blogging | Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Burn-Out Vanishes When We Rediscover Purpose

When I blogged regularly, which I did for six years, I felt more alive, more alert, more attentive to my life, and what God was doing in it. In Frederick Buechner’s phrase, I listened to my life.

I have taken a six month blogging break, and the peril of blogging breaks (or writing breaks: ask Harper Lee or Margaret Mitchell!) is that you feel you have to write something substantial, beautiful, and meaty when you return to blogging …which seems daunting, and so you put off writing—and returning.

The cardinal rule for avoiding writers’ and bloggers’ block—and indeed for any endeavour—is to begin where you are, with something little and slight if need be.

So perhaps I should catch you up with a snippet from my life, and an insight stemming from it.

* * *

The country lane on the outskirts of Oxford, England which we live, unbelievably quiet and beautiful when we moved in over ten years ago, has changed its character as more people have moved in—“Traveller” families, as it happens. It has become noisier, less idyllic and scenic. The whole village was up in arms against “Travellers” moving in; there were public meetings and hearings; I was particularly troubled because they were moving onto a field adjacent to my large garden. But in prayer, I “heard” clearly that we were not to oppose them, so we did not; we ceased attending public meetings or lodging planning protests against them, much to our other neighbours’ mystification.

In early June, because of many and noisy neighbours in what had been a quiet and deserted lane, I realized that the time had come to move–from the countryside on the edge of Oxford, where I have happily lived for the last 11 years to the city, to North Oxford in particular. And we even had an offer to buy our house, phew!!

Why North Oxford? When I applied to study in Oxford as a student in the eighties, I felt a call, a leading to Oxford, and I have never felt a call to any other city. North Oxford is walking distance from my church, St. Andrew’s; from Oxford University where I am now on my second year of the German classes I am taking for fun; from the Ashmolean Museum; the superb Oxford Playhouse, friends, parks, the river, a good gym, yoga classes. I would be able to walk most everywhere.

North Oxford is, however, substantially more expensive than my country village on the outskirts of the city. It’s the most expensive area of the UK, outside of London!!

So…

* * *

Deciding to move has galvanized us. “God meant it for good.” We have owned a small business for almost ten years now, and we have started diligently and creatively expanding it to finance our move. So that’s a definite blessing that’s come from this decision.

Many, many, years ago, I felt a longing, to write a memoir. A call? A desire, a longing, a call–they are all intertwined. God reveals his call on our lives through the desires, gifts and experiences he has given us. But the book turned out to a bigger, longer project than I had visualized, and early rejections of the proposal at a hassled, overwhelmed time of my life broke me. Temporarily.

But writing this book was a mysterious call, all right, something that perched on my shoulder, and I didn’t feel free to move on to anything else until I had completed it. So I did not…move on to something else… nor complete it.

The tale has tragic overtones now, but God who loves good stories can make dark plot twists like Joseph-in-the-well-and-dungeon and Good Friday spiral upwards and morph into gold, into Easter Sunday

Anyway, when I decided to move because of my new and noisy neighbours, I swiftly realised that moving was out of the question until I had finished this book. Moving can be stressful, especially in middle age… People can lose their health, their peace and their papers…

So I decided to finish my book before I moved. Realising that living next door to my noisy neighbours was unsustainable in the long run galvanized me to do what I had always wanted to do for years, get some momentum on the book–which has been a great joy. How relieved, how delighted I will be when the book finally gets finished.

* * *

So here I am, writing slowly but steadily.

Funny thing… In June 2016, I was convinced that I was burnt-out. Our daughter Irene, our last nestling, didn’t want to go on holiday over the February or the June half-term breaks because of her mocks and A-S exams, and all I could think of was how tired and burnt out I was, and how I needed a long, active holiday, and to walk many miles a day to exorcise a cobwebby from my mind, and flood it again with oxygen and ideas.

But then an offer came to buy my house, and I decided to sell the house, and move, and to finish my book before I even contemplate moving. With that fresh hearing of the ancient call came a new momentum, and energy descended from the heavens.

I came across this quote recently, “Burnout is more often caused by purpose deficiency than vitamin deficiency.”

My burnout lifted, just like that.

