Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

1001 Gifts: My Border Collie, Jake, and All the Dogs I have Loved

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My husband and daughters would flee if they read this title, because I do get maudlin about my dogs.
But honestly, what’s not to love? For me, the doggie smell, the shed fur, the muddy paw-prints are nothing compared to the constant loving friendship, the happy tail which expresses their joy, their melting expressive eyes, their sheer joy when accompanying you on a walk, the way they follow you around the house, their delight when you return which makes a house truly home. I would like to have dogs as long as I live, and the thought of living without animals or a garden makes a nursing home unthinkable. It’s dramatic to say “I’d rather die,” but I guess without a garden and pets I soon would.
Soon after we moved to the country, to a idyllic quiet spot perfect for a writer—no neighbours to the left or right , behind or in front of me—a couple of local teens broke into our house. Well, I happened to be there at the time, and told them off, though they had been quietly ferrying stuff out of the house before I noticed their presence. We have an old rambling kind of house!!
Well, the police suggested country remedies—a gravelled driveway, geese (we have ducks instead) and a dog.
Roy wanted to wait till we had settled, but what a trump card! The police said we should get a dog!!
So we called all the Rescues around, describing what we wanted—a dog, any dog, fearsome to intruders, but a good family dog.
Someone said “Oh we have just the dog for you, a collie.”
Dear Reader, such was my ignorance, that I imagined a collie look like this
Kuvasz
like the sheepdog the English nuns had in my boarding school, Saint Mary’s Convent, Nainital. I went there when I was 9 and irrepressible. I ran out of the classroom every time I saw that dog, and my teacher ran after me, and the three of us chased each other round and round the skating rink.
Well, it turned out Jake was a special kind of collie, a short-haired Border Collie, and he is wall-eyed—he has one beautiful brown eye, and one beautiful blue eye. I think he’s beautiful, but a blunt friend of mine said she thought he wasn’t a looker.
Perhaps that explained why he was not adopted for 18 months, and lived alone in a concrete tiny room. And he a border collie, a breed which needs, and thrives on exercise.
When we went to see him, all he wanted was for me to throw a stick for him to retrieve. “He could do it all day,” the lady said. Well, yes, particularly if he had lived in a concrete cage! He has brought me so much joy, it hurts to think of those 18 months wasted alone in his cell.
Well, I didn’t immediately take to him, particularly. As I said, all he wanted to do was retrieve a stick. He’s not the sort of waggy, friendly, heart-meltingly adorable dog that you immediately love. He’s more reserved, takes his time to make up his mind about you, is more English, if you like.
But my neutrality didn’t seem a good enough reason to banish him to loneliness in a cold, unheated concrete cell, and so we brought him home.
Working dogs decide who the Alpha animal or human is, and commit their loyalty to them. Classic one man or one woman dogs! Well, Jake decided I was the Alpha female (way to go, Jake!) and committed his love to me. And by the evening, I too was fast in love.
Border Collies are the smartest breed of dogs, followed by poodles, German Shepherds, Golden Retrievers, and Doberman Pinchers. (I have owned 1 German Shepherd and 2 Golden retrievers). They are reputed to understand up to 165 words and have the cognitive ability of a two and half year old.
Jake understands everything I say to him (well, obviously, I don’t talk theology or poetry to him, nor do I present the Gospel). I speak to him in a clear, distinct, simplified Dog English, though I sometimes feel I am insulting his intelligence.
I have the best commute in the world, from my bedroom to my study, which is on the upper floor of a detached little house in our garden. I tell Jake, “We’ll go Up,” and there he scampers. His favourite phrase is “We’ll go for a walk,” and then he goes wild with joy. The only problem is that I am exhausted, and he’s just got going. He understands things like Stay, Wait, Kitchen, and of course, food. 

