When you aim for perfection, remember that some of the World’s greatest feats were accomplished by people who did not know they were impossible. Well into the eighteenth century, nunneries were dumping grounds for inconvenient women, and their lives withing the dour convent interior were at best tolerably dull and hollow, at worst savagely unhappy or recklessly rebellious. To the unwilling, convents were monstrous prisons in which time served was eked out in minuscule rations, crushing tedium, terrible loneliness, and countless small cruelties. Enforced celibacy increased their angst, for they had to cope simultaneously with the pleasures of the flesh they could never satisfy and the knowledge that marriage and family life were permanently closed to them. Release or escape were seldom options. Most endured in despairing silence. Arcangela Tarabotti, trapped in her Venetian convent of Santa Anna for thirty-two years until her death, poured out her rage on paper. Her magnum opus, Simplicity Betrayed, is a scathing attack on fathers who imprison their daughters in nunneries to prevent the erosion or division of the family fortune or to indulge in sinful luxuries. “You heartless shame,” she lambasted them “is greater than Nero’s or Diocletian’s because, unlike these heartless fathers, they only cruelly murdered and tormented the bodies of the holy martyrs, but did not torment their souls.” Worst of all was the betrayal. These men watched delightfully as their tender little girls lisped their first words, gamboled gracefully, sang joyously like baby songbirds. Then, “guileful, weaving the web of deception, they think of nothing but to force them from sight as soon as possible and bury them, as if they were dead, in cloisters, for the rest of their lives, bound by indissoluble knots.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 25

Convent life was contrary to nature, Arcangela charged. This gentle little girl was forced to cut her long tresses, symbol of her freedom. She was stripped of her winsome gowns and hidden in a drab habit. She was forced to obey the convent rule; eat, pray, meditate when told; cast her eyes downward, hold her tongue; suppress her every emotion, even her longing for her vanished home life. And this way of life was interminable, a sentence from which no appeal was possible. “There is an inscription over the gate of hell: ‘Abandon all hope, you who enter’; on the gate of monasteries, the same should appear. Rather, it would be more painfully appropriate to include an inscription for the dying: ‘The torments of death surround me. The torments of hell surround me.’” Why not kill all but one male baby per family? Arcangela suggested bitterly. At least their innocent souls would fly straight to Heaven. However, nuns kidnapped and entombed alive will plunge downward into fiery depths to seek out their anguished fathers, for whom looking at their daughters’ accusing faces will be infinitely worse than all hell’s other torments. Your motive for abusing your daughter, Arcangela charged, for thrusting her into a convent and a life for which she has no vocation, is simply to cheat her out of her inheritance, so you can give it to someone else you prefer. Arcangela’s indictment was no exaggeration. One English father consigned his unwanted daughters to a European convent where they languished, miserable and lonely. Cut off from home, they wrote letters pleading for continued contact and love. Certainly not, their father responded. One message each year was perfectly satisfactory. These cloistered children, even infants, were routinely trained in nunly ways and, at sixteen or younger, professed their vows. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25

Some pledged these vows willingly, or at least not unwillingly, but many mouthed the words on pain of beatings or worse, or because they had no alternative. In strict convents, obedience was hammered home. Penalties were degrading and brutal—stepping on a nun’s face, hauling her across the floor, spitting at her, ostracizing her, depriving her of food, humiliating her. Saint Douceline whipped a seven-years-old bloody and threatened her with death because she had glanced at some convent workmen. Escapees were usually caught and disciplined, severely beaten, shut up for years, sometimes shackled, forced to fast on bread and water, sentenced to silence or to lowly ranks in the choir or chapel. Maud of Terrington was a runaway who was caught after years of sinful living. She was barred from ever leaving the convent, confined to solitude except during choir, beaten daily, humiliated, twice weekly deprived normal meals and shoes, and never permitted any contact or mail with the outside World. Maud’s treatment was particularly harsh, but transgressing against the complicated and habitual mechanics and rituals of an alien way of life never went unpunished. Chastity was the fundament of the nun’s vocation, the most crucial of her vows, with the farthest-reaching consequences. For committed nuns, it was not particularly difficult to honour. For unwilling nuns, as with monks and priests, it was immensely difficult. A dedicated nun approached the issue of her chastity from several perspectives, shoring up her resolve by recalling its spiritual meaning and rewards, her sacred obligations as Christ’s Bride, and the hellish sinfulness of wavering. To her help, she sublimated her erotic sensations into a sublime adoration of Christ; mysticism and pleasures of the flesh melded into rushes of frenzied outpourings, tranches, or fits of weeping, or screaming, all solemnly recognized by the highest ecclesiastical authority as manifestations of divine possession. The voluntary nun also starved her body into submission, killing its natural flows and cycles. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25

