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“Rosaries at the Grotto” A Chapter from my newly-published memoir, “Rosaries, Reading, Secrets: A Catholic Childhood in India.”

By Anita Mathias

My First Holy Communion

Rosaries at the Grotto

During May, “The Month of our Lady,” Father Jesus Calvo, the Spanish parish priest, corralled the entire Catholic community of Jamshedpur at the grotto of St. Mary’s Church: a cave constructed of rocks and mortar, overplanted with rambling roses, built because the Virgin appeared to Bernadette at a grotto in Lourdes. There we recited the rosary.

“Hail Mary,” “Holy Mary,” the words rose and fell, hypnotic as the sea, fifty repetitions of Hail Marys punctuated by the mini-relief of the Glory Be, and, at last, the Memorare, signalling the glorious end: “Remember, Oh most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thy intercession was left unaided.”

My mother bowed over her rosary, her long-lashed eyes closed, an image of fervour. My father prayed rapidly, head down, frowning, as if his rapidity would hasten the conclusion. I suspected he disliked saying the rosary as much as I did.

 

Decades later, adults reminded me of when I slipped away, climbed to the top of the grotto, and squatted there, like a wise monkey, surveying the crowd. Giggles rose.

On hearing the giggles, my father looked for me. It was a reflex. And there I was, on top of the grotto, the eyes of every Catholic in Jamshedpur on me.

“Anita, come down,” my father hissed. I remained there, grinning. Despite my bravado, I was terrified of heights.

 

“Anita come down,’ he stage-whispered between clenched teeth as children giggled and adults chanted, laughter in their voices. Finally, my dignified father, senior management in that company town, fifty-two years old to my six, squeezed through the crowd, past the amputee Mrs Watkins, past Mr D’Costa, who owned Boulevard Hotel, and Mrs D’Cruz, who owned a nursery school, scaled the grotto, then inched down, half-carrying me, while around us the chuckle-flecked rosary rose and fell, “Hail Mary, full of grace.”

* * *

My Uncle Father Theo Mathias, S. J., my sister Shalini, me and my father

Catholic social life in Jamshedpur revolved around the Parish Church of St. Mary’s, the Mangalorean-Goan Association, and the Catholic Family Movement, introduced to Jamshedpur by an American Jesuit, appropriately called Father Love. It brought together Catholics of the same socio-economic class, an insular tight-knit group.

There were the Fernandezes, the Saldanhas, and the Diases, who had six children whose names all started with D—Denise, Dany, Diane, Dougie, Denzil, and David. There was an Anglo-Indian family, the Thompsons, whose green-eyed daughter, Paula, my sister Shalini adored down to her freckles, lily-white skin, and long, brown ringlets. My father claimed Shalini’s private litany went “Paula most pure, Paula most amiable, Paula most admirable!” (And when I misbehaved, my father would say of Paula’s handsome brother (who later became a priest), “Anita, Anita, if you’re so naughty, Jeff will never marry you, but he would marry Shalini instantly.”)

 

The adults gathered for spiritual instruction, about which we felt no curiosity, while the children played in the host child’s bedroom until everyone clustered around the potluck, an innovation of the American priests. The Indian way would have been for the hostess to say, “Oh, please don’t worry about bringing food. I’ll just prepare a little something,” and then spend a week planning, shopping for, and magicking a lavish near-banquet; most women prided themselves on their generosity, hospitality, and culinary repertoire.

Everyone competed to produce the most delectable dishes, savoured the offerings, and then asked for the recipe, ultimate compliment. Unless the dish was brought by Blanche, wife of the local Mangalorean doctor, Bert Lasrado, who, like my father, had been to England for his professional education. Blanche was the first woman in town with a free-standing freezer; its potential exhilarated her. While other women brought freshly cooked aromatic dishes, she gleefully announced the provenance of her offerings–prawn balchow: three months old; chicken indad: six months old; pork vindaloo: eight months old. And appetites withered.

