Letter From The Highlands, December 2004
By Anne Perry

I am just home again after a full month away.  It is wonderful to be in my own home again, my friends and family here, but I had a marvellous time in a score of ways.  It was full of adventure, new experiences, masses of learning, beautiful things to see, and above all friendship and ideas.

I stayed for a lot of the time with my dear friend Doris.  We had been hoping and intending to do some promotion for her new book Sentinels Along the Way, which is a superb collection of spiritual stories about people whose lives have been affected profoundly by someone who has really changed their views or goals.  However it was not yet back from the printers, so we were not able to.  I believe by the time you read this, it will be fully available at the very least at Amazon, and at Barnes and Noble.

We did a little with my collected ‘Letters from The Highlands,’ which is now completed and available.  I had some nice comments back.  But then it is your beautiful and generous letters that have nourished me and kept me going all the time!  Again, thank you.  You probably have no idea how much it matters to me to hear from any of you.

I spoke in libraries, at BYU, and at the Association of Mormon Letters conference at Westminster College.  It was a lovely experience to meet so many other people interested in the same things, and in some cases, old friends.

One of the best aspects about giving any kind of talk is that it obliges you to consider a subject very carefully, and decide what you believe is important.  I did this especially with the keynote to the A.M.L.  I chose the subject, “Writing with Honesty.” 

I don’t imagine anyone intentionally writes any other way, but just as we dress carefully and present our best selves when going out to meet people we care about, so we can put our best selves into our writing, and so hide our fears, vulnerabilities, wounds, and so on.  Thus we end up with a picture that is lopsided, and so a great deal less than the truth.

And in order to say what you really mean, first you have to know it!  That is a great journey of self-discovery, not easy to make, and not without pain, but it is infinitely worth making.  It is one of the chief purposes of life.  What do we care about most?  Fear most?  Tend to avoid, find excuses for, prevaricate about, resent?  A host of feelings that are not easy to understand or examine.

And yet both good writing and growth of the spirit depend upon doing so.

I used for example the feeling of disillusion.  It is one of the most painful.  Who wishes to have to acknowledge that someone we love, admire, have looked up to, trusted, perhaps leaned on, is not all that we thought they were?  Do we make excuses?  Do we refuse to accept it?  Or blame someone else, get angry, feel personally let down, even betrayed?  There is then self-pity, a loss of faith in other people, and perhaps in other things?  Can we even grow to hate that person for the wound they have dealt us?  We feel left alone, a new, cold wind shrivels up something inside us.

However hurt you are, is that who you want to be?  Angry, self-pitying, doubting everything else, everybody else?

Is it possible there was no intent to deceive?  We placed the garment of our dreams on someone else, without asking them, and then blamed them when they did not wear it as we wished?  Did we require too much, expect others to carry our burdens, live up to an expectation, realistic or not?  Or to light the way for us, when possibly it was our turn to be the standard bearer?

All sorts of things are possible.

At least if we ourselves were at fault, possibly being childlike when it was time to have been grown up, we can do something about it now.  If someone we have deeply loved really is far, far less than we need them to be, if they have betrayed by lies or cruelty or cowardice, or any other darkness of the heart, then it is a terrible grief to have to face.  But we must not compound the ill trying to lay the blame where it does not belong.

Surely God, who understands us all, must have faced that disillusion so many times we cannot imagine it – like the sands on the seashore or the blades of grass on a prairie that stretches to the horizon.  He will give us strength if we ask, and are willing to receive.  But to do that we must let go of rage and self-pity and defensive lies.  Can we forgive?  We cannot afford not to.

That takes a tremendous amount of honesty – and courage.  It takes humility, and the faith that God can ultimately heal all wounds, even if it takes longer than we can foresee or believe we can survive.

And that is dealing only with disillusion!

I approached love a little also.  We say “I love you,” and what we mean can be a hundred different things.  I need you and I admire you, I like it that you need me, you make me feel good about myself, I am sorry for you, I feel duty bound to you, I am comfortable with you ... and so on.  Even that I am afraid to try managing without you.

We say “I love God,” and “I love my family,” and “I love apple pie and ice cream,” and “I love that dress you are wearing.”

The biggest difference is between “I care about what happens to you” and “you please me, I feel better if you are here” – which is really, “I love me.”

The best I can manage to work through is – “I want you to be every good and beautiful thing that you can be – the measure of your creation, if you like.  I want it to involve me, but if it doesn’t, then I still want it for you.”

And that takes a lot of doing – and a lot of honesty.

I certainly gave myself something to think about.  I hope it did for others too.

Another terrific thing I did was attend a writers’ conference near Vancouver.  What a marvellous event.  I had hardly a minute off the whole three days I was there.  It was absolutely burning with ideas, wonderful people.  I met some I had encountered the previous year and what an intense pleasure to see them again – people full of heart and spirit and great intelligence.  Some I met for the first time and was delighted.  There wasn’t a minute that was not filled with good exchange.

They had a feature that they called the Blue Pencil Café, where writers at the beginning of their careers could spend fifteen minutes, one to one, with an editor, agent or established writer, and discuss their work.  They could bring three or four pages.  I found myself listening to so many eager people, full of plans and ideas, and I tried to give good advice, never crushing, and yet also honest.  I felt as if the answers came to me – and then I kept thinking over and over – yes that’s a great idea – do it yourself!  I then wrote down the principles I found myself giving, and as speakers so often do, I learned more than I taught.  I hope their writing will be better as a result.  It will be my own fault if mine is not!

I left with a tremendous feeling of optimism, and an invitation which I accepted instantly, to return in 2005.

One of the last things I did was to dine again with two of the most utterly delightful women I met there the year before.  That dinner had been the spiritual high point of my previous visit, and this one was also superb.  Truly friendship lies at the core of all the best relationships of every sort and degree.  We had been in touch through the intervening year, and they had both contributed, strong and beautiful stories to Doris’s Sentinels Along The Way.  It was wonderful to see them again , and talk of anything and everything with such intensity and freedom.

How odd time is.  A few hours can feed you for years, and months can mean little, and sometimes if they are bad, even be forgotten.  I think there is a vast amount we have yet to learn about time – perhaps that it is a manmade concept anyway which is necessary now, but in eternity can be done away with?

Back in Utah I stayed with Doris again.  We drove south for a short break, a space for both of us to write, and to look at marvellous things.  Zion National Park was spectacular beyond words.  One can reel off pages, but barely touch the grandeur of it.  Does the earth burn with such colours anywhere else?  Is it so vast, so primeval, so like the dawn of the world and the very concept of creation?  One is humbled and uplifted at the same moment.

“What is man that Thou art mindful of him, or the Son of man that Thou visitest him?  Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels” – But with what visions, what hungers and dreams of the soul!

A couple of weeks later at home again, Meg and I drove around Loch Ness and saw the light on the face of the waters, the mountains that rise sheer out of the depths, and the autumn trees blazing with colour.  Hence the photographs included.  Again, beauty to ravish and inspire, to feed the heart and leave one with an eternal hunger to learn, to see and treasure more and ever more of this marvellous earth, and never forget who made it, and has to love it.

Today is Remembrance Sunday again.  It was good to be back at church after such a long time away.  And my lesson again, on the Word of Wisdom.  We touched on the obvious points, of course, but also on some of the less often spoken of, for example to do everything in moderation.  We spoke of sufficient sleep, exercise, to take meat (which is any animal flesh) sparingly, all foods in season, to eat little and regularly.

We also spoke of using common sense to learn what suits each particular person, and that is not necessarily the same for all.  We have our different metabolisms, life styles, ages, intolerances (especially wheat or dairy).  It all could be summed up as respect for the body in order to gain the best health and balance of mind as possible.  Mental as well as physical health was touched on as being one of the blessings.  Foods can very definitely affect moods and temperament, self-control, ability to concentrate, and so on.

We even discussed using less salt, with regard to blood pressure, water retention and other things.  One day we might even have a lesson on cooking with herbs rather than salt or other preservatives.  It could be very interesting, and enormously beneficial.  One sister helped her husband reduce dangerously high blood pressure in a couple of months simply by stopping buying processed foods and making them all herself with juicers, steamers etc.  And she has four children (all at home), studies for a degree and works full time!  So it is not only for those with nothing else to fill their days!

If you want something done – ask a busy person.

It was altogether a most interesting lesson.  Now I must go and have some fresh broccoli for dinner!  Seriously!  What is the point in talking up a storm, then doing nothing about it?

I look at this marvellous world, everything good and bad in it, the splendour and the tragedy, the adventures I think and hope lie ahead, and I need to be as well as I can in order to do my best.  Time may be an illusion in eternity, but it is real enough now – and too little of it lies ahead for all there is to do.  I cannot waste any of it.  None of us can.  Every one of us is here for a purpose, with unique things to do, things to learn and accomplish, to achieve and enjoy.  No one can do more than their best – and how could we want to do less?

I wish you a month of achievement, a giant step along the way towards a bright kingdom.

Until next time.

P.S.  If you should wish to obtain either of the books I have mentioned and have difficulty, please email me, and I will help.