In which I celebrate discipline | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

On Yoga and Following Jesus

I returned home from boarding school in Nainital in the Himalayas, aged ten, to find everything in my father’s life had changed. He, aged 56, had taken up yoga. And so our mornings became dramatic with simhasana, the lion’s roar, which punctuated the hour long yoga session, which was precious to him, and soon became indispensable to his peace, mental wellness, ability to cope with stress, and, of course, to his physical strength and flexibility.

His hour of yoga, to which he added an hour-long walk, brought mental calm and physical strength, and changed the texture and course of his life. He worked a demanding job as Controller of Accounts at Tata Steel and after his retirement worked as Financial Controller at Xavier Labour Relations Institute, XLRI, Jamshedpur, the local Business School, retiring for the second time at 68. He continued daily yoga and walking for the last 33 years of his life, until he died close to his ninetieth birthday. (It was only in the last few weeks of his life, when he was crushed and burdened by clearing out and selling his in-laws house which my parents had inherited—along with a lawsuit from disgruntled family members who wanted it–that he abandoned these disciplines, a parable for me on not bequeathing clutter, and never abandoning exercise).

For most of my life, I did not exercise. As a Christian, I observed that the Bible was silent about it, referring to running and walking as metaphors, not injunctions. Shouldn’t the fitness developed by the tasks of our life, and maintaining our homes and gardens give us the strength we need for our lives? Do we need the extra fitness developed by running, lifting weights, or yoga? Each time I see super-fit people grunt as they lift super-heavy weights in the gym, I still wonder if we really need that high degree of fitness.

However, I am not physically strong, and becoming stronger would give me the physical strength and mental energy necessary for the many sedentary hours that I would love to spend reading and writing. Also, the 10,000 to 13500 steps I aim to walk every day is transforming my life as it gives me the opportunity to explore so much more of this green earth.

In The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Help Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage psychologist Kelly McGonigal says “being active increases all the other joys in your life: it improves your relationships, it helps you focus, it improves your mental health, it can help people recover from depression and grief. People who exercise on any given day have better social interactions with other people, and being physically active reliably increases your optimism, your hope, and your sense of energy,” (in Gretchen Rubin’s summary.)

Though I have lost 81 pounds over the last few years by pretty much cutting out sugar, chocolate, wheat, rice, potatoes and other starchy carbs, and more recently fruit, beans, lentils, milk, and starchy vegetables ( I know, I know, but it’s a short-term thing), I have more pounds, more stone, to lose. And so, I exercise some.

And yoga has been as much of a blessing for me as it was for my father. Not being naturally coordinated or athletic, I am not a gifted yogi; however, yoga classes provide me a quiet space for an hour to move my body, stretch, think and even pray. And the thinking is better for the movement.

I started yoga with a Can’t-Do list. Holding Down Dog was tiring, and adding a Three-Legged Dog seemed a step too far, and then adding “Knee to Nose,”— outrageous! Holding planks was excruciating, side planks were nigh impossible. And Wild Thing… are you kidding? Tree, Eagle, Floating Half Moon, forget it.

However, I have been doing Yoga for over three years now, two or three times a week if possible, in classes at the gym. I often shyly go up to the front (though, sadly, the yoga class convention is that the inexpert hide at the back and imitate, while the skilled go in front). But up front, close to the teacher, I can watch carefully and imitate. I realise how I have unconsciously been taking short-cuts and not been pushing my body to the full reach and strength of the pose. And I realise that if I take my time, and am perhaps a few seconds behind everyone else, I can, I really can, get my body briefly into the poses I thought I was too weak or balance-challenged for. Hello Side Plank, Tree, Wild Thing, Floating Half-moon, Malasana: Yogic squat, and “Warrior Three.”

And, since when it all fades away, what I am through and through, the most essential thing about me, is that I am a Christian, a stumbling Christian, as faltering and bumbling a Christian as I am a yogi—as I do yoga (you probably saw this coming!) I sometimes reflect on following Christ.

When, aged 17, I started my zigzagging adventure of trying to follow Christ, there were things I thought I could never do. Forgive the sociopaths in my life—are you kidding? Keep my temper when those around me were losing theirs? Nah. Consistently practice the empathy required to treat others as I would like them to treat me? Think before speaking or writing when I am angry? Keep my eyes on Jesus and check in with him in everything I do? Live in love? Be gentle. How?

