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I know that only a few of you are of my faith, but today I can think of nothing else. 

President Gordon B. Hinckley, the leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, died last night at the age of 97. Many people are saying that they don't feel sad about his passing, because now he is reunited with his beloved wife and God, but perhaps I am selfish. I do feel sorrow. I can't help but feel that the world has lost an incredible man. I will miss his eloquent messages of love, hope and joy. 

Perhaps one of my all-time favorite quotes from President Hinckley comes from his book, Standing for Something, which is directed to a general audience. The book begins...

"Love is the only force that can erase the differences between people or bridge the chasms of bitterness.

When I was a little boy, we children traced paper hearts at school on Valentine's Day. At night, we dropped them at the doors of our friends, stamped on the porch, and then ran into the dark to hide.

Almost without exception, those Valentines had printed on them: "I love you." I have since come to know that love is more than a paper heart. Love is the very essence of life. It is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Yet it is not found only at the end of the rainbow. Love is at the beginning also, and from it springs the beauty that arches across the sky on a stormy day. Love is the security for which children weep, the yearning of youth, the adhesive that binds marriage, and the lubricant that prevents devastating friction in the home; it is the peace of old age, the sunlight of hope shining through death. How rich are those who enjoy it in their associations with family, friends, and neighbors!

Love, like faith, is a gift of God. It is also the most enduring and most powerful virtue.

In our youth, we sometimes acquire faulty ideas of love, believing that it can be imposed or simply created for convenience. I noted the following in a newspaper column some years ago:

One of the grand errors we tend to make when we are young is supposing that a person is a bundle of qualities, and we add up the individual's good and bad qualities, like a bookkeeper working on debits and credits. If the balance is favorable, we may decide to take the jump [into marriage]. . . . The world is full of unhappy men and women who married because . . . it seemed to be a good investment. Love, however, is not an investment; it is an adventure. And when marriage turns out to be as dull and comfortable as a sound investment, the disgruntled party soon turns elsewhere. . . . Ignorant people are always saying, "I wonder what he sees in her," not realizing that what he sees in her (and what no one else can see) is the secret essence of love.
I think of two friends from my high school and university years. He was a boy from a country town, plain in appearance, without money or apparent promise. He had grown up on a farm, and if he had any quality that was attractive, it was the capacity to work. He carried bologna sandwiches in a brown paper bag for his lunch, and swept the school floors to pay his tuition. But with all of his rustic appearance, he had a smile and a personality that seemed to sing of goodness. She was a city girl who had come out of a comfortable home. She would not have won a beauty contest, but she was wholesome in her decency and integrity, and attractive in her decorum and dress.

Something wonderful took place between them. They fell in love. Some whispered that there were far more promising boys for her, and a gossip or two noted that perhaps other girls might have interested him. But these two laughed and danced and studied together through their school years. They married when people wondered how they could ever earn enough to stay alive. He struggled through his professional school and came out well in his class. She scrimped and saved and worked and prayed. She encouraged and sustained, and when things were really tough, she said quietly, "Somehow we can make it." Buoyed by her faith in him, he kept going through the difficult years. Children came, and together they loved them and nourished them and gave them the security that came of their own love for and loyalty to each other. Now many years have passed. Their children are grown, a lasting credit to them and to the communities in which they live.

I happened to find myself on the same flight as this couple a few years ago. I walked down the aisle in the semidarkness of the cabin and saw a woman, white-haired, her head on her husband's shoulder as she dozed. His hand was clasped warmly about hers. He was awake and recognized me. She awakened, and we talked. They were returning from a convention where he had delivered a paper before a learned society. He said little about it, but she proudly spoke of the honors accorded him.

I wish that I might have caught with a camera the look on her face as she talked of him. Forty-five years earlier, people without understanding had asked what they saw in each other. I thought of that as I returned to my seat. Their friends of those days saw only a farm boy from the country and a smiling girl with freckles on her nose. But these two found in each other love and loyalty, peace and faith in the future. There was a flowering in them of something divine, planted there by that Father who is our God. In their school days, they had lived worthy of that flowering of love. They had lived with virtue and faith, with appreciation and respect for self and one another. In the years of their difficult professional and economic struggles, they had found their greatest earthly strength in their companionship. Now, in mature age, they were finding peace and quiet satisfaction together.

