random | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

One Year of Blogging: Taking Stock. 10 Reflections and Resolutions

By Anita Mathias

Happy First Birthday to Dreaming Beneath the Spires.

And time for taking stock.

1) Am I glad I started blogging? Is it worth it?

I think so. I have never before had my writing read on a daily basis by so many people, between 200-300 most days.

2) What do I like about best about blogging?

The Writing

Wrestling down stray thoughts into shapely posts.

Writing every day.

Beginning to write more easily and fluently than I ever have

The People.

I have met a whole lot of interesting fellow-bloggers over coffee and lunches over the last few months–Lesley Fellows, Simon Cozens, Michael Wenham, Alan Crawley, Louise Lister.

And have had lunches and coffees with blog readers, whom I would not otherwise have met.

And have got to know several other blogger through mutual reading and commenting on their blogs-Ray in Aylesbury, Red, Jen in Oregon, Penny in Georgia, Emma in Eastbourne, Lucy Mills, among other.

Blogging enlarges one’s world. No question about that.

2B Other benefits?

Psychological. I process things through words and images. Processing things on a blog, for public consumption, rather than a journal, does mean that I will follow my thoughts through a lot further than if it were in my journal.

(Risks) Constructing a psychological profile of yourself on the world-wide web is not without risks, and I am not blind to the risks. However, I am trusting my blog and blogging to God, and rightly or wrongly believe that I am under his protection.

Spiritual–Ditto. I tend to follow thoughts through in my blog to a greater extent than in my journal.

3 The Vocation of Blogging

To some extent, I see my blog as a vocation.

In Frederick Buechner’s words, “The place where God calls you is the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger.”

I would like my blog to be a bit of a ministry–a place where my deep gladness in writing might–by the God’s grace and mercy– feed some of the world’s deep hunger.

I would like my blog to be an offering of love to my readers.

I have written about this at length, here

4) What do I like least?

Easy. Its impermanence. People read the most recent few posts at best. They only read the archive through google searches or Link Within.

The number of people who read a post partly depends on how strategic you are in the time/day on which you post it. I have just realized this.

When I was aiming at a post a day, I published them, even though the thinking could have been more rigorous and the writing more concise.

It takes more time to do a short disciplined logical post, than a longer, stream of consciousness one.

And when I was writing late at night with a post to complete before I sleep I was guilty of baggy, sloppy posts.

4B) So, what am I going to do about that?

i) For past posts, go through my archive. My readership naturally has increased several times over in the course of a year. I am going to go through my archive posts, expand, edit or contract and post the best of them again.

ii) Try for the best writing I can in as many posts as I can, which I can later include in a book of short pieces.

5) Is blogging compatible with the writing of books?

It hasn’t been so far, but I will have to make sure it is.

I see my calling and the “life work” I would like to do with the rest of my life as writing “little books” “What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects – with their Christianity latent.” C. S.Lewis

6) So what am I going to do differently?

Set a timer for 45-60 minutes

I wanted to blog thorugh the Bible in a year, then found there was no way I could comment intelligently on several chapters a day that I would need to do to blog though the Bible in a year. Or two.

So I now muse on as much as I can in an hour, post one passage, and save the rest for a day on which blogging is not possible.

I will have to limit my posts on Dreaming Beneath the Spires to 45-60 minutes a day. That does not feel excessive. What if I want to do a long post and it takes more than an hour to get a finished polished post? Well, then, do what I can in the hour, and finish and post it the next day. The world has survived for 4.5 billion years without my blog, and can survive another day more.

No more posting last thing at night because I had committed to do a post a day. Better no post than an incoherent last thing at night post.

If one day I can do 2 or 3 short posts in an hour, I will save up the posts for another day. Writing is always better for being revised

7 Yeah? What difference will limiting blogging to an hour a day make to my blog?

It will be better. A sin against “the Spirit of Writing” to write when you don’t have something to say. It’s better to have no post than to have people waste their time reading a fluffy post posted for the sake of posting something.

Samuel Johnson enigmatically said that the good thing about knowing that you will be executed the next morning is that it wonderfully concentrates the mind. It’s the same with knowing you have just one hour to blog. You get a whole lot more written, and better. It becomes more important to try to get it right the first time.

I will try to write more posts to publishable standard for a possible short book of the best of the posts .

Limiting the time I spend on blogging will also ensure that I only write on subjects of genuine interest to me, and not write on what is of current interest–and will be of no interest to anyone in a month.

I either read blogs and comment on them too much– or not at all. I am now going to increase/limit it to 15-20 minutes a day. Keep a balance between blogs I know, and blogs I don’t know, between blogs from the United Kingdom where I now live, and the United States, where I lived for 17 years, and of which I happen to be a citizen!