1001 Gifts # 3: My Body

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1001 Gifts: My Body
Okay, this isn’t a post I ever thought I’d be writing, since you and I have been at war since my teens, but O Body given to me, I am grateful to you.
I am grateful for your sturdy health, for how you rarely let me down, despite the fact I so carelessly neglect you.  I am grateful you’ve only led me to hospital with pregnancies, and then let me out again in 24 hours.
I am grateful for how you affect my mind. How I can run, or do yoga, or run in place or lift some weights, and am so quickly a different person, more energized, more clear-thinking, optimistic.
I love the fact that when I work with you in the garden, we find peace.
I love the way that you are my early warning system. You tell me, in my gut, when I am stressed and uncomfortable before I consciously know it. In fact, I cannot even pray well unless you are comfortable.
You tell me when I am sad before my mind catches on. And then, you and I, we can run to exorcise sadness with exercise.
And what high spirits you have the power to release, when you and I run together trying to outwit the tennis ball machine, or slam the tennis ball, or play table tennis.
I was foolish, oh body. I hated games, I hated walks, I hated exercise. What joys I have missed in my bookish sedentary life.

But, with luck, oh body, if I look after you, and you look after me, we might still have have another 50 years together. And many more Thanksgivings. And believe me, I fully intend to look after you.

Belated photographs from St. Peter’s and the Vatican Museum

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Here are a few pictures from St. Peter’s and the Vatican Museum, especially the Raphael Rooms, on our trip to Rome in February.

St. Peter’s

St. Luke very high up in the central cupola — taxing my pont-n-shoot’s capabilities.

The guilded interior of the dome of St Peter’s
Coming down a little there are numerous inlaid marble columns
Like most of the “paintings” in St. Peter’s, this, St. Jerome’s Last Communion, is a mosiac.
Of course, St. Peter would feature prominently. (I have omitted the Pieta, which is the most famous sculpture in St. Peter’s)
There are several attractive floor vents, well polished by the shoes of the faithful.  This was about 1.2 m wide.

Two happy tourists begin their tour.
That’s enough for one day.
 The Vatican Museum

The Hall of Maps — a very long corridor with maps of different regions of hte world on the walls between the windows.  No doubt Popes paced this walk and studied the maps with very secular concerns.

Details from the ceiling.
Raphael’s gorgeous transfiguration had an uncrowded room all to itself.

Two decorative ceilings

Here are some images from one of Raphael’s four rooms (this one is Stanza della Segnatura).

Two views of the ceiling–together covering the whole.

The School of Athens is a Who’s Who of  Greek leaning.  Below are Plato and Aristole (top left), Diogenes (reclining on the steps) and Archimedes or Euclid (bottom right drawing with a compass).  The man with dark hair in the bottom right is thought to be Rapahel himself.

In the centre foreground is Michelangelo, easily recognised from his trademark boots.

The seated figure with  abook is Pythagoras.  On the left edge is Epicurus holding a plate.

 

A few belated pictures from our summer holiday in Sweden

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Uppsala cathedral ceiling

Is the lady in grey real?

Some pictures from the greenhouse in Gothenburg Botanical garden.
A pitcher plant  or the genus Sarracenia (sometimes called the cobra plant)
Sundew (another carnivorous plant)
Huge pitcher of the tropical monkey cup plant (genus Nepenthes)
Slipper orchid (?)
Some pictures from a sunny day at Europe’s largest lake–lake Vanern.
Warm shallow water
gets cold in the deep
Queen Phillipa
Sunset on lake Vattern

Christ Cries MINE!

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Oh, no single piece of our mental world is to be hermetically sealed off from the rest, and there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’

                                                                                                                                                                  Abraham Kuyper

 He looks at me.

 

At my body, which tells of comfort sought

and briefly found in chocolate

and the richest of foods

and says, “Actually,

 

MINE.”

 * * *

And he reads my blog,

which has brought me more pleasure

and blessing than any work I have ever done

and he smiles,

and asks,

 

MINE?

 

And I say, “Oh yes, of course; it’s yours. Would I embark on something so time-intensive, so out of my control, with so large a possibility of failure without you? Would I feel happy or confident if it were not yours?

 

And he smiles and says, “Don’t forget it.”

