Letter From The Highlands August, 2004.

This is written a trifle early because I am going to be away one weekend at a mystery writers’ convention in Oxford, and one at the Edinburgh Festival.  It will be most enjoyable to meet old friends and also new people, and hear a whole lot of new ideas.  There isn’t much else as exciting as a new idea, although perhaps seeing a familiar sight from an entirely new angle counts?

Today is sunny and windy and very warm.  We have been having a lot of summer fog, actually a sort of sea mist caused by evaporation and temperature inversion, or something of the sort!  The air seems very close, and we have had so much rain in July things grow practically as you watch them.  The roses were amazing, climbers right up into the trees twenty and thirty feet high, the best we have ever had (I think I say this every year!) but they are over now, for the most part.  We’ll get a second flush later on.

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Driving back from church today the fields were that soft bronze gold of ripe wheat, the verges along the roads were bright yellow with coltsfoot, and there are swathes of magenta-coloured fireweed everywhere!  There are gold corn lilies and blue-purple vetch in the hedges as well.  The sky was blue, the sea blue, and the sunsets have to be seen to be believed!  Sometimes the sheer physical beauty of the world is almost more than we can take in and bear to hold in the eye or the heart.  Where did the doctrine ever come from that matter is evil?  It is the creation of God, who saw it and knew that it was good.  Who loved it and meant that it should have and give joy!  Why would He create a world that was not good?  It tests us, yes of course it does, that is its purpose.  It is made for life and death, and resurrection?  But how could we look at it and fail to be grateful?

And how dare we not treasure it, nourish it and protect it?  If we desire to be creators of worlds in the future then we must show our ability to love this one of which we are merely stewards.

It was my lesson again in Relief Society, and it was one of the very best of the whole book, on service to our fellow men, acts of kindness, the giving of whatever we see is needed and we can offer.  Of course time, care and material things are excellent, but we concentrated on the things we can all give, whatever our situation or means – a word of appreciation or encouragement, approval, understanding, or simply a listening ear.

I wanted to stress that in the book the gifts were given because the giver was sensitive to the Spirit as to what was needed.  People do not always need what we imagine they do.  It is easy, when we are vulnerable, to misunderstand the intention behind a gift, or to feel patronized or criticized.  The Spirit would help us to know what is needed, even when we do not necessarily know what the problem may be – and people can deal with some griefs or difficulties only by keeping them private.

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We all need to know that someone cares, and is giving of themselves, out of friendship rather than duty, or because they have been assigned to it!  Nobody wants to be a charity case.

If we receive praise, we want it to be genuine, not because someone is simply trying to encourage us.  Insincere words are cheap, and often do more harm than good.  It can take time and care to think of the right thing to say.  We all need to feel that we are of value and that what we do matters – WHATEVER our role in life.  If we believe in ourselves we can achieve anything good, if we don’t we are crippled even before we start.  I think that is universal.  To learn to believe in someone and let them know that – as themselves, not simply because they exist, is one of the greatest gifts we can offer.  I suppose it is a kind of respect as well as of love.  It takes time and thought, but what a blessing it would be.

I have been working hard this last month on writing a third draft of my middle book in the series set during World War One.  What a blessing it is to be able to have another view on something we have made and a chance to re-work it!  Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have that opportunity in life?  Perhaps in a way we have – right up until the end there is another day, a new chance to be as wise, generous, honest, brave and kind as we can – and in a way that will be as much as we wish.  The question is not really ‘do you want to be?’ but ‘how much will you pay to be?’

I was speaking with a friend about someone we both knew who recovered from a life-threatening illness.  We both hoped this person would use the experience to value more the good things in his life, to treat them with tenderness and taste every bit of the sweetness, having known with a new force how easily they could be lost.

Tragically this did not happen.

But should we need to face losing things in order to realize how precious they are?  He may not have used that lesson, but what is to stop me imagining that this is my last day, and wondering am I really how I wish to be?  Have I anger, unresolved grudges, apologies not made or not accepted, gratitude I have not expressed, forgiveness I have not asked for, or have not offered?  Then what is stopping me from learning the lessons I blame another for not learning?

Nothing except blindness!

I read in the translation of an old text that the Saviour said that when it is dark the blind man and the sighted one are equal, but when the light comes, the blind man still does not see.

Do I see?  Has the light come, and I missed it, or part of it?

How wonderfully easy it is to see others’ missed chances:  Thomas who doubted, the apostles who slept while Christ was in Gethsemane, Peter who denied Him not once but three times!  And dozens of others.