8 Mr. Holland’s Opus

Do you know Mr. Holland’s Opus? To me, it’s a deeply sad film, though it’s meant to be inspiring. Mr. Holland’s dream is to write the great American symphony. He teaches high school music for 31 years, all the while trying to write his symphony in the ever-dwindling, exhaustion-challenged nibbets of free time.

But he invests in this students, he passes on his love for music. They love him.

When the school cuts the music budget, and he retires, his past and present students play “Mr. Holland’s Opus.”

His opus, he realizes, his life’s work, is the lives he touched and inspired, not the piece of great music he hoped to write.

Many bloggers, I suspect, would like to produce a beautiful, long-lasting piece of work over and above their blogs.

Some do not succeed in this. Blogging is time-consuming and addictive, and their blog becomes their opus.

I have struggled with this for several months now. Do I want to only blog? To let my blog be my opus? All the writing I do?

A blog, perhaps, is read by more people on a daily basis than a book is.

It is easier to achieve “success” and recognition as a blogger than as a writer. For instance, this blog has been among the top 25 religious blogs in the UK and Ireland and in the top 150 religious blogs in the world (technorati rankings) a few times. But that does not parallel the sales rank of my books on Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.

I came to the conclusion that the longing of my heart is really to write more books, not to have a successful blog. And so I will pursue that goal.

And if my blog becomes my opus?

So be it.

9) Monetization?

Hmmm. Jury’s out on that one. There is a corner of my soul that’s four years old (I suspect several people have such a corner), and that part likes to check my google adsense every day and see how much money I’ve made!!

The amount isn’t keeping me afloat by any means; on the other hand, doing totally unremunerated, unremunerative work goes against the grain with me.

10) Rankings.

Wikio started ranking Christian blogs in November. My blog has fluctuated between 25-34 in the UK and Ireland.

A successful blog gains an audience for one’s other writing. However, given my low energy levels if I put the energy into driving my blog up in the rankings, I won’t do other writing.

Thoreau talks about a man who went to India to make a fortune so that he could be a full time writer later. He comments, “Better he went up attic at once.”

So rather than focus on backlinks and stuff to increase the rankings of my blog, and earn an audience for books to come, I am just going to focus on writing more books.

And trust God for their audience.

* * *

So I have decided not to worry about blog rankings.

Being concerned about blog rankings subtly changes a blog.

And not necessarily for the better.

An obvious temptation is to blog about what everyone else is blogging about, which will increase your odds of getting linked to.

However, if you are not really interested in the subject, and don’t have passionate feelings about it, writing about it is a waste of time, whether you get linked to or not. Bloggers who often get linked to soon develop an intuitive sense of what will get them backlinks. However, these topics may not be those which are the closest to their hearts. Which are most uniquely them. Their unique contribution to the symphony of the blogosphere. So the short-term success can be at the cost of making their blogs truly unique and interesting (though perhaps to a smaller audience).

“Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves. They never get around to being the particular poet or the particular monk they are intended to be by God. They never become the man or the artist who is called for by all the circumstances of their lives.

They waste their years in vain efforts to be some other poet, some other saint. They wear out their minds and bodies in a hopeless endeavor to write somebody else’s poems or possess somebody else’s spirituality.

There can be an intense egoism in following everybody else. People are in a hurry to magnify themselves by imitating what is popular–and too lazy to think of anything better.

Hurry ruins saints as well as artists. They want quick success and they are in such haste to get it that they cannot take time to be true to themselves.”

Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation.

Anyway, I changed my template on March 7th, after which backlinks appear not to have been credited to me.

So I am thinking of changing my URL, which of course would wipe out a year’s stats–and would remove the tempation to pay attention to rankings, rather than the writing. Will update you guys if I do so.

* * *

I have a competitive streak, and it is not easy for me to do something without at least trying to be one of the best in my field.

But for blogging, I have decided NOT to try to scale up the blog rankings, because it will prove to be too addictive and time-consuming–and will devour time which could have been spent in reading and writing.

I will spend 45-60 minutes a day on blogging, write the best post I can in that time, and leave my position in the rankings to God.

Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measure even
To that same lot however mean or high,
Toward which time leads me and the will of heaven.
All is, if I have grace to use it so,
As ever in my great taskmaster’s eye.

John Milton, Sonnet VII

10 B) Stats.

And here are some stats, if they are of any interest to man or beast.

Last 30 days, Google Analytics

Site Usage

3,993

Visits

6,033

Pageviews

1.51

Pages/Vi

TOTAL PAGEVIEWS

40,466

11) Request for feedback

What do you like best about my blog?

What would you like to see more of?

Any feedback or suggestions would be most welcome.

And thank you for reading my blog:)

Share on site of your choice … Wikio

A fifty percent chance of cockiness!

