Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

Figuring Out Why I love Downton Abbey

By

downton-abbey-christmasAfter a lifetime of not watching TV (though we buy boxed DVD sets of documentaries), we’ve got hooked, paid our BBC licence fee (£145!!) and are watching –Downton Abbey.

Yes, love it. Adore the elegant costumes and ambiance, but also like the characters. I wonder if Julian Fellowes has created a higher proportion of good characters than inhabit real life?

The theme evolves. Series One is all Love, Sex and Marriage—Who will Lady Mary Marry? This morphs after a fatal indiscretion into Who will Marry Lady Mary? [Read more…]

Christian Blogging: Ministering Without Preaching

By

Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Christians who are digital natives will, quite possibly, encounter two ministries of the Word each week–the Sunday sermon and Christian blogs.

A bad sermon tells you what you should do. It lays down the law. Your shoulders hunch when you hear you should give more to their pet projects, pray more, read your Bible more, love more. More, more, more.

* * *

Now, who in their right minds, would come to blogs to be told what they should do? Not I.

Like everyone else, I know what to do, you see. The trouble isthe doing of it. As Portia says in The Merchant of Venice

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to
do, chapels had been churches and poor men’s
cottages princes’ palaces. I can easier teach
twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the
twenty to follow mine own teaching.

* * *

 The effective Christian blogger ministers the word, but without overt preaching. She has to.

She does not have the preacher’s advantages: the captive audience, the theology degree, the automatic respect.

And so, she must be winsome. Like the poet of old who beginneth not with obscure definitions, but cometh to you with words set in delightful proportion–and with a tale forsooth he cometh unto you, with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney corner (Sir Philip Sidney. Apology for Poetry).

While our intention might be to bless, trust is not instantly handed to us. Yeats wishes for his daughter,

“In courtesy I’d have her chiefly learned;
Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned.”

 So too for the blogger: trust is not had as a gift, but trust is earned.

How? Paradoxically, by sharing our weaknesses, rather than our strengths.

A blogger could tell us of hours in prayer, scripture study, fasts, watchings, and we will feel tired, one more To Do.

But tell us how the Christian life really plays out: how you can snarl at those who delay you on your way to worship God on Sundays; how you can feel maddened by noise during your lovely quiet times; how you knew someone was gossiping at prayer request time but asked a curious question in the guise of concern; how you medicate yourself with chocolate rather than Scripture, because, frankly, it’s quicker. How you love Scripture and prayer, but sometimes find them boring; how you love Christ and love your children, but, frankly, find this whole Proverbs 31 business overrated!

And because we too have visited those shadowlands, we’ll laugh, and we’ll believe you.

And then, when you tell us of prayer, visions, revelations, high altitude glories, we’ll believe you too, because you have earned our trust when you told us of the muck and mud, the shame and breakthrough which are all part of the Christian life.

While the preacher shares the conclusions, the QED of the theorem of faith, the personal Christian blogger, the confessional blogger, shares the process—the falls, the slipping backward, the rare raptures.

* * *

Above all, she tells a story. A story unique in that no one–not the author, not the readers–no one but God himself, knows how it going to end. And as she tells it, she understands it better: the story of her own life.

And this story has multiple narratives, mirroring the four quadrants of human personality:

1.    The things we know about ourselves, and everyone else knows.

2.    The things we know about ourselves, but no one else guesses, and we would die rather than confess.

3.    The things which are glaringly obvious to everyone else, but which we are oblivious to. Bloggers, despite themselves, make these dreadful revelations about themselves—unwittingly revealing their emotional contours, their prejudices, their fears, their secret patches of pride, shame and sensitivity.

Many personal blogs can be decoded by an alert reader. Anyone who chronicles the ongoing story of their personal or spiritual lives on the web makes these unconscious revelations, and must make peace with this.

4. The last quadrant, is the vast, deep submerged world of buried potential–the heights of love and nobility to which we are capable of rising; the depths to which we are capable of sinking; talents and abilities unguessed at, save by the Creator, who alone knows how it is all going to end, and, I like to think, reads the unspooling account of our spiritual and actual lives on our blogs with interest, tenderness, and not a little amusement!

(Edited archive post.)

If you find yourself lacking enthusiasm, explore your childhood passions once again

By

Rachkam_Arthur_Children_By_The_Sea

Children by the Sea, Arthur Rackham

Isaac, son of promise, whose name meant laughter, didn’t do very much. His main contribution: “Isaac dug again the wells of water that had been dug in the days of his father Abraham; for the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham,” (Gen 26:18).

