Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

Some Things I Cannot Do

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  The Lord asks Job out of the whirlwind
  “Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades? 
   Can you loosen Orion’s belt? 
   Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons
   
   Can you raise your voice to the clouds 
   and cover yourself with a flood of water? 
“Can you provides food for the raven 
  when its young cry out to God 
  and wander about for lack of food?
Nope, Job could not,
And neither can I.
* * *

 Then Job replied,
   My ears had heard of you
   but now my eyes have seen you.
6 Therefore I despise myself
   and repent in dust and ashes.”
And then, the Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the first. Job 42:12
* * *    
                
Like Job, I have not entered the storehouses of the snow,
Or given the horse its strength
Who at the blast of a trumpet cries Aha,
Nor can I pull in leviathan with a fishhook.
Forget all this,
There are simpler things I cannot do without help.
Nope, I am not self-reliant.
* * *

 I am just beginning to learn
to eat the bread of the Holy Spirit.
when I am sad, glad, mad,  
Hungry, angry, lonely, tired
Instead of chocolate or cookies or a blood sugar exalting meal.
But guess what?
I cannot remember, or get myself
To eat this “real food”
Or real food
Unless you help me.
* * *
I don’t know very well how to finish what I began.
My laptop is littered with half-finished projects.
But you do know:
And your last words were
 And my only hope of finishing
is clinging to you. Abiding in you
I am not highly focused,
But you were.
And so nothing you did was wasted.
And if I just abide in you
I know you will teach me this purposive and focused living.
I am not great on the second command
I am a Mary,
I can sit at your feet and listen to your teachings
While chaos whirls around me.
Teach me love.
* * *
You have waited long for me to say this:
I cannot do life without you.
And long ago, you said it first.
The Son can do nothing by himself,
he can only do what he sees the father doing. John 5:19
“I am the vine and you are the branches
If you abide in me, and I abide in you,
You will bear much fruit,” you said,
“Without me you can do nothing. You will wither.”
By myself I can do nothing, you said (John 5:30)
And yet you did so much,
That John wrote,
Surely a bit hyperbolically,
That if everything you did was written down,
All the books in the world would not contain it.
* * *
So Lord,
How am I to be focused,
disciplined,
loving?
I only know one way:
(And that is okay,
For apparently you also only knew one way)
Relying on you and your Spirit
To fill and possess me.
“Pray constantly,”
Paul said.
Another Impossible Imperative
And that is my only hope for doing all the things I cannot do,
For destroying the crutch of comfort eating,
For working with focus,
For finishing the projects your gave me,
as you finished your great project,
and to have a heart like yours,
a heart of love.
My only hope: You!
To remember you,
To ask for your help,
To hang out in you,
As a branch in the vine,
As molecules of sap in the green, fruitful vine.

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Lazarus was never the same

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Lazarus was never the same.
For the rest of his life, he walked
like a man with a limp–one
who is different–through the steep
arid paths of Bethany.
For four days, everything
he feared thronged to  him.
And amid the terror,
a voice resounded:
the teacher he loved,
“Lazarus, come forth.”
As they peeled his winding
 sheets, the stench fled.
His eyes shuddered
at day. A man rescued–improbably,
 temporarily–from his fate,
he never speaks of it.
Of such things, who can tell?
Neither quite of this world, nor out of it,
Living in the memory of the glory
he once saw, a memory growing fainter,
as he walked among those harassed
by the cares of this world and
the delight in riches. And having to live
too, make money, survive.
 A man of the mountains
Dwelling in the tedious
plains, figuring out how to follow
the leader he no longer sees
step by step, in humble,
rarely noticed ways:
being kind to Mary
and Martha, and the friends
gathering around them, the nucleus
of a new thing: the church,
ever waiting for the first drumbeats
of Christ, the coming King.

365 Project: A South Beach Meal by the Beach

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 We are spending 5 days by the sea, near the New Forest in Hampshire. And are now following the South Beach diet.
Here’s the meal Roy and Irene put together for dinner tonight–spinach and romaine salad with chicken and cheese topping, sauteed courgette with hummus, chili and ginger chicken, and a ricotta and lemon dessert. Delicious, light and all on Phase 1 of South Beach.
And now to get stuck into the exercise which is also part of the South Beach programme..

