Letter From The Highlands, Spring
By Anne Perry
I am home again after a wonderful book tour
in America. As always, I enjoyed meeting people and
everywhere I found kindness. I discovered something and long
may it last – that the harder I worked the better I felt! I had
some very long days, i.e. 3.30a.m to midnight! And followed by
4.30a.m. to 10 or 11p.m., and so on. And I returned home feeling
as if I could conquer the world! Either I am very blessed – or
completely mad – I do hope it is the former.
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I met so many interesting people who asked
deep questions, as well as the more usual ones about plot structures,
ideas, research etc. This time I found a greater number of people
profoundly concerned about moral and political issues, not that
the two are really very different. If we do not have a concern
about morality, and I use it in the British sense of having to
do with all questions of right and wrong, then we have no business
participating in the governing of our countries.
Sometimes, of course, it is not what is right
that is the problem, it is how to achieve it at the least cost,
not only in money, but in work, pain, or the loss of other privileges
or freedoms. It may be a balancing act, one gain against another.
People were exercised in mind, and feeling
passionately. Surely that, at least, is far better than apathy?
It has been said several times that all that is necessary for
evil to come to pass is for good men to do nothing! I don’t want
to have been busy with my head in the sand while something bad
happens that I could have stopped, if I had cared sufficiently
to be involved.
Fortunately I came home in time for my Relief
Society lesson this month. The subject was the very interesting
one of temptation. I trusted that everyone had read the manual,
so I launched straight into the subject. I believed knowing the
sisters fairly well, that we could safely leave the areas of the
‘Word of Wisdom’ that are generally most touched on: tea, coffee,
alcohol, tobacco. However after we had all agreed that we were
not in serious danger of indulging in any of those, I asked ‘How
about chocolate? Do you ever indulge in that too much? Or any
other favourite food?’ And of course we are all subject to temptation
to overeat sometimes. Moderation, good rest and good exercise
are also part of the Word of Wisdom. Temptation to overeat, be
lazy, eat the wrong things, can catch us all at times.
Then I moved on to other areas where we can
all be tempted. What about the careless or cruel word? The piece
of gossip? The unkind joke? The pleasure at someone else’s error
or misfortune? The criticism ‘I don’t mean to offend – but –
‘ and then the offence?
How about the lie to justify behaviour?
Yes, you do mean to offend! Or you would not say it! But how
often do we wish to do something, THEN find a reason to make it
sound justified? Honesty about our motives is not always easy.
We are very often tempted to dress it up in more agreeable clothes,
when anger, spite, the desire to be important or to pull someone
else down, are the real reasons for what we do.
How about the temptation to lie to evade
something unpleasant, or looking foolish, or having been mistaken?
Or the temptation to make a promise and then
fail to keep it? Or keep it late, even too late? Either we make
promises we cannot keep, in order to sound good, or we later fail
to keep them because our word is not important enough to us.
We forget, or we are tired, or something more interesting, more
rewarding or more fun turns up. We are tempted to break promises,
even though we could have kept them.
We are tempted to avoid unpleasantness, even
if in the long run it would have been better to face it. We put
things off, choose to believe what we know is less than the truth,
because it is easier.
One of the most powerful of all the Adversary’s
weapons is disappointment, mounting eventually to despair. When
it is difficult, we are weary, in pain of body or of heart, when
we lack the belief that we can win through, are we tempted to
give up?
Yes, of course we are! It can take great
courage to continue when we feel alone, heartbroken, failure is
crushing and we are filled with doubt, inadequacy, hopelessness.
Sheer exhaustion of spirit can be drowning. How powerful is the
temptation to give up? Who has never tasted it?
I felt passionately that we must help to
strengthen and support each other. If I feel that I am valuable,
loved, that success is possible, then I am willing to try anything
and I am full of hope, energy, optimism. I am also far kinder
to others and wish them to succeed too. I am more patient, more
generous of spirit.
If I feel useless, unloved and a failure
then all my worst qualities come forward, and I find it very difficult
even to try. What is the use, if I will only fail anyhow?
Am I different from anyone else? I think
not. We all need to believe in ourselves. And if we cannot or
will not try very hard, with sensitivity as well as intent, to
encourage and build up others, how can we claim to have any love
for them at all? Can we say to the Lord ‘I do not wish others
to succeed,’ or even ‘I don’t care if they succeed’, and still
expect Him to own us as His children. Can you imagine Him saying
that to ANYONE?
What about deserving help? What on earth
has that to do with anything? Is there any one of us who can
be happy with only what we have deserved? ‘Father in Heaven,
give me only what I have earned! Give me justice!”
