Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

365 Project: A walk in the New Forest

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A cheerful breakfast before a walk in the woods.

A New Forest pony causes a minor traffic jam

A lovely leafless glade

Lots of interesting trees

The crown of a single tree

There is plenty of interest in the leaf litter.

A sprig of lichen

Moss growing on exposed tree roots makes interesting patterns.

A wonderful February walk in the New Forest, Hampshire. Well, it was new in 1079, when William of Conqueror claimed it as a Royal hunting preserve!

Elijah: The training of a prophet

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File:Abraham Bloemaert - Landscape with the Prophet Elijah in the Desert - WGA2277.jpg

   

                          Elijah

 

Now Elijah the Tishbite, said to Ahab,

“As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives,

whom I serve,

there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years

except at my word.” 1 Kings 17

 

The Lord exalts his prophets to the court of princes.

He tells him what is to happen:

knowledge which can make him seem crazed.

 

And how does he equip his prophet

for the burden

of the certain knowledge of what is to come,

the burden of being thought a fool

which can belong to those who hear the word of God?

 

After seasons of great visibility,

He moves him to hiddenness.

* * *

 

Then the word of the LORD came to Elijah: 

“Leave here, turn eastward

and hide in the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan.

 

“The Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan, Lord?

But I heard you call me to the court of the King

I thought that was my vocation.”

 

“You did.

I did.

It was.

 

But I now call you to something different.”

 

“But the Kerith Ravine is barren,

It has no sources of food.

No one lives there.

 

I have heard men tell of the healing power of social support

I have read that it is not good for man to be alone.

 

I have heard that iron sharpens iron,

that you show each man a slightly

different diamond-facet of your face,

so that in community, the jigsaw

of your revelation of yourself is complete.

 

‘Go alone to the Kerith Ravine,’ you now say.

I might be lonely there.”

 

“You might, Elijah,

 You will.

But I will meet you there,

Teach you there,

Comfort you there.

 

Can I be heard amidst the pomp of Ahab’s court,

the adulation of the people of Israel,

the laughter, warmth and happy

after-echoes of friendship?

When you talk all the time,

when people talk to you all the time

when conversation echoes in your ears,

and you leave head whirring with yeasty talk,

can you still hear my voice,

my gentle whisper?

 

It is more difficult.

 

You may well be lonely.

But I who created you

And know each strand of the tangled roots

Of fear, faith, courage and instability in your heart,

Which neither you nor the world has guessed at,

 

I will be your friend.

 

I will nourish you,

Show you the joy of my presence,

Fill you with laughter as I draw near,

Flow through you in waves of liquid love,

Make you drunk with the wine of my spirit.

I will succour you.

 

I will teach you that though I am a giver

And love to give good things,

I am, in fact, enough.

 

And you will know that for sure

When all you have is me.

 

I am even practical. 

You will drink from the brook,

And I have ordered the ravens to feed you there.

Providing for you though what your people reckon unclean.

* * *

 

So Elijah went to the Kerith Ravine,

and the ravens brought him bread and meat

and he drank from the brook.

 Some time later, the brook dried up

 Because there had been no rain in the land. 

 

“Lord, did I not hear you command

me to drink from this brook.

And it is now dry.

Lord?  Lord?”

 

“You did, Elijah,

I did.

And it is indeed now dry.

 

But, though you do not suspect me of it,

I am, in fact, intensely practical.

And I speak new words.

Go at once to Zarephath of Sidon and stay there.

 I have commanded a widow to supply you with food.

 

Yes, I know it is the centre of Baal worship.

But I will again provide for you through the least

Of those you reckon unclean

Blessing them and you

In the river of blessing in which I delight.”

                           * * *

 

“But I had heard you call me to be a hermit by the brook.

I have grown to rather like it here.

I thought that was my vocation.”

 

“You did.

I did.

It was.

 

But today is a new day,

And I come to you with new words.

As I will keep coming as long as you live

Offering you fresh wisdom, fresh love,

Manna and mercies new every morning.”

 

So Elijah went to Zarephath.

My Journey from Atheist to Christian: A Guest Post by Cat Caird

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Cat Caird
I would really love to share my journey from being an atheist to being a Christian with you. 


The real pinnacle moment for me was when I was 17 and I encountered Jesus for the first time.  Before that I was never interested in Christianity. I was brought up by atheist parents and thought Christians were a bunch of weird folk that wore sandals and waved flags to cheesy music to a God that didn’t exist. Through my teenage years I often questioned many things about life and thought deeply about things and I realised after a while that I had everything that I could possibly want and what the world deemed to make you happy: success (in good grades and having a job), a boyfriend, friends to go drinking with, partying every weekend etc. What more could a girl want? But thoughts would often race through my mind about how unhappy I was, a blackness buried deep that nothing could soothe or make sense of.


