I thank President and Sister Clark and all of you for hosting me here today. You are a truly magnificent sight. This is my first visit ever to the BYU-Idaho campus. This is as far north as I've ever been in Idaho and my husband and I have just been so impressed with the beauty of the campus, the kindness of the students we have met, and a sense of your community and identities, so I thank you for that.
I'd also like to thank my former home teacher from my ward in Provo for coming today. But you'll be relieved to know he didn't drive all the way just for my devotional address. He's actually a freshman here at BYU-Idaho. And my daughters emphatically said, "You cannot say Dylan Forsythe's name, because you'll embarrass him." So, I assured them I would refer to him only as my home teacher.
I've also been really delighted in our short visit to get to spend time with my former college roommate, going back far more years than I would publicly care to admit, and one of my very best friends from college who works here at BYU-Idaho. She and I met in an honors course and a Book of Mormon course at BYU when we were freshmen. She tried very hard to avoid allowing me to become her friend, but I pursued her relentlessly as we walked back to the dorms after our Book of Mormon class and she finally had to give in and she's never regretted it, nor have I. It's been one of the most treasured relationships of my life.
Today, I would like to speak to you about the vital importance of being part of a community. I think you are doing some very interesting and important things here at the BYU-Idaho community and learning and loving within this community.
After I had been teaching at BYU in Provo for about a year, I was asked to instruct a fall semester of the freshmen academy course in classics and the classical tradition. Freshman Academy, which at BYU has more recently given way to a program known as Freshman Mentoring, was originally established in an effort to help incoming freshmen make the transition to a university education; to help them feel more fully integrated into the life of the university; and to make them more likely to continue that life and that education. The students who participated in the program were organized into so-called learning communities.
From that fall, back in 1997 to this one, I have taught that general education course almost every year. And every year, I find myself thinking anew about the importance of belonging to a learning community; particularly about the influence of a community on how and what we learn, and on who and what we become. Those are questions that have been considered by thinkers since very ancient times. In his Politics, Aristotle describes the creation of the ancient Greek city-state, which Greek's call the polis in the following way:
The ultimate human partnership, composed of a number of villages and having already reached, one could say, the highest level of self-sufficiency, is the polis or city-state. It has come into being basically so that life could continue, but it continues so that life can be a good life. Consequently, each polis is a natural thing being the result of the processes that have led up to its formation.
Aristotle was a big believer in things evolving in natural ways to some particular purpose or end. He says, after all the reason anything exists is purpose, or end, is the chief good. He asserts that autarky or self-sufficiency can also mean self-rule, is the best end of all. From all of this, he says, it is evident that the polis has come to be from natural processes. Then this very important phrase:
And that a man is a politokos zoön, that is, a creature suited to live in a polis. Anyone who does not belong to a polis either by chance or by his own nature is either sub-human or super-human. He is like the man criticized by Homer, 'without clan, law, or hearth.'[1]
The polis was the basic political unit of the ancient Greek world. It was in place by approximately 750 BC -the beginning of the Archaic Period. Surprisingly little can be said about polis, beginning its development as it did, in what were the Greek Dark Ages, from which we have no surviving literature. By the time we do have literature about the polis, it is already an accomplished fact.
It is generally assumed that families and then larger social networks grouped together for protection during the insecurity and disruption of the Dark Ages; and that these groupings became increasingly permanent settlements around defended or at least potentially defensible locations like the Acropolis in Athens. There's several points of Aristotle's statement that I would like to discuss. First, the polis, he says came into being so life could continue. Second, the polis continues so that life can be a good life. And third, man, he says, is a politikos zoön. We'll come back to that phrase.
The first statement: the polis came into being so life could continue suggests that human beings need community to survive physically or at least that being in a community makes our chances of survival much better. The second statement suggests that the quality of life is improved by being in a community. It continues so that life can be a good life. In other words, once men have established some sort of physical safety and security, individual members of community can begin to specialize, to divide labor and to produce those goods and services that refine and beautify life; to consider the world around us; to think about philosophical issues; and about our own moral identity and purpose.
The final statement that man is a politikos zoon has frequently and I would say wrongly, but translated man is a political animal. The phrase does not seem to refer to our intense interest, even in an election year, in what we would call politics, but instead seems to be saying that human beings are suited to life in a polis. In other words, that human beings need community to have the best quality of life and to be at their very best.
There is a unique sensitivity to the need for community in the Christian traditions as evidenced in latter- day scripture. From before Enoch to the early Christian era, to Joseph Smith and the Restoration, saints have tried to be of one heart and one and of one soul to establish communities that deserve the name Zion.
We see this in our lives all the time in the LDS community in the framework of our current religion: how we are organized into families, into wards, into stakes, and you will be familiar with the habit of calling fellow members of the Church "brother" and "sister". There are also I think unique challenges posed by being members of a religious community where we are often partnered as missionary companions, as home teaching companions, as members of auxiliary presidency, and undoubtedly in your experience now, as roommates.
