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I Know the He Exists Somewhere in Silence—He Has Hid His Rare Life from Our Gross Eyes
I flashed on Deacon last night in my clutches, my questions to him coming angrily as accusations. He knew nothing about any Totality of Salvation, did he? Why, I had already figured that out, had I not? That when I drifted to Earth, in my fantasy, as Saint William Randolph, I had to leave behind a certain Heavenly Knowledge. One can remember an event, an action, a person, a place, a feeling, a procedure, a line of verse, a melody, or a person’s name. One can remember doing such and such, seeing such and such, or thinking such and such. And one can remember where something is, when a certain event happened, why something happened, who did a certain thing, how to do something, and how something looks, sounds, or feels. Although memory is commonly said to be of the past, one can remember facts about the future (I just remembered that there will be a meeting tomorrow), facts about the present (I just remembered that the debate is going on right now), scientific laws and generalizations, and timeless truths of logic and mathematics. What in the name of Heaven is going on? A stinging hurt spread through me, over my face, my skin. I had never felt anything quite like it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 12
Deacon was back there, in the shadows, laughing cruelly, collecting just a seam of the light along the edge of his face and form. I felt his strength recede, and his eyes misted. A glowing fire was quelled, and I had not done it, and an ever-present grief enfolded it. A protective surge rose in me and the wild fantasies reigned again inside of me as if no one else was present. Behind me the ghost whispered contemptuously, “You are not a gentleman, you never were!” I muttered all the obscenities I knew in French and English in a tight whisper. Some people seem to view eternity as a continual existence through time, but others believe it is a timeless present. Despite the variety of uses, philosophers writing on memory have tended, until recently, to concentrate on those uses of “remember” in which it takes its object an expression referring to a particular past event or action. While they have paid some attention to memory of facts (memory that such and such), they have generally restricted this attention to memory of facts about remembering events. Thus they have tended to ignore, or rule out of consideration, cases in which the fact remembered is about the remote past (for example, the fact that Brutus stabbed Caesar), or about the future. #RandolphHarris 2 of 12
For to say that a person remembers an event (and hence to say that he or she remembers a fact about an event, or otherwise came to know of it, at the time of its occurrence, and this implication limits the possible objects of event-memory to past events and actions occurring within the lifetime of the rememberer. And of course it is only such events and actions that one can remember having witnessed or done. I went up high in the air. I traveled fast—faster than a ghost, or so I figured. I drifted about the city of Rocklin, lulled by its lights and its voiced. I wondered how Ava would handle this power, if she would be weeping again. I let myself believe there were no ghosts who could touch me up here or anywhere if I used all my considerable powers, no ghosts who could make me afraid. I said No to hunger. I said to thirst Be still. I slipped down silently into the realm of my fellow creatures. I caught sight of Deacon in the driveway, pulling behind him a pile of suitcases, all dependent upon one huge rectangular bag equipped with excellent little wheels. He was whistling a melody by Chopin and walking very briskly, and I fell into stride beside him. #RandolphHarris 3 of 12
“You are the most dashing man on the street, Little Brother,” I said. “What is with all the suitcases?” “Are you going to let us stay at the house, Beloved Boss?” he asked. His eyes were fired with love. In our short acquaintance, I had never seen him so happy. In fact, I had never seen him happy before at all. “What do you think?” he asked. “Do we crowd you? Do you want us out?” “Not at all, I want you there,” I replied. “I should have told you.” We walked along together, me trying to keep up with his long legs. Ava was in the bedroom, working on the computer we bought at Sunset, first thing she had to have. She was recording every experience, every sensation, every subtle distinction, ever revelation. The notion of the past enters into the notion of memory in another way, for it is true in general that remembering involves having previously learned or acquired knowledge of what one remembers. However, it should not be supposed that when a person is said to remember a fact about an event in the remote past or the future—that is, about an event to which one cannot have been a witness—what one really remembers is learning (for example, reading or being told) that fact; it commonly happens that one remembers a fact without having any recollection of the occasion on which one learned it. #RandolphHarris 4 of 12
Memory of acts (what has been called factual memory) cannot be reduced to memory of events experienced or witnessed by the rememberer (what has been called personal memory), and not all cases of factual memory are cases in which the remembered fact is a fact about a remembered event or action. However, the concealing memory may be connected with the impression it conceals, not only through its contents, but also through contiguity of time; this is the contemporaneous or contiguous concealing memory. How large a portion of the sum total of our memory belongs to the category of concealing memories, and what part it plays in various neurotic hidden processed, these are problems into the value of which I have neither inquired, nor shall I enter here. I am concerned only with the emphasizing the sameness between the forgetting of proper names with faulty recollection and the formation of concealing memories. At first sight, it would seem that the diversities of both phenomena are far more striking than their exact analogies. There we deal with proper names, here with complete impressions experienced either in reality or in thought; there we deal with a manifest failure of the memory function, here with a momentary disturbance—for the name just forgotten could have been reproduced correctly a hundred times before, and will be so again from tomorrow on. #RandolphHarris 5 of 12
Here we deal with lasting possession without a failure, for the indifferent childhood memories seem to be able to accompany us through a great part of life. In both these cases, the riddle seems to be solved in an entirely different way. There is the forgetting, while here it is the remembering which excites our scientific curiosity. It was fun walking along the street again. Feet on the Summer pavements with the heat of the Sun still rising from them. Reese was talking about how she wished she could get rid of some female. I pondered the matter, perhaps for the first time. A body could not survive being dumped in the Honey Island Swamp in the Pearl River Wildlife area. Too many gators. It made me smile bitterly to remember that once others had tried to dispose of me in just the same way. But this poor dead female had lacked my resources when she tumbled down into darkness. Her soul had fled to the Totality of Salvation, of course. We walked on together through a crush of valiant tourists. The town was drippingly hot. Local legend has it that Honey Island Swamp in Louisiana scares people who dare to venture down the road after nightfall and park along the road, reports claim ghost, believed to be slaves from nearby plantations, may jostle vehicles and leave their handprints on windows. #RandolphHarris 6 of 12
The temperatures in the area are said to drop, an indication of a paranormal presence. This swamp is also the home of the legendary Honey Island Swamp monster, which has from time to time been known as the Tainted Keitre. The creature is described as bipedal, seven feet (over two meters tall), with gray hair and yellow eyes. The story goes that a four-story mansion of antebellum fashion once stood on the land in the 1870s, the owner was notorious for beating the enslaved people, both African Americans and European Americans. There was speculation that he was from a race of slave masters from another planet. One day, Charles Deslondes, on the 1882-acre plantation, tried to convince the master to stop beating them leaving deep scars in their backs, and if he would be their friend they would tell him something that might change his life. The slaves warned that he should watch his wife at night because they found a wild boar with its throat gashed out. The evening after the owner received the message, the couple went to bed as usual and the wife, near midnight, slipped outside into the rain to sneak below to the home’s prison to visit the slaves. As the slave she was fond of moved to embrace her, you could hear the chains restricting him rattle in the night air. The next morning, he was hanged high on one of the property’s 500-year-old oak tree and buried below it. #RandolphHarris 7 of 12
