C. S. Lewis | Dreaming Beneath the Spires

On Prayer-Walking, Seeking the Kingdom and Getting it All Thrown in

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Lake Bled, Slovenia where we were last summer

A friend describes her passion as: exercising and travel and exercising when she travels. The last phrase made me feel wistful because I never used to exercise when I travel. I found spending all day on my feet challenge enough. But then, on my return, it took me several weeks, a couple of months, to recover the distances and speed I had achieved before I went travelling–those personal bests.

On our last trip however, I exercised–ran for half an hour one day, walked a mile as fast as I could on the next, and, oddly, had plenty of energy for everything else.

I thought of what Annie Dillard says of writing, “One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful: it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.”

What’s true of writing and blogging is true too of hoarding strength, as I did on holiday (or of hoarding money!). “You open your safe and find ashes.”

* * *

My own favourite thing is not so much exercising when I travel, though, as praying when I walk, and walking when I pray. I came back today from doing a German presentation at the class I am taking “for fun,” (which is proving far more challenging than I expected). And I walked and walked, all the cobwebs and adrenaline leaching from my mind, my spirit quietening down, turning naturally to prayer.

Worries surfaced and I took them to Father, for had not Jesus said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled, and neither let them be afraid,” and I prayed for his eyes to see. My lane has changed its character in the ten years I’ve lived here; five new people–four of them Traveller families–have moved in on what was undeveloped green belt land; my peaceful rural retreat has suddenly become noisy.

I had counted myself blessed to be able to buy a one and a half acre garden in Oxford. I love my garden, but I cannot maintain it in the eight hours a week I have budgeted to work in my garden. Perhaps—heresy—I would be happier with a smaller garden, .50 acre; .75 acre?

I am always driving across town to North Oxford, to church, to small group, to visit friends, to the German class at Oxford University, to Writers in Oxford meetings, to walk in the University Parks, or by the river. The centre of my life in Oxford is there. The thought of moving there and walking everywhere is powerfully attractive.

I remembered a pastor saying that God guides us through a kick from behind, and a pull from the front. Is this it? Is it time for a move? Yes, I think so. If God is in an idea, it clarifies and strengthens through time. I think this is from him…

* * *

I brought my tired mind to God, and asked him to place his giant hand on it, and heal it. I brought my spirit to him, and asked him to breathe, breathe, breathe on it. For is this not the greatest inheritance we have, that Jesus promises us his Holy Spirit, that Jesus breathes on us, as he breathed on the disciples? I placed my worries in God’s hand, and let the Father sing over me, and quiet me with his love.

When I looked at the time on my Runkeeper app, I had got my fastest times for a mile. Three years ago, I so despaired of my fitness that I (don’t laugh) got a walking coach to teach me to walk fast. Joanna said that I would not improve fitness, unless I pushed myself to walk as fast as I can. And I do push myself a bit every day, a fast mile on one day, and a half hour run on the next. However, since I got a Fitbit in January, I have faithfully walked 10,000 to 11,500 steps every day. And now with the increased endurance, I get personal bests without the bursting lungs, straining heart, aching muscles and sweat-drenching that it took before.

The sweetest things in life come while we are focused on other and usually better things. He was seeks to save his life will lose it, and he who seeks Jesus first will also get the things the rest of the world restlessly seeks for. (Matt 6:33).

* * *

In my first decade or two as a married woman, I was dismayed by the weight of domesticity (especially with a rather messy and absent-minded husband). All that shopping and cleaning and cooking and laundry and child-amusing; how on earth would I ever get any writing done, writing which I felt was my one call from God? So I grabbed and fought for and stole writing time, ignoring the mundane tasks of domesticity (though I loved the reading to children part), but I did not complete the big project of my heart. Perhaps God did not let me complete it then, for I had not yet learnt the lessons he needed to teach me.

More recently, I have revised my sense of calling. I am called to be a writer, yes, but that is not my only calling. I am also called to live in relationship with my family, to run a house and keep a garden pretty, and to be a friend of Jesus and to my real-life friends. The intensity about writing has vanished. Writing is part of my worship of Jesus, as is running a house and garden, and being a friend to my family and friends, and loving Jesus through prayer and studying his beautiful Words.

