Hugh Nibley was known for scribbling down notes on 3 x 5 cards and filing them away for articles and books. Enjoy these first in a series of notes from Hugh Nibley:

Mormon and Moroni, brooding for years on the fate of the Nephites, both came to the same conclusion in answering the question:  Where did they go wrong?  It was in lacking CHARITY.  For Mormon and Moroni charity is everything, the solution to all our problems.  And what is charity?  It is the one absolute in the universe.

 

It is joy in the existence of others.

 

Everything has a cause, everything has a conditioned existence, every act a motivation, everything depends on something else to qualify it, everything depends on a combination of elements even for it’s existence; hence “all things must fail” – EXCEPT Charity!

 

Charity is not subject to any limitations or conditions, it needs no motivation, no conditioning; the feeling of charity does not depend on the worthiness of its object or on recognition by any living thing: “charity suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not… seeketh NOT her own” (all other things seek their own – like clings to like, and thus depends on it), but charity depends on nothing, “bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things.  Wherefore, my beloved brethren, if ye have not charity, ye are NOTHING, for charity NEVER faileth.  Wherefore, cleave unto charity … for all [other] things must fail.  But Charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever.”  (Moroni 7).  

 

Nothing can destroy it, because it asks for nothing, it is dependent on nothing, it has nothing to fear, no force may attack it because it offers NO opposition for evil to grasp or push against.  It is all affirmation and joy, the highest form of consciousness, rejoicing in the existence of all things.

– Unpublished notes of Hugh Nibley, thanks go to T.C.