A procrastinated thank-you

I've been diffident about posting this memory. It's tender, and I wouldn't wish to impose that tenderness on anybody who wouldn't be glad to harbor it. But you can just skip it, in that case. Ray Glazier says I should post it, and I value Ray's counsel. I'll watch for comments.






President Thomas S. Monson
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
50 East North Temple
Salt Lake City, Utah 84150

Dear President Monson,

This is by way of a belated thank-you note. In 1967, you were pivotally helpful to a man we love, and your kindness has begotten wonderful consequences about which you ought to know. Please forgive our procrastination: we’ve repressed good intentions for years.

You may perhaps remember H. Duane Anderson, who was called in 1967 to preside over the mission in Paris. The picture shows Duane and Leola, as they looked then. They’re the parents of one of us and the grandparents-in-law of the other. After decades of teaching French language and culture, our Pappy was thrilled to receive this call, but it also terrified him. As he related the story to us later, he poured out his heart to you in a private meeting, asking how hecould possibly direct the work of three hundred missionaries, when he had never himself served a mission. He told us that you comforted him, related some stories of missionaries who had done mighty work despite a lack of preparation, and assured him that the Lord would make him equal to his opportunities. He went to Paris reassured, and had an intense and honorable experience there.

Now we fast-forward to 1991 when young Ron Ralston had the good fortune to fall in love with the Andersons’ eldest granddaughter, Cynthia Lee Anderson of Arlington, Massachusetts. To his great joy, Cyndi agreed to wait for Ron while he served a mission to Milwaukee.





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Full of enthusiasm, Ron entered the MTC, where it became apparent that a disability would keep him from serving a mission. He came home absolutely desolated, and he went around saying to himself and to others, “Cyndi will never marry me, with all the missionary tradition in her family. Here I tube out of the MTC! She's going to break our engagement. There is no way she's going to marry a guy who couldn't make it through the MTC.”

Our Pappy became aware of Ron’s distress. As Ron remembers it, Pappy called him in and related the story of his own misgivings at the brink of the mission field and how you had assured him that the Lord would make him equal to the challenge. Pappy then, as head of the Anderson family, welcomed Ron to the family and told him: “Nobody in this family is going to hold it against you that you didn't get to go on a full-time mission. If anybody gives you any trouble about it, you send him to me.”

Before too long, Cyndi and Ron were married in the Salt Lake Temple (it was several years too soon to make it happen in Boston). They and their children (see the fairly recent photo on the next page) are forever grateful to you for teaching our family patriarch how to strengthen the feeble knees.






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So now you know; we hope you rejoice. And we do sustain you and pray for you always. Thanks for a beautiful Conference and for your blessings upon us; we treasure them. Within the limits of our capacity, we send you also our blessings.

With much love,




Ronald Ralston




Richard B. Anderson












Mr. Richard B. Anderson
390 East 1500 South
Kaysville, Utah 84037

Dear Brother Anderson:

Thank you for the letter from you and your son-in-law
Ronald Ralston regarding your dear parents, H. Duane and
Leola Seely Anderson. You have a noble heritage of devotion to
the Gospel of Jesus Christ, even in the face of sacrifice and
trials.

There was deep sadness on the passing of your mother
and great admiration for your father as he continued to serve
with faith and courage. How grateful we are for comfort and
peace received from the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the gift of
the Holy Ghost.

Please give my love to your family. May our Father in
Heaven bless you in the service you give and in all that you do.

Lo-ammi?

Why have people¹ named their sons Lo-ammi? Haven't they understood that that lovely, distinctive Hebrew handle comes vertiginously near meaning "not my child"?² Y'gotta be careful how you borrow stuff from the Holy Scriptures, whichever version you may espouse.

Well, "Exalting Grace" bears my name, 'cause I wrote it down. In a deeper sense, though, I have to confess that it's not my child. It isn't very original, and I wouldn't dare claim otherwise. I put borrowed words to a borrowed tune, distorting each as little and as lovingly as possible. Much closer to the self-effacing Shaker model than to contemporary self-promoting authorship, although in 1978 I hadn't yet encountered the Shakers, and I'm not particularly averse to recognition.

The sheet music lists 37 Scriptural passages from which I've borrowed, explicitly and gratefully. Each reports an utterance of the God3 I worship.

Most come from the Bible (5 Old Testament, 18 New, King James Version), with 7 from the Book of Mormon and another 7 from the Doctrine and Covenants. Doctrinally, there's little4 here that should bother any committed follower of Jesus Christ. It has already a significant and (thus far) durable place in my private devotions. Ultimately, that's enough. But if others can find it congenial to their own spiritual life, that's an extra blessing. Some of you have been kind enough to say so. Apart from authorship and credits and such, the other question that keeps popping up has to do with my Church's “Green Book”:5 By sharing “my hymn” in this modern manner, am I angling to obtain for it the kind of approved-for-worship imprimatur that the 341 pieces in that volume enjoy? Complicated question. I'd be pleased and (yes, however inappropriately) flattered beyond measure if anything of the sort were to happen. I'd also be surprised, inasmuch as “Exalting Grace” deviates from the Green-Book pattern6 in some possibly-salient ways: It's long (but so are some in the Book). It's set to a folk tune (but so are some in the Book). It doesn't conform to the amateur-Victorian-art-music tradition that has become something between customary and obligatory with us, ever since the days when we were all amateurs and Victorians in mountainous isolation, some with artistic talents and more with artistic pretensions. It presents God as speaking to us in the first person. Turns out that last point takes this piece farther out of the Green-Book main stream than you might think. Even though the Scriptures are full of wonderful quotes attributed to the Lord:

Please argue with me about individual hymns, if you wish. But the pattern's pretty clear, and (as sampling statisticians are wont to insist) small errors of allocation seldom make much difference: The first person doesn't appear to be forbidden, but few of our hymn-wrights (and, it seems, few of those from whom we've borrowed) have seized the opportunity. Do we feel it would be presumptuous on our part to speak or sing with His voice? I find it hard to square that notion with the Latter-day Saint doctrine of Priesthood. In other theologies, perhaps, but not in ours.

Changing gears abruptly, I need to mention a brand-new realization. It dates to last evening, when Laura and her kids were kind enough to try to sing three verses of “Exalting Grace” around Maggie-on-the-piano. It became obvious that I don't sing it to the exact version of the (monodic) tune that I put in the sheet music. Debbie and I, moreover, have harmonized on this and similar pieces since she was four years old (1978, interestingly enough), mostly in the car and mostly on New England highways. As you can hear in the MP3, a two-part arrangement lends it some intensity.

If anybody were to wish to push this thing any further than the obscurity of a blog, there'd be more work to be done on it.

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¹Not many, to be sure, but some distinguished ones. Colonel Loammi Baldwin of Woburn, Massachusetts, for example, ranks among the honored heroes of our Revolution.
²Hosea 1:8-9.
³Father, Son, or Holy Ghost.
⁴Verse 7 does state one central bit of Mormon doctrine that some might find controversial. If you don't like the source or the substance of a verse, please feel free to skip it. The rest will stand alone, and Heaven knows the angel gave us enough verses.
⁵Hymns of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Salt Lake City, Utah: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1985.
⁶Some would call it a “standard.” On my stronger days, I'd be tempted to argue with them.