In which I explore writing and blogging and creativity | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Our Unique and Transforming Call and Vocation

Anita Mathias — Wed, 05 Apr 2023 12:07:45 +0000

We read in the Gospel of Matthew, that as Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon and Andrew, casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” At once they left their nets and followed him. […]

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We Have Something to Learn, and Something to Teach at Every Stage of Life

Anita Mathias — Sat, 07 Nov 2015 12:48:44 +0000

So what should an actress in Britain’s most popular television show look like? Like this? Or this? Or this? * * * Being young and beautiful—one would consider that a sine qua non for an actress—but Dame Maggie, who has exchanged her youthful beauty for a face with character in every wrinkle, has the best lines in […]

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When Shackles become Wings: On Domesticity, Creativity, and Me

Anita Mathias — Mon, 07 Sep 2015 13:13:51 +0000

I was married 25 years ago, while in a Ph.D programme in Creative Writing at the State University of New York Binghamton. I had just earned a BA and an MA in English from Somerville College, Oxford, then an MA in Creative Writing from Ohio State University. My husband probably hoped for a traditional marriage, […]

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On Juggling

Anita Mathias — Sun, 08 Mar 2015 15:00:55 +0000

Irene, my 15 year old, has decided to become a master juggler. (I blame Baroness Susan Greenfield who told her class that juggling makes you clever). And now the air is full of the swish-swish-swish of juggling balls. And as for me, words and ideas which might have been sublime (one can always dream!) slip […]

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In which Rest is an Essential Part of the Creative Process

Anita Mathias — Fri, 24 Oct 2014 11:25:31 +0000

The first chapter of Genesis explodes with creativity! God creates sun, moon and stars; banyans, baobabs and butterflies; macaws, mice and mastodons from a smile in his brain. He creates the world in exuberance because that is his nature. He is a Maker, a creator. And all of us are inherently creative, because we all […]

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When, For a Season, God Himself Blocks You

Anita Mathias — Thu, 02 Oct 2014 11:09:50 +0000

You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good, to save many lives,” Joseph quietly tells his brothers. (Genesis 50:20) Oh they did; they sure did, first throwing him into a disused well, then uncaringly selling him on for thirty shekels of silver to the Ishmaelites, not caring what became of him. And what […]

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Homo Sapiens and Homo Stupidus: On Giftedness and its Price

Anita Mathias — Mon, 18 Aug 2014 18:19:50 +0000

I live-blogged in Cambodia recently, fund-raising for a charity. We were to be accompanied by a “Christian celebrity” who had promised to do national talks on her return. The posters had been printed. Well, she was not at Heathrow. Among several possible forms of ID, she sent off her passport to get her driver’s […]

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I don’t have time to maintain these regrets

Anita Mathias — Mon, 28 Jul 2014 21:12:09 +0000

My daughter Zoe introduced me to this song by John Mark Macmillan: I don’t have time to maintain these regrets I am a memoirist (and also a restless, tiptoes person full of hope for the future). However examination of the past is rarely without regret. If only. I wish I had But that’s it!! No more looking […]

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On Flawed People, Perfect Art, and Happiness

Anita Mathias — Fri, 27 Jun 2014 21:13:04 +0000

In Creative Writing graduate school in the US, reading of the scandalous, chaotic and pain-filled private lives of the American poets whose luminous poetry I loved, I naively asked the professor if he thought one needed to be a good man or woman to be a good poet. (We were studying the “prophetic” voice […]

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As Birds Sing Because They Must, Even So I Write

Anita Mathias — Fri, 13 Jun 2014 12:31:44 +0000

As long as I have a garden to muck about in, and the health to do it, I shall not mind growing old. My garden is a deep joy at the centre of my life, even though I am making peace with not being able to keep up with it: it’s an acre and a […]

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