And as the intensity about writing leached away what I had wanted, time to write, is being given to me without angst and conflict. The pages are piling up on the big project of my heart.

Seek to save your life and you lose it. Seek first the Kingdom and all the things the Pagans run after will be added to you.

C. S. Lewis writes, “The principle runs through all life from top to bottom: Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”

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Slovenia

The True Fairy Tale of the Life of Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury

By Anita Mathias

He had been “the shyest, most unhappy-looking boy you could imagine,” –so journalist Charles Moore recollects Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, a fellow-student at Eton, and Trinity College, Cambridge.

The alcoholic father, who had custody of him was, The Telegraph had revealed, a conman, a trickster, and (to Welby’s surprise) German-Jewish, not upper-class English. His childhood was “utterly insecure”. Except when at school at Eton, he never spent more than a week at a place; there were “moonlight flits” to evade rent and creditors. His father did not pay the fees for Welby’s last two years at Eton, a feat in itself!!

And then, at Cambridge, something happened. The Spirit blew; there was a revival of sorts; Nicky Gumbel of Alpha, and Nicky Lee of HTB, both at Trinity, as well as three other Nickys (four of them Etonians!) became Christians. I asked Jesus to be the Lord of my life. The sense that something had changed was instantaneous, Welby said. It felt like the world changing, like someone I’d never known coming into the room and being there. He was “overwhelmed by a sense of God’s love for him,” as Andrew Atherstone writes in his unofficial biography of Welby.

The child of alcoholic parents, whose childhood was deeply insecure, becomes the spiritual leader of 85 million Anglicans.

An unlikely and wonderful true fairy tale.

* * *

And that is why we love fairy tales. Because, not infrequently, not infrequently, our lives and the lives of those we love resemble them. Because a kind author is crafting the story of our lives, “shaping our ends for good, rough hew them how we will.” Because Christianity is a true fairy tale, as Tolkein famously told C. S. Lewis, contributing to his conversion.

For the dark areas of one’s life to turn to the gold of fairy tales is an entirely reasonable expectation when we invite Jesus Christ to control these stuttering areas, ask for his instructions, and then do whatever he tells us.

A challenging marriage, a stalled career, a faltering business, ravaged health, impossible dreams–in the midst of all of these, it is completely rational to have great hope because of the power of God. Each of these can completely turn around once we invite Jesus to be the Lord of that area, and of our lives. He will suggest revisions to the current chapter, and inspire drafts of the next ones. The business, health and career may well turn around and ascend under the new divine management. Or they may crash… and a golden, unexpected next chapter may arise phoenix-like from the ashes.

* * *

Justin Welby changed so utterly that Moore meeting him 40 years later was amazed. Of course, The Telegraph recently revealed that Welby’s biological father was Anthony Montague Browne, Churchill’s private secretary, who later worked for the Queen, and from whom he evidently received a genetic inheritance of solidity, good judgement and sound nerves. Inherited brain chemistry makes a psychopath or sociopath behave like one; but it can also be a beneficent inheritance, as it was for Welby.

But other factors contributed to the change in Welby that so astonished Moore…the Gospel, the Holy Spirit, dynamic teaching, his own disciplined follow-through, and, crucially, a circle of friends: Nicky Gumbel and the Eton-Oxbridge-Holy Trinity Brompton nexus that has a huge, hidden influence on the Church of England today. (Many influential figures such as Nicky Gumbel, John Stott, David Watson, Michael Green and Welby were converted or discipled by a man called E. J. H. Nash or Bash).

Serendipity or the grace of god… That is how Scott Peck in The Road Less Travelled explains people who have fruitful and creative lives despite distressing childhoods. In Welby’s case, it was both.

* * *

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

Our inheritance from our family–of intelligence, money, education and upbringing–may not be exactly what we would have chosen.

But once we accept Jesus as our Lord in medieval feudal language, we become part of Christ as he becomes part of us, and now have access to a new inheritance.

This differs from person to person. For some it’s an inheritance of this world, the sort that’s visible, valued and coveted–and for some it’s an inheritance “out of this world.”

