random | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Leaving “A Little Juice”—One Secret of Persisting in Running, Writing, and Living Well

Eric Liddell: When I run, I feel his pleasure.

Haruki Murakami has a strange and wonderful book called “What I Talk about When I Talk about Running.” What he talks about when he talks about running is running, yes, but also writing hard, and living hard, and the art of success, and the freedom of discipline.

In a wonderful Japanese reflection on theodicy he says,

“When I think about it, having the kind of body that easily puts on weight is perhaps a blessing in disguise. In other words, if I don’t want to gain weight, I have to work out hard every day, watch what I eat, and cut down on indulgences. Eventually, your metabolism will greatly improve, and you’ll end up much healthier, not mention stronger. You can even slow down the effects of aging.

People who naturally keep the weight off don’t need to exercise or watch their diet. Which is why, in many cases, their physical strength deteriorates as they age. If you don’t exercise, your muscles will weaken, as will your bones. Those of us who have a tendency to gain weight should consider ourselves lucky that the red light is so clearly visible. So this physical nuisance should be viewed as a blessing. Of course, it’s not always easy to see things this way.”

“Now, after years of running, my musculature has changed completely,” Murakami reports. He develops the body of a runner, which is apparently so distinctive that New Yorker writer Mark Singer tracked down a genius marathon cheat, Dr. Kip Litton, because he did not have “the classic lean and loose-limbed runner’s physique.”

(And yes, musculature does change, infinitesimally. I started my most recent running programme in January, and bought a body composition Tanita scale which reports that I am slowly gaining muscle, while losing another three pounds, bringing my cumulative weight loss to 25 pounds! I have much more to lose, yes, but yay for more muscle and a better metabolism which, like compound interest, gives back while you sleep.)

* * *

I have had many stabs at running, and have always loved it…but, ironically, my temperament has tripped me up. The standard training programmes recommend training every other day, but I enjoy it so much that I try to run every day, and then injure my feet, ankles or knees! Or develop colds and coughs. And then stop!

This time, in addition to using a high-quality rebounder, and doing some yoga, so as to get stronger and prevent injury, I am using a Couch to 5K programme with bouncy Christian music, and, far from charging ahead, am actually repeating workouts because I like the songs.

Also–which, oddly, I did not do before–I am recording my distance and speed daily, and trying to beat them, thus harnessing my natural competitiveness–against myself. This ensures I run fast enough to get a runner’s high, and have my brain flooded with the exhilaration of endorphins, serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine.

The other thing I am doing is not going too far, just under 3 miles. I think this will help me persevere in the long run. I had built up to 4.25 miles 3 years ago, but it was agony—feet, shins, thighs, every muscle in pain. This time, I am building up slowly, so I stick at it for life. I return from my run, and know I could just about do another half mile, but do not. I am leaving some juice in my body for tomorrow.

* * *

Hemingway recommended a similar pacing in one’s writing life. “The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice. If you do that every day … you will never be stuck.”

Stopping when you still have juice, before exhaustion or boredom set in, not wringing out the last drop of blood from yourself or others, I am discovering that this is the key to persistence in all long-term disciplines, whether a lifetime of reading, or writing, or prayer, or Bible study, or running!

* * *

I was inspired by reading of Rev. E. H. W. Nash, called Bash, who led an extraordinarily fruitful life after symbolically handing over to Jesus the keys to every room in the house of his life.

So, over several days, I have been handing over the keys, seeking Jesus’s wisdom on my use of time, on my schedule.

I am a night person: I get going slowly, and do most of my reading and writing in the evenings. But is this genetics and internal unchangeable circadian rhythms–or well over thirty years of bad habits?

After much prayer, and some discussion with my spiritual direction about my schedule, I recently felt led by Jesus to stop writing at 9.30 p.m., a time of the evening when, being a night person, there is still a lot of juice left in me. But if I squeeze it all out, I will be up at 1:30 a.m., and wake late and tired, once again missing the beautiful sunrise God has made!! So I have started stopping writing and blogging at 9.30 p.m., which has become the magic hour when I make the Cinderella-switch from Human Doing to Human Being.

That suddenly opens time for other joyous trivial things that I might not have had time for… reading books, most of all; reading my favourite bloggers; sharing my favourite pictures on Instagram; scanning a few tweets. Tidying up a little. Doing some yoga. Maybe eventually weights. Tasting the joy of life. And I sleep better for the period of decompression.

Scripture describes human life as a race we should run to win, and perhaps a trick of living well is to leave a little juice–for the end of the day, for the end of our decades, and so to finish our days and our lives well.

To still be dancing, aged 106, when the evening comes.

Mentions

Haruki Murakami: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk.

Ernest Hemingway on Writing on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk.

Bash: A Study in Spiritual Power on Amazon.co.uk

When I almost missed the Uffizi Gallery, Florence

By Anita Mathias

The Doni Tondo, a rare canvas painting by Michealangelo. Scroll down for more images.

I spent the first Sunday of January 2106 at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. It was free, and advice online, as well as unsolicited advice on Facebook warned me that the lines were horrendous.

But visiting Florence and not spending a few hours at the Uffizi seemed like something I would always think of with sadness. Though I have visited the Uffizi before in the 1986 and 1997, I am a different person now, know more about art, and appreciate it more deeply.

In fact, when everyone cautions me against something, I often wonder if God is saying the opposite. If what “everyone says,” and the beautiful mind which created the Universe were in sync, what a beautiful world it would be!

(Digression. I thought of the time when I wanted to decline chemo after Stage III Bowel Cancer, and attempt a science project on my own body to find natural ways of preventing a recurrence, which would bless my body in the process, not curse it. I was staggered by the volume of unsolicited mocking and even hostile advice I got from people I had never met, people I barely knew, (and well as, of course, well-meaning people who, quite understandably believed I was being stupid). If not for two trusted friends, both women of vision and prayer, who corroborated what I heard God whisper to me, I might have been bullied into a year that would have been a nightmare of illness induced by toxic medication, rather than a peaceful idyll of recovering health. And chemo is not hugely effective for colon cancer. 30% of people who go through it die anyway; it only improves absolute survival by 10%. Digression done.)

When I heard the co-author of Grace and Forgiveness introduce her book on the power of forgiveness as worth a trillion dollars, I laughed but, yes, absolutely. She’s right!! In Grace and Forgiveness the Arnotts quote Mark Virkler: The Holy Spirit is always positive, and Satan is always negative. There is some truth to this. Negative advice from negative people cuts off hope and possibility thinking.

R. T. Kendall in The Anointing, tells of a British couple who sailed from Bombay to Southampton in 1904 to experience the Welsh Revival. When they walked off the docks at Southampton, they bumped into an acquaintance who said, “The Revival? Oh, it’s just Welsh emotionalism.”

Crushed, the couple bought a ticket on the next steamer, and returned to India.

But, as it happened, that foolish nay-sayer was wrong. In Wales, in 1904, people were experiencing God’s “love, vast as the ocean, loving kindness like a flood”. They were surrendering their lives to God, repenting of their sins, forgiving everyone who had sinned against them. They were experiencing spiritual joy, the spiritual life. All of which the couple missed because they listened to the negative words of a negative person!!

A long way to say: I am glad I went. The lines looked horrendous, but my family told me to sit down, and so I did, and brushed up on art history, totally absorbed, and all of a sudden, we were in, and I got to see as much as I had the energy for.

Botticelli, Michaelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael…

I am so grateful to the Medici for collecting these treasures, and to the last of the Medici for gifting them to Florence.

And here are a few of my favourites.

Botticelli, Madonna of Pomegranate

Botticelli’s Nativity

And note the snooty Florentines amid the adoring throngs

Botticelli’s famous La Primavera

Notice the Virgin’s cool infinity scarf

Sandro Botticelli, Madonna of the Pomegranate–beautiful angels, very fashionable virgin with a cool scarf!
Sandro Botticelli, Venus coyly rising from the foam

Botticelli, Man with a coin. Note the self-confidence of his gaze.Botticelli, Pallas (and the Centaur)

Raphael (below). The Pre-Raphaelites, Oxford undergraduates when they banded together, somewhat unfairly decided that true art ended with Raphael!

