At Their Most Enlightened & Be Renewed | Jeffrey R. and Patricia T. Holland

Sister Holland: We can't fight our external battles by waging internal wars. Our mind must be continually renewed by positive thinking-we must be our own best friend.
President Holland teaches about the Founding Fathers and Constitution as students begin another semester during a presidential election year. He especially commemorates George Washington and reminds us that our leadership is a reflection of our own enlightened minds and moral virtue.
However, the battle that many of you wage on an interior front concerns me more than these external ones I have just mentioned.
"Many of us create a civil war within ourselves by internalizing problems of fear, uncertainty, self-doubt, and worry-often over things we can do preciously little about. If we spend our time and energy worrying about being too tall or too short or about our freckles and warts and big noses, then I fear we are doomed to certain defeat. The person who is engaged in such a constant internal fight has little energy and power left to win the outside battles. To be successful in the many skirmishes of life, you cannot afford to be your own worst enemy. And taking the battles inside-firing mortal shells into your very soul-is potentially one of the most damaging of all human activities. Believe it or not, you can recover from poor grades or a missed date or a flat tire and dead battery on the car. But if you turn such outside matters into self-recrimination and self-criticism, letting them damage your spirit and your sense of self-worth and esteem, then you have begun a battle with a very high mortality rate indeed." - Sister Holland
"Can that possibly be true, that the people made Washington great? That they, as well as he, were “at their most enlightened and alert”? What does that mean for a university, especially for Brigham Young University? I know it means there must be no concession to escapism here, that we must not be “soothed” regarding sacrifice and learning. This university was born out of pioneer effort and anguish. We have a century-long tradition here of asking very much of those who come, and we are asking more and more every year. We intend to be a great people here. We intend to be one of the great universities of the world, a unique university whose light casts a very special gospel glow. But to do that, to become that, will require the commitment and loyalty of every one of us. As Ben Franklin said at the fateful signing of the declaration that started it all, “We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately” (to John Hankcock, on signing the Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776). This is still true, two hundred and twelve years and two months and two days later in Provo, Utah...
Whether building countries or wilderness cabins, whether crossing the Delaware or the American desert, the Founding Fathers of this nation and the prophets of the Restoration knew that ignorance was the enemy, literally and profoundly a tool of the adversary. 'The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth. Light and truth forsake that evil one' (D&C 93:36-37). 'If men would be great in goodness, they must be intelligent' (Brigham Young, Manuscript History of the Church, manuscript in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Archives, Salt Lake City, 22 September 1851, vol. 21, p. 88). 'If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be...'
I tell this story this morning for its Christian significance on a campus where we pledge and profess Christian belief. I submit to you that our effort this year must be perhaps different in degree but not in kind from the effort that a ragged bunch of irregulars made during a winter at Valley Forge, that a beleaguered band of pioneer outcasts made in these valleys for the privilege of freedom and worship and growth, and that Steven Blake made on behalf of seventy-year-old Johnny Wakamatsu. I submit to you that your devotion to your educational opportunity and the life of service that must follow it is to be different in degree but not in kind from that gift given by the Son of God himself, made for friend and foe alike-none of whom could possibly have comprehended the full meaning and majesty of the privilege he was providing them. In this academic year of presidential elections and bicentennial celebrations, I salute you, the students of Brigham Young University who have chosen to educate your minds, discipline your appetites, and serve, indeed sacrifice for your fellow men and women." -President Holland
speeches.byu.e...
speeches.byu.e...
Jeffrey R. Holland was president of Brigham Young University when he and his wife, Patricia T. Holland, gave this devotional address on 6 September 1986.
© Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved.