During the season of the Savior’s birth, I felt surrounded by love: the love of the Father for his Only Begotten, the powerful, tender love of the Savior for us, love of friends and family — the love of men and women everywhere for the needy, for their brothers and sisters across the world.
And that love which enfolded people brought me joy.
Can we go on rejoicing as a new year comes and the Christmas feelings fade?
“Ring out, wild bells, in the wild sky,” Lord Alfred Tennyson wrote. “The year is dying in the night; Ring out wild bells, and let him die.” (“Ring Out, Wild Bells,” Hymns, No. 215).
The past is now entirely beyond our grasp — the sufferings and disappointments, even the triumphs, blessings and joys. Have they paved the way for what we choose to write upon the clean fresh pages of new days that lie before us?
Tennyson writes: “Ring out the false; ring in the true.”
Much of what the world offers is deceptive and false. But we know where to find the true. Madeleine L’Engle wrote in her book “Walking on Water”: “To be truly Christian means to see Christ everywhere — to know him as all in all.”
In the scriptures, there are hundreds of references to happiness, rejoicing and joy. The thought comes strongly: Happiness is something we must choose. Happiness is something which comes up from inside our own selves and then spreads outward.
“Keep thy heart with all diligence,” according to Proverbs 4:23, “for out of it are the issues of life.”
What kinds of things make people rejoice? Not feel pleasure, but rejoice? The courage of human beings in the face of overwhelming odds or of great pain; beauty, be it in a physics equation, a sunset or a line of poetry; the laughter of a baby and the achievements of children; seasons, the harmonies of nature and the harmonies within a home.
How endless and filled with wonder the list is. And what lies at its heart?
Love lies at its heart. And what lies at the heart of Love? The Savior.
L’Engle points to this expression: “By love God may be gotten and holden, but by thought or understanding, never.”
To love is to illuminate our own souls. To love is to open up resources we have carried with us, perhaps hidden away for years. To love is to give of ourselves.
Mark Twain was the father of three daughters, as well as a son who died at 19 months. Susy, his eldest and favorite, died quite suddenly of meningitis when she was 24 and her father and mother were in Europe and unable to be with her. Seven and a half years later, Twain’s beloved wife, Livy, died, and in 1909, his daughter Jean, who had suffered with epilepsy for years, died suddenly on Christmas Eve. Clara was the only child to outlive her parents, marry and bear a child of her own.
By all lights, Twain was a devoted father, but he was also a very important and busy man. As he grew older and wiser, he felt regret for those things he had not done, writing: “We are always too busy for our children; we never give them the time nor the interest they deserve. We lavish gifts upon them; but the most precious gift — our personal association, which means so much to them — we give grudgingly and throw it away on those who care for it so little” (see “A Mark Twain Christmas,” by Carlo Devito).
Whenever someone we love dies, or even moves away, isn’t that the cry of our hearts: “If only I had gone to see him last week” or “if only I had shoveled her walk, helped him repair his fence.” The regrets are always for the things undone, the possibilities that never materialized.
Perhaps this is why Twain also said, “Give every day the chance to become the most beautiful day of your life.”
“Ring in the valiant men and free,” Tennyson’s hymn lyrics continue in "Ring Out, Wild Bells, “The larger heart, the kindlier hand. Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the Christ that is to be … Ring in the Christ that is to be.”
Joy. The fulfillment, step by step, choice by choice, of our potential as literal sons and daughters of God — remembering always what the German philosopher Hermann Hesse wrote in “Reflections”: “Happiness is love, nothing else. A man who is capable of love is happy.”
Let us be about those things that we most want in our lives, letting all else fall by the wayside. For, as L’Engle gently reminds us: “The Journey Homeward. Coming home. That’s what it’s all about … to make us aware of our status as children of God and to turn our face toward home.”
Susan Evans McCloud is author of more than 40 books and has published screenplays, a book of poetry and lyrics, including two songs in the LDS hymnbook. She has six children. She blogs at susanevansmccloud.blogspot.com. Email: susasays@broadweave.net