Everyone thinks of changing the World, but no one thinks of changing oneself. Courage is very important. Like a muscle, it is strengthened by use. The measure of a person’s real character is what one would do if one knew one would never be found out. We all have to be consumers. Everyone of us has to eat and drink. We need clothes, a place to live. Basically, we need and make use of a great many things, and that phenomenon we call “consuming.” Where is the psychological problem in that? That is just the way of nature: We have to consumer to live. Granted, but in saying even that much we have already arrived at the point I want to make: There is consuming and consuming. There is a kind of consuming that is compulsive and that arises from greed, a compulsion to eat, buy, own, use more and more. Now you may ask: Is that not normal? After all, do not all of us want to ass to what we have? The problem, if there is one is that we do not have enough money, not that there is anything wrong with the desire to own more and more. I realize very well that many of you feel this way. However, perhaps an example will show that the issue is not as simple as it may look at first glance. My example is one that will be familiar to you, but I hope very few of you are personally affected by it. Consider someone who is suffering from obesity, someone who simply is above average weight. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14

Obesity can be caused by a glandular malfunction, but more often than not it is simply the result of overeating. The person above average weight has a snack here, a snack there; one has a weakness for sweets; one is always nibbling on something. And if you look more closely, you will see not only that one is constantly eating but that one is driven to eat. One has to eat. One cannot stop eating any more than some smokers can stop smoking. And you know that people who do stop smoking will often start to eat more. They excuse themselves by saying that anyone who quits smoking automatically gains weight. And that is one of the common rationalizations people give for not giving up smoking. Why do we cling to those rationalizations? Because the same need to take something into our mouths, to consume things, finds expression in eating, in smoking, in drinking, or in buying things. Doctors are constantly warning people who eat, drink, and smoke compulsively that they may die prematurely of a heart attack. If those people act on their doctors’ warnings and stop their habits, they often suddenly succumb to attacks of anxiety, insecurity, nervousness, depression. Here we see a remarkable phenomenon: Not eating, not drinking, not smoking can make people afraid. There are people who eat or buy things not to eat or to buy but to quell their feelings of anxiety or depression. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14

Most of us know from our experience that if we are feeling nervous or depressed we are more prone to go to the refrigerator and find what feels like relief in eating or drinking something for which we have no real appetite. In other words, eating and drinking can actually take over the function of a drug, acting like a tranquilizer. And food and drink are more pleasant because they taste good as well. A depressed person feels something like a vacuum inside one, feels as if one were paralyzed, as if one lacked what it takes to act, as if one could not move properly for lack of something that might set one in motion. If one consumes something, the sense of emptiness, paralysis, and weakness may leave one temporarily, and one may feel: I am someone after all; I have something in me; I am not a nothing. One fills oneself with things to drive out one’s inner emptiness. One is a passive personality who senses that one amounts to very little and who represses those inklings by consuming, by becoming Homo consumens. I have just introduced the concept of the “passive personality,” and you will want to know what I mean by that. What is passivity? What is activity? Let me begin with the modern definitions of passivity and activity, definitions that will be quite familiar to all of you. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14

Activity is understood to mean any goal-oriented actions that requires energy. It can be either physical or mental work, and it can include sports as well, for we generally think of sports in a utilitarian way, too: Participation in them either promotes health or enhances the prestige of our country or makes us famous or earns us money. It is usually not pleasure in the game itself that moves us to participate in sports but rather some end result. Anyone who exerts oneself is active. We then say one is “busy.” And to be “busy” is to be engaged in “business.” What constitutes passivity in this view? If we produce no visible results, no palpable achievement, then we have been passive. Let me cite an obvious example: Someone sits still looking out into the landscape, just sit there for five minutes, half an hour, maybe even an hour. One does nothing but look. Because one is not taking any pictures but simply immersing oneself in what one’s eyes are perceiving, we might regard one as strange and would not be at all inclined to grace one’s “contemplativeness” with the name of activity. Or consider someone who meditates (though in our Western culture the sight of someone meditating is rare indeed). One is attempting to become aware of oneself, of one’s own feelings, one’s moods, one’s inner state of being. If one meditates regularly and systematically, one may spend hours at it. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14