I am not a good Yogi, and I am a limping Christian. However, as I follow the teacher as precisely as I can, I find my body becoming stronger and more flexible, and my mind more calm and more peaceful. And as I read or listen to a chapter of the Gospels every day, as I try in small things to do what Jesus says, as I increasingly decline to do what he specifically tells us not to do (“do not judge,” “do not worry,”) I find my life more blessed, more guided, more open to his inspirations, more happy, and more peaceful. The progress in both these areas is, of course, probably only visible to me, and to God, and that must suffice.

* * *

The best book I know on using exercise to improve our ability to think, read, write and create fast is

Spark: How Exercise will Improve the Performance of Your Brain, by Harvard psychiatrist, John Ratey on Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk

And if you have extra reading time, perhaps read my art-inspired illustrated story Francesco: Artist of Florence on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk. I am very fond of it.

I am doing Yoga with Adriene during lockdown, but normally do yoga in real life with Lisa Cuerden.

Image source: Pixaby Creative Commons, CCO Public Domain

Every Prison has a Door… (and We Usually Have the Key!)

By Anita Mathias

From Practice to Mastery Image Credit: https://guitarsquid.com

So, not being a super-disciplined person, I’ve struggled all my adult life with a few things, surprisingly common struggles for those for whom discipline is problematic.

I carry more weight than I should. Okay, I have lost 47 pounds over the last few years as I have changed my diet but I have more to lose. I have romantic ideas of waking with the dawn, but more commonly wake at 7 a.m. I have yet to run a supremely tidy and organised house; probably, half my stuff could be safely given away. And I have rarely been a productive writer. Keats feared that he might die before his pen had gleaned his teeming brain. Me too, me too!

It recently struck me that each of these struggles which I’ve had for most of my married life of 30 years, is to achieve something finite. I don’t have an infinite amount of weight to lose. I could lose it in a year or less! I don’t have an infinite amount of things to declutter; I could do it in six months as Marie Kondo says, or in nine months as Joshua Becker of The Minimalist Home says. If I turn in 5 minutes earlier each day… it’s not an infinite number of days before I will be waking up at 5 a.m. And if the tidying/organising, and exercise, and early rising creates time… who knows, I might even finish the books of my heart.

* * *

In what’s perhaps a metaphor, the enslaved Israelites who escaped slavery and Pharaoh wandered in the desert for 40 years. To walk across the Sinai desert should take 10-11 days, guides say. Similarly, many of the things people struggle with for decades could be dealt with in months or a year: weight, messiness, excessive night-owlness, for instance. Two professional women recently told me that they were chronically late. I struggle with that too… but less and less so. But chronic lateness can be cured–by strategies like adding 50% to the estimated driving time (a tip from Greg McKeown’s excellent book Essentialism), and 50% to your estimated dressing-up time, and aiming to be seated, ready and reading 15 minutes before you leave the house!

These things we struggle with are what Jesus calls the light burden and the easy yoke, difficulties, but with God’s help, not impossibilites. It is possible to be tidy, of course–easy for those who have always been tidy, and hard for those who have never been tidy, but possible for everyone. Shedding unhealthy weight is easier for those who have good eating habits and the physical strength to exercise hard; harder for those of sluggish metabolism, or who are not strong enough to exercise vigorously. But it should be possible for everyone. (I’ve lost 25 pounds over the last 13 months, though a combination of the ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting. I just stopped eating dinner over six weeks ago, and skipping it was surprisingly easy!). Waking early is perhaps possible for everyone, though I have not yet been able to sustain it long-term. And finishing books is possible to everyone God calls to write.

At our last few holidays, Cordoba, Berlin and Krakow (all this year, 2019, yes, we are travelling too much) especially in Krakow, Poland, when we were not eating dinner, we were astonished by how free time opened up in the evenings when Roy and I lived with just a suitcase each, in a hotel suite, and how many loose ends of our family business, our lives and work, we were able to tie up after a full day of sight-seeing. We became wistfully determined to simplify our lives at home for the same sense of spaciousness and peace and extra time.