I do not make bucket lists…I see God as full of kindness towards me, with open hands towards me, full of gifts, and am okay with accepting the gifts he pours out. But if I were to make a bucket list… well, finishing and publishing this book would be one of the few things in that bucket. And circumstances have now given me a sort of deadline.

* * *

Years ago, my mentor suggested that I have a writing goal. But incredibly, I didn’t then know how to set goals. You know I would hope to write two chapters, but instead wrote a teeny bit of one… and then what?

So this time, I started really, really ridiculously small, since I was adding a new thing–finishing a book–to a life already full with blogging, parenting, exercising, German classes, gardening, house-running, church, small group, writers’ group, etc. etc. I set the timer for 5 minutes, and decided to write 20 words minimum. The next day, I went for 40, then 60, and now I am at 2300 words a day, new or revised. I keep track of the words I’ve missed on busy days, and try to make up on the days when writing feels like flying (which are not that frequent, sadly).

So this is the second/third draft of the book, revising is not the most scintillating thing, but getting the book finished will be scintillating, so I try to sit down, revise 2300 words, do some make-up words, and then I’m all done for the day.

* * *

A couple of things that are helping me. I start my writing with reading, to take the revision process more joyous. (Currently reading One Man’s Meat, E. B. White’s memoir of country life which I have just decided is not for me, and Goodbye to All That, Robert Graves’ horrifying memoir of his service in the first World War).

I am using the Pomodoro technique, work for 25 minutes, and then take a 5 minute break to tidy and declutter, or bounce on my trampoline for 1000 steps, and then back to work. 25 minutes is a maddeningly short work session, but according to Britain’s NHS, one should take an active break from sitting every 30 minutes: “excessive sitting slows the metabolism – which affects our ability to regulate blood sugar and blood pressure, and metabolise fat – and may cause weaker muscles and bones. Essentially, the body is ‘shutting down’ while sitting and there is little muscle activity.”

I am using “Freedom,” software which blocks the entire internet for the short time I am reading and writing. Divided attention destroys productivity.

I have discovered that a three mile walk through a park or by a river resets my tired mind and floods it with oxygen again; I don’t necessarily need a week or a weekend away, though they are wonderful.

I have been influenced by a book I am reading by Harvard psychiatrist John Ratey, called “Spark: How Exercise will Improve the Performance of Your Brain,” about how running, lifting weights, yoga, dance and sport can spark a measurable improvement in cognitive ability… help you think more clearly, read faster and concentrate longer… essentially make you smarter. I have certainly found it to be true. I am taking yoga classes, and lifting weights, which helps me concentrate for longer, feel more alive and happier, and sleep better.

* * *

Take away? If you are listless, bored, burnt-out and aren’t getting anything much done, re-align yourself with God. Seek his marching orders for the hour in front of you, the day in front of you, the year. Each of us has been created for a purpose, and is intended to be a bright spot in the jigsaw, the mosaic that God is working on. Ask him to reveal the purpose he has for you in the coming year, or years, and then beaver away at it. Having a purpose and focussing on it has cured cancer patients, as we’ve all anecdotally heard; given the dying a new lease of life; lifted depression; helped people achieve more than they ever imagined possible.

What is the next purpose God has in mind for your one and precious life? Aligning yourself with the Father and working on it will fill your life with excitement and energy again.

Love, Anita, tortoising, and sometimes haring, away on the book she has always wanted to write.

At the End of Broken Dreams, an Open Door

By Anita Mathias

About 20 years ago, in Williamsburg, Virginia, we used to sing this in church, “At the end of broken dreams, an open door.”

I sung it because I liked the lyricism, but I had no interest in the open door at the end of broken dreams because then the dreams would have to be broken, right?

* * *

Well, well, well…

My daughters, choosing their own paths, ask me what my goals were when I was their age. I confess–with a wry smile–that my life barely resembles the dreams I had at 21.

Well, hello there, “failure.” Except the word has lost its sting. Sadness has given way to a shrug.

My life hasn’t worked out as I wanted…more dreaming than writing….though I perhaps have some good decades ahead of me.

And had a career worked out as I had wished, there would have been a lot more stress, busyness, pointless work, self-promotion, and exhaustion, and I would have reached middle age substantially more tired. And in worse health!

There are gains to all our losses—and some loss to all our gains.

