Coronavirus | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

On Not Wasting a Desert Experience

So, after Paul the Apostle’s lightning bolt encounter with the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus, he went into the desert, he tells us…

And there, he received revelation, visions, and had divine encounters. There he pondered on the simple teachings of Jesus in the context of the logic and story of the Old Testament. There he came up with Big Word Theology… Atonement, Justification, Sanctification, Passive Righteousness, and worked out the beautiful, intellectually challenging doctrines of Romans and Galatians. In the desert.

The same Judean desert, where Jesus fasted for forty days before starting his active ministry. Where Moses encountered God. Where David turned from a shepherd to a leader and a King, and more, a man after God’s own heart. Where Elijah in the throes of a nervous breakdown hears God in a gentle whisper.

England, where I live, like most of the world is going through a desert experience of continuing partial lockdowns. Covid-19 spreads through human contact and social life, and so we must refrain from those great pleasures. We are invited to the desert, a harsh place where pruning can occur, and spiritual fruitfulness.

A plague like this has not been known for a hundred years… John Piper, after his cancer diagnosis, exhorted people, “Don’t Waste Your Cancer”—since this was the experience God permitted you to have, and He can bring gold from it. Pandemics and plagues are permitted (though not willed or desired) by a Sovereign God, and he can bring life-change out of them.

Let us not waste this unwanted, unchosen pandemic, this opportunity for silence, solitude and reflection. Let’s not squander on endless Zoom calls—or on the internet, which, if not used wisely, will only raise anxiety levels. Let’s instead accept the invitation to increased silence and reflection

Let’s use the extra free time that many of us have long coveted and which has now been given us by Covid-19 restrictions to seek the face of God. To seek revelation. To pray.

And to work on those projects of our hearts which have been smothered by noise, busyness, and the tumult of people and parties. To nurture the fragile dreams still alive in our hearts. The long-deferred duty. The vocation or call we have ignored or procrastinated on obeying.

Write the book, declutter the house, get your body strong. Don’t waste the opportunities to mine for the treasures of darkness during this prolonged period of global upheaval.

A Mind of Life and Peace in the Middle of a Global Pandemic

By Anita Mathias

From a walk by the River Thames.

I have been thinking about this sentence in the Book of Romans, “The mind controlled by the sinful nature is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace.”

That’s what I am consciously seeking to maintain in these unusual days… a mind of life and peace.

Many of the social supports of our lives have been stripped away. In my case, gradually then suddenly, culminating on March 23^rd, my German classes, Book group, Writers in Oxford meetings, church small groups, supper clubs, yoga classes, personal training, Ramblers walks, parties, lunches with friends, travel, cultural activities, church itself, all stopped. Of course, we can still talk to our friends and family on the phone, or on video calls, and I do, but it’s not the same…

However, reviewing my list, I see many fun, intellectually, spiritually, emotionally nourishing activities, just too many of them. Lockdown made Roy and me realise that our lives had become too full, too rich, too busy, too fun, too fast-paced. And so I have decided not to clutter up this God-given season of quietness with the many Zoom activities I have been invited to—Bible studies, group catch-ups, writing retreats, yoga classes, prayer meetings… but to have just a few meaningful one-on-one conversations instead. I have decided to embrace this season of quietness, and time, time, all the time I have ever yearned for.

Of course, this free time is complicated. Following the news and this real-life tragedy unfolding around us is distracting, infuriating and distressing. We read of the suffering of the poor; fulminate at inept leaders, and manipulative ones who squeeze this for political advantage. We feel powerless to stop coronavirus, and powerless over the length of lockdowns. Some of us might wistfully think of the hopey days when Britain decided to go for herd immunity and life continued as normal… but then, who wanted to be in the herd infected by Covid-19, a particularly gruesome infection if you are not fit?

* * *

Britain’s six-week severe lockdown is disorienting for human beings who are social animals, shaped, defined, refined by social interactions.

And in this time, it is important to guard our minds and spirits. To have minds of life and peace.

Many of us embarked on this enforced retreat with enthusiasm. Britain went on a shopping spree…buying fitness, gardening, and DIY stuff and lots of books. Writers hoped to write their best work, their personal King Lear. Everyone hoped to emerge from quarantine with decluttered homes, pretty gardens, fitter bodies, and finished work.

And, of course, with God’s help, we can achieve these goals, dreams and ambitions, partly or wholly. There is no reason we cannot sleep early and wake very early without the interruptions of social, cultural, intellectual, creative or gym activities on other people’s schedules. Or get stronger as we lift weights. Or declutter. Or write.

In this period of “world enough and time,” it’s the mental game that’s crucially important, as I tell my daughter Irene, who is preparing for her Oxford University finals, in Medicine, taken online.

These are three practices I am finding helpful.

