Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

Jesus Knows the Best Way to Do What You Are Best At

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So Matthew records: Then Jesus got into the boat and his disciples followed him. Suddenly a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping.  The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!”

He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm.

The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!” Matthew 8: 23-27.

So Jesus, a charismatic carpenter, keeps teaching Peter, a fisherman,

a man of the sea, the same lesson, again and again. That he, Jesus,

knew the absolute best way to do everything. Including–fishing.

 

When Peter had laboured all night and caught nothing, Jesus

tells him to cast his nets on the right side and they were

unable to haul in the bountiful catch. Jesus walked on the

waters of a lake, and calmed sea-storms which raged while

he slept in the boat. He showed off his mastery over their

profession, showing that the very cleverest thing they could do,

always, was to check in with him for his guidance and direction.

 

When we feel hard-pressed and incompetent, we desperately ask Jesus

for help. And he can graciously add a one before our zeroes.

However, when we feel competent, educated, experienced, or gifted,

it’s even more crucial to not rely on these limited gifts, but to ask Jesus

to take the wheel, to show us the best way to do things and to bless

them. Then he can add zeroes after our one talent, transforming it

into something with exponential blessing for us and for the world.

 

Avoid the folly of doing anything without checking in

with Jesus. Keep asking: “Jesus, do I need to be doing this

at all?” And: “Please, show me the best way to do it.”

 

In the most successful thing I’ve ever done, co-founding

a small business which has wholly supported our family

for the last thirteen years, I’ve had to rely on God’s guidance

because I had lacked the training, education, skills, or temperament

for it. And God added a 1 before my zeroes, and blessed it.

 

Conversely, I have been relatively unsuccessful in the one thing

I had the education, training, some talent and a deep love for–

that is, writing–because I have done it in my own strength, often without

even thinking of asking God for guidance or direction. And without

surrender. But since God is still writing the story of my life, it’s not too

late to train myself to ask God for guidance, and blessing on my writing.

 

God gives us gifts of good genes, education, opportunity or resources.

But everything we have is God’s, and things can change in a moment.

So the safest thing we can do is to surrender everything we have to God, and

to continually ask him how to do things his way, so He can supernaturally,

exponentially touch, bless and multiply the work of our hands.

 

If you’d like to read my previous recorded meditations, they are here.

I would love you to read my memoir, fruit of much “blood, sweat, toil and tears.”

Rosaries, Reading, Secrets: A Catholic Childhood in India in the UK, and in the US, here, well, and widely available, online, worldwide 🙂

If you’d like to follow these meditations the moment they appear, please subscribe to Christian Meditation with Anita Mathias at Apple Podcasts, Spotify or  

Amazon Music or Audible. And I would be very  grateful for reviews and ratings!!

On Using Anger as a Trigger to Transform Ourselves

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Dear friends, I am continuing my series of short meditations on the Gospel of Matthew. This one, the eight in the series, concludes the meditations on the sublime Sermon on the Mount. Thank you for reading along!

On Using Anger as a Trigger to Transform Ourselves

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged,” Jesus says. “For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

And so, Jesus reiterates a law of life: sowing and reaping. “Those

who draw the sword will perish by the sword,” he says. The

swift to condemn will be judged more harshly. For the seeds we plant

in the garden of our lives–our secret thoughts, our words, and the

kindness or meanness of our actions determine our flourishing.

We reap what we have sown in unexpected ways and at unexpected

times, since God, the righteous Judge, observes both our generosity

and our unkindness towards those we judged powerless to help

or harm us, and God holds our lives in his hands.

 

Jesus does not condemn accurately reading character. That

is an essential life skill—to realise that not everyone is trustworthy,

honest, truthful or decent. Indeed, Jesus warns us about

deceptive, smooth-talking people–“wolves in sheep’s clothing,”

out to devour you. Assess people by the fruit of their lives,

he says; thornbushes don’t bear figs.

