Dear Friends,

SNIFFING OUT JOY!

 Mental Health America last week released a study showing that Utah is the most depressed state in the Union.  It has the highest percentage of people experiencing depressive episodes and/or serious psychological distress (http://www.nmha.org/go/state-ranking).  I was born in Utah!  I am in many ways a product of the prevailing culture of that state!  And this makes me sad. 

The best line to come out of Mormonism is "Men (okay, women too) are that they might have joy."  So what is happening here?  I've got some thoughts on it, but that's not where I'm going today.  I want to try to shine a bit of light for all of us toward a better path. 

Not that I'm your Joy Guru.  People who know me know that 98% of the time I am positive, even, and generally cheerful.  And that about 2% of the time I am in my "Curse God and Die" mode, a bleak place into which I occasionally fall, in which I am convinced there is no meaning, no hope, and I ask myself What Mad Man Thought This All Up???

Those who know me also know that I spend a lot of time tracking Joy.  The best minds that I study assure me that Joy is truly the reason for our existence.  I've been collecting quotes on Joy for years.  Here's one of my favorites-- 

You've got to sniff out joy.  Follow the joy trail.
~Buffy St. Marie 

That one helps me every day.  I stop my self and say, Phew, that thought doesn't smell good.  Let's sniff over here.

And what about this one?--

 Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God.
~Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Want to see the unmistakable presence of God?  Look at the Dalai Lama smile.

Many years ago I had an ongoing correspondence with a General Authority of the LDS Church, Elder Marion D. Hanks, truly one of the greats.  In one of my letters I challenged him to use this next quote in his upcoming conference address.  He did.

At the judgment day a man will be called to account for all the good things
he might have enjoyed and did not enjoy.
~Jewish Proverb

When I was still in my twenties I wrote a little verse that just now popped into my mind:

 Lament of a Grouch
I knew that in heaven all are happy.
But I wish I'd known the reason before.
Only to the happy
Do they open the door.

What if that's true?  What if joy is not a luxury, but a necessity?  Friends, I promise to be more devoted to sniffing out the Joy trail.  And I ask the same of you.

 
TOWARD JOY FOR OUR GAY BROTHERS AND SISTERS.

Recently I called an old friend in Provo, Utah, who had served as my stake president there when I was newly married, Richard Cracroft, much-loved BYU professor of English.   During our conversation he told me a wonderful story and I asked if he would write it down and send it to me.  Here it is:
 
I was serving as Cascade 1st Ward High Priest Group leader and developed a confiding relationship with John Hopkin, our stake patriarch, about 87 years of age.  John was a retired professor of agricultural economics who had taught for many years at Texas A&M University. He was a wise, thoughtful, and articulate man; he had lost his wife in 2001.  During a chat one afternoon, as we talked of life's unexpected twists, he confided in me that his second son (of five children), Mark, had been in a twenty-year gay relationship with a black partner.  He told me of the adjustment which his wife and he had to make in their thinking and feelings about such relationships. Then he confided how he and she had come to accept, love and admire their son's partner, and make him part their family. 

Then, teaching me several lessons at once, John humbly told me how, when Mark told him of the difficulty he and his partner were having in buying a home together, John paid the down payment and secured the mortgage loan, and they happily lived in their own home for a number of years until Mark's untimely death at 43 in 1992 (John told me how wonderfully Mark's partner had cared for him during his last and prolonged illness). The Hopkinses continued their relationship with the partner after Mark's passing.  At John Hopkin's funeral in 2006 (I was present), the partner was invited by the Hopkins' siblings to speak; he spoke of his love for Mark, for Brother Hopkin's loving goodness and generosity; then he explained how John Hopkin, after Mark's passing, had given the partner the deed for the home. 

I have used this story in counseling with several families who have been torn by the struggle over how to deal with a son's homosexual lifestyle. It seems to me that this reverberating act of open-armed Christian love was a far better "tender mercy" than a lifetime of coldness, rejection and disapproval. I have always admired John Hopkin for his Christian example. It is that which I recollect from his funeral; it is that which seems to me to focus and sum up a long life of Christian devotion.


GOT YOUR VALENTINE'S GIFT YET?  What better than a cozy evening by the fire reading love poems from In Love Again and Always by CLP--

EMBRACE
I think I have melted all over you--
Melted like a crayon on a windowsill
On a warm, warm day.
You may have to peel me off.
Or let me stay.

FREE COPY OF NO MORE GOODBYES with every order for $30 or more through January 28.   www.clpearson.com/personal_gifts.htm  Your valentine would also love The Lord is My Shepherd: Inspiration for Couples.  Or the new book of humor, In Dog Years I'm Dead.  Lots to choose from at www.clpearson.com/personal_gifts.htm.

Stay warm.  And remember—

"Joy is not in things.  It is in Us."
    --Richard Wagner

 
Love and blessings from your friend,

        Carol Lynn