Needing to Believe this Journey Has a Destination
Letters from the Highlands-January 2010
By Anne Perry

I am writing this letter from a hotel bedroom in New York, where I have been for nearly a week.  I am filled with all kinds of thoughts and feelings.

I had an interesting journey to get here.  When I left Britain the whole country was covered with snow.  From the air it could have been a Polar landscape.  There was no relief from north to south or east to west.  The police were advising people not to go out except for emergencies.  Several major roads were blocked by accidents, and the minor ones were impassible anyway.  Even the railway was closed because of a derailment.  Some airports were open, but the one I needed to land in at London was open only three hours, and we were warned of up to five hour delays in disembarking.

It was a big question before I set out.  Should I even try, or would I be risking breaking bones for myself, and being a cause of accident, emergency vehicles etc. for others?  My meeting in New York is important, and the other people coming are wasting their time if I don’t turn up, since it is a conference with my two agents, i.e. London and New York.  What would be the sensible thing to do?  What would be the right thing to do?  If I turned up and the flight was cancelled then they have to refund my fare, and I could cancel the hotel in time.  If I don’t try, I could hardly expect anything refunded.  It would be my own decision.

Yes – no – yes – no, whirled around in my head.  Two o’clock, three o’clock, four o’clock in the morning.

Clearly I went – and had a perfectly normal drive to the airport, an excellent flight to London and no delay in disembarking.  My luggage arrived safely – and that doesn’t always happen!

The next step was to take the bus from Gatwick Airport to Heathrow Airport, a journey which can take over two hours, or less than one, depending on road and traffic conditions.  It was no trouble at all!  But better than that, I sat next to a charming man from South Africa and we spoke of all kinds of things, especially books.  He was intelligent, well-read and well-travelled, and he had a highly optimistic attitude, seeing the best in places and people.

Actually I found good fellowship all the way along.  There seems to be something about rotten weather, difficult circumstances – many people did have delays – which brings out the best in most of us, a friendliness and willingness to help which is not always there.

The flight to New York was good also and I was not too jet-lagged.  It was about the same temperature as Britain, that is very well below freezing, but no snow lying, just a knife-edge wind.

So after all my anxiety, the journey was excellent and my luggage arrived safely in New York as well.  I wonder how many journeys in life are like that?  Far more than the physical ones, how much of our spiritual journey, voyages of growth, adventure, learning need only the courage to start and then the diligence and faith to persist, and we would reach the destination?  In a sense we are travellers in a strange land, alone and far from home all the time.  Occasionally we even forget the destination.

But what of our fellow travellers?  We meet with many different kinds of people, and at times in their lives which may be good or bad.  How much notice do we take?

This trip to New York has been unusual for me.  On all the many journeys I make I have met with kindness, but this has been extraordinary.  Like many people, maybe most of us over the last year of world wide financial depression, I worry about meeting my obligations, sometimes even about survival.  Christmas can be a time of particular stress.  At this time of the year it is usually cold in the northern hemisphere, days are short and dark.  There are often chills, colds, types of ‘flu going around.

Also at Christmas in particular some people are surrounded by loving family, but many are alone, perhaps deeply missing those they loved, or those they never had!  Worse still, some are in close proximity, in a small space, with those to whom they are related, but with whom they do not get on well, or have old griefs and anger unresolved.  It can be very trying, and with no escape except those which would only cause even further problems.  Just because you are family does not mean you necessarily have a great deal in common.

And then there is guilt if you are not happy, if there are quarrels, if gifts or food are not what pleases everyone.  And there is the fear that you have overspent, and will take the rest of the year to come to terms with the debt.  When all the excitement is over, there can be a let down, a taking stock of the year that is past, and a wondering if we did all the things in it that we wanted to, hoped to, and what will the new year bring?

Can we go forward with courage, kindness, faith, and resolution to deal with the difficulties that will arise?  And for most of us they will. 

But to speak of kindness.  When I arrived at my hotel room I found a gift waiting for me from my friends here in New York.  It was a huge and very attractive zip bag, maybe 16 inches by 22 inches roughly.  Inside were several sachets of lotions, creams etc., a large bottle of liquid cleanser specially made to relax, a scented candle, also for relaxing, a special camomile and lavender tea, and the means to make your own tea-bags for it, two sorts of biscuits, a huge bottle of water, a pair of soft, warm socks with special non-slip soles – and an excellent hard-backed book on stress-relief designed particularly for women!  The sheer kindness of it overwhelmed me.

I am here to work, and we have done some great creative things towards the future, but also had fun.  We have been to the theatre on Broadway, which was excellent, then to see a modern dance troupe which was entertaining and beautiful, and we dined out on delicious food.  Above all, there has been terrific conversation.

