blogging | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

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

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 hybrid publisher who suggested I send in an outline.

I think that a post facto outline would help me with a logical shape of the book, deciding which chapter goes where; which should be combined; the significance and importance of each chapter in the grand scheme of things, and, most importantly how much space I should give each chapter if I want the book to be no more than 350 pages. Also, in outlining, consistent organic themes and metaphors emerge.

I shelved the book 7 years ago, and when you have left a piece of writing that long, it’s easier to rewrite it than revise it because “style is the man,” (or woman). You write who and how and what you are. Besides, your interests, priorities and sense of what is important and interesting change.

I start re-reading my mass of notes and outlining on April 10^th, and finally I have an outline. Just have to make sure it makes sense to a reader, and will send it in today.

“Don’t spend too long,” Roy says, “It’s a single use document.” “A single use document:” that’s a strange concept for a perfectionistic writer.

* * *

This is a story of success and failure. I failed in outlining that book quickly. I got tired, I got bored, I have long ago hit that dreaded state of diminishing returns where, tiredness increasing, you get less and less done in each writing session. The right thing to do then is to take a couple of days off, go away if you can, and just walk and sleep. But heck, I felt stressed about being behind, and couldn’t do that.

If I had asked God from the start about the quickest way to do it, and surrendered and soaked and saturated it in prayer, would doing my outline have been quicker? Without a doubt.

And it is not too late to do that now, for the last day that I’m working on this outline.

* * *

However, in God’s mercy, I have had corresponding success, during these 6 weeks which compensates for the failure.

I took up blogging three years ago, after hearing God’s direction. I did not feel comfortable just letting my blog languish while I did that outline. Reading a blog is a habit, and once people get out of the habit of reading yours, perhaps they won’t return (judging by myself). And besides, you yourself will have got out of the habit of capturing your thoughts and life in words.

So I did a sort of schedule shift. I prayed and listened to scripture on my iPod as I walked. And in my normal quiet time, I prayed and wrote. Writing became part of my prayer and worship for the first time ever.

And this was a seismic shift in my writing.

Instead of exploring what I thought about things, I prayed and tried to hear what Christ might think about those things. I strictly limited my blogging to 90 minutes a day, and sometimes prayed about, and drafted a post over several days. I have written about the Cwmbran revival, a prolonged failure in my writing life, anger, forgiving the dragons of my youth, what I hear Christ say about the sometimes strident pro-life movement, what I hear Christ say to those who struggle with their weight.

And in this month, in which I limited my time spent on blogging, and stopped working out my thoughts, and tried to listen Christ’s thoughts, my blog has risen to its highest ever on every metric: unique monthly visitors, page views, facebook fans, twitter followers etc. And with the fewest posts ever.

Each time I throw up my hands in despair, and ask God for his wisdom on how to do things, I am astounded by the results. It makes me yearn to do this in every area of my life.

* * *

Zoe reminded me yesterday that I had told her that Martin Luther normally prayed for two hours, but prayed for three hours when he was abnormally busy. I guess he had learnt to pray in a way which accessed God’s wisdom. In prayer he was what was inessential, in prayer, God showed him better ways of doing things.

* * *

When an idea comes from God, it is: Beautifully simple. Something we would never have thought of, and never had the guts to think of. Bigger than what we would have dreamed of. Both so clever, that we could never have thought of it—and, sometimes, apparently so nuts that, ditto, we would never have thought of it.

As I said, I am listening to whole swathes of scripture as I walk preparing for my pilgrimage in the hills of Tuscany in September. I listened to the book of Joshua yesterday.

And this was how God decided to hand over the ancient fortified city of Jericho to Joshua.: March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days. Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams’ horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets. When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have the whole army give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse.” (Joshua 6).

Who would have thought, huh? Perhaps the trampling, the shouting, the racket of the shofar, created powerful sound waves and mechanical and acoustic resonance, which weakened and then destroyed the foundations. Perhaps it was sheerly miraculous. Either way, the walls fell down in a way no human being could have thought of.