Redigging ancient wells which have been blocked by the enemy of one’s soul. Recovering old dreams and enthusiasms. Recovering whom one truly is. It resonates with me.

The beloved Christian writer, Catherine Marshall, in Beyond Oneself, goes back to childhood dreams as tries to discover God’s will for her life. One of her earliest dreams, she reads in her childhood diary was to be “a pretty lady with lots of perfume. And a writer.”

* * *

 I am enjoying Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project.  When Gretchen decides to have more fun, she realizes that because her work has been so absorbing, and because she has been so driven by ambition, productivity, and the ideas of what a serious, “legitimate” (her word) intellectual should do, she no longer even knows what she finds fun. Pure fun–something which cannot be leveraged, or double-dutied to serve one’s career or ambitions!!

A friend tells her, “What you enjoyed as a ten-year-old is probably something you’d enjoy now.” She starts reading children’s literature.

I too after decades have begun to both read and write fairy tales again, thank you, Jesus!

* * *

As I choose books to read, or future writing projects, I am reflecting on childhood enthusiasms.

I loved fairy tales, Grimm, Andersen and Perrault, which I must have read dozens of times.

And I loved mythology above all things. My grandfather had given me a book of Norse Mythology, and I loved Odin, Freya, Thor, Loki, Balder and the Ragnarok.

I read every scrap of Greek mythology I could find, putting mythology books on birthday wish lists. I kept a notebook when I was 11, with a page I’d dedicated to every character from Greek mythology. I devotedly recorded every scrap of information I discovered there. I guess I was constructing an encyclopaedia.

When I was even younger, I loved The Mahabharata and The Ramayana, which with their themes of honour, love and family devotion, betrayal and tragedy stir deep wells of anger, sadness, “if onlys,” and “what ifs”.

I loved Arthur, the decency, gallantry, the nobility–the brief golden age with darkness hovering at its edges; the Holy Grail floating above the table; the doomed triangle of Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere, all three of whom tragically love each other; noble Percival and Gareth; and the dark figures of Morgan Le Fay  and Mordred, whose very name is ominous.

* * *

I started reading poetry young, because both my father and grandfather loved it, could easily recite poetry from memory, and gave me poetry books. I have always read it, with a desperate love, whether I understood it or not. I’d love to begin writing poetry again.

Shakespeare, I was introduced to through Lamb’s Tales, which my grandfather must have given me. When I went to boarding school at nine, to St. Mary’s Convent, Nainital, my classmates often asked me to tell them a story, and I would tell them Shakespeare stories, which I knew almost by heart from the beautifully written, lyrical Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare.

 

I began reading unabridged Shakespeare when I was 11 from my father’s massive Complete Works of William Shakespeare, which he brought back from England. I started with Julius Caesar,  memorizing “Pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,” and Macbeth from which I memorized, “Is this a dagger I see before me.”

Reading, fiction in particular, imagined universes: that was the greatest delight of my childhood.

My other great joy and delight was losing myself in my garden. I basically spent the day there, reading in trees, or in a chair on the front lawn of our high-walled garden. And all these joys I am recovering in middle age!

And what a delight it is to re-dig ancient wells, and explore these ancient sources of pleasure again in this slower season of life.

My Fitness Adventure in 52 Habits (Week 3)

By

I started this because I had to do something about creeping weight gain—17 pounds since I moved to Oxford eight years ago!!

Obviously, if I do not do something, it could reach the point that I could no longer go on long walks easily, or explore easily on our travels. Or worse, have less strength for long hours of reading and writing!

* * *

In addition, exercise helps creativity. I am now writing fairly intensely—doing 800 words a day on my memoir, and getting those words polished enough to share them on my blog. And also, writing and publishing a 500-800 blog post.

So much intense reading, thinking and writing has the potential to affect perspective, clarity of thought, mood (and perhaps even mental health!) unless one’s life is balanced. And mine is. I live in a family of four. I get together with friends twice a week—with the women’s group I co-lead once a week, and I schedule a one on one coffee, or a couples’ dinner once a week.

But I also need the dissipation of writing tension, and the fresh air, endorphins and runner’s high of exercise in between writing sessions so that my day really feels like two days, and I can come fresh to my second writing session.

And so exercise is a godsend. I am increasing my daily steps, week by week, and have, this week, reached 6600 steps a day, as measured my Omron pedometer. However, the optimal number of steps to be truly physically fit is 10,000. 34 days to go since I am aiming to increase my steps by 100 a day.