Years later, the house sank with the owner, Manuel Andry in it. Legend has it that he was eaten alive by gators and the property turned into a swamp. No records survive to tell us what Charles said the final minutes before the mansion sank, but some suspect he used a powerful voodoo curse and that Manel Andry some how became the swamp monster we hear about these days. Here we seal with lasting possession without a failure, for the indifferent childhood memories seem to be able to accompany us through a great part of life. The riddle seems to be solved in an entirely different way. There it is the forgetting, while here it is the remembering which excites out scientific curiosity. After deeper reflection, one realized that, although there is a diversity in the psychic material and in the duration of time of the two phenomena, yet these are by far outweighed by the conformities between the two. We deal with the failure of remembering; what should be correctly reproduced by memory fails to appear, and instead something else comes as a substitute. We are justified in saying that the diversities in material, in duration of time, and in the centering of both phenomena serve to enhance our expectation, that we have discovered something that is important and of general value. #RandolphHarris 8 of 12
This generality purports that the stopping and straying of the reproductioning function indicates more often than we suppose that there is an intervention of a prejudicial factor, a tendency which favors one memory and, at the same time, works against another. The subject of childhood memories appears to me so important and interesting. What vibe did you get in your secret soul? Good ghost? Bad ghost? Hmm, well, good, obviously. Trying to tell us we have Andry genes. Trying to save us, trying to keep us from breeding some awful mutations, which occurs now and then in the family. A benign ghost. I have told you the whole story. A benign ghost and an awful mutation. Has Reese mentioned the mutation? The lost child? Then I stretched out on my bed. Satin tufted tester above me. Satin counterpane below. Fairly shadowy. I turned my face into the down pillows, of which I always had a sizeable heap, and with all my muscles sort of scrunched up against the modern World. I believe we accept too indifferently the fact of infantile amnesia—that is, the failure of memory for the first years of our lives—and fail to find it in a strange riddle. We forget of what great intellectual accomplishments and of what complicated emotions a child of four years is capable. #RandolphHarris 9 of 12
We really ought to wonder why the memory of later years has, as a rule, retained so little of these psychic processes, especially as we have every reason for assuming that these same forgotten childhood activities have not glided off without leaving a trace in the development of the person, but that they have left a definite influence for all future time. Yet, in spite of this unparalleled effectiveness they were forgotten! This would suggest that there are particularly formed conditions of memory (in the sense of conscious reproduction) which have thus far eluded our knowledge. It is quite possible that the forgetting of childhood may give us the key to understanding of those amnesias which, according to our newer studies, are possessed at the basis of the formation of all neurotic symptoms. Suddenly, there was an agitation in me so greater that only lying alone, scrunched up on the bed, could comfort me. Sleep. Sleep, but I could not. And I had to see if the ghost would come. A clock ticked somewhere. A clock with a painted face and curlicue hands. Not a huge clock. A clock that with its whole soul knew only how to tick and might tick for centuries, maybe had ticked for centuries, a clock to which people would look, and which people would dust, and which people wound with a key, and which people might come to love. #RandolphHarris 10 of 12
There was a clock somewhere in this house, perhaps in the back parlor, the only piece of all this furniture that could talk. I heard it. I knew what it was saying. Its code was lovely to me. Of these retained childhood reminiscences, some appear to us readily comprehensible, while others seem strange or unintelligible. It is not difficult to correct certain in regard to both kinds. If the retained reminiscences of a person are subject to an analytic test, it can be readily ascertained that a guarantee for their correctness does not exist. Some of the memory pictures are surely falsified and incomplete, or displaced in point of times and place. The assertions of persons examined, that their first memories reach back perhaps to their second year, are evidently unreliable. Motives can soon be discovered which explain the disfigurement and the displacement of these experiences, but they also demonstrate that these memory lapses are not the result of a mere unreliable memory. Powerful forces from a later period have moulded the memory capacity of our infantile experiences, and it is probably due to these same forces that the understanding of our childhood is generally so very strange to us. The recollection of adults, as is known, proceeds through different psychic material. #RandolphHarris 11 of 12
Some recall by means of visual pictures—their memories are of a visual pictures—their memories are of a visual character; other individuals can scarcely reproduce in memory the partly sketch of an experience; we call such persons auditifs and moteurs in contrast to the visuels. These differences vanish in dreams; all our dreams are preponderatingly visual. However, this development is also found in the childhood memories; the latter are plastic and visual, even in those people whose later memory lacks the visual element. The visual memory, therefore, preserves the type of the infantile recollections. Only my earliest childhood memories are of a visual character; they represent plastically depicted scenes, comparable only to stage settings. “And it was by faith that these three disciples obtained a promised that they should not taste of death; and they obtained not the promise until after their faith. And neither at any time hath any wrought miracles until after their faith; wherefore they first believed in the Son of God. And there were many whose faith was so exceedingly strong, even before Christ came, who could not be kept from within the veil, but truly saw with their eyes the things which they had beheld with an eye of faith, and they were glad,” reports Ether 12.17-19. #RandolphHarris 12 of 12
I Meant to Have but Modest Needs Such as Content and Heaven
The sky was a faint lilac color now, overcast and reflecting the city glow. The motionless grandeur came about the Earth; the fiery vigor burst from Heaven. For centuries, people have been fascinated by the essential and powerful fall of man. Earthly states are merely coercive institutions which would not exist had man not fallen, and serve simply to issue punishments and remedies for the corruption of human nature. Civil subordination is natural to humans and would exist even if the Fall had not taken place, and cannot be written off as an extraneous penal imposition. Perfection and fulfillment of human nature is in the intellect rather than the will. Law is essentially a rule of right reason, rather than a species of will-based commands. Moral evaluation consists of rational assessments based upon the intrinsic nature of the cases in question and is also susceptible of being interpreted as constituting a restriction on divine omnipotence. It is my ultimate goal to transmute this experience into a level of life participation which is worthy of the immense powers that God has bequeathed to us, a level of life experience which knows no moral shrinking from the most obvious yet painful theological questions which in our transfigured state has made utterly inescapable, the first of which is, obviously, how does God view our essential beings? Perhaps damnation is not a literal Hell with flames, but a state which is defined by the absence of God. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
Humans have a real measure of responsibility for their spiritual condition. The free will of human beings, therefore, can cooperate with God’s grace, and does so. The human will, of course, is never the primary cause of human’s regeneration—the Spirit of God and the preaching of the Word always maintain the initiative—but human’s will is specifically granted a place, and unless there is consent on the human’s part there can be no effective regeneration. The mind is darkened by what it learns when regeneration is absent and cannot understand; the lips are folded, and cannot speak. Regeneration is the impartation of life, spiritual life, to those who are dead, spiritually dead, through their trespasses and sins. It is the Holy Spirit who impart this life. It is truth that the written Word is the instrument which the Holy Spirit uses in regeneration. “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God, which lives and abides forever,” reports 1 Perter 1.23. Regeneration is the spiritual change wrought in the heart of human beings by the Holy Spirit in which one’s inherently sinful nature is changed so that one can respond to God in Faith, and live in accordance with the Will of God. It extends to the whole nature of a being, altering one’s governing disposition, illuminating one’s mind, freeing one’s will, and renewing one’s nature. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
