M E R I D I A N     M A G A Z I N E

Letter from the Highlands, December 2001
by Anne Perry

I hardly know where to begin. It is Sunday and I have just returned from an excellent service at Church, and then an afternoon out driving around the countryside with my closest friend Meg, and my Mother. Actually Meg drove, which left me free to look—and look—and look. Each year I think it cannot possibly be more beautiful, and then each season returns with a sharpness so breathtaking it is as if I had never seen it before.

The morning was overcast, but in the afternoon the cloud broke, and we left home at about half past two. The sun painted the mountains of Sutherland to the north with swathes of light. Earlier in the month we had a cold snap, and they were white from skyline to sea, but it is mild again, and as still as glass. The water was misty blue, the sky broken with light and shadow, and the slopes of the hills patterned with colours so subtle as to be nameless, but full of shifting, exquisite shapes.

We drove west, climbing up behind the shore-line villages. The lanes were overhung with beech trees, elms, birch and mountain ash. The wild roses and hawthorns were stripped of leaves and the berries scarlet and crimson, the larches a soft gold, like fur, the alders green-gold, the pines dark, dense green, and the beeches a score of burning coppers and bronzes like waves of fire. They seem to glow of themselves, so you think if the sun were turned off, the trees would light the way. Can there be anything on earth more beautiful than a beech wood in autumn?

Up in the hills we turned west. Right across the sky the early sunset was sprawled in gold across the horizon, lighting the trees and fields, making the sporadic mist like veils of gold shimmering and fading as they touched the water. There was not the whisper of a breeze, not a sound except the steady munching of cattle and sheep, and now and then the honking of wild geese going over, and the creaking of their wings.

On the way north, towards home again, the sky was slate blue with high cloud, and below, on the horizon, turquoise and shell pink turning to rose. By the time we reached our own village, the lights just on, along the stone harbour wall, the sea and sky were silver. The water lay so still it was like a polished shield, hardly a ripple where it slid up the wet sand, bright as a mirror, broken by the black of stones. A single heron stood on a rock, stretching his neck and inspecting the surface for fish.

Then skein after skein of wild swans flew over, dark against the flush of the sky, peach fading dove grey into the east as the last light dissolved and the sickle moon speared above the clouds.

This earth has to be the Celestial world. Cleansed of the mistakes we have made, how could anything be more beautiful, richer or more splendid, more full of the glory of God's creation? The changes need to be in us, not in the world.

Of course many other things have happened in the last month. On the eleventh it was Remembrance Day, as always deeply moving as I watched the special service at the Royal Albert Hall on television on the Saturday evening. All the armed and emergency services are represented, in the Muster when a few people came forward from each group—Army, Royal Navy, Merchant Navy, Marines, Royal Air Force, S.A.S, all the nursing auxiliaries, air and sea rescue, ambulance men, and on and on—many women included, many young people, war widows— on this occasion a recent widow whose husband was killed in Ireland, and her two sons, wearing full kilts. And last of all there were guests from America, the first time so far as I know. One was from the New York Fire Service, from September 11^th, one from the ambulance—looking wonderful in full dress uniform—came down the steps slowly to the music— and at the bottom he linked arms with an old, old man, standing ramrod stiff, wearing his medals, who had performed the same duty during the blitz of London in World War II. And the ambulanceman from New York took the arm of a man who pulled men and women out of the rubble in the blitz - and they walked very slowly together to the front and stood to attention side by side.

It was a moment of supreme loyalty and honour.

Then they let down the 800,000 poppies from the ceiling, to remember the British dead of World War I.

This time always fills me with an emotion of such gratitude that I can scarcely contain it. The War in Heaven is endless, there is no escape—we are for the good we believe, for courage, compassion, integrity, for generosity of spirit towards all living, for gentleness and honour—or we are against it— or we are too cowardly to choose, and to fight at all. But there is no opting out. That was never a choice in the pre-existence, nor is it. The only choice is which side will we fight for, and how valiant will we be. Days such as Remembrance Sunday remind me how much I want to be fit to hold up the banners beside those who are willing to give all they have for their belief, to keep going no matter what the cost—who have the ultimate courage— who do not turn their backs on the light for anything—not anything at all!

