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I Know of Some Lonely Houses off the Road—Was that Me that Winked or a Nervous Star?
Store will be opened promptly at six a.m. and remain open until nine p.m. the year around. Store must not be opened on the Sabbath day unless absolutely necessary and then only for a few minutes. Any employee who is in the habit of smoking Spanish cigars, getting shaved at a barber shop, going to dances and other places of amusement, will most surely give his or her employer reason to suspect one’s integrity and all-around honesty. Each employee must attend Sunday school every Sunday. Men employees are given one evening a week for courting purposes, and two if they go to prayer meeting regularly. After fourteen hours of work in the store, the remaining leisure time must be spent in reading good literature. All God’s children will thrive from our growing knowledge, but to repeat this is only the beginning. We must have the courage to embrace the beauty of science in the name of the Lord. The image of God Incarnate, become Man out of fascination with His own Creation, will triumph in the Third Millennium as the supreme emblem of Divine Sacrifice and Unfathomable Love. It takes thousands of years to understand the Crucified Christ. Why, for example, did the Savior come down to live thirty-three years? Why not twenty? Why not twenty-five? You could ponder this stuff forever. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11
Why did Christ have to start as a baby? Who wants to be a baby? Was being a baby part of our salvation? And why choose that particular time in history? And such a place! Cosmic Energy is dominant and you do not possess the energy for the material World. You have the energy to pray and commune with God, and to inspire and guide others to elevate themselves so as to attain the spiritual heights and ecstasies of divine experience. Jesus was a perfect example of a soul with excessive cosmic energy (because of his evolution), which enabled him to achieve the most miraculous energy cures the World has ever seen. The spiritual path requires total renunciation. The more one treads the path, the more one is required to renounce. However, one is ready for the experience, the renunciation corresponding to the material World or emotional attachments, and the extreme discipline are not in comparison to all that is received on a higher plane. The renunciation occurs more on a mental and emotional level than on a purely physical plane. One would never be expected to renounce one’s children, for example. If one has children, they are one’s growth as one is theirs. One would not have to renounce a business if it is the only source of income for an individual and that person’s family. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11
However, many individuals will totally dedicate their lives and every possible moment to spiritual practices and disciplines, which becomes their life mission, which is demanding. Because of the impact of Christianity on the Western World the revival of the ancient schools of thought at the beginning of the modern period was not only a revival but also a transformation. It is true of the renewal of the arts, of literature, of the theories of the state, and of the philosophy of religion that the rebirth of antiquity in the modern period started to actively shape the material realm. And while in some of the ancient World there was a tragic feeling toward existence that dominated though and life, especially the attitude toward history, the Renaissance started a movement which was looking at the future and the creative and new in it. Hope conquered the feeling of tragedy, and belief in progress the resignation to circular repetition. While the ancient World valued the individual not as an individual but as a representative of something universal, e.g. a virtue, the rebirth of antiquity saw the individual as an individual a unique expression of the Universe, incomparable, irreplaceable, and of infinite significance. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11
In human beings the ontological work is elaborated. Humans have the ontological foundation of ethical existence, including the courage to be. And, ss we look into the various areas of human experience, we find a great deal that does not seem to make sense. The above statement may seem humorous or it may seem tragic. It might make a socially conscious person furious. And yet, it represents not only the limited perspective once found widespread in this country, but also some of the attitudes still prevalent in our thinking about work and religion. Theoretically, if a person sleeps eight hours a day, one has eight hours left in the day for something else. It is in this eight hours of something that we are interested here. Also theoretically, we should have no trouble with those eight free hours. Yet, the simple fact is we do. Most of us have not gotten thoroughly used to the idea that leftover time is out own! A case in point: a colleague of ours find his teaching day ends at noon of Fridays. He is a hard-working man who puts in more hours during the week than his contract calls for. He is always prepared for his classes, spends plenty of time in conferences with students, serves on my committees, takes paperwork home almost every evening. He earns his salary and then some! #RandolphHarris 4 of 11
The courage to be is an expression of the essential act of everything that participates in being, namely self-affirmation. Decisive character is manifested in the evdeavour, wherewith everything endeavours to persist in its own being, and is nothing else but the actual essence of the thing in question. The Latin word for endeavour is conatus, the striving toward something. This striving is not a contingent aspect of a thing, nor is it an element in its being along with other elements; it is its essentia actualis. The conatus makes a thing what it is, so that if it disappears the thing itself disappears. Striving toward self-preservation or toward self-affirmation makes a thing be what it is. This striving is the essence of a thing and also its power, in addition to being part of the mind it affirms and has the power to control actions. So we have the identification of actual essence, power of being, and self-affirmation. And more identifications follow. The power of being is identified with virtue, and virtue consequently, with essential nature. Virtue is the power of acting exclusively according to one’s true nature. And the degree of virtue is the degree to which somebody is striving for and able to affirm one’s own being. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11
Because of his upbringing (presumably under the Work-Sin Ethic) this teacher has a difficult time when Friday noon comes around and he finds an entire afternoon at his disposal. He confesses that he often feels like volunteering for some assignment that would full up his Friday afternoon. He invites students to confer with him after 12 o’clock on Friday, but those who are finished with their classes at 12 head for the beach or the billiard parlor or home. They are not troubled by any such deep guilt at finding free hours. The person who rigidly works a schedule eight hours a day for five or six days a week probably does not sympathize with our colleague. I remember hearing a bishop eloquently, and in his case sincerely, telling less affluent audience in England that he worked at least sixteen hours a day and asked for nothing better. “If I were a bishop, I would work sixteen hours a day, too, but eight hours of my work a day is quite enough for anybody” declared one workshop foreman in the audience. The assumption here, more prevalent than most people might suspect, is that people who do not punch time clocks do not work. This assumption is irrational and, individual variations on work habits to the contrary, simply invalid! The dictates of individual, corporate, discipline and/or social circumstances support an infinite number of work-habit variations. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11
Nine-to-five-ism may be the lot of the majority, but this is just one more example of why occasionally majority does not rule, although it might like to. Our colleagues, who may work odd hors by a laborer’s standards and erratic hours by most people’s habitual, routinized system, does one’s job, earns one’s salary, and in comparison with many people far exceeds what is expected of him or her. By these modern-day standards alone, one deserves every moment of leisure one can come by. (Granted one’s compulsion is more complex; we hope to have people straightened very soon!) It is impossible to conceive of any virtue as prior to the striving to preserve one’s own being. Self-affirmation is, so to speak, virtue altogether. However, self-affirmation is affirmation of one’s essential being, and the knowledge of one’s essential being is mediated through reason, the power of the soul to have adequate ideas. Therefore to act unconditionally out of virtue is the same as to act under the guidance of reason, to affirm one’s essential being or true nature. Very well, we are attempting to make a strong case for a life of balance. The puritan attitude of Work or Sin should be euthanized, allowed or helped to reach oblivion. It is an ethic that denies humanness and makes workhorses or machines out of all organisms that have the potential for being replaced. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11
People have a strength of the soul and power to be what they essentially are. Animositas, derived from anima, soul, is the courage in the sense of a total act of the person. By courage I mean the desire [cupiditas] whereby every person strives to preserve one’s own being in accordance solely with the dictates of reason. There is also a desire to join other people in friendship and support. This duality of an all-embracing and limited concept of courage corresponds with the whole development of the idea of courage to which we have referred. In a systematic philosophy of the strictness and consistency of this remarkable fact, we see the two cognitive motives which always determine the doctrine of courage: the universally ontological and the specifically moral. This has a very significant consequence for one of the most difficult ethical problems, the relation of self-affirmation and love toward others. Since virtue and the power of self-affirmation are identical, and since generosity is the act of going out toward others in a benevolent affect, no conflict between self-affirmation and love can be thought of. This of course presupposes that self-affirmation is not only distinguished from but precisely the opposite of selfishness in the sense of a negative moral quality. Self-affirmation is the ontological opposite of the reduction of being by such affects as contradict one’s essential nature. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11
The right self-love and the right love of others are interdependent, and selfishness and the abuse of others are equally interdependent. Self-affirmation is participation in the divine self-affirmation. The power whereby each particular thing, and consequently human beings, preserves one being is the power of God. The participation of the soul in the divine power is described in terms of both knowledge and love. If the soul recognizes its sub aeternitatis specie, it recognizes its being in God. And this knowledge of God and of its being in God is the cause of perfect beatitude and consequently of a perfect love toward the cause of this beatitude. This love is spiritual (intellectualis) because it is eternal and therefore an affect, not subject to the passions which are connected with bodily existence. It is the participation in the infinite spiritual love with which God contemplates and loves oneself, and by loving oneself also loves what belongs to him, human beings. From the existence of God comes the existence of other contingent beings. God possesses objectively a supreme degree of reality because it is the idea of a Perfect Being; here its cause must possess formally a similar degree of reality. Therefore, God is indeed a perfect being. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11
God’s excellence is not merely indefinitely, but infinitely, great. This explains why self-affirmation is the essential nature of every being and as such its highest good. Perfect self-affirmation is not an isolated act which originating power in every individual act. In this idea the ontology of courage has reached its fundamental expression. “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof,” Romans 6.12. In time, addictions enslave both the body and the spirit. Full repentance from addiction is best accomplished in this life, while we still have a mortal body to help us. As children of God, we should not let anything enter the body that might defile it. To allow sensors of sight, touch, or hearing to supple the brain with unclean memories is a sacrilege. We will cherish our chastity and avoid foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown us in destruction and perdition. We will flee these things; and follow after righteousness, Godliness, faith, love, patience, and meekness—traits that edify the whole souls. An affect can be conquered only by affect, and the only affect which can overcome the affects of passion is the affect of the mind, the spiritual or intellectual love of the soul for its own eternal ground. Who are we? We are children of God. When your heart runs deeper than a ghost town gold mine, you just know you are bound to find that mother load. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11
The omnipotence of God requires that he should be able to do even what we would understand as being logically impossible, and thus that the eternal truths are dependent on God’s will. God could have brought it about that two and two did not equal four; although, since God has not chosen that this should be so, it must be beyond our finite comprehension how it might have been so. God is an efficient cause himself. Our potential is unlimited. Our inheritance is sacred. This affect is an expression of the participation of the soul in the divine self-love. The courage to be is possible because it is participation in the self-affirmation of being-itself. However, why is it that the way of salvation (salus) which God has shown us in the Bible being neglected by almost every? Because it is difficult and therefore rare, like everything sublime. Our inheritance is sacred. May we always honor that heritage—in every thought and deed. The stronger the foundation of our identity is rooted in being a child of God, the stronger our self-worthy becomes. The stronger our sense of self-worth becomes, the less insecure, defensive, and fearful we are. If we are willing to shed our less important identities and place our divine origins at the very forefront of our self-perception, we can be more confident, happy, and content human beings. “And now may God grant unto these, my people, that they may sit down in the Kingdom of God,” reports Alma 29.17. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11
As I Hope to the Father in the Skies I Wonder if Perhaps the Kingdom of Heaven has Changed!