So, at the moment, I am (perhaps foolishly!) barely writing, but focusing on getting my home tidy and decluttered (especially because I want to move in a year or two). I am focusing on diet (keto!) and fitness, believing Rick Warren statement: if you want to change anything the first thing to do is to change your body to provide the energy for other changes. The decluttering, the spiritual peace and serenity from the order, the brisk walks and yoga to get healthy, the weight loss, the waking earlier, will release more writing time within a few days or a week. I hope so. I pray so. I believe so.

But for now, baby steps.

If you can’t fly, then run; if you can’t walk run, then walk; if you can’t walk, then crawl, but by all means keep moving. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Discipline, short-term suffering is painful for the moment, but it eventually yields what Scripture winsomely calls “a harvest of righteousness and peace.”

It’s what my friend Paul Miller, who discipled me for 5 years in the late nineties, called a J-Curve. The seed has to fall into the ground and die for fruitfulness, as Jesus died to provide the Spirit, and as an atoning sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. The death of Jesus involved less than 24 hours of intense physical and emotional suffering, 3 hours of which consisted of immense, unimaginable physical suffering. However, the fruits of the resurrection of Jesus reverberate on and on in the life of the world, in my life, and perhaps in yours, dear reader.

Jesus strikingly says that we are not worthy of him if we do not take up our cross, and embrace the suffering that a fruitful creative life calls for. In all these things I’ve mentioned, there is a cross, a small death, and much joy at the end of it. The cross I am bearing for the next six months is decluttering my house. It will lead to a resurrection of energy, and focus and time. The cross I am bearing for the next six months to a year is getting stronger and shedding the weight that hinders, which will give me the joy and resurrection of more energy and time. The cross of turning in early rather than surfing the net or desultory reading will add to the joy and productivity of early mornings. The resurrection that these things may bring will reverberate and echo, sweet and magnified, through the rest of my life, and perhaps, if God blesses my writing, though the lives of others too. May it be so Lord, Amen.

Some resources which I found very helpful, and you might too.

Gary Taubes: Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk

Gretchen Rubin describes reading this book as a lightning bolt moment that changed her eating habits, immediately, effortlessly and permanently. It has been a little bit like that for me.

To quote from Taubes: Carbohydrates are uniquely fattening because they elevate levels of insulin, and insulin signals to our fat cells to store fat, and to our lean cells not to burn it, which inhibits the use of fat for fuel. For a diet to successfully reduce obesity, it has to reduce insulin levels, and restrict carbs.

The Complete Guide to Fasting by Jason Fung on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk.

I found intermittent fasting far easier than I imagined, and I love the mental clarity, the physical energy—and, of course, the weight loss.

The Keto Diet: The Complete Guide by Leanne Vogel on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. More a dietary change than “a diet,” though I’ve never found losing weight as easy as on this.

Marie Kondo: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk

I have some ambivalence towards her ideas, but I can testify to the huge amount of energy in many areas of my life as I began to donate my surplus stuff

Joshua Becker: The Minimalist Home on Amazon.com

I find his blog Becoming Minimalist motivating, and here it is in a convenient form

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk

Strongly recommend. Don’t we all need essentialism?

And if you’d like a Christian perspective on these things, a book by my friend and mentor Paul Miller.

J-Curve: Dying and Rising with Jesus in Everyday Life by Paul Miller. On Amazon.com

and on Amazon.co.uk

Leaving “A Little Juice”—One Secret of Persisting in Running, Writing, and Living Well

By Anita Mathias

Eric Liddell: When I run, I feel his pleasure.

Haruki Murakami has a strange and wonderful book called “What I Talk about When I Talk about Running.” What he talks about when he talks about running is running, yes, but also writing hard, and living hard, and the art of success, and the freedom of discipline.

In a wonderful Japanese reflection on theodicy he says,

“When I think about it, having the kind of body that easily puts on weight is perhaps a blessing in disguise. In other words, if I don’t want to gain weight, I have to work out hard every day, watch what I eat, and cut down on indulgences. Eventually, your metabolism will greatly improve, and you’ll end up much healthier, not mention stronger. You can even slow down the effects of aging.

People who naturally keep the weight off don’t need to exercise or watch their diet. Which is why, in many cases, their physical strength deteriorates as they age. If you don’t exercise, your muscles will weaken, as will your bones. Those of us who have a tendency to gain weight should consider ourselves lucky that the red light is so clearly visible. So this physical nuisance should be viewed as a blessing. Of course, it’s not always easy to see things this way.”

