We want to sidestep negative moods and emotions, bad life choices and unhealthy habits. We tend to think of consecration only as yielding up, when divinely directed, our material possessions. However, the ultimate consecration is the yielding up of oneself to God. Consecration is the act of dedicating something to God, sanctifying it and making it holy. It is a sacred dedication of heart, soul, and mind to God for the lasting welfare of our souls. Spiritual submissiveness is not accomplished in an instant, but by the incremental improvements and by the successive use of stepping-stone. Stepping-stones are meant to be taken on at a time anyway. Eventually, our wills can be swallowed up in the will of God, as we are willing to submit. Otherwise, through striving, we will continue to feel the World’s prop wash and be partially diverted. Rising out of the ashes of true mentorship and human connection is the popular culture-instilled desire to have relationships with celebrities. Alas, mighty few of us can actually have meaningful interactive relationships with celebrities. However, our need to do so is embedded in a popular culture system that asks us to get to know our performers, watch their movies, listen to their songs (ostensibly about their most intimate crises), read their biographies and tell-all interviews, but never actually assume that we have any right to communicate with these people expect as passive, supplicating, paying fans. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7

This tension of feeling a connection to someone you actually have no logical grounds for, along with the decreased interest in the traditional religious institutions that once infused our lives with meaning, is beginning to manifest itself in emotional crisis and mental disorder. The identification of celebrity worship syndrome is an indication of the extent to which popular culture is changing our relationship to everyday life. It permits you a connection to the World of celebrities, products, and the good life, no matter how poor or distanced from the nexus of power you may be. We do not just watch the movie, listen to the song, and play the video came, we try to replicate the scenario in our daily lives. Such is the power and allure of popular culture in our lives, and so deep runs the myth that anyone can attain stardom. The result is a World filled with popular-culture supplicants, enthusiasts, and obsessives. The fantasy of the ordinary person turned international success has become a universal fantasy encoded in the unconscious. We are probably much too inclined to overestimate the conscious character even of intellectual and artistic production. It is a recognition of popular culture that gives a validation for the existence of some—they feel they like are worth something as long as they can dream and connection is someone they romanticize. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7

Popular culture has become a homage paid to the unsubdued and indestructible element in the human soul, to the daemonic power which furnishes the dream-wished, and which we have found again in our unconscious. These are our myth, the myth of celebrity success, they are stories being told to our unconscious. It is hard to separate them from our mass culture. It is part of the human spirit to create hope. To not have it would be to kill some sort of primal instinct. However, what really matters to most people is being on TV. Having their existence recognized by the popular culture forces that shape our World. Some people are successful because of the times. Since God lends us breath, from one moment to another, we should use our time to find areas we can excel in life. Hyperventilating over distraction is not recommended! What starts out as adversity can end up being an opportunity. For instance, the New York City public schools of the 1940s were considered the best schools in the country. Because there was a generation of educators in the thirties and forties who would have been in another time and place college professors. They were brilliant, but they could not get the jobs they wanted, and public teaching was what they did because it was security and it had a pension and you did not get laid off. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7

Because of the result of the depression, families simply stopped having children, and as a result, the generation born during that decade was markedly smaller than both generations that preceded it and the generation that immediately followed it. The class sizes were at least half of what they had been twenty-five years earlier. The school were new, built for the big generation that had come before, and the teachers had what was considered high-status jobs. Therefore, the magnificent buildings were already there to receive the students; the ample staff of teachers welcomed them with open arms. The basketball team was there and there was no problem getting time on the gymnasium floor. The same dynamic benefited the members of that generation when they went off to college.  The University was a delightful place; lots of room in the classes and residences, no crowding in the cafeteria, and the professors were solicitous. In the job market, the supply of new entrants was low, and the demand was high, because there was a large wave coming behind this generation providing a strong demand for the goods and services of one’s potential employers. However, if we lack proportion, the next few yards can seem so formidable. Even during the Great Depression, God blessed America by making it easier for the next generation to obtain an education and become a success as adults. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7

Love of the soul asks for some appreciation for its complexity. Inordinate attention, even to good things, can diminish our devotion to God. For instance, one can be too caught up in sports and the forms of body worship we see among us. One can reverence nature and yet neglect nature’s God. Only the Highest One can fully guide us as to the highest good which you and I can do. Before enjoying the harvests of the righteous efforts, let us therefore first acknowledge God. Otherwise, the rationalizations appear, and they include, “My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten m this wealth.” As we develop additional love, patience, and meekness, the more we have to give God and humanity. Moreover, no one ese is placed exactly as we are in our opportune human orbits. Granted, the stepping-stones take us into new territory which we may be very reluctant to explore. Hence, the successful users of the stepping-stones are powerful motivators for the rest of us. We usually pay more attention to those we quietly admire. Meanwhile, God has given us our lives, our agency, our talents, and our opportunities; he has given us our possessions; God has also given us our appointed mortal spans complete with the needed breaths. Guided by such perspective, we will avoid serious errors of proportion. Miracles sometimes bring extensions of life and lessen suffering—for some. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7

Sometimes, of course, it can be difficult to honor the soul’s dramatic ways of expressing itself. Not everyone learns the signals of the body easily, but everyone who heeds the body’s wisdom benefits. Bombarding our bodies with cortisol and converting our cellular activities from anabolic to catabolic metabolism on a prolonged basis is disastrous. This constant running on fast forward eats holes in our stomach linings, encourages hypertension, depresses our moods, lowers our resistance to disease, and promotes chronic fatigue. Unless we take special measures to interrupt the prolonged stress response, we are, in effect, shortening out lives. People have been ae to restore biological equilibrium by having long, comforting prayers with God on a regular basis for five years or less showed a biological age as many as five years younger than their chronological age. Those who had been praying for loners than five years showed a biological age twelve years younger than their chronological age. People who practice regular relaxation become sick enough to go to the hospital only half as often as people who endure an uninterrupted stress response. Those who learn how to relax exhibit 80 percent less heart disease and 50 percent less cancer than their overstressed counterparts. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7

When we are operating synchronously within our internal cycles, we have a strong sense of well-being. We feel relaxed and energized simultaneously. Our logic is harp, and we concentrate on whatever interests us. We express a full range of emotions—sadness, grief, frustration, anger, anxiety, elation, joy, surprise, thrill, excitement—and are sensitive to the feelings of others. When we are tired, we rest and are able to sleep. No hurry, no worry; the present moment is all there is, and it is good. In pondering and pursuing consecration, understandably we tremble inwardly at what may be required. Yet the Lord has said consolingly, “My grace is sufficient for you.” Having our wills increasingly swallowed up by the will of the Heavenly Father actually means an enhanced individuality, stretched and more capable of receiving all that God has. The greatest happiness in God’s generous plan is finally reserve for those who are willing to stretch and to pay the costs of journeying to his regal realm. Enable us, Lord, to reach the end of this luminous feast in peace, forsaking all idle words, acting virtuously, shunning our passions, and raising ourselves above the things of this World. Bless your children who trust in you. Bless the souls, the sick, those tormented by evil spirits, and those who have asked us to pray for them. God, please show yourself as merciful as you are rich in grace; save and preserve us; enable us to obtain those good things to come which will never know an end. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7