Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

Proverbs 1 7-9 The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of Knowledge. Day 4. Jan 4th.

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Proverbs 1 7-9
7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.


The fear of the Lord is indeed the beginning of wisdom. It puts natural boundaries around us, and safeguards us from much that is destructive–and from its consequences.  The fear of the Lord preserves us from learning about the foolishness and the acrid fruits of sin in the bitter school of trial and error. 


Discipline. Something I have both craved and struggled with all my life. Interestingly, psychotherapist Scott Peck in his perennial best-seller, The Road Less Travelled, talks about discipline–deferring gratification–as the foundation of a decent human life. As parents, we have a dual burden: to discipline ourselves, and to teach self-discipline to our children so that they realize the value of their lives, their time and themselves, and later instinctively practice it. 

8 Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction and do not forsake your mother’s teaching. 9 They will be a garland to grace your head and a chain to adorn your neck.

Reunion with Lost Pets

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My pet rabbits Empress and Bandit

‘And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honour and glory and might forever and ever!”’ (Rev 5:13).

Every creature! Wow! Not only will we ourselves be healed, restored, and lost in the ecstasy of contemplating God and the Lamb, but every creature in heaven and on earth, and under the earth, and in the sea will join us.

We shall be healed, and all the sad, abused, dumbly suffering animals of all history will be healed with us. We shall ask their forgiveness. And since they are more generous than we are, we shall receive it.

We will stand together, and sing together.

I have loved animals all my life, and always has as many of them as my family would permit. A couple of years ago we had 9 pets (I live on an acre and a half in deep country, in Garsington, Oxfordshire)–rabbits, ducks, chickens, and a dog.

But decades of pet ownership do not leave one guilt free. There is always the dog we could have walked more; the loving dog we had to give away when we left America; the rabbit who died of myxomatosis; the duck mauled by the fox on the one night we forget to put her in her shed; the hen eaten by the fox on the one night we forgot to lock the coop.

From my dogs in particular, I have repeatedly sought forgiveness, because they return to me in dreams. My heaven will not be quite complete without dogs, so I was relieved to come across this passage via Charlie, Vicar of Kea Church in Cornwall (what a wonderful name for a church!) on whether there will be animals in heaven.

http://charliepeer.blogspot.com/2010/08/not-such-daft-question.html

 

 

 

Aspects of the Blessings of Failure

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A ruined church — from New Zealand’s war archive, 1918.

Here are three posts from other bloggers on a subject no one wants to consider so soon in a New Year.  And may this year be a year of blessing for all of us.

Failure is an option
Jessica talks about the pain of a church mess and failure
http://jezamama.blogspot.com/2010/11/failure-is-option.html

Can Failure in Ministry ever be part of His plan

Mary de Muth on a failure in ministry.
http://www.wrecked.org/church/god-success-and-failed-french-church-plants/

And, very sweet one this, John Piper on how he put soul, body and marriage together after a season of intense ministry (and perhaps ego-driven ?) work took its toll on each.
http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/john-pipers-report-on-his-leave-of-absence

Failure, and the precious jewels it offers is something I have meditated on for a long time, and am intimately acquainted with. No doubt, once my thoughts are better crystallized, I will share them here– though I am now in a season of blessing–which follows the brokenness, repentance, humbling and acknowledgement of weakness which a season of failure brings.

In which I pursue happiness and the bluebird of joy,

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We all stayed up to see in the New Year with marzipan fruit cake, and Bailey’s Irish Cream, even Zoe and Irene.

Then today, since all of us are somewhat more introverted than extroverted, we decided everyone could be happy in their own way.

I read, prayed, blogged, wrote, and went for a solitary walk.

Roy who is now a dyed-in-the wool house-husband, finished seeing one of our books for our publishing company through press, and then tidied up the house, and assembled IKEA bookshelves for our ever-expanding library. I saw him whistling bustling around, keeping loads of laundry on the go, keeping the dishwasher running and the cabinets stacked (with Irene’s help) and generally restoring to the house to its pre-Christmas season order, and thought, “If that man isn’t happy, then what is he?” I checked, he confirmed my suspicion.

Christmas, luckily this year, hasn’t involved things. Roy and I specifically asked for no Christmas presents, as we have everything material thing we want, and so the girls made us huge lovely cards. We didn’t give any presents, except to the girls, and so Christmas was so simplified. We plan to repeat this every year. No, neither the Grinch nor Scrooge, just–at this stage of our lives– more interested in living well and in experience rather than in accumulation of stuff.

Zoe, 16, curled up with Classical Greek and Latin. I get pure happiness from learning a new language and getting good at it, and I guess she’s got that gene.