Raphael’s portrait of Pope Julius II, the tormentor who chivvied, frustrated, angered and drove Michealangelo into genius–the inhuman effort of painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and, of course, crafting Julius’s own tomb.
Leonardo da Vinci’s Annunciation

Angels from Leonardo’s Baptism of Christ

Fra Lippo Lippi–This painting is one of my favourites!
I love the polychromatic angel’s wings in Lorenzo de Credi’s painting

On Planting Secret Seeds for the Kingdom and for the Love of Jesus. And on a Role Model of Christian Leadership

By Anita Mathias

I am fascinated by the Moravians founded by the reformer Jan Huss, remarkable for their 24/7 prayer which led to a worldwide burst of missionary activity, remarkable for sacrificial exploits like selling themselves into slavery to be able to credibly preach the Gospel to slaves.

Comenius, a Moravian Bishop (selected by Life magazine as one of 100 most influential people of the last millennium) turned down an invitation to participate in Swedish educational reform, to plant a “hidden seed” of the Moravian simple love of Christ, so that the kingdom of Jesus would grow in future generations. The “hidden seeds” he had to plant in the face of bitter persecution came to life when Count Zinzendorf invited the persecuted Moravians to his now-famous estate, Herrnhut.

* * *

The talk among Christian writers and bloggers often drifts to agents, advances, Amazon sales ranks, platform, Twitter followers, Facebook likes, comparison and subtle showing off. I hear the preoccupation with building mini-kingdoms, building platforms, fame and glory and wealth, and it sometimes seems as if the simple love of the Lord Jesus that made us want to be Christ-followers in the first place gets squeezed out (and sometimes the simple love of writing gets squeezed out too) in the pursuit of success, fame and money.

So when I hear of someone unfocused on fame, platform, recognition and money who quietly sows secret seeds for the kingdom, I am deeply and inexplicably moved, to the point of tears.

* * *

When I was an undergraduate at Oxford University, the Rector of the largest Anglican Church in town, St Aldate’s, was a man called Michael Green (who now, incidentally, attends the church I attend, St. Andrew’s, Oxford.)

I wasn’t a Christian as an undergraduate. I was on a six year break from following Christ, which was most foolish of me, because, you see, I knew Jesus as a teenager, really knew him.

And so the Christian Union at my college, Somerville, used to pray for me, and students from my college and from other colleges used to invite me to St. Aldate’s with them, and I would go when I felt distressed and overwhelmed, and listen to Michael Green intently, and with pleasure.

But of course, being a Christian is all about surrender, moving into the invisible kingdom so that you are no longer belong to yourself but to Him, and without that surrender, it’s just nice ideas–and that surrender I did not make then.

* * *

My daughter Zoe is now an undergraduate reading Theology at Oxford University, and is leading her college’s Christian Union. The Christian Union has a retreat before term, and Rev. Canon Dr Michael Green, now 85 years old, spoke at each of the two retreats—this distinguished writer, apologist and pastor humbly spending a few days with 25 young students.

Zoe was as impressed with the character of the man as with what he said. The subsidized retreat was £22 per head for the weekend, and Michael lined up and insisted on paying his £22, though he was the speaker everyone had come to hear. He signed up for his slots of washing up and spiffying up. If he came too late to get an armchair, he, aged 85, sat on the floor with the students: “No, you came first. You keep the sofa.” He took meticulous notes as the young speakers spoke!!

We were impressed to hear this. Roy said, “Perhaps he is teaching these young leaders what it is to be a Christian leader.” Non-entitled. Willing to serve. Humble. Not self-seeking.

* * *

It was a splendid retreat, my daughter said, and Michael preached it not for money, not for fame, not for his career, or enhancing his platform, but for the love of Jesus. He may not see the fruit of his teaching in these young people’s lives, but he is planting seeds, secret seeds, for love of God, for the Kingdom.

