I am an engineer, I am a conservationist, and I am a scientist, and environmentalist. I am a nuclear physicist, I am an outdoorsman, I am a Christian, and I do not see any conflict among these things. I have never claimed to be better or wiser than any other person. I think my greatest strength is that I am an ordinary man. We should live our lives as though Christ were coming this afternoon. As serial marriages become more common, we shall begin to characterize people not in terms of their present marital status, but in terms of their marriage career or “trajectory.” This trajectory will be formed by the decisions they make at certain vital turning points in their lives. For most people, the first such juncture will arrive in youth, when they enter into “trial marriage.” Even now the young people in the United States of America and Europe are engaged in a mass experiment with probationary marriage, with or without benefit of ceremony. The staidest of United States universities are beginning to wink at the practice of co-ed housekeeping among their students. Acceptance of trial marriage is even growing among certain religious philosophers. Thus we hear the German theologian Siegfried Keil of Marburg University urge what he terms “recognized premarriage.” In Canada, Father Jacques Lazure has publicly proposed “probationary marriages” of three to eighteen months. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

In the past, social pressures and lack of money restricted experimentation with trial marriage to a handful. In the future, both these limiting forces will evaporate. Trial marriage will be the first step in the serial marriage “careers” that millions will pursue. A second critical life juncture for the people of the future will occur when the trial marriage ends. At this point, couple make choose to formalize their relationship and stay together into the next stage. Or they may terminate it and seek out new partners. In either case, they will then face several options. They may prefer to go childless. They may choose to have, adopt or “buy” one or more children. They may decide to raise these children themselves or to farm them out to professional parents. Such decisions will be made, by and large, in the early twenties—by which time many young adults will already be well into their second marriages. A third significant turning point in the martial career will come, as it does today, when the children finally leave home. The end of parenthood proves excruciating for many, particularly women who, once the children are gone, find themselves without a raison d’etre. Even today divorces result from the failure of the couple to adapt to this traumatic break in continuity. Feeling is as much a part of true insight into the Real as knowing. It gives life to the end result. It is evoked by enlightened writing and inspired art works. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

Thinking may not rightly claim overlordship here, but intuition, the silent voice of the Overself, may do so. Among the more conventional couples of tomorrow who choose to raise their own children in the time-honoured fashion, this will continue to be a particularly painful time. It will, however, strike earlier. Young people today already leave home sooner than their counterparts a generation ago. They will probably depart even earlier tomorrow. Masses of youngsters will move off, whether into trial marriage or not, after the age of eighteen. Thus we may anticipate that the middle and late thirties will be another important breakpoint in the marital careers of millions. Many at that juncture will enter into their third marriage. This third marriage will bring together two people for what could well turn out to be the longest uninterrupted stretch of matrimony in their lives—from, say, the late thirties until one of the partners dies. This may, in fact, turn out to be the only “real” marriage, the basis of the only truly durable material relationship. During this time two mature people, presumably with well-matched interests and complementary psychological needs, and with a sense of being at comparable stages of personality development, will be able to look forward to a relationship with a decent statistical probability of enduring. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Here, just on the very frontiers of wakeful consciousness, amidst daydreams and intuitions, thoughts and premonitions, lies hidden treasure. It is precisely in this inward region which ordinary humans dismiss as worthless, unreal, and false that the mystic finds worth, reality, and truth. Not all these marriages will survive until death, however, for the family will still face a fourth crisis point. This will come, as it does now for so many, when one or both of the partners retires from work. The abrupt change in daily routine brought about by this development places great strain on the couple. Some couples will go to the path of the post-retirement family, choosing this moment to begin the task of raising children. This may overcome for them the vacuum that so many couples now face after reaching the end of their occupational live. (Today, when they finish raising children, many women go to work; tomorrow many will reverse that pattern, working first and childrearing next.) Other couples will overcome the crisis of retirement in other ways, fashioning both together a new set of habits, interests and activities. Still others will find the transition too difficult, and will simply sever their ties and enter the pool of “in-betweens”—the floating reserve of temporarily unmarried persons. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