However, the unwilling nun was, by definition, reluctant to surrender her woman’s essence just to satisfy this unwelcome requirement. As a wellborn laywoman, she would almost certainly have grasped and accepted the need for premarital virginity. However, as a nun forced into an unwelcome World in which marriage was forbidden, she could not even comfort herself with the knowledge that her chastity would ensure her eligibility for a future good marriage. From this sad perspective, what had she to lose, having already lost everything? Even the tools available to willing nuns made no sense to their incarcerated sister: The meals were stingy enough, so why deprive herself further? Why relinquish the tiny pleasure of a feast-day candy? Why scourge herself when life was whiplash enough? And why obey a domineering mother superior whose stony heart felt no mercy for the wretchedness of her bitter, frightened, and despairing captive? Though the majority of nuns likely remained chaste, a significant minority faltered and fell. In strict convents, this was rarer and trickier, but when abbesses themselves had been pressed into the cloister, they sometimes ran hopelessly dissolute convents. A seventeenth-century English abbess allegedly had twelve children, and a prioress dowried her daughter by selling off her convent’s possessions. The double monasteries were notorious for liaisons in pleasures of the flesh. Bishops routinely issued edicts barring the free intercourse—in all senses—between the male and female sides. The nuns of some slackly regulated convents had servants, ate lavish meals, adapted their habits to current fashion, carried pet lapdogs, strolled outside, or drove into the city. They received men in unsupervised visits, had pleasures of the flesh relations, connived at elopements. Critics charged that any man could walk into a covenant and that the nuns also came and went as they wished. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25

The worst excesses were in Venice, where nunneries were often little more than whorehouses. In the fourteenth century, legal action was taken against thirty-three convents that tolerated, sometimes even facilitated, fornication between nuns and their gentlemen callers. The Benedictine Sant’Angelo di Contorta convent was the most outrageous, though its nuns were drawn from the Venetian elite. The nuns, and two abbesses, did not even bother with discretion but enjoyed pleasures of the flesh as picnics and—putting Madre Marcel’s vaunted solitude to a more mundane use—in their cells. Babies were conceived and born, lovers quarreled, and jealousy abounded. The pope shut down Sant’Angelo in 1474, but it was just one of many egregiously misbehaving religious institutions. Another bordello-like convent was England’s Cannington, in Somerset, small and poor, but peopled by daughters of the finest families. One culprit was Maud Pelham, a reluctant nun, the other High Willynge, a chaplain “as hot and lecherous as a sparrow.” Not only did Maud engage in feverish pleasures of the flesh, she was infuriated when reproached. “Turning like a virago upon the prioress and the other sisters who abhor the aforesaid things…she threatens to do manly execution upon them with knives and other weapons.” Certain English nuns were so free, they indulged in gadfly social lives, enjoying feasts, visits to and from friends, minstrel shows. Nuns actively engaging in pleasures of the flesh too the initiative in the affairs, for though some Anglo-Saxon kings specifically selected mistresses from covenants and chaplains prayed on their charges, English laymen were more reticent. Nuns arranged rendezvous within and without the convent and sometimes shucked off the habit for secular life with their beloved. In sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century France and Italy, young playboys haunted the convents, seeking nubile nuns as lovers. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25

The record of documented sexual transgressions and pregnancies—5 percent in some contemporary investigations of English convents, which undoubtedly missed many affairs and which, in French, German, and Latin convents, would have been much higher—is an impressive indictment of enforced celibacy. Not surprisingly, when unwilling nuns predominated or were governed by unwilling abbesses, an overtone of Worldliness and sexuality tinged the moral tone of the entire establishment. The wonder is that so many unwilling nuns in strict, watchful cloisters found the courage to break that most basic of vows at the risk of humiliation, beatings, and shame. Cheek by cowl with sisters who agonized over the symbolism of dreams or the implications of quickened breath at devilishly tempting images, unwilling nuns understood only the hot tingling of their yearning loins. Their despair and rebellion at their lot, their contempt for their captors, their craving for sensual affection and for pleasures of the flesh, children and normalcy, betrayed their false vows. They nurtured sexual oases in their sterile desert, schemed, intrigued, and plotted, and risked hellfire for the present solace of fiery joy. The disrupted social behaviour of the distressed individual is only half the reason for interpersonal deterioration following psychological disorder. A true interpersonal analysis must also consider the reactions of other people. Research studies have repeatedly shown that people react to others with depression, social anxiety, schizophrenia, a personality disorder, or an eating disorder with interpersonal rejection. It is a harsh reality that most people are repelled by those who exhibit signs of psychopathology. People with psychological problems violate our expectations for appropriate and rewarding social interaction. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25