Here are some blessings that are part of the inheritance of every children of God:

A friend, Jesus our brother, always walking beside us.

Access to Christ himself, “in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”

Guidance from Christ. Access to his wisdom when it comes to solving the problems of our life….whether mundane–how to get the money we need for the fullest, richest, most creative life–or spiritual (stuff which is the essence of life!)

The joy of the Holy Spirit, which resembles being drunk.

The power of the Holy Spirit to help us do difficult things.

Inspiration, though the infilling of the Holy Spirit.

Answered prayer.

The knowledge of the presence of God beside us, and the Holy Spirit within us.

Peace.

Protection from evil.

The promise of wisdom.

Happiness.

Serendipity; a connection-making God.

The forgiveness of our sins: wow!!

Eternal life.

* * *

Bid my brother divide the inheritance with me. The anguished cry of the man in the crowd echoes through the centuries. Inheritances, conniving to get them, families divided by the unfair division of them are a major theme of fiction, Victorian fiction, in particular—and of real life too!!

An inheritance is always a blessing in the Old Testament– “houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant.” The mark of a good man was that he would leave an inheritance for his children’s children.

But the spiritual inheritance of the children of God far trumps any worldly inheritance. Read the list again! Who would jeopardise such blessings? And this inheritance that is available to all who would claim it.

“I find who I am in Jesus Christ, not in genetics,” Justin Welby said, reflecting on his “story of redemption and hope from a place of tumultuous difficulty and near despair in several lives…a testimony to the grace and power of Christ to liberate and redeem us, grace and power which is offered to every human being.”

And that is our truest inheritance as Christians, the invitation to live in a true fairy tale of a deep change in our hearts and characters; answered prayer; the surprising, the exciting, the miraculous. A fairy tale with roles in it for anyone who would come play.

Seeking a God’s Eye View of Success

By Anita Mathias

My daughter Irene succeeding at walking.

I was mentored in my thirties by a friend who genuinely knew God, but was nevertheless conservative and sexist, and made me feel guilty about my call to write which he saw as “dabbling.” He felt I should throw myself into housekeeping and childrearing, and would thereby find God at the bottom of the laundry basket.

So I felt guilty and conflicted about my desire for success in whatever I undertook.

* * *

Both of my daughters are successful in what they do; one of them, in particular, is successful in everything she throws her heart into…

I’ve been meditating on success…

I increasingly want to view things the way that Jesus does. “So, Lord, what do you think about success?” I ask.

* * *

“Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey God. Then you will be successful in everything you do,” the Lord tells Joshua (Joshua 1:7).

Success is God’s expectation for Joshua. And success is God’s blessing on Joshua.

For God is our father. No loving parent would wish to see their child fail, expect when failing is the only way to learn. I remember Irene walking her first steps with a huge grin on her face, her fat little legs collapsing under her plump baby body, and then she lifted herself up, and continued, still with that fat grin on her face. Not to allow her to fall would be keeping her weak.

So God may allow failures…to teach us our need for him, or to redirect us when we have chosen the wrong path. He might permit physical and mental burnouts to teach us to intersperse mental and physical activity so that both mind and body thrive, and we achieve more in the long run.

In general, however, I believe success is God’s will for his children. For instance, I don’t believe God intends us to start a business and fail. I dissolved the first business I ran soon after my second business went into good profit, because it was unsustainably intensive and lacked long-term potential. It was, in other words, a failure! But the things I learnt from it, and the business books I read while running it, helped me run my second business successfully, while having time to taste the joy of life. So it was both a failure, and a self-taught MBA in the school of experience. These failures God permits; they are slip roads onto the highway of our calling, as a writer might experiment with poetry, fiction, essay and drama before settling on creative nonfiction which uses all these genres.

* * *

In J.R.R. Tolkein’s story “Leaf by Niggle,” Niggle, all his life, tries to complete a huge, beautiful painting, always thwarted by those who commandeer his time, and exploit him for their own ends. He dies with his giant painting unfinished, though one leaf was perfection….