Of course, there will be some who, through luck, interpersonal skill and high intelligence, will find it possible to make long-lasting monogamous marriages work. Some will succeed, as they do today, in marrying for life and finding durable love and affection. However, others will fail to make even sequential marriages endure for long. Thus some will try two or even three partners within, say, the final stage of marriage per capita will rise—slowly but relentlessly. Most people will probably move forward along this progression, engaging in one “conventional” temporary marriage after another. However, with widespread familial experimentation in the society, the more daring or desperate will make side forays into the less conventional arrangements as well, perhaps experimenting with communal life at some point, or going it alone with a child. The net result will be a rich variation in the types of marital trajectories that people will trace, a wider choice of life-patterns, an endless opportunity for novelty of experience. Certain patterns will be more common than others. However, temporary marriage will be a standard feature, perhaps the dominant feature, of family life in the future. There is an inner light in all people which could, with time, convert their perplexed questionings into solid certitudes. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

There is this remarkable fact that hard problems which the unassisted intellect cannot solve, gnawing anxieties upon which our past experiences throw no helpful light, may become illumined and solved with ease if we adopt this practical method of applying intuition to them. Among all the varied powers of the mind, a properly unfolded intuition is indeed one of the most priceless anyone could have. It always warns against wrong courses and often counsels the right ones. I sometimes have a feeling, in fact I have it very strongly, a feeling of interference…that some guiding hand has interfered. On the other hand, intuition may help us and allay our fear where reason alone merely increases them. The intuitively governed mind is the undivided mind. It does not have to choose between contrasts or to accept one of two alternatives. It does not have to choose between contrasts or accept one of two alternatives. It does not suffer from the double-facedness of being swayed this way or that by conflicting evidence, contradictory emotions, or hesitant judgments. However bitter a situation may appear, the accepted prompting of the Overself can being sweetness into it; however trying it may be, the same promoting can being fortitude into it. The human who has trained oneself to listen for the voice of intuition, which means trained oneself to wait for it to speak and discipline oneself to be inwardly alert yet also inwardly quiet for it, does not have to suffer the painful conflicts and tormenting divisions which others do when confronted by issues demanding a choice or a decision. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

No charitable human could oneself be blessed in Heaven while one knew that even one human soul was still in hell; and if so, are we more merciful than God? At the back of this objection lies a mental picture of Heaven and hell co-existing in unilinear time as the histories of England and America co-exist: so that at each moment the blessed could say “The miseries of hell are now going on.” However, I notice that Our Lord, while stressing the terror of hell with unsparing severity, usually emphasizes the idea not of duration but of finality. Consignment to the destroying fire is usually treated as the end of the story—not as the beginning of a new story. That the lost soul is eternally fixed in its diabolical attitude we cannot doubt: but whether this eternal fixity implies endless duration—or duration at all—we cannot say. We know much more about Heaven that hell, for Heaven is the home of humanity and therefore contains all that is implied in a glorified human life: but hell was not made for humans. It is in no sense parallel to Heaven: it is “the darkness outside,” the outer rim where being fades away into nonentity. Finally, it is objected that the ultimate loss of a single soul means the defeat of omnipotence. And so it does. In creating beings with free will, omnipotence from the outset submits to the possibility of such defeat. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

What you call defeat, I call miracle: for to make things which are not Itself, and thus to become, in a sense, capable of being resisted by its own handiwork, is the most astonishing and unimaginable of all the feats we attribute to the Deity. I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside. I do not mean that the ghost may not wish to come out of hell, in a vague fashion wherein an envious human “wishes” to be happy: but they certainly do not will even the first preliminary stages of that self-abandonment through which alone the soul can reach any good. They enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved: just as the blessed, forever submitting to obedience, become through all eternity more and more free. In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell, is itself a question: “What are you asking God to do?” To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? However, He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what God does. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