Regeneration, or new birth, is an inner re-creating of fallen human nature by the gracious sovereign action of the Holy Spirit. And the work intended by their regeneration, or in being born again, which is the spiritual conversation and quickening of the souls of humanity, is everywhere ascribed unto them that shall be saved. And this regeneration is the head, fountain, or beginning of our sanctification, virtually comprising the whole in itself, as will afterward appear. Regeneration renews our minds. Being renewed in the spirit of our minds means that our minds now have a new, saving supernatural light, to enable them to think and act spiritually. In the same, the Holy Spirit, implants in our heart a new prevailing love for God, causing the soul to cling to him, and his ways with delight and satisfaction. Our Heavenly Father is all-powerful and all-knowing. He knows our physical struggles. God is also aware of our physical pains due to infirmary, aging, accidents, or birth disorders. God is aware of our emotional struggles, and everything else. God knows each person who has suffered injustice or who has been abused. He knows our weaknesses and the propensities and temptations we struggle with. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
During mortality we are tested to see if we will choose good over evil. For those who keep God’s commandments, they will live with him in a state of never-ending happiness. Of all the paradoxes that help us detach from the ordinary plane of existence and connect with the spiritual plane, suffering that breeds a greater engagement in life is perhaps the most intriguing. Our mortal life is designed by God to be a test and source of growth for each of us. Since the beginning, the tests have not been easy. We face trials that come from having mortal bodies. Sometimes the World and our lives can seem to be in increasing disharmony. However, the loving God who allowed these tests for us also designed a way to make sure we pass through them. God is our father and we are created in his image, entitled through our worthiness to receive revelation to help with our righteous endeavors. We are promised that we may have God’s Spirit with us always. The trunk of the tree does not become superfluous because of a new branch; it makes the branch possible. It takes a prayer of faith, a fervent prayer of faith to our Heavenly Father to be raised unto life eternal. We must encourage ourselves from a central, deep, integrated sense of what we are; what we feel, value, believe, and cherish. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
As personal integrity becomes a more permanent frame of reference from which we operate, we are far less likely to violate one set of needs by satisfying another set. Just as the riverbed guides the river, our best self will guide the way we live our lives. We must pray unto the Father in Heaven with all the energy of our hearts that we may be filled with his love, and that we may be purified. The Savior, Jesus Christ, is putting his name in our hearts. For many of us, our faith in God and Christ is increasing. We are feeling more hope and optimism. And we are feeling the pure love of Christ for others and ourselves. However, sometimes it seems that our hope and faith are being overcome by our troubles. And we may yearn to feel love. Therefore, we have to keep in mind that the human mind is too smart to accept being lied to. The Lord has opportunities near us to feel and share in his love. We can pray with confidence for the Lord to lead us to love someone for him. Because we are principled, we are honest. Because we are loving, we are lovable. Because we are interested in the welfare of others, we are respected. Because our ideas work, we are worth listening to. Because we are determined, we are able to get things done. As we help children of God in their troubles, our own troubles will seem lighter. Our faith and hope will be strengthened. Part of God is inside of us and that voice has the answers. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
God’s voice will give us so much peace. We will find it easier to go from role to role. And will have very little inner conflict over how to act or how to spend our times. It is like we have a kind of cosmic glue holding us together now. In the past, we may have been all fragments, pieces of us darting about in different orbits. To persevere firm and steadfast in faith of Christ, it requires that the gospel of Jesus Christ penetrate one’s heart and soul. That way we will be on one planet in one great orbit, sure of our destiny and our goals. God will give us a new heart, and a new spirit. And God will put his spirit within us and cause us to talk in his statutes. It is challenging but vital to remain firm and steadfast when we find ourselves being refined in the furnace of affliction, something that comes sooner or later to all of us in mortality. Without God, these dark experiences tend to despondency, despair, and even bitterness. With God, comfort replaces pain, peace replaced turmoil, and hope replaces sorrow. Remaining firm in the faith of Christ will bring his sustaining grace and support. He will convert trial into blessings. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
Once we receive God, it may feel that every part of us is blossoming. Suddenly we will be able to stand up to our enemies, feel compassion for them, even. We will not be riddled by worry nor doubt. We will come through these experiences more internally focused, autonomous, and self-directed as we build our integrated sense of self-identity. Instead of basing our identities in career or family roles, our hardier, more self-sufficient, and more inner-directed survivor soul will base our identity on who we truly are. When we learn to trust enough in the wisdom of our own soul to accept how all the various aspects of our personality come together, we will discover the miraculous truth that the whole that is us transcends our individual personality traits. Viewed as a composite, our life has an almost magical coherence and continuity. If we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that the Spirit has touched us more than once and the testimony of the Spirit is real. The temptations and tribulations we experience, with any testing the Lord sees fit to impose, can lead to our full conversion and healing. However, this happens if, and only if, we do not harden our hearts or stiffen our minds against God. The promised healing is the cleansing and sanctification of our sin-wounded souls, making us holy. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
Always remember the good things to come, both now and hereafter, for those who are firm and steadfast in the faith of God. Whenever we can, we must look for opportunities to display our best self. In the Lord’s due time, the additional answers, comfort, and understand about the spirit will come to us through marvelous visions. Our best self is the aspect of us that brings out the best in others and the World, that graces ordinary experience with extraordinary clarity, and that, is the believers are correct, goes with us into the next World. When we face a personal challenge, we also have to understand that each day gives us the opportunity to make life richer, more rewarding. When we have ready (if not constant) access to our best self, amazing things can happen. We are eligible for a kind of genius and will become open to new ideas, more able to weigh touch options, more creative in the way we approach the problems in our lives. We may also begin to get a dose of the cosmic truths whose promise makes every moment an adventure. When we are operating at full throttle, challenged simultaneously at work, at home, and in civic life, as we do everything we can to operate out of our best self—by letting go, staying integrated, listening to our inner voice—we will find that, as a reward, we will rise to every one of the many strenuous occasions of the day. Every day is another day to be happy. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
Eclipse was All We Could See at the Window And Awe was All We Could Feel