Well, when Niggle gets to heaven, he sees the landscape and forest that he had been trying to paint all his life: complete and perfect. Had be been attempting to recreate what existed in God’s Own Country, or had God, just for the fun of it, created what Niggle had struggled to?

Wonderstuck, “Niggle said, “ ‘It’s a gift.’ He was referring to his art, and also to the result, but he was using the word quite literally.”

Art is a gift of God primarily to the artist herself.

* * *

I believe God intends all his children to be successful–though not all to be equally successful. There are tens of thousands of Christian bloggers, but only a dozen or so who have tens of thousands of readers. Are the rest failures then?

The art we produce, the books, the blogs, the poems, may reach millions, or may only reach thousands, hundreds, dozens, or even fewer… In his mysterious purposes before the beginning of time, God chooses the precise places where people live, the gifts he gives them, and their circle of influence.

However, whether its reach is massive or limited, creativity is the gift of God to us, given for our joy, our pleasure, our delight, our growth, and even our sanctification. Creativity, art, is a gift to be enjoyed for its own sake, for the pleasure of making beautiful things, even while we pray that God may use our creativity to bless many.

Success then is taking the talents we have been given by a God who loves us–one talent, five or ten, and investing them fruitfully.

Success lies in running well in our own lane, enjoying the work of our hands, not worrying about people in more glittering and influential lanes, accepting that, for now, God has given them a different story, a larger lane, and perhaps may give us a larger lane one day, or perhaps not–but either way, the love of God is sufficient to fill our hearts with joy.

* * *

Want a shortcut to success?

I was reading about Rev. E. J. H. Nash, who converted many key players in today’s Anglican Church, including Justin Welby, John Stott, Nicky Gumbel, Michael Green, and David Watson. His goal was to reach England for Christ by evangelizing “the best boys from the best schools.”

When Nash surrendered his life to Christ, he mentally “handed over to him the keys of every room in the house of his life.”

What Jesus put in each room, what he took out, and how he rearranged things was now His responsibility. And Christ gave Nash, nicknamed Bash, a disproportionate influence on the course of Christianity in this nation.

I am reminded too of Bill Bright who signed a contract signing over everything in his life to Christ, and said, “The future never looked so bright.” Within a day of his surrender, he received a vision for Campus Crusade for Christ, a massive international Christian ministry with 25,000 missionaries in 191 countries

C. S. Lewis needed to surrender to “the great Angler,” ‘the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England,” to have his imagination baptized, and to be liberated into the freedom, the creativity, the whimsical, playful, and magical combining of all the worlds he delighted in that we see in the Narnia books.

Inviting Christ into every room of your life, and especially into the rooms of your imagination, your creativity, and your work, will yield surprising results.

I must add though that Jesus, the Lion of God, is not a tame lion. He may remove some things, replace them with others, may redirect you to a quieter room for a season–and this season could be a very long one. Or he may almost instantly unleash a flood of words, ideas, connections, and inspiration.

I believe surrender is always accompanied by creativity. Surrender of ourselves to Jesus is a divine exchange, an exchange of our limitedness for his unlimitedness, our smallness for his hugeness, and our puny ideas for his magnificent ideas.

(When I invited Christ anew into every room of the house of my life, I was surprised by a business idea which filled us with purpose and joy, excitement and hope, an idea I could instinctively and immediately tell would work, even on the mundane level that businesses must work, i.e. providing a golden financial return for the investment of time and talent–but which, God willing, will also bless many people.)

* * *

The quest for success in our endeavours becomes light and happy when we love something or someone more than success, when something or someone is more important than success. For me at present, that Someone is Christ.

* * *

I like Samuel’s prophecy over Saul, ^“The Spirit of the Lord will come powerfully upon you; and you will be changed into a different person. Then do whatever your hand finds to do, for God is with you,” 1 Samuel 10 6-7.

So work hard, work joyously, work well, and rest well, and expect the blessing of the Lord on the work of your hands. For the Lord your God is with you.

* * *

References

Tree and Leaf by JRR Tolkein on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk

Surprised by Joy, by C. S. Lewis on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk

Grazie Signore! “Thank you, Lord, for those who have greater gifts.”

