Commissioner Clark and President Eyring, thank you for your wonderful remarks today, and thank you faculty, staff, and administration of BYU–-Idaho for sponsoring this delightful celebration today. You are quite literally unlike any university family anywhere in the world of higher education. I join all of these graduates and their families in thanking you for every lesson taught, every meal served, every shrub trimmed, and every computer that has ever spun into action on this campus in their behalf. These beautiful buildings, nice as they are, wouldn’t mean much without the devotion and dedication of the people who make BYU-–Idaho what it is. We talk about the “spirit” of a school, and that spirit comes only with a very large group of people making the effort to want it, to seek it, and to cherish it when you find it. You do that so very well here.
And now to you graduates. Robert Browning famously wrote once: “O, to be in England / Now that April’s there, / And whoever wakes in England / Sees, some morning, unaware.”[1]
Well, I say to Mr. Browning: “O, to be in Rexburg now that April’s there. And the wind has ceased its blowing, and the snow has left my hair.”
I could go on, but I won’t. Suffice it to say I am thrilled to be with all of you today. I bring you the love of President Russell M. Nelson, his counselors, the Twelve Apostles, the other officers of the Church who care very much about you now and forever. Everything we do in Church Education is being done with an eye toward who and what you are, and who and what you can become. The future of this world’s history will be quite fully in your hands very soon—at least your portion of it will be—and an education in an institution sponsored and guided by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the greatest academic advantage I can imagine in preparation for such a serious and significant responsibility.
Forgive me if I am, by turns, both a little sentimental and a little giddy today, but that is how I have always felt about graduation exercises. They are among the most delightful moments not only in your academic career but in your whole lives. I have marched in, prepared for, attended, conducted, or spoken in more commencement services than I care to count, and I have loved them all. (Actually, I could have counted them, but I didn’t want you to turn to mutter, “How old is that dude?”) Although I get more and more dull over the years, these happy graduation days get more and more rewarding. And, of course, they are rewarding because of you who are being honored today—the hard work you have put in, the challenges you have faced, and the success you have now found. We are all so proud of you. You make us very happy.
Indeed, I think it is safe to say that the only people happier than I am are your parents, some of whom thought this day would never come. I can hear the dinner table conversation over in Rigby last fall: “What? You mean she’s got another year of school left? Don’t tell me she’s changed her major again!” That father was just then coming to realize what President Spencer W. Kimball really meant years ago when he spoke of “Education for Eternity.” Well, dad, kick back and enjoy it. Your children are only young once—thank heavens.
Just one other thought about joyful commencement services. They are probably the least promising moment in the entire academic year for anyone to deliver a message. Now President Eyring and Commissioner Clark have just defied that truism by being absolutely brilliant today. But, alas, it’s now down to me. I have only been up here for two minutes but a lot of you are already looking at your wristwatch, shaking it just a little to see if it has stopped. It hasn’t, but I promise I will.
The text for my counsel to you today comes from a Nobel Prize winner, a poet laureate who was the unofficial spokesman for the British Empire a little over a century ago when that empire was the most powerful civilized force on the face of the earth, a commonwealth on whose boundaries the sun never set. I speak of Rudyard Kipling, who among many other things wrote a famous poem, “Recessional,” that was put to music long ago and is often played or sung at commencement services just like this.
It was written for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897, and, in spite of such an unprecedented era of triumphant English history, his poem was at least as much a warning as a celebration. The British Empire was at the zenith of its imperial grandeur, but Kipling soberly asked Victoria’s subjects to consider what had made that moment glorious, and was there the slightest possibility that it might not always be so? In short, there was a warning about what pride and arrogance, ingratitude and callousness might lead to, the not-so-subtle hint that prosperity of individuals and nations could, if such were not careful, be lost forever. Not even Kipling himself could have realized how prescient he was that day because in less than 20 years England was engaged in one world war, almost immediately to be followed by a second. Those two wars drained England’s treasury, slaughtered two generations of her young men, left an immense legacy of moral cynicism, and destroyed the global British Empire and its influence—likely forever.
