Letter From The Highlands December, 2003
By Anne Perry

I can hardly believe this is the final letter of the year.  Last Christmas seems so recent.  Yet a great deal has happened since then, both good and bad.  There have been successes and failures and an enormous amount from which to learn.

We have had the strangest weather anyone can recall.  Right here in this part of Scotland, we have had what is more or less summer since February!  That is now over ten months, and for us summer is usually an affair of two months, or three at best.  It is still calm almost every day, and if it rains, it must do so at night.  I can only remember a couple of really soaking days in weeks and weeks.  Most of the time it is sunny and air so still nothing stirs.  The beauty of it is breathtaking.  Now is full moon, and in a clear sky, low over the sea in the twilight, it is unforgettable.

Of course the Water Board is getting upset and talking about rationing in places.  Reservoirs are low.  But in our generally damp climate there is still sufficient that we do not have to worry for wild life, which is one of the first things I think of.  Some of the vegetable crops are less than usual, but then the grain is so excellent we are apparently exporting to places like the Ukraine.

If we have two of three years like this people in the south will stop thinking this is a barbaric climate, and all start coming up here to live!  We shall get overcrowded, expensive, too much traffic on the road, and forget what snow looks like – or even frost, for that matter.  So perhaps I shall be glad enough when this glorious season breaks.

But in the meantime, I am gaining such joy in the winter light, the silver and blue of it, the burning sunsets (when there is any cloud to hold the colour!) the breathlessly still days when the sea is like silk with hardly a ripple.  The only way we know it is winter is the filigree of bare branches against the sky, the slant of the light so low across the fields with that eerie, stark clarity no other time has, and the call from skeins of wild birds as they go over.  They are mostly geese, but now and again, low and close, sunlight brilliant on their wings, the swans.  I am not sure why, but when I see wild swans flying it always feels like a blessing.  To see dolphins jump on the incoming tide affects me the same way.

It has been a strange and thoughtful autumn, touched by several deaths of people close to me.  Two of my dearest friends have lost sisters, and two others a husband and father.  Only one of them was up to their three score years and ten.

In one case my friend asked me to come and visit her and her sister on a weekend, and I did go.  It was a journey of six or so hours, and necessitated an overnight stay in order to see them twice.  I was home only a day when the call came to tell me that the sister had died.  Had I put it off, I would have been too late.

The Gift of Time

It has turned my mind lately to the infinitely precious gift of time.  We tend so easily to imagine that we have any amount of it, and what is not done today can always be picked up tomorrow.  No it can’t – not always.  There is going to be a time when it is too late, when we cannot say ‘I’m sorry’, or ‘I love you’, or ‘I am grateful for all you have given me’ – or anything else that matters.  So much of regret is not the things we couldn’t have done, but things we could have, and simply didn’t.

It can seem maudlin to think of death, of shadows lengthening and chances dwindling away.  But it doesn’t have to!  It can be a reminder of how precious it is to have a ‘tomorrow’ in which to try harder, to say the good things which are still unsaid, to refrain from saying and doing those which on looking back will be ugly – or destructive.

Like all of us, I have one life, one chance to make of myself what I really want to be.  Is that what I am doing?  What do I want, stripped down to the naked truth?  I want to be brave.  ‘Coward’ is one of the most terrible, tragic things that can be said of anyone.  I want to be generous.  How fearful to be mean of spirit.  What I do not give of myself now?  I want to be without grudges.  I am going to need forgiveness when I stand before God.  How terrible above all else if I have prevented Him forgiving me, because I will not forgive others!  And there is no one anywhere whom I can possibly know well enough to be righteous in condemning.  Why would I want to, anyway?  An act may be wrong, it may be self-righteous, vindictive, dishonest, in every way ugly – but not a person, not beyond repentance.  And how could I wish it were?

Now is the time to make certain I have made possible my own forgiveness, by willingly and eagerly allowing that of others.

Now is the time to do what is right, whether it causes me fear or not – fear of pain, ridicule, loneliness, misunderstanding, want – fear of failure or rejection, all the things that hurt most deeply.  If I try, of course I might fail.  But if I do not try, I have failed already – and by CHOICE!

Now is the time to make the extra effort, whether I am tired or not.  If this was not the best I could do, then when do I mean to give it my all?  Tomorrow?  How tragic to look back and think on what I could have achieved, if only I had been willing to work at it!

God wishes to bless us, we are not always willing to make the effort it requires to receive.  He cannot give us what we will not hold.

Euphemisms

Which brings me to a related subject.  Euphemisms.  It seems we have developed so many ways of using roundabout means of saying things, misuse of words, toning down of anything which might be embarrassing or abrupt, or painful, that we have lost the truth in a forest of euphemisms.  We ‘lie at rest’, ‘pass over’, ‘fall asleep’, ‘cross the great divide’, ‘go on ahead’ – anything but ‘die’.

I think that matters less than some other things, because we all know what we mean by these terms – at least all adults do.  Perhaps some children wonder why we are so afraid of death we can’t be frank about it.

But we sometimes evade other things as well.  We can be so afraid of offending we end up being obscure to the point of being incomprehensible.  We don’t need hellfire sermons, we do need to be told candidly such things as that in order to be with those we love in eternity, we need to reach the highest degree of glory that there is.  We need to become Celestial people!  And that means we MUST be honest when it hurts as well as when it is easy!  We MUST be concerned with the happiness and welfare of all people, not just our own families, or those whom we like.  We must be free of all resentment, vanity, envy – and most especially unrighteous dominion!  And how hard that is!  A little praise, a little authority and we find it so easy to exert a power we should not.

Joseph Smith’s warning on authority should be written in letters of fire across the sky!  The humility which is so much praised is not, I believe, a putting down of oneself, not a fear nor a doubt of worth, and never, ever an excuse for cowardice.  It is the conviction that every other human being is worthy of being treated with respect, and may have knowledge, skills, wisdom, even understanding of the ways of God, that I do not!  And ‘every other’ includes women and children, people of other races and cultures, other degrees of intelligence or education, or any difference I care to think of.

It is not easy to be corrected by someone younger, newer to the church, dare I say it – female!  But if they are right, how much more arrogant and stupid of me if my pride will not let me acknowledge it?  Am I then not only perverse, but wilfully stupid?

Let me not obscure truth by pride, fear, laziness, anger, or so many roundabout words that what is ugly no longer frightens me, and what is beautiful no longer tempts me, or fires me to work night and day to achieve it.

It is a delicate path to tread, being sure enough of truth that I don’t speak it without danger of hurt, or misleading because my words are not used well.  I think it is better to speak simply of the goals to be desired, not of condemnation.  It is so easy to drive someone else away into despair, because I have crushed their hope of forgiveness with my anger.

Let me not say this or that person is bad, this or that sin damnable, but rather extol with passion, the beauty of what is good, in the certain knowledge that some measure of it is attainable by all, and only our Father who made us – and LOVES us – knows how much by any one.  For me – I MUST do my best.  It is fast growing too late for anything less.

May the joy and the hope of Christmas bless you all and fill you with courage and with peace.