blogging | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Burn-Out Vanishes When We Rediscover Purpose

Anita Mathias — Mon, 19 Dec 2016 22:25:52 +0000

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: […]

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At the End of Broken Dreams, an Open Door

Anita Mathias — Sun, 22 Mar 2015 11:05:20 +0000

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, […]

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

Anita Mathias — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 21:01:16 +0000

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 […]

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

Anita Mathias — Sat, 18 Jan 2014 19:44:53 +0000

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 […]

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

Anita Mathias — Mon, 13 Jan 2014 17:43:23 +0000

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 […]

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When Writing Feels Dictated by a Power Beyond Ourselves

Anita Mathias — Tue, 15 Oct 2013 09:56:15 +0000

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 […]

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How Persephone Marlowe can Keep You Straight

Anita Mathias — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 07:37:18 +0000

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 […]

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

Anita Mathias — Tue, 02 Jul 2013 08:28:24 +0000

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 […]

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On Success and Failure and Accessing God’s Zany, Left-Field Ideas

Anita Mathias — Mon, 20 May 2013 10:16:43 +0000

I’ve had a bit of a nose-to-the-grindstone month, trying to outline a book.This was difficult as I’ve already written and fine-tuned the last third of the book, and have a first draft of the first two-thirds.However, I had written the chapters topically, dealing with each subject which interested me, but am now publishing with a […]

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Blogging and Penfriends

Anita Mathias — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 21:45:57 +0000

When I was growing up in India, letters with a foreign stamp were exciting, a window into exotic worlds. And every week, a thick envelope from Canada arrived, from my mother’s penfriend, Barbara Redlich, to whom she had written for decades, but never met. Barbara was Austrian, and in a letter I’ve kept, wrote, […]

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