* * *

 And he looks at my dream of finishing the big, big book on which I worked, off and on, for 15 years before I dropped it

 

And he says,

MINE.

 

And I say,

“Yes, of course. But will you let me finish it?”

 

And he replies,

MINE.

 

And I say, “Okay, Lord,

We’ll wait and see.

MINE, you say?

Well, then, it’s safe.”

* * *

 And he looks at my children, and sees,

My love, dreams, fear, and vicarious ambition all mixed up,

And he says,

MINE.

 

And I sigh with relief,

“Okay, then, you’ll manage them better than I can.

Okay then, have them, but look after them well.”

 

And he replies,

MINE.

* * *

And he looks at my marriage,

and says,

MINE.

 

And I say,

“Well, of course. How else could I do it?”

 

And he looks a little deeper,

Getting a bit more intimate,

and says, MINE.

 

And I say, “That’s a bit personal, you know.

But, okay.”

* * *

 

And so he goes, through my life,

Friendships.

MINE.

 

“Of course, Lord, would I want to have a friendship you hadn’t given me?

I would not.”

* * *

 Travel.

MINE.

 

I sigh. I love travel.

 

Yes, I say, “Yours.”

* * *

 Money.

 

MINE.

 

“What, Lord, all of it?

 

MINE.

 

“What? No scope for frivolity? For self-indulgence?

 

MINE.

 

“That’s going to be a hard one, Lord, but we’ll begin to work it out.”

* * *

And he looks at my day:

How time slips away in trivial

browsing of blogs,

newspapers, facebook, twitter

and the sadness I feel as it does.

 

And he says,

“Your time, Anita;

Actually, it’s MINE.”

 

“Of course, have my time,” I say. “Please. I don’t manage my time that well anyway. Please manage it.”

* * *

And he looks at my garden,

my acre and a half with which I was so thrilled

and now find so hard to maintain

and he says,

“MINE.”

 

And I say,

“Yours? Okay,”

and sigh with relief

because I want so much to get it perfect

and fail so miserably, but if it’s His,

he’ll help me.

 

And he looks at my house and says,

MINE.

And again, I relax.

Oh, that bugbear of mine,

Yes, Lord, you manage it.

* * *

And business done, he looks at me again,

Smiles and says,

“MINE.”

 

And I sigh with pleasure, relief and happiness,

And say, “Yes, Lord,

 

I’m YOURS.”

 