Consequently, most people ultimately prefer to keep their distance from such individuals. The inevitable outcome to this interpersonal pattern is a marked deterioration of social relationships for the person suffering from psychological disorder. Closely related to the consequence assumption is the belief that interpersonal interactions will maintain mental health problems. Within the interpersonal paradigm, many research programs explore how interpersonal interaction maintain poor mental health once it is started. There is an implicit recognition in such research that mental health problems may have numerous origins. Regardless of how a problem was initiated, it is clear that interpersonal interactions can maintain and prolong psychological problems. By analogy, there are multiple casual origins of physical illnesses, such as influenza and the common cold. Regardless of how one contracts such illnesses, diet and rest can affect their course, despite having no straightforward connection to the cause of the illness. One can look at mental health problems from this same perspective. Even in cases where psychological problems may be caused by nononterpersonal agents, the quality of interpersonal relations will often significantly affect the course of the problems. For example, in the area of depression, interpersonal rejection from others may maintain the disorder. Similarly, CD (conduct disorder), EE (expressed emotion), and negative AS (affective style) in family members of patients with schizophrenia can prolong the active state of the disorder and precipitate relapse. Interpersonal conflicts and stressors can also activate episodes of substance misuse and disordered eating. These patterns have been conclusively documented, and appear to operate regardless of the actual “cause” of each disorder. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25

A more radical version of the interpersonal maintenance hypothesis can be found in the faction of the interpersonal school knowns as family systems. Traditional family systems theorists eschew the search for “casual” agents in psychopathology in the traditional linear sense (exempli gratia A causes B). Rather, they see cause and effect as inseparable, and they see all components of an interpersonal system as acting on and being acted on all other components. To a system theorist, what “causes” a disorder is what keeps that disorder alive. Research in certain areas of mental health (exempli gratia, eating disorders, schizophrenia, substance dependence, and somatoform disorders) clearly illustrates the systems notions of mutual influence or interdependence. In such cases, it is clear that something is not quite right in the social fabric of the patient’s interpersonal system. Family members may be hypercritical and overly involved; spouses and friends may be combative and prone to conflict; and parents may exhibit and model behaviour that is itself indicative of questionable mental health. Presumably this disturbed interpersonal milieu is abrasive and leads to symptoms of poor mental health. However, at the same time, it is clear that living with an individual who has a psychological problem is itself taxing. The presence of a disturbed family member, for instance, will fundamentally alter the interpersonal communication and relationships in that family. Members may change their style of relating both to the “ill” member as well as to each other. People may feel shame, stigma, or burden associated with the presence of mental illness in their family or immediate interpersonal network. These changes in social behaviour then go on to affect the person with the psychological problem, and suddenly the attribution of “cause” and “effect” becomes impossible. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25

Systems research showing that families of individuals with alcoholism literally structure their lives around drinking, and that families of patients with eating disorders exhibit preoccupation with food, dieting, and exercise, obfuscate conventional notions of cause and effect or action and reaction. Indeed, the popular terms “alcoholic family” and “eating-disordered family” reflect the key assumptions that the disorder is not located within the individual, but rather within the larger social system that maintains and sustains it. It is important to note that these interpersonal processes in psychological problems, be they causal, consequential, or maintaining factors, apply not only to clinical cases of these problems, but to subclinical instances as well. What has come to be known as the continuity hypothesis holds that subclinical cases of a particular problem differ in degree, not in kind. Although this hypothesis has drawn some controversy, most of the research evidence in the interpersonal domain is supportive of the continuity hypothesis. People with subclinical levels of depression, anxiety, and eating disorders, for example, often experience and exhibit many of the same interpersonal difficulties as those with full-blown clinical cases of the same problems. Often the only difference between the two, interpersonally, is the magnitude of the problems. Indeed, a portion of the research results examined in this report came from studies of subclinical syndromes, and these studies are generally consistent with those of clinically diagnosed cases. Therefore, one of the particularly useful aspects of the interpersonal paradigm in mental health is its explanator and predictive power for both clinical and subclinical versions of different psychological problems. “Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for humans, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ who your serve,” reports Colossians 3.23-24. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25

