random | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

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

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!

The Democratization of Blogging–Miltons no longer Mute or Inglorious

By Anita Mathias

Stoke Poges Churchyard, Buckinghamshire

Thomas Gray who wrote “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” was an extremely self-critical poet, paralyzed by the fear of failure. Though he had devoted his life to a self-imposed programme of literary study, and was known as one of the most learned men of his generation, he published a mere 13 poems in his lifetime, 1000 lines, which might be mistaken for “the collected works of a flea,” he said sadly.

In the graveyard of Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, he ponders the graves of those whose lives were not blighted by ambition–or thwarted ambition.

But were they any less gifted then the household names of their generation? Statistically, the inhabitants of Stoke Poges should have had the same probability of producing a genius like Milton, a leader like Cromwell as any other town. They did not. Why? Gray muses

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway’d,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre:

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne’er unroll;
Chill Penury repress’d their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood,
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country’s blood.

Th’ applause of list’ning senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o’er a smiling land,
And read their history in a nation’s eyes,

Their lot forbad:

Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;
Along the cool sequester’d vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenour of their way.

He mourns these “mute inglorious Miltons,” “born to blush unseen and waste their sweetness on the desert air.”

Blogging however gives the many Miltons who live far from the madding crowd, a voice–and an audience. The farmer’s wife Ann Voskamp in rural Canada, mother of six children who finds the sacred in the everyday. Or Jen in Oregon who homeschools 4 kids and still finds time to write well, to pick, at random, two blogs I enjoyed this week. Sweetness is no longer wasted on the desert air, in Gray’s phrase. It can be shared. And that is good, for sweetness should be shared.

Blogging is the greatest democratization of writing the world has seen–and probably its greatest explosion of shared knowledge and experience.

I love it.

And here’s the entire text of “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” commonly considered the greatest elegy written in English.

“ELEGY WRITTEN IN
A COUNTRY CHURCH-YARD”

Thomas Gray

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree’s shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,
The cock’s shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire’s return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share,

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
How bow’d the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the Poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Awaits alike th’ inevitable hour:-
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye Proud, impute to these the fault
If Memory o’er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour’s voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway’d,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre:

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne’er unroll;
Chill Penury repress’d their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood,
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country’s blood.

Th’ applause of list’ning senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o’er a smiling land,
And read their history in a nation’s eyes,

Their lot forbad: nor circumscribed alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;
Forbad to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
With incense kindled at the Muse’s flame.

Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;
Along the cool sequester’d vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenour of their way.

Yet e’en these bones from insult to protect
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck’d,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their name, their years, spelt by th’ unletter’d Muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply:
And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e’er resign’d,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
E’en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
E’en in our ashes live their wonted fires.

For thee, who, mindful of th’ unhonour’d dead,
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If chance, by lonely contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate, —

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away,
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn;

‘There at the foot of yonder nodding beech
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high.
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

‘Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove;
Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,
Or crazed with care, or cross’d in hopeless love.

‘One morn I miss’d him on the custom’d hill,
Along the heath, and near his favourite tree;
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

‘The next with dirges due in sad array
Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne,-
Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay
Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.’

The Epitaph

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melacholy marked him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,
He gained from Heaven (’twas all he wish’d) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode
(There they alike in trembling hope repose),
The bosom of his Father and his God.
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The Vocation of Christian Blogging

By Anita Mathias

‘The place where God calls you is the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger.’

Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking

That quote always made me sad. Because for a couple of decades, my deep gladness lay in words, in reading and writing. Literature, and literary writing. And how could this possibly meet the world’s deep need?

And what about Christian writing? Well, I felt I needed to have experienced some of the things Jesus promised us–the bread which stills our hunger, the water which slakes our thirst, the peace which transcends understanding, light in our darkness, joy in spite of trouble–before I wrote about them.

And now, in my forties, over the last decade or so, I have tasted all these, not as a permanent settled condition, but in ever-increasing and deepening tastes, glimpses and experiences.
* * *

Of course, this hurdle–of not wanting to embark on writing about my faith until I was sure the writing would be a blessing–was a self-constructed one. A friend who was a mentor in my thirties, and who I used to show my spiritual journal to, found it hilarious, and thought it could speak to other people. “Publish your spiritual diary,” he’d urge. “Just be bitchy. Write psalms of the every day.”