1 Be Mindful of the Mind. Maintain a mind of life and peace. I am using the brilliant Headspace app, which has brief meditations, targeted interventions, when I am aware that I am stressed, distracted, or down-spirited. Meditation can change one’s mood and mental state as effectively as chocolate or sugary treats can while improving one’s health. Phew!

Since I formally learned meditation at first at a beginners and then at an advanced meditation course at the Oxford Mindfulness Centre, a ten minute meditation almost always suffices to calm, still, and focus my mind.

2 Be Mindful of the Body. Keep your body well-stretched, well-exercised, full of energy. A happy body, a happy mind, and a happy creative spirit are inextricably connected; I wish I’d learned that decades earlier. Scripture interestingly calls our bodies, “The temple of the Holy Spirit.” We experience the shalom, the love and blessing and goodness of the Father not only in our minds, and spirits, but in our well worked-out vibrantly alive bodies.

I walk every day, often 4 to 4.5 miles, either with my husband Roy or alone, praying, and then listening to the Bible or an audiobook. And because I have so much extra time now, in lockdown, I am alternating periods of sitting (reading, writing, meditating, praying) with physical activity (decluttering, gardening, Yoga with Adriene on YouTube, and Alisa Keeton’s Revelation Wellness workouts, which aim at movement as worship and has dance, weights, HIIT, cardio and flexibility workouts).

And in a life-changing intervention…I started housewalking last autumn, introduced to it by American blogger, Jean Wise, who used it to lose 100 pounds. Though I walk outside whenever possible, in England, in grumpy seasons, it can rain for hours, it gets dark early. And when it does, I download an audiobook onto my phone, and just walk through my house, which is, fortunately, large and rambling, until I have my goal steps (10,000 to 13500)! If I get bored or tired, I say, “Keep walking. You are actually reading.” Which I am! (I’m currently listening to Hemingway’s memoir A Moveable Feast), not his best work, but I am charmed and engrossed by it.)

3 Be Mindful of Your Emotions.

I am trying to train my thoughts and emotions not to give way to negativity or annoyance or restlessness or down-heartedness or impatience at this lockdown.

Beyond the jokers and movers and shakers and doomsters and gloomsters who make the decisions which govern our lives is God. God who has a purpose for this primitive, medieval quarantine, even if it was imposed by mass hysteria. God who can bring good from the mistakes of governments, as he can from our mistakes.

God who can create good from all things, including a virus–both for our own lives and for the world.

Our lives are not entirely our own, and we do not control the plot. God does. And lockdown and coronavirus is what God has permitted for this time of our lives. It takes faith to accept it from his hands, and thank him. Counting blessings on my fingers helps, even the blessing of the longest stretch of free, quiet, uncommitted time that I have had since I was a schoolgirl, and since Puritan ideas of using time well and making each hour golden entered my life.

Living with gratitude in each season for its goodness is perhaps the most important ingredient for a happy life…that, and living with love. I sometimes remind myself, “If you cannot live with appreciation and gratitude, why are you even living?”

** *

And, if you have time to read my story of a really inspiring life, perhaps check out

The Story of Dirk Willems: The Man who Died to Save his Enemy on Amazon.com

and on Amazon.co.uk

Images of some walks in Oxford https://www.instagram.com/p/B_w1URkJ8Vy/

https://www.instagram.com/p/B-nIQybJStb/

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_w1URkJ8Vy/

Silver and Gold Linings in the Storm Clouds of Coronavirus

By Anita Mathias

So, over the last two weeks, life, as I knew it, has been unrecognisably altered.

While this is just a drop in the ocean of virus-sadness, we were about to go to Prague on holiday when the Czech Republic closed its borders to British citizens (and BA promptly refunded us, thank goodness.) (And, probably, the holiday in Vienna in May, for which we had paid a deposit, will get refunded too!)

Then as government guidance tightened, things I could never have imagined happened. Oxford University shut down, taking with it the German class I was taking, which gave me much intellectual pleasure and joy. My daughter Irene, third year Medicine, Christ Church, Oxford University, had her Pharmacology exam on March 18^th cancelled, and suddenly came home, earlier than planned, following her college’s desperate request to students. And it looks unlikely that Christ Church will reopen next month, let’s see.

The Church of England closed, in effect, and our church shut its doors, ending some church activities I enjoyed… a monthly supper club/small group I enjoyed, a monthly church supper and the Lent supper series, (which commenced with a wonderful talk by N.T. Wright. I was impressed by his encyclopaedic knowledge of, and excitement about Scripture. Aged 71, he almost bounced as he spoke in a great rush of enthusiasm!)

I had to close down a supper club/classics book group I run, and which I love. (We were reading Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey). Writers in Oxford, a society I belong to, closed down, along with their enjoyable drinks evenings. The Oxford Literary Festival for which we had tickets was cancelled. Parties were cancelled.

The gym closed down, and I lost yoga classes, and personal training with weights. And goodness, The Ramblers, with whom I enjoyed walking, closed down. And over the weekend, some outdoor things we go to have closed… Blenheim Palace, the Oxford Botanical Garden, Harcourt Arboretum, even The National Trust, for heaven’s sake.

