Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

Change your Words, Change your Emotions

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Speed-reading “just this one.”
Jake, the Collie, finds a spot to rest his weary head.
I finally started a massive project —getting rid of all the books from my second-hand books business  which I had for a couple of intensive years, and a couple of desultory years.
Progress, as you can see, was slow.
* * *
But internally, where all that really matters happens, progress has been made.
I’ve worked for 4 days like a Benedictine, balancing ora et labora, work and prayer, thought and creativity.
I’ve always been enamoured by the Benedictine ideal of balance–especially when it’s theoretical. When one actually has to do it: BAH-humbug, the Labora part is highly overrated!! I said to my soul in disgust.
* * *
 Of course, I didn’t really need to do this. But you see, during the years of the business, I came across so many lovely art books, gardening books, Christian books, nature, photography, history, biography, literature, poetry and children’s books, which I would have loved to keep. And so many that I did not want to keep. So I needed to sort them, keepers, givers-away to prevent myself drowning in books.
And I was feeling grumpy sorting through these boxes, givers/keepers because you see what I really want to do is pray, read and contemplate scripture, blog, write, garden, and run. Not sort books.
Then I read this blog by Michael Hyatt which says your mental state and attitude are highly dependent on the language you use. Don’t say “I have to,” Hyatt advises; say, “I get to.”
And so I said to myself, with great truth,
I get to sort through 240 boxes of 50 books each, books I have already sifted and discarded the junk from, and keep whatever I want! How great the love the Father hath given that I get to keep the best of 240 boxes of art, poetry, literature, Christian, nature, history, biography, gardening, children’s books, travel and photography books.
And I immediately felt happier. 
* * *
Whatever dark or desperate situations you face,  there is almost surely a silver lining in them because of the goodness of God. Something positive in them. Search it out. Thank God for it.
And as surely as dawn follows the night, your emotional state will begin to change. It will mirror your honest thanksgiving. You will feel happier.

 

How to Get into the Zone of Writing or Prayer

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Mixed Flock of birds flying in a V Formation- Put together- ©Creative Commons

Mixed Flock of birds flying in a V Formation- Put together- ©Creative Commons

 

I love writing and blogging: watching something shapely, and sometimes beautiful, emerge from a jumble of thoughts.

But there are many times when I just don’t feel like writing. My brain and spirit and fingers feel wooden. It is what Steven Pressfield calls “The Resistance.”

What helps then? Reading, reading a lot, ideally something like what I want to write, until the rhythm of words beats in my bloodstream, and ideas explode in my brain, and I yearn to get them out on the page.

* * *

And what when it comes to prayer, and I feel numb, a lifeless thing without joy, or love, or thought?

But I have made a commitment to pray, so pray I will.

I used to read scripture and read it until my heart said “Amen.”

I now practice eucharisteo–giving thanks for all the beautiful and lovely things in the world, and in my life.

I give thanks, and give thanks while the plane of my emotions slowly slides down the runway, and inches into the blue, sunny skies of praise and joy.