Similarly, the strategy God gave Gideon was zany, and brilliant, and what terrified Gideon would never have thought of. He goes with just 300 men so that it is going to be abundantly clear that the victory was given to him by the Lord. The men have trumpets and torches in clay jars, and surround the Midianite camp at night. At a signal, they smash their clay jars, blow their trumpets, and shout. The effect of the flashing torches, the trumpets, the shouting was bewildering to the just-roused Midianites especially since there were normally just a few trumpeters in each army. The groggy army is slaughtered. (Judges 7)

A brilliant strategy, totally from left-field, and not one Gideon would have thought of.

It increases my longing to rely on God for ideas, both in the areas in which I am at a loss—how to do a left-brain outline quickly, how to find readers for my little blog, how to lose weight.

And I want to hear him in the areas of my life which are working well, in which I think I do know how to proceed, but, by proceeding on my own wisdom and strength, I am only getting second best-because God’s zany, left-field strategies are guaranteed to far surpass mine in brilliance and simplicity.

Blogging and Penfriends

By Anita Mathias

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, randomly, about growing up in Austria after the Second World War. Everything was rationed; everything was scarce, even food. And, oddly, exercise books.

So schoolgirls wrote small on the line in blue ink, then coming to the end of the page, turned the book upside down, and wrote in black ink on what was left of the line.

A random little detail, but how it fascinated us.

* * *

We followed Barbara’s exciting life, week by week. She never married, but lived with another woman. Lesbians, I now surmise, but such a thought would never have crossed my mind then, or my mother’s, though my urbane father would have realised it.

She and her friend/partner travelled the world, sending us photographs of the Victoria Falls in South Africa, and SA’s amazing botanical gardens. Immigration to Canada opened up the world to her.

* * *

I was bored of India. I begged my father to emigrate as so many of our friends and relatives were doing, but he had already emigrated to England, where he lived from 1944 to 1952,

He qualified as a Chartered Accountant, and then worked for Tubbs Clarke and Co., Chartered Accountants.

While he liked his boss who was fair-minded (and hired him after all!) he realized that he would always be held back by the petty racism of the English. When an audit was requested, he heard his boss pre-emptively explain, “One of our accountants is an Indian. Do you mind?” Some did not. Some did. “It’s always best to ask,” his boss said, apologetically.

My father’s epiphany: “Why be a second class citizen in someone else’s country when you can be a first class citizen in your own?” He was now Controller of Accounts of India’s largest company, Tata Steel. We had a luxurious life. No way was he leaving to start again from scratch.

Any emigration to be done had to be done by us. My sister emigrated to the US in her early twenties and stayed there. I came to England, to read English at Oxford, moved to America, stayed there for 17 years, then moved back here 9 years ago, and am now a dual US/UK citizen.

* * *

Why am I telling you this? The same instinct that made Barbara Redlich and my mother write to each other weekly for decades, though they had never met each other. The instinct to record, share and preserve our lives, a human instinct since the cave painters of Lascaux.

Few people today have the time or energy to record their week in long, beautifully written letters which help them see the beautiful, the noteworthy, and the art in their own lives.

But facebooking stems from the same instinct, as does blogging. In post after post, we record our thoughts and lives and read other people’s.

Will you be my penfriend?

Living in the Updraft of the Wild Goose of the Holy Spirit

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. And then it spreads its 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 enormous, magnificent wings, soaring, soaring? They are soaring on thermal currents—masses of air that rise when the ground rapidly warms up.

And sometimes, they soar on obstruction currents, when wind currents are deflected by mountains, cliffs or tall buildings. The resulting updraft lifts them to high altitudes at which they can 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 rarely waste their energy flapping their enormous wings—they soar on thermal currents, obstruction currents, and on the wings of the wind…

I have been reading about “the anointing,” in R. T. Kendall’s splendid book, “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. If I listen to what the Spirit is saying to me through the events of my life, record the mini-revelation or “revelations” given to me each day by the God who speaks continuously and is never silent (God is speaking. Not God spoke, but God is speaking. He is by His nature continuously articulate. A W Tozer) then blogging is quick, easy and delightful. And what’s more, it very often speaks to people.

But when I look at other people’s important mandarin posts, strategic posts that capture the zeitgeist and echo what everyone else is writing about, and wonder if I should go and do likewise 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 abounding creativity–tossing off creating zebras, giraffes, toucans, morpho butterflies or orchids. It is not fanciful to suppose that God was at play as these beautiful things came into being, step by step through the mighty forces of evolution. Work merging into delightful play.