Well, I haven’t been particularly bitchy in this blog. Maybe my forties have ironed it out of me–or perhaps my residual bitchiness will slowly emerge!

* * *

Christian blogging offers us a place in which our deep gladness might meet the world’s deep need.

A difference between blogging and preaching is that there is no captive audience. A preacher has a captive trustful audience given to him/her by virtue of the theology degree and church position. As such, preachers often share the QED, the proof, without going into the working out of the theorem. Talk about things like trust, praising God anyway, forgiveness, love–without sharing the painful road, and the failures it took to get them where they are.

An entirely inspirational blog won’t ring entirely true. In general, we trust not the blog post, but the blogger. Trust is not had as a gift, but trust is earned, to paraphrase Yeats. Bloggers who are honest about their lows, failures and sin, earn our belief when they share their mountain-top experiences, revelations and insights. When they attempt to inspire us.

* * *

A writing teacher of mine, Carol Bly describes “moral fiction” as the kind of writing which if read by someone contemplating suicide would make them decide not to kill themselves after all.

I bravely started this blog with the intention that the posts would be a blessing to anyone surfing the net in the sort of bored, empty, inspiration-seeking mood in which I used to surf it (a habit I believe I have broken once I realized that that was becoming my default way of dealing with emptiness and boredom.)
* * *

I’ve realized that the only way I might be able to be a blessing to as small or as large a readership God might decide to give me is to continually, deliberately turn back to Christ who promised, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” John 7

* * *

Well, if Jesus were a blogger, rather than an itinerant preacher, what kind of blog would he

have?

1) It would be unique. It is recorded that people were amazed at his words because he did not teach as the scribes and Pharisees did.

No man ever spoke the way this man does John 7:46

Thank you very much. And how can I be unique?

By being yourself.

The more honest you are–the more unusual you are, the more fun you are.

The more you are yourself, the more original you are.

Each person is unique like each snowflake, rose, fingerprint, zebra’s stripes, or the iris of an eye.

As we grow to utter honesty, we discover in the process–unique blogs.

2 It would be full of grace and truth.

It would be honest. Honesty was apparently the trait Jesus most respected in people, and hypocrisy the trait he most abhorred.

3 It would be a blessing.There would be life in it, living waters

and nourishment–the bread of life.

4) Would Jesus spend time in gaining readers for his blog, or would he proceed on the “If you build it, they will come?” principle.

Hmm. Primarily, the latter. However, he did approach people–Matthew, Zaccheus, Peter and Andrew…

And the real-life friendships and relationships which grow out of blogging are one of its pleasures.

If one invests time in blogging, it is perhaps only sensible and responsible to invest some time in finding readers for one’s blog.

Whatever is alive, grows. A healthy blog grows in terms of visitors, commentators, spots on blogrolls, and all the other measures of a blog’s success.

And if it does not? Time to consider whether pursuing it is indeed God’s will,

and if it is,

then how you can change so that it would it be a growing, burgeoning blog. (This blog is growing, albeit very slowly, gaining a few new readers each week. I am, however, content with its rate of growth).

5) Jesus would not embark on or continue a blog without being sure that blogging was his Father’s will for him, what he was called to do. He would also seek to hear God’s voice on the frequency of his posts.

At the end of his life, Jesus informed his Father, “I have done the work you have given me to do.” Those must have been the most satisfying words ever said.

He would not spend too long on his blog, and all the interesting distractions to do with blogging.
* * *

If I never write another book, I will be sad, so I have to be careful not to allow blogging to cut into my writing time.

I need to maintain a balance between blogging–instant noodles, quick bread–and writing a good book, which is like

“a draught of vintage! that hath been

Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth.”

6 A blog written by Jesus.

Wow. What would it be like?

It would be varied, like his teaching ministry, and use a variety of forms. Jesus used parables, exposition, sermons, exhortation, explication, allegory, straight teaching. He was funny. He even used satire.

He never spelled things out too much. He asked questions. He encouraged people to think. His parables could be interpreted in multiple ways.

* * *

I am not Jesus, but I would like my blog to bear some resemblance to the blog a central figure in my spiritual, emotional, and thought-life might have written.

And how do I do that?

Oddly enough, it begins with slowing down. Spending more time with him–to catch his spirit. To have my soul filled with his living waters, with his bread of life.

anita.mathias