Some know the measure of Celestial Forgiveness more than others truly do. It is well known that people who have been undergoing a strain will sometimes burst into laughter if the strain is suddenly removed. It has been argued that all laughter is of this type and that any joke will be found, in one way or another, to remove the restraints which society imposes on our natural impulses from social constraints, not of our intellects from too narrow a point of view, that is emphasized by relief theories. God may enter the picture indirectly by having endowed us with our moral faculty. And when it comes to picking out actual instances of virtue and vice, most agree about the value of benevolence and the wrongness of acts of violence against other persons. Moral sense is a determination of our minds to receive amiable or disagreeable ideas of actions. The amiable idea is our determination to be pleased, and it has two jobs. It is both our perception of the virtue of an action and our approval of it. It so happens that those actions which we discern to be virtuous are always benevolent actions, and we are necessarily determined to discern their virtue as soon as we observe them. There is a connection between virtue and benevolence and our necessary perception of the virtuousness of benevolence to arrangements superintended by God. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8

Like sight, the moral sense is universal in humankind. However, just as some people are born visually impaired, and others have imperfections in their sight, some people have no moral sense at all and others have defective moral senses. The God who can sanctify our sufferings will purify us and will forgive our last cries. “I tell you the truth, if anyone keeps my word, one will never see death,” reports John 9.51. The theory of moral sense rests in understanding how we know that benevolent actions are virtuous: they are virtuous because they please. We must also carefully observe that they please irrespective of any advantage they may have to ourselves. Most people do not like being different nor standing out. Of course, on occasion, we have the outgoing type like Paris Hilton who like attention, but generally most people do not want to be noticed. However, it is not as bad as one may think. In fact, when someone lives life as someone who is different, people tend to learn right away that it has its cool moments. These individuals get to meet amazing people and get in on special opportunities. Not surprisingly, these results led to heated and nationalistic debate over whether one group was superior to another. Some people actual become frustrated because they have never experienced that feeling even though they have prayed for long periods of time. #RandolpHarris 2 of 8

Surely, God does speak from Heaven, but he manifests, confirms, or gives direction in a variety of ways. It is very important to teach people that they have to learn to hear the Spirit of God in the way he speaks to them. Our people need all the strength and all the faith we can give them while they are around us. And they will also need a greater strength which comes of a higher power. Receiving guidance and direction from our Heavenly Father through the Holy Ghost is a great blessing in our lives. As we learn how to receive and pay attention to these promptings, feelings, and instructions, we will be able to gain personal testimonies that will give of the strength in the future. The Holy Ghost can be our constant companion, and we will be able to hear him more fully. Above all, prioritizing our health in life’s transitions means not being afraid to ask for help when we need it. Humans are social beings by nature, so we are not built to withstand every sudden event in life without the support of others. We cannot avoid change, but we live a life of resilience. We can embrace transition and see challenges as opportunities to thrive. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8

When it comes to dealing with the people we care for, we must be able to look deeply enough at them to see more than their surface presentation. We have to recognize their vulnerability, wounds, uncertainty, and other subtle signs. Sometimes their facial expression and energy will not match their word and we have to sense what they might not be saying. Empathy and creativity spring from the same source: diversity. Empathy, after all, is a fundamentally creative act by which we connect previously unimagined lives to our own. The path to embracing other people and other cultures has to traverse the imagination. That is why studies have shown that a high need for closure hurts creativity. And it is why reading novels and watching television and movies—which puts us in other people’s shoes—can both lowers our need for closure and make us more empathetic. Spending time among diverse social groups has the same effect. Since people who naturally crave neatness tend to get nervous around unfamiliar others, good intergroup experiences help those with a high need for closure feel less anxious. In fact, intergroup experiences benefit these people the most. Cultivating ambiguity helps us keep an open mind and empathize with different viewpoints and how contradictions are a kind of fuel for human imagination. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8

