Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

The Lord breathes honour

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The Lord Breathes Honour
The Lord breathes over us.
At his breath, we are covered in gold dust as in a cloak.
At his breath, we are covered with stars
And the jewels of the earth
Which he creates from mud, coal, rock
And the bones of dead creatures.
From these nothings,
He creates diamonds, sapphires,
Rubies, amethysts and emeralds.
Which he breathes over us
Covering us.
We forget that the Lord
 Can breathe on us
And make us great in his sight              
And toil and strive
To get to the top
Of our particular ant-heap
While he forgotten
Stands on call
To bestow his goodness
On whomever who will ask
Shaking his head as he watches us scheme and scramble
For he knows there will never be an shortage of wealth or honour
For he creates these with this breath,
And sadly says
“How can you believe
if you accept praise from one another,
 yet make no effort
 to obtain the praise
 that comes from the only God ?” John 5:44
Anita Mathias

India has come of age–Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, exemplifies this

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When my parents visited the family of our Belgian parish priest in Belgium were first married, in the mid-fifties.

The host’s kids had to wash up after dinner. As they did so grumbling, they said, “I wish we were Indians. We could eat with our hands on leaves, and then throw it away.” My parents smiled. They ate on fine crockery, with cutlery, and the servants washed up.

Perceptions change slowly. We ate at a delicious church buffet the other day with multi-ethnic finger food (samosas, bhajjis, kebebs thai and middle eastern snacks etc.). A visiting Indian said, somewhat rudely, “It’s good; all that is missing is rice.” An older Brit said, equally rudely, “Well, you eat rice with your hands. We use cutlery. This is a finger food buffet.”

I am Indian. I have never eaten rice with my hands, as far as I remember. I looked at Roy, we shook our heads, and smiled.

Socially unconfident Brits are paranoid about using cutlery for everything. I laugh to see them eat chips or pizza or toast with their knife and fork. For heaven’s sake!

I now take up a chicken drumstick with my fingers and happily gnaw on it, saying, “Excuse me, I am Indian, and I think this is so much more natural.” And the Brit sitting next to me, frequently on a couch, at one of these Oxford dinner parties in rooms too small, says ruefully, “I was thinking of doing that too.”  And?

This story about Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, from the New York Times illustrates what I am talking about.

“To a 19th-century British official, Thomas Babington Macaulay, the Indian elite were “interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and color, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.”
As time went on, the elites were steeped in British culture, spoke with Oxbridge accents, pooh-poohed Bollywood films and danced only to British and American music. They dismissed those who spoke Indian languages at home as “vernies,” short for “vernaculars.”
Then, in the 1990s, Bombay changed its name to Mumbai, and Altamount was renamed S. K. Barodawalla Marg. Neither name has stuck with everyone, but the changes were part of an emerging movement to purge India of its colonial legacy.
Such changes accompanied the rise to power of a new class of Indians who want to live and work and raise their children in India, who are tethered to Indian values, food and popular culture and who are unapologetic about their indigenous tastes. The Ambanis are this class’s first family.
Many other Indian business families have been rich for generations, and their scions don finely cut suits and flaunt fussy tastes. Ratan Tata cruises down Marine Drive on Sundays in fast cars and favors Hermès ties with matching handkerchiefs. Vijay Mallya is said to be trailed in his home by a butler holding a silver tray with a cigar and a Scotch. Adi and Parmeshwar Godrej are famous for soirées that attract Hollywood stars.
Mr. Ambani comports himself quite differently. Among family members, he prefers speaking Gujarati to English, friends say. He may ask colleagues to stop at the temple with him during business trips to partake in a ritual Hindu prayer. He loathes Western suits, preferring a white short-sleeved shirt, black trousers and black shoes that resemble sneakers cross-bred with office wingtips.
His idea of entertainment is not ballet but Bollywood; he watches as many as three films a week at home in a private theater. “You need some amount of escapism in life,” he says. “Those two or three hours give you relief.”
He has a legendary appetite, but mostly for the food of the bustling Mumbai streets. He has been known to walk out of fancy restaurants in search of dosas, south Indian crepes sold by the roadside. And he carries those preferences with him when he travels.
One evening, when Mr. Ambani and a former Stanford classmate, Akhil Gupta, were in New York, they dined at Nobu, the popular Japanese restaurant. Mr. Ambani, a vegetarian, picked at the fare, finding it bland. At the end of the meal, Mr. Gupta recalls him saying: “That was nice. Now should we go have dinner?”
For Mr. Ambani, it’s all a matter of comfort food.
“Personally, I still have to eat my dal, roti, chaval,” he says, using the Hindi words for lentil soup, flatbread and rice. “I just have not developed those tastes.”
He recalls “a lot of emulation” of Western ways surrounding him as a child. “My view was: ‘What the hell, man! We can do what we feel like.’ I think what has changed now, and it is changing in multiple generations, is this self-confidence and self-belief.”
His preferences reflect a wider cultural transformation in India, admirers say. “If you look at his interests, they’re very rooted in India,” says Nandan M. Nilekani, co-chairman ofInfosys Technologies, a leading outsourcing company in India. “He’s not trying to impress anyone else. It’s part of a broader shift in self-confidence that is happening, where people are no longer looking at Westernized symbols of having arrived.”

