joy | Dreaming Beneath the Spires

My One Word for 2015 : Joy

I had wanted to choose “Accelerate” as my One Word for 2014 but God impressed “Alignment” on my heart, and it proved to have been useful through a tumultuous year—a cancer diagnosis, and surgery, the death of my beloved border collie Jake from cancer, a burglary. And some nice things too… being invited to Cambodia for a week by Tearfund; being the runner up for Tweeter of the Year in the Christian New Media Awards; being interviewed on Premier Radio; publishing a children’s book, Francesco, Artist of Florence.

* * *

That cancer now a past tense occurrence, God willing, all gone.

Because I could not stop for health, health kindly stopped for me. Health will be one of my priorities this year

I will have to be careful about diet and exercise–so as not to have a recurrence. My body will have to change its bioeme to become an ecosystem unfavourable to cancer. I will learn stress management techniques, and practice positive psychology, thinking positively. I am juicing to get my diet more nutrient-dense, and am moving towards a raw and plant-based diet.

I thought of choosing “Focus,” as my word for the year because huge things can be done with focus, but no, I had a greater need.

My word for 2015 will be Joy.

* * *

I am training myself to become conscious of my emotional states, of when joy leaches out of me, and am learning to slow down and ask, “Why are you sad, oh my soul?”

And then, I am learning to accept the things I cannot change, and to change the things I can, as in the brilliant Serenity Prayer used by Alcoholics Anonymous, and to be thankful for the rest, the obviously good things, and the more ambiguous things–for there is a God who is writing straight in crooked lines in my life. Again and again, I see this.

When I notice I am grumpy and low-spirited, I tell myself, “Anita, light the sacred flame of joy.” I visualise myself as a priestess in a temple filling the sacred bowl with incense, the seeds of joy, lighting the flame. I start noticing the good things, thanking God for the good things. I ask the Holy Spirit—who, Jesus says, comes on demand–to fill me with joy, those rivers of living water, and He does.

We can change our emotional states, as blogger Michael Hyatt writes. He calls being able to do this his most important asset.

I shift my emotional state by entering the narrow gates of surrender to God. By deciding to walk in love. By praise and thanksgiving. By worship music. By reading a bit of the Bible or a spiritual book. By physical activity, a walk outdoors, or even just tidying the house. By spending time with my family or seeking out a friend to hang out with.

* * *

19 years ago, I told a good friend Paul Miller (author of A Praying Life, often praised as one of the best books on prayer, for instance by Tim Challies) that I had not experienced joy-as opposed to happiness. He volunteered to disciple me in exchange for editing help, and this discipling relationship lasted for 5 years. Joy, he said, comes from dying, from dying to self.

I did not stumble upon joy through “dying;” that was not my path. (However, I learned other things from Paul, about Jesus–I was an editor for his book Love Walked Among Us–about love, and faith, and prayer).

Nonetheless, I was eventually surprised by joy. Joy and peace crept up on me, as my original ambitions were thwarted, and the fierceness of ambition leached away, leaving more of an openness to what God might be doing in my life, to the plot he was writing. To giving God what he takes, and taking what he gives, with a smile—Mother Teresa’s definition of holiness.

So in 2015, I want to experience joy, by seeking it where it lies in plain sight, and if necessary, hunting it down, looking a little harder, a little deeper. I want to light the flame of joy with the incense of praise, of thanksgiving, of faith, of Scripture, of nature, of friendship, all the good and precious things which come down from the Father of Lights.

And if you’d like to pray for me, please pray for vibrant health and that cancer never returns. Eight weeks after surgery, I am glad to report that I feel full of energy, good spirits, health and…yes…joy!

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One Word for 2015: Joy. On lighting the sacred flame of joy from @anitamathias1

Have you chosen a one word goal for 2015? What is it?

One Secret of Joy: Be More Dog

By Anita Mathias

https://youtu.be/LB8dD9c5AgA

So what’s the secret of a dog’s wild energy and wagging tail?
Their warm heart, their boundless capacity for love? Their short memories, their natural ability to forgive?
Be more dog.

http://youtu.be/yu9sWjnJFHU

And here is Jake the Collie, in the buttercup meadow behind my house

And me and Merry, my Labradoodle

Walking Away from the Dreaming Spires; Walking Away from Joy

By Anita Mathias

The Dreaming Spires
(credit)

Well, my daughter Zoe is in Cambridge today for her Entrance interview, and I have been thinking about Oxbridge interviews.