Why it is that some people are so blessed and continue to prosper and get ahead, while other remain in ruts of their own making? There may be many factors, of course, but one thing is for sure: God does not bless mediocrity. He blesses excellence. Notice, whatever we do, we should give it our best effort and do it as if we were doing it for God. If we will work with that standard in mind, God promises to reward us. What does it mean to be a person of excellence and integrity? A person of excellence and integrity goes the extra kilometer to do what is right. One keeps one’s word even when it is difficult. People of excellence arrive at work on time. They give their employers a full day’s work; they do not leave early or call in sick when they are not. When you have an excellent spirit, it shows up in the quality of your work, and the attitude with which you do it. If you want to live a successful life right now, start aiming for excellence and integrity in everything you do, doing a little bit more than you are required to do. If you are supposed to be at work at eight o’clock, get there ten minutes early and stay ten minutes late. Go the extra kilometer. A lot of people show up at work fifteen minutes late, then they wander around the office, go get some coffee, and finally get to their desk or workstation thirty minutes later. They spend half the day engaged in personal telephone calls, playing games, or sending jokes on the Internet, and then they wonder, “God, why do You not ever bless me? Why do I not every get a promotion?” The answer is easy to figure out. God does not bless mediocrity. God blesses excellence and integrity. Even if everyone is slacking off, clowning and acting a fool, do not be like everyone else! #RandolphHarris 10 of 25

You care called to live a life of excellence. You represent Almighty God. How you live, how you conduct your business and do your work is all a reflection on our God. Start making the more excellent choices in every area of life, even in mundane matters such as paying your bills on time. In everything you do, attempt to represent God well. For instance, you may be driving a car that has not been washed in six weeks. Your trunk or backseat may be filled with so much junk—everything from your sports equipment to your office equipment—you can barely close the door! I am not condemning anyone, some people have children—and sometimes their car looks wild. However, I do not like driving a car like that. Not only does it represent God poorly, but it makes me feel unkempt, undisciplined, sloppy, and less than my best. Many times before I leave the house, I will take a couple of minutes and clean out the car, not because I want to impress my friends, but because I feel better driving a clean car. You need to take pride in what God has given you. Even if your car is a few years old, take care of what God has given you. God will be more likely to give you something better. Similarly, you may not live in a big, new, beautiful Cresleigh home. You may have an older, smaller home, but at least you keep it clean and looking nice. God’s people are people of excellence. They stand out from the crowd because they choose to do things well. You may be in a situation today where everybody around your is compromising their integrity or taking the easy way out. Do not let that rub off on you. Be the one to have an excellent spirit. Do your work well, take care of the resources that God has given you, and live in such a manner that when people see you, they will be attracted to your God. Dear Lord in Heaven, please let my life be a beneficial reflection of You, O Lord. In everything I say and do, by the way I dress to the way I take care of my personal possessions, I pray that You will receive honour from my life. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25

 Basing ourselves on the Word of God, what can we say? St. Paul told us earlier that the unmarried woman, the virgin, gives one’s full attention to the Lord’s affairs “and to being holy in body and spirit,” reports 1 Corinthians 7.34. To be a virgin only in body means little or nothing; to be a virgin in spirit is a fine thing; but to be a virgin “in body and spirit” is very beautiful indeed. In such a case, the sign and its meaning meet and complete each other, as do nature and grace. For such as these, the Book of Revelation reserves the singular privilege of “following the Lamb wherever Ge does,” reports Revelation 14.4, making them the symbol of those absolutely faithful souls who have never compromised themselves with idolatry. We must therefore encourage those consecrated souls who, without any merit of their own, of course, but by God’s gift, have managed to preserve their purity and are able to offer an integral gift to God. In actual fact there is, in this, an altogether special hint of God’s glory which is not to be found anywhere else, because—as our friend the poet says—“That which has been regained, defended every inch, retaken and won back, is not the same as what was never lost. A sheet of whitened paper is not white; a whitened fabric is not white; a human soul is never quite as white, when whitened, as it would be, white.” It is not a question of a taboo, as unbelievers think, or of a simple privilege or honour of which whoever has it is usually proud. Rather, when it is freely accepted, what is involved is a delicate and profound sacrifice, one which calls to mind the primordial sacrifice God asked for from His creatures, that they should give up to the will to know “good and evil” personally and by experience. In fact it is one thing to give up the use of pleasures of the flesh and bodily pleasure after having experienced it, and another (much more demanding) to renounce the wish to experience it. That means accepting that there is an experience, basic to other men and women, which you freely choose not to want to experience, for love of the Lord. Only God knows the fragrance of this sacrifice, which touches not just the heart or body, but the very being of the creature. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25

