Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

Decluttering: An Easy Way to Start a Virtuous Circle in Your Life

By

Vermeer, Music Lesson,

 

Until 2008, one of our greatest sources of sadness and irritation was the fact that we were rather messy and disorganised. And, as for the girls, well, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

But we have gradually changed. If you show up unannounced, or better still, with 15 minutes warning, you will find an acceptable house, not immaculate or even particularly tidy, but not disgraceful either.

* * *

 What changed? Partly getting a cleaner which motivated us to get everything in the right place for them to clean. And going through the house, tidying every room, once a week, motivated us to begin getting rid of things.

And space and order is addictive. Once you start decluttering, it becomes a habit to ask “Do I really need this? Is it beautiful? Is it useful?”

And how old were we when we finally got our acts together, and became tidy grown-ups? Mid-forties!!

Which shows it’s never too late to change.

* * *

And, interestingly, the last five years have also been a period of blessing and productivity for us, in many ways.

Messy, disorganized people will never achieve as much as they could, though they may be achieving enough!

* * *

 One of my inspirations was Marla Cilley, Flylady. Marla in her mid-forties was depressed, overweight, in debt, and surrounded by chaos, mess and clutter.

“Enough,” she said, one day. There was too much clutter and mess for her to clean it all up in a day, or a week, or a month, and, besides, she was depressed! However, she shone her sink, and resolved that she would continue shining her sink, if it killed her. Gradually, she began picking up the dishes around the sink, sticking them in the dishwasher, and order and beauty spread outwards.

She attributes her success at becoming a tidy, organised home-dweller to two things—consistency and persistence.  Anyone she says can run a tidy, organised home, if they work at it with consistency and persistence.

Her website flylady.net is full of practical ideas. She will email these to you if you would like to follow her way to domestic order and peace. She has worked out where to start to get out of chaos, and the most leveraged first steps. Her way definitely works!!

* * *

 Which of her tips have helped me?

1)  Anyone can do anything for 15 minutes at a time. So when a room gets messy, or when there are rooms I have never tidied properly, like the library or the garage, or the barn, I set a timer for 15 minutes. I never do more than 15 minutes on a room, so there is no risk of boredom setting in.

2)  She has cool suggestions for crisis cleaning–if guests are due, for example. Work on 3 separate rooms for 15 minutes each, take a 15 minute break. Repeat.

3) She also suggests focusing on hot spots—you know, where clutter gathers all by itself. We don’t have these any more, since we work on them weekly.

4) Most useful of all, perhaps is the concept of baby steps. Your house didn’t get messy in a day, and won’t get tidy in a day. Take small, but consistently maintained steps to get it all tidy again.

The confidence she gained in getting her domestic act together spilled over into a writing ministry. She next tackled her overweight body, “cluttered” she called it, and wrote a book about that too.  She got out of debt.

It’s amazing how confidence breeds confidence. For instance, I’ve noticed this syndrome in several people, and have sunk into it myself (except for the debt): sleeping in, a messy house, being overweight, and substantially in debt.

How to get out of it? The answer is: Start anywhere. Start with what bugs you most. Getting your house tidy or waking early will give you the time and confidence to lose weight. And the discipline and organizational skills and confidence you gain in one area will spill over to others.

* * *

For myself, getting our family business into profit gave me the confidence to get the house together (and helped pay for the cleaner) which gave me the peace and mental space to launch a reasonably successful blog, which gave me the confidence and drive to wake earlier, which gave me extra time, and I am now working on the weight, and have lost 16 pounds! You see, a virtuous circle!!

Anyway, have a look at Flylady.net. You will be entertained, and perhaps educated!!

 

The Willingness to Fail and Joy

By

http://sophiafine.com/main/2008/02/




  My forties have been an amazing decade for me, so far. We left America after 17 years and moved back to Oxford, England, and are very happy here. It feels like the right place for us to be.