Sometimes we are paired with people we may not have a great deal in common with and we may not have thought to choose as our associates if we had had any say in the matter. This can be as I say a very challenging thing to be required by circumstance, or by a calling or by an assignment made by a mission president or by a roommate assignment to interact closely and intimately with people that we might not have hand selected as our friends. This I think is true no matter the size of the religious community.
There was a very interesting book written, it was originally published in 1948, by an author named Thomas Merton, called Seven Story Mountain. It is Thomas Merton's autobiography and in it this very fascinating writer talks about his conversion from atheism or at least agnosticism, his conversion to Catholicism and eventually his determination to enter into a monastic community to begin living his life, or the remainder of his life, as a monk.
In one of the sections of this biography, he describes and discusses his decision to enter the monastic community and specifically his experience once he had entered the monastic community: of being inside the community rather than looking at and admiring and developing certain ideas of the monastic community from the outside looking in. This is what he had to say, once he had entered the monastic community:
Now I was face to face with monks that belonged not to some dream, not to some medieval novel, but to cold and inescapable reality. The community which I had seen functioning as a unity in all the power of that impressive and formal meturgical anonymity which clothes a body of men obscurely in the very personality of Christ Himself now appeared to me broken up into its constituent parts. And all the details good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant, were there for me to observe at close range.
By this time,God had given me enough sense to realize at least obscurely that this is one of the most important aspects of any religious vocation. The first and most elementary test of one's called to the religious life, [and then he says this very important phrase] is the willingness to accept life in a community in which everybody is more or less imperfect.
So what he had admired from the outside as this sort of unified Christian ideal, inside were real people like himself, pleasant and unpleasant, good and bad.
And this is one of the most basic challenges of the religious life. Accepting the necessities must be part of the community in which we are all imperfect. [I submit to you this is something like your experience at this university and in your wards.] The imperfections are much smaller and more trivial than the defects and vices of people outside in the world. And yet somehow you tend to notice them more because they get to be so greatly magnified by the responsibilities and ideals of the religious state through which you cannot help looking at them.[2]
So I think sometimes we are inclined to be more compassionate, more forgiving, more understanding, of people outside our religious community than we are of those inside for whom we have very clearly defined articulated expectations of how they ought to be living. And we judge each other perhaps more harshly with those very high expectations or to use Merton's phrase, because they get to be "magnified by the responsibilities and ideals of the religious state." The ideal of the religious state was understood and ordered by the Lord in the Doctrine and Covenants when he called for the establishment of the temple at Kirtland.
The verses, or at least some verses, very commonly quoted from section 88 of the Doctrine and Covenants, are of the Lord ordering the saints to build a temple. And this is what He says in section 88 of the Doctrine and Covenants:
Therefore verily I say unto you my friends, call your solemn assembly as I have commanded you. And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books, words of wisdom, seek learning, even by study and also by faith. Organize yourselves, prepare every needful thing, establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of Glory, a house of order, a house of God.Which refers explicitly to the temple but also I think for the community of saints that would surround and contribute to and learn from and be part of that temple life. That your incomings may be in the name of the Lord; that your outgoings may be in the name of the Lord; that all your salutations may be in the name of the Lord; with uplifted hands unto the most high. Appoint yourselves a teacher and let not all these spokesman at once but one speak at a time and let all listen unto a saying that when all have spoken that all may be edified of all and that every man may have an equal privilege. See that ye love one another. [And I'll come back to that phrase.] The order of the house prepared for the presidency of the school of the prophets established for their instruction in all things that are expedient for them. Even for all the officers of the Church or in other words, those who are called to the ministry in the Church beginning at the high priests even down to the deacons.
And then He says this very interesting thing, and these are verses that are not often looked at:
This shall be the order of the house of the presidency of the school: he that is appointed to be president or teacher shall be found standing in his place in the house that shall be prepared for him. He shall be first in the house of God and when he cometh into the house of God for he should be first in the house, behold, this is beautiful for he should be an example.
And what does he do when he enters the house?
Let him offer himself in prayer upon his knees before God in token or remembrance of the everlasting covenant.And when any shall come in after him, let the teacher arise and with uplifted hands to heaven, yea even directly, salute his brother or brethren with these words: Art thou a brother or brethren, I salute you in the name of Lord Jesus Christ in token or remembrance of the everlasting covenant.
And then I love these lines:
In which covenant I receive you to fellowship in a determination that is fixed, immovable, and unchangeable to be your friend and brother through the grace of God in the bonds of love. To walk in all the commandments of God, blameless and thanksgiving, forever and ever, amen.[3]
How do we arrive at this determination- a determination that is fixed, immoveable, and unchangeable; to be one another's friends, brothers and sisters, and to keep the commandments together forever? How do we live and learn in a religious community of such varied experiences and personalities, such varied sins and strengths, and with people we may not even like very much sometimes. Because I submit to you that this is what we must do.
