Writing and Blogging | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

The Eagle, and Waiting to Discerning God’s Will Before You Act

The eagle waits at the edge of its nest for the winds of the storm to gain velocity. Once the storm is strong enough, it spreads its magnificent wings, and allows the storm to carry it where it wills.

By waiting for the wind to gain velocity before it flies, “it can run and not be weary, walk, and not be faint.” It wastes not an ounce of energy.

* * *

I think we can avoid much wasted effort if we do not act until the winds of the Spirit are strong, until we are sure we are flying with the wind of the Spirit, not without it, or, heaven forbid, against it.

And this is a learned skill.

I have been impulsive and impressionable for much of my life, and this does not make me rejoice. I look back on wasted efforts; projects committed to impulsively and later abandoned; or grimly seen through but without much fruit. Things done that came to nothing.

It is perhaps the story of many lives, but it does not have to be.

I have noticed the enormous difference even in small things– like deciding if and where to go on holiday, and what to do there—when I pray about it, and wait for guidance. It leaves me quite disinclined to commit to things, if I have not heard God’s guidance on whether I should be doing them. I now do not like to go through a weekend, or a vacation day without checking with God to see what ideas he may have for my day!

* * *

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor and the enemy of the people,” Ann Lamott says. I have, for decades, allowed my writing life to be poisoned by the stress and sadness of perfectionism.

“What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects—with their Christianity latent,” C.S. Lewis wrote.

So, I am trying to lower the bar–which is the best way to write well.

Apart from “little books,”–and I have just finished one which is with editors–I am trying to discipline myself to write more “little blogs,” 400-500 words (rather than my normal 800-1200 word blogs)– a single thought, a single insight, a single blessing, slight perhaps. I will write these on the off-chance that what spoke to me might speak to others.

Christian bloggers can play a prophetic role if they record what they hear the Lord saying to them. For He might be saying the same thing to others too, and perhaps our little blog is one way in which he will speak to our readers. Perhaps. God willing!

On Writing and Ambition and Some Thoughts from C.S. Lewis on Both

By Anita Mathias

So I have found myself a finalist for “The Tweeter of the Year,” an award from The Christian New Media Awards Conference.

I wondered if I should even mention it. But yeah, I am a bit pleased, for to be ambitious for one’s writing is natural–and why act deny it or be hyper-spiritual about it?

After all, nobody sets out to blog aiming to be the least-read, least-followed, or the very worst blogger in the whole world.

We write to be read, and to inspire and delight, and naturally we are pleased if we succeed in that aim.

* * *

The blogosphere is full of affirmation, and encouragement. Blogging has been a life-changing experience for me.

However, those Best of… Lists, while encouraging to those on it, as I have occasionally found myself, are discouraging—even a sock in the stomach–to those not on them. And the latter category includes most bloggers and writers.

The editor, Ted Solotaroff, says uncertainly, difficulty and doubt are as much part of a writer’s life as snow and ice are part of an Eskimo’s life.

It is the fact of anything competitive that everyone will NOT win more than they win; that no one can win ‘em all; that top bloggers or best writers lists change each year.

As Ted Solotaroff said in his brilliant essay “Writing in the Cold,” writers who survive and thrive must somehow learn to keep rowing, to not only not stop writing, but to somehow derive energy and resolve and inspiration from discouragement and failure itself.

Ah, a seemingly impossible task!!

* * *

As a Christian writer, here is how I deal with writing setbacks.

1 First of all, I consider my call. Am I indeed called to continue writing and blogging?

The answer is Yes.

It is my one gift, and I must continue.

(Both writing and blogging are such crowded fields, fraught with discouragement, that I now believe one should not embark on them unless one really loves them.)

2 Secondly, I hand it over. Hand over the success or failure of this enterprise of writing.

Surrender it to God. That gives me much peace.

3 Thirdly, I ask for God’s blessing. Visualize myself and this little blog of mine in the force field, the waterfall of God’s blessing.

4 Fourthly, have a little strategy session with God.

Am I using my gifts to the best advantage, writing about the things I can best write about? Is what I am saying genuinely helpful to my audience Are there simple tweaks which might increase readership? Any ideas for things to do differently?

