A Letter from the Highlands, January 2001
by Anne Perry
It is tragic to spend one’s life in the past or the future, not in the NOW – not to look around and think – THIS MOMENT is wonderful!
Happy New Year to everyone.
Now I had better think what I mean by that. It won’t happen that we should all have everything we wish, or even everything we think we need. Some of us are presently struggling against great suffering or want, some of us will in the year to come.
None of us will be denied the opportunity to learn whatever it is we each need in order to come nearer to the measure of our creation. The most difficult thing for me to keep remembering is that that is the purpose of life on earth. All kinds of trivial and immediate issues blur that truth.
I think that should be my New Year Resolution Number One: God can see an infinite view, I can see only what I hope and dream, which is not even the rest of today, let alone next year, and eternity. I should trust that He not only loves me, but that He knows me better than I know myself, regardless of what I think! And this is true for every one of His children without exception.
A Sense of Proportion
Resolution Two is to try and get a sense of proportion as to what I should worry about, because it is my responsibility to do something about it! – And what I should not worry about because it is right and appropriate that I should trust the Lord, and not ‘waste a good worry’ as my brother puts it.
Christmas and New Year are times of certain emotional stress for many people. Some spend far more time with extended family than usual, expectations are high, there can be disappointments, differences can become heightened. There are those who are alone, old memories can be painful.
Precious Moments
I was very fortunate this year because my brother and his family, and my mother, were all here. Such times are very precious indeed and should be savoured. It is tragic to spend one’s life in the past or the future, not in the NOW – not to look around and think – THIS MOMENT is wonderful! Right this instant is one of life’s treasures, let me savour it, smile, let everyone around me know my gratitude in words, and in deeds. It passes so quickly in actuality, but it does not need to pass from the mind or the heart. That is what memory is for, to make good things eternal within us. We can use their strength and their joy as a well from which to draw in more arid stretches of the journey.
This is all so easy to put into words, and so much harder to do in the times when it matters most – but that is what resolutions are for, and perhaps because it takes real resolve to keep them.
Old Resolutions
All the other previous resolutions are back, because there is a lot of room for improvement. Be tidier and then the place will look better, and I won’t lose so much! Keep an accurate diary of things to do – then nothing will get forgotten or double booked. ‘My house is a house of order – saith the Lord’! Good idea if my house were too!
And the same resolutions on ‘don’t lose your temper, think before you speak, don’t leap to judgement – good or bad – be generous but don’t be extravagant – answer all your mail immediately so it doesn’t pile up, or get lost, or overlooked!
Sort out my wardrobe and give away anything I haven’t worn in two years, doesn’t really fit me, or doesn’t suit me any more – or never really did!
Perhaps I should sort out my mental wardrobe as well – I may have a few ideas and habits that don’t fit me – or suit me – and perhaps never did?
If I sound like everybody else, it could be that these are places of weakness that many of us tend to. If I’m improving at all it is definitely ‘step by step – grace by grace’ and unfortunately not by any miraculous leap! It is a matter of ‘keep taking the medicine’ – which would be very regular prayer, scripture study and faith that no good thing is impossible, some just take longer!
Tithing Settlement
Our Branch news is small, because over the holidays we see less of each other, many people are away to stay with family, or have visitors to stay with them. And our weather can become interesting at this time of the year. Actually it has been staggeringly beautiful, day after day clear and still, navy blue seas, cobalt sky, far mountains across the water white from crown to foot in every direction. It was only there for a few days, now they are green again – for the time being. But sunrise – at about 8.30a.m., lighting them with peach and amber and gold, has been breathtaking. Sunsets are all fire and shadow beyond the black lace of the bare trees.
Our snow lasted a very short while, but it still takes the edge of a shovel blade to break the ice on the 15 x 30 lily pond in the courtyard, so the fish have air.
The nights are dazzling, so sharp you would think the larger stars were fairy lights caught in the branches of the trees along the drive – big, old elms and sycamore. Wild white swans are flying low – and the huge skeins of geese high up, talking to each other all the time. They never let you miss their going over.
The sea is so flat calm today you can see the faint ‘brush strokes’ my mother calls them, of the shadows caused by the current underneath. There is hardly a breath of wind and it is well above freezing. In the garden the snowdrops and some daffodil species are through.
But yesterday evening our new Branch President held tithing settlement, and he lives eighty miles away on the opposite coast of Scotland (We are east – he is west). We have a BIG branch (geographically – about seventy people counting children) – and he had to drive over the mountains through a blizzard. You city dwellers have a little something to be grateful for – although I wouldn’t change places.