 

However, dwelling on another’s faults, while ignoring our own,

invites judgement, Jesus says. He recommends using our irritation

with annoying or evil people as a reminder and trigger for

self-examination. When we are bothered by a speck in another’s eyes,

Jesus recommends checking if we have a whole log of the same

failing or a greater one in our own eyes. (Interestingly, Freud says

we are most infuriated by our own faults mirrored in other people!).

Obsessive judging is wasted time and energy. We must train ourselves

to refocus that energy into transforming those blind spots, limps, and

cracks in our characters, which so often destroy the house of people’s lives.

 

Besides, fretting over others’ faults leads only to evil, as the Psalmist says.

We unconsciously imitate speech and character traits we dwell on!

Read a good stylist, and you write better; focus on another’s stinginess,

manipulativeness, or dishonest self-promotion, and you risk mirroring it.

 

And what of us who’ve been judgey and critical? When we

repent, we live “under the mercy,” in Charles Williams’ phrase.

Jesus forgave Peter, who betrayed him, and he will forgive us.

God devises a unique calling suited to both the naturally sweet and

the naturally outspoken and no-nonsense. Whatever seeds you

have sown into your life, thistles or grapes, place them in the hands

of the God of redemption. Ask him to make the garden of your life

bloom, and to help you do the work he has given you to do.

 

I would love you to read my memoir, fruit of much “blood, sweat, toil and tears.”

Rosaries, Reading, Secrets: A Catholic Childhood in India in the UK, and in the US, here, well, and widely available, online, worldwide 🙂

If you’d like to follow these meditations the moment they appear, please subscribe to Christian Meditation with Anita Mathias at Apple Podcasts, Spotify or  

Amazon Music

or Audible. And I would be very  grateful for reviews and ratings!!

If you’d like to read my previous recorded meditations,

9 Do Not Worry About What To Eat: Jesus

8. Happy Are the Merciful for They Shall Be Shown Mercy

7 The Power of Christ’s Resurrection. For Us. Today

6 Each Individual’s Unique and Transforming Call and Vocation

5 Change Your Life by Changing Your Thoughts

4 Do not be Afraid–But be as Wise as a Serpent

3 Our Failures are the Cracks Through Which God’s Power Enters our Lives

2 The World is full of the Glory of God

1 Mindfulness is Remembering the Presence of Christ with us.

Thank you 🙂

 On Not Wasting a Desert Experience

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So, after Paul the Apostle’s lightning bolt encounter with the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus, he went into the desert, he tells us…

And there, he received revelation, visions, and had divine encounters. There he pondered on the simple teachings of Jesus in the context of the logic and story of the Old Testament. There he came up with Big Word Theology… Atonement, Justification, Sanctification, Passive Righteousness, and worked out the beautiful, intellectually challenging doctrines of Romans and Galatians. In the desert.

The same Judean desert, where Jesus fasted for forty days before starting his active ministry. Where Moses encountered God. Where David turned from a shepherd to a leader and a King, and more, a man after God’s own heart.  Where Elijah in the throes of a nervous breakdown hears God in a gentle whisper.

England, where I live, like most of the world is going through a desert experience of continuing partial lockdowns. Covid-19 spreads through human contact and social life, and so we must refrain from those great pleasures. We are invited to the desert, a harsh place where pruning can occur, and spiritual fruitfulness.

A plague like this has not been known for a hundred years… John Piper, after his cancer diagnosis, exhorted people, “Don’t Waste Your Cancer”—since this was the experience God permitted you to have, and He can bring gold from it. Pandemics and plagues are permitted (though not willed or desired) by a Sovereign God, and he can bring life-change out of them.

 

Let us not waste this unwanted, unchosen pandemic, this opportunity for silence, solitude and reflection. Let’s not squander on endless Zoom calls—or on the internet, which, if not used wisely, will only raise anxiety levels. Let’s instead accept the invitation to increased silence and reflection

Let’s use the extra free time that many of us have long coveted and which has now been given us by Covid-19 restrictions to seek the face of God. To seek revelation. To pray.