There are many aspects of being a social being that are not as clear-cut as the psychosocial crises. Some of the vague and abstract situations involves the learning and following of the rules of the society in which you live. At the bottom, because they are the least clearly delineated, are the customs and traditions. These are often fuzzy and difficult to understand. For instance, no one seems to know, or bother to explain, why Americans shake hands to greet each other, but it is probably an antiquated psychic process so we can get a feel for the other person. Handshaking is also a symbolic gesture of peace-making, placating the stranger or friend so one will not think we are going to attack him or her. Possibly this is the origin of the practice, but the evidence is still speculative. However, it is a good example of a custom that is taught but not explained other than with the statement, “Now, this is what you do when you meet somebody, Ralph Silvestri.” In this same class are things like opening the car door for a lady, walking on the curb side of a lady to protect her run a runaway car, and wearing particular types of clothing on certain occasions. In Japan turning the eyes away is a mark of respect, as if the person finds you so awesome that one must turn away to avoid being blinded by your radiance. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11
Anthropologists call these customs folkways. They are expected and strongly urged behaviors, but the person who fails to perform them can expect only very slight negative reaction. They boy who does not open the car door for a certain class of girl may hear her say: “Chivalry sure is dead!” or he may notice a slight clouding of her brow, if anything at all happens. However, there is a set of culturally prescribed behaviors and rituals that have much stronger sanctions attached to them. These are called the mores (pronounced mor-ays) of a society. These are so important that two things come about because of them: first, they often become part of society’s ethical behavior and we speak then of moral behavior; and secondly, many of them become codified and written down as laws. Some of these moral rules involve the rights of other people and to violate them means to bring down all kinds of social wrath. Belching, spitting, flatulence (passing gas), nose-picking, speaking about bathroom habits, or making sexual overtures in the full view of other people are good examples of unwritten, but strongly sanctioned, immoral behavior. Negative mores are sometimes called taboos, from a Polynesian word meaning behavior set aside as sacred. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11
No society can live wholesomely by any other sort of regulation, and State legislatures stultify themselves when they fail to realize that their part is merely to formalize, and record, and support, the growth and decay of the taboos. Growing up and learning some of the rules for living that a society gives can become downright bothersome. Babies do not have to obey any rules but those of nature. However, as they grow, natural behavior comes more and more under the control, direction and sanction of the people who share the World with them. Actually, the babies become socialized. Socialization is the process of becoming enculturated, or of absorbing the required behaviors of the culture of which the individual is a part. Various aspects of life and experience go into making an individual’s personality. There are some experience that only happen under Biological Roles to only males or only to females, or only to adults or only to children, depending of course on the role that they play in their society. Yet, none of us participates in culture alone nor by ourselves, nor do we, individually, create culture. “Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid,”2 Nephi 22.2. No one is a slave or robot to anything in our culture. We can, within the limits we must acknowledge, make or break our selfhood. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11
No man or woman is an island, entire of itself; every person is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a cold be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any person’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in humankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. “There was great mourning and howling and weeping among all the people continually; yea, great were the groanings of the people, because of the darkness and the great destruction which had come upon them,” 3 Nephi 8.23. Each of us is involved and interwoven delicately with our fellow human beings. The analogy of a spider web may be useful. All of us in the World, but especially those grouped closer together in nation, state, community, school, family, and marriage unit are tied together by delicate spider webs, webs of delicate resiliency. Each sensitive and responsive web tends to draw us closer or pull us father to whatever side another is drawn. Nobody dies without our feeling it, nobody rises without our also being pulled up. Each of us is responsive to and responsible for every other. “And one that will contend against the word of the Lord, let him or her be accursed; and one that shall deny these things, let him or her be accursed,” reports Ether 4.8. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11
No person is an island, unless we look carefully at the geologic charts of our oceans. If we do this, we find that each island is the protruding peak of an undersea mountain range, but the range is connected and all of one piece, tied intimately and unmistakably to the Earth below it. Islands do not float on the surface of the ocean. Individual people do not float on the surface of society, unconnected from any of the rest of us. A full realization of this is what must take place for any ideal of universal humanity, or oneness to emerge. If there were no ties connecting the people of this land, and no longer ties connecting people of all lands, then there would be no need for an elaborate plan of governing and interrelating. However, there are. The designers of the Constitution of the United States of America (our Country), while great humans, full of the love of God and honor, wanted to put into effect a form of government based of the scriptures of the Bible so that the fullest participation of the largest number of the citizenry possible. Unfortunately, there are many ways of interpreting “citizens,” and the abuses of civil liberties down the years testify to the problems of interpretation with which we live. “If anyone tries to harm them, fire comes from their mouths and devours their enemies. This is how anyone who wants to harm them must die,” reports Revelations 11.5. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11
Furthermore, the attempt is being made by people of conscience and good will to actualize the fullest meanings of the United States of America’s Constitution and Bill of Right, which is our laws and codes to protect legal citizens, so that all people who are legal can participate in both the benefits and responsibilities of full citizenship. One of the most crucial areas is still liberties, especially those of members of marginalized groups of citizens in this country. The nature of Americans is not cruel nor hostile, but there is a strong learning program through which everyone passes that insists one must grasp what one can and keep it, at whatever cost to another person. However, never tolerate, because of sympathy for yourself or for others, any practice that is not in keeping with a Holy God. Holiness means absolute purity of our behavior before God, the words coming from our mouths, and every thought in our mind—placing every detail of our life under the scrutiny of God. Holiness is not simply what God gives us, but what God has given us that is being exhibited in our lives. “Be holy, for I am holy,” 1 Peter 1.16. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11
If people in this nation are going to insist that they are moral people, that their land was founded in the spirit of religion and all the beneficial aspects that that can mean, then they will attempt to act more optimistically on the fellowship and love their religions teaches. The idea of American Country, were if the laws were established by God, then no one can challenge them, for God is supreme. We must discover that we are not to watch and profile our people, but to protect and love and assist them. This means that we must catch some of the deeper meaning of our common life styles, must recognize that the success of the nation depends on the mutual assistance of each one of us, and that an uplift in the economic, social, moral, personal, and educational level of any one of us can also bring about similar upliftings for each and every one of those who share this land. “Behold, when ye shall rend that veil of unbelief which doth cause you to remain in your awful state of wickedness, and hardness of heart, and blindness of mind, then shall the great and marvelous things which have been hid up from the foundation of the World from you—yea, when ye shall call upon the Heavenly Father in my name, with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, then shall ye know that the Father hath remembered the covenant which he made unto your fathers,” reports Ether 4.15. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11
Many a critic of this viewpoint insists that giving to the less affluent, for instance, means to take something away from one that one has rightfully earned. Such critics fail to see that if the poverty can be minimized or even eliminated, it means more jobs, more wages, more tax receipts, and an uplift in the entire economy. This is why we must put the needs of Americans first. We must help ourselves so we do not become bankrupt and poor and occupied by a hostile nation. “A third Angel followed them and said in a loud voice: ‘If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, he or she, too, will drink of the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the Holy Angels and of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever,” reports Revelations 14.9-10. If one can find and restore the relatedness one has with others in this upward climb, humans can continue to prosper in all the ways one can prosper. “And they did land upon the shore of the promised land. And when they had set their feet upon the shores of the promised and they bowed themselves before the Land, and did shed tears of joy before the Lord, because of the multitude of his tender mercies over them,” reports Ether 6.12. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11
The population of the World continues to soar, we are nearly at 8 billion people, and many think 5 billion is the capacity, and the effects of this overpopulation will continue to be felt. As you can see, a dangerous mob of over 14,000 people is storming the American shores as we speak and demanding that we support them and their families. However, as the actual amount of square footage available for each human being is being computed, we need to deal with the many problems of sheer survival that are facing all of us—deal with them in a united fashion. Overcrowding brings about increased poverty, mental illness, infectious diseases, unemployment, housing shortages, crimes, and the biggest consequence of all: war. “People gnawed their tongues in agony and cursed the God of Heaven because of their pains and their sores, but they refused to repent of what they had done. The sixth Angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the East. Then I saw three evil spirits that looked like frogs; they came out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast and out of the moth of the false prophet. They are spirits of demons performing miraculous signs, and they go out to the kings of the whole World, to gather them for the battle on the great day of God Almighty, reports Revelations 16.12-14. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11
There is a continual round of controversy in the history of nations and people. We find ourselves enmeshed in this conflict right now. In the frontier period of any nation, raw, heroic, rugged individualism is the keynote. We sing the praises of the Daniel Boones, Davy Crocketts, Jim Bridgers, Malcom Xs, Ice Teas, Abe Lincolns, Teddy Roosevelts, Harriet Tubmans, Aaliyahs, Brandon Lees, and Jennifer Lopezs, and others who have done it for themselves, who have risen from less affluence or weak to successful or strong. This is part of the frontier history of any nation. However, most nations recognize that this period of emphasizing the solitary exploits of individual heroes must give way to the period of cooperative effort, group and family action. Even though our nation can show many examples of cooperative programs (beginning with the United States of America’s Constitution, Civil Rights Act of 1875, Civil Rights Cases (1883), the doctrine of Balance of Power, the League of Nations, the National Recovery Act and its New Deal, the United Nations), we have to a large degree continued to promulgate the success story to our children. We do not believe that either the loss of personal identity that often accompanies socialist or communist programs, or the loss of group cohesiveness and group relatedness is necessary. Rather, we liken any group endeavor to love. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11
Love is union under the condition of preserving one’s integrity, one’s individuality. Love is an active power in humans, which breaks through the walls which separate humans from their fellow humans, which unites people with others; loves makes one overcome the sense of isolation and separateness, yet it permits one to be oneself, to retain one’s integrity. In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two. “Righteous love truth and are not shaken,” reports 2 Nephi 9.40. It is not only possible, but highly desirable, to see any human cooperation as more important and productive than singlehanded or solitary effort when the goal has mostly social implications. This is true whether the effort is in the family, friendship group, work group, management group, legislative, judicial, executive, or any other kind of activity. Physicians and surgeons still rely on the consultative skills of fellow doctors before making important final judgements. Even in the surgical arena, there are many hands doing the work, even the work of the greatest surgical brain around. No person is of necessity an isolated entity; one achieves one’s humanity by virtue of one’s interaction with others; one shares one’s humanity and it comes back to one multiplied many times over. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11
One Day is there of the Series Termed Thanksgiving Day and Celebrated Part at Table and Part in Memory!
