A
Peek into the Meridian Mail Bag: Anne Perry Strikes a Chord
Edited and compiled
by Kathy Green
Guilty Treasure
Read Article
Here
I totally love “The Treasure
of Our Guilt,” and most of everything Anne Perry writes.
By the time I finished reading this, my heart was bursting.
Tears fell.
When she wrote "I am reminded
of the Lord’s words to Thomas — ‘Blessed are they that have
seen, and believe, and more blessed are they who have not
seen, and yet believe’ It seems it is not what you see with
the eyes and with the mind; it is what you see with the
heart and the spirit that lasts," it reminded me so
much of how I felt when I first joined the Church and my
feelings about Joseph Smith.
A line from the movie Joseph
Smith: Prophet of the Restoration, "We do not need
to see him to know he is a Prophet," reminded me of
that conversation between the Savior and Thomas.
The Lord is all forgiving and
all knowing and all wonderful. The faith we have in our
Prophets and that of our Savior should be a tremendous strength
to get us through ANYTHING that gets thrown into our paths.
We don't need to see; we need to let the Spirit guide us,
witness to us and to help us on our way to do what is right
and good.
I look forward to her next
article. Thank you, Anne Perry.
Alana Thomas-Rhodes
Tooele, Utah
**
What a delight you are! First,
you pull me in with lovely descriptions of things rural
and natural. To an old farm girl, that is irresistible!
Then you teach me in words that just soak right into my
soul.
You are a kindred spirit. I
know you hear that same thing from thousands. It is such
a long way from the quiet, peaceful spot where I dreamed
away my childhood, to your spot in Scotland — and yet, you
transport me to where you are with such familiar and warm
images. It's a reminder of the common humanity of each of
us, and of things peaceful and beautiful the world over.
Thank you for your physical
and spiritual insights —AND for your books. I am eagerly
reading them, trying to keep myself in check, because once
a book is in my hands, I'm lost to the world around me.
May you keep writing for years
to come!
Ann Call
Bountiful, Utah
***** ***** ***** ***** *****
Homework
Read Article Here
This article was very well
written. After living in an abusive marriage for 22 years,
I can fully relate to most of what was said in the article.
The best thing for people to do is to get help with their
problems. I ignored a lot of things over the years, hoping
they would go away. This approach did not help the situation.
It wasn’t until I took a stand against abuse that the healing
process began.
When my husband at the time
realized that abuse was not an option anymore, he sought
the help he needed from childhood. I was married to him
for 22 years and did not have any idea the sexual abuse
he had gone through as a child.
Juli Riley
Salt Lake City,
Utah
**
This is an excellent article.
It is sad that so many years have passed before this was
actually addressed openly. I came from an abusive home (yes
we were members — active) and went into an abusive marriage.
Sometimes I think I subconsciously chose an abuser just
because it was what I knew. I hated it but it was familiar.
The few times I did meekly try to inform leaders of the
problems in the home, I was instructed to give more, stop
thinking about myself and take "I" out of my thinking.
My ex-husband was a handsome,
charming man. There was no way people could imagine him
as an abuser to wife or children. He finally left us after
17 years of marriage. It took me years to recover, but I
did, but only with the Lord's help. I saw two of my daughters
go from one abuser to another several times until they too
began to take control.
I am in a happy marriage now
to a kind and patient man, who has done a great deal to
set my thinking straight — but what a struggle it has been.
It was so difficult as a child, then a young adult, to reconcile
the lessons of the gospel that I heard each Sunday with
what was going on in our home.
I finally removed myself emotionally
from the church for a while, as home was the reality of
my world. The families mentioned in Church lessons were
no where near to anything I knew. The church view of families
did not sound attainable to me. I knew the Gospel was true;
I just didn't feel I fit in anywhere. It even distorted
my thoughts of God. If my father, who was so skilled and
impressive in so many ways, and also held the priesthood,
could be so angry and abusive towards me, why should God
be any different? My husband just confirmed my childhood
attitudes, as did an abusive grandfather, who was a bishop.
Fortunately as I matured, so
did my spiritual understanding and I was able to move beyond
those confusions and struggles.
Life is good and the Gospel
makes it so; but family abuse can be a dark, confusing and
devastating experience, which warps and distorts all other
things, as you measure life through the lens of the abuse
until you look to the Lord.
Name withheld
***** ***** ***** ***** *****
Mother Love
Read Article
Here
The Revised and Enhanced History
of Joseph Smith by His Mother, by Maurine Proctor
I was so impressed by the chapters
of the Revised & Enhanced History of Joseph Smith
By His Mother included on this site that I ran down
and bought the book at my local LDS bookstore.
I noticed it was printed in
1996 — I was expecting something like 2004 or 5. I didn’t
realize this book has been around for 10 years.
Perhaps because of the title
and the fact it is being shared recently on this site that
I assumed incorrectly.
I am so amazed and blessed
by reading of the character of Lucy Mack Smith. Clearly
she was the perfect woman prepared to be the mother of the
prophet of this dispensation.
Thank you for including full
chapters in the Meridian Magazine.
Paul Haldeman
Murrieta, CA
**
I have been following the publishing
on-line of Lucy Mack Smith's history of her son, Joseph.
Thank you for making this available for us. His brother,
Samuel, shows up in my family tree and therefore, so do
the rest of the family.
I am keeping them in a binder
so I can read them at my leisure, so I print out each chapter.
Melba J Cox
Niceville, Florida
***** ***** ***** ***** *****
A Proctor Pick-Me-Up
Read Article Here
Finding the
Door to Personal Revelation, taken from a talk given by
Maurine at the BYU Women’s Conference, May 4 and 5th in
Provo, Utah
Thank you so much for this
article. All things do testify of Christ! I am dealing with
some extremely serious issues with one of my adult children,
and all the logic and love have not worked. Clearly, I have
been lacking the Spirit.
