This first week has been a little rough, but there is no pain when I don’t move! I’ve bound quilts and appliqued pieces. I’ve read a few books and we started watching the TV series, Call The Midwife. I’ve enjoyed sitting by the fire feeling my bones heal. It often feels like the growing pains I had as a young girl–achy. There is no pain at all in the hip joint–it’s gone!
Today I sat out on the front porch, enjoying some beautiful fall weather. Below are 2 books I’ve just read that I highly recommend. Both are written by scholars who were mothers. They each had important things to say. They recorded their words so they wouldn’t be lost. Both knew they were dying of cancer as they wrote.
I am so grateful for WORDS and the ability to preserve my voice for future generations.
Holly Richardson wrote about this book:
Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye, scholar, author and historian, died on April 23, 2024, at the age of 44.
Many members of The Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter-day Saints are likely familiar with Inouye’s work as a historian for the Church History Department. She co-edited “Every Needful Thing: Essays on the Life of the Mind and Heart” with Kate Holbrook, who also passed away from cancer. I imagine their reunion was ebullient.
The last book she released while still earthside is “Sacred Struggle: Seeking Christ on the Path of Most Resistance.” Terryl Given called it “a great-souled work by a great-souled woman.” It’s a “treatise on trials,” said “Faith Matters” in its conversation with her last December.
“Struggle,” she writes, “is a feature, not a bug.” It’s easy to be drawn to – and too often we are – drawn to Satan’s plan, a life in which we can avoid trouble and trials, a world without cancer, car accidents, abuse or betrayal. Instead, she reminds us that “By divine design, the world is big and scary. Gravity yanks us down to hard landings. There are droughts and floods, pandemics and broken bones. Human relationships are a source of both joy and pain. Frequently, we misunderstand each other. We cause each other unspeakable suffering.”
Trying to have a trouble-free life would “miss the whole point of life,” she writes. “The purpose of life is to explore opposition and contrasts, and to struggle to love without pride or selfishness. Challenging and even devastating incidents are not a waste of time or effort because they stretch our experience to fit the reality of the cosmos as it really is.”
And yet, “having experienced suffering, one develops power over it—not the power to stop it, or take it away from someone you love, but to know its sorrows fade. Having experienced suffering, one receives power from it—the power to share others’ burdens and be humble, to see one’s own burdens and be kind.”
“On the other side of suffering,” she writes, “is strength.”
Suffering can develop empathy and compassion and seeing our fellow earthly travelers are sisters and brothers, rather than people who once seemed inexplicable, broken and “tainted with ruin.” In fact, she says “All true human history is mostly a hot mess. Latter-day Saints believe the hot mess is the whole point.”
Inouye spends a good deal of time in “Sacred Struggle” writing about our covenant relationship with God and how that relationship puts us in covenant relationships with each other. She acknowledges the difficulties we often encounter. “Loving our neighbors is a contact sport with a high rate of injuries,” she says.
She invites us to welcome and recognize “spiritual biodiversity,” just as we welcome and recognize the biodiversity in the natural world. We forget sometimes that there is truth to be found among all people and in all places. She quotes President Dallin H. Oaks, who in turn was quoting Orson F. Whitney who observed: “‘God is using more than one people for the accomplishment of his great and marvelous work. . . . It is too vast, too arduous, for any one people.’ As members of the restored Church, we need to be more aware and more appreciative of the service of others.”
She reminds her readers that as we pray for the Gospel to be shared around the world, and as missionary work expands, we are not going to see more and more people just like us, but rather, more and more people different from us.
Inouye urges us to remember that our experience is not a universal experience. We can be driving in the same van on a mountain road, for example, and the driver will be having a very different experience than a person in the back seat of the van. Their nauseating experience is no less real than the driver’s experience of being in control and seeing beautiful vistas.
“In our struggle to get to where Christ was and is,” she says, “the path of most resistance,” is one where we must make “hard, demanding, uncomfortable choices to reach out to those at the margins.” Following Christ, who Himself took the path of greatest resistance, gives us courage to tackle the challenges of living in this world, with all its difficulties. And, our “covenant loyalty to each other has the power to overcome the forces constantly driving us apart. We must exercise our agency to choose each other and honor our divine siblingship, over and over again.”
I will echo her final thoughts in “Sacred Struggle.” May we be repairers of the breach, restorers of paths to dwell in.