It seems so simple, so innocent, so entirely praiseworthy, to put down indecent literature by laws against obscenity. We are none of us in favour of what seems to us indecent. It is impossible we should be, for the word means, if we search into it, simply what is unfit. Yet the simpler and more fundamental the conception of decency is seen to be, the more it eludes any prescription of positive law. It is determined by the nature of the individual oneself, by the feelings of one’s social group, and very notably by fashion. Most of us are old enough to know that less than twenty years ago the whole young womanhood of today would have been held guilty or banned from television for indecency in dress and liable to be conducted to the nearest police station. In literature fashion is even more uncertain and elusive than in life, for the good reason that it is not produced by mass action. Endless examples have been brought forward of such fluctuations of opinion regarding books condemned by law, as well as examples of books legally condemned as obscene in England and free in America, or legally condemned in America and free in England. The obscenity of today will be the propriety of tomorrow. However, by the spread of education, the extension of religion, the people will themselves learn to reject all forms of unpleasant conduct, literature, art. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
If the people learn not merely to disregard but to detest all these forms of indecency in thought, word, and deed, the day will come when no form of censorship will be needed, when there will be no prosecutions for breaches of the law, and when acts of Congress will be a dead letter on the Statute Book. Indeed, there will be a time when the whole population will live up to God’s ideal, and this is a desire of many. There is only one way to prevent the circulation of bad literature, and that is to promote the circulation of good literature. That would do more than any revival of a moral censorship of the Press. When archbishops preach these sound doctrines of common sense I begin to believe that it is time for me to be silent. For the truth is when one is speaking from a place of authority, that he or she should have the floor alone to teach genuinely healthy minds, when not surrounded by secrecy and prohibition. For some reason, I do not feel worthy to teach the work of God to others. I think it is a sacred responsibility that should be left to someone with more maturity, power, and authority. However, at the same time, I want to share with others the doctrines and covenants that have helped get me through some of my darkest days. And although, I am still waiting on my testimony, I do the best I can. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
I supposed that deliverance from darkness is a gradual process. It is not like it just eclipsed us over night. “There is something cold and blank behind her smile. She is standing on an overpass in her miracle mile. Because you were from a perfect World, a World that threw me away today, to run away. A pill to make you numb. A pill to make you dumb. A pill to make you anybody else, but all of the drugs in this World will not save her from herself,” (Coma White by Marilyn Manson). I supposed that we cannot blame anyone for the things that have happened to us, but we should count our blessings. It is also clear that it is important for us to stay sober so we can learn what is going on around us and figure out how best to resolve these situations and move forward in the name of God. We cannot have integrity without clarifying our convictions or values or goals. We can change them, but we must always have some. And so we clarify our ideals and determine to act according to them. The biggest tragedy of life is not to live—not to function with our full soul, with our whole life, with enthusiasm, with spirit, with faith, with love. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
We must humbly pray that none of us will be so burdened by mistakes, by failures, and by sin that we will not have the courage and wisdom to turn to the ideals of the gospel, to the wonder God, and to each other to find the strength to live life as it is meant to be lived. It is a beautiful existence we have, and it is not too late for any of us to enjoy it to the fullest. If we truly love God, we would never consider disobeying him. If we truly love our neighbor, we would never dream of lying to or about one, nor stealing from one, nor doing anything that might cause one pain or harm. If we are focused on loving and serving God, and on loving our neighbor, obedience will become part of our nature. We will not need anyone to spell out what we can and cannot (or should and should not) do, because our natural impulse will be to act as Christ would act. If we are truly living the gospel, then it should not matter where the line is, because our natural impulses lead us well away from the edge. Sometimes, however, things are complex and beyond our spiritual understanding. For instance, one of the strangest art clichés that still circulates endlessly is the one about the eyes in the portrait following you around the room. This non-illusion arises from somewhat muddled expectations about how a two-dimensional image might behave when seen from different angles in three-dimensional space. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
Provided the image is not a hologram, we can hardly expect it to take account of our position in the room. If the eyes engage us when we stand directly in front of the picture, they will also engage us from any other viewpoint, despite the distorting effects of foreshortening. I doubt if the eyes following us around the room have anything at all to do with Gothic fiction or those old movies in which real eyes spy through peepholes cut into the face of a portrait. Of course, they actually do follow you around. I suspect by its slightly supernatural, spiritualist note that we can safely blame the concept of eyes that seem mobile and, worse, intently watching us, on our conscious reminding us that we are in the house of God, which is Earth, and regardless of if we want to realize it or not, God is watching our every move. Therefore, the complex situational is actually not beyond our spiritual understand once we analyze the metaphor. Nevertheless, it is the disposition of the eyes in a portrait, as between living people, that tells us that the smile of the subject is a direct avenue of meaningful communication, vividly reserved for you and me, and it is also a reminder that people have faces and eyes and this is where we should direct our attention when communicating with them. There is no doubt that this sensation, this knowledge, has a profound impact on the viewer. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
It may be a blinding glimpse of the obvious, but it is worth noting in conclusion that the exchange of a smile—be it sincere or forced or spontaneous—makes us feel good. “I know that God loveth his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of things,” reports 1 Nephi 11.17. God loves all his children—his sons and his daughters alike. And the truth of his love is absolute. It is the truth upon which everything else is founded. The eyes are the windows of the soul, and in the soul is where truth is possessed. The truth holds the Universe together. When you see our Father, you will see a being with whom you have long been acquainted, and he will receive you into his arms, and you will be ready to all into his embrace. You will be so glad and joyful. When you are qualified and purified, you can endure the glory of eternity. We are blessed to know of God. How many people over the space of thousands of years have not even known that there is a Father in Heaven? How many individuals’ lives might have been different if they could only have known about our loving, merciful, and caring Heavenly Father? #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
Indeed, how blessed we are to have such teachings that center on the nature of our Father in Heaven. We know that there is something taking place, even though we know at the same time that the source of stimulation is coming from inside of us. However, God and humans are of the same divine, eternal species, and if we do not comprehend the nature of God, we cannot appreciate our divine parentage nor the very real potential we possess to become like our Heavenly parents. Coming to know God is done through revelation. And powerful personal revelation is predicated upon righteous living and spiritual discipline. Certainly a knowledge of these laws and powers enables people to learn truths which are faith promoting and which help one to understand more about God. May God help each of us to so live now in order to merit that marvelous moment when we are clasped in the arms of God. We have the plan of salvation, which makes this possible. Moral agency, the ability to choose, is an essential part of this plan. We have already made some good choices, and we can keep learning and growing. To gain a testimony, we must nourish it step by step. Our testimony will increase as we make decisions to keep the commandments. As we live and strengthen others, we will see our testimony continue to develop. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
Reinforcement is the process of strengthening a habit, pattern, or attitude so that the individual tends to repeat it. Most of our learning happens because it is reinforced or rewarded in some way. As we establish personal habits of prayer, scripture study, obedience to the commandments, and service to others, we will be blessed with moments of inspiration that will strengthen out testimony. It is important to value experience and project no matter how small or large they are, as being thankful for these moments is constant nourishment and will keep us safely on the path to reaching our goals. God loves us, he knows us, he hears us and answers our prayers. “Search diligently, pray always, and be believing, and all things shall work together for your good, if ye walk uprightly and remember the covenant wherewith ye have covenanted one another,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 90.24. Whatever strengthens our tendency to hold onto some learned idea or action, and to repeat it, is called a reinforcing event. If it rewards us, meets a need, brings some kind of pleasure, then we tend to hang onto it. And, because of pleasure, we do again and again whatever feels good. We each need the help of the Savior to follow the plan and return to our Father in Heaven. We must fill our lives with virtuous activities that will bring spiritual power. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
I Took My Power in My Hand and Went Against the World
I was taught that I am not to love everyone, that love is precious, and while you can respect people you meet and be civil, I do not have to love them. Because love is precious, it is something that is special and only reserved for people who have meaning in your life. If you gave love away, like you say “Hello,” it would be worthless. The hidden religious element accounts for the degradation of the material World, of humans, and of civil lifestyles. To comprehend human action and thought one must take account of human’s capacity to transcend the limited responses of the lower animals to their environment. Which basically means people have to learn to respect other people and not try to force their opinions or lifestyles on others. In fact, in a being which awakes to consciousness, there takes place a qualitative change, a differentiation of the entire nature. Yet this qualitative change in no way justifies the idealist contention that humans are consciousness alone, for as humans belong to the essence of Nature—in opposition to common materialism; so Nature belongs to the essence of humanity—in opposition to subjective idealism. We do not believe in God as a fire escape from Hell, but we believe in God because the power of the gospel. The love of God does not supersede his laws and his commandments, and the effect of God’s laws and commandments does not diminish the purpose and effect of his love. #RandolphHarris 1 of 12
In recognizing that our essence reveals itself quintessentially in the impulse toward union with other people: The essence of humanity is contained only in community, in the unity of human beings—a unity which however is founded only on the reality of the differences between I an thou. Among these responses will be found the passions, especially the emotion of love, the impulse toward union with the other that is peculiar to human beings. The capacity to create communities of shared emotive contents is the secret of human beings and therefore the secret of al thought and action; for what people are really seeking in every imagined absolute is nothing but the unity of you and thou. Religion is a form of the projective spirit of human beings, the means by which a person projects one’s being into objectivity, and then again makes oneself an object to this projected image of oneself thus converted into a subject; one thinks of oneself not as an object to oneself but as an object of an object, of another being than oneself. Thus, religion is the dream of the human mind; properly understood, it is a dream of human, not divine, development: it is and can be nothing else than the consciousness which a person has of one’s own—not finite and limited—but infinite with nature. “Hearts of rich are upon their treasure, which is their God,” 2 Nephi 9.30. #RandolphHarris 2 of 12
Humans, then, unlike the animal, is self-transcending, and religion is one of people’s means of objectifying their own essence in ideal terms, of spinning out visions of what one might be. For example, the Christian idea of the Incarnation is nothing but a reflection of the dream of humanity to become God and the realization that this can be achieved only through a transcendent love of one’s fellow being. Religious feelings thus depend on an alienation of human beings from oneself. Religion generates belief in an objective other in which all of human’s best qualities are vested, their worst qualities being designated as the true human essence. Philosophy must therefore destroy an illusion that deprives humans of the power of a free life as well as a genuine sense of truth and virtue, for even love, in itself the deepest, truest emotion, becomes by means of religiousness merely ostensible, illusory, since religious love gibes itself to humans only for God’s sake, so that it is given only in appearance to human beings, but in reality to God. Religion is the uncontrolled and unconscious exercise of a human faculty that with the assistance of the sciences of anthropology, physiology, and psychology can be controlled, raised to consciousness, and turned toward the attainment of genuine healthy, well-being, and community here on Earth. For the consciousness of God is nothing but the consciousness of the species. #RandolphHarris 3 of 12
