Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

Still by Lauren Winner, and Other Books I’ve Read This Year

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Another mid-life revision is my two year project to build up to reading at least a book a week. I used to do this, but being on my laptop so much means I do read a lot—but online newspapers, magazines, blogs, social media stuff, rather than books.
So my goal was to complete a book in 30 days in Jan, in 29 days in Feb, in 28 days in March, 27 days in April, and 26 days in May. So far, I have kept to this, but I can see it getting harder as it gets to a book a week (about 45 pages a day), and perhaps having to cheat by listening to books on my iPhone as I walk.
* * *
Anyway, the book I finished this morning was Lauren Winner’s Still which I read because I was sent a complimentary autographed copy. I both enjoyed it, and was disappointed.
I enjoyed the structure: several very short chapters, many of them not meaty enough to be blog posts even, but the majority of them interesting. It was like observing a subject in a refracting mirror from different angles. Winner’s formidable intelligence probably intimidated her editor, as many of the chapters, while charming enough, were slight. Far from being an instant spiritual classic as some reviews said, the book will probably not be read in five years. The pastiche didn’t quite hold together, in my opinion.
It’s thematically problematic too. The classic arc for a memoir is “I once was lost, but now am found.” We need that, we poor benighted readers. Tell us how you found light, grace, joy, God, so we know there’s hope for us too. But the narrative arc of Winner’s memoir is “I once was lost, and now am a little bit less lost,” but the less-lostness is not convincing. Which makes the book less satisfying. “Yes, oh dear, yes, the novel tells a story,” E.M. Forster famously said. So much a memoir!
Winner says she stopped praying, and her spiritual life shrivelled very early in a six year unhappy marriage from which she desperately wanted out—and did eventually leave. Church suddenly seemed very boring. And so she gives up prayer, so she could give up her marriage.
Interestingly, she continued her career as a professional Christian—writing books on “Christian sex” and spiritual disciplines; teaching in a divinity school; speaking at Christian conferences and training for and receiving ordination—while her own spiritual life was dry, desperate and almost dead.
This disjunction between the public image and persona and the inner spiritual reality probably lengthened and deepened her spiritual crisis. She wrote books on Christian sex, when her marriage was withering; wrote books on spiritual disciplines while church bored her, and she could not pray.
The worst thing about living a lie is that it becomes second nature. The mask, the act, become a reality; the situationally right words come so easily that you forget what the true words are. When you are living a lie, when you are a professional Christian with a dead spiritual life, you can begin to forget what a vital spiritual life looks like, or to even believe there can be one. You almost no longer believe in the truth of joy, and peace and being filled to bursting with the Holy Spirit.  Pretending to be what you are not has become second nature–and, for all you know, everyone else is pretending too.
If I were Winner’s spiritual director, I would say: There’s so much more. I would say, “Why not be totally changed into fire?” I would use old-fashioned words: repentance, surrender, humility. But that’s the peril of being formidably intelligent as Winner is. It’s harder to get straight talk, which we all need—for the realm of the spirit is a democracy.
So ultimately, it is a book which outlines a private boredom with, and total breakdown of faith. Towards the end of the book, she is still hanging in there. Still struggling. She has committed to the outward expressions of the Christian faith: it is her job and her writing and speaking career, and she is besides, newly ordained as an Episcopalian minister.
The real gold of the spiritual life—joy, peace, love, the Holy Spirit, surrender, intimacy with God—so far seem to have evaded Lauren, but she is still there, as she tells us. Perhaps she needs a more fiery spiritual director, or perhaps yet another crisis– which tosses old spiritual certainties and truisms aside–to come, perhaps for the first time, to the fire and joy at the heart of the Christian faith.
Writers must write, and Lauren writes well, and so I don’t regret reading her painful narrative of the valley of dead faith and dry bones, but I wish she had waited, figuratively speaking, for a spiritual spring to write it, so that it would have had more nourishment for her readers.
  * * *
Other books I’ve read this year: Roy Godwin’s “Grace Outpouring,” about co-operating with God in the remarkable spiritual experiences at Ffald-y-Brenin.
Ann Voskamp’s memoir 1000 Gifts about discovering God through the process of praise and thanksgiving, “Eucharisteo precedes the miracle.”
A. S. Byatt’s wonderful “Victorian” novel, Angels and Insects, set when Darwin was turning people’s religious convictions topsy-turvy.
And Mary Oliver’s elegant poems. I’ve read a few each day with much pleasure.
Some books on the go: Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle,R. T. Kendall’s The Anointing on the Holy Spirit, and Berniere’s Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.