If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. (James 1:5). It’s true! Often amazingly simple but fruitful ideas will emerge from these sessions.

5 And then, convinced that I am indeed called to continue writing and blogging, that I have surrendered it to God, that it has his blessing, and that I am seeking the most time-effective and strategic way to write and blog, I continue rowing!!

* * *

And here are some thoughts from C. S. Lewis on ambition.

Ambition! We must be careful what we mean by it. If it means the desire to get ahead of other people . . .then it is bad. If it means simply wanting to do a thing well, then it is good. It isn’t wrong for an actor to want to act his part as well as it can possibly be acted, but the wish to gave his name in bigger type than the other actors is a bad one . . .

What we call “ambition” usually means the wish to be more conspicuous or more successful than someone else. It is this competitive element in it that is bad. It is perfectly reasonable to want to dance well or to look nice. But when the dominant wish to dance better or look nicer than the others – when you begin to feel that if the others danced as well as you or looked as nice as you, that would take all the fun out of it – then you are going wrong.

And here is a letter Lewis wrote to his long-time friend Arthur Greeves who was struggling with being rejected by a publisher.

From the age of sixteen onwards I had one single ambition [to succeed as a writer], from which I never wavered, in the prosecution of which I spent every ounce I could, on which I really and deliberately staked my whole contentment: and I recognise myself as having unmistakably failed in it.

…The side of me which longs, not to write– for no one can stop us doing that, but to be approved as a writer–is not the side of us that is really worth much. And depend upon it, unless God has abandoned us, he will find means to cauterise that side somehow or other.

…Think how difficult that would be if one succeeded as a writer: how bitter this necessary purgation at the age of sixty, when literary success had made your whole life and you had then got to begin to go through the stage of seeing it all as dust and ashes. Perhaps God has been specially kind to us in forcing us to get over it at the beginning. At all events, whether we like it or not, we have got to take the shock. As you know so well, we have got to die. Cry, kick, swear, we may: only like Lilith to come in the end and die far more painfully and later.

…I would have given almost anything—I shudder to think what I would have given if I had been allowed—to be a successful writer…I am writing as I do simply and solely because I think the only thing for you to do is absolutely to kill the part of you that wants success.

(The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume 1, Ed. Walter Hooper (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004), pp. 925-927).

(Revised October 5^th, 2013)

Encounters with the Angel of Writing

By Anita Mathias

I heard a really amazing talk last month on writing at—get this!!– a large Charismatic Conference, RiverCamp. The speaker Mark Stibbe talked about the angel of writing, and prayed for an anointing to write for us.

I asked for it; I received it.

I have always felt guilty and conflicted about my writing, since I got married in 1989: wasn’t there some laundry or housework to do? Should I be encountering God in a laundry basket as a male spiritual adviser suggested?

Now I saw it as a calling, a spiritual gifting. An anointing!! I have, on a daily basis, written more words than ever since then. When I am stuck, I visualize myself as standing in the waterfall of God’s power and anointing, and ask to be refilled with the spirit.

* * *

Another thing Mark Stibbe said that interested me was that “Seeing” was a spiritual gift. If you have a gift for leading Bible studies, he said, you “see” things in the text which most people do not. I have long had the experience of seeing riches in a Biblical text which I thought were totally obvious to any reader, but which, apparently, were not. But I had never thought of this as a spiritual gift.

Stibbe talked about the gift of “seeing” as you write. And the manuscript which I had been stymied over for 15 years began to shape and coalesce in my mind as he spoke, and over the next couple of days.

That evening, a sweet Elim Pentecostal minister, Trevor Baker, in his sixties or older, spoke about how he had been stymied with his first book manuscript—his autobiography—for decades; how Mark Stibbe prayed for him; how the block dissolved; how he finished the manuscript in six months. He asked us to buy the published book!!

Stibbe himself spoke about how he received an anointing to write when John Wimber prayed for him.

(I am reading a book called The Anointing by R. T. Kendall, unusual, brilliant. It says God’s gifts and call are irrevocable. It examines how one might be able to transfer an anointing to write, let’s say, or be able to preach brilliantly, or heal, while no longer in a fresh, close relationship with God.)