The doctrine of food is of great ethical and political significance. Food becomes blood, blood becomes heart and brain, thoughts and mind-stuff. Human fare is the foundation of human culture and thought. Would you improve a nation? Give it, instead of declamations against sin, better food. Humans are what they eat. Religion is the imperative supremacy of the moral law. Belief in God is essentially a recognition of the fundamental and sovereign moral dynamic in reality. You funny thing. Did you never stop to think that perhaps I worried about the same “what-ifs”? Avoiding a face-to-face meeting was to my advantage. You would not see how big my feet are or how clumsy I am when off the dance floor. I think you have a good opinion of me now (aside from my taste in jackets, I suppose). After all, I am devilishly handsome. Wickedly clever. Witty and utterly brilliant. Why would I want to jeopardize that? All those illusions could vanish the moment we said hello. However, for the elusive chance to meet you…all of those apprehensions pale in comparison. We have been dating for two years now? (I say that with a bit of nonchalance, as though I have not saved every letter you ever sent.) Really, after all of this time, can there still be mystery? We have told our deepest fears, confessed our secret longings. I know you, and I think you know me, too. If I were sitting in front of you, saying this right now, I should hope my words would not mean less just because you disliked the sound of my Midwestern accent. #RandolphHarris 4 of 12
Think about when you first meet a person. You have to get past all the superficial nonsense, the appraisals of accents and the checked jackets. An interrogation of appearance. After you have deemed each other worthy, then you can actually settle down to get acquainted, to begin those first tentative probes of the mind. Find out what sort of thing fuels the other—what makes them scream, what makes them laugh, what makes them tremble on the rug. You and I are lucky. We never had to worry about the first part, the visual sizing up. We got to go directly to the interesting bit. The getting to know the depths and breadths of each other’s soul. I do not know about you, but I find it refreshing. I am sick to death of having to worry whether people think I look old enough or respectable enough or whatnot. Always having to be polite and look interested. When I write to you, I do not have to think about any of that nonsense. I do not have to worry about my big feet. I can peel away the husk (if you will forgive a corn metaphor) and reveal the shiny kernels of my dreams and passions and fears. They are yours, babe, yours to gnaw on as you will! Marvelous with a sprinkle of salt. “The power to do good is in each person,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 58.27-28. #RandolphHarris 5 of 12
Now, after all that, you must tell me your new secret. I promise I will not laugh. At least not loud enough that you can hear me from Rocklin. I am starting to nod off and so pulled out my watch. I am not going to admit to how early in the morning it is, but the streets have long been quiet. I hope you are sleeping a bit more soundly than I am right now. Also, you must hear from God. That is why you can tarry and tarry and not receive your miracle. When you seek God about your situation, and if you are really in faith, you will hear from him. God is faithful. You can hear from God through the Word of God or by the Spirit of God speaking to your spirit. However, you have to come to believing. When you need healing, you can know that it is God’s will for you because it is in the Word of God. The Saviour paid a lot for us to be healed. Think about it. He did not have to go to the whipping post to go to the Cross. However, he did so that by his stripes we were healed. Every time the scourge hit him, something spiritual happened because every infirmary and malady was laid on him. The Saviour was hit with the cause and source of that infirmary. He took it all. That is why you do not even have to get the right diagnosis before you can be healed because you already know the Saviour personally took the source of every infirmary. Believing you can be healed if the first to recovery. “You are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation,” reports 1 Peter 1.3-5. #RandolphHarris 6 of 12
When we heal, it is in the Word of God, and we can know that it is his will to perform a healing miracle in our body, but we need to still hear personally from God about our specific situation. Whether it is revelation from the Word of God or a direct speaking to your spirit, wait until you hear from God. It is important that we participate in activities that will help us build spiritual strength and learn and fulfill our Earthly duties. We have to learn about a gospel principle. We discover that Heavenly Father wants us to do, and we strive to gain a spiritual witness about why it is important. Next, we have to make plans to act on what we have learned. We are encouraged to base our plans on our own needs, circumstances, and opportunities to serve others. This is a wonderful chance to take responsibility for our own growth and develop spiritual self-reliance. Then we share what we learn and experience with others. As we do so, we will strengthen our testimony and build faith in those around us. We will increase our ability to talk about the gospel with others. “God is my strength and power,” reports 2 Samuel 22.33. In the scriptures, power is often connected with the power of God or the power of Heaven. It is often closely related to priesthood authority, which is the permission or right to act for God. “I am filled with the power of God,” reports 1 Nephi 17.48. #RandolphHarris 7 of 12
We have so many laws and rules and regulations and are not free do to what we want to do. Everything in the Universe, and the Universe itself is organized by a divine Creator, is governed by laws, known as the laws of nature; and we must have laws of nature; and we must have laws of the land so that we might have order and protect the rights of humanity and punish those who infringe on the rights of others. Speaking of the laws of nature, have you ever stopped to think what would happen if we could not depend on the Sun rising at a certain time each morning? Of if the Earth failed to rotate on its axis for only one day, or for just a few minutes? Or if the law of gravity were suspended? In a very short time, the Earth and all humankind would be destroyed. All those bodies of the Universe are controlled in space and move according to law. If iron, when heated, were to expand one day and contract the next, it would be impossible for anyone in the World to operate a machine shop or produce implements of any kind. These laws are immutable and must be such that we can depend upon them at all times and under all circumstances. It would be interesting to review in our minds all the things we do every day and see how totally we depend on the laws of nature and how they must be followed to the very letter in order to accomplish our purposes. “There is no power but of God,” reports Romans 13.1 #RandolphHarris 8 of 12
We have seen people walk on the Moon, and we have marveled that people and spacecraft from different countries can have rendezvous in space. We have watched the Viking leave on a mission to Mars in search of evidence of life. If any of the natural laws had been ignored or had failed to operate, the space missions would have been complete failures and lives would have been lost. We are awed when we read of the predictions of astronomers who can foretell so accurately the appearance of comets and eclipses. All of this is only because through the laws of nature, the Creator keeps creation in its course. Law is simply the application of truth. Let me draw your attention to some statements taken from the writings of great thinkers. Truth is the logic of the Universe. It is the reasoning of destiny; it is the mind of God. And nothing that humans can devise or discover can take its place. There is no progress in fundamental truth. We may grow in knowledge of its meaning, and in the modes of its application, but it is great principles will forever be the same. “You shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you,” reports Acts 1.8. The clash of souls touches off the flashes over the Winter jasmine, and we walk hand in hand into the World of youth. You are a streak of cool water that flows into my heart. The water changes into vintage wine that will intoxicate us in happiness. #RandolphHarris 9 of 12
God gave law to all things, by which they move in their times and seasons. And their courses are fixed, even the courses of the Heavens and the Earth, which comprehend the Earth and all other planets. And they give light to each other in their times and in their seasons, in their minutes, in their hours, in their days, in their weeks, in their months, in their years. The Earth rolls upon her wings, and the Sun gives his light by day, and the Moon gives her light by night, and the Stars also give their light, as they roll upon their wings in their glory, in the midst of power of God. “Behold, all these are kingdoms, and any person who has seen any or the least of these has seen God moving in his majesty and power. So, regardless of whether or not we know or understand the laws of nature, they always operate the same. A child, though ignorant of the law, will get burned if he touched a hot stove. If we disregard the law of gravity, we may get seriously hurt. If we know and understand the laws of nature and live by them, we benefit thereby and can be free of the hazards facing those who ignore these laws. “I am truly full of power by the spirit of the Lord,” reports Micah 3.8. When the seed of love is sown into our hearts, we have to water it with loyalty and we have to cultivate it with sincerity, and then the product it bears is sure to be happiness. #RandolphHarris 10 of 12
It is necessary that we be governed by laws, which are made not alone to curb the evildoer, but to protect the rights of all. We believe that governments were instituted of Go for the benefit of humanity; and God holds people accountable for their acts in relation to them, bot in making laws and administering them, for the good and safety of society. We believe that no government can exist in peace, expect such laws are framed and held inviolate as will secure to each individual free exercise of conscience, the right and control of property, and the protection of life. We believe that all governments necessarily require civil officers and magistrates to enforce the laws of the same; and that such as will administer the law in equity and justice should be sought for an upheld by the voice of the pubic if a republic, or the will of the sovereign is to sustain peace and tranquility. Bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible; still, while they continue in force, the should be religious observed. In reality, the person who defies or flouts the law is like the proverbial fool who saws away the plank on which he or she sits, and disrespect or disregard for law is always the first sign of a disintegrating society. Respect for the law is the most fundamental of all social virtues, for the alternative to the rule of law is that of violence and anarchy. “Withhold not good when it is in the power of thine hand to do it,” reports Proverbs 3.27. #RandolphHarris 11 of 12
There is no reason or justification for people to disregard or break the law or try to take it into their own hands. It is the duty of citizens of any country to remember that they have individual responsibilities and that they must operate within the law of the country in which they had chosen to live. “We believe that all people are bound to sustain and uphold the respective governments in which they reside, while protection in their inherent and inalienable rights by the laws of such governments; and that sedition and rebellion are unbecoming every citizen thus protected, and should be punished accordingly; and all governments have a right to enact such laws as in their own judgments are best calculated to secure the public interest; at the same time, however, holding sacred the freedom of conscience,” Doctrine and Covenants 134.5. Many a rainy or shiny day has passed amidst drifting leaves, but your melodious song still lingers in the woods in my memory and your enchanting figure files from time to time into my dreams that arouse my memory of the past days with gentle breezes, murmuring brooks, white clouds and Sunlight. Short as it was, our meeting has shaped my life. Please accept my lasting yearning for you. “For this cause I have raised thee up, to show in thee my power,” reports Exodus 9.16. #RandolphHarris 12 of 12
Give Your Faith to No One Undeserved
We desire to possess a beauty that is worthy pursuing, worth fighting for, a beauty that is core to who we truly are. We want beauty that can be see; beauty that can be felt; beauty that affects others; a beauty all our own to unveil. Egyptians worshipped God in all things, and they believed they possessed a profound magic by which they were able to draw down cosmic powers into the statues of their gods, and that they reflect the divine mind behind the Universe. The idea behind it was they could turn from thinking about God to addressing him, and that way they were able to communicate with the living God, as distinct from merely giving intellectual assent to the God of philosophers. Intelligent, loving devotion to God has always been important with through eternity, it will never become obsolete. Because of the way different cultures channel God, it becomes obvious why scholars have long maintained that each era has a unique spirit, a nature or climate that sets it apart from all other epochs. Another remarkable and apparently pleasant feature of the spiritual existence is the absence of the measure of time and space as we know it here on Earth. God sent his word to heal us, and there is no time or distance in their spirit. Divine love permeates every part of our lives because God is greatly concerned with the quality of character we are building. The future the Lord has planned for us will be built on the strength of character we forge by his grace. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
It is God’s intention that our lives should be a seamless manifestation of his Spirit. God’s qualities are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The Lord has made abundant provisions for his indwelling our lives here and now. A fundamental aspect in our caring for our souls is to understand that we are always in the presence of God and it is important to redirect our minds constantly to the Lord. God is the great longing focus of our souls, and we are privileged to walk in this profound reality. God provided for human freedom through a doctrine of self-creation: humans are free even in the act by which they come into existence, for God allows human to collaborate in their own creation. God makes available a distinctively authentic and free mode of existence to all humanity. Only through practice of virtue are we able to transcend the barriers that separate the mental life of one age from that of another. “If you fully obey the LORD, your God, and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, The Lord, your God, will set you high above all the nations of Earth. If you obey the Lord, all these blessings will come upon you and accompany you. You will be blessed in your city and blessed in your country. You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out. The LORD will grant that the enemies who rise up against you will be defeated before you,” Reports Deuteronomy 28.1.1-3 and 6-7. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