In the Watches of the Night, I will Think of Thee

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Part of my mid-life revision of life is trying to change tiny, but leveraged, habits, which together change a life.
Everyone, from Trollope, to Hemingway, to Bruce Wilkerson testifies to the power of early rising. However, I have the classic depressive personality, waking slowly, and really getting going much later. I am groggy in the mornings, and tired and brain-fogged all day if I get up too early. In the evenings, I am wide-awake and very creative.
So I have been getting to bed earlier in the evenings. Setting the alarm for bedtime, rather than waking.
Of course, I am often wide awake when the alarm shrills at 10.40 p.m., time to get to bed. But I have been going to bed anyway, and praying.
In the watches of the night, I will think of thee.It’s strangely peaceful, actually, going through one’s life in prayer, putting one’s life in the force-field of radiant light and energy which emanates from God. Letting that light shine on areas of weakness and sadness—weight, disappointing writing productivity, weaknesses in relationships. To pray for family. To bathe areas of my life—housekeeping, my garden, future plans, in the light of God in prayer.
Of course, ideally, I would sleep at night, not pray—but I am getting used to this new early bedtime, and am enjoying the extra time opened up to pray through my life, to submit it to God’s radiation.
I am in a strangely happy phase of life now in which I realize all the things I cannot do. I cannot touch spirits with my writing, unless the Spirit touches me. I cannot lose weight unless the Spirit heals me, and strengthens me. I cannot be a loving person unless the Spirit fills me and loves from within me.
So prayer to me is an incredibly powerful thing—seeking power and healing and strength in areas of woundedness, brokenness, low self-confidence, and weakness. And slowly being healed, strengthened and changed!!
Truly, it’s the most powerful thing I can do!!

The Great Time versus Money Dilemma. “Plain Living and High Thinking.”

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The ultimate economy: Vegetable gardening in the snow!



Roy bought a wood chipper for £150, and is now chipping all the branches and twigs I have pruned, and two 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 not not use mulch–which I used to hate 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 that the 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 bought by exhausted mums, stress and consequent disorganization and items bought to replace lost or broken ones; impaired health and immunity. She felt that if a mum stayed home, kept a notebook recording where things were cheapest, shopped for loss-leaders in four 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 equally popular.
                                             * * *
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 thrift, rather than businesses which employ leveraging (setting your time, talents, skills and money to work so as to earn the highest possible return on them).
Frugality and thrift, carried to an extreme, cramps my spirit; business 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 skillet while he tidied up. And you could hear her squeak, “Booning, Daddy,  booning,” when the entree 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.” 
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 chopped veggies with Roy from the time she was three, occasionally cutting her fat little fingers.  She was able to cook soups and pasta by herself at 9, and elaborate meals (roast duck with potatoes, stuffing and gravy) at 11. At 17, 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 New Year’s Eve 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 meagre 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 and educational, have increased our confidence because we’ve had to function in unfamiliar situations and countries, and have taught us much about human nature. 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. 
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!!  And “the plain living and high thinking” for most of the years pays for these educational explorations and adventures.
                                             * * * 
So what should one value more, time or money?   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. 

