Your solicitude in my behalf has been greater than mine in my own behalf. For a Devout like me seems entirely too casual when one does not forward You all in one’s own solicitude; that is the sort of advice Peter offered in his First Letter (5.7). O Lord, while my will is aimed at and locked firm in You, do for me what You feel and think best. For whatever You do for me cannot be anything but good. If You want me to be blanketed in darkness, my blessing to You. If bathed in lightness, my blessing to You also. If You think me worth a quick hug, blessings on Your house. If you think I deserve a swift kick, more blessings on Your house. All of which is to day, whatever the holy day or holly day, may my blessings festoon Your hallowed halls. Lord, I suffer willingly for Your sake whatever You want to lay on me. I wish to accept from Your hand—I do not care what the sequence—good to bad or bad to good, and so on with the sweet and the bittersweet, the happy and the sad, and to give thanks for all the things that happen to me. Please guard me from every sin and neither Death nor Hell will be a stranger to me. In the meantime do not cast me into eternity, as the Psalmist feared would happen to him (77.7); and please do not delete me from the Book of Life; that is the terrible threat, one of many, in Revelation (3.5). Whatever the tribulation laid upon me, it may hurt me now but will not affect me in the long run. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not see,” reports Hebrews 11.1. We must continue to push for the excellence that God has put in our heart. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

Do not be satisfied with a little improvement. Instead, believe for better progress, and persevere for God’s best. Jesus Christ descended from Heaven for the purpose of our salvation. He took on our miseries, drawn not by necessity but charity. Why? So that we could learn patience and consider it a not unworthy task to tote some of our temporal miseries ourselves. We must step out of our comfort zone. God has so much more in store as long as we keep pursuing and believing. It does not take any more effort to believe and stay filled with faith than it takes to develop a negative and defeated attitude. However, perhaps some of us are broken. We have been optimistic in the past, but things kept going wrong and crushing our optimism. Maybe unimagined wrongs were heaped upon us and our faith is still rebounding. However, Christ’s Holy Example and the footprints of the Saints have led the way, and because of that, the trudge is made the more bearable even for the weakest among us. That is not to say the Old Testament did not offer some hope and consolation in the regard. However, in those holy pages the Gate of Heaven appeared to be closed. Did it really matter? So few took pains to seek the Kingdom of Heaven, and those that did often found the road to Heaven heavily fogged. Somehow, though, the Just and their friends made it through to the gate, that brazen barrier, but there they had to wait before they could enter. First, O Lord, You had to pay the entrance fee, that is to say, expunge the debt of debts by dying the death of deaths. How can I thank You enough! #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

To show me and all the faithful the right and good way to Your Eternal Kingdom was a gamble on Your part, and as happened, it turned into a gambol on your part. Yes, Your life is our way, and through holy patience we walked toward You, who are our Crown. However, I have to ask, who on Earth would follow You if You had not already charted the path and acted as guide? If we had no had Your astonishing model of spiritual behaviour before us, we would still be milling around on Earth. Up to the time of Your arrival, You know, Humankind was neither hot nor cold about this Heavenly Enterprise. Of course, there were signs along the way, from the Old Dispensation as well as the New (John 12.37). And are not these great illuminations that John spoke of (8.12)? Without them—which is to say, without You, O Lord—would not we still be stumbling around in he dark instead of staggering up toward the light? It does not come easily. People who see their dreams come to pass are people who have some resolve, some internal strength; people who refuse to settle for second best. Nothing may be going my way right now, but I am going to keep drawing closer to God. I am going to trust God to help me expand my horizons and keep believing for all that He has for me will come to fruition. God will help me make it all the way to the Promised Land. Dear Lord in Heaven, I am excited to be on this new journey of faith with you. Please help me to develop a brand-new vision for my life, to believe You for better days ahead, and to know that You will continually expand my horizons as I trust You to do more in and through my life. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

