In which I am Amazed by Grace | Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Finding Golden Hours in Dark Days (and Some Thoughts on Forgiveness)

I love travel, and I’ve had many, many magical trips over the years…Costa Rica, New Zealand, Norway, Slovenia, and several trips to Switzerland, Italy, France and Greece were highlights.

But anyone who travels a lot knows that every trip will not be a slice of heaven. Things can go wrong, tempers can go wrong.

So we once left on holiday two days after my husband had surgery on a polyp. We had tickets to fly, but couldn’t because of the recent surgery, so claimed travel insurance, and drove. He was angsty; I was angsty; it was one of the hottest summers on record (as almost every summer in Europe is nowadays), and we overheated, in every way, argued and got historical, masking our fear. (Would he take chemo? I, the risk-taker, did not; would he, the cautious one, be foolish enough to (in my book)? Irene, our daughter, who is studying Medicine at Oxford University, hissed, “Mum, I will be so mad at you, if you tell him not to take chemo,” and I, “But, of course, I will. Chemotherapy is a demonic, extremely toxic poison. It’s irresponsible, quite insane, to take it if there are alternatives.” So, you see, we were in just the right frame of mind for a peaceful holiday!!

However, when we parked, and got out of the motorhome, there were beautiful palaces like Palais des Papes in Avignon, historic walled cities, magnificent Roman ruins like Pont du Gard, cathedrals, beaches, glorious mountains, walks by gorges, a hike up a volcano, and great food. Magic, self-forgetfulness, joy.

So, how do I assess this holiday, I wondered, as I sorted through my photos each evening. If you looked at the hours and minutes, there was much interest and magic, and the losing track of time which defines happiness for me. There were also heated arguments.

It’s like life. Every day has beautiful things, what the poet Rilke calls, “the things that will never leave you:” sunrise, sunset, cirrus, cumulus, and cumulonimbus clouds, the ever-changing panorama of nature, the quiet patience and dignity of animals, people who love you, and the inalienable love of God. Most days have opportunities to read, to pray, to meditate, to sleep, to walk, to awaken your body with exercise, to love, to rest and relax, and rejoice in the love of God. When we live fully in each hour, there is much to make us happy, and many things to be thankful for… even though things have gone wrong, there have been hammer-blows to the heart, the breakers and waves have crashed over us, and there is an Evil Being, the enemy of our souls, who prowls, who can possess people, and bend them to his malign will (literally, metaphorically). Hassle we will not escape, for it is in skilfully dealing with it that we grow strong.

But God gives us good and happy hours in the midst of the worst days, and, so, even during the worst days, we need to seize them with gratitude.

* * *

What went wrong in the motorhome that holiday was not just the Damocles sword of pending test results. (We got a call on holiday, but not the call. All was well. Phew!!) It was that we brought unresolved issues on holiday with us.

I recently read an inspiring biography, “My Life: A Guided Tour” by Ken Taylor, translator of The Living Bible; and a bestselling children’s writer, founder of the major Christian publishing company, Tyndale House; the Christian Booksellers Association; pioneer of short-term missions; Life Application Bibles, and the One Year Bible. Almost everything that man touched turned to gold.

He had ten children, and, when they were young, had inadequate housing and not much money. Unsurprisingly, there were tensions, and his wife was critical of him. He describes leaving the house, seething, and being in turmoil all day, walking for hours until his anger was spent. He believed this anger “was hindering his prayers,” but “steady peace and joy with my wife seemed beyond my ability.”

Taylor finally decided that this must not go on. He wanted to get his prayers answered. The solution, which he felt he could not bear to consider, was “simply to forgive Margaret for criticising me. The situation must end, and since Margaret would not solve the problem by no longer criticising me, I would have to take the lead by trying to learn from her criticism, and meanwhile forgiving her for hurting me.”

“It was one of the hardest actions of my life,” he wrote, “to allow myself to admit the fault she had alleged, and concurrently to say in my heart, ‘I forgive you,’ and mean it. But God helped me.”

“The next time a criticism came—a few days later—I flared up internally as before but rushed out and prayed for help to accept and forgive, then I came back quieted a few minutes later. Not many days went by before I realised that the flare-ups took a shorter and shorter time to deal with, and they could finally be handled immediately. A few weeks later, Margaret remarked, “You are different from the way you were,” and I knew the Lord’s grace had prevailed, the spiritual battle of many years was ended, and Satan, who had conquered for so long, was himself conquered.

And when the turmoil ended, the grass could become fresh and green, and flowers could grow and bloom—and they did.”

This is the best account of forgiveness in practice that I know of.

* * *

More and more, I am trying to keep short accounts, to forgive when things happen, or surface in memory, so that I can live happily, and as free as a bird.