Why I love the Spiritual Passive Voice

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rodney howard browne
When I was getting my Master’s in Creative Writing, there were some taboos. Adverbs! In fact, all unnecessary words–and the passive voice.  This was how David Citino, my first writing teacher, memorably excoriated it. “The passive voice is an evasion of responsibility. It says the cookies were eaten. Not, I ate the cookies.”
* * *
But spiritually, I love the passive voice. I love the transference of ultimate responsibility.
Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.  Oh that’s too active! It makes me feel tired, inadequate, quite out of joy, worried that I am going to drop the cross, and go off and eat chocolate after a few steps.
And if that was all being a Christian was about—denying yourself, and taking up your cross, I wouldn’t feel capable of being a Christian. I would tell Jesus: “I love you very much. In fact, I adore you. You are the cleverest person I know. The way you suggest living is the very best way to live.”
“But you know that bit about denying myself, and carrying my cross? It’s too daunting. I wouldn’t have the energy to get out of bed. Or down the stairs.”  (“Deny yourself and take up your cross,” translates into no chocolate, and doing laundry, and dishes, and cleaning and tidying the girls’ rooms in my mind.)
And so I just love the spiritual passive voice. Where continuance as a Christian is dependent on God’s goodness, and not on any muscular cross-carrying on my part–for I have no confidence in my stamina, resilience, or ability to persevere in that without crippling depression.
* * *
When the risen Christ appears to the disciples, He breathes on them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”  And in that there is hope for the weakest of us to follow Jesus. We don’t have to grab the Spirit; we don’t have to earn it. We just have to receive it. And it is promised to us as often as we ask for it. (Luke 11:13.) 
Much of the Christian life is actually in passive voice. Lovely things happen to us. We are chosen. We are adopted. We are redeemed because Jesus died for us. And we do precisely nothing to earn all this. We don’t fill ourselves with the spirit. We are filled with the spirit. We don’t give ourselves the gift of tongues or any spiritual gifts; we are given them. We don’t sanctify ourselves, make ourselves holy. How can we? Christ within us, the Spirit within us, slowly sanctifies us.
I know there is an active element to faith, Paul labouring mightily, but that has too much of a masculine feel for me for my spiritual temperament; it’s too muscular!
* * *
I find hope in the spiritual passive voice. I am now, in a slower time of my life, seeking healing for nebulous wounds I cannot accurately diagnose which have led to my seeking comfort and highs in food and sweets and crisps instead of God.
As I laid the wounds and callouses in my spirit bare in prayer yesterday, I saw two things.
Firstly, that I lacked the diagnostic or therapeutic ability to heal myself of these wounds I do not understand.   Someone else, the Great Physician, has to do it for me. All I can do is bring my wounded spirit to God, and ask him to shine on it, touch it,  lavish on it balm, honey, the word of God,  and heal me.
Secondly, given that Jesus is who he is, nothing can stop him getting his healing hands onto my wounded spirit, working with it, touching it and healing it. And so, because of the goodness of God, I know the process of healing has begun. Because I have asked him to heal me, and because he is good.
If I had to rely on my own faith, my own endeavour, even my own prayer to be healed, and to live as a Christian, rather than on the goodness of God–ah, what chance would I have? 
This is one of my favourite Matt Redman songs. “Who, oh Lord, could heal themselves, their own selves could heal?”





Hudson Taylor struggled mightily against his own sins and shortcomings, particularly in the hot, irritable climate of China. The spiritual secret of “resting in Christ” transformed his life.
Hudson Taylor writes to his sister, “ How then to have our faith increased ?  Not a striving to have faith, but a looking off to the Faithful One seems all we need; a resting in the Loved One entirely.
Not by striving to have faith, but by resting on the Faithful One. Here, I feel, is the secret : not asking how I am to get sap out of the vine into myself, but remembering that 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.
The Lord Jesus tells me I am a branch. I am part of Him, and have just to believe it and act upon it. If I go to the bank in Shanghai, having an account, and ask for fifty dollars, the clerk cannot refuse it to my outstretched hand and say that it belongs to Mr. Taylor. What belongs to Mr. Taylor my hand may take. It is a member of my body. And I am a member of Christ, and may take all I need of His fulness. I have seen it long enough in the Bible, but I believe it now as a living reality.”
These are inspiring words for me. Just rest, trust in God’s goodness, trust in God’s healing. Just be a branch in the vine, let his sap flow through you. I find this as energising in my writing, as in out of my depth social encounters, or encounters when I travel.
And this is becoming a way of life for me, relying on God to get through the day. Relying on him for words and wisdom in my interactions with people, at church, in writing, or to speedily tidy the house before guests come, or pack before a flight. Living life depending on his power and goodness to help me. Living life in the passive voice.

