Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

Ten Spiritual Lessons I’ve Learned from Running a Small Business

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The Church That Had Too Much


1)  Everything starts with a good idea. And good ideas can be birthed in periods of intensive prayer. 

2) There is no area of our lives which God cannot invade.

Interestingly, it was a bit of a cognitive shift for me to realize that God cares about the business I run–about something so mundane as money–and about how I run it because he cares about me. 
                                           
3 Good ideas are not born in a vacuum. They rise out of the ashes of other things you have tried, and at which you might have failed. 


It’s rare that people stumble upon the right thing immediately–the right genre to write in, the right business, even the perfect arrangement of plants in a garden. (Most good gardeners will move a plant 3 or 4 times until they find the right place for it, and most beautiful gardens are the third or fourth ones the owners have planted.)

And so my current business, publishing, was the second I started. The first, selling antiquarian books was interesting but very time-consuming and rather exhausting. 

I started crying out to the Lord in my exhaustion (in the words of Psalm 107) to help me find a business which could let me put my kids through private school while still leaving time and energy to write. And in a flash of insight, using little pieces of information, knowledge and experience I had subconsciously stored, the idea and business plan for our current publishing business–which is not particularly time-consuming or exhausting–came to me. 

4 Beware of Greed


 If a business is more or less successful, then, you will  make money–more or less.

All addictions are born and grow in the mind. And so you must try very hard not to get addicted to watching or obsessing over the trajectory of sales, spreadsheets and bank balances.

Because while money is an excellent servant (Somerset Maugham likens it to a sixth sense without which one cannot properly appreciate the other five!!) it is an insatiable master. As it says in Ecclesiastes, he who loves money will never have money enough. 

5 The Pricking of Griefs

Working to keep oneself and one’s family afloat at a standard of living best suited for one’s calling and vocation is one thing.
A business will not be devoid of hassle, no more than any other vocation on earth. In the world you will have trouble, as Jesus forewarned his disciples in his last conversation with them. 

However, with a certain detachment, one can conduct it in peace, because one lives in Christ–at a very good address indeed. Definitely, on the right side of the tracks!
  
There is a fine line between working at a steady, rhythmic measured pace to achieve an interesting, comfortable standard of living, and overworking for the greed of money.
Proverbs again has something to say about this, “Do not wear yourself out to become rich. Have the wisdom to show restraint.” (Proverbs 23:4)

When one overworks–works at the expense of rest, relationships, physical health– driven by greed, one opens oneself up to being  pricked by many griefs, because greed is an irrational emotion, and those avaricious for money will never have enough.

So while hassles are an inevitable part of work and life, overworking leads to an accumulation of trouble and hassle, to a piercing with many griefs. 

It is very important to set time limits for how much you will work to prevent the scourge and exhaustion of overwork.

6 It’s just money. 

That’s a really useful mantra. 

You, being human, will make errors, which will lead to financial loss, sometimes trivial, sometimes rather serious. 

Few businesses can be conducted single-handedly. Most businesses are like a chain, a complex interlocking of many human units. We have had nine of our friends working with us at various times, and are reliant on printers, distributors, shippers. Lots of people.

People who, being human, might well, on occasion, make errors, mess up. Money has been and may well again be lost, through other people’s errors, as well as my own.

And then, there is no point stewing about it. No point fretting. It’s just money.


Do not fret; it only leads to evil. Psalm 37:8

If however, a work relationship causes consistent stewing, stress, and aggro, and things cannot be resolved,  it’s perhaps time to sever the work relationship and move on. 

7 Never let money steal your peace. It’s just money

Never get emotionally involved in a transaction to do with money, when, as is inevitable in  business, you run up against other people’s greed or dishonesty or aggressiveness. In business as in life, you will run up against people who should really be emailing their therapist, not you.

It’s just money, an inert substance, which can be earned again, or can be given to you again by your heavenly Father.