The sins of my past rose up to taught me. All my own excesses mocked me. I thought it was nothing short of magnificent. When we got to my house I gave two hundred dollars to my two mortal guards who were happily astonished. When we reached the courtyard garden, and just when I was about to exclaim about the ancient cherub fountain and all the tropical wonders blooming against my cherished stucco walls, I stopped to ponder what loyalty is. Loyalty is not just an act, it is also an attitude. To be loyal to someone, we have to embrace affection or sentiment towards such persons. Loyalty requires the complete subordination of one’s own private interest in favor of giving what is due, and perhaps also the exclusions of other legitimate interests. In this sense, loyalty may often be one-sided, although it need not be. If we could not count on the loyalty of others or give them our loyalty, social life would be not only bleak but also impossible. The back parlor of my house had been cleaned and dusted earlier this very day and I could smell the cleaning lady’s distant perfume. Of course I had never laid eyes on the woman. She came by the light of the Sun, but she did her job well enough for me to leave her big bills. I loved giving away money. I carried it for no other purpose. I slapped a hundred on the desk for her. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
We have desks everywhere in this house, I thought. Too many desks. Did not every bedroom have a little desk? Why so many? I made my usual beeline for the front parlor, peeking into each and every bedroom on the way, as though I really needed to, in order to know that no one was home. The place had too much furniture. Not enough paintings. Too many books. What the hallway needed was Emile Nolde. How could I get my hands on the German Expressionists? The Prophet, 1912 is one of the finest examples of woodcut. There is a great contrast between light and dark, and as a result, dramatic emotional effects. We do not merely sense the pain and anguish of the prophet’s life, the burden that prophecy entails, but we feel the portrait emerging out of the very gouges of Emily Nolde’s knife made in the block. Ava, with her own genius, recently made a copy of the Prophet, using her own face and gold and black, which represents prosperity and nobility. I thought it was very sophisticated. That young lady really has a lot of talent. I value such human qualities as sincerity, courage, cheerfulness, and kindness. Human nature has all sort of lessons driven into it by the pressure of events and reasoning afterwards redefines them and adds new inventions, quickly or slowly. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
Front parlor. Piano. Here was no piano now. I should tell them to get a piano. Had we not passed an antique piano in a window? I had a sudden urge to play the piano—to use my gift to rip at the keys. It was that Bela Bartok concerto still assaulting my mind, and the picture of those two macabre dancers accentuating the music. An essential step in the development of society is the growth of natural justice, which is a bargain for mutual profit not to hurt or be hurt. Natural justice is followed by the characteristic comment that not everybody keeps this bargain, but unless a substantial number do, the human race would have been wiped out. Thus the fact that humankind has survived at all is adduced as a proof that there must have been such a compact. However, it also serves to explain the occurrence of such a compact along Darwinian lines, as an example of survival of the fittest; communities that failed to achieve it must have perished like those ill-equipped forms of life, trapped in the toils of their own destiny, which nature had debarred from increase. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
The social contract is the basis of social cooperation, not in calculated self-interest, but in a natural instinct that impales the strong to have empathy for the less able. The Universe is great; yet it has its limitation, but what is more perfect than a Universe that is rational? Rationality in the Universe is so evident that it is never concealed. The greatness of the Universe is based on the foundation of the existence of rationality which is an order publicly followed and without partiality. We should partake worthily of the sacrament each week and fill our lives with virtuous activities that will bring us spiritual power. As we do this, we will grow stronger in our ability to resist temptation, keep the commandments and be more Godlike. The justice of God is identical with his grace: it is not conditional upon human merit, but is received by faith alone (faith itself being a work of God in humans). God offers humans his justice and creates the response of faith. The security of humans before God rests solely in the Gospel, with its word of forgiveness. From a religious, psychological, and practical standpoint, it stands to reason that we have a vested interest in changing our attitudes, even if evil seems too powerful to oppose. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
Before we can hope to conquer the evil that is out there, we must face the part of us that gives in to these vices, that allows us to lose hope in the face of negativity, that is still the conscienceless, selfish being some have evolved into since birth. Typically, those of us afraid of the evil within project those traits onto others in the World. Projection is the easiest way to avoid dealing with our own darker traits, impulses, and actions. Projection is purely a person blaming others for the wrongdoings, mistakes, or faults they are actually responsible for. Spiritual growth requires the acknowledgement of one’s own imperfection. The destructive power of evil is the inability to admit personal sinfulness, and the corresponding tendency to see others as bad. Fortunately, inner exploration means more than facing personal weakness. Looking closely at oneself also allows for rediscovery of spiritual strengths. Each action we take and each thought we think is a choice between good and evil. Keep in mind that illusions do hurt us twice. They hurt us when they cause us to take action whose logic is based in false ideals; we then suffer the consequences of our bad decisions. Arguably, they hurt us more the second time around, when we have to face the pain of losing the (ineffective and untrue) principles that have guided us. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
Fortunately, through redemptive suffering, we can survive the loss of these illusions, discover important truths, even spiritual growth. Even one episode of deep suffering can destroy our damaging illusions. The deeper the pain, the greater the potential for growth. We can make good use of our heartache, allowing it to dispel a debilitating belief system. Changing the ways we view suffering and learning to put its lessons to good use are two of the best ways to get the most out of our adventure in life. I grew up believing in God, Heaven, and Hell, and the power of the Devil. I was sure that is I followed the Ten Commandments, I would go to Heaven. After all, good boys get Christmas presents, do they not? By the time I was a teenager, my life grew more complicated and confusing. I had these wild dreams about running away and eloping with Paris Hilton. I even convinced myself that if I got a job and a luxury German car and a big house that my dreams would come true. By reminding oneself of the truths we are suffering and what it has revealed, we can empty ourselves of the disillusionment that weighs us down and fill ourselves instead with the wonderful experiences and insights life has to offer. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Sometimes our dreams and illusions are the catalysts that push us to reaching high goals. Paris Hilton is out of the league of most men, but there are other beautiful people we can enjoy. Maybe, if you are like me, and dreamed of someone like Paris Hilton, when you meet your true love you will cherish that person as much as you would a mega star. As natural as it may seem to turn away from or distract oneself from our pain, we might want to consider practicing facing it, daily. When pain arises, it is a good idea to acknowledge this as soon as possible, and then direct our undivided attention toward it, taking care not to turn it into suffering (meaning the over-dramatization of pain). As we become a student of emotions, casting both a finely focused and panoramic eye on them, and get to know them intimately. The more deeply and skillfully we can relate to our emotions, the more we will be able to do so in actual relationship. Human beings resist change, even in a beneficial direction, when we cannot be sure what is a head of us. Until we bid farewell to these former parts of ourselves, we will not be fully prepared to step into the void and grasp the new sense of identity that awaits us on our journey. We have to allow ourselves to feel the depth of our sadness, anger, pain or any losses that hurt us. “And it came to pass that there was no contention among all the people, in all the land; but there were mighty miracles wrought among the disciples of the Savior,” reports 4 Nephi 1.13. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
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
My Friend Must be a Bird Because it Flies! Ah, Curious Friend, Thou Puzzlest Me!