Christ says, “I will let nothing be wasted.”

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“Let nothing be wasted”

“Nothing, Lord?”
“Nothing.”
* * *
Not our weary years,
Not our silent tears,
None of the loneliness
Which caused that deep, echoing silence
in which we could hear you?
None of our failures
Which stilled the insistent voices
Of those who might otherwise have found a use for us.
We were nobody and nothing
And in the vast silence which surrounded us,
We heard your signature sound:
A whisper.
The bad days we planted which became bad weeks, bad years.
Days, nights, wasted to bickering, quarrelling, fights?
Even them?
 “Let nothing be wasted.”
* * *
The smart learn wisdom from your Word,
The stupid learn it from experience.
I was stupid, Lord.
* * *
The years I wasted in depression,
Ingratitude, bitterness, jealousy, hatred…
Will I still produce as much
As if I had spent them in praise,
thankfulness and love,
hidden in the holy places of the Most High?
“I will let nothing be wasted.”
* * *
And when I overworked so much that I burned out,
And still tried to read, being too exhausted too read,
Those wasted hours and years?
Nothing was wasted.
And I got terrified and perfectionistic,
And revised pieces of work a hundred times,
And have not finished the final draft of my big book
NOTHING IS WASTED.
* * *
The friendships, Lord, the friendships.
I expected too much, held on too hard,
Was too impatient, too possessive.
Nothing is wasted.
Oh and how many people I could have loved,
How many could I have got to know
But I–I read and wrote and worried
That I wasn’t reading and writing more.
Oh and I and my sweet Roy.
We could have been so happy.
Everything was, is, given us.
But how we have fought!
Nothing is wasted.
And those sweet, adorable little girls
And me adoring them, and wanting to write too
And writing often won.
I was there. With them and with you.
I was there.
Nothing was wasted.
And worry, worry, anxiety.
That my dominating in-laws would visit us for months on end,
Would stay forever,
Would run our lives, ruin them,
All the eventualities you averted!
But how long did fear rule me,
Instead of trust!!
And why did I not get it, Lord,
That love is all that matters
That I can trust you in everything
That you mean good when men mean evil
Why did I not learn to trust you instead of worrying?
Mess, Lord!
I sweep it up,
Shards, tesserae, beach glass,
Broken vases, crystal, beads, jewels.
Take and receive, oh Lord
The mess I have made of the jewels
You have lavished upon me, again and again.
* * *
Nothing is wasted, he says.
I take what you have to give me:
broken jewellery, broken crystal, broken children’s crafts,
kid’s toys, never assembled, parts missing
gifts never used, now rusting.
Broken pottery, broken dreams, broken body,
And my hands work instantly, busily,
They mould, they shape,
They join, they paste,
And from what you thought was a Psyche heap of broken baubles
They create
Such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake,
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium.
                                                  * * * 




I am grateful to Dave Roberts for the phrase, “If you have a bad day, don’t plant it. Bad days have a habit of turning into bad weeks, months and years.”

Beggar, Slave, Friend, Child.

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 How do you see your relationship to God?Are you a beggar? Evangelism is just one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread. Niles, D. T.

Are you a servant or slave? The Book of Romans opens thus,Paul, a bond-servant of Christ Jesus,

Are you a friend? I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. John 15:15.

Or are you a child? But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. (Ps 131:2)

Beggar, servant, friend or child?

Which are we?

All.

* * *

I love Hudson Taylor’s description of his relationship to Christ (also known as Hudson Taylor’s spiritual secret).

Jesus is the Vine–the root, stem, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit, all indeed. Aye, and far more too! He is the soil and sunshine, air and rain-more than we can ask, think, or desire.Let us not then want to get anything out of Him, but rejoice in being ourselves in Him-one with Him, and, consequently, with all His fulness.

* * *

He is our creator, our sustainer, and the sea in which we will eventually swim. He is the vine, in which we are branches.

He is the shepherd of shepherds.

The inspirer of writers, the editor of writers, the literary agent of writers.

He is the parent of parents

The gardener of gardeners

The intelligence behind entrepreneurs who seek him

He is our all-sufficient everything, and we realize the truth of this gradually.