 

And to work on those projects of our hearts which have been smothered by noise, busyness, and the tumult of people and parties. To nurture the fragile dreams still alive in our hearts. The long-deferred duty. The vocation or call we have ignored or procrastinated on obeying.

Write the book, declutter the house, get your body strong.  Don’t waste the opportunities to mine for the treasures of darkness during this prolonged period of global upheaval.

A Mind of Life and Peace in the Middle of a Global Pandemic

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                                        From a walk by the River Thames.

I have been thinking about this sentence in the Book of Romans, “The mind controlled by the sinful nature is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace.”

That’s what I am consciously seeking to maintain in these unusual days… a mind of life and peace.

 

Many of the social supports of our lives have been stripped away. In my case, gradually then suddenly, culminating on March 23rd, my German classes, Book group, Writers in Oxford meetings, church small groups, supper clubs, yoga classes, personal training, Ramblers walks, parties, lunches with friends, travel, cultural activities, church itself, all stopped.  Of course, we can still talk to our friends and family on the phone, or on video calls, and I do, but it’s not the same…

However, reviewing my list, I see many fun, intellectually, spiritually, emotionally nourishing activities, just too many of them. Lockdown made Roy and me realise that our lives had become too full, too rich, too busy, too fun, too fast-paced. And so I have decided not to clutter up this God-given season of quietness with the many Zoom activities I have been invited to—Bible studies, group catch-ups, writing retreats, yoga classes, prayer meetings… but to have just a few meaningful one-on-one conversations instead. I have decided to embrace this season of quietness, and time, time, all the time I have ever yearned for. 

Of course, this free time is complicated. Following the news and this real-life tragedy unfolding around us is distracting, infuriating and distressing. We read of the suffering of the poor; fulminate at inept leaders, and manipulative ones who squeeze this for political advantage. We feel powerless to stop coronavirus, and powerless over the length of lockdowns. Some of us might wistfully think of the hopey days when Britain decided to go for herd immunity and life continued as normal… but then, who wanted to be in the herd infected by Covid-19, a particularly gruesome infection if you are not fit?

* * *

Britain’s six-week severe lockdown is disorienting for human beings who are social animals, shaped, defined, refined by social interactions.

And in this time, it is important to guard our minds and spirits. To have minds of life and peace.

Many of us embarked on this enforced retreat with enthusiasm. Britain went on a shopping spree…buying fitness, gardening, and DIY stuff and lots of books. Writers hoped to write their best work, their personal King Lear.  Everyone hoped to emerge from quarantine with decluttered homes, pretty gardens, fitter bodies, and finished work.

And, of course, with God’s help, we can achieve these goals, dreams and ambitions, partly or wholly. There is no reason we cannot sleep early and wake very early without the interruptions of social, cultural, intellectual, creative or gym activities on other people’s schedules. Or get stronger as we lift weights. Or declutter. Or write.

In this period of “world enough and time,” it’s the mental game that’s crucially important, as I tell my daughter Irene, who is preparing for her Oxford University finals, in Medicine, taken online.

 

These are three practices I am finding helpful.

1 Be Mindful of the Mind. Maintain a mind of life and peace. I am using the brilliant Headspace app, which has brief meditations, targeted interventions, when I am aware that I am stressed, distracted, or down-spirited. Meditation can change one’s mood and mental state as effectively as chocolate or sugary treats can while improving one’s health. Phew!

Since I formally learned meditation at first at a  beginners and then at an advanced meditation course at the Oxford Mindfulness Centre, a ten minute meditation almost always suffices to calm, still, and focus my mind.

 

2 Be Mindful of the Body. Keep your body well-stretched, well-exercised, full of energy. A happy body, a happy mind, and a happy creative spirit are inextricably connected; I wish I’d learned that decades earlier. Scripture interestingly calls our bodies, “The temple of the Holy Spirit.” We experience the shalom, the love and blessing and goodness of the Father not only in our minds, and spirits, but in our well worked-out vibrantly alive bodies.

