Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires
Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art
Jesus’s lovely promise in John.
It is totally spectacular. On a grey, gloomy day as it is today in Oxford, England, we can remember that Jesus gives us his joy, and that nothing and no one–no circumstances can take it from us.
By learning to forgive too, we can avail ourselves of some of this joy. People who disappoint us can no longer rob us our our joy as we learn to forgive them!
Though generally the hearts of both adults and children sink at the words “Family Service,” we had good ones this Easter.
Jesus after his resurrection was as pithy, trenchant and incisive as ever, and his questions cut, once again, to the heart of the matter.
His first words, practically, “Why are you weeping?”
And then, “Be not faithless, but believing.”
These two sentences are connected, somehow!
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
I grew up in India where religious chants spilled into the streets, early into the morning with the muezzins holler–Allah oh Akbar…There is no God, but God, and Muhammed is his prophet. And from merry dhabas and corner shops selling cloth came the rhythm of bhajans. Hare Rama, Hare Krishna, Hare Rama, Hare Krishna, Hare, Hare, Hare.The rhythms thud in your pulses, and repeated, lull and calm the mind.
How much more this majestic, absolute declaration.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
It calms and stabilizes my mind, even before I ponder its meaning.
THE WORD. Thought. Aliveness.
As God touches, and invades our lives, one thing that happens is that words flow.
The mind comes fully alive. It begins to sing.