Having said this, however, it must also be said that spiritual virginity is the most important, and that it is not something given once and for all and to be preserved, but rather something that can be acquired day by day. By His grace, God has transformed some of the greatest sinners into His most loving and most loved spouses. This is why anyone who has lost physical integrity and baptismal innocence, for whatever reason, does not need to spend one’s consecrated life constantly looking back and brooding over past failures and mistakes in every detail. This only makes the situation worse, like a woman walking with a jar of water on her head: the more tense she is and the more she thinks about it, the more water she spills. On the contrary, what is necessary is to strive to grow in interior virginity, letting go of the useless desires and affections in our hearts, because purity of heart can restore a new virginity to the soul. In a certain sense, virgins are not born, they are made. This does not mean that one can calmly accept any situation and wait for it to improve. On the contrary, if a person has not yet managed to eliminate from one’s habits that are seriously contrary to chastity, and has not achieved a certain balance and master in the sphere of pleasures of the flesh, it is still a good rule to advise the person against making a definitive commitment to celibacy or virginity. Precisely because the essential virginity is that of the heart, the way of virginity is in some way open to all, even to those who are or have been married. If there are some “who do not marry for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven,” there are others who, for the same reason (id est, for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven), do not re-marry, though they could do so. There is a certain kind of windowhood, devoted to the family and to good works, that has always been highly honoured in the Church and placed immediately after virginity. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25

People who, for a whole variety of possible reasons, have been unable to marry, though they would have liked to do so. They did not choose their situation. In fact, it may cause them great suffering. To them I would like to say this: Jesus tells us that some are eunuchs because they are like that from birth, others are made so by human agency, others again have made themselves so “for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven.” Apparently, you belong to the first or second category. However, in the sight of God, no one is irredeemably condemned, or a prisoner of situations. In other words, it is possible to pass from one category to another: from the category of those who have not married because of the circumstances of life, to the category of those who do not marry “for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven.” You need only accept the situation as something allowed by God, reconcile yourselves to that way of life and use your greater freedom to devote yourselves to prayer and to the Gospel cause. In this way you can share in the “hundredfold” promised by Christ to those who leave everything to follow Him. The greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven are not those who belong to the “more perfect state,” but those who love and suffer most. This is why they can move ahead of so many others whose lives, apparently, were more successful. For some there be that without much and long exercise may not come thereto, and yet it shall be but full seldom, and in special calling of our Lord that they shall feel the perfection of this work; the which calling is called ravishing. And some there be that be so subtle in grace and in spirit, and so homely with God in this grace of contemplation, that they may have it when they will in the common state of a human’s soul; as it is in sitting, going, standing, or kneeling. The way is a progressive one only in the largest sense. In actuality it consists often of stagnations and setbacks, falls and even withdrawals. Nearly all seekers experience lapses and wanderings aside. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25

Continuous advance without retrogression is likely to begin only after initiation into the ultimate path. The disciple should not worry about the ups and downs of one’s moods, but should wait patiently while continuing one’s regular meditation practices and philosophical studies, for if one has a teacher one will come within one’s sphere of protection, so that advice and guidance are always open to one, and inwardly one will be aware of this. It is as much a part of the aspirant’s experience of this quest to be deprived at times of all feeling that the divine exists and is real, as it is to be granted the sunny assurance of such existence and reality. The upward flights of one’s novitiate have to be bought at the cost of downward falls. A period of illumination is often followed by a period of darkness. At fist the experience of reality will come only in flashes. Many a student tells of disheartenment at the lack of results, and depression over long period of barren waiting, despite the faithfulness with which meditation has been practised. They tend to overlook that the path is integral, is a fourfold and not a single one. Often there is something left undone by the student. For instance, no effort in character building may have been made by this student, or in religious prayer by that one. Living from this core, the actualizing Christian exemplifies a new dimension of openness to life in the following ways. One becomes: An adventurer in truth. One sees life as an adventure in becoming oneself as fully as Christ was Himself in His life. An expression of one’s own Christlikeness—because one believes in the kingdom of God within, one’s goal is to express grace-full and in an original way the particular talents, gifts, or ministries that one has been given by God. An enlightened traveler on the road of life—one’s core represents a light within. It is a light that each person must discover. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25

The actualizing Christian can make one’s light shine so as to guide others to discover their own inner light. As Jesus said, “You are the light of the World. Let your light so shine before humans, that they may see your good works, and give glory to your Father who is in Heaven,” reports Matthew 5.14 and 16. The kind of full and intimate surrender to God that we have been talking about may seem difficult for some readers to understand. Yet the message of the New Testament is that union with Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit is the calling of every Christian and the meaning of true spirituality. It then becomes highly feasible to speak of the inner core of the personality as being filled with the Holy Spirit. And the overflowing of that “infilling” is a lifetime of graced relationships with others. One of the New Testament Greek words used for the Holy Spirit is Paracletos. This translates as “one called alongside to help,” or “comforter” or “companion.” These meanings clearly indicate a most personal and intimate role of the Holy Spirit in supporting, nurturing, and guiding a person through life. In addition, Jesus promised of the Holy Spirit to those who accepted and followed him (John 14.18). He portrayed the Holy Spirit as the believer’s personal Companion who would be adequate for all the needs of daily life. We encourage the reader who is unfamiliar with these references to read or reread the four Gospels and the Book of Acts, found at the beginning of the New Testament. As we move further in the process of integrating the Bible with psychology, we can say that the Holy Spirit is intended by God to be the center of our existence—the inspiration of our feelings, thoughts, choices, and values. One of this oneness, flow forth the words of God. He asks us to lend him our eyes to see, our mouth to speak, our eats to hear, our mind to think, our hear to love, our feet to walk, our hands to acts. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25