* * *

In his book, Homo Ludens, or Man the Player, the Dutch historian and cultural theorist, Johan Huizinga, suggests that culture stems from man at play, man simply 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. And I am playing in the fields of the Lord, thinking aloud, possibly, probably making mistakes–but oh, it is all such fun!!

Zapping Negativity and Worry Through Prayer and Faith

By Anita Mathias

Dr. Barbara Fredrickson in her book Positivity ( Norman Vincent Peale with data) says that “experiencing positive emotions in a 3-to-1 ratio to negative ones leads people to a tipping point beyond which they naturally become more resilient to adversity and effortlessly achieve what they once could only imagine.”

And how do we do experience three positive emotions to one negative one?

Well, here’s one way for a Christian: We interject prayer into our lives, until it becomes as instinctive as breathing. Okay, let’s start small: As instinctive as worrying!

Some examples…

It’s University application season, and parents and children are getting nervous. None of us wants to drop the ball. My daughter Irene is applying to one of the most competitive courses in one of the most competitive Universities in Britain.

We can do this two ways…though worry and anxiety and striving, or in peace and quiet and trust and prayer from which the wisdom and strategies we need will blossom. I know which path we are going to take. So each worry, I plan to turn into prayer, so that, whatever the outcome, with God’s help this is going to be the most prayer-soaked University application ever.

* * *

I now try to add a 50 percent margin to everything I do. If I think it will take 30 minutes to get to small group, or to German class, I leave 45 minutes early, and use the extra time to practice German on Duolingo or catch up with email, and replies to Facebook comments or tweets. And this injects serenity into my day.

And what when things go wrong, as things are apt to do, and I am rushing somewhere and sense time is against me? I relax. I do my Duolingo. I listen to my book on tape. I breathe. I close my eyes and pray (Roy drives!) about the next things in my day. I do not look at the time. Half the time, we are not late after all, and when we are… well, at least I don’t know how late. Being stressed about the outcome won’t change it, but using the time to retreat into the cave of God, there’s holiness and peace and wisdom and strength in that.

* * *

I’ve blogged for over five years now, and every now and then I hit a wall.

And the wall—a temporary plateau in subject matter, style and audience–is an important thing for a blogger to hit. Otherwise, we can go on autopilot, saying the same things we’ve said before, boring ourselves and the world!!

When I used to hit a wall, I would feel I should blog up, write more mandarin posts, carefully written, long, on subjects likely to speak to or engage many people. Yeah, sounds to me like a recipe for writers’ block, insecurity, frustration, weariness and stress. For it’s best to blog your weekday self, not your Sunday best!

But now that I am tired, when I hit a wall, I blog down. Share little things which interest me, a bit like Facebook. Share my fears, failures and worries. Find my subject matter in honesty about what it’s really like to follow Christ. Find newness in honesty, the best place to find newness!

And then I pray—for ideas, for time, for energy, for readers, for deeper surrender, for the ability to abide in Christ ever more deeply, to burrow deeper into his heart, and record what I overhear as Isaiah did. Prayer thus converts the butterfly flutter of fear when stats plunge into faith and assurance, which is a sine qua none for writing well and quickly.

* * *

I have lost 24 pounds since changing my diet, but as anyone who tries to change their body knows, scales have a mind of their own. And when they tilt upwards, I have learnt that there is only one thing to do to keep focused—return to thanksgiving for all I have lost. Renew a commitment to health, to 10,000 steps a day, and more fruits and vegetables!

Ask Christ “in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” to show me the best way to get strong.

And my heart and emotions are stabilized and, indeed, hopeful.

* * *

Prayer calms me, opens my mind up to possibilities, reassures me of an infinite power beyond myself. I work in a more assured and relaxed way.

These are the benefits of prayer, if there were no God.

But, of course, there is a God and so prayer has a power whose limits we can only guess.

Many things happen in our lives, and in other people’s lives because we have prayed.

So much so, that as Mark Batterson says, the transcript of our prayers can become the transcript of our lives.

Some Ways To Trick Yourself Into Writing When You Don’t Want To

By Anita Mathias

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Writing on a laptop with WiFi is so sub-optimal. There are myriad distractions. When, every Sunday, Rescue Time, an app I use, tells me how much time I have spent on Facebook, Twitter, other people’s blogs and online newspapers and journals—“consuming ideas,” and how much time writing—“creating,”-I am totally horrified.

