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Peek into the Meridian Mail Bag: Anne Perry Strikes a Chord
Edited and compiled by
Kathy Green
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
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 withheldI 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
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
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
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
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