By Anita Mathias

In his excellent The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning mentions the limited Antonio Salieri, court composer to the Holy Roman Emperor, who was conscientious, devout, and wildly jealous of the wildly gifted Mozart who–neither conscientious, nor devout–tossed off sublime music in the interludes of a life of “wine, women and song, and he didn’t sing much.”

Nevertheless, at the end of each piece of limited, uninspired music, Salieri added a postscript, “Grazie Signore.” Thank you, Lord.

Manning continues,“Grazie Signore, for other people who have greater gifts than mine.”

And that was a prayer I had never thought of praying.

* * *

Those of us brought up by restless parents with unfulfilled ambitions—and I guess that’s many of us!!—have, from childhood, absorbed ambition and striven to be the best, to win the prize, the first prize, if there are two.

An Oxford undergraduate recently told me that at school, she had to be the thinnest, the cleverest, the best in every field she was interested in, and there were many. At Oxford, however, faced with myriad people just like her, this drive made her ricochet between anorexia and bulimia. And exhaustion. Always exhaustion.

Oh, I know all about burnout and exhaustion (though not about slenderness!)

“If you do one good deed, your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one,” C. S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy. Since success elevates us to a vaster ocean, this drive to be the best will inevitably burn us out and exhaust us, diminishing potential achievement.

And worse, should God ever grant a foolish Salieriesque desire to be the best, some interest and challenge would leach away from our world. It is a blessing I take for granted—that in my social circles, professional circles and online circles, I continually encounter those who are more intellectually gifted, creatively gifted, spiritually gifted, and better read. Always someone to learn from.

We all take that blessing for granted. Even the greatest living scripture expositor, speaker, scholar, writer, prophet or mystic still has much to learn…from the great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us, leaving silvery snail trails to inspire…

So that’s it for envy—an occupational hazard of writers, according to Bonnie Friedman in her Writing Past Dark. Let me shed it with unforgiveness, and other cancers of the mind.

Grazie Signore, I resolve to inwardly rejoice whenever I read a writer or a blogger quite obviously better than I am.

Grazie Signore, for all those who write with the pen of angels, for they fill the world with exquisite language.

Grazie Signore, for original thinkers who make me too think.

Grazie Signore for the well-stocked mind of scholars.

Grazie Signore for all those who garden better than I, for in meandering around their gardens, I learn.

Grazie Signore for those read your word more deeply than I do, for they show me new things in it.

Grazie Signore, for those who encounter you more deeply than I do, who see your face more clearly, hear your voice more distinctly, for I learn more about you from them.

Grazie Signore, for those who are spiritually gifted, the speakers who revive my flagging spiritual fervour; the prophets who can tune into your thoughts; the mystics who can see your face and feel your heartbeat.

Grazie Signore, for the world so rich, so full of gifts, which you pour freely on all men and women.

Tweetable

Brennan Manning’s prayer: Grazie Signore, thank you, Lord, for those who have greater gifts.

The Power to Change Comes from Christ in Us, Our Hope of Glory

By Anita Mathias

A mosaic in Ravenna, made of millions of broken tessarae of glass and enamel

The principle runs through all life from top to bottom.

Give up yourself, and you will find your real self.

Lose your life and you will save it.

Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life.

Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours.

Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity).

* * *

“Christianity can only be caught, not taught,” they say. I caught a lot while I was discipled from 1997 to 2002 by a spiritually deep Christian writer and leader.

He said that as he found himself becoming intense–a sign that self was on the throne, not Christ–he’d say, “Take that too. I surrender that to you, Jesus,” and so on, until it became a habit to surrender everything precious to him, everything he worried about, to Jesus.

We swapped my editing of his first book for spiritual guidance. He was a naturally gifted writer, and I think I helped him find his natural speaking voice and rhythms in writing. He thanked me in the acknowledgements for teaching him how to write!

Interestingly, he said that he did not own his writing. He had given it to God. And whereas I wasted a lot of time on false starts, he wrote to just three publishers, one of whom took his first book. Several reviewers have said his next book was one of the best books on prayer of all time, and that’s because it sprung from the heart, spirit and experience, not from study, reading or thinking.

