Letter from the Highlands, February 2002
by Anne Perry

Our Branch has started off the New Year in good form. We even have excellent news that we have been waiting for as long as we have been here, which is pushing forty years, I think. We are looking at land for our own building! We are not there yet, but we are so close, and there is a very good site available which we are actively considering.

But more important than that, we have begun the new Relief Society and Priesthood manual, and the Pearl of Great Price and the Old Testament, in bright spirit. I love the old Testament, for me it has long held a passion and a beauty I find nowhere else, except in the four Gospels, and in the books of Moses and Abraham. Already I am caught up in the power and the magnitude of the vision. Today we were working on the Creation. It brought to my mind reading I did some little while ago about the teachings of the early church fathers, in the first three centuries after Christ, and their doctrine that all matter is coarse and vile, temporary in nature, and that ultimately we aspire to doing away with it and becoming pure spirit.

Even as I write this the enormity of the damage such ideas can do comes up before me into almost immeasurable horror. We are speaking of the Creation of God, the things that He laboured to organize into beauty, order and life, all so that we, His children, might grow and our joy might be endless and spread to fill eternity. He saw all that he had made, and called it good. Is there a greater blasphemy than to say it is vile, and should be risen above, eventually pass into nothing?

What has this done to our thinking over the centuries? How deeply has the poison run? How many birds and beasts have been abused because we feel we have licence to do so, since they are only 'material'? We are ignorant that they too existed in the Spirit before being made, by God, in their flesh. How many people have despised and misused their own bodies, and then the bodies of others in many different ways, sprung knowingly or not, from this terrible lie? Surely any creature born of God in the spirit and housed in a body made in the image of His, merits our deepest respect?

Surely the earth, its waters, its rocks, its plants, with their abundance and their breath-taking beauty, demands both awe and our love?

And yet we have polluted and laid waste, the forests, the seas and the minerals used unwisely, too often exterminated, as if we despised the very earth which will one day be the Celestial home for those who are fit to inherit it. What a devastating evil has sprung from this one lie!

This afternoon I drove my mother a few miles around the countryside in the golden light as the storm clouds piled dark and dramatic over the west, and brilliant gold of the winter sun lay long and burning over the fields. Blue patches of sky reflected almost navy over the sea. The stubble is still amazingly gold, the fields with cattle or sheep are bright green. The snow all melted weeks ago, there is none left even on the mountains, and the ploughed fields are strong and dark, smelling of rich earth ready turned for the spring crops to grow and strengthen.

The bare trees are black fretwork against the sky of fast driven clouds of grey, white, and sulphurous, glowing yellows. Flocks of birds swirl up and around, hundreds of them, as if on a single current of wind, then settle into the woods again and are silent.

A few days ago the light made the sea turquoise, pale and luminous, much paler than the land of the farther shore. Skein after skein of wild geese flew over, and every now and then, lower and far closer, dazzling white swans with sunlight in their wings. The air smells sweet, infinitely clean off the water.

The first snowdrops are well through, and any day now they will bloom. There are a few wallflowers yellow already! I don't know if they are early this year, or late from last. My mother had roses from the garden in her vase on Saturday - and when I drove her out to the point to walk to the lighthouse, some of the gold, wild gorse is in bloom, although it has no perfume yet, the air is too crisp. It is a May flower! What has happened to our seasons?

But early or late, brilliant with snow or green and gold in the sun, the winter is so beautiful not even spring could be better - only different.

Surely anyone who says that Creation is not 'good', blasphemes the Creator, and denies their own part in the past, the present, and perhaps in eternity as well?

Of course there is ugliness, waste and destruction, but that is our doing, not God's.

Another thing that happened this year and from which I should learn, actually has to do with one of my New Year resolutions.

My friend Meg has rescued hundreds of lost or unwanted animals over the quarter century I have known her. One of the most recent is a small, black wild kitten. To begin with the kitten was so terrified she would come out from hiding only at night - so she was named Star.

On New Year's eve there were lots of fireworks in the neighbourhood, and she was frightened and ran away across the fields. It was fairly deep snow and we all worried the next day, waiting for her to come home. She didn't.

Days went by and we called, searched, hoped and prayed. For nearly three weeks there was nothing. We finally recognized that it was time to accept that she was gone, and we would never know what had happened to her.

Then on January 18^th Meg rang me late in the evening - her voice almost hysterical with joy. 'You'll never guess! Star's home!' The unbelievable had happened. Not only is she home, she is fit and well, nicely fat, shiny-coated and full of herself. She is running around the house shouting at the other cats, telling them where she has been, and all about it! But she is happy not to go out again yet. Very wise little cat!

Perhaps I should be wiser as well, and keep more faith that what is good can happen even long after it seems it is possible. Wait a little longer before you abandon hope! My resolution was to trust the Lord's timing better, and just keep working and believing, even when I cannot see - in fact especially then.

