What Could I Have Done More? Off the Sacred Path – an open letter

What Could I Have Done More?  

Off the Sacred Path – an open letter

Dear Friend,

I have a 200-acre ranch in the mountains where a cabin sits with views that still take my breath away after all these years. When we built it thirty years ago it stood in a grove of quaking aspens—quakies, as we call them. The whole mountainside was covered in relatively dense stands of them. You know how aspens work: whole groves connected underground by the same root system, one living organism wearing the appearance of many trees. A family connected at the roots.

Over those thirty years I watched several of those stands die. Not a few trees. Whole connected families and communities. We brought scientists from the University of Utah up to study their demise. Was it some disease we had missed? Harsh climate? Fire scar? After several seasons of careful work they came back with an answer that was almost too simple: it was none of those things. The land was healthy. The weather had been favorable enough. The stands had simply completed their cycle. They came and they went the way everything does. All I could do was watch. As Ecclesiastes puts it, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”

New stands are rising now—young, green, vigorous. I will not live long enough to see them grow into the mature groves that once shaded the cabin. But someone will. Somewhere back in time those old trees had themselves been the young ones, newly risen on ground that would give them everything they needed. I used to wish I could have done something—anything—to keep them as they were. Nothing I could have done would have changed their cycle.

I think about my six children a great deal these days. They too were born into fertile soil. They were nourished, taught, provided for, and surrounded by the ordinary kindness and love of a family that actually loved being together. As they reached adulthood I have watched them pick their way through their lives. I showed them, as best I knew how in their youth, the path I believed they should walk. Yet now, I have only the ability to watch and see them along whatever path they have chosen.

When Denver taught about cycles of existence, something in me unclenched. Much of the stress I carried about seeing them choose roads I would not have chosen for them—roads that may be filled with challenge, pain, joy, happiness, or long stretches of quiet confusion—was relieved. My conscience was released from duties that were never mine to begin with. Interestingly, I can only see where they have already been. The trail behind them is visible. Ahead of them I do not know which mountains they will have to climb, which streams they will rest beside, or what work is still waiting for them. I only have hope and faith that their paths will eventually rejoin mine, or mine theirs, so that we can share in being heirs with Christ.

I see my job now much the way a mother bird sees hers. Take care of them in the nest while they are young, then set them free. Setting them free does not mean I abandon them. I do not walk away when they leave the nest. I work with them more subtly, more quietly, and at their request—much as I think Christ does with us when we seek His input. The Savior used nearly the same image when He said He would have gathered His people “even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings.” And He still extends the open invitation: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” I think of Zenos and the allegory of the olive tree, where the Lord of the vineyard asks again and again, “What could I have done more for my vineyard?” The real answer is likely little—without disturbing their agency and without trying to withhold whatever the Lord Himself had in store for them. I believe my children are all wonderful people with good work and good families, and I am proud of who they have become. In many ways they are already better than I ever was at their age.

I did not embrace the gospel the way I have come to understand it now until I was fifty. I was religious and “righteous” (whatever that word is supposed to mean) but really only dutiful to the institution. My concern for my children has never wavered, but the heavy feeling of responsibility I once carried for them beyond the nest has been replaced by something quieter and better: the simple joy of watching them tumble upward. I allow them to own their choices, feel their own cuts and bruises, glory in their own successes, and then keep walking. I am left to believe that if nothing else they have experienced exactly what God would have them experience. And if some part of their work remains unfinished in this round, then eternally—in another cycle—they may be given the chance to repair what still needs repairing. I hope the same for myself.

When a mother grieves because her son seems uninterested in the path she holds most sacred, I understand and share in the ache. It feels as though he has rejected the very reason we came here. Yet I have learned, slowly and with some reluctance, that agency is not a flaw in the plan; it is the plan. We can water, we can dig about, we can dung, we can prune with all the care we possess. Beyond that we must trust the same God who trusts them with the power to choose. Looking forward we rarely see His hand in the moment. Looking back along the trail they have already walked, we almost always do—sometimes gently, sometimes with a severity that still turns out to have been mercy.

Despite our agency, the Lord continues to work with His children—so shall I. Not by force, not by hovering, but by remaining available, ready to answer when they knock, ready to draw near when they draw near.

The old stands of quakies are gone. The young ones are rising. The cabin still stands in the light. And the view, somehow, is still breathtaking.

With hope that is quieter than it used to be,  

and with real affection for you and for your son.

Signed  

John The-Not-So-Beloved