What impressed me was that someone who did not seem naturally gifted as a writer could so rapidly write two good books. Was not “owning” his writing a factor? He said he wrote as God provided time, whereas I was then always trying to grab, steal, wrangle and fight for time, which caused me a lot of stress.

Interestingly, he said once that he owned the Christian organisation he founded far more than his writing. And that, 16 years on, has never really taken off, perhaps for this reason.

* * *

I was thinking this morning of the similarity to things in my own life. Things which I do not own, which I have turned over to God, and do reliant on his strength are blessed—things like our family business, my blog or even little things like my Twitter presence where after two years I chosen as a runner-up for the Tweeter of the Year by the Christian New Media awards in 2014, (and was a Finalist for Blogger of the Year in 2015).

The things which I do by worry and self-effort are not so blessed. My attempt to finish my memoir, say.

I am reading a book by Duncan Smith called Consumed by Love. It is about our oneness with Christ, how we are safe in Christ–as an astronaut in his spacesuit is safe from being bumped in a zero gravity spaceship–and how Christ is in us.

And in that lies the power to overcome long-standing battles: Christ in us, the hope of glory. Relying on the guidance and power of Christ, step by step.

Kim Walker Smith of Jesus Culture puts it well:

Where you go I go
What you say I say
What you pray I pray.

Jesus only did, what he saw you do.
He would only say what he heard you speak.
He would only move when he felt you lead.
Following your heart following your spirit.

How could I expect to walk without you

When every move that Jesus made was in surrender?

Two verses are speaking to me: “You will not have to fight this battle. Stand firm and see the deliverance the Lord will give you.” 2 Chron. 20:17. And, “The Lord will fight for you. You need only to be still” Exodus 14:14.

So that’s where I am spiritually at present. A disciple, a learner. Turning over these areas of my weakness to him, relying on him for strength and guidance. Letting Christ in me, my hope of glory, act in me, guide me, change my tastes, my habits, my mind and spirit.

Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk

A Praying Life on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk

In which our Sehnsucht, Restless Longings, are Really a Longing for God Himself

By Anita Mathias

Image: My Photograph of St. Paul’s Bay in Malta

So we are looking forward to our half-term holiday—to sleeping in, no stress, family movies…and especially to getting away.

* * *

The funny thing is, we had all that—sleeping in, staying up late, family movies, luscious meals, creaking family dinner tables, and travel– last summer (when we squeezed in an epic drive through Belgium, Germany, Austria and Slovenia in our motorhome) and for 24 days over the Christmas holidays (home, and Florence).

And towards the end of each holiday, I was actually looking forward for school. For a routine. For those rascally girls to get to bed at a half-decent hour, and not sleep in. For predictable silent undisturbed hours to sink into reading and writing.

* * *

After weeks of them being home 24/7, I look forward to school. After weeks of school, I want them home.

You know why? It’s because both are good. It’s all good.

Life is good because it’s a gift from God.

* * *

I am going away later this month, and am really looking forward to sunlight and movement and seeing beautiful things. Sometimes, I have had very exciting, dream holidays, full of doing and seeing and learning—Istanbul, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki, and after an intense week or so there, I am surprised by a yearning to be home, to spend a day in my pyjamas, reading or playing around with words.

What? I had so yearned to see these magical places. On my first trip to Paris, I heard an American say on the phone in a rich resonant voice, “I am travel weary. I am homesick.” Travel-weary and homesick in Paris? I thought. Yeah, it’s all too possible.

Life is a gift from God. That’s why at home, we can think of glorious art, architecture, history, gardens, mountains, forests, and the ocean and yearn to be there. And that’s why, in the middle of Rome or Athens or Madrid, I have had a sudden longing to go nowhere, do nothing, just sit with green tea, God, a book, and a laptop.

* * *

“Thou hast made us for thyself, Oh Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you,” St. Augustine wrote.

This restlessness in our hearts is meant to lead us to the one who stills all restlessness.

German has a word for this restlessness, this indefinable longing: Sehnsucht.

C.S. Lewis describes sehnsucht as the “inconsolable longing” in the human heart for “we know not what.” That unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World’s End, the opening lines of “Kubla Khan“, the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves. (Pilgrim’s Regress, C. S. Lewis).