The best thing we can do then is throw up our hands in acceptance and worship.

Failure. The beautiful thing about achieving failure is that we no longer fear it.

Failure is a re-direction. We have been whisked into a different plot.

* * *

The dreams of 20-30 years ago are not entirely “broken,” though they have morphed.

I wanted to write as beautifully as the writers I then idolised…Salman Rushdie, Vladimir Nabokov, Toni Morrison, Annie Dillard, Laurie Lee; to write with that beautiful texture, almost music. Yeah, I’d still like to.

However, that kind of writing comes out of immersion in literature, and the way life has happened…I haven’t read enough.

I took four years out of reading and writing to establish a business. At the end of that four years, I faced my broken dreams. My fingers had got stiff. My writing felt like the flightless cormorant of the Galapagos– bland, music-less, poetry-less compared to what it had been just four years ago. The instinct had gone dormant. That intricate lace-like writing which had once won me a National Endowment of the Arts award of $20,000– I couldn’t do it any more. I had lost the knack.

Broken dreams.

Once the business no longer needed my involvement for my husband is now running it, I wondered what I was going to do, how I was going to wriggle back to writing.

And I did perhaps the only thing I really know how to do… I prayed.

* * *

And, four months in limbo, I heard God suggest blogging…

That sounds like a grand way of putting it, but it’s the only accurate way!

My readers when I started were my Facebook friends…but slowly through the miracle of Google and the web and social sharing, they grew. About 10,000 people read my blogs each month, unique monthly visitors Google calls them.

And, ironically, my blogs may touch more people’s hearts, spirits and lives than the exquisite, artful writing I wanted to create. They may influence people for good on a daily basis. May help shape the way people think and perceive; help shape spirits. Blogging has been an unexpected adventure, and an unexpected gift!

* * *

I want to write beautifully, of course I do, and I will keep trying to write well until I die. Keep practising.

But what I am primarily aiming for in blogging is not a lace-maker’s artistry.

I think instead of a leaf, a kite, a raptor, catching the wings of the wind, flying high and higher as the wind lifts it.

I think of recording what God whispers to my heart.

* * *

I am trying to write–if it’s not too grand a word–“prophetically.” I try to hear what God is saying to me, and write it down. Record what I am struggling with…and the answers I have discovered. Answers which may perhaps help someone else up to the next step of the ladder.

And that’s more satisfying, healing, and enriching for my mind, heart, soul, and body than writing the beautiful literary books I wanted to.

Blogging…the open door at the end of broken dreams.

Will I ever write the books I wanted to? I believe so, though they will be different, more products of Spirit than of blood, sweat, toil and tears.

And that’s all to the good, isn’t it?

* * *
Anyway, it’s become second nature now, when I face the rubble of broken dreams, things not turning out as I had expected, to ask, “So what’s the plot, Lord? Where’s the open door in this rubble? Show me the road I am to take.”

You come to a dead end, and there is hope in the deadness. For nothing in this world truly dies; dead seeds reappear as sheaves of wheat. Every death has some resurrection in it.

This world whispers of infinity. Pi has been computed to 10 trillion digits. 10 trillion of an infinite number of digits? Is that success or failure? It’s interwoven. There’s some failure in our bright successes, and our failures have ironic gains and golden lessons.

* * *

There are no dead ends. The door which seems closed whispers of windows.

And that window swings open….and you see the stars.

Tweetables

For nothing in this world truly dies; dead seeds reappear as sheaves of wheat. From @AnitaMathias1

The best thing then that we can do is throw up our hands in acceptance and worship. From @AnitaMathias1

The beautiful thing about achieving failure is that we no longer fear it. From @AnitaMathias1

Failure is a re-direction. We have been whisked into a different plot. From @AnitaMathias1

Every death has some resurrection in it. From “At the end of broken dreams, an open door.”

How Can a Christian Blogger keep Fresh and Green Without Burnout?

By Anita Mathias

Image Credit

Friends from America mentioned that they no longer attend the Williamsburg, Virginia Church that we’d met them at.

The preacher had a knack of cutting to the heart of the matter, of looking at the things Jesus said in a new, startling way.

“Oh, why did you leave,” I asked surprised.

“Well, after listening to him for ten years, you’ve heard it all. Then it’s just repetition.” Oooh.