One’s peace, and mental, emotional and physical health, and relationships and happiness–these on the other hand are precious–priceless!!-– and cannot be as easily recaptured if frivolously squandered by stewing about money. 

Think rationally in business conflicts to do with money. What is the outcome you want to achieve? Work towards that, realizing that it may well not be achieved. Either way, be at peace.

I think the non-violence Jesus recommended in the Sermon on the Mount is a risky but sensible business practice. It is better to lose small amounts of money than waste time and peace contending with an aggressive person. 

8 Optimism is a lucrative mental and business habit.

While there is some truth to that old statement in the Desiderata, “Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery,”–and one learns the truth of this the hard way–optimism is a great business principle. 

Our family business is a publishing company. Though we now have a decent list, we, of course, started with 1 book, then 5, then a dozen… And we used to pack and ship these ourselves, until we grew big enough to use distribution networks, and third party sellers.

So one drops an expensive book into the post with no proof that you have done so, totally reliant on the honesty of people, knowing you will have to replace it if they claim they haven’t received it.

When we first started, it cost £0.75 to get proof of posting, and the time/petrol to the PO. We got proof of posting for a while, then stopped and decided to see if it was cheaper to trust God and people. It was. Just a handful of books each year “did not arrive,” and replacing these or refunding was cheaper than getting proof of posting for everything.

Book buyers, on the whole, are honest, and discovering this was pleasant. 

Optimism and trust are good business strategies.

Fear and suspicion on the other hand, are costly emotions–costly in terms of time, peace and mental health–AND financially costly!!

9 Enough

It is vital to learn the meaning of this word.

New technologies, the internet, social media are turning the traditional assumptions of business upside down.

There is a lot of money to be made.

But I don’t need to make all of it. Certainly not now.

Enough.

“To the one who pleases him, God gives wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner, He gives the task of gathering and heaping, only to give to the one to pleases the Lord.” Ecclesiastes 2:26

God save us from the task of gathering and heaping.

The one who has learnt the meaning of enough can work at a business at a measured pace, consistent with physical, emotional, spiritual and relational health.

10 The Lord is my Pacesetter.

I am naturally a A type personality, and it would come naturally to me to run ahead of the Lord and exhaust myself. To run a business on my own ideas and enthusiasms, and those of my co-workers.

The Lord is a gentle shepherd who goes before us, who walks with us. I remember a sermon which said that a hallmark of Satan is that he drives, that drivenness is used by the evil one to drive one over a Gadarene cliff. 

It’s important for me to check-in with Christ, and to run through my ideas with him. What he invariably tells me is to slow down! (Why? Perhaps he has other good plans for me up his sleeve!)

And I do.

Because what I want more than anything is for his blessing to be on my business.

 The blessing of the LORD brings wealth, and he adds no 


trouble to it. Proverbs 10:22

  

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Baptized with the Holy Spirit

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 4 On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. 5 For John baptized withb]’>[b] the Holy Spirit.”


How excited they must have been if they had grasped the enormity and fullness of this promise. 


Having their souls filled with a power beyond themselves.


Come Holy Spirit, baptize my soul again.

A Baptism of Repentance

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Mark 1: 4 Blog Through the Bible Project

4 And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 

Repentance. Changer la vie in French probably gives as better idea of what it means, or metanoia in koine Greek, changing one’s soul.

I am presuming that my readers are Christians, or Christ-seekers.


If we could easily change our lives, and live purer, more Christ-like lives, we would have done so.


And that is why the coming of the Holy Spirit to us who are weary and heavy-laden, and feel powerless to do all the good things we know we should do is such good news.


Come Lord Jesus. Come Holy Spirit. We fail in love and unselfishness. We fail. Help us. 



Wait for the Holy Spirit

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Acts 1

Jesus Taken Up Into Heaven

 1 In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach 2 until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. 3 After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God.
 4 On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. 5 For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”


40 days again. The spiritually and psychologically crucial period often mentioned in Scripture.