* * *

The restlessness in your heart is a God-yearning. Don’t confuse it with what you think you desire— finishing and publishing a beautiful book, having a successful blog, travel, stimulating friendships, the holiday cottage by the sea…

“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them,” C. S. Lewis says in The Weight of Glory. “These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”

* * *

So listen to your restlessness. Listen to your longings. You are longing for more than Alaska, or Antarctica or the Amazon (places I would rather like to see before I die). You are longing for more than to write a beautiful book (something else I would like to do before I die).

You are really yearning for the infinite sea of God. For the ocean of God to pour into your spirit, and for your spirit to pour into the ocean of God, now and in eternity.

You are yearning to abide and dwell in Him, and to be filled with his spirit, which Jesus says is possible in this life.

The things of this world for which you think you yearn are just signposts to the things which will truly satisfy your soul.

This world, this life, which lies, “before us like a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new,” is a gift, a love-gift from God.

Its loveliness is designed to delight, but not entirely satisfy our hearts.

Only the Giver can do that.

* * *

The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk

Pilgrim’s Regress by C.S. Lewis on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk

There will be “the essence of dogness” in Heaven: C.S. Lewis

By Anita Mathias

Jake, my collie, in a buttercup meadow.

‘And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!”’ (Rev 5:13).

Every creature! Wow! Not only will we ourselves be healed, restored, and lost in the ecstasy of contemplating God and the Lamb, but every creature in heaven and on earth, and under the earth, and in the sea will join us.

We shall be healed, and all the sad, abused, dumbly suffering animals of all history will be healed with us.

We will stand, and sing together.

I have loved animals all my life, and have always had as many of them as my family would permit. A couple of years ago, we had 9 pets (I live on an acre and a half in deep country, in Garsington, Oxfordshire)–rabbits, ducks, chickens, and a dog.

But decades of pet ownership do not leave one guilt free. There is the dog I could have walked more, the dog we had to give away when we left America, the rabbit who died of myxomatosis, the duck mauled by the fox on the one night we forget to put her in her shed, the hen eaten by the fox on the one night we forgot to lock the coop.

And as for the beloved pets who have died, the pets I have had to give away—I hope I will see them in heaven, for I imagine—but what do I know?–heaven will not be quite complete without dogs
The feisty C.S. Lewis was a slave to the dog of Mrs. Moore, his friend’s mother with whom he eccentrically lived. His brother, Warnie sardonically comments on the great things Jack might have achieved if he were not always trotting off to get meat from the butcher’s for the dog, or to walk him, or take him to the vet.

When a grieving dog-owner asked him if we would be re-united with our pets in heaven, Lewis did not let his lack of acquaintance with that undiscovered country prevent him from having opinions about it. “No,” he said, “not our dogs.” However, he said, there would be, in heaven, “the essence of dogness.”

I hope he’s right about the Platonic essence of Dogness in heaven. Surely he is.

But though there is nothing in Scripture about the resurrection of the dogs, I would love to believe that my dogs past and present will be there in heaven. Oh, please, Lord, let it be.

I particularly want to be reunited with my wonderful dog, Jake, whom I got from a rescue, as I have got every dog we have ever owned (or will own). He fell fast in love with me on the day we brought him home 4 years ago, and has been my constant shadow, sleeping at the foot of our bed, following me everywhere even to the bathroom, constantly repositioning himself to keep a vigilant eye on me. Though what an active collie and a sedentary writer could have in common is probably one of the mysteries of the universe!!

So tell me, do you viscerally believe you will be reunited with your pets in heaven?

RIP Buttercup Duck! On Accepting Your Actual Life

By Anita Mathias

The tall thin Indian Runner was killed; the fat Aylesbury mourns

Climbing out of our pond

When I was a child, I had a huge, fat bunny, two hens, two ducks and a dog. We had a large house with an acre around it.

When we bought a house in the English countryside in 2006, one of the first things I did was get two hens, two ducks, two rabbits and a dog. I bought a large house with an acre and a half around it.