Irene, 11, who has waist length hair, spent the day with the new blow-drying and hair-style gadget Roy got her putting her long curly hair into extravagant styles, and admiring them. She wrote to her cousins and penfriends, and read some.

In the evening, Roy and I are going to a New Year’s day party with friends from St. Aldate’s. Ah, a New Year’s Day party, so much more sensible than a New Year’s eve party. At least, one can get to bed at a godly hour without the sense that you might be disrupting someone else’s party!

Leisure, free time. That’s been the most coveted commodity in our married life, and at last we have it.

Last Christmas Day, in New Zealand, I spent some time praying while the Christmas dinner was in the oven. (I have nothing to do with Christmas dinners, since Zoe and Roy love cooking). I saw a vision, maybe I should say a mental image, of our life. The direction it was flowing in which  absorbed a lot of our enthusiasm, creativity, and energy and interest was our family’s publishing company (in which a bunch of our friends also work part-time).

Roy then had a Chair as Professor of Mathematics, and though he was well-paid, it put time at a premium, and increased our stress with the additional demands on him.

I saw concentrating on Math would almost be rowing against the stream, that God’s provision and blessing was flowing on the publishing, and that we should row with the stream, go in the direction in which God’s blessing was flowing.

4 months later, Roy’s University had an early retirement offer–three times the usual settlement but we had to decide by Sept 2010. He left the decision to me. I decided on early retirement–at 47!!

It was a risk, of course, but we have so enjoyed peace, leisure, time, just living, being, that we would hate to trade it for a real job. And though, of course, we were prepared for downward mobility, that has not been the case at all, thank you, God.

What will this year bring? It’s in God’s hands, and God is good!

"Can a homosexual be a Christian?" theological musings by William Stringfellow

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The Good Shepherd





Can a Homosexual be a Christian. One might as well ask, can an insurance man be a Christian? Can a lawyer be a Christian? Can an ecclesiastical bureaucrat be a Christian? Can a rich man be a Christian? Can an infant be a Christian? Or one who is sick, or insane, or indolent or one possessed of power or status or respectability? Can anybody be a Christian? Can a human being be a Christian? All such questions are theologically absurd. To be a Christian does not have anything essentially to do with conduct or station or repute. To be a Christian does not have anything to do with the common pietisms of ritual, dogma or morals in and of themselves. To be a Christian has, rather, to do with that peculiar state of being bestowed upon men by God….

Can a homosexual be a Christian? Yes: if his sexuality is not an idol.
William Stringfellow, cited in Anthony Dancer, An Alien in a Strange Land: Theology in the Life of William Stringfellow (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2011), pp. 198-99.

I like this because, as a newer Christian, I naively assumed that a practising gay person could not be a Christian. On the other hand, I did not doubt that, despite the occasional schadenfreude, malice, gossip, and sheer untruthfulness I encountered in my church, those who said they were Christians were Christians. 


Perhaps that is the safest assumption: to assume that those who say they are Christians are Christians, and to leave the sorting out of sheep and goats to Him.  

Proverbs 1, 1-6, Day 2. Jan 2nd

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 1 The Proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel:

 2 for gaining wisdom and instruction;
   for understanding words of insight;
3 for receiving instruction in prudent behavior,
   doing what is right and just and fair;
4 for giving prudence to those who are simple,[a]
   knowledge and discretion to the young—
5 let the wise listen and add to their learning,
   and let the discerning get guidance—
6 for understanding proverbs and parables,
   the sayings and riddles of the wise.

And this is what the Proverbs are for:

For gaining wisdom and insight

And prudence for the simple-hearted

Learning what is right and just and fair

Giving knowledge and discretion to the young

Helping the wise become wiser

And the discerning receive guidance

I.e. They are for everyone, the simple, the wise, the young, the learned.

Lord, bless my reading of them.

The Christian's First Duty: Being Happy in Christ—George Mueller

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George Mueller



Hmm. I find this passage really interesting. I encountered it probably a few years ago, and legalistically followed it. 


Then, I thought it was a man-made rule not God’s, and went back to prayer before Scripture. But as Mueller observes, prayer can take up one’s entire allotted quiet time, and also, as Mueller says, it can take 10, 15, even 30 minutes before the mind stops wandering and begins to pray.

So, though my spirit often longs to pray and hear God’s voice “as the deer thirsts for living waters,” I think I am going to reverse the order, and begin with meditation on God’s word.

And next year, God willing, is going to be the year of God’s word for me, since I am starting a new big project–blogging through the entire Bible in a year. I start on Jan 1st. So help me, God!!