 If the Lord and Tailor of the Universe had to suffer and die, and if the legions of His saintly followers had to suffer, many of them to the point of martyrdom, then, at the very least, will I not have to suffer, too? The answer is, of course, yes, but as for my so-called sufferings to date, I just might paraphrase the Letter to the Hebrews (12.4). “You have suffered all right, and you have made a great squawk about it, but I do not see one single drop of your precious red blood on the pavement!” Whatever one may have suffered to date, is but a jot, a tittle, a smidge, a skosh, especially when compared to those over the centuries who have been battered so much, tempted so relentlessly, troubled so grievously, twisted and tortured in so many hard and horrid ways. Therefore, one should take another look at the rather grand suffering of others. Why? That one might learn to bear one’s own rather grandiose discomfits. To one they seem mountains; to God, they are molehills. How could this happen? One’s impatience has magnified them out of all proportion. Nevertheless, whether the aching of your soul is small or large, be a good patient; strive to endure them all. There is an advantage to one’s bettering one’s attitude toward battering and getting battered. One will begin to appear sagacious and meritorious not only to oneself, but also to others. There is another advantage. No doubt suffering lays a terrible load on a person, but the proper spiritual attitude lightens the load. That will be especially true in one’s case, what with one’s having so carelessly prepared in one’s mind and body up to this point. That is to say, any adjustment on one’s part is bound to be an improvement. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

God created us as visual beings with incredible imagination. “The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. However, if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness,” reports Matthew 6.22-23. Unfortunately, many people have a negative vision for their lives. They do not see themselves rising higher or overcoming their obstacles. Consequently, they are limited by their own vision. “He hit me first, and I just do not have the strength to suffer another blow. I think I must be in the wrong walk of life.” “That person brought a serious charge against me, and harried me with all sorts of horrid stuff I could not possibly think up myself! I cannot accept that, and from him of all people! Is that the sort of miserable suffering I am supposed to put up with, O Lord and Tailor of the Universe?” What vapid and insipid thoughts! First, it does not do justice to the virtue of patience or—ahem—to the Person who rewards all patience. Second, all it does is focus attention on your and the garbage that person dumped on you.  If one can dictate just how much and at whose hand, one is not really getting serious about suffering. Another, though, is indeed serious about it when one pays no attention to the person wielding the lash. One does not care whether it is one’s superior, one’s peer, or one’s inferior; it can be a good and holy human with knotted cords or just a vulgarian or barbarian with a whip. As much and as often as the Devout encounters rough skating or tough sledding, one gratefully accepts it all as coming from the hand of God; one even counts it not as a loss, but as a substantial gain. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

How? Nothing in the presence of Good, however minuscule, however majuscule, as long as it is a step taken for God, can be transacted without an increase in merit. Suffering it is then. If you want to have the victor, ready yourself for battle. If you truly want the crown of patience, wrote Paul in his Second Letter to Timothy (2.5), then engage the Enemy. However, what if you change your mind and do not want to suffer? Then you are in the wrong line of work. However, if you truly want to be a Devout, then you will have to fight manfully, endure vigorously. Without huffing and puffing there is no movement along the road to peace. Without slugging it out there is no decisive victory. Make possible through grace, O Lord, what seems so impossible through nature. Is that not what You promised You would do when the people of Jerusalem asked who would be saved? Luke wrote that You did (18.27). You know what little I can put up with and how quickly I give up, even when it is only a tiny adversity that rears its timorous head. What I should really do is consider every tribulation as a token of affection from You. After all, to suffer a little physically and spiritually is no exactly unhealthy for the soul. The Christian Bible says your eye is the lamp of your body. Obviously, that is not talking about your physical sight; it is talking about what you see through your eyes of faith, your spiritual vision. It is talking about the type of image you are keeping in front of you. God is telling us that if we focus on our problems, on what we cannot do, of if we think we have already reached our limits, then that image of mediocrity will keep us stuck right where we are. It is not because God does not want to promote us; it is simply because we are focused on the wrong things. We are developing the wrong images in our mind. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

However, if we can learn to look at life through our eyes of faith and see ourselves rising to higher levels, accomplishing our dreams, receiving more blessings, giving assistance to others, becoming more loving, and enjoying life, seeing our family and friends serving God, then we will experience God’s blessings and favour our over lives. We produce what we continually keep in front of us. “Against my better judgment I will confess my injustice,” sang the Psalmist (32.5). And I too shall confess my infirmity, O Lord. Often it is a small thing that jogs me off my strive; it makes me so mad at first, and then I grow sad. To remedy that, I resolve to act more energetically in the future. However, a modest temptation comes along, and I am completely thrown for a loss. Something trivial trips me, and I end up on my face. Just when I recover and think myself safe again—the moment when I least expect it—the briefest wisp whispers me away. Therefore, O Lord, about my humility and fragility, there is nothing new for You to know. Have mercy on me. “Rescue me,” as the Psalmist has had to cry out on more than one occasion “before I am sucked up by the mire,” (69.14). This thrashing about in the muck has got to stop! Yes, it embarrasses me to have to confess one again that I have made no progress. However, when it comes to putting up a front against the passions, I am still so nervous and cowardly. It is not as though I open the floodgates to them, but the leakage in the dikes is so persistent and pervasive that it is driving me crazy. All of which is another way of saying, do lecture me about my infirmity. I need to know, because these foul fantasies are seeping in more quickly than they are draining out. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