* * *

Christian bloggers set themselves the same task as preachers do, sharing spiritual truth on a daily basis. “It’s like writing a short sermon every day,” a vicar friend said of my blog, in some awe.

And how then can a blogger keep her writing fresh, when those who speak just once a week find not repeating themselves challenging?

* * *

1 First of all, accept there is no shame in repeating yourself. We are not celebrities who, apparently, wear an outfit once only, so much so that Kate Middleton, interestingly, has been praised for repeating outfits.

We do not need to generate 3650 fresh ideas every ten years. And besides, who needs 3650 new ideas?

My readership has increased ten-fold over the last three years which means that nine out of ten readers will not have read the posts from 3-4 years ago. If I think the same thing today, there is no shame in revising, developing (or, often, contracting) an old post, and resharing it, if it can be more of a blessing that way than loitering in my archive.

Writing entirely new stuff every day while good posts moulder unread in one’s archive makes sense if ideas well up naturally. However, the archive is good to root around in on tired and busy days.

* * *

However, since my blog is a reflection of my spiritual life, I would like it to be fresh and green. Some other ways to bring this about.

2 Reading “Leaders read, and readers lead.” Reading about other’s people’s adventures in the holy wilds of the spiritual life makes me aware of heights and depths of spiritual experience which I have not explored—the possibilities of prayer, of transformation of the deep structure of the personality.

3 Suffering pushes us deep into God. When we are writhing in emotional pain, other people’s platitudes won’t do. We need to find our own truth, our own comfort.

Times of suffering can result in losing faith–or, alternatively, faith can become deeper, more real and life-giving.

(I think, given a choice, I’ll stick with reading rather than suffering!)

4 I am enjoying listening to swathes of Scripture as I walk. I am learning a lot about God, what He is like, what He values, how life works, and how to live life well. Several posts spring from this. The Gospels themselves with Jesus’s slant perspective on life never fail to challenge me.

5 Travel opens up new ideas, new experiences. As Mark Batterson says in The Circle Maker, Change of Pace + Change of Place= Change of Perspective.

I learn the history of another region, and a little about its great men and women, its religion, art and architecture. Travel provides numerous new ideas to explore on one’s return. And blog posts inevitably flow.

6 Prayer, placing myself in the force-field of God, invariably generates new thoughts, ideas and blog posts.

7 As do deep conversations, plunging into other people’s lives, thoughts and experiences.

What do you think? How might a blogger keep fresh and green, producing new posts without burn-out?

Writing with the Wind of the Wild Goose of the Holy Spirit in your Wings

By Anita Mathias

Wild Geese fly in a V formation. The lead goose reduces the wind resistance; the others glide, almost effortlessly, in the currents she has created.

During a storm, the eagle waits perched on the edge of its nest for the wind to gain sufficient velocity. Once she knows the direction in which the wind is roaring, she spreads her wings wide, and effortlessly glides into the winds of the storm.

Have you ever seen hawks or eagles soar, wings outstretched, rising without a single beat of their magnificent wings, soaring, soaring? They are soaring on thermal currents—masses of air that rise when the ground rapidly warms up. Or sometimes, obstruction currents, when wind currents are deflected by mountains, cliffs or tall buildings. The resulting updraft lifts them to high altitudes at which they glide.

* * *

The Wild Goose was an emblem of the Holy Spirit in Celtic tradition.

And the eagle, in Scripture, is a symbol both of God, and God’s people.

Eagles never waste their energy flapping their enormous wings—they wait for, and then use thermal currents and obstruction currents to soar on the wings of the wind…

Flying is so much easier when we sense the direction the wind of the Holy Spirit is blowing in our lives, and in the world, and then open our wings and fly in that direction, using the energy he generates within us, and in circumstances around us.

* * *

I have been reading about “the anointing,” in R. T. Kendall’s splendid, “The Anointing.”

He writes: “The anointing is when our gift functions easily. It comes with ease. It seems natural. No working it up is needed. If one has to work it up, one has probably gone outside one’s anointing. If one goes outside one’s anointing, the result is often fatigue, that is weariness or spiritual lethargy that has been described as ‘dying inside.’”