PLEASE, give me mercy! Give me all you can,
all that I need! I cannot deserve it, but I can be grateful for
it. And I can try to deal with others by that same standard and
not my arrogant opinion as to what they deserve, but by my most
generous judgement as to what I have that might help.
The Sunday School lesson was on the Plan
of Salvation. Is there anything in all existence more beautiful,
more precious to the soul of mankind? It seemed to be one of
those lessons when everyone was on fire and we all participated
with eagerness and were filled with understanding. We are a small
branch, there were only seven or eight of us, but we all seemed
to catch one piece of understanding after another. I cannot say
there was a single thing said with which I did not agree, nor
was anyone left out. There is hardly room to write of it all
here, but since we have had the same subject in all our classes,
I expect you had much the same in thoughts as we did.
I wonder if sometimes we lose perspective
of the grand design. Of course the pre-existence is something
of which we have only glimpses now and then, things which we have
not seen before and yet they feel familiar, ideas that we know
instantly are right. And there can be people we feel connected
to, and yet know we have not met before. Perhaps the most important
thing is to remember that we saw the plan, not only for mankind
in general, but something for each of us individually. God loves
us and deals with us individually, not by the millions, nor by
the scores, nor the tens, but individually and by name!
In the pre-existence we each had a purpose
in this life, which we promised to try to fulfil. We knew it
would be hard, perhaps it would take all the strength, faith,
love and courage that we possess, but it IS POSSIBLE, and we ACCEPTED.
God knows that we CAN do it.
Now – today – is all that we hold – but the
future is ours to affect as we will – with God’s help. And let
us hope, with the help of each other. We need to remember this,
and be kinder, gentler, but also braver, and more honest.
Talking about honesty, I received a letter
from a friend the other day in which she told me how an accident
in which she had broken a fairly major bone had forced her to
be idle for some time, altering her plans drastically. At first
she had been angry, then after a while she had asked herself what
God wished her to address in this time of introspection when she
had little alternative but to examine herself, her goals and beliefs,
and what various aspects of her life caused her pain.
I marvelled at the courage of heart and soul
and the true humility she showed. She is not a member of our
Church, but she is a deeply spiritual person. She wrote of certain
intense hungers and needs which activity had masked.
Do I have such honesty to look at myself
– the inner wounds that hurt the most desperately, and see what
God would have me learn, face, and perhaps alter? What extraordinary
courage that requires!
She asked ‘Has God forgotten me?’
What a cry of the heart! ‘Does He really
have a purpose for me? He has given me talents, but how am I
supposed to use them? They cannot be for nothing! I cannot be
for nothing!’
Could that not be all of us, at one time
or another? I have certainly wondered if God has forgotten me,
and if perhaps He might one year or another turn around and say
‘Oh yes! Sorry, but it’s rather too late now!’
Of course that is absurd! God does not make
mistakes or forget anything! But it is easy to feel that He has,
when time races by and nothing seems to be fulfilled. And certainly
we make mistakes, let chances pass without seizing them, fail
to recognize opportunities because we are looking for something
else.
As well as love for my friend, I was filled
with admiration that she could be so blazingly honest, and I understood
exactly what she meant in the various areas in which she examined
pain and confusion. I cannot believe that such valour will fail.
She is an extraordinary person. I will try to use my setbacks,
my fears, my loneliness or confusion to listen to what the Spirit
is trying to teach me, however painful it might be.
If I could do that, no experience would be
wasted and every step would ultimately be upward!
How fear cripples us! Fear of failure, of
pain physical or emotional, of admitting we were wrong about something,
always in some way an outsider, perhaps not admired or not admired
is not liked. It hurts! Tiredness hurts. Guilt hurts. Exclusion,
the feeling that life passed you by and the good things never
came.
Worse even that is that the good things did
come! You got all you wanted – and it still didn’t matter, they
didn’t taste as sweet as you expected. The old cry of despair
– ‘Is this as good as it gets? Is this all there is? I have
it – and it tastes of nothing!’
If there is no hunger, there can be no joy!
Perhaps if we get the good things too easily,
we do not have the passion, the hunger or the wisdom to be able
to keep them? There is great love in God to give us the treasures
of the soul only as we can hold onto them, see them for the glory
they are, and never lose them, here or in eternity. Surely damnation
is to have them now, and fail to keep them into forever?
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I look at the beauty of the spring, the gorse
burning gold and smelling like honey and wine, hear the skylarks
singing and the faint roar of the waves on the sand, the blue
of the water and the hills fading lilac and grey into the distance.
The flowers are dazzling bright in the garden, white cherry blossom
against the dusk in the evening. I cannot imagine I will ever
grown tired of seeing it.
Please God, we will never grow weary of the
loveliness of the earth, the voices of friends, the Promise of
another day tomorrow in which to try harder, do at least one thing
better and eternity ahead of us.
