Insights From the Past That Apply Today

     I was the Editor of the Boise First Ward Newsletter for a few years way back when. I found this entry that I wrote and posted in the August 1981 edition. In the world news that year, President Ronald Reagan was shot in NYC in an attempted assassination, and tensions were at an all-time high with Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the USSR (Russia). This piece was written during the time I personally was heavily involved in the critical care of my two invalid parents, Z. Reed & Edna Millar. My father had suffered a stroke (1979), and Mother was stricken with arthritis throughout her body. Jim and I, at the same time, were knee-deep in rearing our six kids who were still at home and striving to “keep it together.” Natalie was 2 years old; Susan was 17 and about to take flight from us. Everyone one else was in-between those ages! I call it the “roots & wings” time for our family unit. Perhaps, I was more in tune with the Spirit in those humbling days of our lives!

As I read it, this message comes across to me as strongly today as when I wrote it 38 years ago. I was 41 years old.  In a time today when our prophet, President Russell M. Nelson, has asked us to “minister” to one another, maybe this is what the message was…all along! 

                                                                                                                                       Carol Ann Shepherd 2-18-19

(I retyped it because it was so hard to read in its original form):

A Letter from the Editor

From the Boise First Ward Newsletter, August 1981

     We have had to defend our religious beliefs for a long while. We see the letters to the editor, the slanted view, the half-truths. People appear to know, to say, to enter a verdict, spice up a conversation, voice a conviction, and elevate a position. More than anything or whatever the stand is-to come out right.

     And, in our real life around us….

     A young mother of 2 girls, suddenly—mysteriously dies…

     A defect is found in a tiny baby’s heart which requires painstaking care…

     A beautiful young woman endures the effects of M.S…

     Our neighbor & friend struggles to put her life together after 2 recent deaths in her immediate family…

     A marriage (with five grown children) that spanned over many years’—abruptly dissolves…

     A dear friend describes the pain of seeing her 14-year-old son endure yet another surgery after 8 months of intense suffering…

     Two wonderful, aged parents labor to find any reason to keep going…with bodies riddled with arthritis and paralyzed with a stroke…

      And in the same very real life…

      There are dimpled cheeks of a 2-year-old to be kissed, the strong, steady rhythm of your feet as they pound out yet another mile (I ran 5-miles in those days.), the smell of homemade bread in the oven, the sting of sweet snow on your cheeks as you traverse down the hill, and hands to be touched.

   

                In the headlines, there are stomachs bloated with hunger, prisoners held hostage, borders invaded, human wreckage cast upon violent waters. What in the world do we have to offer one another? When ever in the world have people so needed people?

    “And what is one offering that is never depleted by supply? Good will, compassion, caring, and tender concern. Nothing could be more basic to Mormonism. The very real loving concern that is so much a part of every level of Church experience can lose its viability if not exercised every day in the unmalicious behavior of every one of us.

     Might not any of us ask in troubled time, ‘Where are my fellows? My sisters? My kindred folk whose sustenance I need just as they must need mine?

     In a day when what matters most can be so neglected and distorted by what matters least, wouldn’t it be something if life and death could bring us together at least to say, ‘Who are you?’ and ‘Tell me where it hurts?’ For all our wrangling and defensiveness, we are all struggling in the most turbulent waters that ever suggested a need for the life jackets of kindly human exchange. And, we need to be listening, not only to each other, but to the voice that continues to say, ‘Love one another, even as I have loved you.’”

                                                                                       This quote was from Emma Lou Thayne.