My greatest take away from this book is the idea of LEGACY. What will we leave behind when we die? The more we try to fashion or create our legacy, the less effective it will be. Legacy lies more in who we ARE than what we’ve done. And yet, we need to be mindful of what it is we will leave behind.
If you’d like to read more about her Essay #5 on Legacy, read on:
Essay #5: The Weight of Legacy (Reviewed by B. Kent Harrison)
‘The Weight of Legacy’ was a lecture Kate gave. She says, “By legacy, I mean, everything our life’s work gives to the future.” In this chapter she presents interviews with people about what they would like their legacy to be. She tells about the terrific Conversations with author Terryl Givens, in which he interviews Latter-day Saints about the intersections of their intellectual work and their faith. An interesting question he frequently asks is what they thought would be printed in their obituaries or what they would like to see there.
Responses: the artist Brian Kershisnik: “I aspire, actually, more to being, I hope that I am to be a good human being rather than an artist.”
The writer Margaret Blair Young: “When I finally became a published writer I realized that it wasn’t that big of a deal… that was when I started taking my covenants very, very seriously…the name I most want to be is disciple.”
Young’s friend and collaborator, the founder of the Genesis Group, Darius Gray: for his obituary: “To those whom I’ve loved, I love you still…To those who have loved me, thank you. See you soon.”
Kate Holbrook herself: “I’ve written some books on Latter-day Saint women’s history that I feel have been good contributions…I think I’ll be remembered generally for some recipes that have come from me…”
Kate observes that we are caretakers of other people’s legacies. How do we speak about them? This relates to reputation. The author and motivational speaker Wayne Dyer once said: “Your reputation is in the hands of others…You can’t control that. The only thing you can control is your character.”
She gives another model to help us understand legacy, due the author Wendell Berry, who contrasts exploiters and nurturers. “Exploiters want to get the most for themselves out of any given resource or relationship…Nurturers are primarily concerned with the health of resources, relationships, and communities.”
Kate gives an example that shows, in a way, the legacy of Oliver Cowdery. Mark Staker of the Historical Sites Division of the Church Historical Department, was working on the restoration of the Harmony historical site. He recounts how Oliver walked all the way from Manchester, New York, to Harmony, Pennsylvania, through snow and rain, to meet Joseph. He and Joseph stayed up late that night, talking. Oliver gave his meager school teacher’s salary to Joseph to help with Joseph’s property and as a sign of his commitment. He began work immediately as Joseph’s scribe.
Staker, in reconstructing Oliver’s work, determined that Oliver’s writing grew wider as his quill pen tip flared out with use. He found that the quills were turkey feathers and wanted to place one in the house as an accurate representation of the translation process. But they were expensive, so he bought some goose feathers and made quill pens from them. He knew they were wrong, but determined to use them as best he could. The morning of the opening of the site he arrived early. There on the front stoop was a beautiful wild turkey feather, eleven inches long. He pulled out a penknife, trimmed it, and had the perfect quill pen sitting in Oliver’s inkwell a few minutes later.
Staker believes that while God orchestrated this tender mercy, he could not help but feel Oliver was pleased that his contributions were remembered and celebrated. Staker could say in his heart, “I know what you did,” and Oliver could whisper back, “I know you know.”
“Our representations of those who came before is one of the ways we seek to honor the dead and remember their legacy.” Kate quotes historian Richard Bushman, who noted that someday we will meet these people in Heaven, and they will want to know how we remembered them.
She reflects that “Terryl Givens’ question about legacy has led us to a complex conversation. How we want to be remembered is an uncomfortable and potentially incriminating question, but it is also beneficial because it invites us to reflect.”
Kate offers these thoughts in the spirit of empathy and encouragement but also warning us about the vanity that leads us to care more about our reputations than others’ well-being. Having said that, she notes that our legacies do matter. “The desire for our life’s work, to make a difference in the world, to persist in blessing our families and communities, is a worthy and righteous one. Truest of all is this: lasting legacies are made through …encouraging and remembering others, acting with integrity, and seeking truth through the Spirit.”
Kate’s final comment, “The legacy of the boy Joseph who sought…a quiet place to pray…” is not in his hands, it is in ours, in the ways we respond to the work he left behind. The same could be said of Kate Holbrook. Her legacy is now in our hands in the way we respond to the work she left behind.
The lights are controlled by this small remote control. It’s really amazing technology that is way beyond my comprehension.
