Letter from the Highlands, March 2003
by Anne Perry

I have just lately returned from the most profoundly moving trip to Flanders to research for the First World War book that I have just begun. It was necessary in order to do the best I can to represent the circumstances even remotely as they were. I admit I am devastated by it. The suffering was more than anyone can imagine who did not live through it. The photographs still fill my dreams, the voices and the sounds of gun-fire and shells bursting, the pictures of death and of terrible mutilation, and a shattered land.

But to write of it as if it were less than it was would be to dishonour those who were there, and I have been warned more than once in blessing that I must not ‘pull any punches’ by softening the truth.

My brother came with me, and did the driving, also my literary agent, and my closest friend and neighbour, Meg, who is my constructive critic, and who helps generate so many of the story lines, especially on the family and domestic side of things.

We were all very moved by what we saw, too much to speak of it a great deal. There were some things for which only poets have words. But we are filled with emotions, particularly gratitude to those who endured a kind of hell so that we might have the freedom that we have today.

We felt no enmity to anyone who took part. It seems all ordinary soldiers were much the same, certainly in their suffering: the long boredom, the wounds, the gas, the hunger, the cold, lice etc. were the same for French, German, Belgian, British, American, Turkish, Bulgarian, Canadian, or whoever else. The only people who raise my anger are those who can look at the horror, and the fields white with crosses, and not care.

Now I am home and have started the book, but by Thursday I shall be off to Singapore to join the QE2 for three weeks where I am to give five lectures – the price of my fare – and must write a 40,000 to 60,000 word novella. But what a place to do it! I’ll tell you about that next time I write.

The weather is still so beautiful it is absurd, day after day after day of sunshine! Sometimes it is chilly, but today, for example, it was actually in the 60’s at one o’clock when I left church. Flanders was bitterly cold, much of the water in the old shell craters and in the trenches which are left was sheeted with ice, but there was not a cloud in the sky!

What has happened to winter? My garden now is full of flowers; daffodils, primroses, irises, winter aconites, snowdrops, crocuses of all shades, pansies, polyanthus and Christmas roses. And as I write it is 8th March! Spring doesn’t start for another two weeks.

Today church was excellent. It was my Sunday to teach the Relief Society lesson, which was on the Atonement. I began by asking questions on the two plans put forward by the Saviour and the Adversary. What I wanted to point out was the necessity of agency in order to learn anything. The Adversary’s plan would have saved us all – but to what? mediocrity. We would have survived as a world of spiritual dwarfs, never having realized our potential.

How often have we heard someone say ‘he could have been a great – pianist, statesman, actor, athlete – whatever – BUT – and then give the reasons why he never fulfilled that golden promise? We would all have lived that way – ‘could have been’ – could have been gods – but settled for safety, and remained the clay of broken dreams, by our own choice.

But we didn’t! We took the great challenge of life, with all its pains and risks of failure, knowing that nothing was certain except that this was the higher path, the course of courage and of faith.

I believe that the Adversary thought he would win, right up to the point when he actually lost. All through the ages from the time we accepted mortality, Eve tasted of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, and chose to grow up, to begin the greatest journey, the most profound adventure of creation, from child through man into God. From that time onward the Adversary believed that the Saviour would not love us enough to take all our pain, guilt, loneliness, grief and anguish upon Himself at Gethsemane. Then the Adversary would have won not only those who followed him, but all of us.

But he was wrong. Christ loved enough to endure it all, never once to look away or leave any one of us alone. In that moment the Adversary lost.

Now he would like all of us to lose as well, or as many of us as he can trip up, deceive, win over. Which of course he can do only if we permit it. It is that sublime daring of agency again. With it we may make every mistake in the book, but without it we achieve nothing of our possibility.

What faith in us God must have! Doesn’t that stagger your mind? He knew all the pitfalls, all the dangers and the problems, and He still believed we could make it! That has to mean that we can. Is that not the most wonderful thought that there is?

Now shouldn’t we – and I must heavily include myself, have an answering faith in Him?

I was also privileged to speak in Sacrament as well. I chose to talk about magic. Not the sort practised by witches or sorcerers (in which I do not believe) but by conjurers. It is not really anything to do with the supernatural at all, but a mixture of sleight of hand, and misdirection of one’s attention so while we see the left hand, the right hand is doing what really matters. Then when the trick is accomplished we marvel and are astonished. How did that happen?

Is that not what the Adversary does so well? He misdirects our attention so that we watch the wrong things, and then are amazed when we find that we are not where we wished to be, where we thought we were going to be.

It happened to the Pharisees. They concentrated on the letter of the law, became self-righteous and critical, and so sure they were doing well, they lost sight of what mattered, the love of God and the love of their fellow men.

One of my favourite stories was featured in Sunday School – that of the Saviour dining with the Pharisee who omitted to offer Him water to wash his feet, or oil to anoint his head. When they were at the table a woman came who was known to be a sinner, and yet she anointed his head with ointment, washed his feet with her tears and dried them with her hair.

He said of her ‘She has loved much, therefore she is forgiven much’. And to her ‘Thy faith hath saved thee. Go in Peace’. Could anyone hear words more wonderful than that?

The Pharisee said to Him, ‘If you were the prophet you claim to be, you would know what manner of woman she is – a sinner!’ He himself had no idea who Christ was – but the WOMAN KNEW! She was not concerned to find fault with the Pharisee for his arrogance or his unkindness, his speed to condemn her, or the fact that he dined with Christ, and knew Him not. She was not misdirected by lesser things so she lost sight of the Redeemer of the World, and of love, repentance, forgiveness, faith, the virtues which light all the lesser laws, which gives meaning to everything great and small.

As one of our brothers said at testimony meeting last week, the power of the priesthood which created worlds and sustains them is love, no more, no less – pure love. Let us never lose sight of the hand that holds that, and we will not be misled by anyone, we will always be able to recognize the true from the false and no lie will conquer us, no ‘magic’ surprise us into finding ourselves where we do not want to be.

May we meet one day having walked the true path, however slowly or however many times we stumbled.

Until April, when I return home briefly before the next journey.

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