Being in the Wrong Place at the Right Time

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 Have you ever been in the wrong place at the right time?
A place of loneliness with few real friends?
A place of barrenness without energy to express the thoughts welling up within you?
A place of sterility which yielded no inspiration or support for your creativity?
A place of tears and stress when living with difficult people drained all your joy and energy?
An overwhelming place, in which the sheer tasks of living—keeping a home tidy and running—required more cleverness and energy that you seemed to possess?
I have lived in all these places.
Have you ever been in church in which you didn’t fit?
A cliquey church, whose cliques had no room for you?
A church-status conscious church, a climb to the top of the anthill, join the inner circle, seek-church-significance kind of church
A socio-economic status conscious church, a perfectly groomed, perfect smile, right kind of house-car-decoration-accessories kind of church, at a time when all this baffled you,
An outward appearance is all church, a pretend you tick the right behavioural boxes church when you and your family were barely holding your act together.
A theology conscious church, when, oops, your theology was a bit more nuanced, couldn’t be articulated in correct, brief sound bites.
Over my 22 years as a Christian, 15 all over in America (New York, California, Minnesota and Virginia) and 8 in England (Manchester and Oxford) I’ve been to all these.
You know, I have spent much of my life being in the slightly wrong place. There were perhaps only 12 years in which I definitely felt that I was in the right place at the right time as far as my creative life went—my three years in Oxford as an undergraduate; two years in Minneapolis, Minnesota as a young married woman; and 7 years in Oxford as a middle-aged wife and mum. My church experience has been varied. I’ve loved most of the churches I’ve been part of, and learned from them all, both those in which I perceived myself as being in the right place, and those in which I certainly seemed to be in the wrong place.
And yet, in a way, I have been in the right place in the right time all my life.
In the same way that the desert was the right place for Moses to see the bush which blazed and was not consumed, like the love and generosity of God.
In the same way that the land of suffering—pits and dungeons—was necessary for Joseph to become fruitful, to move from herding sheep to bringing blessing on two nations.
In the same way that being alone and abandoned in the desert was the right place for David to taste and see that the Lord was good because there was nothing and no one else to taste.
In the same way that being fed by ravens by the Kidron Valley was the right place for Elijah to learn that God always provides, and to trust His protection enough to single-handedly confront the Ahab’s court and the 450 priests of Baal.
In the same way that John needed to be exiled and quiet and still in rocky and arid Patmos to hear him whose eyes were like a flame of fire and whose voice was like a sound of many waters.
Being in the wrong place at the right time turned these men into poets, prophets, and writers. Men who could hear God when he spoke in gentle whispers or in a voice like the sound of many waters.
Suffering is suffering. I am not trying to minimize it, my own or anyone else’s. And I wouldn’t wish it on myself, or anyone else.
And yet, as Scripture says, suffering does yield blessings.
And these are blessings I found from being in the wrong place at the right time.
When I was bored and lonely, I read a lot.
When academics were too easy and not stimulating enough, I got involved in debating and organising things from idea to execution, which gave me useful skills when it came to running a business.
When my marriage went through rough periods, I burrowed into the Bible and Christian literature seeking answers, and scripture became so part of me, that if you scratched me, I bled scripture. Probably still do. I sought counsel and support from older Christians, two of whom became my closest friends.
When I was unhappy, and my writing did not go well, I learned to pray. I initially began praying for my writing—and though the answer was a “Not yet,” I continued praying for the sheer delight of being with God. And I wrote more in desert periods than in periods with many friends and much social life.
When I felt spiritually sick—was comfort-eating, getting angry too quickly, falling prey to malice and irritation–I grew convinced that I needed the great physician, and deepened my spiritual quest to get the fatness of Christ into my own soul
When I felt depressed—didn’t feel motivated to exercise, or do any housework, or do anything but read or write in bed—I remembered that Jesus said unless you eat my flesh, you have no life in you. And I began to learn to feed on Jesus.
When I went through a desert period in my previous church, I began to spend enough time with Christ to hear his voice, and hear his guidance quite clearly. And that has provided invaluable.
You made me fruitful in the land of my suffering,Joseph said. I wonder if enduring fruit only grows in that land.
Not the easy fruit that grows in the soil of one’s natural talent and ability, but fruit that grows in soil enriched by tears of repentance;
compassion born out of suffering;
tolerance born out of failure;
wisdom born from seeing the fruits of one’s own folly;
faith born of the times when all seemed lost, and you were in free fall, and God lent you a safety net, rescuing you from your mad sky-dive.

The Beautiful and the Useful

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William Morris, St. George cabinet 1861-1862 - designed by his friend Philip Webb and painted by Morris himself
Image Credit 

Do you want a simple guide to freshen and declutter your house?

Here it is from the Pre-Raphaelite, William Morris: If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. 
It’s a really useful guide as one sweeps through the house. Is this beautiful? Useful? Nope? Then out it goes.
The same is true for writing. One of my daughters showed me a short story she had to write for school. I went through it sentence by sentence. Was each sentence serving the larger purpose of the story–character, setting, plot, atmosphere? If not, out it should go unless it was extraordinarily beautiful.
It’s a good rule for creative writing, isn’t it? Everyone should be both beautiful and useful. If it’s not, save the beautiful darling for another post, and coax the useful thought into beauty
Makes me yearn to get back to the rigours of serious writing. Blogging is like a beach holiday compared to serious writing. But perhaps I will be able to combine both which will be like living in San Diego, or New Zealand with both beaches and mountains accessible in a single day!

 

Summer Does Come (Rainer Maria Rilke)

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Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!

Rainer Maria Rilke