They are not yet ready for the Great Commission. But very soon, they will be. 


What will make them ready will be a total and seismic change in the inner structure of their personalities, which will happen when the Holy Spirit comes.


How does Jesus refer to the Holy Spirit? 


As a gift.


It is a gift I too need to fulfill the inner commissions I have heard. 


One of the most comforting promises about the Holy Spirit which I know is the one from Luke, “If you who are evil give good gifts to your children, how much more will my Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.”


As I do now.









The Dances of Intimacy and Anger

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 About twenty years ago, when we were newly-weds, Harriet Lerner’s books, The Dance of Intimacy and The Dance of Anger were recommended to us.


Essentially–it’s been a while since I read them–the books view relationships as a dance. The longer you are in a relationship, the more it becomes automatic and conditioned. A: says/does; B responds in anger or pique. Which gives A what s/he was looking for if s/he is passive-aggressive.


B is having a bad day. Says/does what is guaranteed to push A’s buttons. A obligingly reacts as expected.


A dance. It gets nowhere. Spinning round and round the dance floor in circles.


The good news is that it takes two to tango. Two to continue in an unsatisfying, unproductive dance. 


And either one can just change the steps.
                                     * * * 


Since Roy took early retirement last year to run our family business, we’ve been together a lot. Not in the same house, but in the same property. (We had presciently bought a property with a self-contained ensuite granny apartment in the garden, which is now my study.) 


And so working on our relationship is becoming more important.


I am slowing down in various ways; one positive way is that I have begun to interrogate the way I act and react rather than responding instinctively. Begun to slow down, and ask myself why I am feeling the way I am. 


I am realizing that I do not need to react in the way I always used to–instinctively, from the gut. That I can step back, take counsel with the Lord, and determine what the best thing to say and do is. That I can change the steps of the dance.


It’s an amazing realization for me–that at any time we can change habitual ways of reacting that might have become so engrained that we think of them as our personality or character.


That in Christ, we are free to change at any time of our lives.  

Enough: Random Thoughts

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John Bogle, founder of the mutual fund, Vanguard,  wrote a book called Enough, in which he says “not knowing what is enough leads us astray in life leading to the subversion of our


 character and values.”


He got his title after overhearing a a conversation between Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller at a party hosted a billionaire hedge fund manager. Vonnegut tells Heller that the manager made more money in a day than Heller made over the lifetime of Catch-22. 

Heller quips: “Yes, but I have something he will never have: Enough.”
                                  * * * 

Enough. One rarely meets anyone who has it. And when one does, one is charmed by a merry twinkle in the eye, a sense of peace and freedom.

Over the last few months, Roy and I have been hanging out with an alternative Christian community called MayBe, people who are embracing voluntary simplicity. What strikes us is that they do have a sort of gaiety and simplicity–and, especially, have so much more time: time to read, time to think, and time to offer hospitality often and simply in houses that apparently haven’t been tidied up for guests. (Perhaps one just needs to do that–have people over in a house which hasn’t been tidied up– to be able to have them over more more often. I still tidy a bit before guests arrive, but less and less each time, just 10-15 minutes.)
                                   * * *

I have been thinking about the word, “Enough” with some worry. I hope I will have the wisdom to know when I have it. 


We decided we had enough last year, when Roy decided to get off the academic treadmill. He had a chair in applied mathematics, and was a researcher. The cruel thing about academic research is that the concept of Enough is foreign to it. There is always more one can do–more papers to read, more papers to write, more things to learn, more stuff in a constantly evolving field to keep up with.
                                    * * * 

Ars longa, vita brevis is an aphorism attributed to Horace. Art is long but life is short. It takes a long time out of a short life to learn an art. If one is perfectionistic as a writer or artist, again, enough will prove an illusion. You will never be good enough. There will always be more to read, more to learn, more practice. For years, this perfectionism dogged me, sapping the joy out of writing.

