Letter from the Highlands, May 2002
by Anne Perry

May flowers
(Photo credit: Dallas Petersen)

It has been so long since I have written because I was away in America for five weeks, had just under one week at home, and then was in Italy and London for a further week. The amount of e-mail and surface mail I had to answer was wonderful to receive, but quite a mountain to answer.

Added to which I had so many people to thank for their hospitality, kindness etc. that it required a further eighty-three letters as well! I am afraid this one was put to the back of the list. All the single individual letters are now sent, plus my complete one hundred and forty-five pages of outline for the five new stories set in World War One!

I have even done the re-write bits, line corrections etc. for the manuscript for next spring. And my cases are unpacked and the laundry washed and ironed, cleaning sent and returned. Not everything is put away yet, but that will come. All I have to do now is work out what I am going to speak about in sacrament the day after tomorrow! I have even accomplished, and greatly enjoyed, my visiting teaching this month. You see why I am a little late?

Other than that, I have only a book to write before the end of July—I have done the first fourteen pages! Out of four hundred and eighty! So it is plain sailing from here on - as long as I have all sails set and there is a hundred mile an hour wind behind me!

The most important thing is that my mother is in hospital in Inverness, almost fifty miles away, and seems to be calm and in no distress. I say 'seems to be' because since her stroke, and her smaller strokes after that, she cannot speak clearly enough to understand most of the time. Every so often she is unconscious for a while, then comes back again. From the radiance in her eyes and her face, I believe profoundly that during those times she is learning wonderful things about the next part of her life's journey. She had a blessing to that effect, and I am not the only one to believe that we can see it coming to pass.

I feel very blessed indeed for this privilege.

I try to see her four times a week, but because of the distance it takes about three hours each time. The hospital is very good indeed about letting us in any hour we wish, and the care is so gentle and with so much kindness and dignity that I could never be grateful enough for it.

The spring has been superb, day after day of sun. The garden is blazing with flowers, particularly all kinds of daffodils and narcissi at the moment, brilliant tulips of every colour, and some wallflowers, polyanthus, grape hyacinths and pansies. The white triple daffodils look almost like gardenias, and they smell marvellous. When I pick them to take to the hospital—some for Mother, some for the nurses' station—the perfume is so powerful I have to have the car window open or it would overcome me.

The gorse is burning yellow all along the lanes, but it has been for weeks, and the trees are really becoming green. The fields are shimmering as if there were a giant chiffon scarf spread over each, a film of green just above the brown of the earth, and the sky fairly sizzles with the sound of larks.

I have been asked to speak in sacrament tomorrow, which is always a privilege, and better still, I have been allowed to choose my own subject. So driving back from the Saturday market where I help for a while with the refreshments (once a month—proceeds to the local medical practices,) I gave the matter some thought. My ideas centered on the visiting teaching message regarding listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit. I have both done my visiting teaching and received mine (I had better! Considering that it is the 27th of the month). It was interesting how different the conversations became, and which sides of the many-faceted message they touched.

I plan to speak on the other name for the Holy Spirit—the Comforter. Comfort can be many things, some good, some capable of misuse.

No one wishes to be physically or emotionally uncomfortable, the word itself implies something you don't like. Without even thinking about it, we move, we try to change whatever it is that bothers us.

Yet can you imagine anything more dead of the soul than to have no hunger of any kind, nothing to seek, nothing to strive for, nothing yet to do? Without appetite, food is of no use and no pleasure, and I use the word 'food' in the broadest possible sense, the feeding of body, mind and heart. What point would there be to existence at all if there were nothing ahead to achieve, and no passion to do it in order to be happy?

Hunger of the mind to learn, to discover and to create, hunger of the body to exercise, to achieve, to consume, and above all hunger of the heart to love and give, and to be loved, are surely among God's greatest gifts to us. Without them we can have neither joy nor pain.

And it is right that we should have joy in all things that are beautiful, it is part of our gratitude for those things: music, the glory and perfume of flowers, a blazing sunset, tumultuous seas, a hot bath when you are tired and cold, the feel of a warm wind in your face, cut grass—anything that pleases you. We are supposed to know happiness, and as soon as we have savoured it - to thank the God who created it, and gave us the power to feel it—and then look for people with whom to share it.

The kind of comfort which can be misused is what I have heard many Americans call 'the comfort zone', and I know of no better term for it. It is that area of satisfaction in which we gradually become stagnant. We begin to say 'it doesn't matter' —'I can't do that'—'I'm just me, this is how I am'—'it is too late to change'—'near enough is good enough'—'it will do'. It doesn't actually hurt any more, either because we have become so used to the pain of not doing our best, and knowing that we are not, that we don't notice it any more, or we have grown a callous over the place that ought to be sensitive.