It also is a decade of experimentation, and  trying several new things.
                                         * * *

In my teens and twenties, I didn’t want to do anything I couldn’t be really good at. At boarding school, run by German and Irish nuns, I had a relentless campaign to be excused from choir and games because I would never be good at them. I wanted to concentrate on academics, in particular literature and debating (and writing, though I didn’t say that) and become really good. Amazingly, the nuns agreed, and I was the only girl accused from compulsory sport, an hour a day, and choir practices.


But I think my old approach of wanting to be good at what I do, or not doing it at all, has often robbed me of joy. I was telling my husband, Roy, that writing this blog, a post a day, has been and is one of the things I have enjoyed most in my whole life. 
                                    * * *


Then I stopped and thought. No, the work I have most enjoyed was the period in my twenties when I read reams and reams of poetry, and wrote poetry. I submitted a slender volume of poetry for my Masters Thesis in Creative Writing (at the Ohio State University) and was accepted for a Ph.D in Creative Writing at the State University of New York, Binghamton to develop, revise and expand it as a Ph.D thesis. (I quit my Ph.D to get married, and am not yet sure if that was a good decision–dropping the Ph.D which was SO, SO stimulating, I mean; not the getting married part).


For the first year and a half of married life, all I did was read poetry, and write poetry. I must have had 50 poems published in magazines around America in that period. 


And then, silly girl, I showed them to John Frederick Nims, the editor of Poetry Magazine, then the leading poetry magazine. “So, are they really good?” I asked. “Do you think I might have a career as a poet?” He re-read them, pursed his lips, and said, “I don’t know. I don’t know if I would make major sacrifices for a poetic career if I were you.”


Something else was tugging at the bits: non-fiction writing. Annie Dillard says that moving from only writing poetry to writing “creative non-fiction” is like moving from playing a single instrument to working with a whole orchestra. And there is something to that. 


And so, just like that, I gave up reading and writing poetry, which was the most thrilling and fascinating thing I have ever done. 


The poet Donald Hall wrote that people abandon poetry, and then talk about it wistfully, as if poetry has abandoned them. So I did, whenever I met poets. “I used to love it too,” I’d say. “I used to write it too.” The poet Ellen Bryant Voight, who I met at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference at Vermont said encouraging, “Well, then, you will write it again, perhaps when the children are older.”


And so I will.
                                           * * * 




Meandering. The point of this post is to say that the idol is broken. The idol of needing to be good at something if I am to do it seriously. The idol of doing it really well or not at all.


In my forties, I have taken things up which, odds are, I may not be brilliant at, but which I immensely enjoy.


My second and third languages at school were Sanskrit and Hindi, and so I have never learned French, but I adore the sound of it. So two years ago, I got a tutor who comes over weekly and works with me on my French, even though I can only dedicate 2-4 hours a week to it. He is a Parisian actor and playwright, living and  working in Oxford, who directs his own plays, acts in other people, and adapts books for the stage. 


We talk for an hour a week, on everything— films, plays, books, art and Europe, and it is amazing how much fun one can have–rowing far out of shore, talking in a foreign language about things which interest you, while knowing that you are probably making several erreurs per paragraph.


Zoe, 16, and I used to do French conversation together with a native speaker, but now she is seriously working for her G.C.S.E.s and I don’t want to spend more than 3-4 hours on French (an hour of conversation; a hour of grammar and reading a book and Le Monde; two hours on a French movie. So she has Jean-Patrick for her own hour. “Do you think I am now better than you, Mum?” she asked in delight. “Are you going to let me become better than you?” Yeah, I think I am, though it will be hard. The idol of competitiveness is being smashed, along with the idol of being really good at what I take up seriously. It’s freeing to enjoy something for its own sake, without it leading to anything that I can see. 
                                                                              * *  *


Another late-forties project of mine is to become a bit fitter. (To become really fit will be a project for my fifties.) Something else I have taken up recently is tennis, with a coach. There is not a snowball’s chance in hell that I will ever be good at it, as I can’t run fast enough. But that doesn’t prevent it being a lot of fun. Roy watches me in amazement and says, “Wow! You’re really enjoying it. You really enjoy exercise” And so I am. 


The girl who hated anything physical now has a gym membership!! Again, I really enjoy yoga, zumba and body combat, while being, quite probably, and– quite probably, quite visibly–the
worst in the room.   
                                                                               * * *


I don’t think I would have been able to blog in my thirties. I don’t think I would have been able to release work which wasn’t my best. Now, I do. In fact, I don’t even have a blog stack, but press publish as each post is written. Holding on to them, revising them, would be a sure way for perfectionism–and its evil twin, writers’ block–to show their faces again. 

Pascal’s Memorial–His Experience of God and “Joy, Joy, Joy, Tears of Joy.”

By


Blaise Pascal

 I love Pascal’s Memorial. I particularly love how words and sequential thought fail this brilliant, cerebral, verbal man. He is describing something from a different world–a world beyond words and logic.

What a joy to so lose oneself in God!!

I have dipped my toes into these waters.

Pascal’s  experience, however, led to a profound and unshakeable conversion; he could not bear to speak about it, and never did (his account of it was found sewn in the lining of his cloak upon his death).

It’s exciting to read of the joy in store for us in the secret places of God.

The year of grace 1654,

Monday, 23 November, feast of St. Clement, pope and martyr, and others in the martyrology.
Vigil of St. Chrysogonus, martyr, and others.
From about half past ten at night until about half past midnight,
FIRE.
GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob
not of the philosophers and of the learned.
Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.
GOD of Jesus Christ.
My God and your God.
Your GOD will be my God.
Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except GOD.
He is only found by the ways taught in the Gospel.
Grandeur of the human soul.
Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you.
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
I have departed from him:
They have forsaken me, the fount of living water.
My God, will you leave me?
Let me not be separated from him forever.
This is eternal life, that they know you, the one true God, and the one that you sent, Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
I left him; I fled him, renounced, crucified.
Let me never be separated from him.
He is only kept securely by the ways taught in the Gospel:
Renunciation, total and sweet.
Complete submission to Jesus Christ.
Eternally in joy for a day’s exercise on the earth.
May I not forget your words. Amen.
And here, the actual words he wrote:
L’an de grâce 1654,
Lundi, 23 novembre, jour de saint Clément, pape et martyr, et autres au martyrologe.
Veille de saint Chrysogone, martyr, et autres,
Depuis environ dix heures et demie du soir jusques environ minuit et demi,
FEU.
« DIEU d’Abraham, DIEU d’Isaac, DIEU de Jacob »
non des philosophes et des savants.
Certitude. Certitude. Sentiment. Joie. Paix.
DIEU de Jésus-Christ.
Deum meum et Deum vestrum.
« Ton DIEU sera mon Dieu. »
Oubli du monde et de tout, hormis DIEU.
Il ne se trouve que par les voies enseignées dans l’Évangile.
Grandeur de l’âme humaine.
« Père juste, le monde ne t’a point connu, mais je t’ai connu. »
Joie, joie, joie, pleurs de joie.
Je m’en suis séparé:
Dereliquerunt me fontem aquae vivae.
« Mon Dieu, me quitterez-vous ? »
Que je n’en sois pas séparé éternellement.
« Cette est la vie éternelle, qu’ils te connaissent seul vrai Dieu, et celui que tu as envoyé, Jésus-Christ. »
Jésus-Christ.
Jésus-Christ.
Je m’en suis séparé; je l’ai fui, renoncé, crucifié.
Que je n’en sois jamais séparé.
Il ne se conserve que par les voies enseignées dans l’Évangile:
Renonciation totale et douce.
Soumission totale à Jésus-Christ et à mon directeur.
Éternellement en joie pour un jour d’exercice sur la terre.
Non obliviscar sermones tuos. Amen.

 

The Pursuit of Happiness

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The Pursuit of Happiness: The State of my Soul


Middle age is a great time for the pursuit of happiness. It has been for us (Roy and I) a time of slowing down, considering what we really want to do, shedding what we don’t.


Time to again interrogate oneself. Who am I? What makes me happy?


Well, many things make me happy! And that has been a problem all my life. People make me happy, learning things, exercise, gardening, travel, art, the arts, reading, writing, so many, many things.