“Now, after years of running, my musculature has changed completely,” Murakami reports. He develops the body of a runner, which is apparently so distinctive that New Yorker writer Mark Singer tracked down a genius marathon cheat, Dr. Kip Litton, because he did not have “the classic lean and loose-limbed runner’s physique.”

(And yes, musculature does change, infinitesimally. I started my most recent running programme in January, and bought a body composition Tanita scale which reports that I am slowly gaining muscle, while losing another three pounds, bringing my cumulative weight loss to 25 pounds! I have much more to lose, yes, but yay for more muscle and a better metabolism which, like compound interest, gives back while you sleep.)

* * *

I have had many stabs at running, and have always loved it…but, ironically, my temperament has tripped me up. The standard training programmes recommend training every other day, but I enjoy it so much that I try to run every day, and then injure my feet, ankles or knees! Or develop colds and coughs. And then stop!

This time, in addition to using a high-quality rebounder, and doing some yoga, so as to get stronger and prevent injury, I am using a Couch to 5K programme with bouncy Christian music, and, far from charging ahead, am actually repeating workouts because I like the songs.

Also–which, oddly, I did not do before–I am recording my distance and speed daily, and trying to beat them, thus harnessing my natural competitiveness–against myself. This ensures I run fast enough to get a runner’s high, and have my brain flooded with the exhilaration of endorphins, serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine.

The other thing I am doing is not going too far, just under 3 miles. I think this will help me persevere in the long run. I had built up to 4.25 miles 3 years ago, but it was agony—feet, shins, thighs, every muscle in pain. This time, I am building up slowly, so I stick at it for life. I return from my run, and know I could just about do another half mile, but do not. I am leaving some juice in my body for tomorrow.

* * *

Hemingway recommended a similar pacing in one’s writing life. “The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice. If you do that every day … you will never be stuck.”

Stopping when you still have juice, before exhaustion or boredom set in, not wringing out the last drop of blood from yourself or others, I am discovering that this is the key to persistence in all long-term disciplines, whether a lifetime of reading, or writing, or prayer, or Bible study, or running!

* * *

I was inspired by reading of Rev. E. H. W. Nash, called Bash, who led an extraordinarily fruitful life after symbolically handing over to Jesus the keys to every room in the house of his life.

So, over several days, I have been handing over the keys, seeking Jesus’s wisdom on my use of time, on my schedule.

I am a night person: I get going slowly, and do most of my reading and writing in the evenings. But is this genetics and internal unchangeable circadian rhythms–or well over thirty years of bad habits?

After much prayer, and some discussion with my spiritual direction about my schedule, I recently felt led by Jesus to stop writing at 9.30 p.m., a time of the evening when, being a night person, there is still a lot of juice left in me. But if I squeeze it all out, I will be up at 1:30 a.m., and wake late and tired, once again missing the beautiful sunrise God has made!! So I have started stopping writing and blogging at 9.30 p.m., which has become the magic hour when I make the Cinderella-switch from Human Doing to Human Being.

That suddenly opens time for other joyous trivial things that I might not have had time for… reading books, most of all; reading my favourite bloggers; sharing my favourite pictures on Instagram; scanning a few tweets. Tidying up a little. Doing some yoga. Maybe eventually weights. Tasting the joy of life. And I sleep better for the period of decompression.

Scripture describes human life as a race we should run to win, and perhaps a trick of living well is to leave a little juice–for the end of the day, for the end of our decades, and so to finish our days and our lives well.

To still be dancing, aged 106, when the evening comes.

Mentions

Haruki Murakami: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk.

Ernest Hemingway on Writing on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk.

Bash: A Study in Spiritual Power on Amazon.co.uk

On “Defining Decisions” Rather Than New Year’s Resolutions

By Anita Mathias

Image Credit

Mark Batterson, in The Circle-Maker, a fascinating book on a prayer, praises “defining decisions,” that set the course of your life, sort of like choosing whether you drive to Slovenia (which our family did last summer), or to Scotland (which we might do this summer).

I made three defining decisions in my twenties. Chronologically: I decided to become a writer. I decided to follow Jesus. And I decided to take a marriage vow to love.