Your Brother of Jared analogy
was right on. Thank you so much for picking me up and putting
me back on the right track!
Angel Ellinghaus
Denton, TX
***** ***** ***** ***** *****
BYU History Lesson
Read Article
Here
Approaching History: The Da Vinci
Code as a Case Study by Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, Andrew
C. Skinner, and Thomas A. Wayment
Thank you for carrying the
excerpts from the new LDS book responding to The Da Vinci
Code. There are so many "faith promoting rumors"
that we hear all the time from our LDS neighbors and family
members.
It is easy to understand why
information of suspect provenance is often popular. People
like the sense of being "in the know," of understanding
things in a way that is superior to the less educated or
(we flatter ourselves) less righteous. When someone has
a private conversation with
a senior general authority,
their remarks are parsed for insight into the day of the
Second Coming, or when we are going to be returning to Jackson
County, or undergoing the tribulations of the very last
days before those events. When we can offer more insight
to others, we are often admired by them (which can be a
temptation for teachers of seminary and adult gospel doctrine
classes who put even a modicum of study into their efforts).
Especially when the "special
knowledge" is arrived at without a great deal of studious
effort, we sometimes think that we have received a revelation
based on our righteousness, which others are not yet entitled
to.
I think one of the remarkable
things about the Church is that, despite the fact that many
of our general authorities are people of great education
and scholarship, and even though we strongly promote education
and study, there is NO emphasis on seeking arcane knowledge
that is available to a limited few. The prophets and apostles
teach that our exaltation is much more a matter of living
according to the truth we know than simply seeking information
for our personal delectation.
The "principle of intelligence"
that will rise with us in the resurrection is how obedient
we are to God's revelations, not the volume of the revelations
we know of. The scriptures are full of people who knew
all too well the truth, but did not live the truth. That
is the tragedy of the Nephites.
Many apostates start from a
desire to have a knowledge that ordinary members of the
Church cannot attain to. My own theory is that, since God
loves all His children, and seeks to make the gospel available
to all, in all lands, including the land of the dead, he
does not make salvation and exaltation a matter of IQ but
rather a matter of our love for God and for our neighbors.
The First Commandment is to love God, with all of our faculties,
including our minds, but the focus is on our willingness
to act out that love, as opposed to simply knowing God.
Alexander Pope said, "A
little knowledge is a dangerous thing." His solution?
To drink deep from the spring of knowledge. We cannot dip
in our toes. We must immerse ourselves, be baptized in
a commitment to understanding the truth, not only to know
things, but also know why we know them, and how well we
know them, and be willing to admit our ignorance and our
need for more perfect and complete knowledge.
There is certainly a temptation
to have "itching ears," to seek for things "that
we cannot understand," to "look beyond the mark"
for a more advanced knowledge whose possession will confer
on us greater status in the eyes of God and ourselves.
Atheists and agnostics love
to be able to tell religious believers that their trust
in God is "blind faith," that they cannot actually
know anything about God because he is by definition immaterial
and therefore unreal. (Latter-day Saints, it seems to me,
have a unique response: That God is material and real, existing
every bit as much in the real world as we do.) Atheists
seek for books that reassure them that Jesus was never a
God. And there are many Christians who are really agnostic
about the precise details of the nature of God and Christ.
When people are eager to find
conspiracies, which will justify their lack of faith, they
ignore historical truth of even recent events. How much
easier to ignore the historical truths of events 2000 years
ago if it releases you from having to follow the strict
injunction of Jesus to follow him, to take up his yoke and
his burden, to love our enemies and accept persecution?
Raymond Takashi Swenson
Idaho Falls, Idaho
83402
***** ***** ***** ***** *****
Da Vinci, the Movie
Read Article Here
Da Vinci Doubts and
Reason’s Rebuke, by Karen Boren
I just read Karen Boren’s article
at Meridian. It was an interesting read and I would like
to see another article after she watches the movie, which
was a little more subdued than the book in its doctrinal
claims.
My husband and I went to see
the movie last night and saw three members of our ward!
We both read the paperback book in the past month, which
we purchased. All told we contributed $25.00 to the Da
Vinci Coffers. Do I feel duped, guilty, ashamed for
liking the book and enjoying the movie last night? Nope.
The divine Feminine to me is
not so much worship of Mary, the Code's articulated wife
of Jesus, as it is simply the understanding that posterity,
blood lines, family relationships, and the possibility that
Christ married, loved, and fathered a child are sacred things,
not to be hidden from humanity.
If it is true that during the
councils of Nicea Christ was made into a spirit without
body, parts, or passions and all evidence of his more human
side — being married, having children, having a wife who
was regarded with extreme high esteem by her fellows, much
like the Saints regard the wives of our living prophets,
then perhaps it is time for that particular fraud to be
exposed. The mistake Brown made in the book was in going
all the way to the other extreme — he believed that Christ
being a father meant his divinity was in question.
One line in the movie struck
me in particular. Tom Hanks’s character said that perhaps
being human is divine. I think moviegoers will appreciate
the entertainment value of the show, and also the possible
opportunities it presents for conversation with others about
what is sacred, what is real, who is divine, and what makes
people holy.
As Latter-day Saints we know
that healthy posterity is the fullness of the gospel.
Jenny Hatch
Louisville, Colorado
***** ***** ***** ***** *****
Mining the Book of Mormon
Read Article Here
Book of Mormon Anachronisms,
by Michael R. Ash
I found the article about "Book
of Mormon 'Anachronisms' Metals and Metallurgy very informative.
I shared it with some friends and relatives — some LDS and
some not LDS
Carol Hakanson
West Jordan, Utah
