In which I resolve to live by faith | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

The Lord is my Literary Agent

David, a shepherd, addresses the LORD as his shepherd. Hmm.

And when Jesus invites Peter initially, and re-invites him again after the Resurrection, it is in the areas of his competence. You are a fisherman? Well then, fish men.

You have laboured all night and caught nothing. Well, cast your net where I tell you to and be astounded. And Peter catches 153 fish.

It’s easy to recognise our need for God in our areas of weakness. But our areas of competence, if surrendered to him, can bring the most surprising revelations of how we can do exceedingly abundantly more than we imagined with his ideas, and his power.

Rachel Held Evans said mockingly, “I’ve often heard authors claim that God is their agent. Mine is Rachelle Gardner, and she’s excellent.)

Hmm. Whom would you rather have as a literary agent–the Lord or Rachelle Gardner (of whom I know nothing, by the way, so nothing personal)? Whose advice would be more helpful?

Who’s more likely to have good ideas and inspiration? Who’s cleverer and more creative? Who has more power to open doors? Who can lead you by the quickest, swiftest way to reach as many readers as you can be a blessing to?

This is what Rachelle Gardner advises,

“speak frequently to large groups.” Your proposal lists every speaking engagement for the last year, and every speaking engagement already booked for the future, including the date, the event, and the NUMBER of people you spoke to.
We want to know your Klout score, your number of Twitter followers, number of LinkedIn contacts, number of Facebook friends or fans on your profile page. We want to know how many visitors view your YouTube channel each month. If you use Facebook ads, Google Ad Words, or Wiki Book Summaries, we want the number of monthly impressions.
If you’re regularly on radio, what’s your audience size according to Arbitron? If you write for a regular newsletter or journal, what’s the circulation?

And how might one have time to write, prithee, with all this relentless self-promotion?

And how much social media success does she expect you to have before people might read your book? Rachelle writes

As a benchmark, you could shoot for 500 fans on your Facebook profile page and 15,000 monthly page views to your blog.

Building a platform takes time—sometimes, a lot of time. Sometimes non-fiction authors need to set aside their manuscripts and focus on gathering their tribe for awhile.

LOL!

And if the Lord was my literary agent–which (thank God!) He is?

He advises me to spend more time with Him, so that what I write is drawn from eternal wells.

He advises me to keep my blog readership growing steadily, which it is, and suggests simple do-able strategies for this. He doesn’t suggest 15,000 page views, just growth.

He also tells me that if my blog blesses people, many of them will buy the reasonably-priced books that spring from the blog, whether self-published or conventionally published.

There is rest and joy and peace in what the Lord advises, no stress, none of the relentless push for more, more, more. His strategies and advice are do-able. And I do believe that books and ideas that come from God will last longer, and bless more people than market-driven ideas which spring from the brains of literary agents.

* * *

Whatever our profession is, the Lord knows how to do it better, and WE can do it better if we lean on his guidance and inspiration.

The Lord is my muse and my literary agent.

I shall not want.

He makes me down to lie

In paths of green, he leadeth me

By quiet waters…

The Tardis of Faith

By Anita Mathias

We almost pass it by,

yet another cathedral encased in scaffolding,

But inside. Inside, it is different

Enormous,

full of light glowing

from its stained glass windows.

So too the beloved ancient

faith in the Lord Jesus

From the outside

is grimy, disused,

the province of rules,

and prim, prissy people,
dusty with the accretion of centuries

of whose who haven’t quite
got it right or tended it with due diligence

Inside it glows,

saying “Trust me,

your life is in my hands.

Ask me to satisfy your needs.

Love me,

and I will fill your hungry, thirsty heart.

Come to me, all who are thirsty,
And I will pour my living waters
into your heart.

Come,

and I will give you peace.

And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, Joel 2.25

By Anita Mathias

And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you.KJV, Joel 2.25

When, oh Lord, when? When we turn to you. When we place them in your hands. When we ask you to!