I am a gardener, and I have had a life-threatening illness, and the thought of sowing without knowing if I will ever see the harvest…it’s tough. So I was particularly inspired by how Michael Green sowed seeds whose fruits he might never see for the love of Jesus, sowed spiritual seeds of the love of Jesus, sowing into the foundations of the great and invisible Kingdom which grows and grows, and which shall never pass away.

I heard the awe and respect in Zoe’s voice at observing Michael Green’s humble, exemplary behaviour, an example that will linger long after she has forgotten everything he said. Following Jesus is something that is caught not taught, it is often said. Words are forgotten, but meeting someone whom Jesus has transformed, that one does not easily forget.

I thought of Michael Green pouring everything into teaching 25 young students, and I prayed, “Oh Lord Jesus, do I love you enough? I do not yet. Lord Jesus, increase my love for you.”

* * *

During this summer, I heard Rolland Baker who has taken in thousands of orphans in Mozambique talk with simple intensity about the love of Jesus. I jotted down notes as spoke:

“Following Jesus is putting all your eggs in one basket, one person. There’s only one person you trust, only one you go to.

The point of following Jesus is not that he will make your life work a little bit better, accelerate your path to wealth, health, success, fame… Jesus is the point.

He is not the one who gives you what you want; he is what you want. Jesus himself is the treasure, not the means to treasure.

Jesus is how God gives us the desires of our heart. Everything you need is in Jesus.

Miracles, signs and wonders and the things we tend to seek Jesus for go with the territory. We don’t chase miracles, we chase Jesus and miracles chase us. When we follow Jesus, he follows us. He finds us.

Never chase joy, wealth, fame, health by itself–you will never get it. Chase Him. The rest comes with the territory.

If you base your joy on anything but Jesus, your laughter will turn to grief.

Jesus’ emphasis was himself. He is the treasure in the field.
When you are in love with God, everything that happens is enjoyable because He gives us joy.”

* * *

I listened, and wondered if I loved Jesus enough.

What is the point of being a Christian if we do not love the Lord Jesus? And, oddly enough, we cannot quite create love for Jesus within ourselves.

We increase it within ourselves in only way I know to do difficult things. We put in the work (in this case, reading the Gospels and meditating on them). And we pray to–love Jesus more.

We reach out our hands and hearts, and ask Jesus to fill them with love for Him so that we might be totally turned into fire.

Tweetables

On a striking example of Christian leadership NEW from @anitamathias1

On increasing our love for Jesus, who is the point of the whole Christian enterprise NEW from @anitamathias1

On sowing secret seeds of the Kingdom for the love of Jesus. NEW from @anitamathias1

My One Word for 2015 : Joy

By Anita Mathias

I had wanted to choose “Accelerate” as my One Word for 2014 but God impressed “Alignment” on my heart, and it proved to have been useful through a tumultuous year—a cancer diagnosis, and surgery, the death of my beloved border collie Jake from cancer, a burglary. And some nice things too… being invited to Cambodia for a week by Tearfund; being the runner up for Tweeter of the Year in the Christian New Media Awards; being interviewed on Premier Radio; publishing a children’s book, Francesco, Artist of Florence.

* * *

That cancer now a past tense occurrence, God willing, all gone.

Because I could not stop for health, health kindly stopped for me. Health will be one of my priorities this year

I will have to be careful about diet and exercise–so as not to have a recurrence. My body will have to change its bioeme to become an ecosystem unfavourable to cancer. I will learn stress management techniques, and practice positive psychology, thinking positively. I am juicing to get my diet more nutrient-dense, and am moving towards a raw and plant-based diet.

I thought of choosing “Focus,” as my word for the year because huge things can be done with focus, but no, I had a greater need.

My word for 2015 will be Joy.

* * *

I am training myself to become conscious of my emotional states, of when joy leaches out of me, and am learning to slow down and ask, “Why are you sad, oh my soul?”

And then, I am learning to accept the things I cannot change, and to change the things I can, as in the brilliant Serenity Prayer used by Alcoholics Anonymous, and to be thankful for the rest, the obviously good things, and the more ambiguous things–for there is a God who is writing straight in crooked lines in my life. Again and again, I see this.