And this term I tried to do many of them, and, as I blogged, http://theoxfordchristian.blogspot.com/2010/11/in-repentance-and-rest-is-your.html a couple of weeks ago landed up really exhausted, cutting almost everything, even parties I had been looking forward to.  


Now I have picked up the pieces, and have a sparer schedule. I just love learning languages, which is something I do for its own sake, without a clear idea of how it fits into the master plan of my life, though I believe it will be useful, since of late, thankfully, we have been able to go to Europe 5 times a year (during every half-term and term break, basically, on culture and nature oriented trips).  I have now got a tutor, a young, clever Frenchman, to come to my house, which saves me driving to classes, and also means that the class will be focused on what I want to learn, and my interests.


We’ve taken a long hard look at our calendar and diary, and discussed what makes us tick. We are both introverts. I need a lot of solitude, time to think, reflect, pray, meditate, dream, walk alone, exercise alone, read and write to be happy. If I have too much of activity or talking or even cyber-conversation, I find my equilibrium a little off balance. On the other hand, 3 intense days of reading and writing and thinking is all I can take without some extra-familial social life, to bounce  ideas off people, and feed off theirs. So I’ve organized my next few weeks with two lunches or coffees with friends each week, and the rest of the time reading, writing, and blogging and hanging out with my family.


 I am in the process of discovering a unique voice for my blog, and what God may want to do with it. It probably takes a year or two or writing to find one’s unique contribution to the Christian blogosphere, and what one can best and most usefully do. I now think my best contribution may be in being honest, even if not inspirational!! As I think I have said, I have led several women’s Bible studies over several years, and have got into the habit of being inspirational, and not sharing all the jagged edges and pain which are an inevitable part of both life and the Christian life. Just today, I read Anne Jackson’s Permission to Speak Freely, in which she says that by being really honest, haemorrhaging in public, so to say, you give people the gift of Going Second, being equally honest about themselves. Is this one of the things God wants to do with my writing? For me to be honest about what the Christian life really feels like and give people the Gift of Going Second?


God’s will is often revealed through a process of trial and error. But I have always found playing the boundaries more exciting than centre-court, so no doubt, I will find playing at the boundaries of the Christian blogosphere very interesting. (Just theorizing, only a few ideas for specific posts just yet.).  

In which I am Determined to Declutter

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Today was my decluttering morning.

We finally broke down and decided we needed more help than a cleaner. So we have a young Polish man come a couple of times a week, to clean, and do various housekeeping chores–he assembled bookshelves today.

And so I have designated the morning he comes as my decluttering morning. Which feels SO good.

Getting rid of things, and having a sparse household is linked to one’s faith in God. I often think of a lovely story Jack Miller tells. He and his wife Rosemarie founded World Harvest Mission and were visiting Uganda. They come late to a meeting, and every seat is taken, except the ones right in front, next to President Idi Amin. Rose Marie nervously tells Jack, “I’ll sit on the grass.” Jack says, “Rose Marie, no! You are wearing a lovely dress. You are a daughter of the King. Be brave. We will sit in front.” And they go and sit next to Idi Amin, who is gracious to them.

I have said that to myself numerous times–when nervous, when beyond my depth, when dealing with rude, overbearing or condescending people, when travelling, when insecure.  “Anita, you are a daughter of the King.”

And when decluttering.

Because there are two principles at work in decluttering. As Thoreau rightly observes, the true cost of everything is “the life” which goes into earning and replacing it. If I tidy a closet by taking its entire contents to the Charity shop (a solution I’ve contemplated, believe me!) the cost of that will be the time it takes me (or more likely, my long-suffering husband, Roy) to earn the money to replace these things.

Conversely, I am a daughter of the King. I do not need to have clothes which are worn, or ill-fitting or ugly. I do not need to have things which are ugly, or chipped or broken lying around waiting to be mended. I can throw away lonely things and throw away the missing parts when they surface.

So I am consistently giving or chucking at least one thing a day, generally far more. Not selling, no time for that; besides, it is more blessed to give than sell.

