Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art
Betsie, Corrie and Nollie Ten Boom : The Righteous Among the Nations Praise the Lord anyway, because he is creative. He can create diamonds out of mud, coal, rock and the bones of dead creatures. Brute facts are just inert materials in his hands, … [Continue reading]
Narendra Modi’s supporters, Image: The Guardian. He wakes at 5 a.m. and does yoga for ninety minutes. He is vegetarian. He lives a simple, almost ascetic life. He has vowed celibacy to concentrate his energies on making India great. In a country … [Continue reading]
Jesus was a truly extraordinary human being. I keep learning from him as I read through the Gospel of Matthew. Sometimes I am put on the spot, and asked a question, with hostile intent, by people who do not wish me well, and who, I sense, will use … [Continue reading]
Martin Luther’s barber, Peter, asked him how to pray. Luther “ without doubt, at the time, one of the busiest and most hard-pressed men in the Electorate of Saxony, if not in the whole of Europe,” goes home immediately, and replies to this … [Continue reading]
When my daughter Zoe was born, twenty-one years ago, frazzled between nursing, and impractical plans of still writing, I made a mental prayer list to pray through as I pushed her stroller round our neighbourhood. And blush: All those items are … [Continue reading]
“The past is never dead. It's not even past.” William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun. Keats, sitting down to read King Lear again, feels torn between anticipation and the dread of immersing himself again in this scabrous tragedy. Once again … [Continue reading]
View from the palace, showing the island. Image credit. I’ve lived in Oxford for 14 years now (in two instalments) and try to walk around the Blenheim Gardens and grounds once a year, if not once a season. I love the lakes: they get … [Continue reading]
Francesco, Artist of Florence:The Man Who Gave Too Much The child gazes at the jade parrot on my jewellery box, her eyes bright and fascinated. I come to look too. The perky parrot grasps a cherry. He is surrounded by carnations, cosmos and … [Continue reading]