Until one day I met a Christian and a Christian who was different to everyone else and didn’t seem like the cheesy Christian I was expecting. This friend soon began talking about Jesus and she gave me some Christian music to listen to, which led her to inviting me to a Christian music event which completely changed my life!
So here I was at this event surrounded by Christians and listening to some good music, suddenly there was a break in the music and a guy got up and started to speak. This really caught my attention, this guy started to talk about Jesus but it wasn’t the Jesus I had heard of before. The Jesus I had heard about was some 2000 year old guy on the cross which resulted in people wearing funny robes and singing badly to 3 chords.
But this guy spoke about Jesus in a different way, a Jesus that was alive now and cared about people and cared about me. After he spoke there was some prayer time and a lady came up and prayed for me (I don’t think she knew I wasn’t a Christian).  She started to tell me things that God was revealing to her about me. This again was a complete shock: she was telling me things that no one knew about and she was telling me what God thought of me. I left that place very confused.
This completely shook my foundations and led me to question a lot of things about my life, Christianity and if there was really a God that loved me.
 I started to go to church and hear the Gospel. I also started reading the Bible and it become apparent to me through reading the Bible that it was authentically about Jesus and that actually Jesus was asking me to make a decision to follow him.
But there was a snag. I had been dating a guy for about a year and it was getting serious; however he had no interest in Christianity at all. But I was getting to that point where I was going to become a Christian and I felt deeply that Jesus was asking me to make a choice between going out with this guy and carrying on the path I was on, or dropping everything and follow him.
On April 11th 2004 I made my choice. I broke up with my boyfriend in the morning and went to church in the evening and because it was Easter Sunday there was a wonderful Gospel message with an appeal at the end for people to follow Christ. Except of course, I was scared to go up to the front! And I stayed put until it got to the point where the preacher said “There is still someone here who needs to come up to the front” Well If that wasn’t a sign then I don’t know what is! My legs took me to the front where I gave my life to Christ.
Since then it hasn’t been easy. I don’t think I understood what it meant to follow Jesus until I got to Uni and became a part of the Christian Union there and started hearing more of the Gospel and of who Jesus is. But one thing I have noticed is that I have a security that I never had before, there is no need to strive for what the world calls success when life is found in Jesus, and he shone the light in the darkness which brings such peace!
I went through so many emotions during that year, some spiritual attacks with bad dreams, some fighting with friends and parents about whether I was joining a cult and some just within myself – is this Jesus really real and does he really love me? Yet as I look back now, I know that through those struggles Jesus was always with me and pointing me to the Cross where I glance and see how rubbish I am and then I look again and see how much he loved me and that he would never leave me.

Cat Caird is married and works as a Staff Worker with UCCF. She blogs at Sunshine Lenses.
Thank you, Cat!!

It is I; don’t be afraid!

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It is I; don’t be afraid.
So, the disciples row for “three or three and a half miles” (I love these charming details, John striving to remember accurately, and how they make it easier for us to believe in truth of these memoirs and autobiographical reflections of Jesus.)
It’s dark, the wind is blowing, the waters are rough.
And a figure looms out of the darkness, walking on the waters, approaching the boat. Understandably, they are terrified.
But Jesus reassures them, It is I; don’t be afraid.
* * *
And that is the aspect He wears too. He shows himself sometimes when it is dark, and the winds are strong, and the waters are rough. He comes towards us, a dark figure, and we cannot see his face, and we do not know his name, and we are terrified.
But it is Him, nonetheless, and face to face with the stranger in the darkness, we are to remember God’s most consistent command from first to last: Do not be afraid.
And so I will not be afraid.
   * * *
A health scare has been swirling around me for the last 3 weeks. Doctor’s visits, hospital visits, ultrasounds. Two more tests next week. I google. Oh what a dreadful thing to do, and yet, how can one not?
Who is he who comes walking on the waters, in the dark, when the winds are strong, and the sea is rough? The dark figure terrifies, until he speaks, “It is I. Do not be afraid.”
I will not be afraid. My next appointments are Monday and Thursday, but then I will have to wait for the results. I am not going to waste the time of uncertainty in fear, but live in trust, tasting the goodness of God.
I will taste the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
        * * *
The Israelites response to the manna which sustained them was “What is it?” In Hebrew, Manna. “Tell me your name,” Jacob uncertainly asks the dark figure who disabled him. “Who is it?” the disciples wondered, terrified, as a dark figure loomed of out the storm and darkness, approaching them.
The answer was always, is always, the same.
It is the Lord.
* * *
Everything we have comes from God. He comes to us in spring and summer–and winter too. In day–and night too. In birth–and death too. In success–and failure too.  In health–and sickness too.
“Yes,” I say to the figure, walking towards me on the stormy waters.
I pray that nothing will be malignant, that all will be benign. I pray for health.
But I also say to the dark figure walking towards me amidst the roaring winds and turbulent sea. “I know it is you. I have trusted you in the past and I trust you now. I know you.”
“And so, however the dice falls, I know nothing shall separate me from your love, and all shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well.”

Blessed are the Failures

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Blessed are those who have failed.
Who set out to do glorious, inconsequential things
Race across Everest, Antarctica,
higher, faster, stronger, first
Break records, set new ones, break those too.
Whose bright promise was broadly praised
And they believed their press.
Who have schemed and striven and intrigued,
Only to find themselves with empty hands
Wrestling though the night with the Mysterious One
Whose face they cannot see,
Who will not share his name,
Refusing to let him go unless he blesses them.
And then he does.
And this is the blessing:
He wrenched the tendon of the hip
So that, ever after, we walk with a limp.
Ah, what kind of blessing is this?
You have disabled me.
I will never run again.
Climbs will exhaust me.
I will have to leave my shepherding to others.
And this was the blessing:
You slowed me down.
I can no longer walk miles
I have to be deliberate about where I walk.
I tire easily.
I have to choose my projects prayerfully.
I will forever
limp through life:
And that is my blessing!!
Limping, slow enough to see beauty.
Walking at a child’s pace,
slow enough to listen.
No more running, no more sprinting
But limping at a slow, measured pace,
My routes meditated over, considered carefully.
I will now always need to ask for help
From the Nameless Great One
Who crippled me
because I have to!
I cannot manage without it.
My limp sets me free
From having to climb, scale, ascend
I have time for people.
To look at them, to see, to listen.
Delivered from running,
from the possibility of ever running,
I will now limp though
an examined, reflective, contemplative life,
keeping pace with the slowest of these, the youngest of these,
the Josephs, the Benjamins,
learning, at last, to love.

Some Things I Cannot Do

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

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

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

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Lazarus was never the same

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