Most people experience a rush of pleasure the moment a puzzling solution comes to them. When God puts a promise in our hearts, we have to come to the place where we believe in that promise so strongly no one and no circumstance can move us. Beauty grows in us to the extent that love grows, because charity itself is the soul’s beauty. As the soul is the life of the body, so God is the life of the soul. As spiritual knowledge unfolds, it must be understood, valued, obeyed, remembered, and expanded. The greatest achievement humankind can make in this World is to become familiarized with the divine truth, so thoroughly, so perfectly, that the example or conduct of no living creature in the World can ever turn us away from the knowledge that we have obtained. Of all treasures of knowledge, the most vital is the knowledge of God. The role of obedience in gaining spiritual knowledge is crucial. The Lord gives us gifts. He will quicken our minds. God will give us a knowledge that is so deeply rooted in our souls that it can never be rooted out. All we have to do is seek for the light and the understanding which is promised to us, and which we can receive, as long as we are true and faithful to every covenant and obligation, will become a treasure we are allowed to possess. “We trust God will deliver us, and deliver us out of the hands of our enemies,” reports Alma 58.37. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
The satisfaction of performing a benevolent action will certainly encourage acts of benevolence in someone who desires the advantage of society. We must acknowledge the place of God in our lives, as we are already under his government. Our discoveries in nature have already prepared us to accept the main claims of revelation about God as a creator and judge. I do not like to see things on purpose. I like them to soak in. A friend asked me to go to the top of the state capitol castle once, and I told him that he should not treat park as a sight—it is a feeling, an emotional experience. And the same with every place. When you slow down and have a moment to reflect on everything, it is very beautiful. Some people go to watch people, I enjoy looking at the nature and the architecture. When there are not many people around, you can get a sense of how majestic everything is. It is like sensing God. There is perhaps no better evidence of the psychological impact nature can make than to look at the landscape and just be at peace. It is a warmth so powerful that even the blue sky is barely perceptible through the all-consuming, healing, green atmosphere. It is as if, the trees, grace, flowers, the statues, and the architecture of the castle cols the atmosphere, like rain in a time of drought, or shade at an oasis in the desert. It can be a very spiritual experience to reflect on the living memorial. Happiness should be all one feels. Just like a sunny autumn day. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
Profound spiritual truth cannot simply be poured from one mind and heart to another. It takes faith and diligent effort. Precious truth comes a small piece at a time through faith, with great exertion, and at times wrenching struggles. The Lord intends it to be that way so that we can mature and progress. As packets of knowledge unfold, they must be understood, valued, obeyed, remembered, and expanded. As each element of truth is encountered, we must carefully examine it in the light of prior knowledge to determine where it fits. Ponder it; inspect it inside out. Study it from every vantage point to discover hidden meanings. View it in perspective to confirm one has not jumped to false conclusions. Prayerful reflection yields further understanding. Such evaluation is particularly important when the truth comes as an impression of Spirit. This awareness of age had a halo of innocence around it, and it also enjoys a measure of nobility. Spiritually sensitive information should be kept in a sacred place that communicates to the Lord. That is how we are to treasure it. Gaining spiritual knowledge is not a mechanical process. It is a sacred privilege based upon spiritual law. We can receive inspired help, as long as we humbly ask our Eternal Father. We must also seek the divine light, exercise faith in the Savior, and strive to live righteous lives. God will bless us and lead us as we move through this wonderful World. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
Our Father in Heaven loves all of his children equally, perfectly, and infinitely. The Lord’s love is an advantage and brings out the flavours of the personality. The Lord’s love can carve out an interior space where wisdom can take up residence. Character strengths and virtues are brought into existence by God. We love virtue. It is always nice to have people in our lives who are good in some important way. Good people make us laugh, support us in hard times, and inspire us. Virtuous actions are better than ordinary behaviours because virtues integrate ethics and health, are embodied traits of character, are sources of human strengths and resilience, are embedded within a cultural context and community, contribute to a sense of meaningful life purpose, and are grounded in the cognitive capacity for wisdom. We are expected to wait calmly in the face of frustration, adversity, or suffering because we are connected to something bigger than the self and the present circumstances. As we endure, God will give us the gift of acceptance, which is unconditional. Given that charity or supernatural love is paramount in our spiritual life, it is clear why we have a high level of devotion to God. When we accurately reflect on ourselves, we realize the excellence of our natural gifts. There is no knowledge of self without knowledge of God. “It is the Lord, your God, you must follow, and him you must revere,” reports Deuteronomy 13. 4. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
The human person recognizes an intimate unity of the body and mind and understands that they are held in unity by the spiritual soul (as secondary formal and efficient causes) and by God (as ultimate first, formal, efficient, and final causes). People who use both reason and will in finding the standard moral knowledge are guided by well-ordered love, which is associated with healthy physiological and psychological functioning. The divine being is nothing else than the human being, or, rather, the human nature purified, freed from the limitations of the individual human. Our knowledge of God is our acknowledgment of his attitude toward us, especially his attitude of benevolence and love. The character strengths of this virtue include love, kindness, and social intelligence. Humanity relies on doing more than what is only fair—we must show generosity when an equitable exchange would suffice, kindness even if it cannot (or will not) be returned, and understanding even when punishment is due. “Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better World, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope comes of faith, makes an anchor to the souls of people, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God,” reports Ether 12.4. Intelligence exists and we interpret it. Justice, as a civic strength, is the underlying foundation of healthy community life. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
We need to recognize the hard mortal realities in all of this and must use common sense and guidance by personal revelation. We need to remember that trials and temptations are an important part of our lives. When people are faced with adversity or affliction, we are advised not to criticize others for the way they choose to exercise their moral agency. “Pray for them that repentance may come unto them,” reports Moroni 8.28. We each also have the privilege to carefully and prayerfully seek the Lord’s will for regarding our individual challenges and dilemmas. Personal revelation is personal, indeed. It is not based on gender or position, but on worthiness. It comes in response to sincere inquiry. “And the remission of sins bringeth meekness, and humbleness of heart and because of our meekness and humbleness of heart cometh the visitation of the Holy Ghost, which Comforter filleth with hope and perfect love, which love endureth by diligence unto prayer, until the end shall come, when all the saints shall dwell with God,” reports Moroni 8.26. When our lives are in balance, before we realize it our lives will be full of spiritual understanding that will confirm that our Heavenly Father loves us and that his plan is fair and true and we should strive to understand and enjoy it. We should be worthy of trust, and always keep confidences. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
God is the Lonely Cosmic Dancer Whose Routine is All Creatures and All Worlds
We know the current state of things is not right. It has been brought about by a script for what supposedly constitutes a successful nation that has been playing out particularly the past few years. While it is granted that there are inevitable tragic aspects of life, knowledge of existence and nature is to be preferred to illusions. America is no longer a population building country and some might even say that it is overpopulated, which is why housing, cars, clothes, food, medical care, and legally assistance is so expensive. The symbols that used to guide our minds, hearts, and souls no longer sustain us as a people. We are waking up from illusion of material reality. People want things to go back to the way they used to be in the past when a person could work at a supermarket and could afford a brand-new house, car, and support a family on one’s salary. Because the United States of America has, in modern times, been outsourcing jobs and production to other countries, so that companies can earn more profits from lower labor cost, it has hurt America by creating huge deficits and suppressing the wages of American workers. The economy consists of millions of people engaged in many activities—buying, selling, working, hiring, manufacturing and so on. A closed economy is a self-contained economic unit that has no business or trading relations with anyone outside of that unit. This model is why the United States of America used to be so innovative and produced a large number of scholars and Academics, as we had to solve our own problems and produce future leaders, so people took education more seriously. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
A closed economy does not engage in international trade in goods and services, nor does it engage in international borrowing and lending, which is why generations of the past could keep the national deficit low and traditional jobs, not just professional ones allowed people to ability to afford to live in their communities, as the closed system was characterized by a small amount of exposure to external markets, as opposed to the relatively open economy. As a nation, our economy used to follow the circular-flow diagram, where firms produced goods and services using inputs such as domestic labor, and capital (buildings and machines). These inputs are called the factors of production. Households own the factors of production and consume all the goods and services that the firms produced. Self-reliance means that the country does not have to worry about the global economy. A closed region is independent from other regions, so there is no fear of coercion nor interference. A direct result of not relying on other countries and regions is that the closed economic region is independent. An open economic region, or one that depends on importing and exporting, is susceptible to external demands that could weaken the region’s infrastructure, much like when OPEC manipulated that gas prices to cause fuel to cost three or four times as much as it used to, while you are still making the same wages before the cost of fuel skyrocketed. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
Market manipulation in an open economy means you have less money to spend on others bills and goods and services, which could hurt your bottom line, or even cause your lifestyle to become unaffordable. This also may force businesses to sell good at extravagant prices just to cover transit, which can lead to weak sales. Much like how consumers and businesses now have to pay taxes on items they buy online, along with shipping, which will make the items much more expensive than the ones they buy in the store. Because of the increased costs, more consumers might return to shopping in the physical stores in the material World, which is the point, but this will also add to more cars on the road, and more people waiting in line at the stores, and that is a major disadvantage because time is money. When prices increase, it also may keep people from obtaining goods necessary for living, which can weaken the economy. Closing such regions economically eradicates high transit costs, leaving more money for the internal economy. This is why President Trumps is placing tariffs on foreign goods because many American companies are being shut down, as they cannot compete with more cost-effective products coming from other countries. Because we are importing so many goods and services, much of our money is being sent overseas, helping other nations develop faster, and is causing a national security problem. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
The catch up effect, alternatively called the theory of convergence, demonstrates how poor or developing economies grown faster compared to economics with a higher per capita income and gradually reach similar high levels of per capita income. Basically, poorer nations are grow much faster because of higher possibilities of growth and over time catch up with the richer countries in terms of per capita income such that the divide between the two gets minimized. And that is why the trade deficit and national debt is a matter of national security. Because of opportunities of growth available for developing economics like access to technological know how from the developed Word and increasing returns to capital, they may one day become a World power, which puts the status of the United States of America in jeopardy. The US trade deficit is $46.2 billion, and the US national debt is $21.2 trillion. If America loses its status as a World power, we could be occupied by another government and subjected to human rights violations, slave wages, loss of private property, slavery and more. Empirical evidence suggests that while some developing economics have been able to effectively tap the available advantages to grow faster and catch up with robust economies, this has not been true for a large part of the developing World, but with the United States going into so much debt and borrowing so much money for foreign sources, we are weakening America as a nation. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
Mr. Desmond Townsend
Also, if we had a closed economy, we would have already figured out how to produce cars that run on other types of fuel, besides oil. And face it, no one, especially the youth wants to sit around charging a car for hours. We are already experiencing an over consumption of electric, which is why we had rolling blackouts a few years ago and the very reason power companies are asking you to use major appliances at night and not heat nor cool your homes as desired. As a result of high demand on electricity, the California Energy Department is placing restriction of all new homes three stories and less that they have to have solar panels, which will increase the cost of your home by at least $10,000.00 and there is no cap on that expense. As you know, prices of technology can rise overtime. And the federal government plans to hike interest rates four times this year to keep up with inflation, so the cost of the mortgage will rise even higher, making homes even more expensive than they are. People are demanding more homeownership, family, and financial security. A desire for community and authenticity is strong and growing. Many individuals want what is real, and not just regularly scheduled programming and the constant onslaught of fame, wealth, greed, social propaganda, and survivalist tendencies it celebrates, and that is why we have to support goods and services produced domestically. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