Here’s a striking story from missionary, Simon Guillebaud: In Malaysia, monkeys invaded a farmer’s land and destroyed his crops. The damage jeopardized his very livelihood so he needed to act fast. The ingenious solution he devised was to put peanuts in hollowed-out coconuts. He then hid and waited. The monkeys came, scaled the walls, and smelt the peanuts. When they found them in the coconuts, they grabbed them, but now their clenched fists couldn’t pull them out – they couldn’t fit through the narrow apertures if they remained clenched. Neither could the monkeys now scale the walls again without releasing the peanuts, but they didn’t want to, so they were stuck. The farmer then reappeared and shot them one by one. Their freedom was so easily attainable. All they had to do was let go, but they chose to hold on.

If you are holding on to anything, let go.”

Let it go. Let the peanut go. Most of us who live in this world have been cheated, robbed, lied to, lied about, manipulated, taken advantage of… Evil is a real force in the world, though not as strong a force as good.

Just let it go, let the peanut go. That does not mean you have to invite those who have slandered, cheated, or abused you to lunch, or to be your house guests, or best friends. It may not even be safe to be in relationship with them, for evil is real, and there are People of the Lie.

Forgiveness is partly a matter of mental discipline. When the memory of wrongs surfaces, release the darn peanut. Mentally say, “I forgive you.” Release the peanut to God, the righteous judge, and leave it in God’s hands. “No one gets away with anything,” John Arnott says in Grace and Forgiveness. Ask God to convert the evil done to you to good. (“You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good,” Joseph tells his scheming brothers).

To leave the harm done to us in God’s hands, and then ask God to bring good to us and to our family out of the evil done to us is a potent prayer, which sets us free to dance.

Gratitude: A Secret to Happiness

By Anita Mathias

Georgia O’Keefe

All of us have a negativity bias which makes us more apt to remember one mean comment about our writing, our children, our appearance, or our characters, than dozens of positive ones. It’s true, isn’t it? More disquietingly, I’ve read, in Andrew Solomon’s brilliant The Noonday Demon that the myelin sheath around our nerves wears down as we age, so that, if we live long enough, almost all of us will suffer from depression. And that’s not a happy prospect!

* * *

I want to live with peace in my soul. I want to live with joy, mindfulness, and gratitude, “in the light of his glory and grace.” That phrase is precious to me. I say it to myself, often, when I feel stressed, and my heart and mind race with a hundred thoughts and emotions, and then I remember to pivot, “to turn my eyes on Jesus” once again, “to look full in his wonderful face, until the things of earth grow strangely dim, in the light of his glory and grace,” and sanity and good sense return.

One way of pivoting into the presence of Jesus, and living in the light of his glory and grace, is the practice of gratitude. I do this quite deliberately. When I find myself stressed, or distracted, or discombobulated, I like to do what in mindfulness practice is called a three minute breathing space which, astonishingly, often serves to bring peace and clarity. Another practice I use is “the ten finger gratitude exercise” of Mark Williams, author of Mindfulness: count ten blessings or reasons for gratitude on my fingers. Often, my mood and perspective has shifted, and I am calmer before I got to ten!

For years, I have told one of my daughters who had trouble falling asleep to count a hundred blessings to help her sleep, and I often do myself…both the little unnoticed ones—that by God’s grace, I have never been in an accident, or broken a bone, and have rarely experienced physical pain, and have reasonably good health. I count my favourite gorgeous paintings, and books, and poems, and places, and people. That changes my mood before I get to a hundred.

* * *

Gratitude is the most important ingredient of happiness. Rick Steves who writes wonderful travel guides (and who, a couple of decades ago, converted me to his “Europe by the Backdoor” philosophy, enjoying Europe as many Europeans do, picnic meals in great parks, camper-vanning and campgrounds) writes of a loud disgruntled American eating an expensive meal in an expensive restaurant in a resort which cost five times what Steves recommends spending, loudly grumbling about his life and his taxes; berating his wife, thoroughly miserable through it all. I have often seen that traveller, bringing their internal unhappiness and spoilt-brattiness to exquisite surroundings. On occasion, though rarely, I have been that traveller.

What does it profit you if your business makes, say, a million pounds and you do not have sunshine in your soul? What does it profit you if you seen every beautiful sight in this green planet and have no love in your heart? What does the beautiful home, and garden, and all the beautiful art you seen, and experiences you have had, matter if you do not savour them, at the time, and in memory? Achieving the success of their wildest dreams will not make a person happy unless they are continually grateful for it. I know enough successful, wealthy people to know that this is true.

* * *

Some people are naturally more cheerful, sanguine, optimistic and grateful than others. It has to do with an internal, largely genetic, set-point for happiness which psychologists say is virtually impossible to shift. Some people are just more optimistic and sanguine than others, and luckily, I am naturally Micawberish. But gratitude is also a practice, which we learn by practising–and there is nothing more happy-making to practice.

The magic practice of gratitude can change our memories and perceptions of the past. Hold the picture frame of your dark and traumatic memories to the light. Look for the gold, and there was gold there, for God was there. Look for the light and transformation which flowed from the trauma, or still can flow from it. Thank God for the flashes of brightness and goodness in those dark picture frames… for even in them, God was present, and his story for your life was being written.