O Warrior God of America, Shepherd King of the faithful souls, would that You would look at the labour and pain in me, Your slavish Devout, and assist me in everything I put my mind to. Please fortify me with oak and Heavenly Fortitude lest the Old Man the New Testament spoke of—that wretches Flesh not yet fully subjected to the whims of the spirit—be strong enough to tumble me in the hay. Against that one it will certainly be necessary to do battle as long as there is breath in my wretched life. Alas, what kind of life is there where tribulations abound, where everything underfoot is game for the Enemy’s snares? What is it when one tribulation ebbs and another flows? What is it when one conflict has been in full throttle for some time and yet, before it has had a chance to choke, others spring up on the horizon? It is a World without hope? How can life be loved? It has so many bittersweet things about it, so many calamities and miseries. And how can life be called life when it is generated so many deaths and diseases? Even so, a wretched life, or so many people are inclined to think, is better than no life at all. When something goes hideously wrong, the World is frequently blamed. However, for many it is not easily left behind; the concupiscences of the flesh still cling for dear life to the diseased soul. Some things about the World are not so attractive, but others apparently still have some allure. Itching flesh, ogling eyes, luxuriant living; that is as John put it in his First Letter (2.16). However, wherever these are found, pangs and throbs are surely present, turning the World into a playground of hatred and unrest. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

Depraved Delight, sad to say, has had no such trouble distracting a mind dedicated to the things of this World. Vixen that she is, she has even had the cheek to tell the chickens not to worry. Nor should the rest of Humankind, she says, now that she has got everything under her personal control! Well, I am chuffed! How could this have happened? It could happen only because that poor damaged damsel has neither seen nor tasted the spiritual amenities, that is to say, God in Heaven and God on Earth. We produce what we continually keep in front of us. If we keep an imagine of success in our minds, we are going to move toward success. We must conceive our blessings on the inside through our eyes of faith before they will manifest on the outside. Our vision, what we see, has a tremendous impact on our lives. We benefit by allowing God to use our imaginations to build us up, to help us accomplish our dreams. Devouts, I am rather happy to say, wholeheartedly and wholemindedly condemn he World and strive to live for God under holy discipline. Hence, they are no strangers to the Divine Sweetness promised to all genuine renouncers of the World. These last see quite clearly just how they World has made the Serious Error and, because of it, has disintegrated in a variety of splashy ways. The kind of mental picture we paint is the goal toward which we will move. That image will set the limit for our lives. If one wants to change one’s life, one needs to change the mental image they are creating. Beginning today, I will lift up my head and start to get a new image in my mind of the tremendous potential that God has poured into my life. Please help me, Father, to build a new mental picture of my life, to live with faith, seeing with my spiritual eyes not just what exists today, but the life that is possible because of You. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

The word crazy is typical for defining that which is unthinkable. Most people call certain ideas “crazy” because “sane” is only that which is within the frame of reference of conventional thought. That which transcends it is crazy in the view of the average person. (This, however, is different when the author, artist, becomes successful. Does not success certify sanity?) That the equality of women was unthinkable to some is hard for many to conceive in the modern World. The concept hat half of humankind is biologically, anatomically and psychically inferior to the other half is a way of thinking that is without the slightest redeeming feature, except as a portrayal of a male-chauvinistic attitude. In the past, however, many people were found to be in acceptance of the extreme form of patriarchalism. The key them is one of control. The psychological concept corresponds to the social reality. Just as socially the majority is controlled by a ruling minority, the psyche is supposed to be controlled by the authority of the ego and superego. The danger of the breakthrough of the unconscious carries with it the danger of a social revolution. Repression is a repressive authoritarian method of protecting the inner and outer status quo. It is by no means the only way to cope with problems of social change. However, the threat of force in keeping down what is “dangerous” is only necessary in an authoritarian system where the preservation of the status quo is the supreme goal. How much renunciation of happiness does the ruling minority in a society need to impose on the majority? The answer lies in the development of productive forces in the society, and hence in the degree to which the individual is necessarily frustrated. Human beings can live harmoniously and without the necessity of controlling sinister forces. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