Food For the Inner Man – George Mueller

by George Mueller (1805-1898)

While I was staying at Nailsworth, it pleased the Lord to teach me a truth, irrespective of human instrumentality, as far as I know, the benefit of which I have not lost, though now…more than forty years have since passed away.
The point is this: I saw more clearly than ever, that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day, to have MY SOUL HAPPY IN THE LORD. The first thing to be concerned about was not, how much I might serve the Lord, how I might glorify the Lord; but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished. For I might seek to set the truth before the unconverted, I might seek to benefit believers, I might seek to behave myself as it becomes a child of God in this world; and yet, not being happy in the Lord, and not being nourished and strengthened in my inner man day by day, all this might not be attended to in a right spirit.
Before this time my practice had been, at least for ten years previously, as a habitual thing, to give myself to prayer, after having dressed in the morning. Now I saw, that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God and to meditation on it, that thus my heart may be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed; and that thus, whilst meditating, my heart might be brought into experimental communion with the Lord. I began therefore, to meditate on the New Testament, from the beginning, early in the morning.
The first thing I did, after having asked in a few words the Lord’s blessing upon His precious Word, was to begin to meditate on the Word of God; searching, as it were, into every verse, to get blessings out of it; not for the sake of the public ministry of the Word; not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated upon; but for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul. The result I have found to be almost invariably this, that after a very few minutes my soul has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to intercession, or to supplication; so that though I did not, as it were, give myself to prayer, but to meditation, yet it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer.
When thus I have been for awhile making confession, or intercession, or supplication, or have given thanks, I go on to the next words or verse, turning all, as I go on, into prayer for myself or others, as the Word may lead to it; but still continually keeping before me, that food for my own soul is the object of my meditation. The result of this is, that there is always a good deal of confession, my soul invariably is even sensibly nourished and strengthened and that by breakfast time, with rare exceptions, I am in a peaceful if not happy state of heart. Thus also the Lord is pleased to communicate unto me that which, very soon after, I have found to become food for other believers, though it was not for the sake of the public ministry of the Word that I gave myself to meditation, but for the profit of my own inner man.
The difference between my former practice and my present one is this. Formerly, when I rose, I began to pray as soon as possible, and generally spent all my time till breakfast in prayer, or almost all the time. At all events I almost invariably began with prayer. But what was the result? I often spent a quarter of an hour, or even an hour on my knees, before being conscious to myself of having derived comfort, encouragement, humbling of soul, etc.; and often after having suffered much from wandering of mind of the first ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour, or even half an hour, I only then began really to pray.
I scarcely ever suffer now in this way. For my heart being nourished by the truth, being brought into experimental fellowship with God, I speak to my Father, and to my Friend (vile though I am, and unworthy of it!) about the things that He has brought before me in His precious Word.
It often now astonishes me that I did not sooner see this. In no book did I ever read about it. No public ministry ever brought the matter before me. No private intercourse with a brother stirred me up to this matter. And yet now, since God has taught me this point, it is a plain to me as anything that the first thing the child of God has to do morning by morning is to obtain food for his inner man.
As the outward man is not fit for work for any length of time, except we take food, and as this is one of the first things we do in the morning, so it should be with the inner man. We should take food for that, as every one must allow. Now what is the food for the inner man: not prayer, but the Word of God: and here again not the simple reading of the Word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts.
I dwell so particularly on this point because of the immense spiritual profit and refreshment I am conscious of having derived from it myself, and I affectionately and solemnly beseech all my fellow-believers to ponder this matter. By the blessing of God I ascribe to this mode the help and strength which I have had from God to pass in peace through deeper trials in various ways than I had ever had before; and after having now above forty years tried this way, I can most fully, in the fear of God, commend it. How different when the soul is refreshed and made happy early in the morning, from what it is when, without spiritual preparation, the service, the trials and the temptations of the day come upon one!
-George Mueller 

On a LifeStyle of Forgiveness

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The Giant Red Star Mira

 

“A Lifestyle of Forgiveness.” I owe this phrase to Jack Miller, father of our friend Paul. Jack, a pastor, writer, theologian, founder of World Harvest Mission etc. etc. wrote a moving book called Come Back Barbara. 
Barbara, his daughter, was an angry renegade and prodigal, moved in with a druggie, as I remember from the book (I hope correctly.) No matter what Barbara did, Jack forgave her, as instantly as he could, and just resolved to love her more heartily. He developed a remarkable “lifestyle of forgiveness” in his phrase, letting things go, responding to insult with the determination to love in return.

Wow!  Forgiveness can have as dramatic an effect on your spiritual life, as cutting all sugar and white flour, white rice, pasta etc can have on your health, mental health, energy levels, emotional well-being, and intellectual ability. (This cutting is a recent experiment for a season, and after the first 2-3 days, I feel great).