If you want your wages to rise to keep up with inflation, we have to start supporting American made goods and services, which will cost us more in the short term. However, as costs keep rising and more money is being spent in our domestic economy, in the long term it will also cause wages to rise so people can afford to buy the goods and services. However, if we keep sending our money overseas and buying foreign products, other nations will have caught up to America and surpass us, while we decline and the cost of living increasingly becomes unaffordable. Already, 43 percent of Americans are struggling, and experiencing food shortages, economical insecurity, and unstable households. Some people worry each month about paying their bills and as the bills keep going up and their wages are not, they fear they are being priced out of their homes, or eventually will be. Decreases in the money supply, cuts in government spending, and increases in taxes lead to lower inflations, but higher unemployment. Because we have been outsourcing labor, wages are suppressed. How many people do you know who can live off $10-$15 an hour, when rent for a one-bedroom apartment is on average $1,505.00 a month? An economist actually reported if minimum wage were keeping up with inflation, it would be about $28.00 an hour. And with the mandated increase in minimum wage to $15 an hour, many skilled workers will experience pay deflation, so something really needs to be done to correct this unstable market. It is not fair to work your way up to $20 an hour and a new employee with no experience comes in making $15.00. #RandolphHarrris 6 of 8
Because of how stressful life and the economy are for many is the reason a lot of people do not watch the news. No one wants to be reminded daily that they are being priced out of a country they and their ancestors helped build. However, when we feel far from God, we need only to make the decision to turn from sin and face the Savior, where we will find the Lord waiting for us, with his arms outstretched. God is here to guide us, and we are just one prayer away from receiving the guidance again. On matters of such supreme moment, the truth rather than fiction is the more fitting ideal of rational people. The power of God awaits our demand and reception. This promised blessing, claimed by faith, brings all other blessings in its wisdom. What an incomparable gift comes to those who put their faith in God. That gift is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God’s power in action, his active force. It is the vital, or animating, force in living creatures. God sends out his spirit by projecting his energy to any place to accomplish his will. The Holy Spirit inspires us, empowers us and guides our understanding. The Spirit touches our hearts and transforms us, renewing the image of God in which we were created. God wants us to have the Spirit’s gifts to build up the Lord’s kingdom. Miracles will be wrought, the infirmary will be healed, and signs and wonders will follow the believers. The Spirit is, as well, the ultimate solution for all our maladies and problems. Those who respond to the Spirit the Lord renews and transforms into the image of God. Guilt, stress, hostility, and a host of other problems melt in the presence of the Holy Spirit. Father, son, and the Holy Ghost are one Spirit. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
Some may think we should not expect daily guidance from the Spirit. However, to live by the Spirit is a high privilege. It brings a sense of cam and certainty as well as the products of the Spirit such as love, joy, and peace. In many situations, being familiar with the voice of the Holy Ghost is a matter of spiritual life and death. Whoso will hearken unto the word of God, and hold fast unto it will never perish; neither can the temptations and the fiery darts of the adversary overpower them unto blindness, to lead them away to destruction. Following the feet of the people ahead of you on the path is not enough. We cannot just do and think what others are doing and thinking; we must live a guided life. We must each have our own understanding of faith. Then we may go to the Lord with humble confidence, knowing that he shall lead us by the hand, and give us answers to our prayers. Then we will achieve a realistic outlook on the World and will be freed from the knows of the heat and the identification of the self with the Spirit. Thus liberated we will perform our royal duties efficiently, like an actor on the stage. Following this example and the teachings in the scriptures, we will no longer be motivated by temptations and they will no longer possess us. Like a child playing alone, God is the lonely cosmic dancer whose routine is all creatures and all Worlds. From the tireless stream of the Lord’s cosmic energy these flow without end as God executes his graceful, repetitious movements. #RandolpHarris 8 of 8
He Opened the Door, Your Honor
There are many currents in this Earthly life—some are safe and others are not. The current that is good for the soul encourages reflection and reverie. There are rich prospects for revival in the privileges granted the golden years of life that allow people to live out their existence with a far greater purpose in mind. The golden years are about more than accumulating comforts. It is for resuming activities that we gave up during the commotion of our earlier years, which may renew our spirit for life. Physical problems may have reduced our choices and stripped away previously dominant aspects of our identity, but it is also important to remember that many seniors are actually much more active and stronger than some people who are younger than they are. Maturing is not always a life sentence to pain and suffering, it all depends on how well a person takes care of themselves. However, throughout life, our bodies tend to get banged up, even young people suffer debilitating pains, and this requires them to slow down. Yet, injuries and age are not reason for anyone to give up on their dreams. If a person has one hour to live and discovers oneself and one’s life in that hour, is not this a valid and important growth? There are no deadlines on living, none on what one may do or feel so long as one is alive. People have to resolve to invest themselves in the sacrifice of love and mature with Godly zeal. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
Infirmaries or age may disrupt so many of the patterns that previously constrained us that we may at least attain the freedom to be fully ourselves. The powerful forces in our lives surface as we age, allowing one to discover previously untapped abilities, and pursue their development. These forces are real. We should never ignore them. Their development may inspire us with fresh purposes. We do not take well to uselessness. Many become painfully aware that absence does not make the heart grow founder. Retirement and indisposition challenge us to redefine what it means to be of use and to have purpose. Outside of making a living, raising a family, or practicing the trade or profession around which we have built our identity, most of us would be hard-pressed to designate other aims. One does not incorporate a professional self for some forty years only to cast it off suddenly as a worn outer garment. It is our flesh and blood, giving meaning and purpose to our lives. Our lives are structured such that grappling with emptiness is usually concentrated at the end. In youth, our time is filled with schooling. Middle age is consumed with work, and the last third of life is left to leisure. Younger people crave work and free time, middle-aged people long for leisure and opportunities to learn, and older people wish above all for useful activity and new knowledge. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
We could wipe out ninety percent of senior’s woes at a stroke by finding them suitable work. Real work and real education, that is the open secret of satisfaction from birth to passing. Some people cherish the opportunity to hang clothes on a line outdoors. The fresh smell, the wet fabrics, the blowing wind, and the drying Sun go together to make an experience of nature and culture that is unique and particularly pleasurable for its simplicity and the good memories it brings of youth. Clothes tossed on a line by the wind arouse a pleasurable scent and touch upon the vitality, the deep pleasures of ordinary life, and unseen forces of nature. The Sun kills germs and therefore the clothes smell so much better. If you are old enough to recall, you could smell the Sunshine in lined dried clothes and with the mixture of fabric softener, they smelled like Heaven. As keepers of home and gardens the spirit still move and speak but if we attend. They found in the unplanned sproutings in the flower beds, and sudden moments of blinding beauty, as where Sunlight glances across a newly-waxed table or the wind stirring clean laundry into fresh choreography. Many of the arts practiced at home are especially nourishing to the soul because they foster contemplation and demand a degree of skill and artfulness, such as changing a lock, arranging flowers, cooking and making repairs. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
What counts as real work is an individual question. Activities such as teaching, creating things of beauty, or helping other people are highly esteemed by some. I have a friend who is taking time over several months to paint a garden scene on a low panel of her dining room wall. Sometimes these extraordinary arts bring out the individual, so that when you go into a home you can see the special character of your hosts in a particular aspect of their home. Attending to the soul in these ordinary things usually leads to a more individual life, if not to an eccentric style. However, those accustomed to more traditional careers may not be satisfied with the kinds of work they are able to do within their reduced physical capacities, or around the house. What is sometimes needed during retirement is a willingness to accept a kind of excommunication from the things from which one formerly derived satisfaction. A stumbling-block for many is that the work available to them is unpaid. Many believe that the labourer is worthy of one’s hire, that you get what you pay for. It is very hard for a lot of people to believe that their work is valued when they do it for nothing. Assigning worth to a task according to the amount of money received is an attitude not easily discarded, no matter how vehemently reassurances are offered that one’s unpaid work is valued. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
We each employ personal constructs, customary channels through which our thoughts reach conclusions, and that these constructs limit what we are able to perceive. When a person is under pressure one is not likely to develop new channels; instead one will tend to reverse oneself along the dimensional lines which have already been established. A man who had been a successful packing designer had a stroke in which he lost the use of his right hand. He recounts a painful moment of reckoning that occurred soon after his return home from the hospital: I was home alone. I cannot recall the exact circumstances but I suspect I must have tried to do something with my right arm and failed. Then it hit me—the realization I had been trying to deny since I had my stroke. I was going to be crippled for the rest of my life. They say that your past life flashes before you when you are drowning. I do not know about that, but it certainly happened to me with this realization. “Now when our hearts are depressed, and we are about to turn back, behold, the Lord comforted us and said: Go amongst your brethren, and bear with patience thine afflictions, and I will give onto you success,” reports Alma 26.27. Seeing his situation in such dire terms left this man choiceless and bereft. However, reading the scriptures is supposed to remind God of his promises, and he is more likely to fulfill them. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
Contained in the designs he had rendered with his right hand had been all he knew of his talents and all he has surmised about making a meaningful life. The mysteries of God are unfolded unto us only according to his will and by the power of the Holy Ghost. Eventually, the man realized that there was more to him and to life than had emerged in his previous career, but much time and struggle elapsed before he was able to widen his views to this extent. Once the initial pressures of disability or idleness abate, our former ways of perceiving may gradually fall away. “God will not give you any more than you can handle,” reports 1 Corinthians 10.13. A woman who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) at the young age of thirty-seven states, “The knowledge that I have MS has made me want to be even more clear about exactly what life is and to be direct in my response. Tamia, a successful and absolutely gorgeous singer with one of the most beautiful voices many have ever hears was also diagnosed with MS, at the tender age of twenty-eight. It was difficult for her to deal with the symptoms and attacks while trying to keep up her successful career. “God the Father of all compassion and the God of all comfort, who consoles us in all our troubles, so that we can alleviate those in any trouble with the solace we ourselves receive from God,” reports 2 Corinthians 1.4. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
Some people find that they are satisfied by their sheer pleasure of being in the midst of activity. It fills a person with soul, reflects their love of nature, and irrepressible eccentricity of the imagination. When imagination is allowed to move to deep places, the sacred is reveled. The more different kinds of thoughts we experience around a thing and the deeper our reflections go by its artfulness, the more fully its sacredness can emerge. To feel their lives are worthwhile, others need to participate in something larger than themselves. They need to know that somewhere, at least for a few hours a week, their presence is expected and their efforts make a difference. It gives people a feeling of being alive again. Many feels like they have a new lease on life. There is no reason why one should sit back and vegetate because one has reached a certain age or suffers from injuries. There has to be meaning in what we do. It follows, then, that living artfully can be a tonic for the secularization of life that characterizes our time. We can, of course, bring religion more closely in tune with ordinary life by immersing ourselves in formal rituals and traditional teachings; but we can also serve religion’s soul by discovering the natural religion in all things. The route to this discovery is art, both the fine arts and those of everyday life. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
If we could loosen our grip on the functionality of life and let ourselves be arrested by the imaginal richness that surrounds all objects, natural and human-made, we might ground our secular attitudes in a religious sensibility and give ordinary life soul. Until we manage to redefine our purposes in this way, our days may lose their momentum and our spirits may yield to lassitude. When a fifty-three-year-old man was forced to retire from his position as a corporate executive due to worsening osteoporosis from vertebral compressions fractures, which caused pain that got worse when he would stand or walk, trouble bending and twisting his body, he spent the next several months dreaming all night long that he was at work. He even felt envious and degraded each morning as he watched his wife leave for her job. After struggling through the chasm of having nothing to do, he eventually emerged with another view of his circumstances. An elderly neighbor asked him for help doing her taxes. He had been feeling so worthless that he was surprised that she thought of him. Then another neighbor needed help doing her budget. She had gotten into bad debt with credit cards, so she started coming over once a month to figure out how to match her income with her expenses. Then a friend asked his advice in managing his stock. It kept building like that. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