It goes without saying the antiquated grotesque picture of women as essentially narcissistic, unable to love, and cool towards pleasures of the flesh is male propaganda. The middle-class woman was as rule was cold toward pleasures of the flesh. The proprietary character of bourgeois marriage conditioned them to be cold. Since they were property, they were expected to me “inanimate” in marriage. Only women of the upper class and courtesans were permitted to be objects of pleasures of the flesh (or at least to fake it). No wonder that men experienced lust in the process of conquest; the overevaluation of the “sexual object” which according to some exited only in men (another lack in women!) was, as far as I can see, essentially the pleasure in the chase and the eventual conquest. Once the conquest was assured by the first intercourse, the woman was relegated to the task of producing children and to being an efficient housekeeper. However, is there really a such thing as a “love-object”? Does not the loved person cease to be an object, id est, something outside and opposed to me (same root as to object)? Id not love precisely the inner activity which unites two people so that they cease to be objects (id est, possessions for each other)? To speak of love-objects is to speak of having, with exclusion of any form of being; it is not different from a merchant speaking of capital investment. In the latter case capital is invested, in the former, libido. It is only logical that frequently in psychoanalytic literature one speaks of love as libidinous “investment” in an object. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

It takes the banality of a business culture to reduce the love of God, of men and women, of humankind into an investment. There is also some smallness of the imagination of people whose class considers investment and profit to be the meaning of life. One who speaks of love “objects,” means these beings are directed to being possessions of one’s own ego. Love is sexual energy attached to an object; it is nothing but a psychologically rooted instinct directed toward an object. It is a waste product, as it were, of the biological necessity for the survival of the race. “Love,” in men, is mostly of the “attachment” type, id est, attachment to the persons who have become precious through satisfying other vital needs (eating and drinking). That is, adult love is not different from that of the child; they both love those who feed them. That is undoubted true for many; this love is a kind of affectionate gratitude for being fed. Very well, but to say that is the essence of love is painfully banal. (Some say women cannot arrive at this high achievement because they love “narcissistically,” they love themselves in the other.) Loving in itself, in so far as it is longing and deprivation, lowers self-regard, whereas being loved, having one’s love returned and possessing the loved object raises it once more. Loving, by implying longing and deprivation, lowers one’s self-regard. To those who proclaimed the exaltation and strength which loving gives to the lover, all of you are wrong! Loving makes you weak; what makes you happy is being loved. And what is being loved? Possessing the loved object! This is a classic definition of bourgeois love: owning and controlling makes for happiness, be it material property or be it a human being who, being owned, owes the owner love. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

Love begins as a result of the child being fed by mother. It ends in the male’s owning the female who still has to feed him with affection, pleasures of the flesh, and food. Indeed what some are saying is that in between the lines is probably fitting for patriarchal society to have the male remain a dependent creature but denying this by boasting of one’s strength and proving it through making the female his property. The main factors in the patriarch male’s attitude are dependence on the female and its denial by controlling her. Patriarchal male love has transformed a specific phenomenon, that of patriarchal male love into a universal human one. Another significant change has been the growth in the number of those consciously choosing what is coming to be known as a “child-free” lifestyle. We are seeing a massive shift from “child-centered” to “adult-centered” homes. At the turn of the 20^th century there were few singles in society, and relatively few parents lived very long after their youngest child left home. Thus must households were, in fact, child-centered. By contrast, as early as 1970 in the United States of America only one in three adults lived in a home with children; and in 2020 that number was 48 percent. Today organizations are springing up to promote the child-free life, and a reluctance to have children is spreading in many industrial nations. In 1960 only 20 percent of “ever-married” American women under age thirty were child-free. As of 2021 49 percent were child-free. A vocal organization, the National Alliance for Optional Parenthood, has arisen to protect the rights of the childless and to combat pronatalist propaganda. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

A similar organization, the National Association for the Childless, has sprouted in Britain, and many couple across Europe are also deliberately choosing to remain childless. In Bonn, Germany, for example, Theo and Agnes Rohl, both in their mid-thirties, he a city official, she a secretary, say “We don’t think we’ll have children.” The Rohls are modestly affluent. They own a small home. They manage a vacation trip to California or Southern France now and then. Children would drastically alter their way of life. “We’re used to our life-style the way it is,” they say, “and we like being independent.” Nor is this reluctance to bear children a sign of capitalist decadence. It is present in Russia, too, where many young Russian couples echo the sentiment of the Rohls and explicitly reject parenthood—a fact that worries Russian officialdom in view of the still-high birth rates among several non-Russian national minorities. Turning now to those with children, the breakdown of the nuclear family is even more sharply evidenced in the spectacular increase in single-parent families. So many divorces, breakups, and separations have occurred in recent years—mainly in nuclear families—that today a staggering one-in-seven American children is raised by a single parent and the number is even high—one in four—in urban areas. The huge growth in such household has brought a growing recognition that despite severe problems, a one-parent household can, under certain circumstances, be better for the child than a nuclear household continually torn by bitter strife. Newspapers and organizations now serve single parents and are heightening their group consciousness and political clout. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