When E.M. Bounds Taught Me About Prayer (A Guest Post by Stuart McCormack)

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Meeting E M Bounds

E. M Bounds

I was twenty years old when I first met Edward McKendree Bounds. It had been a quiet summer in Lerwick, and I often found myself with time to sit by the sea watching the waves crash on the rocks only a few meters from where I sat. I would sit for ages just watching the power of the sea and I guess there came a point when my thoughts came to an end. I began itching to read a good book!
Lerwick’s Christian Bookshop was the opposite of my perch on the rocks. It was quiet but it was crowded. On the shelves there was a host of books written by men and women long dead. Up to this point in my life, I rarely read a Christian book so I didn’t really know where to begin. Being Scottish, it didn’t take me long to find my tongue and ask for help.
The lady who ran the store was about seventy years old and she loved Jesus and she loved books. She was a most helpful, shining soul and began thumbing along the books, highlighting some that had touched her heart: Tozer, Ryle, Finney, Simpson, Bounds.
I was drawn to Bounds because her face lit up when she talked about him. She claimed that Bounds knew more about prayer than any other person living or dead, besides Jesus himself. I left the store with “The Necessity of Prayer” by E M Bounds.
The next day I sat on my shoreline rock, the waves frothing and the sun shining on my back, and I opened the book. Reading that day, I thought I’d slipped from time into eternity: time flew past with the turn of every page, but I did not notice. As I read Bounds’ words I became convinced that he was a man who not only wrote a lot about prayer, but who also was a devoted man of prayer.
Bounds entered ministry when he was in his twenties. He was a lawyer before that and he had a keen mind for information. His passion for truth led him into a deep relationship with the Bible. He was convinced that scripture held all the answers we need, a conviction which shows in his writings about prayer.
Bounds bases his writings upon years of Bible meditation and reflection and prayer. One of the reasons I liked Bounds from the first meeting (reading his book) was that he loved the Bible and wrote about the Bible. Jesus is at the heart of his writings! I learned from Bounds that if I wanted to know Jesus more, I had to come by the path of prayer, and that if I wanted to learn to pray more fruitfully, I needed to be walking closer to Jesus.
There was one point that Bounds made that transformed my own prayer life. Before Bounds I struggled with prayer (actually, I often still do). I came to a chapter called “Prayer and Desire”, and in it he wrote, “If you have no, or little, desire to pray, then pray for the desire to pray.”
I really liked that and I began to do it. I saw my desire for praying grow fast. I previously felt I had to pray, but now I was finding that I WANTED to pray; I WANTED to get to know God in the way that Bounds seemed to know God.
Bounds became a prayer mentor to me at a time when I needed a challenge and encouragement to draw closer to God. This is why I count his writings as some of the best on prayer and the deeper life with God. His writings reflect a man who was consumed in every way with prayer, and with God.
I wish I had met Bounds in person, but he died long before I was born. I only ever met him through his writings, but the imprint he left on my heart burns hotter than the warmest of handshakes. Without Bounds, I would have stayed on the shoreline of shallow prayerlessness, but Bounds taught me not to sit on the shores of God’s grace, but rather to enter into the power of his mighty presence and experience His love, grace and mercy in deeper ways.
I chose not to write about Bound’s life simply because better people than me have already done so. My hope in writing about my experience of Bounds is that one or two people might seek him out for themselves. There is a pretty accurate biography of Bounds on Wikipedia. I would personally recommend “The Necessity of Prayer” and “Power through Prayer”.
*******
Stuart


Stuart McCormack lives in North Yorkshire with his wife and three kids. He worked for the Church for 12 years and now spends his time mentoring troubled teens and thinking about how the world could be a better place. Stuart is passionate about mission, Discipleship, positive life choices and good curry.  Check out his blog Missionalrev, or follow him on Twitter @missionalrev.