So some years ago, when I was a graduate student in Berkley, California, my husband, who was not yet my husband at the time, he and I went to see a movie at a theater in Palo Alto, California not far from the Stanford campus. It was a movie called 35 Up and this movie was actually the most recent iteration in a series, a documentary series that had been made by British filmmakers beginning many years earlier.
The first film in the series was called 7 Up which has nothing to do with the soda pop, but was instead this group of film makers who went and gathered this array of seven-year-old British school children. They filmed them and interviewed them and talked to them about their lives. They took children from a great variety, very many different walks of life; kids who were bound for Eaton and Oxford and other children who had very different futures in line for them.
I had never heard of this series, until we went to see 35 Up. We sat through the interviews and the conversations with this array of people who had been interviewed every seven years of their lives ever since they had been seven. Some had dropped out and ceased to be a part of the project, others were still very much involved with the project.
The final individual, who was featured in this film, was a man whose life was troubled at best. He was actually doing apparently quite a lot better at thirty-five than he had been doing at twenty-eight. My future brother-in-law's wife, my future sister-in-law turned to me and said, "In 28 Up he was homeless and living in a trailer." He was a man who clearly had some issues and I, as I said, was living in Berkeley at the time not far from campus. I would walk to and from campus every day for course work and then back to my apartment. The walk to and from campus would take me along a not very clean street in Berkeley that was filled with panhandlers and drug addicts. When I saw this man in the film, the first thought that occurred to me was, if I saw him in Berkeley, I would cross the street to avoid him. That's the kind of individual I would tend to shy away from.
But in 35 Up this hadn't been the case, you didn't just see the man at 35. They showed clips from all of the earlier movies from 7 Up, from 14 Up, from 21, 28. And so instead of just seeing this deeply troubled, disturbing figure at thirty-five, I also saw the boy. And this boy was beautiful, bright-eyed, vibrant, intelligent, articulate, little lad-completely loveable. Because I had seen the child, I found myself perfectly capable of loving the man because I had some idea of who he really was: of that innocence, of that beauty, of that energy that had characterized him as a seven-year-old. And it completely transformed my perception of him as an adult. Instead of thinking, "I would run from that person," I felt drawn to him. I felt great compassion and great and quite real love for him.
It occurred to me then and it has occurred to me many times in the years since, that this is how and why parents are perfectly capable of loving us as teenagers. I have some teenagers and they're great and I love them. I mean they're quite adorable and pleasant now as they were as small children. But it occurred to me, too, that this gave me at least a little glimpse in to how our Heavenly Father can see us. He doesn't just know the flawed mortal you. He knows who you really are and He can see that and He loves it. If we can see something of that in one another, if we can just see a glimpse of that, how it can transform our sense of one another.
Let me read to you some of the most quoted verses in all of scripture from chapter 13 from 1 Corinthians. But, I'll place a little bit of emphasis on one of the final verses in that chapter is not discussed much. So in chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians, Paul says famously:
Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, and have not charity, I am become a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity suffereth long and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up. Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, and thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth: But whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease, whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
And then verse twelve:
For now we see through a glass, darkly: but then face to face: now I know in part: but then shall I know even as I also am known. Now abideth faith, hope, charity these three but the greatest of these is charity.[4]
How do we arrive at and live in that fixed determination to truly be each other's brothers and sisters? The Lord Himself tells us when he says in Doctrine and Covenants 88, "That ye love one another." This can be read and regularly is and is reasonably read to mean, "see to it that you love one another." It is a commandment to love, but perhaps it is also a commandment to see. Because when we are given a glimpse, when we have that rare insight, and really see and know who someone is, then we can learn to value them; forgive and love that person, even if that person is myself. And that vision transforms us individually and collectively.
It is no accident that Paul's promise of a future where we no longer see through a glass darkly, where we know even as we are known, follows his discourse on charity. That clear vision is mediated by love. There will come a time when we do see clearly; when we know even as we also are known; when we see and know as God sees and knows; and when we see as He sees, we cannot help but see others and ourselves for what they and we truly are. And when we see we cannot help but love.
What we need is to see others and ourselves with God's gracious eyes. He knows not only the purity and potential of our mortal childhood, like the glimpse I caught of a child in a documentary. But the divinity and destiny of our pre-mortal spirit, we must pray as Mormon teaches, with all the energy of heart that we may be filled with this love. Because it in only with the clear vision that comes with love that we are able to see our truest selves.
Your Heavenly Father sees you and He loves what He sees. I love what I have seen here too, and pray that you may love and learn from one another in this wonderful community of students and saints. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Notes
[1] Aristotle, Politics, Book 1
[2] Merton, Thomas. The Seven Storey Mountain, 1948, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
[3] D&C 88: 117-133
[4] I Corinthians 13: 1-12