How much do I doubt?  Far too much.  When am I asleep to chances for good, to another’s need?  Again, too often.  How often have I denied Him, not perhaps in words, but in deeds?

I see how sad it is in another.  Perhaps it is even worse in me, because I had a chance to do better!  It shouldn’t have to be my mistake for me to learn from it!

Something else I have realized lately, and I cannot imagine why it took me so long, is why we are told so often and so powerfully both in the Old Testament and in the Book of Mormon how the people prospered under good leadership and sank under bad leadership.

I used to think – for heaven’s sake - how can one man, good or bad, affect a nation of millions?  Haven’t they got minds of their own?  What was the matter with them?

But I have come to perceive lately how all nations are made up of people of every degree and quality of compassion, honour, courage and decency.  Some are greedy, others are generous; some are cruel, others gentle; some are cowardly, others brave; some are violent, stupid, easily led into brutality, others are heroic in the extreme.

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But like a vast mixture of chemical elements, when the leader and the most powerful and highly visible is of one nature, those of a similar nature rise to the top and acquire the other positions of power.  They are copied.  They choose the lieutenants of their own kind.

Picture a vast tray of chips of all sorts of minerals.  Pass a magnet over it, and the iron filings will all be drawn upward!  A glance at the top of it and it will seem to be all iron, because that is what is visible on the surface.  We draw into ourselves that which is like us!

Leaders who practise deceit will allow those lying and cheating to prosper and become acceptable.  The easily led will become deceitful also.  Leaders who admire and condone violence will appoint juniors who indulge in violence and brutality also.  And so on.

Those who love honour and keep their word whatever the cost, those who face forward with dignity and love will similarly draw to themselves the best among us.

It is not that one nation is different from others, simply that a different part of it has been given the power to affect it all.  One looks back in history and says, how on earth could such a thing as the holocaust in Europe have happened?  Or the Spanish Inquisition?  Or the blood bath of the French Revolution?  Or any of the other mass persecutions and deaths that there have been?  Could our nation (whoever that may be) ever do such a thing?

I think the answer is that if we allow the wrong leaders, nurture and permit the wrong elements, then yes, such things could happen.  There is no ‘them’ and ‘us’.  We are all ‘us’!  ‘All that is necessary for evil to come to pass is for good men to do nothing?’  These horrors do not happen as an avalanche, but come as snow, flake by flake, until it is too deep to get out of without agony and terrible loss.

One person can make a difference.  The greatest events in history began with one person, and gathered strength.  Eve, who took mortal life for all of us was one person.  Noah who heard the Lord’s command to build the ark, and believed and obeyed, was one person.  Moses who led the children of Israel out of Egypt was one person.

Mary who said to God ‘Be it unto me according to Thy word’, and gave mortal life to Christ, with all that entailed, was one person.  Christ Himself was one person.  And it goes on and on.

Look after your ‘one person’ and make your words and your acts talk for what you believe, whether it is obviously regarding spiritual matters, or in things that are less obviously so.  There are a hundred arenas in which to fight for what you believe:  forgiveness, the freedom for others to choose whether it be in agreement with our views - or NOT!, compassion to those we love – and those we find it hard to like, justice for friends and enemies ALIKE!  Freedom from bigotry, hasty judgement, persecution of the different, less able, less likeable, less attractive.  There are hundreds of things to fight for, there is the beauty and value and safety of the earth itself, and all the creatures who are upon it, and who are our stewardship, and for which we will have to account.

Another talk given today was on putting on the armour of God in order to protect ourselves from temptations to sexual sin.  The speaker listed the breastplate, helmet, sword, shield etc., which could preserve us from attack by the world outside us, and they are of priceless value.

I think this analogy stretches quite easily to the attacks of many other sins as well.  But I found myself crying out in my own head that all the armour in the world which can protect us from attacks from without – but from my own knowledge of people, myself and others - the deepest and most powerful temptations sometimes come from the hunger and the loneliness within!  It is not the swords of my enemies I fear the most, it is the starvation of dreams and the long walk alone that will defeat me, if something does. (By the grace of God, it may wound but will not beat me!)

We need the inner defence, the feeding of the belief that the journey, however long, is worth it and is towards something of infinite value.  And we have to believe that we CAN make it, right to the end.  Then no one else’s attack will injure us mortally.

If an army marches on its stomach – and its supply lines are necessary to life – then a soul marches on its spirit, and the lines that feed that spirit and connect it to the love of God are the difference between victory and defeat in the journey upwards.

Until next month, keep your sword sharp and your armour bright – but above all, feed your soul.