* * *

And what is Christ to me, at the moment?

Well, I have come to a point which took me a long time to reach: the point of brokenness.

Interestingly, my battles with weight have brought me there. I am really, really struggling to remember to eat low-calorie meals and to exercise enough everyday. To change my eating habits. Okay, I am breaking a lifetime of bad habits, so it’s not easy.

But like those struggling with alcohol, I reached the stage at which I realized I could not do it on my own.

* * *

And there were other things I realized I could not do on my own.

I am finding it hard to both blog and write books, though I long to do both. So I need God’s help with that too.

I need God’s help with discipline.

I need God’s help not to get side-tracked with social media—blogs, twitter and facebook and online newspapers.

I like the Alcoholics Anonymous 12 steps

  • Step 1 – We admit we are powerless over our addiction – that our lives have become unmanageable
  • Step 2 – We believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity
  • Step 3 – We make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God

I have recently realized how I use food as a way to deal with uncomfortable emotions—stress, boredom, highs, lows, depression, emptiness, the occasional tantrums and negativity in family life. And this must stop.

* * *

How? In this respect, I am coming as a begging child to her father for remember to seek the filling and fullness of the Holy Spirit, whenever I am tempted to eat for comfort.

Come Holy Spirit. Veni Sancte Spiritus.

Baby Steps: A Guest Post by Emma Scrivener

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(Image credit)
Recently, I was reading an interview with Susan Boyle, (the singer who won X Factor and was catapulted from ordinary life to worldwide celebrity).  Understandably, Boyle struggled to cope with this transition and her mental health was gleefully discussed and dissected in the media. 


But more than the time she spent in therapy, I’ve been struck by a phrase she learned from her mum: and that I’ve learned from mine too. It’s this: ‘Baby steps’.

‘Baby steps’ implies a number of things.  Firstly,  take it a little at a time.

‘It’ can be anything, from bereavement to panic attacks – but the point is this: what seems overwhelming in one swallow, can sometimes be digested in little chunks. Conversely, when I try to take giant steps, I’m often overwhelmed and give up completely.  It’s not rocket science, but it’s worth remembering, especially when even getting out of a bed is a struggle.

In the times when I’ve been depressed, (as opposed to just a bit sad), a ‘day at a time’ can be far too much. Instead I’ve coped by poddling from minute to minute. Those minutes add up into hours and days and eventually, you get through them.  But taking on too much  sends me into a spiral of self-pity and self-contempt.

One thing to note however: baby steps are not the same as no steps at all.  It’s possible to exempt yourself from life and the challenges that are a part of recovery: to settle too quickly into a mindset of despair. Instead, I’ve found that little things – like sticking as much as possible to a normal routine or setting myself Very Small goals, can be a big help.  I never want to do them, but even if I’m frustrated, I’m feeling something instead of just giving up.

When a baby takes its first steps, everyone celebrates.  They don’t ask why he’s not jogging round the park.  In the same way, instead of beating ourselves up for what we can’t do, perhaps we can celebrate the things we can: no matter how insignificant these appear.

(Emma lives in Eastbourne and shares a house with her long-suffering hubby Glen and two feral cats. She writes about issues of identity and faith – including culture, infertility and eating disorders. Her book, ‘A New Name’ will be published this summer by IVP.  Emma blogs at A New Name.)

Missing the Banquet

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Missing the banquet
The same story, always.
No room in palaces, or
middle-class lounges. So
He goes where few
would choose to.  Down.
Among those working for small
 wages, hemmed
 in by circumstance, forced
 to be silent, still,
and awake
to see
the glory
of an angel-streaked sky,
and hear the promise
of Joy:
A Saviour.
And His simple, easily
missed gift:
Peace.
Whatever I may miss
In the hurly-burly of my days
Let it not be you,
Elusive, beloved one
Or the great banquet
To which you summon me,
In which you are the appetizer,
Meat and sweet.
Let me feast with you before
the day rushes in on me,
and through its quiet interstices.
Let this tragedy not be mine:
too busy with the field, the cow,
the barn to savour the banquet,
squinting at the endless to do list,
missing the dazzle of the rainbow.