One day in eternity there will be another Remembrance Day—one to honour all those who fought valiantly right from the beginning—I want to be one of the risen—not the fallen. Don't we all?

But how much do we want it? Enough to be that kind of warrior, to sustain the wounds to the soul?

I have been doing more research on World War I recently, because I am planning stories set in that time, and a great deal actually in the trenches on the Western Front, behind them in the field hospitals, no-man's land, and the Home Front, even a little in the war at sea. I have barely begun to scratch the surface of what life was like—and death, even though I can remember a little of being bombed in the blitz in World War Two.

Perhaps I need to know something of the sacrifice, the kind of courage needed, the cost of fighting for the freedom to follow your own beliefs in all things.

But to follow a belief we need to know heart and bone deep what it is. If it is really worth having then it will not come cheaply—and if I am to pay all I have for it, then it had better be right—the truth and not an error, a mirage which has no substance I can treasure throughout my existence.

A dear friend of mine has recently had an experience which it is possible one day or another may afflict any of us, if we love and trust anyone—whatever kind of love, that of family, of friends, of allies in a great cause, of a companion, or someone we would wish for as a companion. Perhaps all of us have someone who will speak ill of us, and the higher we lift ourselves above the parapet, the more likely we are to attract the attention of enemies. We have only to look at what ill was said of Joseph Smith to remember this. In loyalty we do not believe such things, we trust, we do not bend with every wind, once we have given trust we do not let it go, unless there is bitter and absolute proof.

And thus we can be used, and betrayed. It takes an extraordinary courage to rise above self-pity, anger and the sense of defeat. We retreat when wounded. To go back into battle a second time, knowing in the nerves and the heart what the pain will be, requires far more than does the first charge.

But we know that not everyone will have the courage to face forward when the battle is hot. Not everyone will be wise enough to use power, and then let it go when the time comes, never to rob another person of their own dominion, even when we disapprove passionately with what they will do—for in robbing them of their agency, we lose something of our own.

We will not all be able to face truths that hurt, we will choose the comfortable lie until it is too late. We may at times fail to tell those we love a truth, for which they would blame us, perhaps even turn away, and not ever forgive. We always knew this, it is only that in the dust and strife of mortal existence sometimes we forget.

But if we are true to the best we know, and constantly seek and strive for even better, not only a cleanness of mind, but a cleanness of heart, then if others do not forgive us for our love of the light above our love for them, we will survive. It is not the loneliness that hurts the most, it is the guilt if we have betrayed what is good. If we have kept ourselves, then we can begin again. If at times it seems impossibly hard, never forget that with a clean heart, we can turn to our Father and ask for help, for healing, for a hand to bear us up in the impossible places, a voice to tell us of comfort, and hope, and to promise all things to those who endure and keep the ability to forgive others, and above all do not lose the power to love, however dearly it costs.

Courage is the one virtue without which all else can become forfeit. We seldom use the word 'coward'. I do not think I have heard it spoken within the Church. Perhaps it is a word we should keep to whisper to ourselves in the most difficult of times. I have wondered if it is not Satan's greatest weakness? When we try to imagine what the Saviour suffered in Gethsemane, the pain of every living thing, even of the earth and we ourselves too often wish to look away from even one person's suffering—what courage was drained to the last drop?

Satan would not take the risks of mortality upon himself, the cost of loving, of caring, of being involved in mankind with its hope and its despair, its laughter and the disillusion, the glory and the grief—because he was—and is—a coward! He would have the lesser prize—as a certainty.

We want to risk everything—and win the greater—indeed the greatest of all. But let us not deny the truth of God from the beginning—it will cost all we have—because it is worth everything! Just make it through this battle—and eternity is sure!

Courage! I see it around me—please God I may also find it within.

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