We can approach the depth that is the domain of our soul when we find the essential passion, that solid, palpable, and intellectually satisfying appreciation of life beyond our perceived limitations. After a while, he started seeing ten or fifteen regular clients. Because he cannot go to them, they come right to his living room. He would do everything from balance checkbooks to manage stock portfolios. He does it for free because they are so kind to him and acting as their accountant and investment manager gives him the chance to use his education and experience. This man was finally able to relinquish his previous notions of a useful life and replace them with ideas that fit his circumstances. Many of the crises of the latter half of life or by an on-set disability, is marked by desperate bids to retain old channels of satisfaction and fulfillment. It is only when we let go of the familiar that fresh life can come in and revive us by imagination with exceptional range and depth. God is the minimum as well as the maximum. The small things in everyday life are no less sacred than the great issues of human existence. “Behold, my beloved brethren, we came into the wilderness not with the intent to destroy our brethren, but with the intent that perhaps we might save some few of their souls,” reports Alma 26.26. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
Treatment deals with thoughts rather than with people. We must be careful never to associate a negative condition with the person who suffers from it. It does not belong to you nor anyone else. Perfection is already accomplished; it was and is and will remain. There is a perfect idea back of every organ and there is a perfect actor back of all life. The more completely you realize this the more effective will be your psychological treatment, because this treatment is a conscious pronouncement about the spiritual self and its relationship to the Universe or God. Faith and trust in the Lord requires us to acknowledge that his wisdom is superior to our own. We must also acknowledge that his plan provides the greatest potential for spiritual development and learning. Through their age and disability, some people are able to speak up for others and share in their suffering and let them know someone understands. Some are able to help save lives and help others prosper with their career and knowledge. If these people had not matured or suffered from a loss of ability, they would have never been able to reach the millions and give them hope, or simply help their neighbors avoid financial ruin and homelessness. “God is mindful of every people, whatsoever land they may be in; he numbers his people, and his bowels of mercy are over all the Earth. Now, this is our joy, and we will give thanks unto God forever. Amen,” reports Alma 26.37. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
There is Power in Being an Understander and Listener
Pure mind is in a state of harmony. We want to be encircled in the arms of our Heavenly Father’s love and guidance. At different times in our history we have denied soul to classes of beings we have wanted to control. Certain groups of people, at one time, had been deprived of having the ability to possess a soul. In our day, we assume that things have no soul, and thus we can do to them what we will. If we knew in our hearts that all beings and all things have a soul, we could not govern them as conscious subject over inert objects. Instead, we would have a mutual relationship of affection, respect, and care. We would be less lonely in a World that is alive with its own kind of soul than we are in a mechanical World we think we need to sustain with our technological efforts. Collectively we are like the burdened individual who thinks he or she has to get up early every morning in order to help sun rise. This is not all that uncommon a neurotic conception, and it reflects an attitude we all share, in part, as participants in the spirit of the times. If there is such a thing as mental healing it must be based on the supposition that all form is a manifestation of mind and that mind controls its manifestation. If God is all, there is nothing of which to be afraid, for perfect love casts out fear; where love is, fear cannot enter. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
There once was a boy who used to put all of his stuff animals on his bed in alphabetical order. Bear, cat, dog, elephant and so on. One day, his mother realized that they were in a different order and she asked why? The boy responded, “I put them in the order that I love them. Please do not tell them, I do not want to hurt anyone’s feelings.” In all of us there is a profound longing for friendship, a deep yearning for the satisfaction and security that close and lasting relationships can give. Much conspires against friendship in later life. Retirement removes the context from which work friendship may have drawn their momentum. Physical problems may interfere with the nature of our activities and the frequency of our contacts with others. Above all, the passing of old friends may rob us of the will for friendship. When new friends beckon, we are reluctant to put heart and the energy into making news ones. Many people will limit themselves to superficial friendships. They insist that nothing further is possible, staying within safe conversational topics, such as the doings of family members and the trivialities of work. They then point to these dull friendships as proof of their initial belief. Some believe that the new friendships have no place to grow together and that they have heard it all before, and there is nothing left to say. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
Simple love, honestly expressed, gives hope and value to others. We tend to shun in others what we fear in ourselves. Yet mustering our willingness to look beneath the surface of other people’s dispositions if the only way to counter this fear with hope. If instead we keep averting our eyes and refusing to make accommodations, our intolerance will fill us with dread as our own surfaces deteriorates. We may leave ourselves stranded when we disallow soul to simple things around us because we lose that important source of soul for ourselves. Concretely, a tree can tell us much in the language of its form, texture, age, and colour and in the way in presents itself as an individual. However, in this expression of itself, it is also showing us the secretes of our own souls, for there is no absolute separation between the World’s soul and our own. We are truly the World, and the World is us. When we are satisfied that we know all that is worth knowing about ourselves, or when we accept that there is nothing more to day or to learn from others, we close off our curiosity. We tell ourselves, “I have had enough,” and we stay sad and exhausted. Some people would rather have dinner in complete silence instead of talking about the same problems over and over and so they push themselves to find new ideas and concepts to discuss to keep life interesting. Like the fact that we can clone or pets and buy land on the Moon. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
Perhaps our life in a loving premortal World set up our yearning for true, lasting love here on Earth. Taking an interest is half of inspiration. There is power in being an understander and listener. As life gets physically more difficult, we need commitments to others to bind us to life. Those who stay insular find that their spirit for life dwindles along with their physical powers. Gift have to move from one person or another, or they lose their values. Anything contained within a boundary must contain as well its own exhaustion. The gift that is not used will be lost, while the one that is passed along remains abundant. The gift of continuing to be alive, when passed on to others through friendship, makes the spirit abundant every as the body wanes. Many people surprise themselves with the quality of the friendships they are able to form, once they put aside their biases. Most people want sibling-like equality and reciprocity in their friendships. Individuals who are open to their needs and back up the relationships. We need to cultivate our relationships to the ensouled World through simple daily mindfulness and imaginative practices. We must carefully expose ourselves to art, architecture, food, landscapes, cultures, and climate. Life is rich in what it can offer the soul, but in order to receive that richness we must learn to enjoy things in moderation and use them with great discernment. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
We are divinely designed to give love and be loved, and the deepest love comes when we are one with God. The soul straddles the eternal and the temporal and the full blend of these two dimensions gives life depth and vitality. The body of God is perfect, including every manifestation of itself. Humans are the body of God. Turn things into thoughts and heal the thought. Spiritual enlightenment in the mind heals the body because the body is mind in form and because spiritual enlightenment changes the form of thought in mind. Religion and theology show us the mysteries and the rites that inform every piece of ordinary modern life. To care for the soul we will need to give up our limited ideas of what psychology is, our attempts to gain rational control over our moods and emotions, our illusion that our consciousness is the only sign of soul in Universe, and our desire for dominance over nature and fabricated things. We will have to expose ourselves to beauty, risking the irrationality it stirs up and the interference it can pace in the way of our march toward technological progress. We may have to give up many projects that seem important to modern life, in the name of sacred nature and the need for beautiful things. And we may have to do these things both communally and individually, as part of our effort finally to care for the soul. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
Healing emotional distance between each other will require our acceptance of God’s love, coupled with a sacrifice of our natural selfish and fearful tendencies. There is no necessary enmity between technology and beauty, or between care of the soul and development of culture. Science has as much capacity for soulfulness as do art and religion. However, in all these areas we have lived for a long time now as though soul were not a factor and consequently encounter soul only in intractable problems and deep-seated neuroses. For instance, we have amazingly efficient cars, but marriage is becoming impossible to sustain. We produce movies and television programs without end, but we have little imagination about living in a peaceful international community. We have many instruments for medicine, but we do not understand except on the most rudimentary ways the relationship between life and ailments. We do not have to lose pleasure and fun in order to give the soul what it needs, but we do have to give it attention and articulation. As long as we leave care of the soul out of our daily lives we will suffer the loneliness of living in a dead, cold, unrelated World. We can improve ourselves to the maximum, and yet we will still feel the alienation inherent in a divided existence. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
We will continue to exploit nature and our capacity to invent new things, but both will continue to overpower us, if we do not approach them with enough depth and imagination. The way out of this neurosis is to leave our modern divisions behind and learn from other cultures, from art and religion, and from new movements in philosophy that there is another way to perceive the World. We can replace our modernist psychology with care of the soul, and we can begin building a culture that is sensitivity to matters of the heart. As the physical Universe has been linked to prayer to God, so our individual experiences may be linked to our spirituality. Spirituality forms our awareness, our realization—an inner feeling and conviction which transcends the experience taking place in an objective World. Take a definite time at least twice each day to be alone, sit down, compose your mind, and think about God. Try to arrive at a deep sense of peace and calm. Then assume an attitude of faith in a power greater than you are. We need to continually deepen our knowledge of and obedience to Heavenly Father. Our relationship with God is eternal. We are his beloved children, and that will not change. How are we going to wholeheartedly accept his invitation to draw near to God and this enjoy the blessing he longs to give us in this life and in the World to come? #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
We are here on this Earth to learn and grow, and the most important learning and growing will come from our covenant connection to Heavenly Father. From our faithful relationship with God comes superior knowledge, love, power, and capacity to serve. We are duty-bound to learn all that God has revealed about himself. We need to know that Heavenly Father’s plan of salvation is that we obey the laws and ordinances of the gospel and gain eternal life and thus become as God is. This is the true and lasting happiness Heavenly Father offers us. There is no other true and lasting happiness. Our challenges can pull us off this course of happiness. We can lose our trusting connection to God if trials drive us to distraction instead of sending us to our knees. A matter of lasting value to the Father is that we learn of him, humble ourselves, and grow in obedience to him through Earthly experiences. God wants us to change our selfishness into service, our fears into faith. These lasting matters can test us to our core. It is now, with our mortal limitations, that the Father asks us to love when loving is most difficult, to serve when serving is inconvenient, to forgive when forgiving is soul stretching. Sacrifice of our personal agendas is required to make room for the eternal plans of God. To live with high degree of prophetic counsel means attending to the small things that keep the soul engaged in whatever we are doing, and it is the very heart of soul-making. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
Our Degree of Gratitude is a Means of Love for God
Think of our physical sustenance. It is truly Heaven sent. We are at home here on Earth. So many people who come here seem lost and emotionally or spiritually homeless. They keep moving, but they never really live anywhere. To get to Heaven, we need to focus less on saving our own soul and more time loving all souls. Loyalty is a reward for remembered generosity. Community, friendship, and generosity are three aspects of life that we may squander until we fully admit to our dependence on one another. Throughout history we find certain schools of thought, such as the Renaissance Platonists and the Romantic poets, that have focused on the soul. It is interesting to note that these soul-minded writers have emphasized certain common themes. Relatedness, particularity, imagination, mortality, and pleasure are among them; another is beauty. In a World where soul is neglected, beauty is placed last on its list of priorities. There are moments in life when our true dependence on one another breaks through. Loyalty is the attribute we most value in our relatives and celebrate in our friends. If we conducted the middle of our lives with an eye to the end of our lives, we would choose a place to live and we would stay. Residing near others with whom we establish a history of reciprocity is the best hope for our future stability, whether we manage to live near blood relations or choose to develop family-like bonds with others. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