Gratitude is the most important ingredient of happiness. And it’s learnt by practice. During daylight, I practise by looking out and thanking God for the ever-changing panorama of the sky, the clouds floating across it. I thank God for the stars so bright in the countryside where I live. I thank God for the people who love me, for the animals who love me, my Golden Retriever, Pippi, and my labradoodle, Merry; for the continuous beauty of nature, so like a Constable painting so often in the Oxford countryside where I live that it takes my breath away. I thank God for the beautiful countries and art I have seen, and the books and poetry I have read, an internal treasure bank, and the leisure to have enjoyed them. I thank God for my love for Scripture, and for knowing Jesus. I thank God for the continuous presence of the Father, the Son, the Spirit, and ministering angels, so that, at present, I can freely choose “the desert,” for I need to get some work done. See, just typing a paragraph like this changes your mood.

Try to count five or ten blessing when you are sad, or stressed, or out of sorts. See if changes your mood. It’s almost magical–though the real magic of the spiritual life is not in our practices, but in the great magician himself, in Jesus.

And on occasion, you may need another route out of sadness and general malaise. Sometimes you may need a change of scene, the sea. “The cure for anything is salt water — sweat, tears, or the sea.” Isak Dinesen

Sometimes, you may just need a hot bubble bath and a good long nap!

http://https://youtu.be/3Zl9puhwiyw

P.S. My practice of gratitude begins with mindfulness of the sky and the weather after I watched this astonishing video by Benedictine monk, David Steindl-Rast. Do watch it. His narration in his gentle German accent somehow makes it more memorable. Here is the text:

A Good Day, Brother David Steindl-Rast

You think this is just
another day in your life?

It’s not just another day;
it’s the one day that
is given to you…

today

It’s given to you. It’s a gift.

It’s the only gift that you
have right now, and the
one appropriate response
is gratefulness.

If you do nothing else but to
cultivate that response to the great
gift that this unique day is,

if you learn to respond
as if it were the first day
of your life,

and the very last day,

then you will have spent
this day very well.

Begin by opening your
eyes and be surprised that you
have eyes you can open,

that incredible array of colors

that is constantly offered to
us for pure enjoyment.

Look at the sky.

We so rarely look at the sky.
We so rarely note how different
it is from moment to
moment with clouds coming
and going.

We just think of the weather, and
even of the weather we don’t think
of all the many nuances of weather.

We just think of good weather
and bad weather.

This day right now has
unique weather, maybe a
kind that will never exactly
in that form come again.

That formation of clouds in the sky will
never be the same that it is right now.

Open your eyes. Look at that.

Look at the faces
of people whom you meet.

Each one has an incredible
story behind their face, a story
that you could never fully fathom,
not only their own story,
but the story of their ancestors.

We all go back so far.

And in this present
moment on this day, all the
people you meet, all that life
from generations and from so
many places all over the world,
flows together and meets you
here like a life-giving
water, if you only open your
heart and drink.

Open your heart
to the incredible gifts that
civilization gives to us.

You flip a switch
and there is
electric light.

You turn a faucet and
there is warm water and cold water—
and drinkable water.

It’s a gift that millions and millions
in the world will never experience.

So these are just a few of
an enormous number
of gifts to which you can
open your heart.

And so I wish for you that
you would open your heart
to all these blessings and let
them flow through you,
that everyone whom you will meet
on this day will be blessed by you;
just by your eyes,
by your smile, by your touch—
just by your presence.

Let the gratefulness overflow
into blessing all around you,

and then it will really be
a good day.

Hope for Limping Christians. Changing your Character is both an Act of Will and an Act of Grace

By Anita Mathias

Neuroscientist James Fallon was (interestingly!) studying the brains of murderous psychopaths, using brain scans of his family as a control group of the healthy. He suddenly noticed the unmistakable brain scan of a psychopath among his family’s scans. Puzzled, certain it has been misfiled, he has the technician break the code. The brain of the psychopath? It was his own.

I found that I happened to have a series of genetic alleles, “warrior genes,” that had to do with serotonin and were thought to be at risk for aggression, violence, and low emotional and interpersonal empathy, Fallon writes.

Can someone whose brain chemistry predisposes them to aggression and low empathy ever change? Fallon decides to try.

“For myself, I decided to try to treat my wife and other loved ones with more care. Each time I’m about to interact with them, I pause for a moment and asked “what would a good person do here?” My wife started noticing this and after two months said “what has come over you?” When I told her that I was trying against all odds, overcome my psychopathy, she said she appreciated the effort even though I was not sincere…

Even though my wife, my sister, and my mother have always been close to me, I don’t treat them all that well. They said, “I give you everything. I give you all this love and you really don’t give it back.” They all said it, and that sure bothered me. So I wanted to see if I could change. I don’t believe it, but I’m going to try.

In order to do that, every time I started to do something, I had to think about it, look at it, and go: No. Don’t do the selfish thing or the self-serving thing. Step-by-step, that’s what I’ve been doing for about a year and a half and they all like it. Their basic response is: We know you don’t really mean it, but we still like it.

I told them, “You’ve got to be kidding me. You accept this? It’s phony!” And they said, “No, it’s okay. If you treat people better it means you care enough to try.”

