Helsinki | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Friends,

Happy New Year!! May it be a year of blessing and happiness for all of us

My Christmas letter has morphed into a New Year’s letter–which is kind of how my year went!

2014! What a year! Here it is:

January—I win an all-expense paid competition to go to … Cambodia with Tearfund.

Zoe gets an offer from Oxford University to read Theology. She worked in the Bridge in Gadsden, Alabama at the end of her gap year at the School of Ministry, Catch the Fire Toronto.

February—Family trip to France—Paris and the Loire Valley. Came back to find we had been burgled. Our car too and loads of stuff. A beautiful moment to discover that we had never got around to getting homeowner’s insurance!

March—Intense trip to Cambodia. Images here.

April—I publish my first children’s book: Francesco, Artist of Florence: The Man who Gave Too Much

Merry Labradoodle joins our family.

May—Still exhausted after Cambodia, so go on a retreat to shake it off to El Palmeral, Spain, a retreat centre run by charming Mike and Julie Jowett.

(In fact, I have aggressive cancer, not that easily shaken off by rest and retreats!)

July—Irene wins the Anne Hogg Prize for Modern Foreign Languages (French and Spanish).

Lovely family holiday in Helsinki. (See images) I walk, walk, walk.

August— Suddenly exhausted. I surprise Roy by continually murmuring, “I think I have cancer.” Take up running to feel better—but do not outrun cancer…

Irene goes to Poland and Germany on a school trip, and Zoe and Irene visit my mother in India.

Roy and I go to David’s Tent, a 72 hour worship festival. I’d like to go next year too. This prophecy I received was VERY significant for me, though it may seem heartbreakingly ironic in the light of the rest of year.

September—Interview by Maria Rodrigues at Premier Radio, Women to Women Show.

http://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Weekday/Woman-to-Woman/Episodes/Woman-to-Woman80

I’m on at 34:30 and the interview is 55 minutes!

October—Nice trip to France at half-term.

Zoe starts at Oxford University reading theology. She has a great first term, throwing herself into all manner of activities, from Cuppers drama, to Christian Union, Christian Theologians Society, Just Love (social justice), Just Lunch (Freshers studying the Book of Amos), Family of Friends (Charismatic Oxford students) and… oh, my head’s spinning already.

Jake the Collie, who was once “obese,” (thanks vet!!), gets thinner and thinner, until he has to be carried downstairs, limps painfully, and we say a tearful goodbye. It was cancer. Not to be taken lightly

I am still tired. See doctor. Severe anemia. Colonoscopy. Visually, it looks like cancer, the endoscopist says. It quacks like cancer…

November— I am the runner-up for “Tweeter of the Year,” in the Christian New Media Awards, and attend a glamorous awards dinner in London.

Roy and I celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary.

Biopsy in. And it is…colon cancer! I have surgery on November 25.

December—

Biopsy in again. Fresh horrors. 45% of the lymph nodes removed have tested positive for cancer. Chemotherapy is advised. I am envious of my friends who had cancer at the same stage, declined chemo and are alive to tell the tale.

I don’t have peace declining chemo, because to go by the three oncologists I’ve spoken to, and the medical papers I’ve read, taking chemo will dramatically reduce my odds of getting cancer again, and will increase my odds of 5 year survival. Also, if it returns it may be metastatic and virtually incurable. Horrors!

So I guess I am going to go ahead with chemo next month.

10-20% of people who take the chemo combination suggested for me do not have side-effects. If you’d like to pray for me, please pray that I am among them.

I am also learning about mega-nutrition via juices and smoothies to strengthen my immune system to withstand chemo, and vanquish cancer.

Some people come out stronger at the end of chemotherapy and cancer because they start exercising and eat beautifully, my friend Azmy, a GP tells me. God willing, I will be one of them.

Stephen Jay Gould writes in his beautiful essay on his cancer, “The Median is not the Message,” “Attitude clearly matters in fighting cancer. We don’t know why (from my old-style materialistic perspective, I suspect that mental states feed back upon the immune system). But match people with the same cancer for age, class, health, socioeconomic status, and, in general, those with positive attitudes, with a strong will and purpose for living, with commitment to struggle, with an active response to aiding their own treatment and not just a passive acceptance of anything doctors say, tend to live longer. A few months later I asked Sir Peter Medawar, my personal scientific guru and a Nobelist in immunology, what the best prescription for success against cancer might be. “A sanguine personality,” he replied.”

What a year! Dear God, I don’t want to hurt your pride, or show off or anything, but I think I could have done a better job editing it! But whey-hey, I am just in the middle of the story and I do not know how God is going to work it out.

