Some doors are heavier than others and the longings of the human heart is life everlasting. The chance to explore unlived life awaits us as long as we are alive, but only if we are willing to succumb to radical change. Irrespective of age, we mourn for those loved and lost. Mourning is one of the deepest expressions of pure love. It is a natural response in complete accord with divine commandment: “The shalt live together in love, insomuch that thou shalt weep for the loss of them that pass away.” (D&C 42.45.) When we lose a near and dear friend, upon whom we have set our hearts, it should be a caution unto us. Our affections should be placed upon God and his work, more intensely than upon our fellow beings. In many respects, once we recognize our mortality we open ourselves to the discoveries that incite growth of our nature. Long before we speak the words, we receive reminders that we have a finite amount of time on Earth. As seedlings of God, we barely blossom on Earth; we fully flower in Heaven. Some people cling to physical powers, both as their chief tool for coping with life, and as the most important element in their self-definition. Since physical powers inevitably decline, such people tend to grow increasingly depressed, bitter, or otherwise unhappy as they grow older. When hardship heaps its heavy load upon us, good may still be gleaned because after much tribulation comes the blessings. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10

While we are still full of youthful vigor, we tend to feel cheated when mishaps interfere with our strivings. Physical incapacity reverses this stance: we expect some portion of our desires will be frustrated, and we are relieved when our preferences are satisfied. Physical and spiritual trials provide continuing challenges in life. Each of us can provide illustrations from personal experience. Many of us, for instance, are at the twilight of life and endure long and difficult days. We know well the meaning of that divine injunction to endure to the end. To varying degrees, unlived life is everyone’s plight. Our time is finite, our abilities are uneven, and we have to forsake some goals in order to attain others. These limitations are there all along, but erosion of independence finally forces us to reconcile ourselves to them. Everything here on Earth is in a continual flux which allows nothing to assume any constant form. All things change round about us, we ourselves change, and no one can be sure of loving tomorrow what one loves today. When it comes to us, let us make the most of peace of mind, taking care to do nothing to drive it away. Everyone knows that we can be deeply affected by the things of nature. A certain hill of mountain can offer a deep emotional focus to a person’s life or to a family or community. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10

Can anyone believe that the Great Creator would provide for life and growth and achievement only to snuff it all into oblivion? Reason says no. When my great-grandparents lived in New City, New York, they bought a large house on Strawtown Road. They planted and tended an orchard with great care. The house was graceful to look at from the outside, and inside it was filled with old paintings and photographs, beautiful furniture and plants, stained glass windows and gorgeous wood floors. There was a grand piano in the parlor, and a built in curved wooden bench in the foyer, along with a marvelous fireplace. In front of the house were several lush trees that offered privacy, shade, and beauty for the family and many other people who visited the house. The trees are like members of the family, bound to us as individuals of another species. Many things have a soul. We know these feelings of attachment to things, but we tend not to take them seriously and allow them to be part of our World view. What if we took more seriously this capacity of things to be close to us, to reveal their beauty and express their subjectivity? The result would be a soul-ecology, a responsibility to the things of the World based on appreciation and relatedness rather than on abstract principle. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10

A real relationship with nature has to be fostered by spending time with it, observing it, and being open to its teachings. Any true relationship requires time, a certain vulnerability, and openness to being affected and changed. A deep ecological sensibility can come only from the deep soul, which thrives in community, in thing that it is not detached from the heart, and in relatedness to particulars. It is a simple idea: if we do not love things in particular, we cannot love the World, because the World does not exist expect in individual things. Really, this truth we have found marks but the beginning of a new day, a new experience, a new life—a life no longer disturbed by fear nor haunted by doubts or filled with regrets of the past or misgivings over the future—a life that can be lived in its fullness today, and a life that will extend through all our tomorrows in an ever-broadening arena of experience, an ever-deepening realization of a presence and a power and a peace that gives us complete security and an ever-greater vision of the more that is yet to come. Care of the World is a tending to the soul that resides in nature as well as in human beings. God is the only power and the only presence there is, and God is right where we are. We live and move and have in our being God. God’s being moves through us and manifests itself in what we are doing. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10

We cultivate a sense of home wherever we are, in whatever context. The things of the World are part of our home environment, ad so a soulful ecology is rooted in the feeling that this World is our home and that our responsibility to it comes not from obligation nor logic but from true affection. Without a felt connection to thins we become numb to the World and lose that important home and family. The penury we see on our city streets is a reflection of a deeper destitution we feel in our hearts. Care for our actual hoses, then, however humble or grand, is also a care of the soul. No matter how much money we have, we can be mindful of the importance of beauty in our homes. No matter where we live, we live in a neighborhood, and we can cultivate this wider piece of Earth, too, as our home, as a place that is integrally bound to the conditions of our hearts, as a noble instrument in the hands of God. We thank God our Eternal Father for a more tolerant day and greater understanding. The sunshine of goodwill is upon our people. As long as the heart is involved, care of the place will follow. Perseverance is vital to success in any endeavor, whether spiritual our temporal, large or small, public or private. Think seriously of how important perseverance, or the lack of it have been in your own endeavors. Essentially all significant achievement results largely from perseverance. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10

