Life celebration emerges in stories
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Two Latter-day Saints — one an accomplished poet and author and the other an emeritus General Authority — spoke of their commitment to preserving and sharing personal history in separate presentations June 26 at the Church History Museum, an event that was part of the "Evenings at the Museum" lecture series.
Emma Lou Thayne, whose published works include poems, novels, personal essays, short stories, memoirs and lyrics — including the words to "Where Can I Turn for Peace?" (Hymns, No. 129) — spoke first. She was followed by Elder F. Enzio Busche, an emeritus member of the First Quorum of the Seventy whose active term of service was from 1977 to 2000.
"If, for no other reason, when we write our stories we keep track of who we are and what's going on," said Sister Thayne, who lately has taken to ending her journal entries with "Lucky Lady," a nickname that was given to her by her father.
She said her mother's motto was "Pray at night; plan in the morning." Her father's was "Things work out," and, pertaining to the tennis matches that the family members engaged in, "Try hard, play fair, and have fun."
"The whole thing was a celebration of life, a celebration of doing what we do," she said of her family life, "and writing came as part of that. I've kept a journal for a long time. It becomes part of what I think and do."
Out of the journal come her stories, she said.
With her mother's attention to detail and love, "we just grew up liking each other as well as loving each other," Sister Thayne said. Her mother's saying, " 'You're no better than anyone but you're just as good,' meant that we loved everybody. We got to be friends with people that weren't a bit like us."
In school, she became entranced with words, she said. From that has grown a lifetime of involvement with poetry and prose.
In teaching university classes on writing, she has found that many people don't believe they have any personal accounts worth sharing. When they involve themselves in writing, though, they find that they do have something interesting to tell.
"People want to hear our stories," she said. "Stories are important; they're what we have." She has encouraged members of her family, including her husband and brothers, some with the help of their wives, to write their stories.
"I'm encouraging every single one of you, please, know the importance of getting your story down."
She told the story behind her writing of "Where Can I Turn for Peace?" One of her daughters had a serious episode of manic depression. At that time, Sister Thayne was on the Young Women General Board and on a committee planning the annual June conference. She and her friend, Joleen Meredith, decided to write a hymn for the final session.
The experience with her daughter was difficult for the family, and at times they wondered if she would get better, though ultimately she did recover.
"So, I could sit down very easily and write three verses," Sister Thayne said.
"Sister Meredith, who had challenges of her own, could feel the spirit of the hymn as she composed the music. Since then, the hymn has been translated into many languages, has been recorded by many artists, including the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and has taken on a life of its own because of what it deals with," Sister Thayne said.
Elder Busche told of his boyhood in Germany, where he was a teenager during World War II. He spoke of searching for splinters as souvenirs of the first bomb that was dropped on his hometown, little realizing that, sometime later, he would be fleeing in fear of such bombs.
On one occasion, he said, he asked his father if there is a God. He was shocked when his father replied, "I don't know; I wish I could tell you." That put him into a depression.
Later, after the war, when he was newly married, LDS missionaries knocked on his door. He was prepared to receive them, he said, because of a spiritual experience he had earlier in a hospital, recovering from a liver disease, presumed to be fatal. On that occasion, he heard a voice speaking from the ceiling: "If you can pray now, you will recover."
He did not know how to pray, he said, but the words came to his mind in German: "Thy will be done."
From that time forward, he said, he was completely healed, not only from the disease, but in other ways, as well.
"I have never forgotten that," he said. "It was so powerful and so real that I have learned to understand there is a different dimension in life, that we have the opportunity to open up in our own life's understanding and to find more joy."
Later, Elder Busche inherited the management of the family-owned printing business. His work with participatory management, in which he counseled with his employees on decisions affecting the business, led to its phenomenal success. It was so successful that one of his competitors asked to come and work for him, willing to take a reduction in his pay to do so. The hiring of that man subsequently put Elder Busche in a position to be able to respond to the call from President Spencer W. Kimball to serve in the First Quorum of the Seventy.