I was delighted when Mark Stibbe prayed that we receive the anointing to write. Over the next few days, I saw the shape my book should take. I saw the painfully long chapters—between 12 and 20+ pages dissolve and reshape themselves into short 2-3 page 1000 word chapters. In the other words, the length of the blog-posts I’ve been writing for the last 29 months—the sound-bites in which I’ve been instinctively thinking. I was filled with a longing to write it, and it has been flowing freely and joyfully since then.

In which I Encounter the Angel of Writing

By Anita Mathias

Okay, I recently had one of the biggest sermon surprises in my decades of hanging around the beautiful, broken Church of Jesus Christ.

I came to RiverCamp to hear Heidi Baker, as well as Mark Stibbe because I am interested in his message of the Father Heart of God.

But what Mark talked about was—get this—writing!!

Yes, a whole sermon on writing!! Never ever heard one before.

That evening, the preacher Trevor Baker felt God told him he was going to heal someone with secondary cancer. And there was only one person in the huge tent with that. He said, “Well, that’s okay. Sometimes the message is just for one person.”

Stibbe’s message was so apposite that it felt as if it was also just for one person. Me.

* * *

Mark Stibbe spoke of writing as a spiritual gift, an anointing. He had attended a John Wimber conference as an ordinand from Nottingham and everyone else had a spiritual experience. But he did not.

However, when, on the last day, he went up for prayer, sad and disappointed, his right hand began shaking uncontrollably.

He asked God, “So, what’s going on?” God answers, “What can you do with your right hand which you cannot do with your left?”
“Write.”

And Stibbe said on that day, he received an anointing to write, an anointing, which, in R T Kendall’s phrase in his book, The Anointing, “makes the difficult easy.”

Stibbe then talked about an angel of writing, who would put its great golden wings around him when he was stuck, put a quill in his hands, and say, “Write.” Some pages from his most recent book, he says, were so “anointed” that he does not remember writing them.

He prayed for an anointing on us. Said part of an anointing is seeing things no one else sees. Seeing things before you write them down.

* * *

And in the course of the next two days, through talks on other subjects, through hours of “soaking prayer,” a vision jelled, clarified and solidified which filled my heart with joy. A re-vision, really. A recovery of lost dreams.

* * *

With a rush of sadness (because of how I’ve forgotten it) and joy (because God’s gifts and calls are irrevocable) I remembered how I began writing.

As a young woman, I had wanted to leave India to study abroad, and looked at several countries, the US, NZ, Australia, aiming low–and not thinking of the UK because of the exorbitant overseas student fees.

And then suddenly, I heard God say, “Apply to Oxford.”

Me, “Okay, I’ll apply to Oxford and Cambridge.” (Roy, now my husband, was then at Cambridge.)

Inner Voice, “No, just Oxford.”

Me, “And how will I pay for it?’

I hear, “You have your pen, haven’t you?”

And poetry came in a flood. Eight poems that evening.

(And the call to writing, and the call to Oxford are somehow intertwined, but in a way I do not understand. Yet!)

Later that month, I won a national poetry writing competition for a long poem I had written in three hours.

The gift came from God.

· * * *

But oh, how I have worried it and worried about it, tried to protect it, squeeze time for it, flog it, sinned in relationships to get time and space for it, necessarily and unnecessarily sacrificed for it.

And while—oh, I could cry—all the time it was a gift!!

* * *

As I have often written in this blog, I have two deep failures in my life. One is my failure to control my weight (though I have lost 13.5 pounds, and this is a battle I am going to win when the chairos time–is right).

The other is THE book. I had the idea for it in the late-eighties. I started writing it in 1991 and continued, off and on, until 2006, though, on the way, I got distracted and wrote and published essays, book reviews, film and theatre reviews. Oh, and had babies.

Chapters of the book met with success, the $20,000 NEA award, the $6000 Minnesota State Art Boards Award, prizes for the best article in the Catholic Press, many essay prizes, have been published in “Commonweal,” “Virginia Quarterly Review” The London Magazine, and magazines like “Notre Dame Magazine,” which paid $1000 etc. I once added up what I had already made from this unfinished, unpublished book—it was $35, 000.

