Ann's Words

“The bottom line is this: You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can’t, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world. The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it . . .  If there is no moral question, there is no reason to write. I’m an old-fashioned writer and, despite the odds, I want to change the world.”

—James Baldwin in The New York Times, September 23, 1979. Photograph, also from 1979, by Brownie Harris.

American author, playwright, and Civil Rights activist James Baldwin, New York, New York, 1979. (Photo by Brownie Harris/Corbis via Getty Images)

I often think about why I feel so compelled to write, to journal, to blog, to remember and record.  I don’t know many others who feel they MUST record the things I record in so many places and in so many ways.  I usually don’t understand it either, but when I read this quote, it felt right to me.  Maybe I do it because I have HOPE.  I hope that maybe someday, someone I love will find my words and read a few of them and smile, or feel better, or feel loved, or see something in a new way.

I hope that my words will express love and hope to those who will follow me.  My children, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren, and beyond.  I want them to know that whenever they read this, I was thinking of them now, long before, on this December day in 2023, always cheering for them, wishing them happiness and wellness and all my love.

I hope my words help you see the world in a good and better way.

This photo above of my Book Club was taken in our home last year.  This group of friends has been together 36 years, since organizing into a book club in 1987, the year I came home from Nigeria.   Some of us had worked together at the MTC in Provo, some were college friends, some were friends of friends.  The miracle is that we came together and we stayed together and we continue on, together.

I have often thought how interesting it is that some of my dearest friends are in this group.  Or in my long-time quilting groups, or in my neighborhood.  My question is, “Are we dear because we’ve known each other for so long?” or “Are we dear because our paths were meant to cross and they did?”

My friends and I been through thick and thin together–is that what’s made us close?  Or, did some Divine Hand gather us all into like places and let us learn to love each other?

I sometimes think that if I were to have 30 years, or 40 or 50 years with anyone, I would learn to love them and we might be close friends.  We would SEE each other and be SEEN by each other.  I think about Eternity and having all the time in the world (out of the world) to learn to love others.  I have no doubt that will live in a society of Love.

I happened across this thought this week and have been thinking a lot about these words:

No matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend or sustaining a long close relationship with another, the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.

~David Whyte, from the Book: Consolations – Revised edition: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words

These words describe beautifully that witness–of having been seen by someone, and being granted the sight of the essence of another.  I want to be better at this–better at seeing the essence of others.

I am so grateful for my friends.  I miss having them near.  I appreciate those who really see me, and love me still.

Today, in a place called Marburg, I walked on stones that have been walked for more than a thousand years.  These stones are worn and old.  If they could speak, oh the stories they’d tell!  I wondered about those stories and the people in them.  I tried to imagine the shoes on the feet of the people that walked here–the women and children, the soldiers and guards, the shopkeepers and buyers.  Years and years of them living lives we know little about today.

And then I thought about words, and how something as simple as a word can also last for centuries.  But unlike stones, words communicate.  They tell the stories.  They explain.  They describe. They detail.  They evoke emotion.  They enlighten.

Words are more powerful than stones.

I’ve shared this before and will share it again because all day today, these words went through my mind:  ““You know, there are poems, there are stories, whole books, about people who lived hundreds, even thousands of years ago. Those people still live because of words. Words! Words are the most wonderful things in the world. As long as there are words, nobody need ever die.”
– Betsy Byars, Keeper of the Doves

Stones preserve structures, but words preserve people and thoughts.  We are more important and words are more powerful and more enduring, but only if we preserve them.

Another reason for writing my fingers to the bone.

On my nightstand at home is a small book by Nicole Johnson that I’ve read and re-read many times as a wife and mother.  And now that I’m living in a land of cathedrals, I’m thinking about it again as a grandmother.  The Invisible Woman.  We are many and we are not alone in this feeling.  There have been plenty of times when my tears have wet my pillow at night because I was invisible on any given day.  This message has helped me get through those days and years.  Maybe they will help you too.

It started to happen gradually…

I would walk into a room and say something and no one would notice. I would say , Turn the TV down, please.” And nothing would happen. So I would get louder. “Turn the TV down please!” Finally I would have to go over and turn the TV down myself.

And then I started to notice it elsewhere. My husband and I had been at a party for about three hours and I was ready to go. I looked over and he was talking to a friend from work, and I walked over and he kept right on talking.  He didn’t even turn toward me.

That’s when I started to put it together. He can’t see me. I’m invisible. I’m invisible. Then I started to notice it more and more.

I would walk my son to school and his teacher would say, “Jake, who’s that with you?” And my son would say, “Nobody.” Granted he’s just five, but nobody?

One night, a group of us gathered and we were celebrating the return of a friend from England. Janice had just taken this fabulous trip, and she was going on and on about the hotel she stayed in.

And I was sitting there, looking around at the other women at the table. I’d put my makeup on in the car on the way there. I had an old dress because it was the only thing clean. And I had my unwashed hair pulled up in a banana clip and I was feeling pretty darn pathetic.

Then Janice turned to me and said, “I brought you this.” It was a book on the great cathedrals of Europe. I did not understand. And then I read her inscription.

She wrote “With admiration for the greatness of what you are building when no one sees.”

You can’t name the names of the people who built the great cathedrals. Over and over again looking at these mammoth works you scan down to find the names and it says, “Builder unknown, unknown, unknown.” They completed things not knowing that anyone would notice.

There’s a story about one of the builders who was carving a tiny bird on the inside a beam that would be covered over by a roof. And someone came up to him and said,

“Why are you spending so much time on something no one will ever see?  And it’s reported that the builder replied, “Because God sees.”

They trusted that God saw everything. They gave their whole lives for a work, a mammoth work they would never see finished. They showed up day after day.

Some of these cathedrals took over 100 years to build. That was more than one working man’s lifetime. Day after day. And they made personal sacrifices for no credit.

Showing up at a job they would never see finished for a building their name would never be on. One writer even goes so far as to say no great cathedrals will ever be built again because so few people are willing to sacrifice to that degree.

I closed the book, and it was if I heard God say, I see you. You are not invisible to me. No sacrifice is too small for me to notice.

I see every cupcake baked, every sequin sewn on and I smile over every one. I see every tear of disappointment when things don’t go the way you want them to go.

But remember, you are building a great cathedral. It will not be finished in your life time. And sadly, you will never get to live there. But if you build it well, I will.”

At times my invisibility has felt like an affliction to me. But it is not a  disease that is erasing my life. It is the cure for the disease of self-centeredness. It is the antidote to my own pride. It’s okay that they don’t see. It’s okay that they don’t know.

I don’t want my son to tell the friend he’s bringing home from college, “You’re not gonna believe what my mom does. She gets up at 4:00 in the morning and she bakes pies and hand bastes a turkey and she presses all the linens.”

Even if I do all those things, I don’t want him to say that. I want him to want to come home. And secondly, I want him to say to his friend, “You’re gonna love it there.”

It’s okay they don’t see. We don’t work for them. We work for Him. We sacrifice for Him. They will never see, not if we do it right, not if we do it well.

Let’s pray that our work will stand as a monument to an even greater God.