Please open the window to let in the stars in the sky and the fragrance of flowers to let the yearnings from your dear ones in the motherland into your hearts. Though we are separated by the ocean, heartfelt blessing will shorten the distance between us because this special blessing across the ocean will bring to you so many endearing yearnings. Eight weeks ago, I stood on the pier, trying to find the nerve to step on that ferry. I kept my eyes on that horizon, knowing that if I went to meet it, to meet you, everything would change. Not necessarily in the going, but in the leaving. People like me do not go across the water to rendezvous with fascinating Americans. They wait at home for babe’s boat to return. Love is more than flowers, smiles, kisses and spring breezes, and it is also the pine trees in the Winter and the sparkles at night and the mutual hand-in-hand support in a trudge. Tree wars? They are silly pranks. Every class plants a tree on the campus and then the other classes try to destroy it. My class has already lost one. We have planted anew and have high hopes for the newest member of the ‘13s. We are guarding it in shifts, armed. Sean Alexander has been feeding the tree a formula he swears by, but I think it is mostly beer with a bit of bay rum oil to mask the scent. It must be working, as the tree has not kicked it yet. The other night we yanked up the ‘14s’ sapling, roots and all! #RandolphHarris 1 of 9

Despite the tree wars, things are not all fund and games around here. This term is already turning out to be pretty difficult. My friends think the senior years is the easiest of all, but I have such a heavy load of courses. I am at the library so often, I am considering moving my pillow and toothbrush over. What is easy about it? I am dreading exam time. You know, it is times like this that I doubt the future. I kept hoping that at some point the right professor or course would inflame me and I would feel the passion others seems to feel. That I would know, without question, what I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing. However, here I am, my final year of college, and I still really have no idea. However, you are my eyes in the whole World, so how can you say that I am alone? I always assumed I would follow my father into medicine. Well, I suppose he has always assumed that and I have just followed suit, having no plan of my own. I have come to realize, thought, that I am not eager for it. As much as I hate school, I almost wish I could just stay. Then I would not have to go out into the big wide World. Well, there, you have heard my worries and doubts. Perhaps they are born of frustration as I move closer to end-of-term exams. I am sorry to burden you with such glum ponderings. I will have to send this letter quickly before I change my mind. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9

Revealed religion expressed the recognition in ourselves of an imperative spiritual principle not derived from our empirical nature but sovereign in our lives. This is the true supernatural revealed in out natures, the divine authority of the moral law; the practical acknowledgment of it in our obedience to God’s will strengthens our moral resolution and is exalted in divine worship. Belief in God is essentially a recognition of the fundamental and sovereign moral dynamic in reality. With God, there is an ethical Word order, a conviction of a moral dynamic of reality, essentially spiritual in character, which posits an objective range of its self-manifestation. Moral activity is the free, purely dutiful commitment of the will in ideal devotion. The conviction of duty is a challenge to any mere wants or empirical conditions. The dutiful will is the will of our true self, pursuing in unremitting endeavour an expanding goal. In the recognition of any course of action as my duty, I am also expressing a more fully realized recognition of myself. I should never disavow the fulfillment of my duty as being beyond my ability. The true moral reflection is quite the opposite; it takes the form “If I ought, I can.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 9

The primary reality is ideal activity, underived, and prior to any specific or definable thing, substance, or process. The primary reality of self-existence is in its ideal self-affirmation. The specific limitations and distinctions of our World, the World that we know, have made their appearance. The conditions of finitude and definition have emerged out of the undefinable ultimate self-activity of the infinite mind. Human’s true vocation is to achieve in ever fuller freedom an ever more loyal devotion to one’s spiritual ideas. Freedom and loyalty alike are unique and personal. The duty to which I am devoted is my duty; the endeavour to recognize and fulfill it is my true being and career. This insight and commitment constitute my conscience, my own self-recognition and my self-expression. The categorical imperative in our ethics is formulated explicitly in terms of conscientious activity: Act always in accordance with your best conviction of your duty; or act according to your conscience. As I thus forthrightly play my role in the drama of reality, I also reach towards Godliness. True religion is the consummation of moral piety; in our aspiration towards the divine, the Divine itself is actively manifest in us. “And while they were overshadowed he departed from them, and ascended into Heaven. And the disciples saw and did bear record that he ascended again into Heaven,” reports 3 Nephi 18.39. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9