And, yeah, if you detect a note of insecurity in the last paragraph, you are right!! I need to keep reminding myself there was goodness in the manuscript.

* * *

I took wrong turnings. I really wanted to write a story of my Roman Catholic Childhood in India. A teacher suggested I focus on my 14 months as a novice at Mother Teresa’s Convent. A leading editor and agent were very interested. I finished the manuscript in my life-blood through my pregnancy and the first year of my baby’s life. They turned it down. And in my naivete, I thought that that was the end of the world, instead of shipping it out again.

I then wrote the whole Indian Catholic childhood; again, agents were interested but each wanted changes which I couldn’t see how to make.

I had twisted my original vision of many short topical chapters into what the industry wanted—fewer, more thematic chapters. No wonder it was hard for me to formulate it in a magnetic proposal, write it or sell it. Also, I guess I did not try hard enough it to ship it, but crumbled with each rejection.

Crumbled too soon. Focusing on publication instead of finishing it. Focused on what the publishing industry wanted instead of my original vision. And, then, believe it or not, depressed, I shelved the project

* * *

And started selling antiquarian books in 2006, when I had bought my dream house I could not afford, and put both girls in a dream school I could not afford, either. I then founded a small publishing business in 2007. Which God blessed so much that within 3 years, my husband, Roy, was able to retire early at 47.

Which means I am writing full time, and have domestic support, the lack of which depressed and bedevilled me.

But I did not take up the book of my heart, which I have always been longing to write.

Instead, on guidance from God, I took up blogging!! Which for the last 40 months has squeezed out “real” writing. But taught me a huge amount about writing.

* * *

And then, as Mark Stibbe spoke, I clearly saw that the time had come to take up writing the book again.

And I saw the form it should take. Which was, interestingly, my original vision—many short chapters of 2-3 pages each. Roughly 800-1000 words each. In other words, the length of blog posts.

I am going to re-write the entire book, which is going to be so much easier than revising my original version. My style has changed over 40 months of blogging. It is less mandarin, less literary, less poetic, but easier to read. And to write!!

It will be too hard to revise the old manuscript. “Style is the man.” Or woman. It reflects your thinking and sensibility. When you change, your style changes. When you deliberately simplify your style and make it transparent, as one needs to in a blog, you also start thinking in shorter, lucid sentences and paragraphs.

Attempting to revise the old manuscript will be like revising someone else’s manuscript. I am a different woman now.

On the other hand, since much of the work of memory, writing and organizing into chapters is done, rewriting will be relatively easy. And very easy compared to writing it in the first place when I had masses and masses of notes and memories.

* * *

I am going to post chapters from the memoir on my blog as I write them.

I will plan to write 400-500 words of my book each day, posting each finished chapter on my blog as it’s done. 300 pages of 400 words each. 120,000 words. A page a day. And will be done with the book by September 1^st, 2014, so help me God.

And that is not an over-ambitious goal because A) the book is written. It just has to be rewritten into an easier and less mandarin style. B) I have been writing 800-1000 word blog posts every day for 40 months, and writing has now become quick and easy.

* * *

And I am so grateful to God for restoring my vision and enthusiasm for finishing my book at just the right time, the chairos time.

(Revised and edited, 31^st August, 2013)

Blessed are the Meek — A Guest Post by Jo of Travelling the Circle Line

By Anita Mathias

Jo blogs at Travelling the Circle Line. Do visit her.

Thank you, Jo.

‘Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.’ Matthew5:5

Meek is not a word that is used much these days. When it isit tends to have a passive nuance: timid, mild, docile. In the bible meek is used to describe Jesus (Matthew 11:29,1Peter 2:19-22)) and those are not words that I associate with Him. I think that the Bible must mean something quite different by the word meek.

Biblical meekness is defined as patience when one has been slighted or injured. It is the very opposite of sudden anger, malice andvengeance. It is a quiet and gentle spirit rather than haughty highmindness.The English word comes from the Greek word meaning companion or equal; the meek person is willing to walk alongside others without judgement, superior to none,she knows that everything she has and all that she is comes from God. One commentator described the meek person as one who ’carry themselvescourteously’. I like that.