The adults had Bloody Marys, while we had “Virgin Marys”–tomato juice, after which what we considered “western food” was served. As a student in England, to my surprise, I rarely found the supposedly Western food I had grown up with: “potato chops,” mashed potato croquettes stuffed with spicy minced beef, pan-fried in a batter of egg and breadcrumbs, or “cutlets,” large, flat burgers, cooked with onions, green chillis, coriander and mint; or “meat puffs,” crisp hot filo pastry stuffed with spicy curried minced lamb.

After dinner, Dougie Dias or Benny Fernandez produced guitars and led us in “Jamaica Farewell,” “Old Man River,” “Banana Boat Song,” or “Polly-Wolly-Doodle.” How we loved them–“Oh my darling Clementine,” “Silver Dollar,” “Country Roads”, or “Una Paloma Blanca.” The lyrics were mysterious, but we sang along, Hang down your head, Tom Dooley,/ Poor boy you’re gonna die; John Brown’s body is a-mouldering in the grave, or with greater gusto, Oh bloodee, oh blood-dah, that chorus striking us as deliciously naughty. The sun so hot, I froze to death; Susannah, don’t you cry. What did the lyrics mean? Who knew? But it all felt magical…Daylight come, and I wanna go home.

* * *

We once rented a beach house in Puri, Orissa, with the Diases, Thompsons, and other CFMers, one of whom brought his gun and shot doves, pigeons, and even sparrows, which we roasted over an improvised fire of bricks and sticks; the deliciousness lingers in memory. Their young son was allowed to use the shotgun, and I, aged six, seeing it left unattended, picked it up, looked through the sight, and, inspired by books and movies, pulled the trigger. The safety catch was off: Bang! I was startled and thrilled, though I did not shoot a bird (or myself). The father ran out and cuffed his son, and I felt scared, sad, and guilty, for it had all been my fault.

* * *

Shalini and me with our Easter Eggs

The Catholic Diocese of Jamshedpur was a missionary project of the Jesuit Maryland Province in Baltimore; it was run by hearty, good-hearted Irish American priests: Father McGauley, Fr. MacFarland, Fr. Guidera, Fr. Keogh, Fr. Moran, and Fr. O’Leary. There were other priests from the worldwide fraternity of the Jesuits–Father Durt, a Belgian who built St. Mary’s Hindi School for underprivileged children, and, on loan from the Spanish Gujarat Mission in Ahmedabad, Father Arroyo and Father Jesus Calvo, a kindly Spanish priest, who helped me develop a magnificent stamp collection by asking all the Europeans he knew to send me stamps.

The Jesuits were respected, even loved, by Jamshedpurians, both Catholic and non-Catholic, for they ran Loyola School, which turned out achieving boys, as well as the prestigious local Business School, Xavier Labour Relations Institute, XLRI, at which my father later taught, which had sought-after courses in Business Management and Industrial Relations which drew students from all over India, Asia, and the Middle East.

We had the American Jesuits over for meals and parties and were invited to dinners at the Jesuit residence. My father was amused to be told that, among Irish-American Catholics, one son became a priest, one became a cop, and one a criminal! My father marvelled when Father O’Brien told us of his father, the butcher, who distilled and sold moonshine in Baltimore during Prohibition. “Can you imagine, Anita? Father O’Brien is a butcher’s son!” (Indian Jesuits were, then, largely upper-middle or middle-class). “And his father, though a pious Catholic, had no compunction about breaking the law and making bootleg liquor!”

* * *

The priests returned from furlough with American brands—packets of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle soup, Smarties, Betty Crocker cake mixes, Danish Butter Cookies, squeezable tubes of icing sugar, or flavoured Primula cheese, coveted because foreign. These they gave their favourite Catholic housewives who compared their bounty, apparently carelessly, “Oh Father MacFarland is so sweet; he got me lovely Devil’s Food Cake mix,”–happy if their loot was the most bountiful and secretly cross about Lola or Deidre’s Angel Food Cake.

From America, too, came boxes of lightly used clothes collected for “the poor in India.” These the priests sold at jumble sales to middle-class Catholics, using the proceeds for the poor. Some of my favourite clothes came via America—my fuchsia winter coat and a red plaid coat with a fur collar for my Himalayan boarding school; a shimmering white silk blouse with pearl buttons that I passed off as boarding school uniform; a pale blue silk dress, and red goloshes.