1001 Gifts #5: Living in England

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I’ve lived in Oxford for 10 and a half years now, in two instalments, and still love it.
I read a email yesterday from an American friend who did some ministry in London earlier this month. “We were immersed in British culture. We loved their sense of humor. If I added these six words to my vocabulary, I might pass as British: brilliant, lovely, fabulous, fantastic, cheerio, and really. As in, “that was a brilliant seminar, really lovely, just fantastic”.”
Well, I must say, in that case, people in London are certainly more positive than those in Oxford, where “not bad” passes for commendation. But yes, when the English succeed in getting themselves enthusiastic, they are really enthusiastic; things are indeed brilliant, lovely, fabulously fantastic.
I read a Lonely Planet guidebook on the flight over from the US to Britain in 1994. It remarked that contrary to the stereotype of buttoned-down reserve, the greatest pleasure of travelling England is the English themselves.
The English do indeed cultivate humour like as a sixth sense. Perhaps they need it to deal with the notorious British weather, and cold, old houses without central heating.
                                               * * *
And indeed, as the guidebook said, one of the best things about living here is the English themselves, their eccentricities, their passions, their funny hobbity ways, and, yes, their sense of humour, evenly distributed across every spectrum of society.
Roy and I had supper with an Oxford friend of mine in an posh old house in Surrey. In her house, nobody ever locked the loo. Well, Roy, like Alice, seeing a key turned it. And it stuck, stubbornly.
The only locksmith who picked up his phone on Sunday evening had to drive nearly 90 miles to get to us, in deep country. Jane and I passed him his slides beneath the bathroom door, giggling like schoolgirls, and being a true intellectual, indifferent to his surroundings, he sat there and continued his research, while Jane and I had a longer and lovelier catch-up than we had bargained for.
 Two hours later the locksmith comes, gets Roy out, and says gleefully, “You must be relieved.”
Had he been choking on that pun all evening? “Working class English people are very witty,” explained Jane, who comes from well-known High Tory political family.
* * *
In fact, most English people are. We often have people over for a meal—a form of fun and recreation both Roy and I enjoy. British people, at least in Oxford, pride themselves on speaking well and amusingly, and such evenings are always fun.
The only chink in the British sense of humour is that they totally fail to see how funny they appear to people from elsewhere, To Americans, in particular (who are like brash Romans, compared to the cute hobbity culture and mores of sections of English society) but also to the French, as I realized through hours of French conversation with tutors, and Germans…
I remember a surreal episode in the New Wine Conference when Carl Medearis, an engaging American speaker continually laughed at his hosts, in the sweetest manner. At how seriously they took their tea and biscuit breaks, and how restive they got when these were delayed by an overrun. At the charming place names, like Shepton Mallet, where the conference was held. This stream of quips was received by the audience in stony silence.
At the long-awaited tea and biscuit break, Roy tells the man next to us in the queue. “The only question is “Do Brits find Americans funnier, or do Americans find the English funnier?” ”
The man stared. “What’s funny about the English?” he asked, genuinely puzzled.
What indeed?

Quest for Joy-7. Pieta

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File:Michelangelo's Pieta 5450 cropncleaned.jpg
Michaelangelo, Pieta



I saw an absolutely flawless piece of art today, Michaelangelo’s Pieta (Italian for Pity) now behind plexiglass at St Peter’s.


His contemporary, Vasari, wrote of it, “It is certainly a miracle that a formless block of stone could ever have been reduced to a perfection that nature is scarcely able to create in the flesh.”


The rest of St. Peter’s was overwhelming–lots of eye-candy, beautiful marble everywhere, lots of ornate little side chapels, all too much in keeping with the central shrine of Catholicism, and the second largest church in the world (in area).


I enjoyed my exhausting wander through it, of course, but it didn’t have the same sense of awe and holiness for me, as Gothic cathedrals do.

Believe it or not, this is a mosaic. What a labour of love!!

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In which I Got the Precise House I Prayed for, and when I see better, I will remain content

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When we were house-hunting in 2005, I made a list of 10 things I wanted in a house.
Some of them were fantasies, pipedreams, improbabilities. A detached study, ponds, at least an acre of garden, and since we were in England, stone walls, rambling roses. A stream around the property.
And being a Christian, I prayed through the list most days–passionately, I must confess!
And then, chills ran down my spine, when I saw this house in Garsington advertised on the internet, after we had looked at just one house, a farmhouse, with a “healing” well mentioned in the Domesday book with an acre, yes, but in the one of the worst areas of Oxford (in terms of crime and poverty) and in bad repair. Living in a house that  costs way more than the average neighbourhood price might not augur well for safety I thought, and did we want to spend our time doing repairs.
I instantly knew I wanted the house, as I looked at the pictures and details. It had 9 of my 10 desiderata. The agent never had an easier sale.

Picture perfect, roses on its stone walls, a detached upstairs study (“a granny annexe”) with views over farmland for me, a 1711 house. An acre and a half around it.
Way too expensive. But perfect! We bought it, and made the life-style changes to afford it. I started a business, which has been among the most interesting and compelling things I have ever done–a publishing company.
It was my dream house. I was thrilled. Till I saw a friend’s house, same acreage, but her living room faced her large pond, whereas my pond was out of sight. She also had a large sunny conservatory. She said they was thinking of selling her house. It was 60% more than mine. Buy another dream house?
Or be content, and stay rooted. We instead built a large conservatory, twice as large as any of the rooms in this old house. I love it.
One does not need perfection. Better to learn the fine art of being content.
Also, given that it has taken us four years to set up this house, and we still have boxes to unpack, I simply cannot contemplate doing it all again.
And moulding and reshaping a house is satisfying. We are constantly tweaking it, putting in new lighting, new bookshelves. We now eat in the conservatory and our dining room is a library with wall to wall bookshelves. I love it!