This is the person who will inherit the earth. Is this inheritance eternal only or can it be claimed here and now?

So much of ourfaith is bound by the tension of the here and the not yet – the piquant combination of current joy and patient anticipation. In the Old Testament, the land is clearly linked to blessing but also to just and responsible living.

The New Testament teaches us that we can aspire to another sort of wealth, even more precious. Godly living, we are told leads to benefits in this life and the next (1 Tim 4:8). Meekness produces peace too great to be moved by small insults and I suggest that leads to contentment. We are free to enjoy everything God has given without grasping,without ambition, without demanding rights. We are joint heirs with Christ of the earth and everything in it, both spiritual and physical, now and in what is yet to be, if we are prepared to replace retaliation with peace, anger with courtesy and vengeance with love.

The Deep Play of Blogging, Philosophy or Theology

By Anita Mathias

My daughter Irene, aged 5

The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he’s always doing both. James A. Michener
Simone Beauvoir, brilliant philosopher and life-long partner of Jean-Paul Sartre describes in Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter her pleasure in studying philosophy.

She found grown up, brilliant people seriously discussing the very same questions which had intrigued her as a child. Eternity. The good life. God. Right. Wrong. Happiness. Time. Goodness.

* * *

I find the same pleasure in theology. It deals with the same questions which puzzled me as a child. Is there a God? Is Christ God? Why did Christ die, and for whom? How can I be happy? How should I live? What is the purpose of life?

* * *

And blogging for me only retains its fun when it has a child-like sense of play. When I can play with ideas, think them through, record my conclusions, capturing stray bluebirds and hummingbirds of thought. Occasionally sharing cool things I’ve learned– beach glass and starfish of facts; little ideas, little insights, little delights. When I can write short imperfect posts every day, rather than one perfect post a week.

Whenever I get too ninja about it, and want to write big, significant, meaty posts, which make people think, and get shared and retweeted, blah-di-blah, blogging takes too long, and loses its fun. Stress enters the domain of play.

And my life becomes slightly less pleasurable because my blog is taking too much time, making “real writing” impossible.

* * *

So, when I was praying about my blog today, I heard surprising advice, but advice I hear each time I pray about my blog, “Lower your standards. Write shorter posts. Try just one idea per post.”

Yeah!!

I no longer even try to write the big meaty posts. I don’t have the energy to. Instead, I ask, “So what are you saying to me, Lord? What are you teaching me?” or even “What’s on my mind?”

And these may be small, slight things, but they may speak to someone I do not know.

One aspect of a prophetic ministry is tuning in to God’s thoughts and sharing them with others.

Can a blog do this? I would like mine to try.

* * *

I know that I have the most fun, and the most delight in writing when I calm down, slow down and tap into the stream of what God is saying to me, or even into my own inner stream of consciousness, and then record it, be it a minuscule humble insight or a life-changing one.

For we need both, don’t we? Cups of coffee, glasses of cold water, snacks, and the occasional banquet.
And I find the most joy in blogging when being at play in the fields of the Lord, or the fields of the blog, become one and the same.

A Guest Post by Jan Sassenberg: The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth

By Anita Mathias

I love this post in which my friend, Jan Sassenberg grapples with the statement that the meek shall inherit the earth.

Jan and Karoline Sassenberg, who were born Germany, have been serving for the last three years with WORD MADE FLESH in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Find out more at www.wordmadeflesh.org or email thesassenbergsATyahoo.co.uk.

Jan and Karoline Sassenberg

Blessed are the Meek and the Great Commission

As a teenager, I was scared of the Beatitudes. Brought up in a conservative Free Evangelical Church, it didn’t make sense to me that Christ’s longest and best recorded sermon opened with words about the poor, the meek and the persecuted. Why not have the most important come first? Why not start with: “Surrender to me, Jesus, and you shall be saved!” Was Jesus perhaps more political than my pastors and teachers wanted me to believe? Too scared of becoming “a liberal” and of watering down the gospel I did not dare following this uncomfortable train of thought.

By now, 20 years later, without abandoning my love and complete trust in God’s precious word, I am not scared of liberals anymore. I sometimes rather enjoy looking at our faith from their fresh perspective.