I walk every day, often 4 to 4.5 miles, either with my husband Roy or alone, praying, and then listening to the Bible or an audiobook.  And because I have so much extra time now, in lockdown, I am alternating periods of sitting (reading, writing, meditating, praying) with physical activity (decluttering, gardening, Yoga with Adriene on YouTube, and Alisa Keeton’s Revelation Wellness workouts, which aim at movement as worship and has dance, weights, HIIT, cardio and flexibility workouts).

And in a life-changing intervention…I started housewalking last autumn, introduced to it by American blogger, Jean Wise, who used it to lose 100 pounds. Though I walk outside whenever possible, in England, in grumpy seasons, it can rain for hours, it gets dark early. And when it does, I download an audiobook onto my phone, and just walk through my house, which is, fortunately, large and rambling, until I have my goal steps (10,000 to 13500)!  If I get bored or tired, I say, “Keep walking. You are actually reading.” Which I am! (I’m currently listening to Hemingway’s memoir A Moveable Feast), not his best work, but I am charmed and engrossed by it.)

 

3 Be Mindful of Your Emotions.

I am trying to train my thoughts and emotions not to give way to negativity or annoyance or restlessness or down-heartedness or impatience at this lockdown.

Beyond the jokers and movers and shakers and doomsters and gloomsters who make the decisions which govern our lives is God. God who has a purpose for this primitive, medieval quarantine, even if it was imposed by mass hysteria. God who can bring good from the mistakes of governments, as he can from our mistakes.

God who can create good from all things, including a virus–both for our own lives and for the world.  

Our lives are not entirely our own, and we do not control the plot. God does. And lockdown and coronavirus is what God has permitted for this time of our lives. It takes faith to accept it from his hands, and thank him.  Counting blessings on my fingers helps, even the blessing of the longest stretch of free, quiet, uncommitted time that I have had since I was a schoolgirl, and since Puritan ideas of using time well and making each hour golden entered my life.

Living with gratitude in each season for its goodness is perhaps the most important ingredient for a happy life…that, and living with love. I sometimes remind myself, “If you cannot live with appreciation and gratitude, why are you even living?”

** *

And, if you have time  to read my story of a really inspiring life, perhaps check out

 The Story of Dirk Willems: The Man who Died to Save his Enemy on Amazon.com

and on Amazon.co.uk

Images of some walks in Oxford https://www.instagram.com/p/B_w1URkJ8Vy/

https://www.instagram.com/p/B-nIQybJStb/

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_w1URkJ8Vy/

Silver and Gold Linings in the Storm Clouds of Coronavirus

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So, over the last two weeks, life, as I knew it, has been unrecognisably altered.

While this is just a drop in the ocean of virus-sadness, we were about to go to Prague on holiday when the Czech Republic closed its borders to British citizens (and BA promptly refunded us, thank goodness.) (And, probably, the holiday in Vienna in May, for which we had paid a deposit, will get refunded too!)

Then as government guidance tightened, things I could never have imagined happened. Oxford University shut down, taking with it the German class I was taking, which gave me much intellectual pleasure and joy. My daughter Irene, third year Medicine, Christ Church, Oxford University, had her Pharmacology exam on March 18th cancelled, and suddenly came home, earlier than planned, following her college’s desperate request to students. And it looks unlikely that Christ Church will reopen next month, let’s see.

The Church of England closed, in effect, and our church shut its doors, ending some church activities I enjoyed… a monthly supper club/small group I enjoyed, a monthly church supper and the Lent supper series, (which commenced with a wonderful talk by N.T. Wright. I was impressed by his encyclopaedic knowledge of, and excitement about Scripture. Aged 71, he almost bounced as he spoke in a great rush of enthusiasm!)