Yeah, well…

I have failed in all of these, continually. There have been days, weeks, months, and years, in which I have not written at all. I sometimes think of my beloved Jesus sadly: how imperfectly I imitate him. And marriage, well.

Yet, oddly, I’ve not failed in any of these, because I am still on the road. I am writing, albeit less than I would like to. I am still following after Jesus, albeit imperfectly. I am still married, more or less happily.

* * *

Oh, it is this season again, this season of resolutions. And I will probably make some.

But what I am more interested in are defining decisions, North Stars, compass points, things I will continue to do even if I sometimes go off course. Things that I will continue doing, even if I fall. Not resolutions I make year after year like Yom Kippur sacrifices, but a once-and-for-all decision I will follow, though I may wobble, and fail some days, some weeks…

Here are a few of my defining decisions, which I return to again and again. These are to do with health

1 I will walk 10,000 steps a day.

2 I will avoid sugar

3 I will avoid white flour (using bread, pasta and noodles as a treat, rather than as food).

4 I will begin reading myself to sleep at 10 p.m.

5 I will do some yoga every day (a habit I am struggling to adopt).

These are habits which are not yet second nature. There are other habits which are second nature, though again I fail some days, some weeks, some months….

I will spend time with God

I will read or listen to my Bible.

I will read.

I will write at least a little.

I will keep the rooms in which I work and sleep tidy.

I will garden.

* * *

How about you? Instead of a resolution, different every year, why not try a defining decision which you will return to, despite falls and wobbles, as we continue trying to follow Jesus, though like Peter, we might forget him, deny him, and yearn to go on a break.

In praise of tiny goals

By Anita Mathias

I know many people who want to write books they haven’t completed—and I, alas, am one of them.

The standard advice for writing a book? Ray Bradbury, Stephen King or Donald Miller recommend 1000 words a day. If people did that, they’d publish 4-6 books in a year, Miller says.

More commonly, writing gurus recommend 500 words a day, which gives you 182,500 words a year—i.e. 2-3 books of average length. However, how many writers do you know who publish 2 to 3 books in a year?

500 words a day is more challenging than it seems, apparently.

Because….Life!!

* * *

But how about slice that finer? 250 words a day? Which makes for 91,000 words a year. One long book.

1000 words is too challenging for me. I have streaks of the perfectionist. I get distracted. I get tired. I have a life, a very full one. And I need to work on my health, which is partly built by exercise. And I want to make time for my spiritual life, my family life, my social life, my house and garden. A consistent 500 words every day I find challenging for the same reasons. If I do it consistently, other things slip.

But 250 words? 250 words. Beautiful. Piece of cake. Blink of an eyelash. Not quite, but I can often write it, and revise the previous day or two’s words in half an hour. Perhaps it’s psychological–1000 words or 500 seems like a lot; 250 words feels like nothing. If you’ve read this far, you’ve read 267 words.

But 250 words a day adds up to a long book a year.

And isn’t it better to have a low goal, and reach it than a lofty one which sneers at you when, more days than not, you fall short?

So last week, I wrote 250 words a day six days a week on my memoir, did not miss a single day, and took new ground every day. So easy, so joyous, and how quickly it gets done.

* * *

Mid-life is a time for radical changes. And change, revision of life, excites me. But what I am trying is what the Japanese call kaizen—making big changes in the smallest measurable increments, a technique used brilliantly to change the corporate culture and increase productivity in Japanese companies. I am making changes in the smallest possible increments—using a app, Runkeeper, that gives me feedback as I walk so that most days I increase my speed and distance by a few seconds a mile, and a tiny increment of a mile; slowly improving the efficiency of my housekeeping practices; slowly but radically changing my diet; and writing more by aiming at less.

Everest is climbed step by step, and slow progress means you are more likely to get there smiling.

“A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules, ” Trollope wrote, who wrote daily and steadily for 35 years, producing 49 novels.

So off I go then to write 250 words.

Goodbye to Everest

By Anita Mathias

When I was six years old, I wanted to be the first woman to climb Everest.

Well, I won’t be. That was Junko Tabei, a Japanese woman–a record which will forever be hers.

And neither will be I be the oldest person to climb Everest. That’s Yuichiro Muira, who climbed Everest aged 80. Nope, not going to train for decades to beat him (though it would guarantee keeping superbly fit!)