By Anita Mathias

Zoe

We are breaking Zoe into contact lenses. I would like Irene to have them too, but Roy says, “Just one girl at a time.”

I remembered the hassle it was getting me contact lenses at 16. Jamshedpur, the small Indian town we then lived in did not have a contact lenses clinic, so my dad took a train to Aligarh, and I took a train there from boarding school. We met up, stayed in a hotel, ate out, and got me lenses.

Why? Because we believed that people are more confident if they look more attractive, and so we believed shedding glasses might boost self-confidence!

I can’t believe how vain I was at 16, and how much hassle I put my dad through!!
* * *

And now we are going through the break in to hard (rigid gas permeable) lenses with Zoe, and she’s giving us a bit of trouble to keep in them. Braces for her next month, fingers crossed. I never needed them.

Irene asks, “Did you know we’d have weak eyes when you got married?”

Me, “Yes. Both of us have weak eyes.”

Though mine are getting better each year with aging, and I may soon no longer need contacts, but reading glasses!!

Irene, “Was there anything you could have done?”

Me, “We could have not got married.”

She, considering this, “Oh!”

Roy, “But we also knew you would definitely be smart.”

Irene, cheering up, “Oh.”

Zoe, “And you also knew we’d have at least a 50 percent chance of cockiness.”

Roy and I in unison, “Oh, who do you think you got your cockiness from?”

Zoe, “No comment.”

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A Symphony of Colour: The Glorious Mosaics of San Vitale, Ravenna

By Anita Mathias

A beardless Christ in the apse of San Vitale

We have been in Ravenna, Italy this week.

Dante who died in Ravenna describes it as a”a symphony of colour.” Yeats hails the Byzantine mosaics here as “monuments of undying intellect.”

Ravenna is famous for its Byzantine mosaics, constructed over the the third and 6th century A.D. The best known is San Vitale, which was begun in 525 AD under the Roman Emperor Theodoric, and completed in 548 under the Emperor Justinian.
Justinian, is interestingly best known for marrying Theodora, a child prostitute and circus performer, and later a courtesan. She had a reputation for calculated cruelty, arranging “disappearances” of anyone who went against her.

I can think of modern parallels to these “disappearances!!”

Here is Justinian in San Vitale,

And here is Theodora

The Empress Theodora in San Vitale

The mosaics have everything–deep blue skies, rich green meadows, brightly coloured birds and flowers. Ducks, bulls, lions, dolphins and even a phoenix!

As Yeats described them in Sailing to Byzantium

This is no country for old men. The young

In one another’s arms, birds in the trees

–Those dying generations–at their song,

The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

Fish, flesh or fowl commend all summer long

Whatever is begotten, born and dies.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect

Monuments of unaging intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

III
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

IV
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But 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
Of what is past, or passing, or to come

The Floors of San Vitale

San Vitale Ceiling

And look at this adorable mystic lamb in the centre, probably made by someone who had never seen a real lamb.

Domestic economies and women’s work. Child-rearing theories

By Anita Mathias

Please could someone identify this shrub in our driveway

Close up of the same shrub. Please identify

The previous owners planted 50 of these in our paddock. Poplars? Or should I try again when they leaf?

Roy bought a wood chipper for £150, and is now chipping all the branches and twigs I have pruned, and a couple of 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 without mulch–which I used to hate in America 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 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, stress which means disorganization and items bought to replace lost or broken ones; impaired healthy and immunity. She felt that if a mum stayed home, kept a notebook recording where things were cheapest, shopped for loss-leaders in 4 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 similarly popular.

(Though interestingly I have not worked outside the home except for a part-time college teaching gig, and Roy did retire at 47.)
* * *

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 ingenuity, rather than some sort of business which employs leveraging (setting your time, talents, skills and money to work so as to earn the highest possible return on them). The former, carried to an extreme, cramps my spirit; the latter 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 dish while he tidied up. And you could hear her squeak, “Booning, Daddy, booning,” when the dish 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.” She also chopped veggies with Roy from the time she was three, occasionally cutting her fat little fingers. I grew up with a live-in cook, and first cooked in my twenties, and cut my fingers too–better to get that over with, sooner rather than later, perhaps!

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 was able to cook soups and pasta by herself at 9, and complete elaborate meals (roast duck with potatoes, stuffing and gravy) at 11. At 16, 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 dinner 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 meager 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, have taught us much, increased our confidence by having to function in unfamiliar situations and countries, taught us much about human nature, and how to survive when all is strange. 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. Not what Amy’s ant family would have done.

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!!
* * *

To conclude my meander, 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.

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Too Busy for Happiness. The Saddest Parable Jesus Told.

By Anita Mathias

To celebrate life together, to be together in community, to simply enjoy the beauty of creation,the love of people, and the goodness of God—these seem faraway ideals.There seem to be a mountain of obstacles preventing people from being where their hearts want to be. It is so painful to watch and experience. The astonishing thing is that the battle for survival has become so “normal” that few people really believe it can be different.”
   Henri Nouwen, Seeds of Hope

This is the saddest parable Jesus ever told. We are invited to a banquet. Our soul will be fed with the richest of food. There will be steak, and sirloin, wine, and bread, and honey. And great joy.

Do we have time for all this bliss?

Nope. Too busy with business and making money to spend time with someone who wants our presence at a banquet, and asks for nothing in return.

And so the invitation, having been turned down by the obvious suspects is now extended to the to the “the bad as well as the good.”
And they come. “And the wedding hall was filled with guests.”

However, to accept the hospitality while refusing to respect the host by wearing the wedding garment he has provided is as bad as rejecting it in the first place. That man is banished from the banquet.

The invitation to enjoy God, and to feast on his spiritual riches is open to everyone. However, few bother to attempt to take God up on it, and fewer to respect and value the privilege as they should.

Many are called; but few choose to be chosen.

Matthew 22

¹ Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: ² “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. ³ He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.   ⁴ “Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’

   ⁵ “But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. ⁶ The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. ⁷ The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.

   ⁸ “Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. ⁹ So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ ¹⁰ So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.

   ¹¹ “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. ¹² He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless.

   ¹³ “Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

   ¹⁴ “For many are invited, but few are chosen.”

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The Faith of Children or Adventures in Bringing up Christian children.

By Anita Mathias

Irene at 4 in Swtizerland, 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. A lady left, and held the door open for her, and she entered, omitting the 25 franc 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, inspite 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 almost 12 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 today 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.).

Sadly, however she finds the church we have been attending for the last 6 years boring. Part of it is that her school (private, all-girls, academically selective) has a lot of well-behaved, well-disciplined girls, and Sunday school has rowdy boys and girls who let down their hair, behave badly, and who are indulged and jollied along. Contests like stuffing marshmallows into their mouths while saying chubby bunny which she complains don’t teach her anything, about God or anything else.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Irene refused to have anything to do with it. She cries, quite literally, to the point of looking rather ill, at the thought of an hour of rowdy jollification.
   * * *

Roy thinks we should insist that she goes to church. That children should be taught to obey their parents. Once Irene reached Year 7, I no longer forced her to go to church. Would Jesus have made a child who sobbed at the thought of having to worship him worship him anyway? Perhaps not.

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 Benediction every Sunday, an additional hour of contemplative prayer, “Adoration” every first Sunday, Blue Army in Middle School, Cathechism 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 requuring children to go to church. But facing with a crying Irene, I relent.

The church we were going to, St. Aldate’s, is obviously not meeting her spiritual needs, and we are exploring other options for Irene. Think we have found one, which I will probably blog about as the star of guidance shines brighter.
   * * *

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.

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Who is the Word of God For? Beth Moore. Thought for the Day

By Anita Mathias

Alpha, Omega, Marie Serraris

The words of God are not primarily for seminaries, dissertations, and theological treatments. They are primarily for everyday living on the third rock from the sun. The words of God are for people who run late to work, hop out of the car, and spill coffee on their crisp, white shirt. It’s for people who run to get their trash to the curb before the garbage truck comes and end up strewing it all over the driveway. It’s for people who need to change the litter box and who realize something green and furry is growing in their fridge. The words of God are for people whose neighbors drive them nuts. And mainly, I suppose, for people who drive themselves nuts. Like me. Maybe like you.

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Ravenna, Bologna, Verona

By Anita Mathias

Ravenna

Mosaics, Ravenna

Boris Johnson, in one of his sensible pronouncements, said it is cheaper to fly to Italy than to fill up your car with petrol. So indeed it is.

We will be flying to Ravenna, Bologna and Verona next week. House and pet sitter all lined up, and he will be painting the house too. Deo gratias!

I am, of course, primarily going to see the Byzantine mosaics in Ravenna, 4th, 5th and 6th century A.D. when Ravenna was the capital of the Western world. Bologna, I’m told is enchanting, and Ruskin, whom I love, highly recommends the art and architecture of Verona. So, all in all, it’s going to be a strenuous, stimulating and God willing, very happy fortnight.

I will keep up with the blog, insofar as I can. I’ve rented apartments with wifi, so will be returning to this century and my blogs in the evenings/late nights.

If anyone has tips/”don’t miss” suggestions for these cities, do share!

* * *

I need some techie advice, please. We have a mass of digital

photographs on our cameras from years of travel and family life.

We need to download them, so that all of us can access them, and I

can easily post them on my blog as illustrations. What is the best

way to go? A web picasa album? Flickr? Facebook? Or?

Thanks much!