September 2004

By Anne Perry

Once again, I am not writing from home, but from a plane between Glasgow and Chicago, where I am going to give a lecture, something I enjoy very much, even if I get a bit wound up beforehand.  It’s all the usual things that I imagine affect just about everyone.  Will I be everywhere I should be, and on time?  Will I be well – and awake?  Will I have remembered to bring everything I should have – underwear, cosmetics, clothes that match etc?  Above all, will I make sense?  Of course if I don’t have all the right papers, get onto the right plane, have sufficient money, credit cards with room on them, then I won’t get there at all!

So far I’ve made it every time!  The weather I have no control over.

Last weekend I was at home, but the weekend before I was in Edinburgh at the book part of the Festival, the week before at a mystery convention in St. Hilda’s College in Oxford, which I go to every year that I am able.  It is very small, usually no more than a hundred people, and so popular we book for the next one a year in advance.  It is mostly a core of the same people, and we consider ourselves old friends by now.  It is extraordinarily well organized around a theme.  The papers are presented one at a time so everyone can attend all events.  There are no panels, all papers addressing the given theme from some angle.

This year’s theme was ‘Crossing Boundaries’, and produced some of the finest papers I have heard, ranging from the hilariously funny to the serious, tragic and frightening.  One of the latter which gave me most deeply to think, and still engages my mind, concerned male on male rape.  Apparently it is a crime committed far more often than I had supposed.  The presenter knew a great deal about the subject and gave us many distressing facts and figures.  It is not a crime of desire and has nothing to do with homosexuality, but is a crime of anger and violence.  It is driven by a need to humiliate, to exercise power over someone else to the ultimate degree, to do something violently and terribly against someone else’s will and reduce them to total helplessness.  In fact it is the physical manifestation of unrighteous dominion in a particularly hideous form.

What caused me so much thought was a new awareness of how much anger there is submerged yet raging within so many people.  Most would not dream of committing a crime, and yet scratch the surface of any situation that displeases them, and you find fury.  ‘Life is unfair’.  ‘The world is a wretched place’.  ‘Most people are out for what they can get’.  Anything that goes wrong is somebody else’s fault.  ‘I am the wrong age, the wrong sex, the wrong colour, race, religion, social class – you name it – I never had a fair chance!’

‘I got hurt, so somebody owes me!’  ‘I failed.  It must be somebody else’s fault, because it’s never mine!’  ‘I don’t really like myself, so I don’t like anyone else’ – and above all ‘I don’t forgive and I NEVER forget, not if it was unpleasant.  I’ll get revenge one day – if not on the right person, then on someone else – whoever’s standing in the way at the time!’

That’s an extreme case, but I’ve seen shadows of it to lesser degrees, and in some surprising places.  Sometimes it is turned outward to anger, shouting, blame, constant criticism, violent language and finally physical assault.  Other times it is turned inward to fear, self criticism, retreat into constant apology, the self-obsession that is always talking about one’s own failure, false humility (as opposed to real humility which is interested in others).

Now I begin to see why we regard anger as a sin.  Petty upset about something wrong, in order to have the energy and drive to put it right is fine, in fact it’s necessary, or no injustice, lack or wrong would ever be attended to.

It’s the blame, the excuses, the temper, the desire to hurt and to dominate others that is corrosive, even to the death of all the light in the soul.

According to this most interesting woman in Oxford, much of such rage springs from a feeling of helplessness, of having no control over one’s own life, thoughts, future, even at worst one’s own body.  Hence those who have been abused want to show that now they are the ones in control!  Those who feel their lives dominated by others, feel outraged, put upon, worthless, stupid, ugly, outsiders, and become deeply angry at life in general.

It begins to make much more sense.  I know that when I feel excluded, told I do not fit the ‘mold’ and am not as I am supposed to be, not ‘Molly Mormon’, then I have the instinct to lash out verbally.  I want to prove that I do matter, that everyone does, not just those of the accepted type.  To be excluded, belittled, put down, brings out the worst in me.  Maybe everyone else is pretty much the same?  Perhaps we all need a mixture of targets we can achieve, and dreams to aim for, but above all a deep-rooted belief that we are of value because our possibilities are endless, for good and for ill.  And change of direction can happen at ANY time, up OR down!

There are lots of beats to march to, according to the different steps we are able to take.  It’s the direction you are going that matters, not the grace or speed of your stride.