Yeah, unconsciously recreating my childhood which sort of ended when I was sent to boarding school when I was nine. When my mother sent pressed flowers from whatever was in bloom, mulberries, mustard…I cried, and I cried when we left that garden when I was 14 for a flat which came with my father’s post-retirement job. Oddly, I seemed to have missed the garden and its inhabitants more than my family!!

* * *

Well, Oxfordshire has perils that Jamshedpur, India did not: foxes.

A fox ate one of our chickens, and the survivor was so traumatised that we gave it away. No more chickens.

The fox kept coming for our ducks—I looked out one evening to see a white duck seemingly levitating in a fox’s jaw. It dragged one away at 11 a.m. and though Roy chased the fox and rescued the duck, it died of shock. Another was mauled once by the fox, nursed by us, but then mauled again, and put down by the vet.

So we gave up on ducks for a while. But, oh, it was an idyllic picture to see them cluck around our yard. Ducks are the dearest birds, always happy, always cheerful, running to see you in a manic, quacking way!!

So after a duckless year or two after the maulings, we got ducks again, vowing to be very careful and put them away before dusk.

* * *

And then one day, we forget. When we remembered, and searched for them, one was killed by the fox.

The other duck was traumatised, and has spent a day and a half quacking for her friend. Ducks don’t search for a friend; they quack till the friend quacks back.

Unable to stand this desperate, agitated quacking, we have released her—well, put her on a lovely public duck pond on a river in a park, where we can go and see her. She took to it like, well, a duck to water.

* * *

I love ducks, I love watching them run and cluck and quack and eat and live so happily. But it’s really not safe having ducks out in the country—the fox comes even in the day, especially at dusk, and there are always the odd occasions when one forgets to put them away. Though I support Tony Blair’s hunting ban, and feel sorry for the mangy, terrified foxes I often see on my walks, I also hate them for their habit of killing for the sake of it.

I must admit I cried a little. I was very fond of my ducks.

When Job faced far, far more bitter losses, he said, “The Lord gives; the Lord takes away. Blessed by the name of the Lord.”

In the case of Job’s devastating loss of his children, there was no bright side.

In our case, there is. No unsightly duck house and run in our back garden. Ducks are messy critters, their droppings are unsightly, their splashing in their bathtubs we gave them destroyed the lawn. They quack to be let out of their house in the mornings, waking us up. There is a constant stress about remembering to put them away: Many a family dinner has been paused while someone runs out to herd the ducks! And their food attracts garden rats. Yeah, Ratty and Mole, not great friends of the garden.

So give up the dream and idyll of ducks quacking in my garden?? I feel sad to think of it—but yeah, I guess so. I guess having free-range chicken and ducks in fox country is a recipe for stress and failure.

At some point, one just has to accept the life one has and not the idyll we dream of. Foxes are a fact of life if you live in the country, and we will have to give up the dream of free-range poultry, or just-laid-that-morning eggs.

* * *

I adore the ocean, and often dream of living by the sea. But I have lived in Oxford for a total of 14 years. I have many friends I am fond of here, many friends on whose shoulder I could cry (and vice-versa!). I do not have the energy to move, and start again with friendships which, for me, are a vital part of life. So, maybe a small beach cottage if God provides the money, but no more moves. I am living in my dream house, and so I am going to abandon dreams of something dreamier to focus on my work.

* * *

Ah, mid-life, the restless season, mimicking our twenties in many ways. In my women’s group, almost every fortnight, someone tells of their friends or family divorcing.

Mid-life: it’s a Reality Show. You realise that barring the intervention of God (and of course, that’s an immense thing to bar) your spouse is unlikely to change. What you see is what you get. WYSIWYG. So you bail–or you accept, or you pray mightily; Roy and I are going for the last two options.

“The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own,’ or ‘real’ life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life—the life God is sending one day by day; what one calls one’s ‘real life’ is a phantom of one’s own imagination. —They Stand Together: The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914-1963) (20 December 1943).

I am tired, and sad, and mourning my duck, and the prospect of a duckless life.

But, in fact, this is my life, and I love it most days, and I will rejoice and be glad in it, in all the many things God has given me. Blessed be His Name!