Every experience and every science is possible only by means of certain nonempirical premises, such as the principles of real identity, of the continuity of existence, of constant causality or legality, and of the temporal continuity of becoming, or, in general, by means of fundamental a priori forms or principles, which constitute the organization of human cognitive powers but from whose transcendental validity by no means necessarily follows its transcendental reality. Is human life every worthwhile? Does (or can) human life have any meaning? What did freedom mean to a people who had endured and survived 250 years of enslavement in America? What did the future hold for nearly four million African Americans in 1865? True human life is part of a divinely ordained cosmic scheme and after death some human beings will be rewarded with eternal bliss, no matter what culture, race, gender they are. If we are asked to believe that all our striving is without final consequence, then life is meaningless and it scarcely matters how we live if we all end in the dust of death. According to Christianity, on the other hand, each action has vital significance. God’s grand design is life eternal for those who walk in the steps of Christ. Here is the one grand incentive to good living. As life is seen to have purpose and meaning, people find release from despair and the fear of death. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
Whatever meaning life acquires is derived from the encounter between God and human beings. Freedom meant many things to many people. However, to most people who had been enslaved, it meant that families would stay together. Freedom meant that women and men would no longer be sexually exploited. Freedom meant that moving around without having to obtain permission. Freedom meant that labor would produce income for the laborer and not the master. Freedom meant working without the sting of the whip, thrashing against your skin and drawing blood as an incentive to work harder, faster, better, stronger, longer. Freedom meant one could own land, cultivate it, and build their dream home. Freedom meant, if charged with a crime, a trial before jury. Freedom meant voting. Freedom meant citizenship and having the same rights as White people. Years after slavery ended, a Texas woman, who had once been enslaved, called Mrs. Margrett Nillin was asked if she preferred slavery or freedom. “Well, it is this way, in slavery I owned nothing and never owed anything. In freedom I own my home and raise my family. All that causes me worriment and in slavery I had no worriment, but I prefer freedom,” reports Mrs. Margrett Nillin. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
The meaning thus conferred upon human life cannot be understood in terms of some finite human purpose, supposedly more ultimate than the meeting itself. For what could be more ultimate than the Presence of God? It is true that God is not always near, but in times of Divine farness are by no means devoid of meaning. Times of Divine nearness do not light up themselves alone. Their meaning extends over all of life. There is a dialectic between Divine nearness and Divine farness and it points to an eschatological future in which it is overcome. Some people believed in the perishableness of all good things and the ultimate extinction of all their hopes and achievements in death. As slavery ended, the most urgent need for many freed people was finding family members who had been sold away from them. Slavery had not destroyed the African American family. Husbands, wives, and children went to great lengths to reassemble their families after the Civil War. For years and even decades after the end of slavery, advertisements appeared in the African American newspapers appealing for information about missing kinfolk. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
The following notice was published in the Colored Tennessean on 5 August 1865: Saml. Dove wished to know of the whereabouts of his mother, Areno, his sisters Maria, Neziah and Peggy, and his brother Edmond, who were owned by Geo. Dove of Rockingham County, Shenandoah Valley, Virginia. Sold in Richmond, after which Saml and Edmond were taken to Nashville, Tennessee, by Joe Mick; Areno was left at the Eagle Tavern, Richmond. Respectfully yours, Saml Dove, Utica, New York. To be a moral individual is to be part of the human community and to be actively concerned in the life of other human beings. It is indeed undeniable that people frequently fail to bring about the ends of morally inspired acts or wishes, but phenomenological analysis discloses that the real moral value and meaning of an act does not depend on the attainment of the external goal. The good will is the moral intent or attitude. It is here that we find the existential meaning of life: Since that which is morally good contains its meaning and value within itself, it follows that it is intrinsically worth while. The existence of what is morally good is therefore better than its nonexistence. However, the existence of what is morally good is essentially connected with the existence of free moral individuals, and hence it follows that the existence of human beings as moral agents is better than their nonexistence. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
In North Carolina, a northern journalist met a middle-age African America man plodding along, staff in hand, and apparently very footsore and tired. The nearly exhausted freedman explained that he had walked almost six hundred miles looking for his wife and children who had been sold four years earlier. There were emotional reunions as family members found each other after years of separation. Ben and Betty Dodson had been apart for twenty years when Ben found her in a refugee camp after the war “Glory! Glory! Hallelujah,” he shouted as he hugged his wife. “This is my Betty, sure yes. I found you at last. I was haunted and haunted until I tracked you up here. I was bound to hunt until I found you if you were still alive.” The hunger for the love of their family and the faith of God sure was apparent. There was nothing more valuable than family to Americans at one time. Other searches had more heart-wrenching results, however. Husbands and wives sometimes learned that their spouses had remarried during the separation. Believing that his wife had died, the husband of Laura Spicer remarried—only to learn after the war that Laura was still alive. Sadly, he wrote to her, but refused to meet with her. “I would come and see you, but I know I could not bear it. I want to see you, but I do not want to see you. I love you just as well as I did the last day I saw you, and it will not do for you and I to meet.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
Tormented, he wrote again pledging his love. “Laura I do not think that I have changed any at all since I saw you last—I think of you and my children every day of my life. Laura, I do love you the same. My love to you never has failed. Laura, truly, I have got another wife, and I am very sorry that I am. You feel and seem to me as much like my dear loving wife, as you ever did Laura.” The conclusion is inevitable: the best or least undesirable form of existence is reached when, finally, we descend benath the threshold of consciousness; for only there so we see individual pain entirely disappear. Sometimes people reach a negative answer on the ground that unhappiness usually or necessarily outweighs happiness. If the generative act were an affair of pure rational reflection, could the human race continue to exists? Perhaps few who have directly observed the worst agonies and tortures that may be the lot of human beings or animals would subscribe to this judgment, but we have to be careful not to play down the horrors of life because we have to correct the miseries of the human scene. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
One freedman testified to the close relations that bound many enslaved families when he replied bitterly to the claim that he had a kind master who had fed him and never used the whip. “Kind! Yes, he gives men corn enough, and he gives me pork enough, and he never gives me one lick with the whip, but where is my wife?—Where are my Children? Take away the pork, I say; take away the corn, I can work and raise these for myself, but give me back my wife of my heart, and give me back my darling children, as they were sold away without my consent. Emancipation was also a traumatic experience for many former slave masters. A Virginia freedman remembered that Miss Polly died right after the surrender, she was so heart broken that her African America were going to leave her alone and lonely. Another former slave, Robert Falls, recalled that his master assembled the enslaved people to inform them they were free. “I hate to do it, but I must. You all are not my human capital anymore. You are free. Just as free as I am. Here I have raised you all to work for me, and now you are going to leave me. I am an old man, and I cannot get along without you. I do not know what I am going to do.” In less than a year, he was dead. Robert Falls attributed his master’s death to the end of slavery. “It killed him.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