Encouragement is good, but it must be done with honesty.  Lies cause terrible confusion and fears and are so very hard to undo.  Once you have been lied to, told you are right when you were wrong, how do you learn to trust?  Who is going to tell you that you are right, and mean it?  Empty prizes are worse than none at all.  They mean that you are not considered worthy of the truth, not able to face reality, not of sufficient value for bothering to work with.

And above all, comfortable lies don’t alter the truth; they simply cover your eyes so you will not see it.  Other people still can!  The precipice is still there.  It is of no comfort to me to be told it was not my fault I fell off!  I’m still broken at the bottom of the cliff, whoever’s to blame.  And I don’t want to be – I want to be as far forward as I can be, without having trodden on or tripped anyone else in order to get there.  Better still if I have removed a few stones on the path as I went.

We have been taught the principle of unrighteous dominion.  Obviously God knows in every imaginable situation what would be the best thing for each of us to do.  He could not be mistaken, exercise poor judgement or be unaware of some circumstances.  And yet He NEVER forces, coerces, bribes or demands of us that we go a certain way.  He tries to teach us what the result of each decision will be, but that is all.

Yet how often do we decide for somebody else that we know better than they do what they should think, believe, learn, read, watch, who they should associate with, what profession they should follow, what philosophies they should explore and what art they should discover.  We ‘expect’ people into doing what we think is right, or sometimes simply what we want!  We remove love, friendship, approval if they exercise their right to be different, to be ‘wrong’.

Ever made a mistake?  Me too – lots of them.  Did you learn from them?  I did from most.  Would I have learned simply from being told?  I wish!  Was I sometimes right, in spite of what everyone else thought?  YES!  Sometimes I was!  Going to America to live for five years was one of those dreams.  Building my present house out of what was little more than a heap of stones and mangled walls, without foundation and not much roof, was another.  Trying to be a writer for a living was one of the best.

I haven’t room to tell you about all the ones that were wrong!  Or the ones that were middling, but saveable.  But as long as I am prepared to pay the price, be grateful for help when I need it – really grateful, not just lip service, and help others when I can, that’s what life is for – learning, so that you know for yourself, not just believe because someone else told you.  If being told were enough, we didn’t need to have come to earth.  Who could ‘tell’ us better than God?

That woman in Oxford has no idea what a train of thought about anger she started, but I shall think of it differently from now on, and try to recognize some of the feelings that prompt it.  I don’t know whether anyone can help those who live with underlying rage.  It might need far more skill than I have.  But I might be able to moderate some of the condescension, the criticism, the exclusion that causes that feeling of failure, of power- lessness, not belonging, not being in control of anything and being frightened that happiness itself is escaping into the dark where it will never be found again.  That’s pretty overwhelming.  We all need rescuing from the brink of that place!

There is still everything to win!

My own paper in Oxford (actually I didn’t read anything, I just spoke after thinking hard) addressed the theme from a very different angle.  I drew attention to the moral and ethical boundaries one can question in stories, in order to make people think of things otherwise unacceptable – or now perhaps politically ‘incorrect’ would be the appropriate term.  There is very little in explicit sex or violence now that one cannot describe, if one wishes to.  The things that will cause ‘shock-horror’ these days are more likely to be a suggestion that there is such a thing as responsibility.  It is not always the fault of your parents, your school, society etc.  Sometimes it is largely your own fault!  Or no one’s – just life.

Most of my problems are, at least in part, my own fault, many of them entirely.  Which is GREAT!  That means that I can fix them.  I can’t change my parents (I don’t want to).  It’s a bit late to change my schooling.  I might work a bit on Society, but it would be a long, slow process and no results are guaranteed.  Myself I can do something about!  Slowly – but I’m fixable.  So are you – so is everyone – with courage, honesty and help.  Some people will help, some won’t, some can’t.  God will – that’s a promise.

Change hurts, growing hurts – but nothing like as much as not changing or growing!

Compensation was another thing I spoke of.  Life can include a lot of pain and loss at times.  It is not always someone else’s fault, and society does not owe us payment because we experienced something nasty.  Any more than it charges us because we get to see the sunset, or the harvest fields gold to the sea, or the trees glowing with ripe berries, or the wild geese flying over, or the swans with the light on their wings!