I have found peace as a writer by making peace with the best writing I could produce in a reasonable time frame. Making peace with “good enough.” One might not create pitch-perfect writing, but will have a lot more fun doing it.
                                  * * * 


We have owned a small, but steadily expanding business for four years. Suddenly, it becomes important to know when enough is enough, so that one is not guilty of another kind of wage-slavery, working for money one does not need.


We decided to set a figure, a net worth figure,  after which we will put the business in maintenance mode, rather than slow expansion mode.


We both sat down and worked out what we thought this figure should be, and then compared notes. 


Roy’s figure, amusingly, was almost exactly ten times what mine was. And there lies the difference between our characters. I had figured on us maintaining the same level of health–pretty robust–and expenditure, as at present. He made provision for increasing medical expenses, and the increased expenses of an aging house!! Duh! Never thought of that! We’re going with his larger figure, since he is the mathematician, after all.
                                     * * * 


So what does Scripture have to say about when enough is enough?


A few things. I love this proverb. “Do not wear yourself out to become rich. Have the wisdom to show restraint.” Proverbs 23:4.


Jesus cautions, “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed.”


And then there’s Jesus’s wonderful parable of the fool who built bigger barns!! He lives in the future tense. I will build bigger barns. And then, I will say to myself, take life easy, eat, drink and be merry.


God calls him a fool, because in fact, death overtakes him before he does any of these things. And God interrogates him, “All these things you have stored for yourself, whose then will they be?”
                              ***


I liked the New Yorker cartoon which shows vulturous relatives gathered as a will is read. The will says simply, “Being of sound mind, I have decided to spend it all now.”


There is something sane and healthy about that, though I would not like to die with my finances quite so neatly balanced. A good man leaves an inheritance for his children’s


 children. Proverbs 13:22 An inheritance is a sweet and


 magical thing–goodness one hasn’t earned!!–and to bless


your children with it that plays a part in people working for 


longer than they need to.

                                 * * * 


I was interested in following the Galleon hedge fund scandal, 
partly because almost all the key players were from the Indian sub-continent. I listened to some of the wire-tapped recordings of high-level shenanigans, all highly fraudulent, of course. I have heard men talk like that all my life, but with some internal amusement. I would have assumed they were showing off, and wouldn’t have taken them seriously. “You wouldn’t have taken them seriously?” Roy asks, astonished. Yeah, which is why I suppose I don’t work on Wall Street, unlike my younger sister, who is a highly successful director of a Wall Street firm of venture capitalists.


What got these guys, all of whom had a net worth of billions, or at least tens of millions, into trouble was not knowing the meaning of enough.
                                     * * *

Few people do. The editor Ted Solotaroff who read and commented on my essays when I was starting out as a writer used to say that success as a writer is an exchange of one level of frustration, anxiety, difficulty and doubt for another. So it is in any career. The once coveted recognition is taken for granted, as one begins to crave the next rung on the ladder, and envy those on it!!
                                    * * *


For me, the only way to learn the meaning of enough is to work for the love of God–trying to make the most of the gifts he has given me, within the constraints of a balanced life–and leaving the success or failure of my enterprises to him.
                                       * * * 


And learning the meaning of enough opens up many things–time for relaxation, time for friends, time for hobbies. Time to simply be.
                                  * * * 


The write A.N. Wilson wrote somewhere that writers make the most awful revelations about themselves in their good characters– for it is hard to create a fully rounded character who has a depth of goodness which you have not achieved yourself.


Preachers and bloggers make the same revelations about themselves in the subjects they choose to speak or blog about. They thereby reveal their Achilles heel.
                                     * * * 


The concept of enough has a particular piquancy for me because I find it hard to know when enough is enough, whether it is with buying books, or plants for my garden, or laying off the chocolate, or giving someone who has fascinated me space, or stopping work on something which fascinates me, or expanding my business, or …. whatever… 
                                     * * * 


Fortunately, for those born restless, like I am, there is a source of Enough.