What Fallon is doing is behaving like a Christian, playing the game of “Let’s Pretend,” which C. S. Lewis says is essential to developing the character of Jesus.

* * *

I was mentored by a Christian who taught himself to love. He writes about it in Love Walked Among Us.

I enjoy being cheap. The amount of money is not crucial—it just feels good to save. I am the same with efficiency. I’ve caught myself spending ten minutes figuring out how to do something more efficiently when the task only takes five minutes.

Paul watched his daughter Ashley play hard; she asked for a Coke at half-time. His reaction was “to point her to the free iced water for players. Cheap and efficient.

“But then I put myself in Ashley’s shoes,” he continues. “She’s tired. She’s played a hard game, and she wants a soda, not a glass of water. I could do that. I have money in my pocket. I could spend that money.” I even stuck a hand in my pocket and felt my change. “I could walk over to the soda machine several hundred yards away and get a soda for Ashley. Paul, this won’t kill you.” This is truly what went through my mind. I envisoned how Ashley’s face would brighten when I handed her the soda.”

* * *

I find this helpful, this left-brain figuring out how to be kind and thoughtful. If I have said something biting, or am planning to say it, it helps me to ask myself how I would feel if that were said to me. If I am annoyed with someone, I try to imaginatively enter their world, and then, usually, I instantly have more empathy.

The core of following Christ, of being a Christian, is love—love for God, Father, Jesus and Spirit; love for our fellow humans.

And yet, unfairly, love is more difficult for some than for others. I am naturally friendly, warm, empathetic and affectionate, for warm relationships come easily to me. Agape love, on the other hand, does not come easily to me. Does it come easily to anyone? I don’t know.

Someone wrapped in love from childhood, with loving parents, supportive teachers, good friends, and a sunny temperament finds being kind and loving easier. Those who have experienced trauma in their nuclear family, at school, in marriage—for them, behaving like a follower of Christ is more difficult.

* * *

In a brilliant chapter, “Nice People or New Men,” in Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis writes,

“If you have sound nerves and intelligence and health and popularity and a good upbringing, you are likely to be quite satisfied with your character as it is. A certain level of good conduct comes fairly easily to you. You are not one of those wretched creatures who are always being tripped up by sex, or dipsomania, or nervousness, or bad temper. Everyone says you are a nice chap and (between ourselves) you agree with them.

It is very different for the nasty people, the little, low, timid, warped, thin-blooded, lonely people, or the passionate, sensual, unbalanced people. If they make any attempt at goodness at all, they learn, in double quick time, that they need help. It is Christ or nothing for them.

But if you are a poor creature, poisoned by a wretched upbringing in some house full of vulgar jealousies and senseless quarrels, saddled, by no choice of your own, with some loathsome sexual perversion, nagged day in and day out by an inferiority complex that makes you snap at your best friends, do not despair.

He knows all about it. You are one of the poor whom He blessed. He knows what a wretched machine you are trying to drive. Keep on. Do what you can. One day (perhaps in another world, but perhaps far sooner than that) he will fling it on the scrap-heap and give you a new one. And then you may astonish us all, not least yourself: for you have learned your driving in a hard school. (Some of the last will be first and some of the first will be last.)

It is not like teaching a horse to jump better and better but like turning a horse into a winged creature. Of course, once it has got its wings, it will soar over fences which could never have been jumped and thus beat the natural horse at its own game. But there may be a period, while the wings are just beginning to grow, when it cannot do so: and at that stage the lumps on the shoulders, no one could tell by looking at them that they are going to be wings may even give it an awkward appearance.

* * *

Some battles are fought where no banners are flying, They are fought within.

When I was 17, I wanted to join Mother Teresa and become a nun. Not surprisingly, I struggled with the many and varied rules; in its minute control, the convent was a bit like a cult.

And so, each day, I failed, and when I did, I tearfully identified with this Jim Reeves song,

“The chimes of time ring out the news,

Another day is through.

Someone slipped and fell

Was that someone you?

Perhaps you longed for added strength

Your courage to renew

Do not be disheartened

I have news for you.

It is no secret,

What God can do,

What he’s done for others,

He’ll do for you.”

* * *

We do change. After a year of increasing physical exercise, I am so much more energetic that I often barely recognise myself. So too, spiritually and with our characters… After gradual exposure to the sunshine of God’s love, and to the tonic of God’s word, for years, for decades, we do change so that we barely recognise ourselves.

For some relative virtue comes easily. Others fight for gentleness, kindness, and equanimity.

But God sees; he knows.

A caterpillar may look at a hummingbird and envy her flight. Flight may seem impossible to the caterpillar, but one day, one day, after the trauma, darkness, and near-death of the chrysalis, she too shall fly.

Keep looking at Jesus, you who find following him difficult, keep holding his hand as you walk upon the waters; one day, perhaps sooner than you think, he shall take you to the heights.