Family bonds are formed in many ways. And, perhaps a lot goes unsaid, but the fact is that people need other people to survive. In preindustrial societies a kin group may live and work together, share economic resources, and conduct religious and social activities in common. However, declines in household size are becoming more common in both developed and developing countries, because of lower fertility, increased migration, and much greater numbers of persons living alone than at any time in the last. Today, with the exceptions of parents, siblings, and a handful of other close kin, many White, middle-class Americas see relatives rarely—typically at family reunions or holiday celebrations. Moreover, they do not expect much of their more distant relatives, nor do they feel particularly obligated to them. For those at the top of the stratification hierarchy also, such as the Cresleigh, Harris, Hearst, Hilton, and Winchester families, kinship networks are important and often provide their members with homes, jobs, and other support. The less affluent also maintain close bounds with relatives. There is a will to live, and that will is fueled by human concern and human companionship. It makes people feel good to know someone is concerned about them, one lady expressed that concern people have for her is the source of her will to live most eloquently. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
Some people seem to have more social support than others. Some seniors lay in their beds for weeks in the hospital, and only medical personnel visit them. However, the fact that someone cares and their faith in God keeps them alive. “The things I shall tell you are made known unto me by an Angel from God. And he said unto me: Awake; and I awoke, and behold he stood before me. And he said unto me: Awake, and hear the words which I shall tell thee; for behold, I am come to declare unto you the glad tidings of great joy. For the Lord hath heard thy prayers, and hath judged of thy righteousness, and hath sent me to declare unto thy people, that they may also be filled with joy. For behold, the time cometh, and is not far distant, that with power, the Lord Omnipotent who reigneth, who was, and is from all eternity to all eternity, shall come down from Heaven among the children of men, and shall dwell in a tabernacle of clay, and shall go forth amongst people, working mighty miracles, such a healing the sick, raising the dead, and causing the lame to walk, the blind to receive their sight, and the deaf to hear, and curing all manner of aliments. And he shall cast out the adversary, or the evil spirits which dwell in the hearts of people,” reports Mosiah 3.2-6. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
Two Blue Jays Went Out at Noon and Waltzed Above a Stream
Doubt must be genuine, not feigned, and unless it is employed in good faith, one is likely to err in doubting real evidence, just as, without methodological doubt one is likely to err in allowing unwarranted belief. Accordingly, doubt has no privileged status over belief. Ability to attain truth as well as falsehood must underlie the quest for truth, and freedom is thus a condition of the possibility of knowing truth as well as of being mistake. “Better for one person to perish than for a nation to dwindle in unbelief,” reports 1 Nephi 4.13. Freedom is a double dilemma. Either causal necessity or freedom is a fundamental truth, and each doctrine must be asserted either necessarily or freely. If necessity is the true doctrine, my affirmation thereof is eo ipso necessary, but since neither doubt nor belief relative to evidence would function in that determination, doubt results. If necessity is true but I affirm freedom, then in addition to my inconsistency (for my affirmation is made necessarily), there is only a subjective foundation for knowledge and morality. Given the truth of determinism, erroneous as well as true judgments are necessary, and any supposed distinction between them is illusory. “Come to knowledge of true Messiah,” reports 1 Nephi 10.14. Stop listening to the tyranny of the natural life and win freedom into the spiritual life. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
According to the hypothesis of freedom, if I freely affirm global necessity I am fundamentally inconsistent. If I affirm freedom under the same hypothesis, not only is my affirmation consistent with the hypothesis but I have a foundation for knowledge and morality. Under the double dilemma, the only satisfactory alternative is freely to affirm freedom. Freedom is essentially the power to add some novel reality to the existing World. Causality must be explained through the freedom and not vice versa. The data that are present to given event of consciousness arise out of the past relative to that event; they are past actualities, but present potentialities for the internal character o that event of consciousness out of which a determining decision is made. Human consciousness is a succession of self-creative events, each of which is given its ancestor selves as well as other data, and each of which is partially causa sui, a dependent independence. Thus, the totality of causal conditions of any human experience does not make this experience necessary, but only possible, while internal decision makes it contingently actual. All choice-making contains some arbitrary. “Because people are redeemed from Fall, they have become free forever,” 2 Nephi 2.26. The Savior has set us free from sin. We must reply on this energy. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
In extending these doctrines to theology, and taking as axiomatic the concept that freedom, responsibility, and moral and religious values depends upon choice-decisions that an omniscient God need not know future contingents, since, in relation to any divine experience, they are not yet existent. To be knowable is to be determinate, and if all were known from eternity, then all would be eternally determinate, and time and choice-making would be illusions. Also since contingents are unequivocally in part causa sui, they are not wholly dependent on divine power. Far from viewing divine power as absolute total control, it is insisted that the only power worthy of God is the far greater one of creating self-creators. Real choice in the World is incompatible with all-embracing necessity, and it is neither metaphysically requisite nor religiously desirable that God be wholly immutable and eternal. God must have a temporal aspect in order to come to know contingents as they are realized; thus he remains always omniscient in knowingly all there is to know. This theology is thus that of an eternal-temporal being, his omniscience and omnipotence being relative to the irreducible contingency and self-creativity in the World. #RandolpHarris 3 of 13
The essence of the self is consciousness of action against the resistance and limitation of reality. This could be rendered: I will, or I strive, therefore I am. Thus, personality is existence as it is formed by the double cogito: hindered by obstacles, elevating itself by and towards value. People participates in absolute and transcendent value. Although value outruns one and is not wholly one’s creation, it is made determinate by one in a given, concrete situation. Reality, then, is at once the organ of self-creation and an obstacle to it. In a sense it degrades value, yet it actualizes value by making it determinate. We are, moreover, called back to awareness of the value-creating source in which we participate. This is a spiritual flow, or upsurge (essor). Some obstacle has to break the continuity of the upsurge before the self, concentrating upon it the body’s energy, begins to will. The willing self owes its being and consciousness to the obstacles it encounters. We participate in a World of absolute value and a World brute reality and create ourselves unceasingly through them. Therefore, our experiences, even the undesirable ones, make us who we are, even if it is not who we intended to be when we set foot on this journey in life. However, the important thing is to keep faith in God and follow his doctrines and covenants so we can like who we are and feel good about our lives. Because as long as we have faith, our dream will still come true. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
Once we realize all that it cost God to forgive us, we will be held as a vise, constrained by the love God. The worth of a person does not consist in the truth one possesses, or thinks one possesses, but in the pains one has taken to attain that truth. For one’s powers are extended not through possession but through the search for truth. In this alone one’s ever-growing perfection consists. Possession makes one lazy, indolent, and proud. If God held all truth in his right hand and in his left the everlasting striving after truth, so that I should always and everlastingly be mistaken and said to me, “Choose,” with humility I would pick on the left hand and say, “Father grant me that; absolute truth is for thee alone.” What is required of humanity is not to assent to the propositions of a creed, but sincerity, human love, and tolerance. Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the less affluent by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed. Though there are less affluent people in our society, the average American has enough food and clothing—at least enough so that these are not one’s only concerns in life. As one moves up the scale of motivations during one’s early childhood and concentrated more and more on the second level of the hierarchy, safety and security needs. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
Children are explorers, testers, discoverers for themselves. How else can I discover me? A small boy (five years old) called Trayvon told me, “I am smarter than people thing I am!” I asked him, “In which way?” His answer was….”I do dangerous things (like walking to the store by myself) and I do not get hurt!” I did not tell him that he should not nor that he should. How else can there be freedom? How else can there be joy? Naturally, it is important to teach a child how to avoid danger. However, in teaching this lesson, the adult must be sure the child does not also learn to fear the source of potential anger, in and of itself. We have an innate propensity to get ourselves noticed, and noticed favorably, by our kind. No more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose and remain absolutely unnoticed by all the members thereof. As one grows through childhood, the individual moves from being dominated by the need to learn and maintain one’s safety and security to the stage of testing out one’s abilities in a more social area. However, we learn if we put our trust in human beings first, then end result will be our despair and hopelessness toward everyone. We must trust what God’s grace can do. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