And now: it’s lockdown! We are only allowed out to buy essentials like food, and, thank goodness, to exercise outdoors.

The series of minor losses is a bit like old age is supposed to be, when friends die, work ceases, and life shrinks. In the beginning, I thought: the gym would stay open, my favourite Parks and gardens would stay open, I could exercise in them. I couldn’t imagine Church closing or the University and my language class or The Ramblers. But no…

* * *

Is my gloom, after all, shade of his hand, outstretched caressingly? Francis Thompson asks in a favourite poem “The Hound of Heaven.” In that poem, the narrator tries to find solace in love, in friendship, in nature, but God blights these things, determined that the poet should first find joy and comfort in Him. “Behind a frowning providence, he hides a smiling face,” William Cowper writes.

“God so loved the world,” Jesus states, early on in the Gospel of John. And that stands true in the time of Coronavirus. Over 99.99% of the British population, and of the world’s population are not ill, as I write, though thirty percent of the world’s population are under lockdown.

It is a time of worry and economic shaking for most of us. But this slice of silence and solitude and precious freed-up time is also a God-given opportunity to do some of the things we’ve long claimed we wanted to do–things essential or important to our spiritual health and wellbeing, which we have allowed to get crowded out by the urgent, and trivial.

Britons have embarked on a lockdown spending spree… exercise equipment, DIY stuff, seeds, gardening tools, sewing machines, knitting stuff.

For me, health permitting, this enforced stillness and peace is a time to

Make great headway with, or even finish, a big book project so often interrupted by distraction, both internal and circumstantial.
Get my house completely decluttered. It’s tidy, but I could get rid of a goodly percentage of my stuff.
Get as strong as I can be through fast walking and lifting weights at home. And continue losing weight without being thrown off course by travel (hotel breakfasts and restaurant dinners!) and parties and meals at friends’ houses, with food that’s not on my ketogenic meal plan.
Wake early, now that our evenings are more under our control without going off schedule after returning late from book groups, supper clubs, small groups, German class, etc.

My daughter Irene is home, and so is my husband. It is a time to bond more deeply and invest in some of the most important relationships of my life without all the distraction of social life. In enforced togetherness, some relationships dramatically improve, others implode. It looks, so far, as if our marriage is going to do better without busyness, rushing around, social life and distractions.

* * *

Human lives are like a well-structured novel with several plots simultaneously in play. There is the plot we seek to write, which usually involves elements of love, success, wealth, and fun. This plot can be affected by other people’s actions as they pursue their own wonderful plans for their lives. In this case, researchers posit, someone selling illegally trafficked pangolins in a “wet” market in Wuhan, China, has affected the lives of millions of people thousands of miles away, among them the heir to the British throne; the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; and a woman leading a quiet life in Oxford, England. And then there is the plot God is trying to write. And one element of this plot is that we get to know him better.

The Apostle Paul wrote that he counted everything as rubbish, garbage compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Jesus Christ, his Lord. I am Bible-walking every day during part of my 4.25 mile walk, and listening to the Gospels, praying through them, enjoying Jesus, his humanness and quirkiness. His first miracle was multiplying wine at a wedding, how human, how wonderful! He’s no-nonsense. He hates cant and religious hypocrisy. He tells the truth, and tells it straight. He’s brilliant, ingeniously sidestepping people’s traps. If we make time in this quiet season to deepen our friendship with him and with God, it will be, by far, the most important relationship of our lives, especially when the winds rage and the waves beat.

* * *

I have only been under lockdown once before, when I was seventeen, in my hometown of Jamshedpur, India. I read Catherine Marshall’s Beyond Ourselves, and made a commitment to follow Christ. And though I have done so unsteadily, and often badly, it has been the most important and most blessed commitment of my life. May this lockdown will be a similarly blessed turning point, for you and for me, and may our best work, our King Lear and Pilgrim’s Progress (written in quarantine and in prison respectively) get done.

And it’s possible that when “normal” life resumes, it will be forever changed. Creatives welcome a day free from engagements, or a cancelled activity with joy and uplifted spirits. It follows that we often view a day with a church small group, a writerly activity, or a social activity with a corresponding unconscious lowering of our spirits.

Many habits will be broken in this period. Perhaps if our small group or activities leave us more emotionally depleted than energised, we will stop going. Perhaps if we worship God better in the great cathedrals of river and fields and forest than indoors, or even in church, we will do that more often (heresy!). Perhaps we will re-evaluate our activities, pruning the inessential and everything which does not give us joy and energy.

Long cocooning can be a time of intense inner and directional change. Perhaps we will come out of cocooning alive, joyous, and with wings. May it be so. Amen.

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If you’d like to read my book of essays, Wandering Between Two Worlds, which includes my conversion narrative, here it is: on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk