Our wedding portrait, 21 years ago!

Wikio

Irene in Switzerland

“He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe,

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead. His eyes are closed.
                                                               Albert Einstein
                                                                                                                                                

Irene, Zoe and I in Switzerland

The iPhone of course has a prayer list app

I have of late been suffering from what Zen Buddhists call “monkey mind” when it comes to the time of prayer. It’s not that I don’t pray, or don’t switch off screens and sound;it’s just that my mind strolls or darts from thing to thing, and I am finding it harder to focus.


This is annoying as I often get much refreshment, comfort and guidance from prayer.



I am reminded of what Richard Foster wrote, “At times, prayer can seem not just a waste of time, but a waste of self.” When your mind is distracted, and it’s harder to focus on Christ, it can feel like waiting at an interminable red light, or queue. And the green light is when the timer goes off. 


I was brought up Catholic in a boarding school run by missionary nuns, who were regular in prayer, which was timed. They believed (and I believe this is a Catholic belief) that to sustain a spiritual life for the long haul, one should not prolong prayer when it seems sweet, or cut it short when it seems dreary. So I set a timer for half an hour (to be followed by an hour of reading, meditating and sometimes blogging on the four Gospels, in order), and sometimes as I finally get calm and focussed—the timer goes. Drat. I linger a bit longer, of course, but not long.
                                                                       * * *


Prayer Lists. I used them as a new Christian, and then, as I became better friends with Christ, abandoned them. Imagine sitting with my husband, Roy with a timer (We do sometimes use a timer when we are busy, and want to chat—or when we are mad at each other and want to give each person 3 uninterrupted minutes to explain why they might have married the worst person in the world. But if it’s a rendezvous we’re enjoying, we often ignore the timer, and if the other person gets all his facts wrong (pronoun used deliberately) in a epic fight, we sometimes ignore the timer too.) 


However, imagine using a list in a conversation with Roy. Adoration- Roy, you’re handsome. I love your beard. Contrition–Sorry, not up to much of late. Thanksgiving–Thanks for cooking roast duck last night. Supplication–Please sort out the garage. Sorry, can’t go on, there goes the timer.


Actually, it doesn’t sound too bad. And these things need to be said. I had abandoned lists because they seemed mechanical and boring. However, we were talking about it in pastorate last week, and people said that it was the only way they could pray faithfully about things. They talked about staggered lists, different things for different days, as the way to not get bored when you need to pray persistently for people/things/situations.


So that is what I am going to do: have a list, different for each day, so that I do get to pray and move intractable situations in my own life, in the lives of those I care for, and in my world.  

Irene in New ZealandA salutory reminder of the streams of living water.

My needs are many, but my supplies are infinite

Jesus is the Fountain of grace and mercy.

He alone can give to his people the assurance of hope, because none but He is infinite in power, and infinite in grace. Hear his own declaration, ‘My grace is sufficient for you.’

With this promissory note in my hand, ever payable on demand, when presented by faith and prayer in the name of Jesus, I need not despond. I shall receive in return what will supply my every need out of the fullness which is in Christ Jesus. Out of his fullness, I shall receive, and grace for grace.

My needs are many, but my supplies are infinite. Though millions of weak, tempted, persecuted, dying believers, have been invigorated in every age by this living water, yet its streams are undiminished; it still remains as it ever was — Grace Sufficient!

Sufficient to relieve the needy, to strengthen the weak, to pardon the guilty, to sanctify the unholy, to support the disconsolate, to comfort and save all, however vile and worthless; who sincerely, fervently, and perseveringly seek for it, through faith in Christ.

— Thomas Reade Christian Meditations

Our Aylesbury ducks, Buttercup and Daisy who HAVE given up all ambition

            


           How strange to think of giving up all ambition!
          Suddenly I see with such clear eyes
          The white flake of snow
          That has just fallen in the horse’s mane!


‘Watering the Horse’  by Robert Bly       




         Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
         Asleep on the black trunk,
         Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.

         Down the ravine behind the empty house,
         The cowbells follow one another
         Into the distances of the afternoon.

         To my right,
         In a field of sunlight between two pines,
         The droppings of last year’s horses
         Blaze up into golden stones.

         I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
         A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
         I have wasted my life.

Robert Bly, and James Wright, two ambitious and successful American poets have a moment of just being, and “see with such clear eyes” “The white flake of snow,” “the bronze butterfly,” the chicken hawk floating over. Wright looks back at his life of anxiety and toil and ambition, and, in this moment of stillness, feels that he has wasted it!


Ambition, according to Milton was “the last infirmity of noble minds.” Shakespeare, no stranger to ambition, one presumes, makes his dying Wolsey regret it.


Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition:
By that sin fell the angels; how can man, then,
The image of his Maker, hope to win by it?
O Cromwell, Cromwell!
Had I but served my God with half the zeal
I served my king, he would not in mine age.




I have been thinking about ambition since reading Amy Chua’s piece on the fierce ambition instilled in her by her Chinese parents, which she has, in turn, fiercely instilled in her children.
Here are my musings on it:
On Tiger Mothers, Distracted Mothers, and Just About Good Enough Mothers

Both Roy and I were brought up to be ambitious, Roy, by a tiger mother, as I have mentioned in the post, I, by a father, who desperately wanted me not to waste my life, but to do something he could be proud of. 


Around last Christmas, I think we decided that enough was enough, and like Bly thought about giving up all ambition–and, what’s more: Roy did it.


He was quite a high-powered mathematician, and he took early retirement, which, of course, was the biggest change in our family’s life. Sometimes, we can hardly believe we’ve actually done it!! 


It’s now the seventh month of his ambition free life, and we love it. It takes a while to get adjusted to life without adrenalin, stress, the pressing weight of papers to write, papers to referee, books to read, and books to write–and to realize that one now actually has time to do all the things one would do if one had time. It takes a while to realize that you now have time to do the fun creative healthy things that were a waste of time before–fresh pressed juices, gourmet cooking, bits of interior decoration. And it takes time for one’s pulse to return to a slow beat–but we are enjoying the process!!
                                                   * * * 


And for me, I still love writing, write, and want to write. But somehow–I don’t quite know how–after years of trying to slay the idol of writing ambition, I have done it. I am writing for the joy of writing, hoping to find readers, but am content if I do, content if I don’t. I haven’t quite reached the level of surrender  mentioned in this blogger’s prayer, but you know what, I am getting there.


What helped was taking a 3.5 year break from reading and writing to establish a publishing company. And when I came back, I wrote in a different style, more transparent and easy to write compared to the pretzel like, contorted style of my earlier writing (see essays at anitamathias.com). I am wondering if those desert, wilderness years broke the idol of ambition, and returned my writing to me as pure joy, as it was in the beginning, in the land before ambition.