I had to close down a supper club/classics book group I run, and which I love. (We were reading Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey).  Writers in Oxford, a society I belong to, closed down, along with their enjoyable drinks evenings. The Oxford Literary Festival for which we had tickets was cancelled. Parties were cancelled.

The gym closed down, and I lost yoga classes, and personal training with weights. And goodness, The Ramblers, with whom I enjoyed walking, closed down. And over the weekend, some outdoor things we go to have closed… Blenheim Palace, the Oxford Botanical Garden, Harcourt Arboretum, even The National Trust, for heaven’s sake.

And now: it’s lockdown! We are only allowed out to buy essentials like food, and, thank goodness, to exercise outdoors.

The series of minor losses is a bit like old age is supposed to be, when friends die, work ceases, and life shrinks. In the beginning, I thought: the gym would stay open, my favourite Parks and gardens would stay open, I could exercise in them. I couldn’t imagine Church closing or the University and my language class or The Ramblers. But no…

* * *

Is my gloom, after all, shade of his hand, outstretched caressingly? Francis Thompson asks in a favourite poem “The Hound of Heaven.” In that poem, the narrator tries to find solace in love, in friendship, in nature, but God blights these things, determined that the poet should first find joy and comfort in Him. “Behind a frowning providence, he hides a smiling face,” William Cowper writes.

“God so loved the world,” Jesus states, early on in the Gospel of John. And that stands true in the time of Coronavirus. Over 99.99% of the British population, and of the world’s population are not ill, as I write, though thirty percent of the world’s population are under lockdown.

It is a time of worry and economic shaking for most of us. But this slice of silence and solitude and precious freed-up time is also a God-given opportunity to do some of the things we’ve long claimed we wanted to do–things essential or important to our spiritual health and wellbeing, which we have allowed to get crowded out by the urgent, and trivial.

Britons have embarked on a lockdown spending spree… exercise equipment, DIY stuff, seeds, gardening tools, sewing machines, knitting stuff.

For me, health permitting, this enforced stillness and peace is a time to

  • Make great headway with, or even finish, a big book project so often interrupted by distraction, both internal and circumstantial.
  • Get my house completely decluttered. It’s tidy, but I could get rid of a goodly percentage of my stuff.
  • Get as strong as I can be through fast walking and lifting weights at home. And continue losing weight without being thrown off course by travel (hotel breakfasts and restaurant dinners!) and parties and meals at friends’ houses, with food that’s not on my ketogenic meal plan.
  • Wake early, now that our evenings are more under our control without going off schedule after returning late from book groups, supper clubs, small groups, German class, etc.

My daughter Irene is home, and so is my husband. It is a time to bond more deeply and invest in some of the most important relationships of my life without all the distraction of social life.  In enforced togetherness, some relationships dramatically improve, others implode. It looks, so far, as if our marriage is going to do better without busyness, rushing around, social life and distractions.

* * *

Human lives are like a well-structured novel with several plots simultaneously in play. There is the plot we seek to write, which usually involves elements of love, success, wealth, and fun. This plot can be affected by other people’s actions as they pursue their own wonderful plans for their lives. In this case, researchers posit, someone selling illegally trafficked pangolins in a “wet” market in Wuhan, China, has affected the lives of millions of people thousands of miles away, among them the heir to the British throne; the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; and a woman leading a quiet life in  Oxford, England. And then there is the plot God is trying to write. And one element of this plot is that we get to know him better.

The Apostle Paul wrote that he counted everything as rubbish, garbage compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Jesus Christ,  his Lord. I am Bible-walking every day during part of my 4.25 mile walk, and listening to the Gospels, praying through them, enjoying Jesus, his humanness and quirkiness.  His first miracle was multiplying wine at a wedding, how human, how wonderful!  He’s no-nonsense. He hates cant and religious hypocrisy. He tells the truth, and tells it straight.  He’s brilliant, ingeniously sidestepping people’s traps. If we make time in this quiet season to deepen our friendship with him and with God, it will be, by far, the most important relationship of our lives, especially when the winds rage and the waves beat.