The Father’s Song by Matt Redman

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This is one of those songs which have become instant classics. At a retreat recently with John Arnott, he said, “And now Debs will sing the Father’s Song over you.” It sounded as inevitable as “Amazing Grace.” And yet it is not even ten years old!! And written by the amazing Matt Redman.
I love it. I have this image of myself dancing with the Father, who sings this song over me as we waltz each time I listen to it. It is so spiritually powerful!!

Here’s a Youtube link, and the lyrics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrHl4cjhyFE

I have heard so many songs
Listened to a thousand tongues
But there is one
That sounds above them all

The Father’s song
The Father’s love
You sung it over me and for eternity
It’s written on my heart

CHORUS:
Heaven’s perfect melody
The Creator’s symphony
You are singing over me
The Father’s song
Heaven’s perfect mystery
The king of love has sent for me
And now you’re singing over me
The Father’s song

I have heard so many songs
Listened to a thousand tongues
But there is one
That sounds above them all
[Sounds above them all]

The Father’s song
The Father’s love
You sung it over me and for eternity
It’s written on my heart

CHORUS

It’s Heaven’s perfect mystery
The king of love has sent for me
And now you’re singing over me
The Father’s song

The Father’s song
The Father’s love
You sung it over me and for eternity
It’s written on my heart
[It’s written on my heart]

The Father’s song
The Father’s love
You sung it over me and for eternity
It’s written on my heart
It’s written on my heart
You sing it over me
Father

Why God Loves the World Cup

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Why God loves the World Cup

The privileged world, Switzerland, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands, competes  with the developing world, Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon and the Ivory Coast–and does not necessarily win.

Vuvuzelas are democratically annoying.
South African fans play vuvuzelas

Northern Europeans get all colourful
Holland v Denmark: Holland v Denmark

For a month, everyone forgets their problems.

Patriotism grows intense.
Nations grow unified as at times of war.

God values swiftness, agility, magic and cleverness,
And watches the games with great interest, I believe,

But with his headphones on!

The generous Jesus

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One of the things the preacher, Simon Ponsonby, mentioned this Sunday was how Jesus was generous. When he opened his mouth, gifts came forth

Now I am a Christian curmudgeon, insofar as such a thing is possible. One of my pet peeves is people applying every positive adjective in the English language to Jesus. He was amazing, he was all things, but hey, let’s be a little precise here.

(Another pet peeve is Christianese, throwing words around indiscriminately, for the good of the cause, so to say. Choruses which substitute words at random. Jesus said, My joy I give you. My peace I give you. We cannot go on singing the chorus substituting nouns…. Wealth, health, abundance, insurance…)

Ponsonby is not normally a careless speaker, so I started thinking about how a man who had nothing could be called generous.

Well, he gave his life to redeem those who could not redeem themselves!

And though he had nothing, he gave a lot. He gave entrepreneurially, creating something from nothing. Wine from water. 5000 loaves from 5. Telling the disciples where to cast their nets.

And God, who was in Christ, one with Christ, is immensely generous, continually creating, continually giving good gifts, and blessings and grace–because that is his very nature.

I am increasingly deciding when faced with two choices, the generous one and the stingy one, to take the generous choice, as a daughter of a  generous and giving God

 

The website I am most grateful for today

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I am a citizen of the web. It is inextricably linked to my life as I live it now. I found find it hard to go through a day without Wikipedia, Amazon, The New York Times, the Guardian etc.

But the website I am most today is–Youtube! Though I have an extensive collection of music, I use Youtube to listen to the song I am thinking of when I can’t be bothered to troll through my CDs. I play the song again and again, meditating to it as I get dressed, and tidy my room.

Yesterday’s song was “The Father’s Song.” Today’s may be This is the Air I breathe, or The Lion and the Lamb by Townsend.

The Full Measure of Joy

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“I want to say these things that they may have the full measure of my joy in them.” John 17:13.

Joy. Experiencing it: That is the way to live. Sometimes, all we need to do to experience joy is to slow down, remember the Father, ask for a filling of the Spirit, and pray.

I am prone to occasional low moods, which I need to manage. Over the last year or two, making the most of having very flexible work and work conditions (I’m self-employed), I actually take to bed when my mood is low, and pray, and praise God, and remember him. And then briefly nap. Almost always that’s all it takes for me to feel energetic and full of beans again.

Don’t worry, just pray

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I am a writer. I am also an entrepreneur. I really enjoy starting small businesses.

And I feel towards my newest one as a mother feel towards her newest baby–full of protectiveness and concern. And worry.

Being slightly obsessive, I found myself thinking and worrying about my blog which I hope to turn into a business a lot. Will it work? Is it working? (Working for me is doing better each month than the month before.)

And then, I realized again that this worry was wasted energy. That I should pray instead. So each time, I found myself worrying, “Will it work?” (it’s just in its third month) I instead prayed.

And the same day I decided this, I discovered something I had overlooked, which will easily double the income from my new small business. And found a new source of solid information, which will greatly increase its income.

Prayer, hands down, is the greatest resource we have available to us. It’s available to rich and poor, 24/7 and it’s free!

Thank you, God!!