Ah, Everest. Shimmering Everest. A savage place, holy and enchanted. You have long inhabited the landscape of my imagination, and that is where you will stay. South Col, the Death Zone, the Khumbu Icefall, a river of ice with frozen cascades and romantic crevasses deep as a fifteen story building which abruptly open or close. Sheer faces of ice to be scaled with axes and ropes. Blizzards and avalanches; seracs: massive tottering blocks of ice; 360 degree views that stagger the mind–it’s all part of the architecture of my soul.

I will never climb Everest. The practicality of middle age forces me to admit this.

Because. I do not really like walking uphill. I am afraid of slipping. And I am afraid of heights! I am nervous on narrow mountain paths with precipitous drops. I do not enjoy extreme cold. And I really like warm clean private toilets and hot baths, and these will be in short supply on Everest.

As though as Jon Krakauer writes, commercial expeditions (in which barely fit socialites like Sandy Pittman are hauled to the summit by hardy sherpas) have made it possible for the just-about-fit to summit, I feel no call to devote two or three years to get fit enough to plausibly think of summiting Everest without dying in the attempt.

Everest in a vision once I saw.

The beautiful dream of climbing Everest, that symphony, that song, was just that, alas: a young girl’s dream.

Some dreams are meant to be dreams, dazzling dreams of the night, but not of the day. You imagine peaks bathed rose and orange by the rising run, and rivers and mountains of ice, and they are glorious. You look at photographs, read accounts of exploration and watch documentaries, and your soul thrills.

Everest has added beauty to your life. You do not need not haul oxygen bottles up to the summit, and stagger up the last few steps in the death zone, behind the long files of those who summit for bragging rights, or take your mandatory selfie where the earth stops and the flags of the nations flutter. You have travelled there in imagination. You have Everest within. There you on honey dew have fed and drunk the wine of paradise

* * *

I have another dream: Antarctica. No–not walking to the South Pole like Scott or Amundsen, just seeing it on a cruise ship. A friend got to do it for free, and write about it for the American Express magazine. I looked up prices.

But school fees, school fees. Antarctica or school fees? I am a good Indian mama, after all. Antarctica must wait.

Wait forever? Perhaps not. But should it wait for the rest of this life, my soul has been enriched by male Emperor penguins waiting out the long sunless winter, guarding their eggs; the great glaciers calving off into massive icebergs; crevasses into which you simply disappear; gleaming snowy expanses in which one could wander directionlessly forever.

I met Geraldine MacCaughrean at a Writers in Oxford /Society of Authors party a few years ago. Our family had listened to her White Darkness in the car, a description of Antarctica so vivid that it makes you shiver, and reach for a sweater. “Have you been to Antarctica?” I asked. “Oh no,” she said, frowning, shaking her head, and laughing.

She was a writer. Imagination and research can make Antarctica as vivid to ourselves and to our readers as if we had actually travelled there.

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp. Or what’s a heaven for? Robert Browning wrote.

Our imagination and longing exceeds what we can do in this life, with its adamantine parameters of strength, time and money. God imposes some limitations on us; others are the fruit of our own imperfect choices.

And though we never grow too old to dream another dream and set another goal–some dreams, most dreams perhaps, will remain dreams. And that’s what a heaven’s for.

In eternity, which will far exceed this life, as this life exceeds the wildest imaginings of a foetus crouched in the dark and wet of the womb, I will fly and soar over Everest and over Antarctica. I will gaze at the views, and shiver with pleasure. And I shall be very warm while doing so.

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Some dreams must be abandoned, like some writing projects. Nonetheless, they have enriched your life. From @anitamathias1

One Work Goal for 2105: Focus

By Anita Mathias

I enjoy the One Word project. Instead of a resolution, one asks God for a prophetic word as a guide for the year.

My word for 2014 was alignment. I have chosen Joy as the word to return to this year. When I find myself stressed, distressed, angry, worried or simply sad, I am learning to stop what I am doing, and pray until peace and clarity returns, accepting the things I cannot change, changing the things I can…

One word, alas, can be constraining for a woman whose work is words…

* * *

My biggest trauma of 2014 was colon cancer. It was not metastatic, thankfully, but because lymph nodes were involved, I was given an estimate of my chances of being alive in 5 years!!