* * *

I find that with my writing on my blog, and indeed all writing. God is speaking. Not God spoke, but God is speaking. He is by His nature continuously articulate, A. W. Tozer wrote. If I listen to what the Spirit is saying to me through the events of my life, record the mini-revelations or epiphanies given to me each day by the God who speaks continuously and is never silent, then blogging is quick, easy and delightful. And what’s more, it often speaks to people.

It’s when I write to grow my blog, wonder if I should write the topical posts that everyone else is writing, be strategic, capture the zeitgeist– that blogging feels heavy, a chore, work rather than play. Why? Because the wind of the Spirit is not helping me soar; I have to expend scarce energy with a mighty, exhausting flapping of wings.

There is a lightness to God’s work, an amused creativity—we get the impression He tossed off zebras, giraffes, toucans, morpho butterflies and orchids in a massive outburst of creativity. God was at play as these beautiful things came into being, step by step through the mighty forces of evolution. His work was deep play.

* * *

In his book, Homo Ludens, or Man the Player, the Dutch historian and cultural theorist, Johan Huizinga, suggests that culture stems from humans at play, humans playing with words, or music or paint or the sketches of mighty cathedrals.

And when I record the whispers of the spirit, write in the updraft of the wild goose of the Holy Spirit, blogging is easy, light and delightful. It has a bit of the playfulness with which I imagine God made the world. I am playing in the fields of the Lord, playing with God, thinking aloud, probably making all sorts of mistakes–but there is a fun and lightness to it all.

Being Authentic Can Be Tricky, But NOT Being Authentic Can Break Your Heart

By Anita Mathias

I read this entry in Emerson’s journal when I was 21.

Journal, March 29, 1832

I will not live out of me.
I will not see with others’ eyes.
My good is good, my evil ill.
I would be free— I cannot be
While I take things as others please to rate them.
I dare attempt to lay out my own road.
That which myself delights in shall be Good
That which I do not want— indifferent
That which I hate is Bad. That’s flat.
Henceforth, please God, forever I forego
The yoke of men’s opinions. I will be
Lighthearted as a bird & live with God.

I decided to live like that. Not praising what I don’t like. Not pretending to like it. Not making small talk that bores me. Not smiling at what I don’t consider funny. Being myself

And it proved harder than I imagined, especially—oddly–when it came to writing.

***

Thomas Merton observes in his essay “Integrity,”

“Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves. They never become the man or the artist who is called for by all the circumstances of their lives.

They waste their years in vain efforts to be some other poet, some other saint.

They wear out their minds and bodies in a hopeless endeavour to write somebody else’s poems or possess someone else’s spirituality.”

There can be an intense egoism in following everybody else. People are in a hurry to magnify themselves by imitating what is popular—and too lazy to think of anything better.

Hurry ruins saints as well as artists. They want quick success and they are in such haste to get it that they cannot take time to be true to themselves.

Masks, pretence and imitation: temptations in writing and blogging—areas in which, ironically, one should be most oneself.

“Every original writer must create the taste by which he is to be relished,” Wordsworth observed. Labouring in obscurity, a writer or blogger finds a voice, fashions a unique poetic style. Or perfects an expression of outrage at things rotten in the state of Christendom. And becomes hugely popular.

And then there are myriad imitators. But the flourishes, the pretzel sentences, the circuitous locutions–sound distorted in the echo chamber, obscuring rather than clarifying meaning.

However, “Me Too” books and blogs written in the updraft of a successful writer achieve a more rapid success! Of course, they do

In Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, Mephistopheles offers Faust all the world at the cost of his soul. Faust thought he had a great deal– until he had to pay the price!

The Mephistophelean bargain which faces writers is compromising our one wild and precious life for success. However, by not writing about what really interests us, in a style we consider beautiful, we, ironically, sacrifice the very joys that attracted us to writing.

And if we write what “the market wants” and get it wrong–ah, the misery!

I was tempted as a younger writer. A memoir of my Indian Catholic childhood was the book I really wanted to write, but the two chapters I had written about volunteering with Mother Teresa won a Minnesota State Arts Board award; a Jerome Foundation award, and fellowships to Writers’ Conferences, and my professor thought I could find an editor and agent, which I did, but I tried to write the book the editor wanted; an elderly distinguished man who’d discovered several famous writers, writing not what interested me but what I thought would interest him, and in the style I thought he would like.