We would say that genuine spirituality, for the Christian or anyone else, is responding to the Spirit of God and doing God’s will. This is the surrender that we have been talking about. This is the surrender of one’s whole being to the will of God. We do not believe that it is a once-and-for-all event as much as it is a continuous day-by-day process. How is it possible that the fear behind our manipulations, character disorders, and even psychoses described in this report can be healed by the perfect love of God? We believe that the key to understanding this is the awareness that the actualizing Christian, in being filled and led by the Holy Spirit, lives in an atmosphere of inspiration rather than condemnation. According to Webster’s, to perfect means “to bring to final form.” Our fears are healed when we realize that we are being enabled by God’s Spirit within to perfect our love of ourselves, others, and God. We no longer fer punishment because we know that we are partners with God in developing our capacity to be all we are meant to be—and to love our neighbours as ourselves. The artesian well provides an excellent analogy for understanding the human personality. An artesian well is a well drilled deep enough to reach water that has converged underground from a source originally higher than the well itself. Therefore, the water that flows into the well has a natural pressure upward that forces it through the well. All that is required to keep the well filled to overflowing is the continued release of its water. This keeps the core of the well cleansed and open, allowing fresh water to always flow through. Here we see the great importance of developing a giving attitude in life. So it is with us in our reliance on the flow of God’s Spirit, a Source greater than ourselves, to follow through the core of our lives. If we receive freely from the abundance of God’s inner provision, we will have much to give. In giving, our own wells are continually filled to overflowing. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25

However, not everyone receives the richness of God’s love in the inner self. Some have not drilled deep enough; they have not fully surrendered to God as their Source. Others have begun to tap the unlimited supply within, but find that it quickly clogs up when fear constricts their giving attitude toward others. However, when we begin to understand how profoundly we are loved by God, we can begin to surrender in our innermost being to the gentle flow of the Spirit in our lives. Before long, we will experience firsthand the thrill of “stirrings deep within” as our inner core is filled to overflowing with the Holy Spirit. This flow within gives us a sense of perfect peace, even though we know that we are not yet perfect. As the scripture says, “Thou wilt keep one in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee, because one trusteth in thee,” reports Isaiah 26.3. As Christians, we can remain humble, and joyous, recognizing that our beings are vessels through which flows the Holy Spirit. It is the power of God, not our own power, that flows through us into our life and relationships. Drinking deeply from the well within, and knowing that God is working each day to move us toward wholeness, truly creatures a sense of “wellness.” As the song says, “When peace like a river attendeth my soul….I know it is well with my soul.” Jesus said, “One who believes in Me, ‘From one’s innermost being shall flow rivers of living water,” John 7.38. One night after I had taught on prayer, a lady said to me, “What about the woman that went to the unjust judge? She kept going back and pestering him until finally he gave in. Is that not what Jesus wants us to do?” In Mark 4.24, Jesus said, “Take heed what ye hear.” When you hear something explained a certain way and you accept it, then each time you read it, hear it, or think about it, you will receive it the same way. The Spirit of God spoke to me and said, “Study the Word of God like you have never heard it before.” In other words, “Turn off your religious head when you study the Christian Bible.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 25

Sometimes you must turn it off to receive the truth. For instance, when you first look at the parable of the unjust judge, which that lady was referring to, it is easy to think that the widow just kept pestering the judge until he gave in to her request. Some translations indicate this, but we must realize that some areas of this translation are the result of humans trying to logically reason out a meaning. It is their opinion, so they include it. If this parable means what it seems to say on the surface, then Jesus was speaking contrary to what He taught in Matthew 6.7 “when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do.” Prudence requires that our hatred of the powerful be hidden, while our respect is manifest, often ostentatious. As every king must know, however, the hatred though invisible, is always present. Uneasy lies the head….et cetera. Naked power is quicksilver, lost in a flash—a bank robber on the run, hand on his gun, shot down at the next corner. So power rushes to form, which endows power with legitimacy, defines the processes whereby it is acquired, exercised, delegated, transferred. Hiding behind form, power acquires stability. Form is a structure of power but claims legitimacy as a map of reality. Reality is flux, while power, always trying to preserve itself, insists on the permanence of forms; so form falls ever more at variance with the changing reality it claims faithfully to reflect. Power clings to form even after form’s claim to truth has become manifest travesty. The emperor has no clothes. We are not suited to be free. We are suited still, as when we were children, to live under the protection of, and within the limits set by, loving parents. As adults we strive to continue this arrangement, with kings and gods slipping into the place of parents. Always we are of two minds about power. Because we are insecure, we need someone above us, more powerful than we, to whom we can turn for protection and guidance. So great is this need that it shapes our perception: we see our wise humans as wiser than they are, our kings as more kingly, our priests as more holy. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25