Books I’ve referred to

The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist’s Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk

Love Walked Among Us on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk

Mere Christianity on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk

You’ll find my account of working with Mother Teresa in Wandering Between Two Worlds, available on Amazon.com

and on Amazon.co.uk

Mud and the Breath of God: That is What We Are

By Anita Mathias

Several years ago, I wanted to go through a study on Agape Love, the blazing core of Christianity–but not a particular strength of mine!! And being an extroverted, sort of A type personality, I got permission from my church to organise a Bible Study on the topic under their auspices.

Now, like most everyone, I suppose, I do not like things I do to flop. And I sometimes go to far-fetched lengths to ensure they do not flop. So in organising the study, as when throwing a party, I heeded the internal tick-tock of fear…what if no one showed up?

So I invited, and I invited, and I emailed, and I telephoned… and too many accepted. There were over thirty people in my Bible study, which should have had twelve. Well, my ego was pleased with thirty, though I realized it would therefore be less participatory, less transparent, less transformative.

I looked at the list, and my eyes lingered, exasperated, on a particular name. It wasn’t someone I disliked–I wouldn’t have invited anyone I disliked–but it was someone I was neutral towards. So why had I invited her to my Bible study which I intended to prepare thoroughly; give 110%; pour myself out, body, mind, soul and spirit; teach everything I knew, and no doubt, use deeply personal stories and illustrations?

Fear, I realised. Fear that the Bible study would flop, and it would be one of those dismal things to which only five people show up, including the leader. Pride, for I would have felt shame if only five people showed up. I would have felt ungifted, unpopular, unimportant, insignificant, “nobody.” (I would perhaps be able to smile wryly, shrug and bear it now that I am safely middle-aged…but not then.)

So I invited and invited not because of the love of God overflowing from my heart, not because of a desire to bless people with the overflow of Biblical treasure which had blessed me, but out of pride, fear, shame.

I studied the list again, and I was sad. I had freaked out. One never thinks well or acts wisely when impelled by fear, the seizing up reptile brain.

I had started well. I wanted to study those concepts, and I thought I would study them more deeply if I were teaching them. But then, vanity crept in.

I looked out of my window at the slim fingernail of moon in a dark-sapphire sky. Mixed, mixed; light and darkness, all our motives. Mud and the breath of God, that is what we are, sometimes muddier, sometimes more spirit-filled.

* * *

Yeah, so I acted out of pride, fear and vanity and general freaking out. Not out of the centre of God’s will. Not abandoned to him. Those branches did not spring from the mighty trunk of God. How could I ask him to bless them?

“Oh Lord, oh Lord,” I cried, “I’ve done this all wrong. Look at my silliness and vanity. Can you redeem this?”

* * *

And then I laughed.

And what made me think that grace, and the love of God, and the goodness of God, were only for the times when I was all perfect? That I needed to be perfect to be a child of God, entitled to the goodness of his household?

And the Bible, that document I loved to teach? From first to last, it is the story of God stepping in when we have messed everything up. We eat the only dangerous fruit; we are murderous towards our brothers; we diverge from the beautiful way things could have been in our marriages, in our parenting, in our friendships, in our physical health, in our homes and gardens…

And so often God steps in and surprises everyone, creates a bittersweet yet beautiful thing out of our messes.

The story of lives is not perfect, as it might have been were we perfect people in a perfect world. But neither is it dark as when a fractious child mixes together all the bright colours in her paint-box, reducing the glory to blackness.

Yes, our lives are not the original design—beauty. But neither are they things of entropy and chaos, as would happen if there were no grace, if we consistently reaped what we sowed.

What happens is redemption. God takes our mistakes, our shattered shards, and creates a thing of beauty, windows of stained glass though which his light shines.

* * *

When you are certain you’ve married the wrong person, all is not lost, for you or them.

The Bible has an Open Sesame phrase which pops up when all is dark and hopeless and everything is chaotic and disintegrating.

But God.

Failure seems certain. The future looks bleak. We are all out of options.

But God…

You twist your spouse’s arm to go on a holiday which is too expensive, when you should have been working hard, making money, not spending it. Why should grace strike you on that holiday? But it does.

But God…

When you fear that all your parenting mistakes might add up, and your child may not fulfil her academic potential,

but God, but God…

and that child is now an undergraduate at Oxford University reading Theology.

You let money slip through your fingers in the seven years of plenty, and did not save enough, and now have to work so hard all over again…

How foolish, so foolish, but the story is not yet over, grace strikes you in this period of hard work; your creativity burgeons, and ironically through this spurt of work, you end up with a wee bit more prosperity than if you had never blown your windfalls and then had to refill your barns.

Ah, unfair, you really did not deserve grace, you prodigal…

But God…

When you think of all the time you’ve lost: to arguments, quarrels and conflict, to depression and sluggishness, to burnouts following overwork, and you fear you will never achieve your dreams, grace steps in.

Your mind is burnt out; our nervous system is shot; your body is not as healthy as it was…

You are in no position to do anything by strength, resolve or hard work…

And here you are, forced to rely on a force beyond yourself…

Just the right candidate for grace, in precisely the right place to receive it..