I don’t have to pay to hear the silence when there’s nothing in the air but a shining peace.  I have to strain to hear the wind stir the grass or the whisper of waves on the shore, and the sea is cobalt satin and Ballone Castle is pale against the sky.  I don’t pay for the wild flowers in the hedgerow or the taste of the purple plums or the smell of the earth and the cut crops and the last roses.

I’m not due compensation if now and then there are bad things as well.  There must be the bitter in order for us to know and treasure the sweet.

And then there is the other big argument about ends and means.  Does the end justify the means?  I’m not sure the question makes any sense.  When is ‘the end’?  Surely the means you use alters what the end can be?  What you do and how you do it changes who you are.  If you use the devil’s tools that is all he wants – what you think you are doing with them is immaterial.

Would it were so simple.  Every leader in history has learned that there are bitter decisions to make.  Battles must be fought with weapons, and weapons can injure – they are not weapons if they can’t!  There are casualties.  It was the devil’s plan that there should be none – we would all be brought back – but dwarfs of the spirit, not innocent but ignorant, and there is a vast and terrible difference between the two.

Ends and means?  I don’t know.  Pray hard and judge carefully.  Live so you can hear the promptings of the Spirit.  For sure:  coercion is wrong, ingratitude is wrong, kindness is right, lies are wrong, gentleness is good, weakness, evasion and deceit are wrong, restraint is good, cowardice is a canker of the soul, and in the end will lose you honour, faith, even love.  Self-righteousness is destruction of the one who feels it, and is so ugly it can damage those observing it and mislead them as to the beauty of true righteousness, driving them away from it.

Your greatest friends are those who wish for your success, desire for you to fill the measure of all your possibilities for good, whether they succeed in that field themselves or NOT.  It takes great generosity of spirit to be happy for another to receive what you have not, to gain what you have not, to be what you are not!

But no one can exceed you in courage, honour or kindness unless you are willing that you should do less, pay less, become less.  Forgive yesterday, other people’s, and your OWN.  Work on today and tomorrow.

It is my profound belief that God will help any of us, IF we allow Him to.  Too often we don’t.  ‘I’ll be good if’ – ‘I’ll forgive her after’ – ‘I’ll try when’ – ‘I can’t, it’s not my fault!’  ‘It hurts!’  ‘It’s embarrassing!’  And the great one – ‘it’s not fair!’

Of course it’s fair – just not yet!  But this is not the end.  It may be harvest time in the northern hemisphere right now – our fields are gold, our hedges bright, the apples, pears and plums fattening and rich in colour, but it is not God’s harvest yet.  We may be in for a few surprises when it is!  We are going to reap what we have sown, generously or sparingly, with honour or without it, with courage and gratitude and the love of life, or with fear and anger and resentment, frightened we might somehow give more than we get.  As if that were possible!   

And while we are on the agricultural metaphor, the crop needs a little rain to grow – and it needs WEEDING now and then!

Don’t even ask me about reaping and threshing, I don’t think I want to go that far!  But it probably holds true still.

Autumn is my favourite season, though I love them all.  We have had some cloudless days in the high seventies, a slight breeze off the sea, the land burning gold, shining where it is harvested to stubble, and smelling like heaven.  The pigeons are calling and the wild geese will go over soon.  The sunsets are almost too beautiful to bear.

It will fade too soon – but it will come again next year!  And winter can be spectacular as well.  Winter nights can show the splendour of heaven till the mind staggers beneath the weight of it.

There are good days and bad ones.  Some things hurt.  Let us rejoice in what we can, treasure it and be grateful.

Re-reading my past letters to you, which are due to be published in book form in October, I am amazed at how much I have to be grateful for, some of the things I have learned, and some that I haven’t – yet!

There have been ‘Sentinels Along The Way’ – the title of a book of spiritual thoughts and experiences gathered by my friend Doris S. Platt, also to be published in October.  Many of the ‘sentinels’ that have influenced me for good have been the letters some of you have sent, making me realize how much we are alike, that we travel the same road, with the same steep and lonely parts, we trip over the same stones – and with the grace of God we still reach the same bright City on a Hill in the end.

Thank you.

P.S.  Home again.  Chicago was wonderful.  What marvelous people I met, full of light of spirit, intelligence and the warmth of friendship!  I have a whole world of things to be grateful for.