men tell of the healing power of social support

I have read that it is not good for man to be alone.

 

I have heard that iron sharpens iron,

that you show each man a slightly

different diamond-facet of your face,

so that in community, the jigsaw

of your revelation of yourself is complete.

 

‘Go alone to the Kerith Ravine,’ you now say.

I might be lonely there.”

 

“You might, Elijah,

 You will.

But I will meet you there,

Teach you there,

Comfort you there.

 

Can I be heard amidst the pomp of Ahab’s court,

the adulation of the people of Israel,

the laughter, warmth and happy

after-echoes of friendship?

When you talk all the time,

when people talk to you all the time

when conversation echoes in your ears,

and you leave head whirring with yeasty talk,

can you still hear my voice,

my gentle whisper?

 

It is more difficult.

 

You may well be lonely.

But I who created you

And know each strand of the tangled roots

Of fear, faith, courage and instability in your heart,

Which neither you nor the world has guessed at,

 

I will be your friend.

 

I will nourish you,

Show you the joy of my presence,

Fill you with laughter as I draw near,

Flow through you in waves of liquid love,

Make you drunk with the wine of my spirit.

I will succour you.

 

I will teach you that though I am a giver

And love to give good things,

I am, in fact, enough.

 

And you will know that for sure

When all you have is me.

 

I am even practical. 

You will drink from the brook,

And I have ordered the ravens to feed you there.

Providing for you though what your people reckon unclean.

* * *

 

So Elijah went to the Kerith Ravine,

and the ravens brought him bread and meat

and he drank from the brook.

 Some time later, the brook dried up

 Because there had been no rain in the land. 

 

“Lord, did I not hear you command

me to drink from this brook.

And it is now dry.

Lord?  Lord?”

 

“You did, Elijah,

I did.

And it is indeed now dry.

 

But, though you do not suspect me of it,

I am, in fact, intensely practical.

And I speak new words.

Go at once to Zarephath of Sidon and stay there.

 I have commanded a widow to supply you with food.

 

Yes, I know it is the centre of Baal worship.

But I will again provide for you through the least

Of those you reckon unclean

Blessing them and you

In the river of blessing in which I delight.”

                           * * *

 

“But I had heard you call me to be a hermit by the brook.

I have grown to rather like it here.

I thought that was my vocation.”

 

“You did.

I did.

It was.

 

But today is a new day,

And I come to you with new words.

As I will keep coming as long as you live

Offering you fresh wisdom, fresh love,

Manna and mercies new every morning.”

 

So Elijah went to Zarephath.

My Journey from Atheist to Christian: A Guest Post by Cat Caird

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Cat Caird
I would really love to share my journey from being an atheist to being a Christian with you. 


The real pinnacle moment for me was when I was 17 and I encountered Jesus for the first time.  Before that I was never interested in Christianity. I was brought up by atheist parents and thought Christians were a bunch of weird folk that wore sandals and waved flags to cheesy music to a God that didn’t exist. Through my teenage years I often questioned many things about life and thought deeply about things and I realised after a while that I had everything that I could possibly want and what the world deemed to make you happy: success (in good grades and having a job), a boyfriend, friends to go drinking with, partying every weekend etc. What more could a girl want? But thoughts would often race through my mind about how unhappy I was, a blackness buried deep that nothing could soothe or make sense of.


Until one day I met a Christian and a Christian who was different to everyone else and didn’t seem like the cheesy Christian I was expecting. This friend soon began talking about Jesus and she gave me some Christian music to listen to, which led her to inviting me to a Christian music event which completely changed my life!
So here I was at this event surrounded by Christians and listening to some good music, suddenly there was a break in the music and a guy got up and started to speak. This really caught my attention, this guy started to talk about Jesus but it wasn’t the Jesus I had heard of before. The Jesus I had heard about was some 2000 year old guy on the cross which resulted in people wearing funny robes and singing badly to 3 chords.
But this guy spoke about Jesus in a different way, a Jesus that was alive now and cared about people and cared about me. After he spoke there was some prayer time and a lady came up and prayed for me (I don’t think she knew I wasn’t a Christian).  She started to tell me things that God was revealing to her about me. This again was a complete shock: she was telling me things that no one knew about and she was telling me what God thought of me. I left that place very confused.
This completely shook my foundations and led me to question a lot of things about my life, Christianity and if there was really a God that loved me.
 I started to go to church and hear the Gospel. I also started reading the Bible and it become apparent to me through reading the Bible that it was authentically about Jesus and that actually Jesus was asking me to make a decision to follow him.
But there was a snag. I had been dating a guy for about a year and it was getting serious; however he had no interest in Christianity at all. But I was getting to that point where I was going to become a Christian and I felt deeply that Jesus was asking me to make a choice between going out with this guy and carrying on the path I was on, or dropping everything and follow him.
On April 11th 2004 I made my choice. I broke up with my boyfriend in the morning and went to church in the evening and because it was Easter Sunday there was a wonderful Gospel message with an appeal at the end for people to follow Christ. Except of course, I was scared to go up to the front! And I stayed put until it got to the point where the preacher said “There is still someone here who needs to come up to the front” Well If that wasn’t a sign then I don’t know what is! My legs took me to the front where I gave my life to Christ.
Since then it hasn’t been easy. I don’t think I understood what it meant to follow Jesus until I got to Uni and became a part of the Christian Union there and started hearing more of the Gospel and of who Jesus is. But one thing I have noticed is that I have a security that I never had before, there is no need to strive for what the world calls success when life is found in Jesus, and he shone the light in the darkness which brings such peace!
I went through so many emotions during that year, some spiritual attacks with bad dreams, some fighting with friends and parents about whether I was joining a cult and some just within myself – is this Jesus really real and does he really love me? Yet as I look back now, I know that through those struggles Jesus was always with me and pointing me to the Cross where I glance and see how rubbish I am and then I look again and see how much he loved me and that he would never leave me.