* * *

I have only been under lockdown once before, when I was seventeen, in my hometown of Jamshedpur, India. I read Catherine Marshall’s Beyond Ourselves, and made a commitment to follow Christ. And though I have done so unsteadily, and often badly, it has been the most important and most blessed commitment of my life. May this lockdown will be a similarly blessed turning point, for you and for me, and may our best work, our King Lear and Pilgrim’s Progress (written in quarantine and in prison respectively) get done.

And it’s possible that when “normal” life resumes, it will be forever changed. Creatives welcome a day free from engagements, or a cancelled activity with joy and uplifted spirits. It follows that we often view a day with a church small group, a writerly activity, or a social activity with a corresponding unconscious lowering of our spirits.

Many habits will be broken in this period. Perhaps if our small group or activities leave us more emotionally depleted than energised, we will stop going. Perhaps if we worship God better in the great cathedrals of river and fields and forest than indoors, or even in church, we will do that more often (heresy!). Perhaps we will re-evaluate our activities, pruning the inessential and everything which does not give us joy and energy.

Long cocooning can be a time of intense inner and directional change. Perhaps we will come out of cocooning alive, joyous, and with wings. May it be so. Amen.

***

 If you’d like to read my book of essays, Wandering Between Two Worlds, which includes my conversion narrative, here it is: on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk

On Loving That Which Love You Back

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I’m reading Sarah Bessey’s “Miracles and Other Reasonable Things” sent me by her publisher for review.

One thing that struck me was her distinction between self-care and self-comfort in times of sadness, stress and boredom.  Bessey explains that she “numbs out in times of stress; I can use anything from food to wine to books to television to shopping.”

This is self-comfort she explains which FEELS good; self-care, on the other hand, CREATES good in our lives, the lives of our family and friends, and in the world.

I, personally, have used the first and last on the list, but I am learning not to comfort myself with things that will cause future sadness when I am tired, bored, angry, sad, or stressed, but instead to love the things that will love me back.

So chocolate, or comfort eating, or zoning out on social media or online magazines and newspapers will not love me back, but cause future sadness at the weight gain, or wasted time. I am now more regularly rating my hunger on a five point scale, and praying for the bread of the Holy Spirit rather than eat when I am not hungry, but am bored, or stressed, or low-spirited.

The things which will love me back are a long walk, yoga, meditation, decluttering, gardening, reading something challenging and nourishing, prayer, Bible-time, dance, gym-time, hanging out with friends, or with family. Interestingly, none of these cost money, or hardly anything, and they all leave me stronger, mentally, physically, spiritually and emotionally.

And that’s the difference between self-care, and self-comfort. Sugar, and chocolate (or coffee) give the brain a sudden rush of serotonin and stimulation, a certain “change of state,” but a certain descent , the need for more, and weight gain or sleep loss.

The slow steady ways of self-care take a bit longer to change one’s mood, but they leave no regret.

I, like many Christians, often forget that the love we are called to includes loving ourselves just as as much as we love anybody else. That love includes looking after after ourselves as a wise parent would look after a recalcitrant toddler.

Sarah Bessey Miracles and Other Reasonable Things on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk

“An Autobiography in Five Chapters” and Avoiding Habitual Holes  

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 (All images taken on this summer’s memorable trip to Iceland)

Earlier this year, my husband Roy and I took a mindfulness course through the Oxford Mindfulness Centre, a truly mind-expanding experience (a wonderful thing in mid-life, when we can ossify in our thoughts and habits unless we make a conscious effort to change).

The teacher read this poem to us, and it felt like an electric shock.

 

An Autobiography in Five Chapters (by Portia Nelson)

I

I walk down the street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk

I fall in.

I am lost…

I am hopeless.

It isn’t my fault.

It takes forever to find a way out.

II

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I pretend I don’t see it.

I fall in again.

I can’t believe I’m in the same place.

But it isn’t my fault.

It still takes a long time to get out.

III

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I see it is there.

I still fall in… it’s a habit

My eyes are open; I know where I am;

It is my fault.

I get out immediately.

IV

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I walk around it.

V

I walk down another street.

* * *

I thought about mistakes I’ve made, unhelpful habit-patterns, holes I have fallen into–inadvertently, the first time, and then again, without analysing or accepting culpability for my actions, and then repeatedly, out of bad habit.

But there other options exist… I could side-step the hole.

Or go down a different street.

* * *

So, Roy and I began thinking about holes we tumble into, and how to circumvent them. For instance, we left on a 15 day trip to Iceland just after the Meditation course. I love travel, but usually pack an hour or so before we leave. Which means running through the house to run laundry, gather up books, clothes, toiletries and electronics; it’s stressful, and I am frequently still packing when the house-sitters come, and I feel sad that I was not able to tidy up for them as well and hospitably as I would have liked, and I invariably discover I need some toiletries or better walking shoes or eye-masks, but there’s no time to get them.

Well, this time, I started packing a full 10 days in advance, a pomodoro a time. We were renting a camper van, which meant taking more gear, and I decided to buy good hiking layers for Iceland. (We wore 4 or 5 layers in July and August, can you imagine?–because we hiked up to glaciers, took boat trips in glacial lagoons, and it was  chilly!) I also bought a duplicate of almost everything I take in my suitcase or hand luggage when I travel, so that next time packing will be super-easy, with a pre-packed suitcase. (In fact, we are going to Porto soon to celebrate our thirtieth wedding anniversary, and the suitcase is already packed!!) Anyway, I was packed before the house-sitters came, and even got to clean and declutter.

Packing was always a hated and dread task– and I am so happy I have found a non-time-consuming way to do it: buy a duplicate of everything I normally take , and always keep a suitcase packed…

It takes analysis to figure out holes, and how to avoid them. For instance, we booked our trip to Iceland after reading in our guidebooks that while 5-7 days on the Ring Road that circles the country is the minimum, fourteen days are even better. So, we booked fourteen days! We hiked up volcanoes, took boat trips on glacial lagoons among icebergs, walked on iceberg-littered beaches, and among geysers, saw basalt columns, puffins and seals; soaked in hot pools surrounded by mountains; climbed up to more waterfalls than I’ve ever seen in a fortnight, but realised we could easily have seen our personal wish-list in fewer days, if we had read the guidebook, and made a list. (Things like a steep 45 minute walk up a barren Mordor-like landscape to see a volcano’s crater, or climbing behind slippery rocks to get behind a waterfall were not for me, when there were easy-to-access volcanoes and waterfalls). And Iceland is an expensive country to spend an unnecessary day in.  So, though I always read the guidebook on the plane out, and love the serendipity of unplanned travel, I decided I am going to plan an itinerary, ideally before I have even bought the tickets.

I love the poem’s premise: we can avoid habitual mistakes by analysing the holes we can fall into, and, then, take a different road.  Another hole I have fallen into is a form of ghosting. Because I dislike difficult, tense, emotional conversations, I can sever a relationship with, say, a spiritual director, or church, or small group,  or someone who was working for us with an email or by simply stopping showing up.  So, once warm relationships go into limbo, and this is annoying and unsatisfying for the ones ghosted, and leaves me feeling guilty, and without the benefits of maturity that confronting difficult things gives us. I have had to end two relationships this year… one was a warm professional relationship which had definitely come to its natural end. I tried to sever it by email, but he really wanted  a face-to -face, so we had it, and it was a good meeting, and provided a sad but satisfying closure to the relationship which had served us well, but now clearly needed to end. Similarly, I left an activity I was involved in with a frank and mature discussion with the leader, which strengthened our relationship, though leaving was the right thing. And each time we end things well we gain courage and kindness for the next time, which is of great importance, because after all the ending defines the book… Scarlett re-marries Rhett, or doesn’t; Jon Snow occupies the Iron Throne, or doesn’t… Endings define the story!