Anyone who understands nothing of meditation would consider that mediator a passive person. One is not doing anything. Perhaps one’s whole effort is aimed at driving every last thought out of one’s mind, thinking about nothing, and simply being. That may strike you as peculiar. Try it sometime, just for two minutes, and you will see how difficult it is, how something other will keep popping into your hear, how your mind will drift to every last bit of trivia under the Sun, how defenseless you are against those thoughts because we find it nearly intolerable to sit still and turn off our thoughts. For great cultures in India and China and Japan, that kind of meditation is vitally important. Unfortunately that may not be the case with many in the New World, because, ambition-ridden as we are, we think everything we do has to have a purpose, to achieve something, to produce a result. However, if you try to forget about results for once, if you can concentrate and bring enough patience to this exercise, you may find the “idleness” very refreshing indeed. All I have meant to suggest here is that our modern usage labels behavior that produces visible results activity, while passivity appears to be pointless. It is behavior in which we detect no output of energy. That we see activity and passivity that way has to do with the issues of how and what we consumer. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14

If we consume the superfluous things our “bad affluence” supplies us with, what appears to be activity on our part is really passive. What kind of creative activity, of “good affluence,” of richness, of resistance can we imagine that would allow us to be more than mere consumers? From Old Testament times and ancient Greece until this century, the good life was widely understood to mean a life of intellectual and moral virtue. The good life is the life of ideal human functioning according to the nature that God Himself gave to us. According to this view, prior to creation had in mind an ideal blueprint of human nature from which God created each and every human being. Happiness (Greek: eudaimonia) was understood as a life of virtue, and the successful person was one who knew how to live life well according to what we are by nature due to the creative design of God. When the Declaration of Independence says we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them the right to pursue happiness, it is referring to virtue and character. So understood, happiness involves suffering, endurance, and patience because these are important means to becoming a good person who lives the good life. Freedom was traditionally understood as the power to do what one ought to do. For example, some people are not free to play the piano or to say no to lust because they have not undergone the training necessary to ingrain the relevant skillful habits. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14

Moreover, since community is possible only if people accept as true a shared vision of the good life, it is easy to see why a sense of community and public virtue could be sustained given this understanding of the good life, happiness, and freedom. Traditionally, tolerance of other viewpoints meant that even though I think those viewpoints are dead wrong and will argue against them fervently, nevertheless, I will defend your right to argue your own case. Just as importantly, I will treat you with respect as an image bearer of God, even though your views are abhorrent to me. Finally, while individual rights are important, they do not exhaust the moral life properly conceived. “If someone says ‘I love God,’ and hates his or her brother or sister, one is a liar,” John unapologetically said, “for the other who does not love one’s brother or sister whom one has seen, cannot love God whom one has not seen,” reports 1 John 4.20. We only live as we should when we are in a right relation to God and to other human beings. Accordingly, the infant who is not received in love by the mother and others is wounded for life and may even die. It must bond with its mother or someone in order to take on a self and a life. And rejection, no matter how old one is, is a sword thrust to the soul that has literally killed many. Western culture is, largely unbeknown to itself, a culture of rejection. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14

This culture of rejection is one of the irresistible effects of what is called “modernity,” and it deeply affects the concrete forms of Christian institutions take in our tie. It seeps into our souls and is a deadly enemy to spiritual formation in Christ. The power of our persona relations to others is what gives them their incalculable importance for the formation of our spirit and our entire life—for good, or for ill. And of course our body is the focus of these relations, from its DNA to “looks” (how we look or appear, and how we look at and are looked at by others), from touching and working together to talking and praying. However, being with others, our social dimensions, is also inseparable from our inner thoughts, feelings, choices and actions. Their existence and nature are not independent of our social setting. Our very relation to Christ, our Savior, teacher, and friend, is located in the social dimension, along with our place in his body on Earth—his continuing incarnation, the church. Rightly understood, it is true that there is no salvation outside the church—just not this church or that church. The soul is the dimension of the person that interrelates all other dimensions so that they form one life. It is like a meta-dimension or higher-level dimension because its direct field of play consists of the other dimensions (thought, body, and so on), and through them it reaches ever deeper into the person’s vast environment of God and his creation. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14

It has been said that each soul is a star in the spiritual Universe—or so it was meant to be. And there can be no doubt that this is the biblical view, understanding that “soul” here is a term that refers to the whole person through its most profound dimension. People, put disciplined hedges around your life—especially if you work with women. Refrain from verbal intimacy with women other than your spouse. Do not bare your heart to another woman, nor pour forth your troubles to her. Intimacy is a great need in most people’s lives—and talking about person matters, especially one’s problems, can fill another’s need for intimacy, awakening a desire for more. Many affairs being in just this way. On the practical level, do not touch. Do not treat women with the casual affection you extend to the females in your family. How many tragedies have begun with brotherly or fatherly touches and then sympathetic shoulders. You may even have to run the risk of being wrongly considered distant or cold by some women. Whenever you dine or travel with a woman, make it a threesome. This may be awkward, but it will afford an opportunity to explain your rationale, which, more often than not, will incur respect rather than reproach. Many women business associates will even feel more comfortable dealing with you. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14

Never flirt—even in jest. Flirtation is intrinsically flattering. You may think you are being cute, but it often arouses unrequited desires in another. This is why many people do not mix business with pleasure. It keeps the business environment civil and safe. Be real about your sexuality. Do not succumb to vain gnostic prattle about your being a Spirit-filled Christian who would never do such a thing! I well remember a man who indignantly thundered that he was beyond such sin. He fell within months! Face the truth—King David fell, and so can you! “Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart,” reports 2 Timothy 2.22. People the heart of our culture oppresses us with its obsessions and pornotopias. Many in the Church has wilted. The statistics tell it all. In order not to become part of those statistics, there has to be some disciplined swear. Are we human enough? Are we beings of God? I pray we are! “I need more than what you offer me. I need more than pleasures of the flesh, and even more than the beauty of the sea, and more than my every wish granted. I need more then money. Because I am afraid of death. I believe nothing, and therefore like many who believe nothing, I must make something, and that something is the meaning which I give to my life. Had my father not died, I would have been a surgeon, and studied the workings of the boy, and made beautiful drawings of my studies as he did,” (Page 357, The Witching Hour by Anne Rice). #RandolphHarris 10 of 14

We act as if God’s grace only makes up what our good works lack. We believe God’s blessings are at least partially earned by our obedience and our spiritual disciplines. We know we are saved by grace, but we think we must live by our spiritual “sweat.” So who needs grace? All of us, the satin as well as the sinner. The most conscientious, dutiful, hardworking Christian needs God’s grace as much as the most dissolute, hard-living sinner. All of us need the same grace. The sinner does not need more grace than the saint, nor does the immature and undisciplined believer need more than the Godly, zealous missionary. We all need the same amount of grace because the currency of our good works is debased and worthless before God. Neither our merits nor our demerits determine how much grace we need, because grace does not supplement merits or make up for demerits. Grace does not take into account merits or demerits at all. Rather, grace considers all men and women as totally undeserving and unable to do anything to earn the blessing of God. Grace ceases to be grace if God is compelled to bestow it in the presence of human merit. Grace ceases to be grace if God is compelled to withdraw it in the presence of human demerit. Grace is treating a person without the slightest reference to desert whatsoever, but solely according to the infinite goodness and sovereign purpose of God. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14

Perfect people must have existed in antique times, if the accounts which have descended to us are correct; they may even exit today, but in the course of my World wanderings I could not find them. I found remarkable beings, who were perfect enough in their own line, but the broad mantle of realization did not seem to fit their shoulders. I have resigned myself, however, to the acceptance of the probably that the race of realized sages may be extinct today. Is there any being—no matter how spiritual or how well-meaning one may be—who can safely trusted with absolute power over other beings? It is this, along with other and more important observations, that has given me the courage to reject all spiritual authoritarianism. Some defect or some evil is mixed into each one of us. Imperfection is our natural lot here on Earth. In a well-varied experience of my own species and in fairly wide wanderings through this World, I have never, yet, met a perfectly good, perfectly wise, and perfectly balanced being. That is not to say that I shall never meet such a person. I have faith that some must exist. “And blessed is one that is found faithful unto my name at the last day, for one that is found faithful unto my name at the last day, for one shall be lifted up to dwell in the kingdom prepared for one from the foundation of the World, and behold it is I that hath spoken it. Amen,” reports Ether 4.19. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14

We beseech Thee, O Lord, in Thy clemency, to shew us Thine unspeakable mercy; that Thou mayest both set us free from our sins, and rescue us from the punishments which for our sins we deserve; though Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, Who purifies the hearts of those who confess their sins unto Thee, and absolvest the self-accusing conscience from al bonds of iniquity; give pardon to the guilty, and vouchsafe healing to the wounded, that they may receive remission of all sins, and preserve henceforward in sincere devotion, and sustain no loss of everlasting redemption; through Jesus Christ our Lord. My God, Thou hast helped me to see, that whatever good be in honour and rejoicing, how good is one who gives them, and can withdraw them; that blessedness does not lie so much in receiving good from and in thee, but in holding forth thy glory and virtue; that it is an amazing thing to see Deity in a creature, speaking, acting, filling, shining through it; that nothing is good but thee, that I am near good when I am near thee, that to be like thee is a glorious thing: That is my magnet, my attraction. Thou art all my good in times of peace, my only support in days of trouble, my one sufficiency when life shall end. Help me to see how good thy will is in all, and even when it crosses mine teach me to be pleased with it. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14

Grant me to feel thee in fire, and food and every providence, and to see that thy many gifts and creatures are but thy hands and fingers taking hold of me. Thou bottomless fountain of all goof, I give myself to thee out of love, for all I have or own is thine, my goods, family church, self to do with as thou wilt, to honour thyself by me, and by all mine. If it be consistent with thy eternal counsels, the purpose of thy grace, and the great ends of thy glory, then bestow upon me the blessings of thy comforts; if not, let me resign myself to thy wiser determinations. Although it is true that meeting with inspired beings does arouse some persons for the first time to the need of a higher life, it is also true that deep probing would show to what a large extent previous events or reflections had already mentally led such persons to the verge of this need. The inspired teacher does not create it. One only indicates it. Fate brings one at the right moment into the other person’s life to enable this to be done. And somewhere, sometime, for every being who sincerely seeks there must come a Guide, merely because this personal opening of the gate is part of Nature’s program. Enthusiasm is the electric current that keeps the engine of life going at top speed. Enthusiasm is the very propeller of progress. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14

BRIGHTON STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH

Rancho Cordova, CA |

Now Selling!

NOW SELLING! Brighton Station at Cresleigh Ranch is Rancho Cordova’s newest home community! This charming neighborhood offers an array of home types with eye catching architecture styles such as Mid-Century Modern, California Modern, Prairie, and Contemporary Farmhouse. This warm and charming house is a nostalgic tribute to a beloved architectural era. An inviting entry way gracefully leads into the enchanting home, where you are greeted by a spacious great room, dining room, and opens into a well-designed kitchen. The great room is warmed by a fireplace (also has central heating and air). The sumptuous master suit has a soaker tub and a separate shower, duel vanities, and a walk-in closet.

The home offers other special features, like the luxury of a two-car garage and additional parking, secondary bedrooms, and flex spaces and some even have a butler’s pantry. All located in a clean, peaceful, well-manicured, safe neighborhood with lots of fresh air and shopping and entertainment destinations near by. Located off Douglas Road and Rancho Cordova Parkway, the residents of Cresleigh Ranch will enjoy, being just minutes from shopping, dining, and entertainment, and quick access to Highway 50 and Grant Line Road providing a direct route into Folsom. Residents here also benefit from no HOA fees, two community parks and the benefits of being a part of the highly-rated Elk Grove Unified School District. https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/residence-2/