* * *

Anyway, here are a few ways I trick more writing out of myself.

1 Switch Between Two Pieces of Writing

Sometimes, when I think I am mentally tired, I am not really. My conscious has worked as much as it can on what I am writing. I am bored, or have hit a wall. I need to put it aside now for an hour or two to let my unconscious mull over it.

However, taking up a new piece of work will give me fresh energy and passion.

I find I definitely get more written if I can switch between two pieces of work.

2 Set a Timer

When I don’t feel like writing, feel sleepy, tired, lethargic, sluggish, then putting a timer for just 15 minutes, or just even 5, gets me going. The timer goes off and feels like an intrusion. I want to continue writing.

The trick with writing, as with exercise is just starting.

3 Take a Short Break

After a few days of serious work, my spirit protests. I feel as if I want a break. It really, really helps to just declare a Sabbath. I garden, I exercise, I tidy up, I pray. I watch a movie. The well refills. Inchoate thoughts jell. And then, after a few hours off, I am delighted to get back to work.

If, on the whole, you love writing, and occasionally really don’t want to write, don’t. Do other things, do something physical until the underground springs bubble up again like a geyser.

What are your favourite tricks for tricking writing out of yourself?

The Poet, the Albatross and the Christian

By Anita Mathias

The Albatross

Sometimes, to entertain themselves, the men of the crew
Lure upon deck an unlucky albatross, one of those vast
Birds of the sea that follow unwearied the voyage through,
Flying in slow and elegant circles above the mast.

No sooner have they disentangled him from their nets
Than this aerial colossus, shorn of his pride,
Goes hobbling pitiably across the planks and lets
His great wings hang like heavy, useless oars at his side.

How droll is the poor floundering creature, how limp and weak —
He, but a moment past so lordly, flying in state!
They tease him: One of them tries to stick a pipe in his beak;
Another mimics with laughter his odd lurching gait.

The Poet is like that wild inheritor of the cloud,
A rider of storms, above the range of arrows and slings;
Exiled on earth, at bay amid the jeering crowd,
He cannot walk for his unmanageable wings.

— George Dillon, Flowers of Evil (NY: Harper and Brothers, 1936)

We saw huge, white albatrosses glide on their giant wings in New Zealand in 2009. Aloft, in their native element, they are majestic, sublime.

Once captured, and mocked by sailors who force them to waddle on deck where their giant wings hamper their walk, as Baudelaire describes, they are piteous and comic. The gigantic wings which helped them soar are now comic impediments

* * *

God designs an ideal medium, aerial, terrestrial, submarine, for each of us, and we are at home and happy when we are in it. God determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live (Acts 17:26). When we are in the right place, doing what we are meant to do, there is a sense of ease, a sense of soaring.

I have finally found this place. I am living in the town in which I have most longed to live, Oxford, with its heady combination of history, architecture, art, Christian and literary history, beauty, nature and stimulation.

I am beginning to get back into the work I most enjoy, creative prose, and am enjoying my blog. I am again enjoying reading. And I am enjoying the brainy, creative community in my church, St. Andrew’s, Oxford.

Of course, it took years for the pieces of the puzzle to fit together, and for me to discover work and a place which make me very happy.

Taking the time to discover the roles God has created us for, and the work which makes our souls sing—ah, these are worthwhile quests, for when we are doing the right work, and are in the right place and the right relationships, we can soar in the way we are designed to.

How about you? Have you discovered what you would like to make your life’s work? A church which permits your fullest flourishing? What are the dreams which God has placed in your heart, and are you able to work on them daily or weekly, at least a little?

What a string of personal questions! I’d love to hear your answers!

Invaluable Advice on Creativity for Bloggers and Poets from the Poet, William Stafford

By Anita Mathias

I learnt this liberating writing tip from the poet, William Stafford, when he was a visiting writer at Ohio State University where I was doing a Masters in Creative Writing: You need to write the bad poems to get to the good poems.

Get the bad poems out of the way; express the ideas however slight they might initially seem, for perhaps the idea you are conscious of is but the tip of the iceberg of the idea you are not conscious of. Write it down; sharpen your writing skills; improve your technique. And then you are ready for the good poems when they come.