The moral life is free, dutiful endeavour. Our duty to God is not only a very serious responsibility, but also a remarkable privilege. Our lives are filled with difficult decisions and with dreams and hopes and longings to find that which will bring us peace and happiness, and God will not forsake us if we will walk in his paths wit the guidance of his commandments. Evil essentially consists in the laxity or disloyalty of the moral will. Any placidity or routine self-contended stagnation is a denial of our moral career. Any easygoing or cowardly compromise with our bounden duty is a betrayal of our quest. These two evils are in corrupt kinship: laxity and laziness lead to cowardice, and form these two basic vices issues the third, falseness. Our ethics make no concession to the least departure from unqualified veracity: I absolute owe every person complete frankness and truthfulness. Any plea that a true answer in many cases may have undesirable consequences is a surrender of right principle to expediency and seeming advantage, and such a surrender is never in any circumstance justified. Self-achievement of dutiful will, in utter devotion is working towards ideal ends. This unique career of each person is involved and participating in a social institutional milieu. In the system of actual human conduct one’s duties are not merely one’s own: they imply acknowledgement of others and of their rights. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9

The purposes of my career cannot be realized in a social vacuum; they affect others and others’ claims and rights. These claims and rights, and my relation to them, are not only personal; they affect objective natural conditions in which ethics involves economics. Moral respect for my neighbour precludes violation of what belongs to him or her, that is, his or her property rights. I promise you that if you seek the Lord, you will find him. Ask, and you shall receive. The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure. The assurance of the reality, truth, and goodness of God—it is knowledge that is buttressed by divine personal confirmation by the Holy Ghost. Receive that Spirit through obedience to the Gospel. In our ethics of social-economic values, we have been balancing two purposes. One of them is to safeguard the personal moral will from being engrossed and engulfed in cramping material enterprises. That is the ascetic note in our morality: the admonition to hearken, in any circumstances, to the still small voice of conscience, and to observe dutiful integrity in self-expression. Our other purpose is to secure for the individual, as well as for the society and the nation, the external conditions of satisfactory self-reliant operation. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9

A national should balance its economic supply and demand within its own social economy. To prevent any disturbance of that balance by unregulated imports and exports, all foreign trade should be directed by the government. By avoiding both surpluses and scarcity, and using the labour of all to provide for the needs of all, the state can wipe out unemployment and poverty and assure to each citizen the conditions for humane fulfillment. Never is, but eternally ought to be. Over time, much in the World has changed. One thing, however, remains the same. Logic itself affirms that a loving Heavenly Father would not abandon his children without providing a way for them to learn of hum. One of the great messages of the Restoration is that the windows of Heaven are open. All who seek to know the truth may, through revelations of the Spirit, know for themselves. Do you want to know the truth of the holy scriptures? Do you wish to break the barriers that separate mortals from the knowledge of eternal verities? Do you wish to know—really know—the truth? Be sincere. Study. Ponder. Pray sincerely, having faith. If we do these things, we too will be able to stand with the billions who testify that God once again speaks to humans on Earth. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9

A testimony of the truth of the gospel does not come the same way to all people. Some receive it in a unique, life-changing experience. Others gain a testimony slowly, almost imperceptibly until, one day, they simply know. This inflexible commitment to our sovereign principle enables us thoroughly to explore and elicit the significance of a prevailingly ethical interpretation of reality. Most of us do not mind doing what we ought to do when it does not interfere with what we want to do, but it takes discipline and maturity to do what we ought to do whether we want to or not. Duty is too often what one expects from others and not what one does. What people think and believe and plan are all very important, but what they do is the thing that counts most. It is a call to throw out selfishness and to think of the common good of all. “Law of performances and ordinances keeps us in remembrance of duty towards God,” reports Mosiah 13.30. We must always remember that duty reminds us we are stewards of all that our Creator has entrusted to us. When we accept the duties willingly and faithfully, we find happiness. Those who make happiness the chief objective of life are bound to fail, for happiness is a by-product rather than an end in itself. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9

Happiness comes from doing one’s duty and knowing that one’s life is in harmony with God and his commandments. The soul is truly the mean of all things created by God. It is in the middle between higher and lower beings, sharing some of its attributes with the celestial elements down to prime matter. Since the human soul extends its thought and love to all things, from the highest to the lowest, the soul becomes once more and a new sense the center of the Universe. The soul is the greatest of all miracles in nature become it combines all things, in the center of all things, and possesses the forces of all things. Therefore the soul may rightly be called the center of nature, the middle term of all things, the bond and juncture of the Universe. Life is a gradual ascent of the soul toward always higher degrees of truth and being, an ascent that finally culminates in the immediate knowledge and vision of God. This knowledge of God represents the ultimate goal of human life and knowledge must be understood as more or less direct and conscious preparation for this end. The highest experience can be attained during the present life, at least by a few privileged persons and for a short while. The ascent of the soul toward God is accomplished with the help of two wings, the intellect and the will. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9