If you stopped before you were really tired, then you could have gone further. That wasn't your best effort, it was only second best, or perhaps even less than that. If you gave some of your skill to the work, but not all of it, if you wasted—really wasted your time, not filling it with labour or rest, learning or teaching, laughter, gratitude, or survival through pain of mind or body, then you have lost something which will not come back. But of course if you realize it, and the resolve not to do it again, then it is not wasted at all.

We have to rest on a plateau now and again, sit down for a while, BE COMFORTABLE long enough to gather strength from the next mountain. Just don't build your house on the plateau and settle there! Heaven is at the top of your personal mountain, not half way up —as it is of mine, and everybody's. All mountains have some tough bits, and some easier ones, and some places to rest a while and catch your breath, even to sleep.

Have you ever had a school report card which said 'could have done better!' on it? I have. At that time I thought it was terribly unfair. Now I think my teacher was probably right. I was looking at how I thought I compared with other people - she was looking at what she thought I was capable of. I rather think I had overstayed my parking limit in the comfort zone!

But teachers can be wrong. God cannot. How terrible to find that at the bottom of the report on your life, the comment is 'could have done better!' The reward is going to have to be the same, because it is our own choice. 'Could have done better'. Those words are as truly tragic as 'if only . . .'

But it isn't how you start that counts, it is how you finish. If the final comment is 'got the hang of it at last—put everything into it!' Then the reward will be—'it is all here for you. There is no end to what you can achieve —NO END! There will never come a day when you will run out of new possibilities, new excitement, something else to achieve—and enjoy.'

And the final thought on comfort was the sweetest, and possibly most appropriate for me at this time in my life—and I'm sure for many others also. The Holy Ghost as well as whispering to us thoughts of guidance, of warning, of choices to make, also gives us moments of understanding like shafts of light on a temporarily dark landscape.

There are many things we have to bear which at the time seem to be very hard, perhaps even to make no sense. I think the most painful is when we can see no purpose to something, and no good to be served by it. And sometimes that happens. There can be what appears to be injustice, suffering of the innocent—and heaven knows if one looks at the news at the moment there is an overwhelming amount of that!

No wonder many people cry out in bewilderment, seeking to understand, and failing, and say that 'if there were a God, He would not allow such things to happen'.

This is when faith is most difficult to cling onto, and there is no rational answer to give to such a person. But I believe that at these times the Holy Spirit, in His role as Comforter, will give us first a sense of peace and an ability to bear what we must, but also in time, little by little as we are willing and become able to understand, also a knowledge of why things have to be as they are.

I do not mean that we should be passive in the face of wrong. There are many things we should strive to change. All evil should be fought against, all pain should be eased where we can. But the things that are already done, the things too vast for us to combat, or even to address, the events that seem inextricably woven into wild tides we cannot stem, all we can do then is seek to understand where possible, and where not yet within our abilities, then abide with peace of soul. Even in pain or grief, we should struggle to keep faith by listening for the whisper of the Comforter which has been promised us. We must seek it not only by asking in prayer, but by making ourselves people who can hear it when it comes. That means washing clean of anger, guilt, self-pity, self-righteousness, the need to blame and the need to justify and make excuses. It takes great courage, and integrity, but the pure of heart can eventually see God. We have been promised that by the Saviour Himself.

Surely if we are not tested to the ultimate here in this life, then it will not happen at all? We will have lost the chance to be all that we might have become.

And that is all very easy for me to say, living here in good health, a land blessed by peace and a climate that does not give us earthquakes or tidal waves, drought or flood, hurricane or forest fire, and with more than sufficient food. But to whom much is given, much will be required. I am left without excuse. I am very conscious of that lately. I hope that I will have many tomorrows, but no number would be sufficient to waste any, because they are God's gift, to be used.

A happy thought in ending. While I was in America, which was as exciting, welcoming and delightful as always —and even more tiring with flying almost every day, and now two hours at every airport before take-off (all necessary, I know)—I had many rich experiences. One stands out. I was signing books in a shop and an elderly lady came up with two hardback books. I dedicated the first for her, with her own name, and signed it. Then noticed that the second was another copy of the same book. I did not want to offend her, but I was afraid she might not have realized it. I pointed it out, in case she wished to change it.

“Oh yes, I know,” she replied with a beaming smile. “The first is for me. The second is a gift for the next person who makes me happy. I don't know yet who it will be.”

Isn't that a beautiful outlook? Her face was full of the faith that someone would meet her expectations of good.

May you find joy in the small things, while waiting in faith for the great ones.

Until next time.

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