Amazing grace, rescuing what you set out to do with pride, fear and petrified rabbit brain, stepping in, as Jesus told us the Holy Spirit steps in on request, intervening, turning things around

Amazing grace.

Tweetables

Mud and the breath of God…that is what we are. NEW post from @anitamathias1

“Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness” NEW post from @anitamathias1

The Bible has an Open Sesame phrase which appears when all is dark and hopeless. But God. From @anitamathias1

In Which–Fortunately–Our Progress in the Spiritual Life Is Dependent on Grace and the Spirit, Not Our Hard Work

By Anita Mathias

I often think of this sermon illustration from my time in Williamsburg, VA: You cannot knock on the door of Buckingham Palace, or the White House and enter. You need an invitation, or you will be firmly ushered out (at best!).

God, creator of the cosmos, 70 thousand million million million (70 sextillion) stars in 100 thousand million (100 billion) galaxies is an ontologically different being. As high as the heavens are above the earth is He above us.

If we are to dialogue with him, person to Being, he must take the initiative, enlarge our spiritual senses, and provide revelation. He must lean down to us, condescend to us. Our spiritual adventure with him begins through his grace, and continues through his grace.

* * *

I am tired. It’s a time when spiritual disciplines–my prayer, my Bible Study, my spiritual reading–slip. It helps then to remember that just as I cannot jump to the moon, I cannot hustle my way into intimacy with God. I depend on his mercy to know him.

The spiritual life was never about me scaling the Tower of Babel, reaching up to God by my Bible Study, my prayer, my giving, my fasting, the intensity and teeth-grittedness of my disciplines.

It was always about his father-heart reaching out to me in kindness and in mercy.

I sometimes worry that my spiritual life is growing anaemic—more spiritual blogging than Bible study, more worrying and thinking than prayer.

And then I remember that heck, my spiritual life is not the product of my discipline. Faith is a gift from the God who is looking out for me.

The spiritual life is always about God looking out for the lost sheep, the father on the battlements looking for the prodigal son, Jesus reaching out to me when I look at the wind and waves instead of him–and fear rises, and faith flickers, and I sink beneath the waves.

He reached out to me and gave me the grace to become a Christian. I will trust that outstretched hand for grace to continue, walking on the waters, dancing on the waters, hand in hand with him.

* * *

Besides, besides, in just a moment, one’s entire spiritual life can be transformed.

D. L. Moody writes, “I was crying all the time that God would fill me with His Spirit. Well, one day, in the city of New York — oh, what a day! — I cannot describe it, I seldom refer to it; it is almost too sacred an experience to name. Paul had an experience of which he never spoke for fourteen years. I can only say that God revealed Himself to me, and I had such an experience of His love that I had to ask Him to stay His hand. I went to preaching again. The sermons were not different; I did not present any new truths; and yet hundreds were converted. I would not now be placed back where I was before that blessed experience if you should give me all the world.”

Moody’s ministry was transformed in a minute though the filling of the Holy Spirit, though God graciousness.

The spiritual life is not a matter of our striving. It is a matter of waiting with outstretched hands for the power from on high.

In which God Creates Beauty from My Mistakes

By Anita Mathias

In this season of hibernation, I think… and my remembrance of things past is not unaccompanied by regret.

Mists of sadness rise. I will not enter them for they might drag me into a quagmire.

No, I will not re-read past chapters. Today’s chapter is being written—Jesus dictating, me writing. Or sometimes, me writing fast, impulsively, selfishly, and Jesus overwriting it with gold-dust, producing beauty from ashes.

* * *

But what can be done with regrets for time past?

I reach for another alliterative word…redemption.

I take my regrets, shattered shards of what could have been beautiful, were I wiser, smarter, holier,

And I pour the iridescent fragments of these regrets into the great outstretched hands of God.

* * *

I think of David. He sees a beautiful married woman bathe on a rooftop, sleeps with her, has her husband killed when she falls pregnant, and then marries her.

The prophet Nathan confronts him with a story which helps him see the shamefulness of it all.

David repents, but sin has consequences, that’s the deep magic from the dawn of time. The unnamed baby dies.

But there is also redemption…the deeper magic from before the dawn of time

Bathsheba conceives again…and that child is Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, the reputed author of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.

From that union stained by lust and murder came forth exquisite Psalms and wise Proverbs.

* * *

We undervalue what is precious; we overvalue what is trivial; we waste our time; we squander our energies; we damage treasured relationships; oh yes, and for all these things, we pay the price, yes we do– the inexorably fair law of sowing and reaping.

Fair and merciless.

But a deep hidden mercy runs through this world, like subterranean gold, like purple amethyst, yellow citrine, and smoky quartz hidden in the dead, fossilised trees in Arizona’s petrified forest, trees which fell two hundred million years ago.

Gradually, each cells of bark and wood is replaced with minerals of every colour, as God shapes my shabby paragraphs into the frame, the outline of a glory story.

* * *

God takes the fragments of my faltering hopes, my missed chances, my foolishness,

And says, “Child, from this, even from this, from this glimmering pile of your mistakes, see what I am fashioning.”

