On Sunday, March 4, 2018, Ally Isom, Director of Institutional Messaging for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and a BYU Alum, presented a fireside at a beautiful home in Sandy, Utah. Julie and Derek sang and played the piano, then Ally began by speaking about “asylum” and how she was on an emotional frontier, and altered permanently, by the death of her daughter. At the time, she was emotionally seeking refuge. The frontier is where we learn the most, she said: the power of identity, and the power of voices.
We are commanded, she said, to hearken to the voice of the spirit, and referenced Alma 29, about sorrow and joy. We are called to right the wrongs caused by sin in a sequence of sorrow, warning and grief. Our voices can be either a balm or a weapon, she said. If we control the vocabulary, we control the debate. Words are a vehicle for meaning, and until you know someone’s heart, you will not know what their context is and what words mean to them. Our words can be part of the Savior’s grace, especially in public dialogue. On the “frontier,” I understood voices and spaces of time, she explained. In sacred text, space means both time and space. God’s light fills the immensity of space. On the frontier of grief, she learned that the light can enter our lives. Predatory darkness was real when her daughter died, and she asked, “How do I not be consumed by darkness?” In addition, she discovered that we should do something every day that brings light into our lives. The light caught her up in the darkness, and it filled her and helped her find god’s love. She also referenced D&C 88:7, the light.
The frontier can also help us find out who are we at our core—the fundamental identity of every one of us. Our identity drives our paradigms. Grief takes you to your knees and forces you to ask who you are, she said. She came to know, through grief, that she is God’s, with the seeds of infinity. In politics, every day can be a frontier, and light can be obstructed. We must be the leaven in the loaf. We must sound like we are disciples. She also referenced Neal A. Maxwell’s discourse on patience and meekness (“Meekness Drenched in Destiny”). Some people are without compassion, she said. The high road is often the hard road. Seeing things as they really are is also important, as referenced in the book of Jacob in the Book of Mormon. Discipleship is the way the gospel plays out in the real world—the way to fight with civility. Love should be our walk and our talk, and the process may be more important than the outcome—who we touch in the process of life—people nurtured—not being right all the time, but in being disciples.
Ally finally referenced St Francis of Assisi, who wrote: “Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. O, Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love; For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; it is in dying that we are born again to eternal life.”
Thank you, Ally Isom, for wonderful lessons and an inspiring fireside.