Being themselves but human, and having the same needs as we, they, too are driven to look upward, to find someone or something more powerful than they. So we have gods. We kneel, we pray to an Almighty. At the same time we distrust all power, know that it may not protect but exploit, may use us for its own ends. So we are poised for rebellion. When the wind veers, we will turn upon our leaders, tear them apart. The bodies of Mussolini and his mistress, strung up by the heels, swing from the lamppost in Milan. Most manual jobs do not lend themselves so readily to knowing the facts and fraudulently taking advantage oneself. In factory jobs the workman is likely to be unaware of what does on, since one performs a small operation or a big machine that one does not understand. Even so, there is evidence that one has the same disbelief in the enterprise as a whole, with a resulting attitude of profound indifference. Semiskilled factory operatives are the largest category of workmen. Big companies have tried the devices of applied anthropology to enhance the loyalty of these men to the firm, but apparently the effort is hopeless, for it is found that a thumping majority of men do not care about the job or the firm; they could not care less and you cannot make them care more. However, this is not because of wages, hours, or working conditions, or management. On the contrary, tests that show the men’s indifference to the company show also their (unaware) admiration for the way the company has designed and manages the plant; it is their very model of style, efficiency, and correct behaviour. Maybe if the men understood more, they would admire less. The union and the grievance committee take care of wages, hours, and conditions; these are the things the workmen themselves fought for and won. (Something was missing in that victory, and we have inherited the failure as well as the success.) #RandolphHarris 20 of 25

The conclusion must be that workmen are indifferent to the job because of its intrinsic nature: it does not enlist worthwhile capacities, it is not “interesting”; it is not his, he is not “in” on it; the product is not really useful. And indeed, research directly on the subject shows that it is defects in the intrinsic aspects of the job that make workmen unhappy. A survey of the literature shows that Interest is second in importance only to Security, whereas Wages, Conditions, Socializing, House, Ease, and Benefits are far less important. However, foremen, significantly enough, think that the most important thing to the workman is his wages. (The investigators do not seem to inquire about the usefulness of the job—as if a primary purpose of working at a job were not that it is good for something! My guess is that a large factor in “Security” is the resigned reaction to not being able to take into account whether the work of one’s hands is useful for anything; for in a normal life situation, if what we do is useful, we feel secure about being needed. The other largest factor in “Security” is, I think, the sense of being needed for one’s unique contribution, and this is measured in these tests by the primary importance the workers assign to being “in” on things and to “work done being appreciated.” Limited as they are, what a remarkable insight such studies give us, that humans want to do valuable work and work that is somehow theirs! However, they are thwarted. Is not this the “waste of human resources”? The case is that by the “sole prerogative” clause in union contracts the employer has the sole right to determine what is to be produced, how it is to be produced, what plants are to be built and where, what kinds of machinery are to be installed, when workers are to be hired and laid off, and how production operations are to be rationalized. There is none of this that is inevitable in running a machine economy; but if these are circumstances, it is not surprising that the factory operatives’ actual code has absolutely nothing to do with useful service or increasing production, but is notoriously devoted to “interpersonal relations”; do not turn out too much work; do not turn out too little work; do not squeal on a fellow worker; do not act like a big-shot. This is how to belong. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25

We are no longer where we stood a decade ago, dazzled by changes whose relationships to one another were unknown. Today, behind the confusion of change, there is a growing coherence of pattern: the future is taking shape. In a great historical confluence, many raging rivers of change are running together to form an oceanic Third Wave of change that is gaining momentum with every passing hour. This Third Wave of historical change represents not a straight-line extension of industrial society but a radical shift of direction, often a negation, of what went before. It adds up to nothing less than a complete transformation at east as revolutionary in our day as industrial civilization was 350 years ago. Furthermore, what is happening is not just a technological revolution but the coming of a whole new civilization in the fullest sense of that term. Thus, if we briefly look back over the ground we have covered, we find profound and frequently parallel changes at many levels simultaneously. Every civilization operates in and on the biosphere, and reflects or alters the mix of population and resources. Every civilization has a characteristic techno-sphere—an energy base linked to a production system which in turn is linked to a distribution system. Every civilization has a socio-sphere consisting of interrelated social institutions. Every civilization has an info-sphere—channels of communication through which necessary information flows. Every civilization has its own power-sphere. Every civilization, in addition, has a set of characteristic relationships with the outside World—exploitative, symbiotic, militant or pacific. And every civilization has its own super-ideology—a kit of powerful cultural assumptions that structure its view of reality and justify its operations. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25