I spun out what I wanted to be two 30-40 page chapters into a whole book–my short cut to success!! Well, the book, written in blood through my pregnancy and two years of my toddler’s life, was rejected. Of course, it was! It was written for a career, not to express my soul’s imperatives.

I lay down on the carpet and wanted to die. Crushed!

I gave up writing for a season, became an entrepreneur, founded a small company I still own.

I eventually returned to writing, of course, sadder, wiser–and, in jerks, to drafting the book I really wanted to write.

But I have learnt from my mistakes, and now hope I will be too smart to expend my one wild and precious life writing on things that do not really interest me.

And if success, consequently, eludes me? Well, the internet and democratization of writing has changed things. Success is now on a continuum, and I am content to take my place on it, be it “high or low or soon or slow” and write for the joy of creating, as birds sing for the joy of singing.

* * *

The first version of this was hosted by Esther Emery on her brilliant blog.

When Writing Feels Dictated by a Power Beyond Ourselves

By Anita Mathias

18 years ago, Lori, a friend from my Ph.D programme in Creative Writing (we dropped out in the same month) published a children’s book which became and remains a best-seller.

She said God gave it to her in a single morning, as she was at a cabin on Lake Michigan.

She made lots of money from it, and it’s still selling well, 18 years later, with spin-offs too: a DVD, companion books, board books, computer games etc.

* * *

At that time, I was writing with sweat and self-effort and self-doubt, and did not know what it meant for God to give you books. I had a friend, also a professional writer, who’d say, “I am not a naturally talented writer like Anita. I just have to rely on the Lord,” and I would look at her, baffled.

Rely on the Lord for writing? It sounded to me like relying on the Lord to fly a Boeing 757. I thought writing was a matter of reading, studying the craft, learning from teachers and editors, and practising. Always practising.

I have always been fascinated by many writers’ experience of God giving them books or poems, and have hoped (and prayed, but, sadly, hoped more) that God would “give” me books. [Read more…]

How Persephone Marlowe can Keep You Straight

By Anita Mathias

Image credit

When we moved to Oxford, and my daughter, Irene, was five, she sat next to a little girl in school called Persephone Marlowe.

And in church, to our surprise, there was Persephone Marlowe. And the whole Marlowe family who were lovely and became good friends of ours.

And when Irene was 10, I began to blog.

* * *

Now, blogging is an enormous vehicle of growth if you decide to be honest (since, anyway, one day all that is hidden shall be revealed).

And I was. I explored my discomfort with the church I currently attended (which wasn’t the wisest thing, and led me to having to leave it:-).

I explored my discomfort with contentious issues on the edges of faith. With those too ready to consign others to hell, with rigid positions on homosexuality, women’s roles, theology, or rigid inerrancy.

I threw the jigsaw of my faith on the floor, in mid-life, and reconstructed what I, Anita Mathias, really, really, believed rather than what I, Anita Mathias, had been taught.

And having questioned everything, I came back to a settled Mere Christian faith, and it was good. I felt at home in it.

* * *

And then I noticed that little Persephone Marlowe, now a beautiful teenager, was following my blog.

And, oddly, that settled the direction my blog was going to grow.

Persephone Marlowe was going to have plenty of her own faith shifts in time. We all do. But was I going to be the one to precipitate them? I, who know the anguish of questioning the very fabric of the faith so precious to me. It’s like jumping off a cliff trusting that the air will catch you.

I had asked my own daughters not to read my blog when I was working things out, so as not to scandalize then. The Holy Spirit would work on their faith in his own time. They continued to believe the conservative evangelical position taught in church, and I let them, while I was questioning–because I was questioning, and I hadn’t arrived, and some journeys can only be made alone, and one of those journeys is the journey of faith. In fact, my elder daughter Zoe’s faith is more conservative than mine, and when I don’t agree with everything Irene is taught at youth group, I am silent.

So could I, should I, be responsible for precipitating the faith-shifts of the teenagers who follow me, friends of Zoe, friends of Irene? Or should I celebrate the broad common ground of mere Christianity, rather than explore the exhausting, thin, low oxygen Machu Picchu air of dissent.