And like a medieval craftsman making stained glass, he fashions glory, stained glass, from glinting heaps of errors.

And I see what he is creating from sins and folly, the stuff I never intended.

It is the life I now have, bursting with potential for joy and beauty and worship. It is good. It is very good.

And through tear-stained eyes, I bow my head in worship.

I don’t have time to maintain these regrets

By Anita Mathias

Gaudi mosaic

My daughter Zoe introduced me to this song by John Mark Macmillan: I don’t have time to maintain these regrets

I am a memoirist (and also a restless, tiptoes person full of hope for the future).

However examination of the past is rarely without regret.

If only. I wish I had

But that’s it!! No more looking back in sorrow.

Love’s like a hurricane, and I am a tree

Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy.

I don’t have time to maintain all these regrets

When I think about how he loves us.

* * *

Besides, the past is never past (as Faulkner famously said). It is the introduction of an ongoing story. Its reverberations continue through space–time; beauty can still emerge from disasters.

Glorious mosaics are fashioned from shards of shattered glass.

2000 year old seeds have been germinated.

Entire towns in Yorkshire or Wales are built of stone plundered from destroyed monasteries, like Rievaulx or Tintern Abbey.

God can build castles out of the glorious ruins of the past.

He can use the ancient smashed goblets to make stained glass or kintsugi.

I truly believe it. We can write off no experience as wasted because we do not yet know what God will make of it.

So Martha faced with the stench of her brother Lazarus, dead four days, tells Jesus, “Even now, God will give you whatever you ask.”

Even now, God can somehow combine all the things I am tempted to regret: anger, self-pity, unforgiveness, fear, sloth—into art which lives.

Even now, God can combine hazy memories, half-read books, broken friendships and wasted days into art that is different, new and shimmering, an iridescent morpho butterfly shimmying from a drab chrysalis.

* * *

And so I will not give way to regret. Because I have a very clever Redeemer.

All the sadness, the mistakes, the sins, the waste of the past have made me who I am: a woman who is, today, the Beloved of God. (As I always was, always was, even when I didn’t feel it in my bones, as I do now.)

The novelist and essayist Cynthia Ozick says she read 18 hours a day when she was training to be a writer. Joyce Carol Oates has published over 50 novels, 30 volumes of short stories, and 52 volumes of children’s stories, poetry, young adult fiction, essays, memoir and drama. She writes from 8 to 1 in the morning, from 4 to 7 in the evening, and then reads or writes at night. (John Updike had a similar schedule).

I read this, and inwardly writhe. As a writer, I wish I had read more, and wish I had written more.

When I was younger, I wanted to write like Salman Rushdie, or Vladimir Nabokov or Laurie Lee or William Faulkner or Toni Morrison. I haven’t read as much as they, or practiced as much as they have.

And so my thoughts and sentences may never have the depth and richness of one who has single-mindedly trained her mind and pen.

But, no longer trying to imitate the singing-masters of my soul, I now write simply and transparently, pages which can be grasped at the first reading. I write differently, and for a different audience.

But it is the audience God had prepared for me to speak to before the beginning of time, before the Big Bang, before Planet Earth spun into being, before the dinosaurs prowled the earth, before the saber-toothed tigers.

* * *

The race is not to the swiftest, nor favour indeed to the wise, nor riches to men of understanding, but time and change happen to them all. (Ecc. 9:11).

And that is most true when it comes to creativity!

I love Solomon’s observation, and often pray for luck—being neither as swift, nor as wise, nor as understanding as I could be.

But creativity is like the wind which blows, and we cannot see where it comes from or where it goes. The best read do not produce the best writing, which speaks to the most people. Those most diligent in practicing their craft do not necessarily produce art which changes lives, which makes the world happier.

Creativity is the art of combining—things you’ve read, and things you’ve done, and things you’ve thought and felt and heard, and all those 10,000 hours of practice to make something entirely new. And the value is in the combination, not in the raw materials.

Look at Gaudi’s mosaics….

Art is the spark from stoniest flint that sings in the dark and cold, I’m light.

So what I am going to do as a writer is to put it all into His hands–everything I’ve read and heard and thought and felt and experienced–and ask him to make of it an entirely new thing:

Such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

Of hammered gold and gold enameling

To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;

Or set upon a golden bough to sing

To lords and ladies of Byzantium

Of what is past, or passing

When We are Caterpillars in a Ring of Fire, and Need Rescue from Above

By Anita Mathias

Image Credit

I read a striking essay this week.

Two women counsellors listened to my story. I was prayed for very gently. I was encouraged to forgive all the people I felt had done me real or imaginary hurts throughout my life. It took a long time. Eventually, I came to the last thing, and I couldn’t make a sound. I struggled for words, but they would not come out. The only way I can describe it is to say it was like labour contractions in the chest, not the stomach. I struggled to control my breathing, and eventually gasped out, “I forgive.”

The most amazing inner change occurred instantly. I have never experienced anything like it before or since. I was aware that a huge burden had been lifted. I realized that forgiveness has its own dynamic…

Wow! I emailed the author, asking for suggestions of books on inner healing through forgiveness.