If, however, you second-guess the poems: the subject is slight, it’s sentimental, it’s boring, it’s done before, it’s too abstract, too cliched–you become a critic, rather than a creator. More and more embryonic poems will have this shadow of judgement thrown over them. Your mind will become a self-cancelling system. Ideas will go from your mind to the waste-paper basket without ever having been written down.

And good poems may go this way too. You may begin to lose the confidence and self- belief to write them down.

William Stafford’s famous advice for dealing with writer’s block helps me as a blogger: to be willing to lower my standards. To be willing to write slight posts, express slight thoughts.

Then writing becomes as instinctive as breathing, my brain moves to my finger tips, and I keep current with the flow of my inner life and thoughts. Not being willing to post slight posts leads to perfectionism which as Ann Lamott says is the voice of the oppressor and the enemy of the people.

The willingness to fail. The willingness to take risks. The willingness to try something new, even if it is far below your usual standards. These are all essential elements of creativity.

And they keep blogging easy, pleasant and a joy, rather than one more self-imposed chore.

* * *

I love William Stafford’s liberating essay, A Way of Writing.

“A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them. That is, he does not draw on a reservoir; instead, he engages in an activity that brings to him a whole succession of unforeseen stories, poems, essays, plays, laws, philosophies…

Back in school, from the first when I began to try to write things, I felt this richness. One thing would lead to another; the world would give and give. Now, after twenty years or so of trying, I live by that certain richness.

The importance of just plain receptivity… When I write, I like to have an interval before me when I am not likely to be interrupted. For me, this means usually the early morning, before others are awake.

I get pen and paper, take a glance out of the window (often it is dark out there), and wait. It is like fishing. But I do not wait very long, for there is always a nibble–and this is where receptivity comes in.

To get started I will accept anything that occurs to me. Something always occurs, of course, to any of us. We can’t keep from thinking. Maybe I have to settle for an immediate impression: it’s cold, or hot, or dark, or bright, or in between! If I put down something, that thing will help the next thing come, and I’m off. If I let the process go on, things will occur to me that were not at all in my mind when I started. These things, odd or trivial as they may be, are somehow connected. And if I let them string out, surprising things will happen.

If I let them string out…. Along with initial receptivity, then, there is another readiness: I must be willing to fail. If I am to keep on writing, I cannot bother to insist on high standards. I must get into action and not let anything stop me, or even slow me much.

By “standards” I do not mean “correctness” spelling, punctuation, and so on. These details become mechanical for anyone who writes for a while. I am thinking about such matters as social significance, positive values, consistency, etc…. I resolutely disregard these. Something better, greater, is happening!

I am following a process that leads so wildly and originally into new territory that no judgment can at the moment be made about values, significance, and so on. I am making something new, something that has not been judged before. Later others–and maybe I myself–will make judgments. Now, I am headlong to discover. Any distraction may harm the creating.

So, receptive, careless of failure, I spin out things on the page. And a wonderful freedom comes. If something occurs to me, it is all right to accept it. It has one justification: it occurs to me. No one else can guide me. I must follow my own weak, wandering, diffident impulses.

A strange bonus happens. At times, without my insisting on it, my writings become coherent; the successive elements that occur to me are clearly related. They lead by themselves to new connections.

Sometimes the language, even the syllables that happen along, may start a trend. Sometimes the materials alert me to something waiting in my mind, ready for sustained attention. At such times, I allow myself to be eloquent, or intentional, or for great swoops (Treacherous! Not to be trusted!) reasonable. But I do not insist on any of that; for I know that back of my activity there will be the coherence of my self, and that indulgence of my impulses will bring recurrent patterns and meanings again.

This attitude toward the process of writing creatively suggests a problem for me, in terms of what others say. They talk about “skills” in writing. Without denying that I do have experience, wide reading, automatic orthodoxies and manoeuvres of various kinds, I still must insist that I am often baffled about what “skill” has to do with the precious little area of confusion when I do not know what I am going to say and then I find out what I am going to say. That precious interval I am unable to bridge by skill.

What can I witness about it? It remains mysterious, just as all of us must feel puzzled about how we are so inventive as to be able to talk along through complexities with our friends, not needing to plan what we are going to say, but never stalled for long in our confident forward progress. Skill? If so, it is the skill we all have, something we must have learned before the age of three or four.

A writer is one who has become accustomed to trusting that grace, or luck, or–skill.”