I must say the hotel where I am staying is very agreeable and comfortable, but I am struck most of all by the courtesy and friendliness of all the staff.  What a difference it makes to be
greeted with a smile and a cheerful conversation.  It doesn’t matter if it is only about the weather, or the latest piece of news.  It can develop.  Many of the waiting staff in the dining room are students, and willing to speak of the subjects they are studying, where they come from and what they hope to do.  The smile, the interest, is such a simple way to communicate and make people feel good.  Too often we don’t bother, and what an opportunity is lost.

Watching the news of the hideous disaster in Haiti, I realize that my troubles are nothing.  I saw someone holding a baby, very tiny, and crying.  I thought the poor little thing is frightened, alone and probably hungry.  Then my thoughts move on to Christ’s words to us – ‘If you love me, feed my sheep’.

Are we not all in a sense alone, often frightened and even more often hungry?  Enough food for the body is necessary to life.  We all understand that.  But when He spoke, I believe He meant food for the soul, and perhaps as well for the mind and for the heart.

We all need faith in a purpose, a meaning to life.  We need to believe that this journey has a destination that is beautiful and makes the travelling worth while, however easy or hard it may be.  We need to be able to trust that it is there for everyone, without exception, not just a chosen few.  We need to know that 8slipping and falling is not the end.  There is no failure that getting up and trying again will not cure.  We don’t need to understand every step of the way.  We need to know HOW to travel, that is with courage, kindness, the will to forgive, to help others, to do our best.  If we see the next resting point, fine; if we don’t, that’s fine too.  One step in front of the other,  and a hand out to help the fellow traveller, pick up the fallen along the way, share your food and water, a word of encouragement.

And speaking of encouragement, sometimes that is what we need more than anything else.  If we believe in ourselves, that we are worth while, that we have the qualities it takes to succeed, that we can learn, above all that we are loved, we can achieve things that would otherwise be impossible.

If we do not believe in ourselves, for whatever reason, then very often we do not even have the strength or the will to try.  And of course if we don’t try then we cannot succeed.

How many people travel very much alone?  Far more than we think, and often it is not those we suppose.  People can be in the centre of a large family, and very much alone.  Do we make assumptions about other people’s dreams, ambitions, loves or fears?  Do we think because we see them every day that we understand?  How often do we take them for granted and never praise, never thank, perhaps never really even listen?  The loneliest person I ever knew had a husband and many children.  All took from her, no one looked at who she really was.  She was ‘mother’, ‘wife’, never an individual with hopes and fears that had nothing to do with her relationship to them.  It was always 8’listen to me’, never ‘tell me about you’.  It is such an easy pattern to fall into.

We all need to feel we are of value.  Without it we die, most of us not physically, maybe we just lose the opportunity to be all that we might have been.  We do not ‘fulfil the measure of our creation’.  Babies can actually physically die without touch, words, the knowledge that someone treasures them.  I think we all die a little inside.

Are there children of God among us crying with hunger, and left unfed?  What do they need?  A solid faith, based on the love of God and the hope of the true gospel?

Or a belief that God loves them, and that they are valuable, unique, and have a purpose that no one else can fulfil?

Or simply that they are not alone, and we believe in them, find something in them to praise and to like?  Any of us starve without it.

‘If you love only them that love you, what reward have you?  Do not the Pharisees as much?’  And we know how little the Lord admired the Pharisees.  We really are pretty poor creatures if we love only our own.

What are the great commandments?  To love God, and to love our neighbour as ourselves.  When the over confident young man asked Christ, ‘Who is my neighbour?’ the answer was NOT, ‘your own family, or the person who lives next door to you’.  The answer was the story of the good Samaritan who rescued a stranger in trouble.  And not only a person he did not know, but one of a despised race, whom other people crossed the street to avoid.  They ‘passed by on 8the other side’.

‘If you love me, feed my sheep’.  Which surely must mean that if you pass by my lambs, staring for a word of encouragement, of kindness, of praise, gentleness, forgiveness if it is needed, a hand in friendship – then you do NOT love the Lord.

The world is full of babies lost and crying with hunger.  None of us can feed them all, but all of us can feed some of them.  Perhaps we have not bread to give, but we have food from the heart, the mind and the spirit.  Sometimes it can begin with no more than a smile and a small word of acknowledgement, or thanks, a good wish for the day.

New York is a vast, busy metropolis of many millions of people of all races and scores of languages.  I am a stranger to almost all the people I pass, and yet I have received warmth from dozens of them in a smile, a word, a meeting of the eyes.  It counts.  It makes the journey easier, the baggage lighter.

I need to do the same for everyone I pass, not just here where I am a stranger, but when I am home again.  I need to smile, I need to listen, I need to give thanks, appropriate and sincere words of praise now and then, well enough judged to be real.  I need to encourage.

And I need to thank God as well as man, those I know and perhaps take for granted, and those I may see only once and never again.  We are all on the same journey.  In a sense we are all strangers, and in another, greater sense we none of us are.

Today is a good day to start.


No Comments | Post or read comments

  • INSPIRATION FOR LIVING A LATTER-DAY SAINT LIFE

    Daily news, articles, videos and podcasts sent straight to your inbox.