Life, as we live it today, is more highly socialized, more urbanized, more—so far as external relationships are concerned—standardized than it used to be. The World has become uncomfortably small; we have not yet gained a complete control of our excessive procreational activity; so that there are far too many of us, and, being so closely crowded together, we have to adopt all sorts of new precautions to avoid friction and permit of the greatest amount of mutual freedom available within our unduly narrow frontiers. So many of the old traditional social taboos having become antiquated or no longer adequate, there has been a furious activity in making new laws and regulations, without a due recognition of the fact that old taboos can only be replaced by new taboos, and that mere legal enactments, enforced, or left unenforced, by paid officials or the police, to be effective mist themselves become taboos, printed on the fleshy tablets of the individual citizen’s heart. And as a supernatural miracle of God’s grace, we stand justified, not because we are sorry for our sins, or because we have repented, but because of what God has done. Through identification with God, we can be freed from sin and have God’s very righteousness imparted as a gift to us. “The LORD your God will put all these curses on your enemies who hate and persecute you,” Deuteronomy 30.7. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
Challenging—and being challenged by—other is essential for our growth as is nurturance, but this does not mean that relational challenge is always a good thing. If challenge is not delivered with at least some compassion, it will tend to overpower rather than empower, and it will generate either submission or rebellion. If it is too soft or indirect, it will likely lack in needed impact; if it is aggressive, it will more often than not be met with defensiveness, defiance, or a caving in that does no one any real good. One of the most difficult things about a challenge itself is that it is inherently confrontational—not in some melodramatic way, but in the literal sense of the word confront, to stand in front of. Nothing sideways or devious or passive-aggressive about it. To confront is to directly come up against, to be face-to-face with. Unfortunately, this often carries some negative connotations, suggestive of hostility or pushiness. However, compassionate confrontation does not have to a contradiction. If we engage in it with strongly embodied presence, compassion, and clarity, confrontation can be a life enhancing process. This in itself is a real challenge, asking plenty of us, but not so much that it is not doable. “Great blessing of the Lord upon the family of Lehi in wilderness,” 1 Nephi 17.2 #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
Challenging—and being challenged by—other is essential for our growth as is nurturance, but this does not mean that relational challenge is always a good thing. If challenge is not delivered with at least some compassion, it will tend to overpower rather than empower, and it will generate either submission or rebellion. If it is too soft or indirect, it will likely lack in needed impact; if it is aggressive, it will more often than not be met with defensiveness, defiance, or a caving in that does no one any real good. One of the most difficult things about a challenge itself is that it is inherently confrontational—not in some melodramatic way, but in the literal sense of the word confront, to stand in front of. Nothing sideways or devious or passive-aggressive about it. To confront is to directly come up against, to be face-to-face with. Unfortunately, this often carries some negative connotations, suggestive of hostility or pushiness. However, compassionate confrontation does not have to a contradiction. If we engage in it with strongly embodied presence, compassion, and clarity, confrontation can be a life enhancing process. This in itself is a real challenge, asking plenty of us, but not so much that it is not doable. “Great blessing of the Lord upon the family of Lehi in wilderness,” 1 Nephi 17.2 #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
Managers are typically evaluated as to how effective and efficient they are. Managing effectively and efficiently requires certain skills—leadership, technical expertise, conceptual skills, analytical skills, and human relations skills. “The Lord’s power is over all inhabitants of the Earth,” reports 3 Nephi 4.1. It is important to commit organizational resources to develop innovative goods and services and expand internationally to obtain new customers for the organization’s products. Good managers must move quickly to take corrective action to deal with unexpected problems facing the organization from the external environment, such as a crisis like an oil spill, or from the internal environment, such as producing faulty good or services. “Therefore, blessed are they who humble themselves without being compelled to be humble; or rather, in other words, bless is one that believes in the word of God,” reports Alma 32.16. For a business to stay afloat, one must allocate organizational resources among different functions and departments of the business; set budgets and salaries of middle and first-level managers. One must also work with suppliers, distributors, and labor unions to reach agreements about the quality and price of input, technical, and human resources; work with other organizations to establish agreements to pool resources to work on joint projects. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
Healthy challenge is not an attack. It asserts, sometimes forcefully so, but does not aggress or violate. Nor does it shame the other, though it sometimes may—without trying to do so—elicit a healthy shame in the other that catalyzes their conscience regarding questionable behavior on their part, while helping draw forth the kind of vulnerability that makes heartfelt remorse possible. Managers must also be able to monitor, evaluate the performance of other managers and employees in different function and take corrective action to improve their performance; watch for changes occurring in the external and internal environment that may affect the organization in the future, and inform employees about changes taking place in the external and internal environment that will affect them and the organization; one must also communicate to employees the organization’s vision and purpose. “Turn to the Lord with full purpose in heart,” reports Mosiah 7.33. One must also be a competent spokesperson. A successful business has the ability to launch a national advertising campaign to promote new goods and services; give speeches to inform the local community about the organization’s future intentions. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
A good leader has the ability to influence employees to work toward organizational goals. Strong leaders manage and pay attention to the culture of their organizations and the needs of their customers. The intention of a healthy challenge, however fiery its expression might be, is not to dominate nor diminish others, but to clearly highlight and buttress life-giving possibilities, not leaving obstruction to well-being unaddressed. People tend to be more at ease with the delivery of this than with the reception of it, so sometimes the greater challenge is not to let one’s reactivity to being challenged get in the way of opening to it (assuming that such challenge is not abusive). Interpersonal cohesiveness is an important quality because the figurehead has to outline future organizational goals to employees at company meetings; open new corporate headquarters building; state the organization’s ethical guidelines and the principle of behavior employees are to follow in their dealings with customers and suppliers. Leader should possess the ability to provide an example for employees to follow; give direct commands and orders to subordinates; make decisions concerning the use of human and technical resources, and mobilize employee support for specific organizational goals. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
Being a liaison is another quality one has to display. Coordinating the work of managers in different departments; establishing alliances between different organizations to share resources to produce new goods and services is a priority and must be done with good intentions. Of equal importance is that we do not exclude from our challenging of another—however strong that might be or might need to be—and that we remain as open as possible to however the challenge might be received. Much of our work here is not to armor ourselves with our challenge—giving—hiding behind its delivery—but rather to remain transparently present as we express it, not letting our passion or conviction obscure or dilute our sensitivity to our recipient. Our succinct, well-grounded intuition, in as fittingly assertive and skillful a form as possible. And there is often a vulnerable piece here: through such challenge, we sometimes might risk our relationship with others, even as we perhaps recognize that it is an even greater risk to not thus speak up. A healthy manager can be fierce and can be gentle. One have to be emotionally vital and emotionally muted. Great leaders can be powerful motivators because they demonstrate a great deal of trust and confidence in their employees. If we do not deliever, we drift on stagnant seas, removed from not just the reefs, but also the depths. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Dare You See a Soul with the Successful Face of Love and Joy at the White Heat?