In creativity, we see things that define artistic genius more and more in terms of originality, the creation of things never before seen. Creativity is a fifth reason to contradictory, ambiguous experiences. Along with assimilation, accommodation, abstraction, affirmation and assembly. When we assemble, we take the uncertainties in our lives and create something out of them. It is no accident that periods of artistic production—in Hellenistic Greece or in New York City in the 1970s—occurs during eras of social upheaval. Art can be cathartic because the accurate depiction of irresolvable conflicts is itself a form of soothing truth-telling. When the ambiguity wins, creative often results. The Baroque style of art surfaced around 1600 and arose out of the challenge of Protestantism, which had grown steadily more powerful ever since Martin Luther’s first protects in 1517. The Vatican called together as many talents as it could muster with the clear intention of turning Rome into the most magnificent city in the World for the greater glory of God and the Church. At the heart of this effort was an ambitious building program. In 1603, Carlo Maderno was assigned the task of adding an enormous nave to Michelangelo’s central plan for St. Peter’s, converting it back into a giant basilica. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8

It is supposed to express the omnipotence of God. Completed in 1615, the scale of the new basilica was even more dramatically emphasized when Gianlorenzo Bernini added a monumental oval piazza surrounded by colonnades to the front of the church. Bernini conceived of his colonnade as an architectural embrace, as if the church were reaching out its arms to gather the flock. The wings that connect the façade to the semicircular colonnade tend to diminish the horizontality of the façade and emphasize the vertical thrust of Michelangelo’s dome. The State Capitol Castle in Sacramento, California USA is designed similarly to St. Peter’s giant basilica and is one of the most significant architectural features in California and much of the World. These extravagant designs are very popular. San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane was another struct built in Rome from 1665-1667, and was built with great pride. Nothing similar can be found anywhere in the World. The beauty of these architectural features makes clear that the virtues of the classical were continually upheld. One of the defining characteristics of the Baroque is its insistence on bringing together various media to achieve the most theatrical effects. Allowing the great, full life of God to invade us, penetrating every part.  #RandolphHarris 6 of 8

Our part is to walk in the light and obey all God reveals to us. Bernini’s Cornaro Chapel in Santa Maria della Vittoria is perhaps the most highly developed of the dynamic and theatrical spaces. The altarpiece depicts the ecstasy of St. Theresa. St. Theresa, a nun whose conversion took place after the death of her father, experienced visions, heard voices, and felt a persistent and piercing pain in her side. This was caused, she believed, by the flaming arrow of Divine Love, shot into her by an angel: “The pain was so great I screamed aloud, but at the same time I felt such infinite sweetness that I wished the pain to last forever. It was the sweetest caressing of the soul by God,” she wrote. The paradoxical nature of St. Theresa’s feelings is typical of the complexity of Baroque sentiment. Bernini fuses the angel’s joy and St. Theresa’s anguished joy. Even more of the Baroque sensibility is Bernini’s use of every device available to him to dramatize the scene. The sculpture of St. Theresa is illuminated by a hidden window above, so that the figures seem to glow in a magical white light. Gilded bronze rays of Heavenly light descend upon the scene as if from the burst of light painted high on the frescoed ceiling of the vault. To the left and right of the chapel are theater boxes containing marble spectators, like ourselves witnesses to this highly charged, operatic moment. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8

Caring for the soul means respecting its emotions and fantasies and feeding it with things that enhance our spiritual nature. That is the reason why art is meant to be so powerful in the first place. Above all, it is supposed to help us acknowledge our dependence on the Lord. We have to let him help and heal us. Faith, the desire to believe, to chance, can be as a seed that will grow, sprout, and bear fruit. All can be well again. Rembrant van Rijn, the greatest master of light and dark of the age manipulated light across a full range of tones, changing its intensity and modulating its brilliance, so that one could feel in every beam and shadow a different emotional content in his Resurrection of Christ, circa 1635-1639. He contrasts the chaotic World of the Roman soldiers, sent reeling into a darkness symbolic of their own inexperience by the angel pulling open the lid of Christ’s sepulcher, with the quiet calm of Christ himself as he rises in a light symbolic of true knowledge. Light becomes, in Rembrant’s hands, an index to the psychological meaning of his subjects, often hiding as much as it reveals, endowing them with a sense of mystery even as it reveals their own souls. The idea of these works of art is blessed are they who are faithful and endure for they shall inherit eternal life. “Thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a moment,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 121.7. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8