I am a bit of literalist sometimes in reading scripture. When I read, “They that wait upon the Lord will renew their strength. They will mount with wings like eagles,” I ask: How does that happen?

Which is what I usually ask when I read this: And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten?

I ask, How does that work out in practice?

Now, forgive me, God, and do not smile–for trying to reduce the immensity of your power to my capacity to understand it. But that is what I need to do, right now as I paddle in the shallows of your immensity
* * *

The phenomenon of the years the locusts have eaten being restored to us is actually not an unfamiliar one in the story of creativity.

I think of the wonderful poet Rainer Maria Rilke who gathered up strength and sweetness all his life as he struggled with a writers’ block which lasted for decades, indeed intermittently all his life. And then, in his phraseology, the angel came. And he wrote the beautiful Duino Elegies in an astonishing burst of creative power. Like Handel who wrote the Messiah in three weeks.

Faulker wrote As I Lay Dying in six weeks working six hours a night from midnight to six a.m. Annie Dillard comments on this, “Some people cross the Niagara Falls on a bike. Some eat cars. Who would offend the spirit who hands out such gifts?”

Samuel Johnson wrote his classic Rasselas in a week to pay for his mother’s funeral, creativity blossoming under time pressure. Sylvia Plath wrote her astonishing Ariel poems in her life blood over a period of weeks, “The blood flow is poetry/There’s no stopping it.”

I suppose Van Gogh experienced a similar burst of creativity before his incarceration.

The trick I suppose is to accept God’s gifts of creativity with open hands, flowing with his rhythms so that one can be creative for a long time, and not burn out like Plath or Van Gogh after their bursts of genius.

In which the stars tell us that nothing is impossible with God

By Anita Mathias

So Abraham, crouched in his tent, thinks of the promises, always those promises: His name would be great, and he would be a blessing, and all nations on earth would be blessed through him.

Trouble is–he does not have a single child, he who has been promised descendants more numerous than the grains of sand on the seashore.

Not one single child!

* * *

And God tells him to step outside his small tent which makes his vision small, and look instead at immensity.

“Count the stars—if you can,” God says, “So shall your descendants be.”

Can God who made these gleaming myriads of stars not make one human child?

Abraham believed God and it was accredited to him as righteousness.

He slept again with Sarah, though she had urged him to sleep with her younger slave Hagar and father children through her.

He had Isaac whose name is laughter.

* * *

What is your impossible dream? The word you heard God say to you, the promise you heard him give you, the dream so long deferred that remembering it has the bitter taste of mockery.

The impossible person?

The impossible project?

The dream you feel you have the talent and ability for, but which lies locked within you, dormant.

Dreams can have a long gestation.

* * *

Step outside. Look at the stars.

Nothing is impossible with God.

Take your dream. Double it. And again.

Dream hard. Pray hard. Work hard.

Then lie down and rest in peace, for you can no more birth an immense dream by yourself, than you can scatter stars through the heavens.

Work restfully, and sleep restfully, leaving your dream in the delicate hands of the one who scatters stars through the heavens for the fun of it.

Because he loves beauty.

And you. And me.

Connections in High Places

By Anita Mathias

Can miracles happen today? Breakthroughs in creativity? In writing? In publishing? Financial miracles? Breakthroughs in health?

Well, people always say, “It’s not what you know, but who you know.”

Well, I retain my faith in miracles, because you see, I am incredibly well-connected.

I know a guy who can change 5 loaves to 5000; can help me walk on water, and change that water into wine.

And he whispers to me, “Do not be afraid. Trust in my Father. Trust also in me.”

Writing by Relying on the Lord

By Anita Mathias

“Moses, “O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.” The LORD said to him, “Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD ? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.” Exodus, Chapter 4.

Am trying to write with less dependence on education, training, previous reading and study, and more reliance on the spirit of God, of creativity. It’s a very interesting retraining of instincts and reflexes, after so many years of relying on the former.