I decide. I probably didn’t believe everything my faith tradition taught in the way others believed it. But my common ground with other charismatic evangelicals was massive, and there was much to celebrate and rejoice.

There were a myriad celebratory posts I could write with good conscience, ideas which strengthened, encouraged, inspired and comforted me, and so might, if I were lucky, strengthen, encourage, inspire and comfort others.

I would major on the majors. Where I disagreed, I would largely be silent, unless I thought bad theology was actually harmful, in which case it would be my duty to speak.

* * *

When I tried to get my sister Shalini to join me in mischief, my mother used to say, If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

Now I sure Jesus meant it rhetorically, but I decided since I loved Christ, and loved so much about the body of the Christ, I would rather write celebratory, positive, faith-filled posts than risk scandalizing, or denting the faith of Persephone Middleton and the other sweet friends of my daughters who follow my blog.

Will my blog be saccharine sweet? Nope. My no bull-shXt rule still applies. Fortunately, as Adrian Plass says, “God is nice and he likes me,” and so the central fact of the love of God for us provides us a multitude of subjects for blog posts that are sweet, and nourishing and also true. Thank heavens!

A City Set on a Hill cannot be Hidden: Focus on Working, not Networking

By Anita Mathias

So you are going to build a city.

Dig its foundations deep. Pour the concrete. Design your buildings. It’s your city: Put in whatever you like—the Alhambra, the Hagia Sophia, the Sagrada Familia, the Parthenon. Throw in Notre Dame and Westminster Abbey.

Decorate your buildings as you wish—with the mosaics from Ravenna, or from the Topkapi Palacein Istanbul.

It’s your city. Put in the Pre-Raphaelites, the Impressionists, Botticelli and Raphael. Have your floors inlaid marble from Florence. Have indoor fountains and reflecting pools where goldfish glide.

Throw in chandeliers and floor to ceiling windows. Let your city be full of light.

You are building your city on a hill. It cannot be hidden.

* * *

You will, in moments of lesser faith, read blogs on how to hustle, how to promote your city, how to network, make connections, build a platform.

Oh builder of cities, beware. All these things steal time and focus away from learning the art and craft of city building.

Instead, seek God for the perfect blueprint for your city. Seek his inspiration for each tower and spire, each inlaid marble floor, each wall hung with Persian carpets, and each Tiffany lamp through which light glows.

Unless love runs through your city, and the desire to meet people’s needs for beauty, joy, peace, wisdom or rest, all the promotion and hustling you do will be futile. Nobody will long linger there, buy property there, and stroll through the boulevards under shady lime trees, hand in hand with their lovers.

* * *

There is a kind of networking which is sheer joy—if you connect with people whose work you love, if you praise them honestly, interact with their work whole-heartedly, then you make friends, and this whole city-building business become more joyful.

However, flattering people for their attention; making connections for the good things these connections might bring you; befriending people to use them to promote your work—how can one ask God to bless such endeavours? Oh woman of God, flee these things.

There is a sort of hustling and self-promotion that is practical atheism. We act as if there is no God who can help people notice our city on a hill. We act as if God does not delight in good work and want people to enjoy it. We act as if God cannot even now give us twelve legions of those who will enjoy our work if we ask him. We forget the power of prayer.

And the worst thing about excessive self-promotion and connection-making? It devours the time and energy that should go into making your rare and beautiful city, set on a hill. So beautiful that at night, when the lights are switched on, and coloured fountains play, people cannot but look up and marvel; their feet itch, they yearn to walk up and explore.

And in spring, they will delight in walking through its gardens of cherry blossoms, and will sit under their shade, and look at the fields of daffodils, stretching as far as the eye can see.

* * *

Besides, the connections which matter will arise organically. Other builders of cities on hills will notice yours, and ask you managed that 150 metre spire without visible support, and you will talk about flying buttresses. And you will ask them what pigments they used for those impossibly large stained glass windows which flood their cathedrals with rainbowed light, and they will tell you.

* * *

God delights in your creativity. Build your city under his eye, as your worship to him, seeking his wisdom, in alignment with his stream of thoughts which outnumber the grains of sand on the seashore.

Let him smile, and say it is very good.

And as for the audience you’d love to have?

Remember, a city on a hill cannot be hidden. It glimmers during the day, and its light shines through the land at night.