And why am I decluttering? Actually, a wise person we sought spiritual advice from three years ago suggested it. “Let’s start establishing the Kingdom of God in your physical surroundings,” he said, “and other things will fall into place.” And I am doing that.

And order feels so good. For God is not a God of disorder but of peace. I have never known how to combine writing and housekeeping. Because the thought of having to do housework so depresses me that I do neither the writing nor the housekeeping,  So carving out one morning a week to just keep up with the house, and not doing much housework for the rest of the week, seems to be working. And hopefully, within the year or so, I will get it all done.

I am a bit cross with myself for having accumulated so much stuff. We spent 9 years in our last very large house in America which had a large attic and garage. So we basically stuffed things there to be dealt with later, which never came. Our bedroom was a suite, with a room-sized walk-in closet, a room sized dressing room, and an attached bath. And the house was in the modern affluent American style–a formal living room, and a family room, a formal dining area, and a family dining area. Duplication of furniture and stuff!

When we visited England and decided to stay, I did not even go to America to move us. Since the university was paying, we paid movers to pack up our house, lock, stock and barrel, and move it here. Which they did. Unread magazines, trashcans with trash in them, pantries with out of date food, garden compost bins, hoses–no kidding! It was the biggest van the UK movers had ever seen–and eight years later, I still haven’t unpacked everything

But I am determined to declutter. My maternal grandparents were pack-rats. When my aunt died, my parents inherited a house in which two bachelor brothers, a spinster sister, and their parents had a lifetime of stuff, nothing ever thrown out. The strain of sorting and donating all that literally killed my father who had been superlatively fit before those killing months.

I intend to die with a relatively spare, relatively minimalistic house so that no one else will have to waste their life sorting out what I was too lazy to!

Inside/outside, body/spirit, house/spirit, it’s really all of a piece, isn’t it?

A Steady GI Joy

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 A Steady GI Joy

Since I am in many ways a bratty girl who likes to live my life at a high level of intensity (happy intensity, of course) I have always  being seeking for consistent joy–not the chocolate and sugar rush of joy, but a constant GI joy that stays with me through the day.

And it takes setbacks for me to return to it, to find a steady source of joy.

To return to Christ who promises–“You will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.” John 16:22.

That ultimately is the only unfailing prescription for joy that I know of–repenting, returning to Jesus, and drinking of his joy.

On the Surprising Pleasures of Downward Mobility

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Life in the Slow Lane

No, not that’s not my life, nor, most likely, will it ever be.

Roy, my dear husband, has chosen life in the slow lane, having taken early retirement this summer, at the ripe old age of 47!!

It’s amazing! We just love it. He was a high-powered mathematician, had a Chair in Maths, has been a tenured full professor since his early thirties. However, when work keeps you so busy that you have no time to live well, you might as well be earning a dying. When the list of procrastinated chores grows and grows! Ugh!

So now we are living in the slow lane; well, actually we are just adjusting to it. Sea salt from France has a sensational taste; it’s green and unprocessed, and full of seaweed and beneficial algae. Roy ground some this morning in our grinder. He made fresh apple juice from our apples, freshened the rabbit’s hutch, read some Scripture, and now is going to do what it takes to keep our family’s publishing company flourishing.

Less money than before? Yes, a bit. More time? Loads more. Less stress? Yes! More time for each other, our children and our friends? Yes! Healthier? Yes! Happier? Oh yes!!!

The trade-down–less money, less prestige, more time, more leisure, more family time, more time with and for people and God was a good move, and I doubt we will ever regret it.

Jake, my Collie Dog

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Jake plunged me into despair by running away, and was away for hours. He came back lame, limping, with the pads of his feet worn off. Where did he go?

Guilt. For not exercising our lovely working dog, a Collie, enough.

I adore Jake, and just don’t know how I would cope with not having a dog with me 24/7.

Dogs are among the most wonderful things God made.I love those statues to collie dogs in the hills of New Zealand.  Sheep farmers would not have been able to settle the high country if not for their collie dogs.