Cat Caird is married and works as a Staff Worker with UCCF. She blogs at Sunshine Lenses.
Thank you, Cat!!

It is I; don’t be afraid!

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It is I; don’t be afraid.
So, the disciples row for “three or three and a half miles” (I love these charming details, John striving to remember accurately, and how they make it easier for us to believe in truth of these memoirs and autobiographical reflections of Jesus.)
It’s dark, the wind is blowing, the waters are rough.
And a figure looms out of the darkness, walking on the waters, approaching the boat. Understandably, they are terrified.
But Jesus reassures them, It is I; don’t be afraid.
* * *
And that is the aspect He wears too. He shows himself sometimes when it is dark, and the winds are strong, and the waters are rough. He comes towards us, a dark figure, and we cannot see his face, and we do not know his name, and we are terrified.
But it is Him, nonetheless, and face to face with the stranger in the darkness, we are to remember God’s most consistent command from first to last: Do not be afraid.
And so I will not be afraid.
   * * *
A health scare has been swirling around me for the last 3 weeks. Doctor’s visits, hospital visits, ultrasounds. Two more tests next week. I google. Oh what a dreadful thing to do, and yet, how can one not?
Who is he who comes walking on the waters, in the dark, when the winds are strong, and the sea is rough? The dark figure terrifies, until he speaks, “It is I. Do not be afraid.”
I will not be afraid. My next appointments are Monday and Thursday, but then I will have to wait for the results. I am not going to waste the time of uncertainty in fear, but live in trust, tasting the goodness of God.
I will taste the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
        * * *
The Israelites response to the manna which sustained them was “What is it?” In Hebrew, Manna. “Tell me your name,” Jacob uncertainly asks the dark figure who disabled him. “Who is it?” the disciples wondered, terrified, as a dark figure loomed of out the storm and darkness, approaching them.
The answer was always, is always, the same.
It is the Lord.
* * *
Everything we have comes from God. He comes to us in spring and summer–and winter too. In day–and night too. In birth–and death too. In success–and failure too.  In health–and sickness too.
“Yes,” I say to the figure, walking towards me on the stormy waters.
I pray that nothing will be malignant, that all will be benign. I pray for health.
But I also say to the dark figure walking towards me amidst the roaring winds and turbulent sea. “I know it is you. I have trusted you in the past and I trust you now. I know you.”
“And so, however the dice falls, I know nothing shall separate me from your love, and all shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well.”

Blessed are the Failures

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Blessed are those who have failed.
Who set out to do glorious, inconsequential things
Race across Everest, Antarctica,
higher, faster, stronger, first
Break records, set new ones, break those too.
Whose bright promise was broadly praised
And they believed their press.
Who have schemed and striven and intrigued,
Only to find themselves with empty hands
Wrestling though the night with the Mysterious One
Whose face they cannot see,
Who will not share his name,
Refusing to let him go unless he blesses them.
And then he does.
And this is the blessing:
He wrenched the tendon of the hip
So that, ever after, we walk with a limp.
Ah, what kind of blessing is this?
You have disabled me.
I will never run again.
Climbs will exhaust me.
I will have to leave my shepherding to others.
And this was the blessing:
You slowed me down.
I can no longer walk miles
I have to be deliberate about where I walk.
I tire easily.
I have to choose my projects prayerfully.
I will forever
limp through life:
And that is my blessing!!
Limping, slow enough to see beauty.
Walking at a child’s pace,
slow enough to listen.
No more running, no more sprinting
But limping at a slow, measured pace,
My routes meditated over, considered carefully.
I will now always need to ask for help
From the Nameless Great One
Who crippled me
because I have to!
I cannot manage without it.
My limp sets me free
From having to climb, scale, ascend
I have time for people.
To look at them, to see, to listen.
Delivered from running,
from the possibility of ever running,
I will now limp though
an examined, reflective, contemplative life,
keeping pace with the slowest of these, the youngest of these,
the Josephs, the Benjamins,
learning, at last, to love.