When I notice I am grumpy and low-spirited, I tell myself, “Anita, light the sacred flame of joy.” I visualise myself as a priestess in a temple filling the sacred bowl with incense, the seeds of joy, lighting the flame. I start noticing the good things, thanking God for the good things. I ask the Holy Spirit—who, Jesus says, comes on demand–to fill me with joy, those rivers of living water, and He does.

We can change our emotional states, as blogger Michael Hyatt writes. He calls being able to do this his most important asset.

I shift my emotional state by entering the narrow gates of surrender to God. By deciding to walk in love. By praise and thanksgiving. By worship music. By reading a bit of the Bible or a spiritual book. By physical activity, a walk outdoors, or even just tidying the house. By spending time with my family or seeking out a friend to hang out with.

* * *

19 years ago, I told a good friend Paul Miller (author of A Praying Life, often praised as one of the best books on prayer, for instance by Tim Challies) that I had not experienced joy-as opposed to happiness. He volunteered to disciple me in exchange for editing help, and this discipling relationship lasted for 5 years. Joy, he said, comes from dying, from dying to self.

I did not stumble upon joy through “dying;” that was not my path. (However, I learned other things from Paul, about Jesus–I was an editor for his book Love Walked Among Us–about love, and faith, and prayer).

Nonetheless, I was eventually surprised by joy. Joy and peace crept up on me, as my original ambitions were thwarted, and the fierceness of ambition leached away, leaving more of an openness to what God might be doing in my life, to the plot he was writing. To giving God what he takes, and taking what he gives, with a smile—Mother Teresa’s definition of holiness.

So in 2015, I want to experience joy, by seeking it where it lies in plain sight, and if necessary, hunting it down, looking a little harder, a little deeper. I want to light the flame of joy with the incense of praise, of thanksgiving, of faith, of Scripture, of nature, of friendship, all the good and precious things which come down from the Father of Lights.

And if you’d like to pray for me, please pray for vibrant health and that cancer never returns. Eight weeks after surgery, I am glad to report that I feel full of energy, good spirits, health and…yes…joy!

Tweetables

One Word for 2015: Joy. On lighting the sacred flame of joy from @anitamathias1

Have you chosen a one word goal for 2015? What is it?

Most Read Posts of 2014 on Dreaming Beneath the Spires

By Anita Mathias

Roy made this collage of me over many days and many moods for my birthday. And here is my most-read writing on my blog this year

1 Yes, Praise the Lord Anyway. (Even for Loss and Fleas!)

2 Why I am no longer a Roman Catholic

3 In which I am Exasperated by an Ex-Prophet, and Write a Letter to my 70 Year Old Future Self

4 My Experience of The Baptism in the Holy Spirit and of Speaking in Tongues

5 On Mustard Seeds and Malignant Polyps

6 Walking on the Waters, Looking at Jesus, in the Shadow of Cancer

7 When, for a season, God himself blocks you

8 Thoughts on my Twenty-fifth Wedding Anniversary

9 A Little Bit of Theology for Victims of Burglaries (Which, Alas, I Have Just Been)

10 In which I am Surprised by “Prophetic Words” (from the Glasgow Prophetic Centre at David’s Tent Worship Festival)

And the most read guest post this year with 2248 page views was Esther Emery’s intriguing, Why I live in a yurt, off the grid, on a mountain in Idaho

Well, enjoy any you may have missed, and Happy New Year, friends

When God says “Go,”

By Anita Mathias

Franklin Graham, ““When we truly pray, we do not move God to ourselves, but ourselves to God. A small boat nears shore, and a man throws a rope and anchor toward a sandy beach. He, then, when the anchor has bitten into the sand, pulls on the rope and draws the boat up on the beach. The shore did not move out to the boat–the boat is drawn up onto the beach.

God answers all prayer. He does not answer our selfish, materialistic begging. He does not move into our sinful situation. He moves us out of our sinful situation into Himself. God sometimes moves slowly. Sometimes we don’t lack faith, but patience. Wait patiently for HIm, and He will give you your heart’s desire.