Prayer Walking and Worshipping God in Nature

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I started prayer walking most days last month, and this has brought an unexpected dimension of joy, happiness, ecstasy and shalom to my spiritual life.
And being an inveterate reader, I have begun to research other people’s experience of God in nature.
Here’s a summary of the Worshipping God in Nature chapter of Gary Thomas’s book,Sacred Pathways.
We can choose to worship God “in the cathedral he himself has built: the outdoors.”
Any place that has some trees, and a stream, or at a minimum open skies can be God’s cathedral. Getting outside can literally flood parched hearts and soften the hardest soul.
The full force of Biblical imagery—phrases like “the river of life” or “green pastures” strikes us out of doors.
Most of the Old Testament theophanies, or appearances of God happened in a wilderness. God met Hagar in the desert, Abraham on a mountain, Jacob at a river crossing, and Moses at a burning bush.
Jesus himself was walking by the Sea of Galilee when he called his disciples to follow him. He taught in the countryside, and used its images—the birds flying overhead, the lilies.
However, worship has moved from Mount Sinai to the dark indoors. But when God created a paradise for the first men and women it was a garden with trees, and a river!!
Bernard of Clairvaux—“Woods and stones can teach you what you can never hear from any master.”
The famous ascetic, Anthony the Great, the first monk, born in AD 251, was asked, “How dost thou content thyself, Father, who art denied the comfort of books?
He replies, “My book is nature, and as often as I have a mind to read the words of God, it is at my hand.”
Nature, the school which never closes, is open when sermons and spiritual books have grown stagnant for us.
* * *
Space flight is an effective evangelist. John Glenn, “To look out at this kind of creation and not to believe in God is, to me, impossible.”
Article 2 of the Belgic Confession says, God is made known to us by “the creation, preservation and governance of the universe, which is before our eyes as a most elegant book, wherein all creatures, great and small, are as so many characters, leading us to see clearly the invisible things of God.”
Spurgeon writes, “Oh, but surely, everything that comes from the hand of such a Master-artist as God has something in it of himself. There are lovely spots on this this fair globe which ought to make even a blasphemer devout. I have said, among the mountains, “He who sees no God here is mad.” 
And creation in its floods, hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis also reminds us of God’s power and judgement.
Nature brings us rest
We don‘t always need a change; sometimes, we just need a rest, and being out in nature provides it.
Susan Power Bratton writes, “Experiencing the beauty and peace of God in nature is not a substitute for direct interaction with the regenerative powers of the Creator, but the mending and binding so necessary to heal our stress-filled lives may flow through creation. For the spiritually oppressed, or the socially injured, a pleasing or quiet natural environment can help provide spiritual release. Resting by a clear river, or sitting on a sunny slope can bring peace and joy into clouded souls.”
‎“Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush is afire with God; but only he who sees takes off his shoes. The rest sit around it and pick blackberries” Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“Now if I believe in God’s son and bear in mind that he became man, all creatures will appear a hundred times more beautiful to me than before. Then I will properly appreciate the sun, the moon, the stars, trees, apples, pears, as I reflect that he is Lord over and the centre of all things.” Martin Luther
Luther said it is only with the eye of faith that we see miracles all through nature, miracles that he believed were even greater than the miracles of the sacraments. If we truly understood the growth of a grain of wheat, he says, w e would die of wonder.”
Saint Bonaventure, a Franciscan Friar suggests a grid though which we may school ourselves to seek God outdoors. Look at the greatness of creation, sky, mountains, the multitude of creation, for instance, in a forest, and the beauty of creation.
Gary Thomas, “Walks that are truly helpful are those in which I lay down my own agenda at the first sign of grass, and let God lead my mind wherever he choses.” (And that the way that I have begun having my prayer walks too!)

Irene’s 13th Birthday

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 Irene aged 13, did not trust her parents or her sister (aged 17) to make a cake for her birthday, so she planned, shopped for, and made her cake all by herself. Here is the result:

Cake topped with frosting, grated chocolate, blackberries,  raspberries, and a strawberry

 and filled with

blackberries,  raspberries, and, in the middle, sliced strawberries.  Here she is with her creation

and a top view with no flash

She had just brought home a clay pot she’d made at school in the shape of our dog’s head