One caution, and I have done. In order to rouse modern minds to an understanding of the issues, I ventured to introduce a picture of the sort of bad human whom we most easily perceive to be truly bad. However, when the picture has done that work, the sooner it is forgotten the better. In all discussions of Hell we should keep steadily before our eyes the possible damnation, not of our enemies nor our friends (since both these disturb the reason) but of ourselves. This essay is not just about your wife or son, nor about race or culture; it is about you and me. Evil is nothing other than a turning away from good, and therefore evil is secondary in relation to good. Evil cannot come from good, because if it came from good it would not be evil. However, since everything that exists comes from good, everything is in some way good, but evil does not exist at all. Evil in its nature is neither a thing nor does it bring anything forth. Evil does not exist at all and is neither good nor productive of good. All things which are, by the very fact that they are, are good and come from good; but in so far as they are deprived of good, they are neither good nor do they exist. That which has no existence is not altogether evil, for the absolutely non-existent will be nothing, unless it be thought of as subsisting in the good superessentially. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

Good, then, as absolutely existing and as absolutely non-existing, will stand in the foremost and highest place, while evil is neither in that which exists nor in that which does not exist. For this reason all things are good, since some things are better than others and the goodness of the less good adds to the glory of the better. Those things we call evil, then, are defects in good things, and quite incapable of existing in their own right outside good things. However, those very defects testify to the nature goodness of things. For what is evil by reason f a defect must obviously be good of its own nature. For a defect is something contrary to nature, something which damages the nature of a thing—and it can do so only by diminishing that thing’s goodness. Evil therefore nothing but the privation of good. And thus it can have no existence anywhere except in some good thing. So there can be thing which are good without any evil in them, such as God himself, and the higher celestial beings; but there can be no evil things without good. For if evils cause no damage to anything, they are not evils; if they do damage something, they diminish its goodness; and if they damage it still more, it is because it still has some goodness which they diminish; and if they swallow it up altogether, nothing of its nature is left to be damaged. And so there will be no evil by which it can be damaged, since there is then no nature left whose goodness any damage can diminish. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

Since God created all things good and there is nothing which was not created by him, whence arise evil? Answer: Evil is not a natural thing, it is rather the name given to the privation of good. Thus there can be good without evil, but there cannot be evil without good, nor car there by evil where there is no good. Therefore, when we call a thing good, we praise its inherent nature; when we call a thing evil, we blame not its nature, but some defect in it contrary to its nature, which is good. Iniquity has no substance. There is a nature in which there is no evil—in which, indeed, there can be no evil. However, it is impossible for a nature to exist in which there is no good. Evil is not a substance, for as it has not God for its author, it does not exist; and so the defect of corruption is nothing else than the desire or act of a misdirected will. The steel is not evil; but the human who uses the steel for a criminal purpose, one is evil. Evil is a bad use of things as a result of erroneous decisions of the will (blindness due to evil desire, et cetera). One opposite is known through the other, as darkness is known through light. Hence also what evil is must be known from the nature of good. Now we have said above that good is everything appetible; and thus, since every nature desires its own being and its own perfection, it must necessarily be said that the being and perfection of every created thing is essentially good. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

Hence it cannot be that evil signifies a being, or any form or nature. Therefore it must be that by the name of evil is signified the absence of good. Evil is not a being, whereas good is a being. That every agent works for an end clearly follows from the fact that every agent tends to something definite. Now that to which an agent tends definitely must needs be befitting to that agent, since the latter would not tend to it save on account of some fittingness thereto. However, that which is befitting to a thing is good for it. Therefore every agent works for a good. The state was instituted by Go to restrain sin and promote a just social order. One of the most common misconceptions in Western political thought is that the role of government is determined solely by the will of the people. When Pilate questioned Jesus on the eve of His execution, Christ told the governor that he would not even hold his office or political authority if it had not been granted him by God. The apostle Paul spoke of civil authority as “God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.” Peter used similar language, saying that governments were set by God to “punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right.” Government originated as an ordinance of God. It is, in one sense, God’s response to the nature of the people themselves. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

Humans can adapt themselves somehow to anything their imagination can cope with…but one cannot deal with chaos. While it cannot redeem the World or be used as a tool to establish the Kingdom of God, civil government does set the boundaries for human behaviour. The state is not a remedy for sin, but a means to restrain it. Its limited task is to promote the good of the community in temporal concerns, the protection of life and property and the preservation of peace and order. When God established ancient America, His first order of business was the propagation of law, not just for religious purposes, but for the ordering of civil life. Even before the Ten Commandments there was a great need for civil adjudication. The biblical text records that “Moses took his seat to serve as judge for the people and they stood around him from morning till evening.” (Court dockets seemed to have been clogged from the very beginning.) Moses explained that “the people come to me to seek God’s will. Whenever they have a dispute, it is brought to me, and I decide between the parties and inform them of God’s decrees and laws.” Thus the Americans involved in a dispute are to look not to the whim of a judge or to an arbitrary law but rather to a ruling based on divine laws. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

The judicial role was not a mechanism to advance the state’s perception of social equilibrium, but to discern God’s reveled law. This is the origin of what we call the rule of law; it stands in stark contrast to modern moral relativism. Without transcendent norms, laws are either established by social elites or are merely bargains struck by competing forces in society. In the Judeo-Christian view, law is rooted in moral absolutes that do not vacillate with public taste or the whim of fashion. Thus rooted, government can perform not only the negative function of restraining evil, but the positive function of promoting a just social order so that people can live in harmony. The apostle Paul had this in mind when he urged his young colleagues Timothy to pray “for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.” Humans are engaged in a continual quest for community. It is important to remember, however, that the state is not itself that community. Anyone who has ever dealt with a government bureaucracy knows that it is rare enough to get a phone call through, let alone to cultivate warm fuzzy feelings for the mammoth machine of big government. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

However, the state can protect people’s voluntary efforts to shape community by granting equal protection of the law, by upholding principles of justice so the weak and powerless are not exploited, and by guaranteeing liberty and providing security. In this way the government sustains a stable environment in which people can live, producing art, literature, music, and happy homes. They can partake of one of the primary benefits of democracy: the simple freedom to enjoy of cup of coffee by the warm fireplace with one’s family. Christianity teaches, then, that state serves a divinely appointed and divinely defined task, although it is not in itself divine. Its authority is legitimate, though limited. The church is the community that administers and encourages the worship of God and meets the spiritual worship of God and meets the spiritual needs of God’s people, including teaching, offering the sacraments, and the bearing of one another’s burdens. The primary purpose of the church in relation to the World is evangelization—that is, to proclaim in word and deed the same gospel that Christ announced. The church is not the actual Kingdom of God, but is to reflect the love, justice, and righteousness of God’s Kingdom within society. The church is the community in which through its behavioural and mission the reign of God becomes visible, serving as the precursor and avant-grade of the society that will be fulfillment of hope. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

Though the church as a human institution often fails in this high calling, its most potent social weapon is its commitment to live out the Lord’s command to love one’s neighbour, the law of love. In essence, the program of the church disregarded the social divisions of society; it made the church a home for all classes; its democratic basis was a common worship and fellowship and mutual love. The church’s transcendent vision holds the World accountable to something beyond itself. In doing so, its members serve as ambassadors, citizens of the Heavenly Kingdom at work in this World. The Christian who is involved in the material history of this World is involved in it as representing another order, another master (than the “prince of this World”), another claim (than that of the natural heart of humans). Thus one must plunge into social and political problems in order to have an influence on the World, not in the hope of making it a paradise, but simply in order to make it tolerable—not in order to diminish the opposition between this World and the Kingdom of God, but simply in order to modify the opposition between the disorder of this World and the order of preservation that God wills for it—not in order to “bring in” the Kingdom of God, but in order that the gospel may be proclaimed, that all humans may really hear the good news of salvation through the death and resurrection of Christ. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

Thus, the church, while not the Kingdom of God, is to live out the values of the Kingdom of God in this World, resisting the ever-present temptation to usher in the Kingdom of God by political means. Yet this is the temptation to which the church has mist commonly succumbed, and certainly this is its greatest temptation today. The gospels make it clear that in Jesus’ eyes anything that would distort his mission as servant of the Lord was a temptation. He did not accept the view of those who confuse the things of God with attitudes that are purely political. He rejects unequivocally any recourse to violence. He offers his message of conversation to all, not excluding even the tax collectors. The purpose of his mission embraces far more than political order. It embraces the salvation of the entire person through transforming and peace-giving love. Unlike the politics of the World, the politics of the Kingdom is the politics of faith, hope, and love: faith that confesses the Risen Saviour, hope that looks for His appearing, love that is inflamed by His sacrifice on the cross. The church anticipated the form of the World to come and thus it transcends the social and political forms of this World. While Jesus did not come to establish a political kingdom, the announcement of the Kingdom had profound consequences for the political order. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

When Jesus said to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this Earth, Pilate may have breathed a sign of relief. He should have reconsidered. Which is more threatening to a ruler—and external foe wit mighty but visible armies or an eternal king who rules the very souls of humans? The latter can command the will and affections, demand absolute obedience, impart unlimited power to His subjects, and radically change their values and lives; His followers fear no Earthly power and His Kingdom has no end. In the face of such a potentate, any mere political leader must shudder. This is why the Kingdom of God has had such an astonishing effect upon the most powerful of human empires in every age. It is not a blueprint for some new social order; nor does it merely set the forces of radical cultural change in motion. Rather, God’s Kingdom promises radical changes in human personalities. This is the crucial point. While human politics is based on the premise that society must be changed in order to change people, in the politics of the Kingdom it is people who must be changed in order to chance society. Through humans who recognize its authority and live by its ethical standards, the Kingdom of God invades the stream of history. In breaks the vicious and otherwise irreversible cycles of violence, injustice, and self-interest. In this way the Kingdom of God equips its citizens to be the best citizens in the kingdoms of humans. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Such was certainly the case in early nineteenth-century England, when one man dared—against great personal and political odds—to represent the standards of the Kingdom of God for the good of his nation. We may argue about everything except Truth. Even the very best argument can produce only another thought at the end. For Truth can be expressed in words, spoken or written, only by bringing it down to the level of intellect, whereas on its own level as being knowledge of the Real it transcends intellect. Any thought of the Real merely makes an object of it, one among a multitude of others objects, and hence fails to arrive at it. It is impossible to think of the Pure Self without making it an idea, that is, an object, and therefore without missing it. God is neither to be looked upon with human eyes nor comprehended with human intellect. For the eyes see only things and the intellect takes hold only of thoughts. Absolute Being is neither analysable nor measurable, neither imaginable nor weighable. If the Real is unique, if it has no duplicate, nothing inferior to it can make it an object of experience. The ego, the self which sets out to do so, cannot come closer than getting its own personal reactions, however rarefied these may be and however uncommon these mystic experiences are. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

What the Godhead is we do not know. The nature and the structure of the Grand Mystery are beyond all human investigation. We cannot describe it correctly or name it accurately. We can only observe some of its workings and effects in our individual selves and in the Universe. Please Turn aside your storms, please send them away. May peace descend in their wake. Lord Almighty, Lord of Lightning, please withhold the chaos, please let it pass by the place, leaving it in calm. Dear Lord in Heaven, weaver of beauty, laying patterns on the World, binding all things together: please wrap your threads lightly about America in protection. We thankfully acknowledge that Thou art the Lord our God and God of our fathers, the God of all that lives, our Creator and Creator of the Universe. We offer blessings and thanksgiving to Thy great and holy name because Thu hast kept us in life and sustained us; so mayest Thou continue to keep us in life and sustain us. O gather our exiles into the courts of Thy holy sanctuary to observe Thy statutes, to do Thy will, and to serve Thee with a perfect heart. We give thanks unto Thee Blessed be God to whom we are ever grateful. We thank Thee also for the miraculous and mighty deeds of liberation wrought by Thee, and for Thy victories in the battles our forefathers fought in days of old, at this season of the year. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20  

BRIGHTON STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH

Rancho Cordova, CA |

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. Homes range in size from approximately 2,000 to nearly 4,000 square feet!

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.

Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier. Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Google Mini to help connect everything together!

#CresleighHomes