As my own Kipling-like mix of commendation and warning to you, I had thought to have us sing this hymn today—it is number 80 in our Church hymnbook, under the title “God of Our Fathers, Known of Old”—but I thought better of that and now quote you just one verse:
The tumult and the shouting dies;
The captains and the kings depart.
Still stands thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget.[2]
Not a lengthy stanza, and it has a good rhyme scheme. If I said it two or three more times, you would have it memorized. What do those lines mean for us gathered here today in Rexburg, far from war or want? What I hope they will mean is the difference between two perfectly good English words relating to memory. The two words are “recollect” and “remember.” To “recollect” something is quite simply to “recall” it—you can hear the similarity in the very words themselves. You recall things like your telephone number and your mother’s recipe for chicken casserole. But the word “remember” is another matter. It has a deeper, even archaic meaning, going back to the early ages of language.
The earliest meaning of “to remember” was “to remind.” That is, when you remembered something, it was to remind you, to prompt you, to action—making it quite literally an active verb. “Recollecting,” on the other hand, did not imply prompting or activity per se. In that sense, we could say it is a more passive word.
Perhaps that little English lesson will not only reinforce my message to you—to “remember” and then live by what BYU-Idaho stands for—but it also explains why “remember” and “remembrance” are such significant concepts in the scriptures. The standard works of the Church list 554 references of the Lord or the prophets asking someone to “remember” something, hoping that will prompt a certain course of action.
On the other hand, the scriptures contain a total of 9 uses of the word “recall” or “recollect,” 7 of those used by sinful characters in the scriptures or those afflicted with some kind of pain.
The meaning seems clear to me. Speaking of spiritual things, if it is good and worthy and eternal, we should remember it. If it is sinful or wrong or dark, we might “recollect” it only—and even that would only be for the purpose of helping ourselves or others to learn an important lesson and move on.
An example of remembering is this early verse in the Book of Mormon from Nephi: “I, Nephi, have written these things unto my people, that perhaps I might persuade them that they would remember the Lord their Redeemer.”[3]
Or the Savior Himself: “Therefore, whoso remembereth these sayings of mine and doeth them, him will I raise up at the last day.”[4]
As opposed to: “We shall be brought to stand before God, knowing even as we know now, and have a bright recollection of all our guilt.”[5]
Or King Mosiah about his wayward sons: “If my son should turn again to his pride and vain things he would recall the things which he had said, . . . [and] would cause . . . this people to commit much sin.”[6]
Does this help you understand why Hannah in the Old Testament would cry unto the Lord: “Look on the affliction of thine handmaid, and remember me, and not forget thine handmaid, but . . . give unto thine handmade a man child, then I will give him unto the Lord all the days of his life.”[7]
And Jehovah’s response: “the Lord remembered her.”[8]
Why not “heard her” or “blessed her” or “answered her” or “helped her”? Well, apparently all of that and more is suggested in “remembered her.”
Or: Why we are to “remember Lot’s wife”[9] rather than just “recall” her.
Or: Why will the Holy Ghost “bring all things to [our] remembrance”[10] and not just our recollection.
Or: Why we are to take the sacrament “in remembrance of the body [and the blood of the Savior] . . . and always remember him, and keep his commandments.”[11]
Or the double whammy:
“My sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you . . . because of the . . . foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall.”[12] When you get a “remember, remember,” you are supposed to sit up and take note.
Now, you wonderful young graduates, today is a delightful day of Kiplingesque tumult and shouting—a day of marvelous celebration. You are all captains and kings, the featured stars of this drama, center stage, and rightly so. We want this to be one of the greatest days of your life. Take photos. Sign yearbooks. Hang your diploma on the wall. Use all of these ways to preserve your memories of these years, and let those remnants of this day remind you what so many have done for you in order that you could be here today. Reflect on that with love and gratitude—a “humble and contrite heart,”[13] Kipling phrased it—as you grasp lofty new opportunities, standing as you do on the shoulders of so many others who put you there. Actively, with purpose, with action—remember your parents, your family, your friends, the faculty, for some of you spouses and infant children—on and on to people you don’t even know, thousands of people, including the faithful tithe payers of this Church and its leaders who have made it possible for you to be at this remarkable university. And some of those people have long since left us. I look forward to the day when I can thank Jacob Spori and others for keeping this little school alive more than a century ago. The old Bannock Stake Academy closed the 1889–1890 school year $177 dollars in debt. Brother Spori suggested to the Board of Education that one way to cut the deficit was for him to work on his farm, sell the crops, and give the profits to the school without drawing any school salary but still teaching and administering the school full time. The board agreed.[14] Failing to acknowledge that kind of gift to you from that kind of man and so many others like him can be morally fatal in life. Mr. Kipling’s poetic prophecy tried to say that.
Long after this service is over, long after we are far from Rexburg, long after the musical notes of our own personal “Recessional” have fallen into the silent past—still, then, forever we must pray, “Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, / Lest we forget, lest we forget.”[15]
I conclude by asking you to remember and never forget that the gospel of Jesus Christ is true, that His name is the only name given under heaven whereby any man, woman, or child can be saved, and that this gospel—with its saving principles and ordinances, its covenants and righteous counsel—is only available in its fulness in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Assuming this marvelous university experience has helped you learn this grand truth or at the very least reinforce it, then I plead with you never to forget it. And that means you will not simply recall a few articles of faith and a handful of scriptures. It means you will live a certain way, Christ’s way, the way, the truth, the life.
It continues to be a mystery to me how such convictions once held so tightly and esteemed so dearly can slip away into forgetfulness or disrepair or seeming unimportance. But for some down through the dispensations it has. Educational success can do it. Pride can do it. Stress can do it. Above all, vanity and prosperity and self-sufficiency can do it—the kind of things Kipling was warning against. But the truth is, God the Father and Jesus Christ His Son did appear to the boy Prophet Joseph Smith and over time have introduced all the other divine things that have happened in the 199 years since that first vision. That witness is the most important declaration mankind could receive since the days of the Crucifixion and Resurrection of that same Jesus.
So how on earth could anyone forget something so monumentally important? Well, they can, because all that really means is they got passive about it. Unintended, unnourished, unappreciated, that flame can flicker, it can grow dim, it can die. I charge you this day to remember, remember, remember the divinity of this work.
Remember to pray. Remember to serve. Remember to learn. Remember to tithe. Remember to teach. Remember to be clean, to be honest, and to forgive. And remember to be this happy 10 years from now. Then 20, then 50. I have told you—and 554 remembrance scriptures have backed me up—as to how you can guarantee that happiness. “Lord God of Hosts be with us yet, / Lest we forget, lest we forget.”[16] Congratulations you captains and kings, you disciples of the living Christ. You have earned every minute of the joyful tumult and shouting of the day. May you remember to remember with “a humble and contrite heart”[17] to be valiant all the days of your wonderful lives. I pray, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
[1] Robert Browning, “Home-thoughts, from Abroad,” lines 1–4.
[2] “God of Our Fathers, Known of Old,” Hymns, no. 80.
[3] 1 Nephi 19:18; emphasis added.
[4] 3 Nephi 15:1; emphasis added.
[5] Alma 11:43; emphasis added.
[6] Mosiah 29:9; emphasis added.
[7] 1 Samuel 1:11; emphasis added.
[8] 1 Samuel 1:19; emphasis added.
[9] Luke 17:32.
[10] John 14:26; emphasis added.
[11] Moroni 4:3; emphasis added.
[12] Helaman 5:12; emphasis added.
[13] “God of Our Fathers, Known of Old,” Hymns, no. 80.
[14] See David L. Crowder, The Spirit of Ricks: A History of Ricks College: 1888-1997, 4-5, 1997.
[15] “God of Our Fathers, Known of Old,” Hymns, no. 80.
[16] “God of Our Fathers, Known of Old,” Hymns, no. 80.
[17] “God of Our Fathers, Known of Old,” Hymns, no. 80.