There is nothing as energizing, as confidence-building, as sustaining as the power of love. How substantial is its influence on the human mind and heart! How great and magnificent is its power in overcoming fear and doubt, worry and discouragement!"


In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka Mormonism), we believe that the President of the Church is a prophet who is led directly by Jesus Christ, just as the prophets of old were. President Hinckley has been the prophet for more than 12 years. 

He will be missed.


Because Romney is running for President of the United States, a lot is being said about my faith. Some true, some ridiculously untrue. I am not just mormon in name. I believe it with all my heart and soul. I do not want to debate religions. One of our 13 Articles of Faith says, "We claim the privilege of worshiping almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, and what they may."

If anyone has questions about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, please ask me or another active member of the Church, instead of believing everything you hear in the media. You are welcome to comment with questions or email me at emykate03 (AT) yahoo (DOT) com. 


 

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I find I can’t choose examples of what not to do from the sweet, sincere people who entered the contest. There were a couple that kind of asked for it, though. So... some tips:

1. If your first two lines are so rhythmic that they could be the start of a limerick, they’re almost certainly too rhythmic.

2. You probably don’t want to start your manuscript with a run-on sentence.

3. Have your manuscript read by someone who knows a lot of slang, just in case you’ve given a tall pointy structure a vaguely Asian-sounding name which to other people is a term for male genitalia.

Thanks to all for playing!

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Here are a few that I have a slightly uneasy feeling about, but I'd keep reading. And after all, that's the main thing.

Donald owned a purple vulture, a green vulture, and a deep blue pillow-eating vulture.

No matter where she went her bubbles drew a crowd, but Molly always knew she was more than just bubbles.

My brother has a giant head. He keeps it in the closet.

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My mom wanted to know how the cow got in my room. As if that was the strangest thing that happened all week.

The second line could be a bit stronger, but I do want to know about the cow.

I kick at a rock on my way to Mrs. Viola Meyer’s house and tally up my life’s ten most troubling facts. 1. Lillian and I will attend the Winter Dance dressed as floral bookends.

I hope number ten is really troubling.

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In an old Italian villa near the cold Anchovy Sea
Lived two ordinary onions both as bitter as could be.

I have a dread that this is going to a pizza-y place, but for now, a good start.

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Like Moses, Meemaw had Ten Commandments.

Don't you want to know what they were? I do. But they'd better deliver.

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The smell of death drifted from the woods.

Simple, but creepy. Note the combination of the foreboding 'smell of death' with the gentle 'drifted from the woods.'

A long, hairy leg poked through the hole in Ida’s window screen.

The mind goes immediately to 'enormous spider,' something that's definitely icky. But then we get 'poked' instead of a creepier word, and 'Ida' rather than a more normal name. You can tell this is going to be creepy and silly.

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The power of the first line:

Where's Papa going with that ax?

As soon as certain questions are asked, you realize that you, too, would very much like to know the answer. Have you ever been at a cocktail party and overheard a question that turned your whole attention toward it like a needle seeking north? This is one of those. With this beginning, you know something's going to happen. And this question leads directly into the book's source of tension. Fabulous.

I come from a family with a lot of dead people.

Voice. I will wade through dim and perilous fens of slush for voice. And here it's matched with a sense of humor. I'm hooked.

In the great green room, there was a telephone and a red balloon.

Cadence. The order of these syllables and the way in which they rhyme forces the voice to slow. Compare this to the first line of Madeline, which trips off the tongue. Madeline could be read very quickly, but this is a bedtime book, and it makes the reader go softly.

One day my mama caught me paintin' pictures on the floor
and the ceiling
and the walls
and the curtains
and the door
and I heard my mama holler like I never did before--
"Ya ain't a-gonna paint no more!"

Rhythm. Here is a book that would have every chance of sounding idiotic in a query letter. But read that first page aloud, and you're practically out of your seat with the irrepressible energy of it. Love it.

So here's the deal: send me your first line (or your first two lines, if you must) and I will post a select few to comment on. Send them to my email with CONTEST in the subject line.

This contest opens now, and closes as soon as I've had enough. Maybe tomorrow.

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