Anyway, fortunately, the median is not the message as Stephen Jay Gould wrote in this popular essay. He was given 8 months to live aged 40, and lived for 20 years, dying at 60 of an unrelated cancer. He writes

Attitude clearly matters in fighting cancer. We don’t know why (from my old-style materialistic perspective, I suspect that mental states feed back upon the immune system). But match people with the same cancer for age, class, health, socioeconomic status, and, in general, those with positive attitudes, with a strong will and purpose for living, with commitment to struggle, with an active response to aiding their own treatment and not just a passive acceptance of anything doctors say, tend to live longer. A few months later I asked Sir Peter Medawar, my personal scientific guru and a Nobelist in immunology, what the best prescription for success against cancer might be. “A sanguine personality,” he replied.

And God, the great mathematician, is known to upset human stats. (Consider Janet Walton given 104 billion to 1 odds of bearing healthy sextuplets. Which was exactly what she did.)

However, estimates of your chances of being alive—even decent odds, as in my case–focuses the mind. “Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” Dr. Johnson wrote.

In the first shock and sadness after the diagnosis, I wandered through the house, looking at the books I had not yet read, but really wanted to; the documentaries I had not watched, but really wanted to; the books I had not written, but really wanted to; thinking of the places to which I had never travelled, but rather wanted to. I did not want to die. I was in love with life.

I was sad.

Then, who knows how, I snapped out of sadness.

* * *

I had prayed with faith for healing. Why should I proceed as if God was definitely ignore my prayers? That’s crazy behaviour for a believer. God is my Father; why should I hurt his feelings by doubting his goodness.

Fifty springs are little room to look at things in bloom, the poet A. C. Housman wrote. So since, in the Upper Room discourse at the Last Supper, Jesus repeatedly urges us to ask for anything we wish, I asked, playfully, for 50 additional years of life, which would get me to the age at which my great-grandmother Julianna died. (I come from a line of long-lived woman on both sides of the family, thriving into their nineties, often living past a hundred, women who lived on ancestral diets–not the Western diet I have indulged in for the last 30 years.)

And so, while I am steadily changing my diet in the direction of optimum nutrition, and steadily increasing my exercise, I decided to plunge back into work I really wanted to do. Work one loves–a great and mysterious extender of life.

* * *

I started work on a memoir in 1991—an account of a Catholic childhood in Jamshedpur, a Zoroashtrian company town; rebellious years in a boarding school in Nainital, in the foothills of the Himalayas, run by German and Irish nuns; and then working with Mother Teresa at Calcutta.

However, I shelved it numerous times: to write essays; to teach Creative Writing at The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg; for four years to establish a business; and then for another five years, I barely worked on it while I blogged.

Chapters have met with success. They have won a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts; a Minnesota State Arts Board fellowship; a Jerome Fellowship: have won “Writer of Unusual Promise” awards to writing conferences, have been published in Best Spiritual Writing, Commonweal, London Magazine, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Notre Dame Magazine. I am certain that it will be a good book–though a long one in the first draft (which will definitely need a good editor).

I realized that if I died without finishing it, and publishing it (I am thinking of indie publishing the first longer version) I would feel enormous, almost unbearable sadness and regret, because it took me time and sacrifice to get a good first draft.

But if I died without developing my blog to dizzy heights, so be it. C’est la vie. Blogging has been enormously rewarding in psychological, spiritual, creative, personal growth, social and career ways…a trip to Cambodia, for instance… Who would have guessed? It has brought me nearly 10,000 readers a month, some of whom have become real life friends. The confidence and support a large and steady readership brings cannot be underestimated.

* * *

So I will work on the memoir first, writing 500 words a day. A long memoir averages 120,000 words, which means I could be done with it in less than 8 months; much has already been written, and I already have a first draft. Sounds good, huh?

I will shoot for 500 words rather than 1000, for that will leave time for walking, gardening, housework, prayer, family life, friendships as well as gas in the tank for another day’s writing.

500 words… I might be able to write that in an hour if I focus. Perhaps two hours if I shoot for beautiful words. In a widely shared piece, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet attributed their success to that fact that they knew how to focus.