Did you ever stop to think that you are a spiritual and mental broadcasting station, and that the messages are going out from you in all directions, perhaps even while you are asleep—messages which have an influence on your environment and the people around you? And since everything moves in circles, the messages you broadcast will come back to you. Gather miraculous inner strength and be grateful for the effect of love upon you. We each have trials and challenges to overcome as we strive to keep on the right course. Often the most important trials are those we must face and subdue privately within our own hearts. We are told that the mental atmosphere of a home can influence a dog, cat, or canary to the extent that they become neurotic when surrounded by unhappiness or criticism. There is a place where our physical bodies begin and leave off, but the mind has no such limitations, and our thoughts penetrate everything around us. Perseverance is essential to us in learning and living the principles of the gospel and that will determine our progress as we strive to each exaltation. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10

The pursuit of excellence should be major work of our lives. Many people, however, give little thought to it. Perhaps they feel that it is not possible for anyone to reach perfection in this life, and so they let the immediate pressures dominate their actions. While it is true that we cannot attain perfection in a total sense in this life, it is also true that we can attain perfection in many specific areas of activity. We are all broadcasting stations, whether or not we know it. Our thoughts, feelings, and emotions, our faiths and fears, tend to make an imprint on our environment. We are also receiving sets, but it does not follow that we must tune in to every program being broadcast. When we want to listen to a certain program we tune our radios to its wavelength. The program already is within the ether in the room, but it does not affect our instrument until we tune in to it. It is fascinating to think that we are both mental broadcasting stations and receiving sets. And it will be even more wonderful when we learn to broadcast only the kind of messages that we wish to have return. Furthermore, if we fail to do what we can and should do in this life, we may deprive ourselves forever of the opportunity to do those things later on and thus lose great eternal blessings. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10

Heaven is not reached at a single bound, but we build the skyscraper by which we rise from the lowly Earth to the vaulted skies, and we mount to its summit round by round. If a person’s mind is filled with animosity and resentment people will feel it, whether or not one says a word. This animosity arouses within others who have resentment and animosity a feeling like one’s own. One’s thoughts tune in to theirs, and theirs immediately respond by following back into the receptive individual. One accentuates the other. One the other hand, if we are surrounded by people who have resentment and animosity, but we have none, we will not tune in. Their vibrations bypass us, and their antagonism does not arouse an equal antagonism in us because we are not broadcasting on the same mental wavelength. It is the same with everything in life. A person whose thought is filled with the fear of failure tunes in to and picks up vibrations of failure wherever that individual contact them; to one’s own negative thought there is added a great mass of negative thoughts, until finally it seems that the only thing one can think about is failure. In a way, this individual’s will and imagination become hypnotized, because one is tuning in to so much negation. When a person’s mind is upset, disturbed, and unhappy, all one mentally hears is discord because one’s inner ear is listening to a continuous turmoil. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10

Conversely, a person whose thought is filled with the idea of success, who has faith and confidence in oneself and what one is doing, will tune in to the successful thoughts around one, the thoughts of faith and optimism and happy expectancy. When you get into bed at night, rehearse the things you have accomplished during the day. Allow yourself to feel the satisfaction that comes of work completed or even partially completed. A person who confidently expects good things to happen, expects to be respected, and who expects to find happiness in life where one foes, will not only be broadcasting these thoughts which will make other people happy; one will be receiving them in return. Because one feels friendly, people will respond with friendliness. We all wish to be like this. We not only want to be whole ourselves, because no one can be happy unless he or she is whole, but we want to help others. We not only wish to broadcast good news; good news is what we want to receive. We may not see it now, but everything we do, every day we live is for a purpose. And we have a Heavenly Father who will always be there to life us up and cheer us on. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10

We care so much about one another as we walk together on our journey. I know Heavenly Father will bless each of us as we pray, work hard and give time a chance.  We should decide to think on the affirmative side of life, or accentuate the optimistic and eliminate the pessimistic. In doing this we must make up our minds that we are not going to receive the criticism nor the negative state nor the animosity of anyone. And let us not forget the importance of keeping our minds in a state of good-natured flexibility. If a tree did not bend with the breeze, it would break under a strong wind. We have to be flexible and tolerant as well as optimistic and affirmative. Remember that for everyone who passes out of this World someone else comes in life. Life is a river always flowing, and life itself never get tired, worn out, nor exhausted; it never depletes itself. Also, we do not have to morbidly scan all the accidents any more than we have to listen to the negative conversation. More and more we are coming to see what it means to accentuate the beneficial and eliminate the negative. God is still the supreme power, and the divine spirit is still present with us no matter where we are. We must learn to tune in to the mind of God, for when we do we are tuning in to the most dynamic reality in the Universe. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10