I was asked to speak in Sacrament meeting today, at rather short notice, because of someone else's illness. It concentrates the mind wonderfully, and I found I knew within moments what I wanted to say. I could have entitled the whole thing 'The Picture in the Attic'.

Most of us have read or heard fairy stories, especially the classics that have come down to us through the generations, and are common in one form or another to many cultures. The hero is brave and resourceful, the heroine absolutely always beautiful! Actually the hero is usually handsome as well. When the princess kisses the frog, he turns into a gorgeous prince, not one who was pretty well a frog anyway.

Beauty seems to matter to us. We spend massive amounts of money, thought, energy and even pain in order to achieve it. There is a saying 'no pain, no gain' about exercise. Health has a lot to do with it also, but then health is part of beauty. Vitality, enthusiasm, grace and physical well-being are highly attractive; apathy, clumsiness and misery are not.

Can you imagine a product advertized - 'drink a glass of this a day and you will live ten years longer, and be as healthy as a horse - but unfortunately you will also look like a horse!' Would anyone buy it? No need to answer.

And there is nothing wrong with looking as good as we are able to, as long as we do not spend a disproportionate amount of time or money doing it, or end up valuing people by their looks. To appear as healthy, as pleasing and as well-groomed as possible is a mark of your own self-esteem and your regard for others. It is almost a part of good manners.

Then I retold, briefly, the story of Oscar Wilde's 'The Picture of Dorian Grey', the man of extraordinary physical beauty who's portrait of himself he admired so passionately he wished he might always look as he did at that moment. His wish was granted - neither age nor sin ever appeared in his face, and tragically there was a great deal of the latter in his life. But it came to the portrait instead, until that face was so hideous with cruelty, dissipation and deceit that it was hideous to see. He kept it locked in the attic and could not bear to look at it himself. It made even him, sick and terrified.

The faces we have in the flesh will grow older, they will be marked by many things, not only elements of our character, but by illness and accident as well. Some of our sins will not show. Many beautiful faces hide selfishness, lies, viciousness, or we would never be deceived by others, and so often we are.

But I believe when the resurrection comes and we take up a perfected physical bodies, all marks of age and illness or deformity will be gone, but 'The Picture in the Attic' is the face we will have, the one in which our true nature is reflected perfectly. And the beauty of that requires work also - again 'no pain, no gain' is true. It is our lifetime's labour to fill that face with courage, gentleness, patience, strength and balance, honesty, generosity and sweetness of spirit.

Our callings in the Church, and chances and fortunes in life, which are callings also, can give us the opportunities to achieve this. Callings in the Church have two main purposes: for others - to do a job that is necessary in the service of our fellow men - and for ourselves - to learn strengths, skills and virtues we do not yet have. Sometimes the second is the greater gift. We may look at someone else and think that they have been given a calling that we could perform far better. Possibly we could. If that is true, then we need it less than they do. And if we could perform it perfectly, then we do not need it at all.

Perhaps our calling, in these cases, is to learn patience with someone less able, how to support instead of standing in the limelight, how to teach without condescension, and how to have faith that God knows what He is doing! Of course leaders are human, and there is always the possibility that they have made an error. Even witnesses to the Angel Moroni, men who had seen the golden plates, fell away! But it is not for us to make such judgements and use them as grounds to criticize, and tear down others. If there are problems, they can be put right with patience, gentleness and discretion.

The callings in life can also teach us many things. Imagine reaching the Day of Judgement, and having the Lord say to us 'I gave you friends who were easy to like, and some who were difficult, whose ideas and culture were difficult for you to understand, but you persevered, and learned to love them. I gave you things that frightened you, but you did not run away, you learned courage and faced forward. I allowed people to hurt you, and to be unjust, and you learned to forgive. Therefore the mistakes you have made are forgiven you'.

Wouldn't that be the best thing any of us could hear? Such a life has been beautifully used, and every part of it has found purpose.

How terrible to hear the opposite. 'I gave you opportunities to learn every quality you need! Over and over again I offered you chances, but you did not take them. You refused to work, you ran away from everything that was hard or that hurt you. You would not forgive - so you have tied my hands, and I cannot forgive you. If you do not love my people, love my creation, how can I give you the power to have a creation of your own?'

In justice we would have to acknowledge that He cannot.

But we have today in which to learn, and with his grace, we have tomorrow also, and perhaps years yet. But let us not waste any of them. A day in which we have found something to love, with a whole heart, is a day well spent. Something new learned is a gift received, another thread woven into the tapestry, whatever its colour, and it needs all colours.

As I said, one of my New Year resolutions is to trust God more. I'm working on it!

Good luck with yours, and good friends to encourage you.

Until next month.

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