But even before the reply arrived, I said to my soul, “Be still. Oh come on, Anita. It’s the end of a long academic year. Where are you going to summon up the energy for inner healing, counsellors, reading one more heavy book?”

* * *

I was wondering aloud to my husband Roy about why I have a whole lot less energy this month than when I started blogging four years ago.

And then I looked back at the last 12 months. A retreat alone at the Harnhill Centre in Gloucestershire this week last June; a family camper van trip to France, Switzerland and Italy in August, walking in Tuscany with Roy on a pilgrimage with Kim and Penelope Swithinbank in September; a week in a cottage in Cornwall with Roy and Irene in October; a week in Sicily over December with Roy and Irene; a week in the Loire Valley, France, with the family in February, (and returning to find we’d been burgled), a week in Cambodia with Tearfund in March, a week in Spain on retreat in May (just me).

Whoa! T.S. Eliot has this phrase, “Distracted from distraction by distraction.” I have a horror of living like that. Whereas normally travel increases my mental and emotional energy and my productivity, this year—not so. It has decreased it! Over the last ten years, we’ve evolved a rhythm of working hard for six weeks during the girls’ school term, then travelling over the term breaks and coming back full of bounce. This year, however, had Tuscany, Cambodia, Spain and Cirencester breaks during term which were one-offs (I think!) and too much.

I am going to Helsinki next month, and am not up to any extraordinary spiritual or actual effort until then.

* * *

Martin Luther and his great friend and fellow renaissance reformer Philip Melanchthon had a debate on the nature of grace. Melanchthon says grace is like one parent helping a wobbly toddler across the room to the other parent.

Luther says ‘No! We are caterpillars in a ring of fire. Our only hope is that someone from above will rescue us.’

When I am tired, that’s the kind of grace I need. No more DIY spirituality. Just help me, Lord!

* * *

Who, oh Lord could save themselves, their own soul could heal?

I love these words of Matt Redman’s. I hear them sung, and think, “Of course, of course.” To me, they are full of hope.

In my intense thirties, I used to pray: “Lord, I want to be twice as close to you by the end of the year as I am now.” And my game plan? Well, Bible study (45 minutes a day), prayer (45 minutes a day), giving (10% of our income), small groups, church attendance… I even tried to double up, oh yes, I did! Play the Gospels and epistles on CD while doing housework. I jest not!

(And I probably did grow closer to God because of all my striving, but not dramatically so. And, sadly, that’s because I was following the evangelical method of spiritual growth: prayer and Bible study, ever so diligently, but not the ancient, excruciating method outlined by Jesus: Love. “My command is this: Love one another.” Had I done this I would have been pushed into Jesus far sooner.)

The disciplines advocated by Richard Foster in his splendid “Celebration of Discipline”—prayer, study, worship, service, have some value. They make us more disciplined people!

But they cannot change our hearts.

If prayer, spiritual reading, Bible study, church attendance and giving could save us, we would not need God.

We’d be able to save ourselves.

But when Christians self-destruct—destroying their marriages, their ministries and themselves—it’s because of their hearts. Outwardly, we may be blameless—we read our Bibles, and lead and preach and give. Inwardly, there’s ice in our hearts and vitriol in our veins.

* * *

We cannot change our own hearts.

We cannot make ourselves love our enemies. Heck, we cannot even make ourselves love our family and our friends.

Ha, if forgiveness was a mere act of will, who would heft around the gorilla of grudges and grievances on their backs? We need God’s help to forgive.

We cannot unaided shed the envy that sends its distracting spider tentacles through our hearts; who’d choose that cancer?

We cannot get rid of the spiders of fear than lurk hidden in the recesses of our minds, that crippling rejection-sensitivity. Who wouldn’t want sunlight and bravery?

If self-help could save us, Christians would be the happiest and healthiest people in the world.

* * *

We are caterpillars in a ring of fire, but we often forget this because we are rather clever caterpillars, all bristle and camouflage and colour and potential.

And if the definition of insanity is to do the same thing we did before and hope for a different result, we are insane caterpillars, trying to change ourselves by the strategies which failed every time.

* * *

But remembering that someone can lift us caterpillars out of the ring of fire is the true magic of the spiritual life.

And the theological word for this magic is: Grace.

* * *

Self-effort cannot save me. If it could, I would have attained perfection decades ago.

But what if God watches all our busy-bee effort to save ourselves with a sad smile, knowing he can put on all the lights in our soul, can change its deep structure, accomplishing in a moment what we have toiled at and failed at through all our decades of spiritual effort.

* * *

In future, I am not going to try to save myself before I have asked for just one touch from the King. He may touch me and change me in an instant, or he may decide it’s best I grow strength through many sets and repetitions.

There is a short-cut between heaven and earth, fingers which can lift the caterpillar out of the ring of fire—or, better still, metamorphose her into a butterfly.

Lord, remind that my first course of action should be to ask you to lift me out the ring of fire in every challenge I face.

Come, Holy Spirit.