From boxes of donated books shipped from America, I acquired books which, in my late teens, changed the course of my faith–and life: Catherine Marshall’s Beyond Ourselves and Something More, David Wilkerson’s The Cross and the Switchblade, and Nicky Cruz’s Run, Baby Run. The American priests, inexplicably, gave us boxes of old American magazines: Chatelaine, McCall’s, Family Home Circle, and Good Housekeeping, in which we found the recipe for brownies, chewy, cocoa-laden, and bursting with walnuts, adding a new much-imitated item on the party circuit. I leafed through the glossy pages, coveting dolls that walked and talked, dollhouses, and walkie-talkie radios that one could receive by just sending in a postcard–glossy magazines of dreams, never gratified, though my Jesuit Uncle, Father Theo Mathias, always bought me a Barbie doll on his annual trip to the States even into my early teens, when makeup was more exciting than dolls!

* * *

Goa and Mangalore, seacoast communities, were colonised by the Portuguese. Four hundred years later, traces endure–in the names: Mathias, Coelho, Lobo, Rebello, Pinto, Saldanha, Mascarenhas; the imported religion: Catholicism; and the language, Konkani: only spoken by Goans and Mangaloreans, a patois of Portuguese and the Kannada and Marathi spoken by the indigenous communities before colonisation. (I have never learnt Konkani, nor did my father who, as the son of an upwardly mobile surgeon in British India, was only taught English.)

Goan-Mangalorean food is distinctive–sarpatel, archetypal Mangalorean delicacy, small pieces of pork beneath inches of fat and chewy, rubbery rind, simmered in a sauce of spices, wine and the pig’s own blood and liver, eaten with sannas: fluffy steamed rice cakes, fermented in toddy. Kube, a curry of clams or cockles, was breakfast at my paternal grandmother’s house. Fish cooked in coconut milk was ubiquitous while, at afternoon tea, people ate patolio and patrade, dumplings and pancakes stuffed with fresh grated coconut and jaggery, unrefined brown sugar, and steamed in plantain leaves.

At the Mangalorean-Goan Association dinners, people danced the waltz, one-two together, one-two together, we murmured under our breaths, or the foxtrot and polka to Engelbert Humperdinck, Elvis Presley, or Jerry Lewis. If I spotted my parents waltzing together, I flung myself between them in a frenzy of jealousy, trying to drag my father away. They continued waltzing…laughing.

  • * * *

The Catholics from Mangalore, Goa, and Bombay traditionally visited all their Catholic friends during the twelve days between Christmas Day and the sixth of January, the feast of the Epiphany, the official end of the season.

Weeks before Christmas, my mother began creating traditional Christmas treats, kushwar in Konkani, offered to visitors, and given in little boxes to my father’s colleagues, nuns, teachers, priests, and friends. We made chocolate nankatis, mouth-meltingly soft, buttery, sugary cookies; light, crisp meringues; and crunchy coconut, chocolate, or cashew nut macaroons. Kulkuls were another Mangalorean speciality, dough curled on the tines of a comb into shells, deep-fried, then dropped into a thick, simmering sugar syrup, which lumpily congealed around them. Sitting together around the dining table, we hand-crafted marzipan fruits and moulded “milk toffee,” made from condensed milk, sugar, and butter in our buttered red rubber seashell mould to create wentletrap, shrimp, cockles, mussels, seahorses, oysters, and snails.

* * *

How foreign Christmas was when I was a child, how imported! We lopped the top off one of the two scraggly fir trees in our garden, hauling it indoors to deck it with cotton wool or popcorn snow, topped with a little pinecone angel with a wooden mothball face, flaxen hair, a gold wire halo, and little gold paper wings that I brought back from boarding school in Nainital, in the Himalayas. (And each year, my mother said of this durable angel, “I can’t believe you paid five rupees at the Fun Fair for that rubbish some child made.”) We sent each other Christmas cards of robins in snowy fields and sleighs in an entranced Snow Queen landscape, though the wintry sun shone all December, as it might have done in Bethlehem. We carolled outside all Catholic homes: “Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer;” “Freddy, the Little Fir Tree;” “Little Drummer Boy,” and “Jingle Bells”—a Nordic Christmas transplanted to the tropics.