And that is my work goal for 2015: Focus

I am using an app called Freedom to turn off the internet when I write. I really enjoy the quiet and concentration of being in the zone, and get so much done when the internet is off.

So I will write my 500 words, and then blog–a blog or two or three a week as the Lord gives me strength and energy.

I had a mentor, whose book I edited. He said he would write as the Lord provided time. I thought privately, “One can’t write like that!” But both his books are still read in a world in which bloggers publish books to a three week buzz, books which are often dead in six months, and forgotten in a year.

Apparently relying on the Lord for words and time is a very good work strategy indeed!

My One Word for 2015 : Joy

By Anita Mathias

I had wanted to choose “Accelerate” as my One Word for 2014 but God impressed “Alignment” on my heart, and it proved to have been useful through a tumultuous year—a cancer diagnosis, and surgery, the death of my beloved border collie Jake from cancer, a burglary. And some nice things too… being invited to Cambodia for a week by Tearfund; being the runner up for Tweeter of the Year in the Christian New Media Awards; being interviewed on Premier Radio; publishing a children’s book, Francesco, Artist of Florence.

* * *

That cancer now a past tense occurrence, God willing, all gone.

Because I could not stop for health, health kindly stopped for me. Health will be one of my priorities this year

I will have to be careful about diet and exercise–so as not to have a recurrence. My body will have to change its bioeme to become an ecosystem unfavourable to cancer. I will learn stress management techniques, and practice positive psychology, thinking positively. I am juicing to get my diet more nutrient-dense, and am moving towards a raw and plant-based diet.

I thought of choosing “Focus,” as my word for the year because huge things can be done with focus, but no, I had a greater need.

My word for 2015 will be Joy.

* * *

I am training myself to become conscious of my emotional states, of when joy leaches out of me, and am learning to slow down and ask, “Why are you sad, oh my soul?”

And then, I am learning to accept the things I cannot change, and to change the things I can, as in the brilliant Serenity Prayer used by Alcoholics Anonymous, and to be thankful for the rest, the obviously good things, and the more ambiguous things–for there is a God who is writing straight in crooked lines in my life. Again and again, I see this.

When I notice I am grumpy and low-spirited, I tell myself, “Anita, light the sacred flame of joy.” I visualise myself as a priestess in a temple filling the sacred bowl with incense, the seeds of joy, lighting the flame. I start noticing the good things, thanking God for the good things. I ask the Holy Spirit—who, Jesus says, comes on demand–to fill me with joy, those rivers of living water, and He does.

We can change our emotional states, as blogger Michael Hyatt writes. He calls being able to do this his most important asset.

I shift my emotional state by entering the narrow gates of surrender to God. By deciding to walk in love. By praise and thanksgiving. By worship music. By reading a bit of the Bible or a spiritual book. By physical activity, a walk outdoors, or even just tidying the house. By spending time with my family or seeking out a friend to hang out with.

* * *

19 years ago, I told a good friend Paul Miller (author of A Praying Life, often praised as one of the best books on prayer, for instance by Tim Challies) that I had not experienced joy-as opposed to happiness. He volunteered to disciple me in exchange for editing help, and this discipling relationship lasted for 5 years. Joy, he said, comes from dying, from dying to self.

I did not stumble upon joy through “dying;” that was not my path. (However, I learned other things from Paul, about Jesus–I was an editor for his book Love Walked Among Us–about love, and faith, and prayer).

Nonetheless, I was eventually surprised by joy. Joy and peace crept up on me, as my original ambitions were thwarted, and the fierceness of ambition leached away, leaving more of an openness to what God might be doing in my life, to the plot he was writing. To giving God what he takes, and taking what he gives, with a smile—Mother Teresa’s definition of holiness.

So in 2015, I want to experience joy, by seeking it where it lies in plain sight, and if necessary, hunting it down, looking a little harder, a little deeper. I want to light the flame of joy with the incense of praise, of thanksgiving, of faith, of Scripture, of nature, of friendship, all the good and precious things which come down from the Father of Lights.

And if you’d like to pray for me, please pray for vibrant health and that cancer never returns. Eight weeks after surgery, I am glad to report that I feel full of energy, good spirits, health and…yes…joy!

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One Word for 2015: Joy. On lighting the sacred flame of joy from @anitamathias1

Have you chosen a one word goal for 2015? What is it?

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