1) if the request is not right, He will answer, “No.”

2) If the time is not right, He will answer, “Slow.”

3) When you are not right, He will answer, “Grow.”

4) When the request, the time and you are right, God will say, “Go.”

That’s when miracles happen.

That was written on May 16th, 1970, the day that Dr. Bob first caught hold of the vision to start Samaritan’s Purse. What miracles we have seen year after year, as God has worked in mighty ways.”

“Useless Prayer” by Henri Nouwen

By Anita Mathias

“WHY should I spend an hour in prayer when I do nothing during that time but think about people I am angry with, people who are angry with me, books I should read and books I should write, and thousands of other silly things that happen to grab my mind for a moment?

The answer is: because God is greater than my mind and my heart, and what is really happening in the house of prayer is not measurable in terms of human success and failure.

What I must do first of all is be faithful. If I believe that the first commandment is to love God with my whole heart, mind, and soul, then I should at least be able to spend one hour a day with nobody else but God. the question as to whether it is helpful, useful, practical, or fruitful is completely irrelevant, since the only reason to love is love itself. Everything else is secondary.

The remarkable thing, however, is that sitting in the presence of God for one hour each morning — day after day, week after week, month after month — in total confusion and with myriad distractions radically changes my life. God, who loves me so much that He sent His only son not to condemn me but to save me, does not leave me waiting in the dark too long.

I might think that each hour is useless, but after thirty or sixty or ninety such useless hours, I gradually realize that I was not as alone as I thought; a very small gentle voice has been speaking to me far beyond my noisy place.

So: Be confident and trust in the Lord.”

From The Road to Daybreak, by Henri Nouwen (New York: Image Books, 1989).

In real life, amusingly, Nouwen was a fidgety pray-er. Michael Andrew Ford writes, “Nouwen could rarely sit still for long. When he was in prayer, he fidgeted, coughed and moved but seemed to have no awareness he was doing it. His apparently restless and distracted prayer nurtured him. While his body was twitching, his spirit could be deeply present to God.”

The writer Parker Palmer describes Nouwen at a Quaker retreat centre where the traditional gathering in silence was practised for 45 minutes every morning:

“I was conscious of being in the company of a world-class contemplative and I was expecting to have an extraordinary experience sitting next to him during worship. But as we sat in this plain, unadorned room and settled into the silence, I realised that the bench was jiggling. I opened my eyes, glanced to my left and saw Henri’s leg working furiously. He was anxiously trying to settle but without much success. As time went on, the fidgeting got worse. I opened my eyes again only to find him checking his watch to see what time it was.”

Ford continues, “Nouwen’s primary need for prayer meant he was completely oblivious to more mundane things. He would dash to the bathroom wherever he was staying and shower without closing the curtain, soaking the place in water. Then, without looking in the mirror, he would shave as quickly as possible, so he could get downstairs and be with God. As a result, he often ended up with a one inch patch of old whiskers on his neck and fresh soap in his ear.

“Contemplation was at the heart of Henri Nouwen’s life. It was a discipline of dwelling in the presence of God. Nouwen was convinced that Christian leaders need to reclaim the mystical so that every word they speak, each suggestion they make and every strategy they develop, will emerge from a heart which knows God intimately.”

I Asked You to Guide Me

By Anita Mathias

I asked for guidance.

You answered

Pillars of cloud by day.

Pillars of fire by night.

The red sea parted.

Staffs turned into snakes.

Asses spoke.

The ground was dry

but the fleece was wet.

The sign I asked you for.

The fleece was dry,

while the earth was drenched.

The sign I asked you for.

It was as if you strolled into the room

and I could see you–

when I asked you for guidance.

* * *

I asked for guidance.

Silence.

Absolute.

So I navigated,

by ancient arts:

Common sense,

the north star,

the panic azimuth,

the sun rising from the east,

Not in a blaze of illumination,

but like dawn on the peaks

of distant mountains that

shine out of the darkness,

until we see the snow on them.

We see them.

Image Credit

anita.mathias