Oh yes, I was going to be positive, wasn’t I? There is a message in the bottle of cancer, and, next year, I am going to decode it. In Oxford, England, on December 21, the winter solstice, we had 16 hours 18 minutes of darkness, but also had 7 hours 42 minutes of daylight. Always some brightness on the darkest day. Next year, I will be looking for it, and cultivating a joyful and grateful heart.

The whole earth IS full of his glory.

Happy New Year, everyone

Love,

Anita

I love Scandinavian summers, the evenings of late, late light, wading in or sitting around the lakes, with their characteristic red cottages on shore. Tuomiokirkko, Helsinki, the Lutheran church, a mass of domes Seurasaari island. The beauty of an island, of course, is the plenitude of beaches. The sunlight shining on the water late in the evening was little short of magical We canoed down the gulf of Finland, loved the art nouveau cottages and log cabins, letting in the light. Would love to rent one of them sometime. I love the way that time is suspended and goes dormant when you are in a canoe on the water. Zoe and Irene are in this canoe. They capsized into the Baltic Sea later that day, but swam to shore.

The Finns speak English with near-native fluency. The accents often sound American, until by the second or third sentence you hear tell-tale Scandinavian vowels.

They shop in perfect silence. We stand out not only by our colour, of skin and clothes, but by the fact that we, horrors, talk to each other in the grocery store.

I love Scandinavia in summer, and have visited Norway in 2009, Sweden in 2011, and Denmark in 2012. The Finns are warmest of the Scandinavians–but it definitely has a Scandinavian feel–a clean, decent, well-ordered, well-mannered, considerate society. When the Scandinavians die and go to heaven, or the Swiss for the matter, they will be surprised to see an improvement on their societies!

Visited Uppenski Cathedral, the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of Finland, which was ruled by the Russians for too long.

Iconostasis in the Russian Cathedral, Uppenski, which as our daughter Irene who is doing Religious Studies for her GCSE told us is a whole wall of icons.

And here are Zoe and Irene before the iconostasis. Then shopping in the outdoor market, where we had a fast good lunch– delicious fried salmon and battered calamari. We walked around Helsinki, photographing some of the Art Nouveau (Judgendstil) buildings, the airy, curved forms taking on a Germanic/Scandinavian heaviness. Nordic Giants, and decorative clock outside the Train Station

The train station was particularly fascinating, as was the Opera House and the National Art Gallery (Ateneum). Finnish National Theatre Ateneum, National Art Gallery Interior of the Ateneum

There was an exhibition of the paintings of Tove Jannson, author of the Moomins at the Ateneum. The daughter of a Finn and a Swedish woman (the prototype of MoominMamma), Jansson was a free spirit. She trained as an artist in Stockholm and Paris, and continued drawing and painting and writing for seven decades.

It was fascinating to watch her art change, from the political (anti-fascist) in the Forties, through the abstract in the fifties, to the more fantastical and beautiful. And, of course, she illustrated the Moomins herself…which helps us know what a Moomin looks like. Like a hippopotamus, apparently!

A long, interesting life of ever-evolving hard work. Tove Jannson was gay and it is not clear if being free of the stultifying role of good-frau-dom liberated her creativity. Or if she had the guts to live as a lesbian for decades because she was a free spirit anyway! Sibelius Park. A monument in his honour– 24 tons of steel tubes arranged like a large, silver Surrealist organ. Sibelius’s giant, dismembered head! Rock Church, literally hewn out of granite–Scandinavian assiduity and ingenuity Loved tiny, magical Philajasaari Island, full of rocks on which to sunbathe, tiny islands connected by bridges, covered with wildflowers, inviting beaches at every turn, views to feed the soul! I loved Helsinki Zoo, on a beautiful 22 acre island. I adore animals, and could watch them for hours. Time feels suspended as I watch them.

We saw the otters at feeding time The snow leopards had cubs, as did the lions. There were large numbers of kangaroos. Kallio Kirke, an Art Nouveau Evangelical Lutheran Church Then to Jarvenpaa, the countryside outside Helsinki, a beautiful drive through fields full of wild flowers, to Ainola, the house of Sibelius (the most famous Finn, well, after the Moomins!) He bought Ainola when he was 38 and lived in for 53 years!! Life is long.

Surrounded by rural peace and the lake, his creativity blossomed–well, until a long, paralysing two decades of perfectionism and composer’s block–when he composed symphonies, and then trashed them. The price, sometimes, of fame achieved too early.

Sibelius’ house pictured below. Sibelius’s house had typically Finnish interiors

Finland was an eccentric choice, perhaps, but our family thrives when we alternate hard work with a complete change–and Scandinavia is so beautiful in the summer, and there is a thrill in exploring a new country and a new culture. I am so glad we went!

Anita’s Belated 2014 Christmas Letter and Early New Year Letter

Dreaming in Helsinki (A Magical Week in Beautiful Helsinki)