Nor, once again, is the phenomenon purely American. In Britain today nearly one family in ten is headed by a single parent—nearly a sixth of them headed by men—and one-parent households form what New Society magazine calls “the fastest growing group in poverty.” A London-based organization, the National Council for One-Parent Families, has sprung up to champion their cause. In Germany, a housing association in Cologne has constructed a special block of apartments for such families and provided them with day-time child care so the parents can work. And in Scandinavia a network of special welfare rights has grown up to support these families. The Swedes, for example, give one-parent households first crack at nursey and day-care facilities. In both Norway and Sweden, in fact, it is sometime possible for a single-parent family to enjoy a higher standard of living than that of the typical nuclear family. A challenging new form of family has arisen in the meantime that reflects the high rate of remarriage after divorce. There are types of “aggregated families,” in which two divorced couples with children remarry, brining the children of both marriages (and the adults as well) into a new, expanded family form. It is now estimated that 25 percent of American children are, or will soon be, members of such family units. Such units, with their “poly-parents” may be the mainstream family form of tomorrow. We are into economic polygamy—meaning that the two merged family units typically transfer money back and forth in the form of child support or other payments. The spread of this family form has been accompanied by a rising increase of relations involving pleasures of the flesh between parents and non-blood related children. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

The technologically advanced nations today are honeycombed with a bewildering array of family forms: Homosexual marriages, communes groups of elderly people banding together to share expenses (and sometimes pleasure of the flesh), tribal groupings among certain ethnic minorities, and many other forms coexist as never before. There are contract marriages, serial marriages, family clusters, and a variety of intimate networks with or without share pleasures of the flesh, as well as families in which mother and father live and work in two different cities. Even these family forms barely hint at the even richer variety bubbling under the surface. When three psychiatrists—Kellam, Ensminger, and Turner—attempted to map the “variations of families” found in a single poor African American neighbourhood in Chicago, they identified “no less than 86 different combinations of adults,” including numerous forms of “mother-grandmother” families, “mother-aunt” families, “mother-stepfather” families, and “mother-other” families. Faced with this veritable maze of kinship arrangements, even fairly orthodox scholars have come around to the once radical view that we are moving out of the age of the nuclear family and into a new society marked by diversity in family life. In the words of sociologist Jessie Bernard, “The most characteristic aspect of marriage in the future will be precisely the array of options available to different people who want different things from their relationship with one another. The frequently asked question, “What is the future of the family?” usually implies that as the Second Wave nuclear family loses its dominance some other form will replace it. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

A more likely outcome is that during Third Wave civilization no single form will dominate the family mix for any long period. Instead we will see a high variety of family structures. Rather than masses of people living in uniform family arrangements, we shall see people moving through this system, tracing personalized or “customized” trajectories during the course of their lives. Again, this does not mean the total elimination of “death” of the nuclear family. It merely means that from now on the nuclear family will be only one of the many socially accepted and approved forms. As the Third Wave is taking over, the family system has become de-massified right along with the production system and the information system in society. Gentle Goddess, who never asks for anything at all, and gives us everything we have, thank you for this sweet water and your fragrance. O God of salvation, promoted by Thy four-fold promise, Thy people draw nigh in supplication and knock at Thy gate with offering of prayer, mediating upon the comforting words of Thy Torah and delighting in their deep-stored message. They pray fervently that Thou mayest hear. They long for salvation, yea, their hearts are close-knit unto Thee. They study and observe the sacred season. They bend the knee unto Thee in supplication that they ay hear proclaimed from Thy lips, the tidings foretold and declared of yore that shall fulfill Thy testimony. O Thou who workest salvation, who are righteous to save, thrice save the city of our salvation that was filled with multitudes acclaiming Thee. Hasten our salvation; yea save, we beseech Thee. May our old center in the ego be mysteriously gone. May our new center in Thee have taken its place. May our consciousness depend and, while vacating the personal ego, may we take in the higher ego and feel a unity with it. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

CRESLEIGH HAVENWOOD

Lincoln, CA | from the mid $600s

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