“Thou hast made us for thyself, Oh Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you,” Augustine wrote.


There is rest, there is enough, in Infinity, in God, who has Enough, and Enough and Enough for even the most restless spirit.
                                     * * *  

Recycling: How Public Policy can change Private Behaviour

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Forced recycling in South Oxfordshire


I am a bit of a fan of Flylady, the somewhat annoying American Domestic Organization goddess. She suggests that one should not get caught up in guilt about recycling until one has one’s act together, domestically, and is running a smooth and efficient household.

And so I did not. I was an extremely sporadic recycler.


In my travels around Europe however, I was impressed by how European local governments used carrots and sticks to get people to recycle.
                          * * * 

In Switzerland, for instance, household waste can only be discarded in small black plastic bags, which can only be bought from the council, for 8 francs, I seem to remember. Dropping stuff off in the recycling was free. Guess what? Precious little household waste went to landfill.

Supermarkets had machines at which one could return cans and bottles and get one’s deposit. Everyone seemed to be doing this, the well-dressed and posh, and the scruffier.
                           * * *

Last year, my county, South Oxfordshire, decided it did not want to be fined for over-use of landfill.

So it limited us to ONE wheelie bin of rubbish a fortnight, and one wheelie bin of recycling a fortnight. 


However, they would clear as much recycling as you put out. If you put out more trash than would fit in your bin, they would refuse to clear it, as we learnt by experience. And you  would need to drive to the tip, or somehow generate a lot less rubbish in the next fortnight.
                         * * * 

In the days when the bin men collected as much as you put out, our family generated four or more bags of rubbish a week, don’t ask how.

Now, it’s become a bit of a challenge to try to fit two weeks worth of rubbish into one bin. 
We’ve started recycling regularly, for the first time, but are probably still scratching the surface of what can be recycled–70 percent of household waste, some say. 

We’ve started composting, and I, in particular, am fascinated by this garden magic, turning food scraps, garden clippings, and cardboards into black, rich crumbly earth.

We used to have ducks and chicken, but after one was eaten; one terrified to death after being grabbed; and one mauled horrifically by a fox, we took a break from poultry keeping. We are now going to try again, with a larger movable arc and more vigilance. I like the idea of a domestic eco-system–food scraps given to the ducks, eggs produced for humans, duck waste and egg shells to the compost for further human and duck food.
                   * * * 

South Oxfordshire has certainly stumbled upon a very effective way of changing people’s behaviour by limiting the amount of rubbish–but not the amount of recycling they’ll clear. It’s forced us to learn to slow down, and learn what’s recyclable and what isn’t, and then to actually do it.  

Onward and Upward in the Garden

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I have been a bit behind with my blog–but I have been busy in the garden.

Here is a herb garden Roy created from scratch last month

And here is our Alpine garden.

The clematis, as you can see, is blooming, as are my yellow roses

We have bird feeders in the garden, and are popular. Lots of feathered visitors.

I have started basil, coriander, and sunflowers from seed for the first time ever. It does give one such a sense of satisfaction.

The seed bursting its narrow confines, full of promise of yellow sunflowers.

Our bay tree almost died this winter, and then, just when we grew accustomed to its loss, and decided to chop it down, we saw shoots on the trunk itself. New hope, new life, persistent….  Resurrection!! Thank you, Lord!

Jake, our collie, thinks gardening is a brilliant idea, though he does wish we would resume taking him for walks, rather than absently tossing his ball for him!
* * *

I am going to try to grow vegetables for the first time ever. We have laid out an asparagus bed with 40 asparagus plants. And I have about 125 vegetable plants in pots to plant out. No kidding!!

Just curious. Does anyone actually save money by gardening? Or is it just an expensive hobby, which has some fresh, luscious veggies as a fringe benefit?

I’d imagine that the capital expenditure is a more or less one- time thing, and the yield in fruit and veggies increases month by month. Sort of like running a business.

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