Other holes I’m avoiding. Because we are self-employed, and our work is portable, my husband Roy and I travel a lot. We are suckers for those super-cheap airfare and hotel deals to Europe, and had 10 short breaks in 2018. And six so far this year, including Cordoba, Berlin, Krakow, Iceland, and New York, for my niece Kristina’s wedding, and soon, God willing, Porto. However, sadly, it can take a while after travel to recover my good habits and work routines.  Also, I gain weight most times I travel (eating out for every meal can do that to you!) which which can take time to lose. So I am now trying to craft a life in which I travel slightly less frequently for energy, freshness, joy and excitement it gives me, but instead pace myself by taking a stimulating break each week. We went to a Pompeii exhibition at the Ashmolean last week, and recently to a story-telling session of The Kalevala with my book group, and a classic movie night at a friend’s house—Pasolini’s Oedipus!! (Alternatively, I could keep travelling, an activity I adore, and simply became more active to walk off the delicious holiday meals. But some change is necessary.)

Life’s more fun, when we keep revising it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Returning Home to yourself, and The Things you Love More than Yourself.

By

So.. I listened to my first TED talk ever today. The amazing meditation course Roy and I took encouraged us to do something emotionally, or intellectually, or spiritually or creatively nourishing at least a couple of times a day, and this was my nourishment for the day (in addition to yoga, meditation, and a bit of writing!)

Why do nourishing things daily? Because in times of stress and busyness, either work-related, or financial, or just life, the nourishing things we love are sacrificed first… and then we slip into “an exhaustion funnel.” It takes us longer and longer to do simple things… and we burn out!

Doing nourishing things a couple of times a day, mini-non-caloric treats, is also something I decided to do after reading an excellent article by Joshua Becker of Becoming Minimalist: How to Craft a Life You Don’t Need to Escape From. We’ve followed a boom and bust circle for years… pushing ourselves too workaholically and then travelling and doing no work at all. It isn’t really sensible, though I love and adore travel: it makes me come alive. In 2018, I see looking at my calendar that we went on 10 short trips the highlights being Dubrovnik, the South of France, and Berlin. This year, we have been on 5 trips already… Cordoba, Krakow, Poland, and Iceland’s Ring Road being highlights, and still have trips we’ve booked to New York City, Porto, Portugal and Malta.

But I need to break the excessive travel habit, because it is disruptive of good routines and good habits, not to mention creative work. And it’s expensive! So we are building in daily “nourishing things” and a weekly day of adventure in Oxford, or London, or the many fascinating surrounding towns–and fewer short breaks in Europe. TED talks and New Yorker articles are on my list of nourishing things.

So in “Success, Failure and the Drive to Keep Creating,” Elizabeth Gilbert talks about how great success, financial, creative, academic, whatever, has this in common with great failure… it divorces you from yourself, takes you into the dark hinterlands of the psyche. And then what you have to do is return home. She defines home as returning to the one thing in the world that you love more than yourself. And then you have to build your house on that rock. For her, home was writing.

What the poet Rilke calls, “the things that will not ever leave you” also form a home–sunrise, sunset, cirrus, cumulus, and cumulonimbus clouds, the ever-changing panorama of nature, the starry night sky, the quiet patience and dignity of animals, the people who love you, and the inalienable love of God. Opportunities to read, to pray, to meditate, to sleep, to walk, to awaken your body with exercise, to love,  to rest and rejoice in the love of God.

As I listed what I love more than myself, I—I am sorry if this sounds goody-goody or pretentious!—realised that the biggest of these was God. I know this because I have often taken decisions  which have cost me money, time, energy, and work and dream setbacks, because I heard God calling me to them. And, of course, building my life on God is both safe… and the great unknown, because God is not a tame lion. I do not know every chapter of the story He will write in my life… but I do know it will be a good one.