Now, I can see the Beatitudes inspiring South American church leaders to instigate peaceful revolutions against dictators and drug cartels. I am humbled when seeing how liberation theology has given a voice to the voiceless and oppressed.

Now, I live in Sierra Leone, West Africa, as member of Word Made Flesh, a community that is dedicated to serving Jesus among the poorest of the poor of this world. We are reaching out into the slums and favelas of the booming mega cities in the majority world, or as I prefer to call it, the oppressed world. We want to be Jesus’ hands and feet, touching the untouchables, protecting the orphan children, clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, comforting the broken, sheltering the homeless.

Nevertheless, I still find myself puzzled over Jesus’ radical claim. What is it that Christ praises about the attitude of meekness? How can he promise the meek to inherit the earth? Does this reflect reality in a world ruled by social injustice, cruelty, and the survival of the most brutal?

Matthew’s third Beatitude is particularly uncomfortable as it is the only one with the promise of a reward in this world rather than in heaven. All other Beatitudes could be interpreted as finding their fulfillment solely in the after-world: being comforted, hunger being stilled, shown mercy, seeing God, being called sons of God and receiving the kingdom of heaven.

With the blessing of the meek, however, you need to bend the text far to say that “inheriting the earth” simply means inheriting the Christian’s promised land, our eternal home in heaven. I want to believe that this blessing as much as all of them have direct relevance to our identity in Christ now, on this side of the curtain. We know that the promised kingdom of Christ has already started to appear. We believe that we are not just having to wait it out until we reach the other side.

The word “meek” implies peacefulness although it does not only mean the act of peacemaking. The peacemakers receive their own promise later. With the word “meek” Jesus uses the same expression as in His self proclamation: “Come to me, all you who are weary for I am meek and humble in heart.” (Mat. 11:32) The NIV translates “… for I am gentle…”. Jesus is calling to himself the weary and a few verses later Jesus refers to himself as the one who does not quench the smoldering wick.

In Jesus’ own ministry, meekness and humilty are inseparably linked to ministering to the weak and broken. Jesus himself demonstrates his mild and humble approach when he kindly rebukes Martha’s busy bitterness towards her sister Mary. His loving gentleness is woven into his conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well. But despite the softness of his gloves, Jesus is never a conflict-avoiding harmony seeker. He corrects in love.

So how will such a meek disciple inherit the earth? As with all Beatitudes, Jesus does not come up with new ideas but refers here to the Old Testament. Psalm 37:11 says: “The Meek will inherit the land.” From the patriarchs to Jesus’ day, the Israelites had been anticipating the fulfillment of this promise. Becoming again a sovereign independent nation was the ultimate Jewish dream.

But now that Jesus, who said he did not come to abandon the law but to fulfill it, announces his own mission, he goes way beyond that. He promises the whole earth but he does not refer to political power. Jesus speaks here of the new worldwide “Kingdom of God“. We see this wider perspective throughout all his teaching. Asked about taxes Jesus says, “Give to Caesar, what belongs to Caesar and give God what belongs to God.” He refuses to be made king. And nearly all his parables are starting with the phrase: “The kingdom of God is like…” (a mustard seed etc…) All Jesus cares about is to birth this kingdom. Jesus promises “the earth” because it is His declared intention to expand his father’s Kingdom to the very last corner of this planet.

So, how does meekness empower us to reach this world for Christ? Is global mission a question of converting souls, large stadium crusades, and efficient strategies?

Are we in our churches more interested in the message than the recipient? How often do we in our churches and missions run our programmes by means of superior knowledge, skills, finances and powers? And how much do we really achieve with that? Jesus invites us back to caring for the one in front of us. Investing our time, resources and compassion in the “hopeless cases”.

In our community in Freetown, Sierra Leone, we find ourselves often overwhelmed by the vastness of the suffering around us. Children beaten mercilessly and dying needlessly, young women forced into prostitution, hopeless unemployed men turning to crimes and drugs. But in all this we find that God can use us best, when we turn away from programmes and let God use us in our weaknesses and limitations. Where He brings us low we are ready to truly meet our friends in the slum of Kroo Bay at their level. And when we gently touch wounds we see God touch and heal and restore.

anita.mathias