This time I really do write from the Highlands. It is Remembrance Day, and the 11th has actually fallen on a Sunday. The wind has an edge of ice in it, but it is dry and quite sunny. I am really thrilled because for the first time our branch walked up to the War Memorial with people from the rest of the town and its two other churches, and laid wreaths on the cenotaph.

We have already been invited to participate next year, and that is a real victory of bridge-building. It is inclusive rather than exclusive. Surely, we have infinitely more in common in our hopes and dreams, our memories and beliefs, than should ever separate us because we see some doctrine in a different light? It was in every way a good experience.

I have just returned from three weeks in Canada and the United States. As always, that too was a marvellous experience. The time in Canada was at the Surrey International Writers’ Conference near Vancouver, which I have attended for the past five years. It is beautifully run, and I now feel as if I know most of the people and it is a reunion of friends as well as a rich learning opportunity.

One part of it that comes sharply to mind is a time of giving fifteen minutes to each of many beginning writers who bring a piece of work, and wish to receive constructive comments on it. I have the strange situation of asking the writers what they are having difficulty with, and the solution seems almost to leap into my head. I hear myself giving explicit and appropriate advice.

I listen, then I think, “Great! So why don’t you do that yourself, then?” — because I realize that my own work would benefit if I did.

Taking Your Own Counsel

Do you ever find you do the same, when speaking in church, or teaching some spiritual subject? You listen to yourself giving inspired advice to others — and then think, “Why on earth don’t I do that myself? Listening to what I am saying, I am convinced how right it sounds, how lucid, and even how beautiful. So why am I not doing it already?”

Which I suppose is a long-winded way of saying that teaching can be the sharpest and most effective learning, if you try to stay open to the promptings that may well be wiser than your own unaided intelligence. Perhaps there is very often help available, if we will only be sufficiently aware that we need it, and of course of whom to ask it.

Some part of testimony is there for that purpose also, if we are truly speaking of spiritual experiences rather than talking about how much we are blessed with whatever it is we have. Not that gratitude is without a spiritual quality, but “I have this, and I have that” is seldom uplifting to others. It can too easily sound like “I have more than you have.”

Real gratitude shows itself in treasuring the gift, whatever it may be, in using it for good, sharing with others. Wealth, time, opportunity, freedom, knowledge, and talents are all given by God, and are a stewardship for which we will one day have to account. I am reminded with sometimes painful sharpness that to whom much is given, much will be required. I marvel at what some have achieved with poor health, little time but passion, courage and determination.

Today we remember those soldiers who had so little time, often less than twenty years, and yet gave their futures so that we might have a chance of so much more. How dare any of us waste it?

There are occasions when things seem to take forever, days pass into weeks, and nothing happens. Then there are other times when within a few hours there is new knowledge, new beauty and sudden flashes of wisdom or experience that enrich the rest of life. Do we treasure it all enough? And we need the dark threads as well as the bright. Often it is those from which we learn most.

Blessings in Different Settings

During my stay in Utah, I was taken by a dear friend south to Arizona to visit the South river of the Grand Canyon. The weather was cloudless and it was a full moon. The beauty of that has to be seen to be believed. The whole majesty of creation seemed to be there — including a seventeen point bull elk, grazing not twelve feet away from us.

What a breathtakingly magnificent and elegant creature! I use the word “elegant” intentionally. He had such grace, such ease of movement — as if he were a dancer at rest in the moonlight, alternately grazing and standing head high so we might admire him. I think he was definitely holding court! There was nothing awkward or clumsy about him, nothing heavy-footed.

We drove back to Utah through the Vermillion Cliffs, and that was like something out of a science fiction film: huge red buttresses, and towers and castellations, like the remains of two cities of giants, facing each other. What a gift it is to be able to travel and to see!

Lastly I went to Los Angeles. Utterly different, but in its own way immensely exciting because of the intellectual quality of the people I met, and perhaps more eternally important, the vitality and the tolerance of one race and faith of person for another. In one office I found black, Jewish, Iraqi and ordinary white Protestant, all friends with each other. Which, of course, is exactly how it should be, but too often it isn’t. It was deeply pleasing to see, and I found myself smiling without at first knowing the reason.

Now I am home for a couple of weeks, with mountains of work to do, which is good. I have deadlines to meet before I leave for Naples on the 22nd, and I will be back again at the end of the month. I am going because I plan to write a book in the reasonably near future set in Naples, and perhaps the Amalfi Coast. I need to be sure the whole idea would be workable. It would be ridiculous to spend a year or more writing it, and discover that I have everything wrong!

Since it is closer to the present day than many of my other books, error would be more easily seen. If I make the descriptions incorrect, or am wrong in the political beliefs and climate, the descriptions of streets, the sea etc., there will be people still alive who will know. Naples is the perfect place for the story I have in mind, the issues of morality that I want to explore — but it is also a marvellously beautiful place, with Capri, Sorrento, Amalfi etc., and who would turn down a chance to research that?

Filming One’s Own Life Story

At the moment I have staying with me every day a German film crew — director, Dana, cameraman Mischa, and soundman Florian. They are three of the nicest people you could imagine, and they will be here until early December, making a documentary. The weather has been cold but very beautiful, and I am getting used to having a microphone on me most of the time, and a camera a good deal of it. They actually came to Vancouver with me too, and have been here a week already.

It is an odd experience having people listen to everything you say, and watch you. Sometimes I am self-conscious, other times I forget. And they also speak to those I work with, to my secretary, Elizabeth, my brother, and anyone else in the house.

Why I mention this is because when I know I am being recorded I am now more careful of what I say. I think before I speak. I try not to say anything I would not like recorded. I don’t say things about people that would seem unkind, critical, ugly.

Why do I imagine that when I am not recorded then it doesn’t matter so much? Shouldn’t I always do the best I can? There may be no camera or microphone, but it is just as real nevertheless.

If I were to sit at Judgment Day while some angel replays my life on “video,” how pleased am I going to be by what I see and hear? Or what other people say about me?

Isn’t that a sobering thought? And yet it is not merely a flight of fancy. This life is not a rehearsal — it is the real thing. No re-takes. God will do the “editing” at the end and put together a fair judgment of it.
Except that any time we really want a “re-take,” as long as we hallow and use the gift of repentance, knowing it is one of the holiest gifts of Christ, then it is there for us. And the “editing” at the end will be kind.

Still, it is better that we give it the best shot we have now, and get in a few really good scenes — gentleness, the ability to forgive even when it is really difficult and the wound has hurt deeply, hard work without complaint, the courage to try again, and again, and again, and ignore discouragement. Other scenes I want to record are generosity — not necessarily of material things, but at the least of spirit — time to listen, the will to believe in the good, gratitude for gifts given. I want to give thanks for the ability to see, and hear and the freedom to act of our own volition, without fear or oppression, the increase of understanding, patience, faith and honesty.

This is a film in which no acting is accepted. It will be a documentary of who we are.

I’ve already convinced myself I’d like to go back to the beginning and re-do the whole thing! But that isn’t an option for any of us — only to make it the best we can from now on — have faith that the “editor” will show mercy (as must we to others).

How long will I remember this? I hope I won’t forget. But then other things will happen, there will be other opportunities and lessons. Perhaps that is one good reason why we should keep journals, or notes of some sort, so that today’s blessing, today’s insight and increased vision will be remembered in the future, and we can build one step upon another, until we reach the heights.

Next month’s letter will be ready for Christmas, and all the renewed hope and grace that that gives us. Until then, I wish you a time of blessings, of ever greater sight, and ever stronger faith.

 

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