I am planning to lose weight and to get fit by adding in a new dietary habit weekly, and increasing my exercise weekly, until I am exercising for 90 minutes a day. Why 90? Well, my sister-in-law, Dr. Kaaren Mathias told me that numerous studies showed measurable health gains with increased exercise up to 90 minutes  a day. After that, the health gains taper off. So, once I reach 90 minutes, if it’s necessary for continued weight loss, I will weave physical activity into my day in the form of gardening or housework.

I read, “if we make the time to exercise, it makes us so much more productive and leads to such improved creativity, cognitive function, and mood that the time we need for doing it will open up and then some–making us so much happier and better at the art of creation, to boot.”

* * *

And diet? Well, I would like to transition to a diet that is largely plant-based, and hope to do it slowly over ten weeks by adding a new habit a week.

Now obviously, the weight loss is not going to be as dramatic as if I went on Atkins and South Beach. On the other hand, the changes I am introducing are so slow that, with luck, I hope to be able to make them permanent habits.

I  lost a pound. In the past, I would have thrown up my hands in despair…but I know I am stronger, fitter, healthier, with a better immune system—and so I am going to keep rowing, while adding in a couple of different metrics: waist measurements, and body fat percentages as measured by my Tanita electronic scale.

 

 

 

 

Loose Change in God’s pocket; a puppet on a string, or? What’s your metaphor for your relationship with God?

By

I was listening to a Vineyard CD of Songs of Surrender, and reflected on how I have been indirectly blessed by John Wimber, a man I’ve never met. Through Vineyard music; through his wife Carol’s moving biography of him The Way it Was; through the Toronto Blessing, which was launched in a Vineyard church, now called “Catch the Fire,” where my daughter Zoe is currently at the School for Ministry; and through ministries launched after a meeting with Wimber, like Harnhill Christian Centre.

John Wimber used to say, “I am just loose change in God’s pocket. He can spend me as he pleases.”

* * *

 This summer, I heard Heidi Baker say, “I am a puppet in God’s hands. He can move me which way he pleases.”

And it’s interesting that these two people who have expressed such absolute surrender have also had amazing fruitful ministries, affecting thousands.

When I read of music inspired by God like the Messiah, or poetry or prose almost dictated by God, I long to be “in the vine,” surrendered to him, living in him, so that nothing in me presents an obstacle to the free flow of his grace, power and ideas. So that the channels, the pipeline of communication between God and me remain clear.

* * *

 However, my heart does not quite echo these expressions of total surrender like the Methodist Covenant Prayer.

We do not have exactly the same relationship with any two human beings. There is a slightly different level of trust, familiarity, relaxation, and commonality of interests.

So too, I guess no two of us have exactly the same relationship with God. “A puppet on a string,” “spare change in God’s pockets to spend as he wills” does not quite express my relationship with God.

I believe I would accept God’s dealings with me, whatever…

But I use other metaphors to express my relationship with God—dancing with the Lord; standing in the waterfall or river of God,  an eagle waiting on the edge of its nest for the mounting winds of the spirit before it glides effortlessly into the winds of the storm.

How about you? Which metaphors best express your relationship with God?

In which I trace my evolving views on Gay Christians

By

lonnie_frisbee

Two years ago, I was in a small group at St. Aldate’s Church, Oxford, discussing Philip Yancey’s What’s so Amazing About Grace?

 Yancey wrote about his friend Mel White who was a Christian gay man, “Mel felt homosexual longings from adolescence, tried hard to repress those longings, and as an adult fervently sought “a cure.” He fasted, prayed, and was anointed with oil for healing. He went through exorcism rites read by Protestants and also by Catholics. He signed up for aversion therapy, which jolted his body with electricity every time he felt stimulated by photos of men. For a while, chemical treatments left him drugged and barely coherent. Above all, Mel wanted desperately not to be gay.”

Mel had suicide attempts, Yancey continues to write, and, like Lonnie Frisbee, “wild swings between promiscuity and fidelity. Sometimes he acted like a hormone-flooded teenager, and sometimes like a sage.”

Finally, “Mel concluded that his options narrowed down to two: insanity or wholeness. Attempts to repress homosexual desires, and live either in heterosexual marriage or in gay celibacy he believed would lead to certain insanity. (At that time, he was seeing a psychiatrist five days a week, at a hundred dollars a session.) Wholeness, he decided, meant finding a gay partner and embracing his homosexual identity.”

 Mel remained a Christian, and even [Read more…]

Most Read Posts in September on Dreaming Beneath the Spires

By

3 In which I forgive a pair of ecclesiastical rascals, and my soul finds peace

 6 In which He Loves me, Anyway