Standing for Something: 10 Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

"Virtue is too often neglected, if not scorned or ridiculed as old-fashioned, confining and unenlightened," laments author Gordon Hinckley, a 90-year-old ordained leader of the Church of Latter Day Saints. Even as he enumerates all of America's social ills (including 482 billion dollars a year spent on gambling, rampant child neglect and abuse, school massacres, a pervasive deterioration of values) Hinckley believes there is a remedy. Chapter by chapter Hinckley presents 10 old-fashioned virtues that will return America to the glory envisioned by its founding fathers. These virtues include: Love, Honesty, Morality, Civility, Learning, Forgiveness, Thrift and Industry, Gratitude, Optimism and Faith.

Hinckley makes a compelling case for every one of these virtues, quoting extensively from the Bible but mostly using convincing personal anecdotes (after all, he is an elder with 90 years' worth of stories and wisdom). In his glowing foreword, Mike Wallace (of 60 Minutes fame) writes that Gordon Hinckley is an "optimistic leader of the Mormon Church who fully deserves the almost universal admiration that he gets." Clearly, Hinkley has struck a resounding chord with the American populace, including dyed-in-the-wool New York cynics such as Wallace. Word of this book is rapidly spreading across America as simple folk clamour to steer their lives and country with a more virtuous compass.

"Virtue is too often neglected, if not scorned or ridiculed as old-fashioned, confining, unenlightened," laments author Gordon Hinckley, a 90-year-old ordained leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Even as he enumerates all of America's social ills (including $482 billion a year spent on gambling, rampant child neglect and abuse, school massacres, a pervasive deterioration of values) Hinckley believes there is a remedy. Chapter by chapter Hinckley presents 10 old-fashioned virtues that will return America to the glory envisioned by its founding fathers. These virtues include Love, Honesty, Morality, Civility, Learning, Forgiveness, Thrift and Industry, Gratitude, Optimism, and Faith.

Hinckley makes a compelling case for every one of these virtues, quoting extensively from the Bible but mostly using convincing personal anecdotes (after all, he is an elder with 90 years worth of stories and wisdom). In his glowing foreword, Mike Wallace (of 60 Minutes fame) writes that Gordon Hinckley is an "optimistic leader of the Mormon Church who fully deserves the almost universal admiration that he gets." Clearly, Hinkley has struck a resounding chord with the American populace, including dyed-in-the-wool New York cynics such as Wallace. Word of this book is rapidly spreading across America as simple folk clamor to steer their lives and country with a more virtuous compass.

"We live in an age in which traditional beliefs have been attenuated, ridiculed, and mocked. We desperately need leaders who will defend them -- and just as important, we need leaders who can explain why they are worth defending. Which is why Gordon Hinckley's book is so valuable. Timely, intelligent, practical, and readable, Standing for Something is an important contribution to the national discussion."
--William J. Bennett, editor, The Book of Virtues

"I absolutely love this book! Every chapter breathes profound wisdom, insight, and optimism. Articulated by one of the inspired leaders of our day, these ten timeless values, if lived, will literally heal our hearts, our homes, our country, our world."
--Stephen R. Covey, author, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

"President Gordon B. Hinckley has written a wise and inspiring book. He looks at all that ails our society today and offers the most powerful cure: faith in God and the virtues that emanate from it. His voice in this book is prophetic and full of love. People of all religions will benefit from reading Standing for Something, and society will gain too, because this book should lead its readers to stand for something."
--Senator Joseph I. Leiberman

An invitation to stand up and be counted . . .

No nation can be greater than the strength of its individual homes or the virtue of its people. Sadly, many today would say ours is a nation in crisis. Families are splintering around us, our children are becoming alienated from their great cultural heritage, and our leaders seem increasingly out of touch. Yet, according to Gordon B. Hinckley, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, one cannot lose hope. The solution lies not within our governments, schools, or symbols of popular culture, but rather within ourselves, our families, and our faith.

In the tradition of William Bennett's Book of Virtues, Hinckley has created a classic look at the values that can change our world -- and how to stand up for them. Drawing on anecdotes from his own life, as well as from our nation today, he examines ten virtues that have proven through the ages to provide the most profound path to a better world: love, honesty, morality, civility, learning, forgiveness and mercy, thrift and industry, gratitude, optimism, and faith. He then shows how the two guardians of virtue -- marriage and the family -- can keep us on that path, even in difficult times.

Standing for Something is an inspiring blueprint for what we can all do -- as individuals, as a nation, and as a world community -- to rediscover the values and virtues that have historically made us strong. At once masterful and illuminating, it is a work for our time: a reflection from one man's long and productive life that dwells not on the past but on the means by which all of us can work toward a brighter future.