At midnight mass, congregations, not all of whom spoke fluent English, sang a full-bodied Gloria in Excelsis Deo in Latin. I shivered with pleasure. And then we returned home to eat Christmas fruit cake, crammed with crystallised cherries, candied peel, raisins, and nuts, and to drink the very sweet homemade wine made from Jamun berries and mulberries from our garden that we never considered alcoholic.

And what did all this have to do with the sweet, humble birth in a manger? Generations of Europeans had transported the husk of Christmas to Indian homes while its glory lay obscured here as elsewhere. Still, Glor-ooo-ooo-ooo-reeaa in ex-cel-sis Deo, we sang lustily, though we might have been nonplussed if asked to translate.

Rosaries, Reading, Secrets is available on Amazon.co.uk and on Amazon.com  and wherever Amazon sells books, as well as in most online retailers.

Filed Under: A Catholic Childhood in India, Reading, Rosaries, Secrets, Secrets : A Catholic Childhood in India, Secrets: A Catholic Childhood in India Tagged With: Catholic, Catholic Family Movement, Christmas in India, Goans, Jamshedpur, Kushwar, Mangaloreans, Rosary

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Link to post with podcast link in Bio or https://a Link to post with podcast link in Bio or https://anitamathias.com/2023/09/22/dont-walk-away-from-jesus-but-if-you-do-he-still-looks-at-you-and-loves-you/
Jesus came from a Kingdom of voluntary gentleness, in which
Christ, the Lion of Judah, stands at the centre of the throne in the guise of a lamb, looking as if it had been slain. No wonder his disciples struggled with his counter-cultural values. Oh, and we too!
The mother of the Apostles James and John, asks Jesus for a favour—that once He became King, her sons got the most important, prestigious seats at court, on his right and left. And the other ten, who would have liked the fame, glory, power,limelight and honour themselves are indignant and threatened.
Oh-oh, Jesus says. Who gets five talents, who gets one,
who gets great wealth and success, who doesn’t–that the
Father controls. Don’t waste your one precious and fleeting
life seeking to lord it over others or boss them around.
But, in his wry kindness, he offers the ambitious twelve
and us something better than the second or third place.
He tells us how to actually be the most important person to
others at work, in our friend group, social circle, or church:Use your talents, gifts, and energy to bless others.
And we instinctively know Jesus is right. The greatest people in our lives are the kind people who invested in us, guided us and whose wise, radiant words are engraved on our hearts.
Wanting to sit with the cleverest, most successful, most famous people is the path of restlessness and discontent. The competition is vast. But seek to see people, to listen intently, to be kind, to empathise, and doors fling wide open for you, you rare thing!
The greatest person is the one who serves, Jesus says. Serves by using the one, two, or five talents God has given us to bless others, by finding a place where our deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. By writing which is a blessing, hospitality, walking with a sad friend, tidying a house.
And that is the only greatness worth having. That you yourself,your life and your work are a blessing to others. That the love and wisdom God pours into you lives in people’s hearts and minds, a blessing
https://anitamathias.com/.../dont-walk-away-from-j https://anitamathias.com/.../dont-walk-away-from-jesus.../
Sharing this podcast I recorded last week. LINK IN BIO
So Jesus makes a beautiful offer to the earnest, moral young man who came to him, seeking a spiritual life. Remarkably, the young man claims that he has kept all the commandments from his youth, including the command to love one’s neighbour as oneself, a statement Jesus does not challenge.
The challenge Jesus does offers him, however, the man cannot accept—to sell his vast possessions, give the money to the poor, and follow Jesus encumbered.
He leaves, grieving, and Jesus looks at him, loves him, and famously observes that it’s easier for a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to live in the world of wonders which is living under Christ’s kingship, guidance and protection. 
He reassures his dismayed disciples, however, that with God even the treasure-burdened can squeeze into God’s kingdom, “for with God, all things are possible.”
Following him would quite literally mean walking into a world of daily wonders, and immensely rich conversation, walking through Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, quite impossible to do with suitcases and backpacks laden with treasure. 
For what would we reject God’s specific, internally heard whisper or directive, a micro-call? That is the idol which currently grips and possesses us. 
Not all of us have great riches, nor is money everyone’s greatest temptation—it can be success, fame, universal esteem, you name it…
But, since with God all things are possible, even those who waver in their pursuit of God can still experience him in fits and snatches, find our spirits singing on a walk or during worship in church, or find our hearts strangely warmed by Scripture, and, sometimes, even “see” Christ stand before us. 
For Christ looks at us, Christ loves us, and says, “With God, all things are possible,” even we, the flawed, entering his beautiful Kingdom.
https://anitamathias.com/2023/09/07/how-to-find-th https://anitamathias.com/2023/09/07/how-to-find-the-freedom-of-forgiveness/
How to Find the Freedom of Forgiveness
Letting go on anger and forgiving is both an emotional transaction & a decision of the will. We discover we cannot command our emotions to forgive and relinquish anger. So how do we find the space and clarity of forgiveness in our mind, spirit & emotions?
When tormenting memories surface, our cortisol, adrenaline, blood pressure, and heart rate all rise. It’s good to take a literally quick walk with Jesus, to calm this neurological and physiological storm. And then honestly name these emotions… for feelings buried alive never die.
Then, in a process called “the healing of memories,” mentally visualise the painful scene, seeing Christ himself there, his eyes brimming with compassion. Ask Christ to heal the sting, to draw the poison from these memories of experiences. We are caterpillars in a ring of fire, as Martin Luther wrote--unable to rescue ourselves. We need help from above.
Accept what happened. What happened, happened. Then, as the Apostle Paul advises, give thanks in everything, though not for everything. Give thanks because God can bring good out of the swindle and the injustice. Ask him to bring magic and beauty from the ashes.
If, like the persistent widow Jesus spoke of, you want to pray for justice--that the swindler and the abusers’ characters are revealed, so many are protected, then do so--but first, purify your own life.
And now, just forgive. Say aloud, I forgive you for … You are setting a captive free. Yourself. Come alive. Be free. 
And when memories of deep injuries arise, say: “No. No. Not going there.” Stop repeating the devastating story to yourself or anyone else. Don’t waste your time & emotional energy, nor let yourself be overwhelmed by anger at someone else’s evil actions. Don’t let the past poison today. Refuse to allow reinjury. Deliberately think instead of things noble, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy.
So keep trying, in obedience, to forgive, to let go of your anger until you suddenly realise that you have forgiven, and can remember past events without agitation. God be with us!
https://anitamathias.com/2023/08/16/the-silver-coi https://anitamathias.com/2023/08/16/the-silver-coin-in-the-mouth-of-a-fish-never-underestimate-god/
I've recorded a podcast on how Jesus guided Peter to find the necessary tax money in a fish.
The Silver Coin in the Mouth of a Fish. Never Underestimate God
So the taxman comes for Peter: Does Jesus pay the voluntary,
but expected tax for the upkeep of the grand temple and its
priests)? And, as he often does, Jesus asks Peter what he thinks because as a friend, he's interested,and as a brilliant teacher, he wants Peter to think for himself..
Sons do not pay tax to their fathers, they both agree. 
Then, Christ,who repeatedly referred to his powerful body
as God’s temple on earth, decides to pay temple tax anyway
to avoid a skandalon, offence.
And Jesus instructs Peter to cast a line and a hook–as amateur
fishermen did–insulting for a professional with boats and nets.
And Christ again demonstrates that he knows best even in Peter’s
one area of professional expertise. And Christ knows best in our
areas of giftedness. His call often involves working just outside
our zone of competence, forcing us to function with the magic of
God’s spirit and energy. The grain of pride must die for resurrection.
And Peter finds silver in a fish. When you lack the money to fulfil
the dream God has placed in your heart, do not rule out His
wonder-working power. Pray for God’s miraculous provision, or
for Christ’s surprising strategies to create wealth, rather than work
yourself to a breakdown, or manipulate or use others to get money.
Will God tell us, on request, which fish in the multitudinous seas
has swallowed silver? He sometimes might, for he hates waste. But
not always. Tim Keller writes, “People think if God has called