and here’s the dog, with his ears up

A Contemplative in the World

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Angelus, Millet


 One of my personal spiritual ambitions is to live as “a Contemplative in the World.”
I want to live quietly and peacefully. Rooted in Christ. Immersed in Scripture. And right in the force field of the vibrant radiation of the Spirit.
I want to pray through my day. To seek God’s wisdom on my thinking and actions. Both the little and trivial, and the large. And not to have thoughts in my mind which are not in God’s.
I want to lead a quiet life. To do some work with my hands in my garden as the monks of old did.
I want the words and ideas of Scripture to run through my mind through the day, like a quiet underground musical stream.
                                    * * *  
Some contemplatives, for instance, the Trappists, take an additional vow of stability. Stability of place. They commit themselves to live in a particular monastery until they die.
This monastic ideal is very appealing to me. I’ve moved around so much–I have lived in 13 towns in 3 countries–India, England, and America–which is less than some people, but more than most. And for me, it feels like too much.
I have a longing now for rootedness. To stay in a place for a long time. To know its seasons. Its plants and trees and flowers and  wildlife. Its history. To know, love and invest in the same people over a period of years. To settle down.
When Thoreau was asked if he had travelled much, he answered in the affirmative. “I have travelled a great deal in Concord,” he said. I want to travel a great deal in Oxford, especially in my garden, an acre and a half in Garsington. To really know it. 
                                        * * * 
Most monastic life is based on the Rule of St. Benedict. A day held sleep, prayer and study, and manual labour in roughly equal balance.
Their waking hours held a balance of prayer, study and manual labour. It’s amazing that Benedict stumbled upon this perfect balance of mind, spirit and body. 
The one weakness of monastic life is relationships–it does not allow for marital relationships, parent-child relationships or one on one friendships. I would be lonely and bereft without these–which is why I would like to be ” a contemplative in the world.”
However the monks and nuns did live together in community, which is a stabilizing influence, and a safeguard against nuttiness, extreme selfishness or against undisciplined excesses in food, sleep, prayer or study. The anonymity of the monastic life also provided a safeguard against the treadmill and drudgery of ambition. 
                                            * * *
I find I need the manual labour, which was part of monasticism, for mental, psychological, spiritual health besides, of course, physical health and strength. It rounds out and completes my cerebral, incredibly intense, wired, and often highly-strung personality.
I do my best thinking and praying while working in the garden, or pottering about the house, (though I do have a cleaner and get a gardener occasionally, since I don’t potter regularly enough).
                                           * * * 

I committed my life to the lovely Jesus when I was 17, and then and now being ardent, asked, “What should I do?” So momentous a decision had to express itself in action I felt.

And so, being a novice Christian, and not realizing the importance of the seeking the whole counsel of God, I picked up a bit of the jigsaw.

Jesus said, “Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do to me.” And so I decided to serve the least of these.  I lived near Calcutta, and so at 17 and a half, went off to become a nun and work with Mother Teresa.

It was a temperamental mismatch. I had spent my childhood in an exclusive dreamy boarding school in the Himalayas, run by Irish, English and German IBMV nuns, and where I read, and read, and read. I was reading Thomas Hardy, George Eliot, Matthew Arnold, Galsworthy, Shaw, James Joyce, Joyce Cary…

Suddenly, I joined a community where many people were just learning English, literacy was basic, there was no reading except spiritual reading. I had been so used to living in my mind, in books, in language, and I felt bereft of that.  I took an old Bible which had both Latin and English and patiently taught myself some Latin by matching the words!

The hardest part was living in community. This was community in extreme–25 women sharing a single room, which with a constant moving of furniture became a dormitory, refectory, class-room, living room. No privacy, except at times of prayer and meditation–and then, it was your mind and thoughts which were at rest, your body was with 400 others.

Phew. I loved God, loved thinking of Him, talking to Him, learning about Him. Still do. Loved Scripture. Still do. But I just needed a lot more solitude and quiet than I could get in a service-oriented community.

After 14 months there, I realized it was not for me. Mother Teresa had another order, called Sisters of the Word, devoted to a contemplative life. They spent their mornings in prayer and reading Scripture, and their afternoons in proclaiming the Word to the poor, the” spiritually poor,” on the streets, wherever. I fancied it would be just the thing for me.

Mother Teresa had her doors open all day. I asked her if I could either leave and go home or if  I could transfer to her contemplative branch from her active branch. She thought I was too young–at 18–for a contemplative life which is generally considered psychologically, spiritually and emotionally more difficult than an active religious life, and asked me to apply to that order when I was 21.

When I was 21, of course, English in Oxford absorbed all my thoughts. My faith was virtually non-existent. And that was that!!

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But now, in a quiet season of my life, I am living a fairly contemplative life—while writing a rapidly growing blog, and living in a family with two teenage girls. So I guess I am “a contemplative in the world,” a category unknown to Benedict.