Gordon B. Hinckley was ordained the world leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1995. He lives with his wife, Marjorie Pay Hinckley, in Salt Lake City. The Hinckleys, who have been married for more than sixty years, have five children and twenty-five grandchildren.

We need a new emphasis on honesty, character, and integrity. As we build into the fiber of our individual lives the virtues that are the essence of true civilization, so will the pattern of our times change. The question that confronts us is: Where shall we begin?

One
Love: The Lodestar of Life

Love is the only force that can erase the differences between people or bridge the chasms of bitterness.

When I was a little boy, we children traced paper hearts at school on Valentine's Day. At night, we dropped them at the doors of our friends, stamped on the porch, and then ran into the dark to hide.

Almost without exception, those Valentines had printed on them: "I love you." I have since come to know that love is more than a paper heart. Love is the very essence of life. It is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Yet it is not found only at the end of the rainbow. Love is at the beginning also, and from it springs the beauty that arches across the sky on a stormy day. Love is the security for which children weep, the yearning of youth, the adhesive that binds marriage, and the lubricant that prevents devastating friction in the home; it is the peace of old age, the sunlight of hope shining through death. How rich are those who enjoy it in their associations with family, friends, and neighbors!

Love, like faith, is a gift of God. It is also the most enduring and most powerful virtue.

In our youth, we sometimes acquire faulty ideas of love, believing that it can be imposed or simply created for convenience. I noted the following in a newspaper column some years ago:

One of the grand errors we tend to make when we are young is supposing that a person is a bundle of qualities, and we add up the individual's good and bad qualities, like a bookkeeper working on debits and credits. If the balance is favorable, we may decide to take the jump [into marriage]. . . . The world is full of unhappy men and women who married because . . . it seemed to be a good investment. Love, however, is not an investment; it is an adventure. And when marriage turns out to be as dull and comfortable as a sound investment, the disgruntled party soon turns elsewhere. . . . Ignorant people are always saying, "I wonder what he sees in her," not realizing that what he sees in her (and what no one else can see) is the secret essence of love.
I think of two friends from my high school and university years. He was a boy from a country town, plain in appearance, without money or apparent promise. He had grown up on a farm, and if he had any quality that was attractive, it was the capacity to work. He carried bologna sandwiches in a brown paper bag for his lunch, and swept the school floors to pay his tuition. But with all of his rustic appearance, he had a smile and a personality that seemed to sing of goodness. She was a city girl who had come out of a comfortable home. She would not have won a beauty contest, but she was wholesome in her decency and integrity, and attractive in her decorum and dress.

Something wonderful took place between them. They fell in love. Some whispered that there were far more promising boys for her, and a gossip or two noted that perhaps other girls might have interested him. But these two laughed and danced and studied together through their school years. They married when people wondered how they could ever earn enough to stay alive. He struggled through his professional school and came out well in his class. She scrimped and saved and worked and prayed. She encouraged and sustained, and when things were really tough, she said quietly, "Somehow we can make it." Buoyed by her faith in him, he kept going through the difficult years. Children came, and together they loved them and nourished them and gave them the security that came of their own love for and loyalty to each other. Now many years have passed. Their children are grown, a lasting credit to them and to the communities in which they live.

I happened to find myself on the same flight as this couple a few years ago. I walked down the aisle in the semidarkness of the cabin and saw a woman, white-haired, her head on her husband's shoulder as she dozed. His hand was clasped warmly about hers. He was awake and recognized me. She awakened, and we talked. They were returning from a convention where he had delivered a paper before a learned society. He said little about it, but she proudly spoke of the honors accorded him.

I wish that I might have caught with a camera the look on her face as she talked of him. Forty-five years earlier, people without understanding had asked what they saw in each other. I thought of that as I returned to my seat. Their friends of those days saw only a farm boy from the country and a smiling girl with freckles on her nose. But these two found in each other love and loyalty, peace and faith in the future. There was a flowering in them of something divine, planted there by that Father who is our God. In their school days, they had lived worthy of that flowering of love. They had lived with virtue and faith, with appreciation and respect for self and one another. In the years of their difficult professional and economic struggles, they had found their greatest earthly strength in their companionship. Now, in mature age, they were finding peace and quiet satisfaction together.

There is nothing as energizing, as confidence-building, as sustaining as the power of love. How substantial is its influence on the human mind and heart! How great and magnificent is its power in overcoming fear and doubt, worry and discouragement!