Fielding describes being interviewed to read English at Cambridge by Kingsley Amis, “the world’s greatest satirist,” who had recently written Lucky Jim.

Asked “What novel would you take on a train journey?” he says—no, not Lucky Jim, but Wuthering Heights—“I drone on about pathetic fallacies and thanatoid visions – just the kind of bilious bollocks the world’s greatest satirist needs to hear from a callow wanker on a sofa.”

Amis abruptly and scornfully terminates the interview. “My school is later informed that I am “woeful” and “without obvious potential“.

* * *

Here’s C.S. Lewis’s description from Surprised by Joy of arriving in Oxford for his entrance interview.

My first taste of Oxford was comical enough. I had made no arrangements about quarters and, having no more luggage than I could carry in my hand, I sallied out of the railway station on foot to find either a lodging-house or a cheap hotel; all agog for “dreaming spires” and “last enchantments.”

My first disappointment at what I saw could be dealt with. Towns always show their worst face to the railway. But as I walked on and on I became more bewildered. Could this succession of mean shops really be Oxford? But I still went on, always expecting the next turn to reveal the beauties, and reflecting that it was a much larger town than I had been led to suppose.

Only when it became obvious that there was very little town left ahead of me, that I was in fact getting to open country, did I turn round and look. There behind me, far away, never more beautiful since, was the fabled cluster of spires and towers.

I had come out of the station on the wrong side and been all this time walking into what was even then the mean and sprawling suburb of Botley. I did not see to what extent this little adventure was an allegory of my whole life.”

Or anyone’s!

I live in Oxford now. It is 97 years since Lewis came up for his interview, but the contrast between the golden, gleaming, dreaming spires, and mean Botley is still striking.

* * *

In the famous Alpha course, leaders often tell this story attributed to a Native American elder,

There are two dogs inside me. The black dog is mean. The white dog is good.
The black dog fights the white dog all day.

When asked which dog wins, the elder reflected for a moment and replied;

The one I feed the most.

* * *

Yeah, it’s another way of gauging our thoughts, actions and choices, isn’t it? Are they leading towards the Heavenly City of the Dreaming Spires in which the Lord, high and exalted, is seated on a throne; and the train of his robe fills the temple with glory, while above him seraphim fly, calling to one another:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.” (Isaiah 6)

Or, instead of “the fabled cluster of spires and towers,” are the thoughts and emotions I am harbouring leading to a mean, small-minded suburb of judgements, negativity, jealousy and competitiveness?

On a bad, bored day, I have to check my thoughts many times and ask—Do I want to live here, in this small, claustrophobic negative suburb?

When someone annoys me and my thoughts spiral repetitively, rehearsing the many and manifest failings of this person, as they gradually, in my mind, turn from grey to black to horrible–I need to stop and ask myself, “Is this the address I want to live at? Obsessing about this silly person’s silly faults? Or do I want to dwell in the secret places of the Most High?

* * *

“Stop, drop and roll,” my kids were taught when in elementary school in America—basic fire safety.

Well, when I find myself spiralling into negativity, or fear or worry, I have my own routine, “Stop, drop, repent.”

A) Force myself to think about the person’s good points; thank God for the goodness in them,

B) Meditate on whether I myself have ever been guilty of the annoyingness I see them. And so use this “beam research” as an energizing spur to repentance

C) Turn to Jesus, the Lord upon the throne. Ask for his Holy Spirit to fill me.

D) And remember my goals, long and short term, ask him for strength to fulfil them. Move from the negative to the positive; from the mean streets to the golden spires and towers; from a pointless drain on my energy to being re-energized.

* * *

Yes, turn to Jesus. For there is life

Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. For my flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink. I give my flesh for the life of the world. (John 6,53, 55).

And I change my address. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood dwells in me, and I in him. (John 6:56). No longer will I dwell in smallness and negativity. I will escape to the secret places of the Most High. Yeah, I will dwell smuggled in the recesses of Jesus, the Rock.

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“I will give you my joy, and no one will take it from you”

By Anita Mathias

Jesus’s lovely promise in John.

It is totally spectacular. On a grey, gloomy day as it is today in Oxford, England, we can remember that Jesus gives us his joy, and that nothing and no one–no circumstances can take it from us.

By learning to forgive too, we can avail ourselves of some of this joy. People who disappoint us can no longer rob us our our joy as we learn to forgive them!