you to something, he’s promising you success. But He might be
calling you to fail to prepare you for something else through the failure.
To work all night and catch nothing, as Peter did, strengthens our
character and endurance so that we are capable of becoming fishers of
humans, and, if God pleases, sometimes, perhaps even fishers of money.
Hi, I've recorded a new podcast. Here's the link. Hi, I've recorded a new podcast. Here's the link. https://anitamathias.com/2023/08/06/following-jesus-is-costly-and-the-very-best-thing-we-can-do/
Jesus is blazingly honest about the cost of following him. It’s our most brilliant, golden choice, though it does mean we can no longer follow ourselves. We dance instead to his other-worldly, life-changing music, asking at each transition point of our day or life, “Jesus, what is your assignment? How do I do it your way?” 
For me (descriptive, not prescriptive), shouldering my cross includes eliminating sugar and starchy carbs (to lose excess weight!), not watching TV (extreme!), keep my house and garden organised and pretty enough. And, also, taming anger and outspokenness! And refusing to sing a song of worry, or linger in anger, training myself to sing instead a song of trust, praise, and gratitude. 
While following Jesus is electric, and joyful, following
ourselves could entail ruining our health with addictive foods, caffeine,overwork, or the siren-call of our phones. Following Jesus does not mean relinquishing our goals and ambitions, but surrendering them to Him. We do not own
our work; God does. And so, we must repent when we overwork, get too intense about success, or try to impress others with it. For competitive cravings for success, fame, money,
or popularity wreck relationships, and mental, spiritual, and physical health, and never satisfy, for the ladder of success has no end, and climbing it means exhausting ourselves for nothing. We’re still restless.
You have made us for yourself, Oh Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you, St. Augustine wrote. If we do not try to obey the Great Commandment: to love God, and Christ’s second commandment:  to love our neighbour as ourselves, we could, one day,open the treasure box of our lives and find only ashes. Nothing!
C.S. Lewis: “Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”
https://anitamathias.com/2023/07/19/persistent-pra https://anitamathias.com/2023/07/19/persistent-prayer-turns-christs-silence-his-no-and-absolutely-not-to-yes/
So, a Syro-Phoenician woman comes to Jesus, crying out,
“Lord, have mercy on me. My daughter is suffering terribly.” But 
Jesus remains silent. Undeterred, she keeps crying out.
And Jesus snubs her: “I was sent only to the lost
sheep of Israel.” But she can’t believe “No” could be
his final word. “Lord, help me,” she says simply. And
then, a crushing rebuff. “It is not right to take
the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” But hitting
rock bottom makes your prayers strangely powerful. “Yes,
it is right, Lord,” she contradicts him, “Even dogs eat crumbs
that fall.” Dogs, hungry, humble, grateful, happy.
And Jesus praises her dogged faith 
which catalyses the miracle she longs for. 
He says, "Your request is granted.” 
Never passively accept any apparently intractable situations.
Reality is infinitely malleable in the hands of God. We pray,
and people change, circumstances change. We change. So
keep praying until little drops of the kindness of God
soften and change the impossible situation and your heart. 
Take your little mustard seed of mountain-moving faith,
and pray, seeing the kind Jesus in your mind’s eye.
Continue praying, past God’s silence, his “No,” and “Absolutely Not,” 
until Christ, charmed, says, “Yes. It’s time! Go, girl, go. This way.”
Dream big and wide like childless Abraham stepping outside,
dazzled by an immensity of stars, and believing God’s power
could give him as many descendants. But don’t waste your
passion and dream-energy. Pray for things that will bring you
joy, yes, but will also bless myriad others, creating something,
in Milton’s phrase, that the world will not willingly let die.
Each of Jesus’s prayers were not answered affirmatively; neither
will each of our requests be granted. We are not wise enough
to know what best to pray for. But prayer, incredibly, does change
things. So keep praying for the shimmering dream which makes
your heart burn and quiver; pray past apparent impossibility until
the heavens open, the Spirit descends, and you live
and create with God’s spirit energising and filling you.
https://anitamathias.com/2023/07/08/grab-christs-h https://anitamathias.com/2023/07/08/grab-christs-hand-when-you-are-sinking/
LINK in profile
Hi friends, I’ve recorded a podcast meditation. Pls listen should you have time.
Sometimes, the little boat of your life is tossed in the darkness, in a storm-swept lake, far from shore,
And a dark figure looms, walking on water, and you cannot see his face, and you do not know his name, and you are terrified.
And in the encircling gloom, Christ always speaks the same magnificent words, “Take courage. It is I. Do not be afraid.”
He comes to us in the darkness, a future that looks bleak, with unsolvable relational difficulties or financial difficulties, or when intellect, energy, and organisation feel puny, matched with our dreams and calling. But it is Christ. Do not be afraid.
And Peter, the risk-taker, from an overabundance of love and impulsivity, says, “Lord, if it’s you, tell me to come to you on the water.” And Jesus speaks another of his great words, “Come.”
Jesus, the merciful, did not ask Peter to do something that transcended the humanly possible and Peter’s faith, but
since Peter wanted to get to Jesus as quickly as possible, and to do whatever Jesus did, he gives him permission to walk on water.
We sometimes yearn to do things for which we know we don’t have the money, time, abundant gifting, or even the character. Never begin them before you’ve prayed, “Lord, tell me to do it.” And if he says, “Come,” start tackling the impossibility, immediately.
And Peter walks on water, until he sees the almost visible wind, is afraid, and begins to sink. Fear paralyses, sinks, and destroys.
And Peter prays a powerful prayer, “Lord, save me.” And immediately, Jesus reaches out his hand and catches him, scolding, “Oligopistos. You of little faith. Why did you doubt?”
And the wind dies down, and Peter learns to keep his eyes on Jesus and his power when he attempts the impossible, and to cry out for Jesus’s help when he begins to sink.
Help us, Jesus, you who control the wind and waves, and all things, when we are sinking in the darkness, and all seems impossible. Tell the wind to be quiet.
Take my hand, precious Lord. Lead me on. Let me stand. Amen.
https://anitamathias.com/2023/07/01/how-to-find-li https://anitamathias.com/2023/07/01/how-to-find-life-changing-hidden-treasure/
Podcast link in profile
Hi Friends, I've recorded a new podcast meditation on Jesus's statement that following him is like discovering priceless treasure hidden in a field. The finder would joyfully sell everything to buy it, as should we!
Jesus speaks of living in the Kingdom of God, living with him as our High King and Lord, as a treasure, worth selling everything we have to gain.
He describes it as experiencing peace, joy, and operating in the power of the Holy Spirit.
As literally selling everything we have would take time, so too will adjusting our lives to living in Christ's invisible Kingdom.
It requires a slow, steady but definite adjustment of each area of our lives: relationships, what we read and watch, consumption and production of social media, travel, leisure, our spending and giving, time spent on food prep and exercise, on prayer and scripture, on reading and the news, on home and garden maintenance, on church activities and volunteering. Some of us will spend less time on these, others will spend more, for we each have a unique shape and calling.
Entering into the kingdom of God is a very individual pilgrim's progress; we each have a different starting point. Rick Warren of The Purpose Driven Life suggests that those seeking to change anything change their bodies first, by getting their exercise and diet under control... which is where I am starting!!
While following Christ is costly, for sure, it's costlier to follow what Tim Keller called Counterfeit Gods --“money, the seduction of success, the power and the glory,” climbing a cruel ladder which has no end, and never satisfies for long. 
In a remarkable account, Bill Bright, founder of Cru, describes his surrender to God as abandoning his puny little plans for God's magnificent plans. Once done, he said the future seemed brighter than ever before... And it undoubtedly was! Jesus's promise that the things the unbelieving world chases will added to those who seek his Kingdom first came true in Bright’s life, as it will in ours as we pursue Christ.
I’ve seen these Pre-Raphaelite paintings in Tate I’ve seen these Pre-Raphaelite paintings in Tate Britain several times, and they delight me each time. What a gorgeous museum!
And here is this week’s podcast meditation-- https://anitamathias.com/2023/06/18/the-spirit-helps-us-speak-creative-words-of-energy-and-life/ (link in Instagram bio)
On how we need the Spirit’s help to speak creative words of energy and life, not darkness and devastation.
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