No amount of self-reliance can match the confidence derived from years of faithfulness and accumulated gratitude. The assumption that beauty is an accessory, and dispensable, show that some may not understand the importance of giving the soul what it needs. The soul is nurtured by beauty. Many people like to keep close contact with good people they have known since their youth. Some of our friends have been part of the landscape of our lives as far back as we can remember. Having someone to talk to at the end of the day does people a World of good, even just for a few minutes. They know someone is thinking of them, and they can say a thing or two about how their day was. Most people look forward to a short conversation at the end of the day. This is food to the body and pleasing to the soul. If we have lack of beauty in our lives, we will probably suffer familiar disturbances in the soul—depression, paranoia, meaninglessness, and addiction. The soul craves beauty and, in its absence, suffers beauty neurosis. Beauty neurosis is a hyperactive lifestyle that confuses intense activity for the ability to engage with the World. It is not the threat of death, illness, hardship, or poverty that crushes the human spirit; it is the fear of being alone and unloved in the Universe. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
The process that drives creativity has been so mysterious to us throughout human history. The problem with our modern networks is that they become useless once physical frailty catapults our mobility back into the nineteenth century. When our face-to-face contact is cut off, we may as well be three thousand miles away. Prior to reaching our time of frailty, we are wise to survey our lives for pockets of loyalty worth preserving. Starting over is strenuous at any age, but especially when we are emotionally vulnerable or physically fragile. Divine inspiration and reciprocation keeps relationships alive. Bonds with friends and neighbors may mean more than blood oaths, especially if a recent history of giving and receiving animates thee other relationship. Such discoveries contradict what we prefer to believe about the strength of family bonds and our ability to overcome the effects of geographical separation. Scattering across the country causes family members to become strangers to each other, no matter how often they write or call. Verbal contact is not the same as meshing the routines of daily life: going shopping together, exchanging help back and forth, and witnessing each other’s victories and sorrows first-hand. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Our bonds remain strongest when they are sustained by both proximity and mutual need. Beauty assists the soul in its own peculiar ways of being. For the soul, it is important to be taken out of the rush of practical life for the contemplation of timeless and eternal realities. Beauty is arresting. You may find yourself driving along a highway when you suddenly pass a vista that catches your breath. You stop the car, get out for just a few minutes, and behold the grandeur of nature. This is the arresting power of beauty and giving in to that sudden longing of the soul is a way of giving it what it needs. Discussion of beauty can sometimes sound ethereal and philosophical, but from the soul viewpoint, beauty is a necessary part of ordinary life. If only passing a store window and stopping for a second to notice a beautiful ring or amazing car, every day we will find moments when the soul glimpses an occasion for beauty. We know that the objective person, place, and condition are all effects following the causation, which is the mind. And we know that thought is the instrument of mind. The arrow of desire and attachment stops us in our tracks—we are taken by the beauty and feel its pleasure. The point of the momentary seizure is simply to feel the soul with its preferred diet—a sight that invites contemplation. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
From this viewpoint, the word does not have to reach any objective place; it merely describes the place. Identifying itself in mind with the place, it is instantly at that place. For the soul, then, beauty is not defined as pleasantness of form but rather as the quality in things that invites absorption and contemplation. Beauty is something that unlimited gives scope to the imagination; beauty is a source of imagination, and it never dries up. A thing so attractive and absorbing may seize the soul in a special sense. Some of the ancients has reported that the truth is that whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. It will help us to have a complete conviction that our word will always reach the desired condition; it will never fail to objectify where it should, when it should, and in the right way. Nothing but the absolute faith in the Law of Cause and Effect can give us this confidence. If we are going to care for the soul, and if we know that the soul is nurtured by beauty, then we will have to understand beauty more deeply and give it more prominent place in life. It is self-evident that all things come from the invisible, are projected by it, and remain with it. Religion has always understood the value of beauty, as we can see in churches and temples, which are never built for purely practical considerations, but always for the imagination. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
A tall steeple or a rose window are not designed to allow additional seating or better light for reading. They speak to the soul’s need for beauty, for love of the building itself as well as its use, for a special opportunity for sacred imagination. Our thought is an activity of this invisible causation, and when we say, “This word shall manifest in this place,” we may be and we must be certain that it will do so. How much better it would be if all could be more aware of God’s providence and love and express that gratitude to him. Could we not learn from our churches and Victorian homes and temples, to give attention and funding to this same need in our modern homes, our commercial buildings, our highways, and our schools? An appreciation for beauty is simply an openness to the power of things to stir the soul. If we can be affected by beauty, then soul is alive and well in us, because the soul’s great talent is for being affected. The word passion means basically to be affected, and passion is the essential energy of the soul. Let us give thanks to God, for he does work righteousness forever. Our degree of gratitude is a means of love for him. God is the Father of our spirits. He has glorified, perfected body of flesh and bone. We have lived with him in Heaven before we were born. And when he created us physically, we were created in the image of God each with a personal body. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
The Demands of Divine Justice Awaken the Immortal Soul
Pondering takes our thoughts from the trivial things of this World and brings us closer to the gentle, guiding hand of our Maker as we heed the still small voice. We decorate our homes with antiques as a way of capturing soul, and museums are a focal point in our cities because people want to remember vitality. We try to make things and people last forever, but we know that everything has a definite lifespan. That is why opposite tendencies can coexist in us, feelings coexist in us, feelings contradicting each other live together, and what is true and what false can be confused. So much lives in us—wishes and their denials, faith and mistrust, appetites and distastes. They change places so frequently that what is fair becomes foul and what is foul, fair. The more independence we lose, the more torn we become by contradictory urges. Outbursts of anger at family, friends, colleagues, and assistants can take places as some people may resent being rescued as success at ordinary tasks become elusive. However, at the same times they desperately want to be spared their frustrations at not being able to accomplish a project on their own. For many people, to accept help is to miss a chance to prevail, and to go on struggling is taxing and upsetting. We do not want things to die, we do not want life to end, and we are angry if they do—if things no longer function as intended it is an inescapable reminder that everything in the material World is finite. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
No matter how dark the moment, love and hope are always possible. The programming of human concerns as a legitimate scientific endeavor represents the central hope in society. The fundamental principle in care of the soul is that soul needs tending. If we do not tend to things in their erosion of independence, we will take that suffering upon ourselves. Asking for assistance is more complicated than it seems, often evoking a host of conflicted emotions. Some dependent people find the mere act of calling attention to themselves abhorrent. Others can bear this indignity but dislike having to spell out exactly what has to be done on their behalf. Almost all tire of explaining, revealing, and excusing themselves, wish that people would just know what to do and would simply do it without having to be asked or reminded. The best assistance is that which is unobtrusive. Helpers who quietly get things done, rather than announcing their efforts, leave a dependent person’s pride intact. The indebted position is not emphasized, and no mention is made of special accommodations. The fact of vulnerability then recedes into the background, where it can reside without hammering the person’s self-esteem. Thus, we have seen how the emergence of how teaching humans how to once again get in touch with one other is helpful and a necessity. Our Savior knows the heart of each of us. He knows the pains of our hearts. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Repeatedly needing to ask for rides, favors, and special adaptations causes many vulnerable people to feel they must ask for nothing on other levels. Some try to compensate by extending themselves in every other way. For example, an attractive housewife had recently moved into a new neighborhood and was desperately anxious to meet her new neighbors because her husband worked all the time. Finally, someone rings the doorbell; it is the next-door neighbor. She thought to herself, “Thank God I just happened to be brewing coffee, because if I were not, the neighbor just might go away and never come back.” For this woman, the coffee helped to fill the void of loneliness, as it was a tool to use to get her neighbors to sit down and chit chat. This woman survives by remaining attuned to what her friends expect in return for their kindness. She carefully maintains the exchanging, watching to see that each of her acquaintances leaves satisfied. She derives pride and security from accurately detecting what each is getting out of helping her and making sure that these rewards continue to satisfy them. Soul is then revealed, as though it had been hidden for years. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Concealment, whether physical or emotional, only produces a lonely form of dignity. The exercise of influence is essential to retaining both vibrancy and self-respect. Unless we exert control over some aspect of our lives, no matter how mundane or seemingly inconsequential, a significant part of our spirit dies. In situations of dependence, power can be reclaimed through many routes. Any strategy that lessens ambiguity restores authority to dependent people. Insisting that people function accord to a schedule is better for their endurance than putting up with long hours of waiting, especially when they are not feeling well. Just as waiting reminds them minute-by-minute of their helplessness, firm plans convey a semblance of their former control over their lives. When dependent people can count on events taking place at a set time, they can anticipate them almost as if autonomy were still in their possession. There is no waiting, no asking, and no infuriating uncertainty. Until they arrive at compromises that allow for both self-assertion and collaboration, dependent people are often drawn back and forth on a confusing pendulum of contradictions. They are never sure how much leaning on others is acceptable and how much effort they should exert in their attempts to overcome obstacles and frustrations. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
When they are reduced to their function, things and people suffer. Asking for help has always been difficult for a young woman who has mobility issue. She still feels vivacious, but some mornings can hardly walk across the room—even though she wakes up raring to go. What helps her is, “I remember that I’m a gorgeous dame. This is the price I pay to be alive!” Soul is not about the function, it is about the beauty and form and memory. Care of the World soul, therefore, requires that we see things less for what they can do and more for what they are. If we seek the truth, develop faith in Him, and sincerely repent, we will receive a spiritual change of heart which only comes from our Savior. Our hearts will become new again. If we dwell only on our pain, it will inhibit the healing process. Pondering on things that bring us joy and happiness are very important elements in the healing process for the body and soul. We need to spend our time and energy building our faith by turning to the Lord and asking for strength to overcome the pains and trails of this World and to endure to the end for greater understanding. As we ponder the path of life, we can focus our path on righteousness and feel the spirit direct us. “Then the land will yield its harvest, and God, our God, will bless us. God will bless us, and all the ends of the Earth will honor him,” reports Psalm 67.6-7. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
Out of the abundance of the heart and the mouth speak. Today we are keeping careful watch that we think and speak only those things that we wish to broadcast from our minds and returned to us. We desire that everything we think shall be from the hearts as well as from the head. We wish to broadcast kindness and love, and sympathy and understanding, peace and joy. No condemnation, judgment, or fear shall go from us to anyone nor anything. Turning our minds to the divine, we draw into our own souls the essence of everything that is good, true, and beautiful. We draw into our own minds the realization of God and the power of God until our whole beings responds. And this is all we wish to broadcast to the World—something that will help and heal and bless, something that will cause everyone we meet to feel a new strength, a new faith, a new hope. Desiring to receive the divine blessing into our own lives, we wish to broadcast it to the whole Word. Lord, bless and keep us. Make your face to shine up the beautiful World you created. Please be gracious to all of your children. God, lift up your countenance upon the people of this World, and give your faithful peace, both now and forevermore. Resurrection assures us that we will be reunited with our loved ones in the not-too-distant future. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Randolph Harris II International Institute 