As I have written on this  blog, I had a transformational spiritual experience in New Zealand last year. I stood transfixed by a waterfall rushing on, and saw a little pile of sticks, stones, leaves and creatures, that remained stuck behind a rock. If one does not forgive, one remained stuck behind a rock, not rushing on in the waterfall of God.

I had been treated unfairly a couple of years before this experience, and keenly felt the injustice. I brooded, probably got a bit bitter, and unhappy, and was stuck. Now I forgave totally and rushed on. And words came. I had been in the throes of a long winter of writers’ block, and now began to write easily, fluently and in a new style.
* * *

God must have really, really wanted me to learn forgiveness because I have had a lot to forgive this year!! I blogged about decisions made in the Christian community I belong to, actions and decisions which had left half the community seething and simmering. I blogged about these things in a series of outspoken posts called “The Screwtape Lectures” which left the other half of the congregation seething and simmering. Oh dear!

Tentacles of bitterness which defile many. People said and did things to me as a result of these outspoken, though honest, blog posts (now deleted, dear reader!). Oh dear, more things to forgive.

When I left for Spain on the 16th December, I had a LOT to process. Anger, hurt, desire for justice, annoyance at seeing injustice triumph, desire to see God vindicate me against my adversaries, and sheer mixed-upedness about whether God wanted me to continue the Screwtape Letters (and I’ve had an answer from him, a complex carbohydrate answer), some repentance, and sadness over the people I unwittingly hurt.

One of them, a woman I liked a lot, came over to chat about those blogs. I got tearful, as I do when overwrought. Seeing me cry, she got red, and started crying. Wow! Talk about weeping with those who weep.
* * *

There is nothing like travel when you are overwrought, when there are dozens of ideas racing through your head, when your emotions are unsettled.

In Spain, I tasted again the goodness of God. Sheer, unmerited mysterious goodness. I felt peace settle over my spirit again. Deep peace. The peace that, Paul says, transcends understanding because why should I be experiencing the peace of God’s love and God’s shalom, when I was not without sin in what I did, and when the road ahead was unclear? But there it settled in my soul, sweet honey. Shalom, well-being.

I loved God, and he loved me. He healed me. Set me back on my feet. Renewed me. Made me new.

I slept long and well and dreamed. In my dream, I felt again this honey of peace and joy slowly seep through my soul. Woke with incredible peace and joy. I said to myself, “I forgive everyone.” And then, my left-brain said to me, “Wait a minute, Anita. You forgive everyone? Don’t you need to go through the everyone and the aught and any and forgive them one by one.”

And so, like a good rationalist, I went through the people. A bit of mild annoyance remained at some particular bits of untruthfulness, deceit and perfidy, but basically, I had let things go. God had worked on my sleeping spirit. I felt amusement rather than anger at some things people had said and done to me, and just shook my head at them. Oh blessed relief!

God healed me, and put me together in those 9 days in Granada, when I slept a lot, and prayed a lot, and rested a lot, and listened to him a lot. He restored my soul. Restored energy, optimism, and joy. A sense of anticipation. The joy of life!
* * * 

I am reading the early chapters of Matthew about the Magi following the star.

Star of wonder, star of light, star of royal beauty bright, where are you leading? It is definitely, but infinitesimally moving.

Oddly enough, for someone who has always believed that Christians need as much of koinonia, Christian fellowship, as they can get, I feel the star moving away. I have heard entirely too much anger-producing gossip by Christians about other Christians, and my soul needs to hear less. I have got too enmeshed in a smoke-and-mirrors, fear-filled, gossipy, internecine situation–where people are far more concerned about how other people perceive, value and rate them, rather than about what God thinks of them– and I need a short break from it, not from attending church, but from being quite so enmeshed in it. I need to move outwards. Where? Towards the edges of the congregation for now. And then? I am following the star.
* * *

Small ponds are unhealthy for fish and Christians. My Christian life in my church now feels like an unhealthy small pond.

I need a bigger pond.

Luckily, my life in Oxford has another centre of gravity. The very first month I arrived here, January 2006, I joined three groups to which I still belong. I joined a church, St. Aldate’s. I joined a home group, Headington. And I joined a writer’s society, an invitation only group, which now has about 160 members. We have made many friends there, genial, clever, well-read, often erudite people. So on my calendar
, for the next couple of months, I have dinners and lunches with fellow-writers, individuals and couples. It will be good to branch out into the wider world, to truly be quiet, gentle loving salt and light in another sphere.

I feel God saying I need to withdraw slightly from my church for the health of my soul. But I am steadily making Christian friends through my blogging, and that’s good too. Fresh air, a bigger pond!

Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.