A Kingdom of Glory
I have just had occasion to drive about thirty-five miles along the coastline (to the dentist!) and it was dangerously beautiful. I had trouble keeping my attention on the road. In the far distance the snow peaks rise above the green hills, dazzling with the low sun on them. The sea is as still as glass in the shallows, reflecting without a ripple the pinkish clouds, and in the distance the slight mist is touched by the sun, drawing a shining veil to separate the foreground from the back, like a Chinese watercolour.
It defeats me what any kingdom of glory can be if it is more beautiful than this world. But like most of us, I do think about it sometimes. And I wonder how the world will be during the Lord’s thousand year reign. If I live to see it, will I be ready in spirit? If I were one of those changed in the twinkling of an eye, to live and serve the Lord for all that time – what wonderful things could I accomplish?
What power will such people have, freed from the mortal concerns of caring for the body’s need for safety, shelter and sustenance, freed from fear of pain or death? What extra powers to perform miracles might we have?
And I thought about it seriously. With these powers how might I be more greatly enabled to do the Lord’s work? I tried imagining it. What a wonderful daydream!
Then the realization was clear, and really quite swift. The Lord’s whole purpose is to help us to learn to travel far enough along the road towards perfection that He can do for us what is beyond our own ability. We have to learn courage, faith, honesty, generosity of spirit, and above all how to love. There are no miracles that can accomplish that for another. If I could turn stones into bread and feed the world, if I could heal any disease, say to the sick and the crippled ‘arise and sing and dance’, if I could make every physical war cease, it would not prevent it in the heart. I would not save one soul. If it could be done that way, would God not already have done it?
It can be done only by patience, teaching, loving, learning to love God ourselves in such a way that our human example is vivid and passionate enough to be seen by other humans struggling along the path, or blindly looking for its beginning, and then encouraged, won a step at a time.
And I don’t need anything whatever to do that which isn’t available to me in this ordinary mortal life! There is nothing stopping me doing all this – except me!
That was an exciting thought – and a frightening one. When I meet judgement and say to the Lord – ah, but if I had had the power to do –
He will say – ‘You did have – you simply didn’t use it! I gave you EVERYTHING you needed! You had time, knowledge and the means to gain more – and my people were there waiting, needing. What else were you looking for?’
Miracles?
Hearts are not changed by miracles – the scriptures show that over and over again. It is against the very law of growth or of virtue that they should be, or even could be, wrought by an outside source. Growth comes by work and change from within, and understanding and then the grace from without to complete what we have begun, the encouragement to take the next step, and the next.
That sounds very difficult, but the key is that it depends upon us, and it IS possible.
Another resolution for the New Year should be to remind myself of this, so I never use the excuse that I cannot do it, I need more than I have, some extra ability or opportunity. I don’t. That is not how it works.
Speaking of work, over the holidays I wrote two short stories, both of which I enjoyed doing because short stories can be great fun, once you have the idea hammered out. The first was a Sherlock Holmes story rather overdue. The second was my very lightest side – another Daisy adventure. Daisy being my dog! She tells first person detached stories set very much in the here (Portmahomack) and now. There are people in them, but the characters who matter are the other animals. The crime in question this time was the theft of 100.00, and some mince pies.
I also did an afterward for a classic book to be reprinted, Conan Doyle’s ‘Hound of the Baskervilles’,and am working now on the outline for the next Pitt mystery. I had it all worked out before, and have now decided it is not nearly good enough! So back to the drawing board! It is the part of a book which matters most. If this is right all later faults can be corrected. If it is wrong, nothing later will fix it completely. There are no rules except that it must be honest, and it must work, and people must like it. Nobody has to buy a fiction book, it is the art to make them want to. Instruct, enlighten, teach, take people to wonderful or terrible places, make them feel all kinds of emotions, but above all – entertain!
So onward and upward.
Apart from that, all I have to do in the first five months of 2001 is February 6th Munich, 7th Berlin, 8th Mannheim, 9th Hamburg, which I am looking forward to immensely.
From February 13th to 24th visit Alaska, which will be marvelous – Anchorage, Juneau and Hoonah.
In late March I hope to go to the Republic of Georgia, but that is not yet settled.
April I go across the Atlantic by sea – and give lectures, which I need to think about very carefully – the reward is so high they had better be good!
In May I have a few days in France, at my French publisher’s choice.
Other than that there is nothing to do except a visit some time to Argentina (for my South American publisher), two short stories to write – and the next Pitt!
It is terrible how as time passes you realize how short it is, and how precious. There is so much to be done that matters, so many people to meet, ideas to exchange, things to learn, opportunities of any sort.
I pray we may all grasp the good ones, use them, use them, and never forget who gives them to us and for what purpose.
Happy New Year.
2001 Meridian Magazine. All Rights Reserved.