The Third Wave, it should now be apparent, is brining revolutionary and self-reinforcing changes at all these different levels at once. The consequence is not merely the disintegration of the old society but the creation of foundations for the new. Often, as Second Wave institutions crash about our hears, as crime mounts, as nuclear families fracture, as once reliable bureaucracies sputter and malfunction, as health delivery systems crack and industrial economies wobble dangerously, we see only the decay and breakdown around us. Yet social decay is the compost bed of the new civilization. In energy, technology, family structure, culture, and many other fields, we are laying into place the basic structures that will define the main features of that new civilization. In fact, we can now for the first time identity these main features and even, to some extent, the interrelationships among them. Encouragingly, the embryonic Third Wave civilization we find is not only coherent and workable in both ecological and economic terms, but—if we put our minds to it—could be made more decent and democratic than our own. In no way is this to suggest inevitably. The period of transition will be marked by extreme social disruption, as well as wild economic swings, sectional clashes, secession attempts, technological upsets, or disasters, political turbulence, violence, wars, and threats of war. In a climate of disintegrating institutions and values, authoritarian demagogues and movements will arise to seek, and possibly attain, power. No intelligent person can be smug about the outcome. The clash of two civilizations presents titanic dangers. Yet the odds lie not with destruction but with the ultimate survival. If we manage to avoid the worst of the short-term perils that lie before us, it is important to know where the main thrust of change is taking us, and what kind of World is likely taking form? #RandolphHarris 23 of 25

If war comes, the blame must fall not only outwardly on the humans and policies which provoke it, but also inwardly on the passions and greeds and egoisms which influence leaders and led alike. When there is more of hate than of goodwill between two nations, and for a sufficient time, it is inevitable under the law of compensation that physical war will break out between them. War, being ultimately the expression of the mind’s errors and the heart’s passions, can only be stopped by getting at it in the places where it starts: in the mind and the heart themselves. It causes being primarily internal, it cannot be cured by an external remedy. This means that neither organized religion nor organized politics can save the World from the ruin that awaits it. We may wish them well in their attempts but we cannot help seeing facts which all history causes us to see. The guns and bombs, the gasses and tanks of modern war are only the symbols of humans’ inner disorder. The reality behind them is one’s ignorance of spiritual laws, one’s blindness to the fact that all war is a consequence and not a cause. All the national days of prayer and the eminent ecclesiastics who led them have failed to stop two World wars in our time. And they failed because they were tying to escape from a consequence whilst leaving the cause untouched. I thank You God, for this most amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes (I who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay great happening illimitably Earth) how should tasting, touching, hearing, seeing, breathing any—lifted from the no of all nothing—human merely being doubt unimaginable You? (Now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened.) #RandolphHarris 24 of 25

In the book of life, blessing, peace and ample sustenance, may we, together with all Thy people, the house of America, be remembered and inscribed before Thee for a happy life and for peace. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who establishest peace. O Lord, please guard my tongue from evil and my lips from speaking guile, and to those who slander me, please let me give no heed. May my soul be humble and forgiving unto all. Please open Thou my heart, O Lord, unto Thy sacred Law, that Thy statutes I may know and all Thy truths pursue. Please bring to naught designs of those who seek to do me ill; speedily defeat their aims and thwart their purposes for Thine own sake, for Thine own power, for Thy holiness and Law. That Thy loved ones be delivered, please answer us, O Lord, and save with Thy redeeming power. May the words of my mouth and meditation of my heart be acceptable unto Thee, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Thou who establishes peace in the Heavens, please grant our portion in Thy Torah and may the Temple be rebuilt in our day. There we will serve Thee with awe as in the days of old. Magnified and sanctified be the name of God throughout the World which He hath created according to His will. May He establish His Kingdom during the days of your life and during the life of all the house of America, speedily, yea, soon; and say ye, Amen. May His great name be blessed for ever and ever. Exalted and honoured be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, whose glory transcends, yea, is beyond all praises, hymns and blessings that humans cannot render unto Him; and say ye, Amen. And let Thy graciousness, O Lord our God, be upon us; establish Thou also the work of our hands for us; yea, the work of our hands establish Thou it. Dwelling in the shelter of the Most High, abiding under the protection of the Almighty, I say of the Lord: He is my refuge and my fortress, My God, in whom I trust. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25

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