Vision is one of our most dominant sense. Good lighting is truly everything. Light, natural or artificial, helps us to define spatial relationships, and it stands to reason that many architects must concern themselves with light. Interior spaces demand lighting, either natural, artificial, or a combination of both. Our sense can be deeply affected by the quality of its light, as it is aesthetically the most visually pleasing and complimentary to both the inside and outside of a house. Because our sense are intertwined, others aspects of our spaces, such as acoustic features, artwork, and furnishings, also feel better when lighting is good. Lighting is also appealing because it is dynamic—brightness of light during different times of the day and color fluctuates with passing clouds. The spatial relationships demonstrate how important color—and, by extension, light—is to our experience of space. Electric light technology has made great efforts to emulate the natural patterns of light, and this is an indication that we appreciate and benefit from natural lighting as a species. One of the most dramatically lit spaces in all modern architecture is Le Corbusier’s church of Notre-Dame-du-Haut at Ronchamp in eastern France. The light is admitted through narrow stained-glass windows on the exterior southern wall, but as the window boxes expand through the thick wall, the light broadens into wide shafts that possess an unmistakable spiritual quality. The effect is one of extraordinary beauty. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Architects understand that if they are interested in representing the World, they must learn to incorporate the effects of light in their construction. With increased attention to healthy living environment, people are looking for eye-catching homes that maximize natural light in floor plans that flow, which ass immeasurable value to their homes, as it is one of the largest investments. These homes tend to have more character and soul. They allow the buyer to take a journey and spend time exploring experiences and create the kinds of rooms, which represent places that makes one feel good. Lighting affects the ambiance and mood of a space and can help bring value to the function of architecture, as it plays a role in the way people experience and understand the atmospheric perspective of the architecture. The sense of space that light creates can allow us to see the and appreciate the beauty of the area around us when it is luminous and has intense light by giving the sense that the rooms stretch beyond the limits of vision. This can bring an emotional value to architecture—it helps create a spiritual experience as if we are surrounded by Heavenly light. Whether it is daylight or artificial lighting, light draws attention to textures, colors, and forms of a space, helping architecture achieve its purpose. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
In Heaven there is only pure light, but the fact that we can experience color—which, according to the laws of optics, depends upon light mixing with darkness—promises us the hope of salvation. Aesthetics is where designers and architects focus on the emotional impact and the balance of lighting because they want the people who occupy them houses to be awed as they walk through the doors, and have the ability to show off their product. In many causes light symbolizes the spiritual World, and it is powerful and revealing. It also helps occupants feel safe when navigating a room or entire home. They are able to see the floor and walls around the, which create a feeling of reassurance. Along with a breathtaking layout, the open floor plans and many windows allow for an incredibly energy efficient space. Lighting improves people’s lives, makes a house more beautiful by drawing attention to areas, all while making it easier to see. Ambient luminescence is the use of background lights that illuminates an entire space. It can suggest the freedom of space and can suggest infinity. Accent lighting is a layer that can by dynamic and colorful brilliance aim to excite the optic nerves, and in turn stimulates the body and spirit, quickens the appetite, awakens curiosity, and sharpens the wit. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Some people like to see a beautiful chandelier welcoming them in the house, and lavish wall sconces light the hallway, and areas of the house to be accentuated with pod lights, ceiling fans, pillars, and other architectural features such as sliding glass doors. To enhance vertical a home, light should be directed towards wall surfaces. If there is a wall that is a different texture, or simply one that the occupants should notice more than others, wall washing is a great tool. It will draw attention to the wall and make it appear as its own architectural elements instead of a piece of an entire room. Window treatments can also add style and functionality to a room. When thinking about lighting design, architects always have to take into consideration energy efficiency. Architecture has evolved to design greener buildings and homes. The goal is to be more focused on energy consumption and sustainability. Some new homes, like Cresleigh Domain, even come with solar panels included with the purchase of the home. New smart light designs focus on controlling the lighting from every room of the house. Light dimmers dominate newer designs because they allow for controlling the intensity of the light in a specific area. Smart lighting allows a person to complete tasks in a certain area while only using the light necessary to do so. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
When one spends a lot of time under fluorescent light, the brain tends to get overstimulated. This overstimulation might make people feel uneasy or nervous. This feeling affects concentration and reduces productivity. Light dimmers and warmer lights tend to help with this issue. As humans, we a have built-in biological clock. Our exposure to daylight influences the process. Too much exposure to bright light during the evening can delay our sleeping schedule. Dimming the lights before bed, however, has a calming and drowsy effect. Compliment colors in rooms can highlight the structural design. There is perhaps no better evidence of the psychological impact a change in intensity can make than to look at the newly restored frescoes of the Sistine Chapel ceiling at the Vatican in Rome, painted by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512. Restoration was begun in 1980 and was completed in 1995. The process was relatively simple. A solvent called AB 57, mixed with a fungicide and antibacterial agent and a cellulose gel so that it would not drip from the ceiling, was painted on to a small section of the fresco with a bristle brush. The AB 57 mixture was allowed to sit for three minutes, and then it was removed with a sponge and water that also removed the grime. The process was repeated in the dirtiest areas. The entire operation was documented in great detail by the Nippon Television Network of Japan, which funded the entire restoration project. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
Restorers have discovered that the dull, somber hue always associated with Michelangelo were not the result of his palette, that is, the range of colors he preferred to use, but of centuries of accumulated dust, smoke, grease, and varnishes made of animal glue painted over the ceiling by earlier restorers. The colors are in fact much more saturated and intense that they seem, beside the golden tones of the unrestored surface, almost garish. As a result, there has been some debate about the metrics of the cleaning. Architectural trends are always evolving to make rooms and buildings more sophisticated. By adding a certain color or a combination of colors, one can simply change one’s mood, one’s room by creating optical illusion and make it seem smaller or larger. Color also gives us a certain state of mine, can energize us, can cheer us, can make us feel safe, calm, relax, can increase the ability to concentrate or remind us of pleasant things. Texture can also bring a perfectly fine design up to enviable levels. Texture is the sensation caused by the external surface of objects received through the sense of touch. Paint can be enhanced by adding texture to the walls. It has the ability to spark a mood or drama in a space without having to change out the furnishings, flooring, and architectural details. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Textured wall paneling is sold in sheets that can be attached to the wall, and then painted over. Several wall panel varieties come in different colors, or many home owners prefer to leave them white. Depending on the aesthetic one is trying to create, bold textured wall panels are a nice option for one’s interior walls. Many people like to use ship lap on walls, brick, stone, crushed formica in the paint to look like crystals, or Lincrusta wallpapers, which has various styles and patterns. Some people have walls that look art work. Other texture techniques used on interior walls involve painting murals, patterns, and even trompe l’oeil. Trompe l’oeil is an artistic technique that involves painting realistic images and scenes to give the illusion of textures, and realism. This is used on walls to give a room depth, character, or to change the mood of a room dramatically. Walls that have painted to look like artwork can be done by artisans or interior wall professionals. There are also wallpapers and do it yourself murals that mimic hand painted artwork on walls. Whichever is your method of application, the results can be stunning. Let us look deeply into our own lives, setting our own goals and focusing our plans to align with God’s in a way that will ultimately lead us toward our precious privilege to return and receive blessings. “God has entrusted you with these things, which are sacred, which he will keep and preserve for a wise purpose in one, that he may show forth his power unto future generations,” Alma 37.15. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
Can Human Nature Not Survive Without a Listener? The Only Secret People Keep is Immortality!
One might advocate the ascetic life as a means of pleasing God and winning the eternal bliss of Heaven. Before the advent of the camera, illustration was the primary way that we recorded history, and today it provides visual interpretations of written texts, particularly in children’s books. Because it is so direct, tracing the path of the artist’s hand recorded directly on paper, artists also find drawing to be a ready-made means for self-expression. It is as if, in the act of drawing, the soul or spirit of the artist finds it way to paper. The young man in this picture seems to be doing the most ordinary thing in the World—drawing. We think of drawing as an everyday activity that everyone, artists and ordinary people, does all the time. You doodle on a pad; you throw away the marked-up sheet and start again with a fresh one. Artists often make dozens of sketches before deciding on the composition of a major work. However, people have not always been able or willing to causally toss out marked-up paper and begin again fresh. Before the late fifteenth century, paper was costly and expensive, and people wanted to preserve trees. The young man shown here is sketching on a wooden tablet that he would sand clean after each drawing. The artist who drew him at work, however, worked in pen and ink on rare, expensive paper. This work this represents a transition point in Western art—the point at which artists began to draw on paper before they committed their idea to canvas or plaster. This involves frustration of unfulfilled desires, and self-inflicted pain. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
I showed them the bedroom with the sealed-up window that was painted to look like a window. I showed them the steel plating on the door and the lock. I told them about the human guards twenty-four hours. They were to pull the curtains around the bed, and sleep in each other’s arms. No ray of Sun, no immortal, not mortal intruder, no one would bother them here. Of course they had a long time before Sunrise. Talk, talk, yes. They could wander. However, no spying on the Harris’, no. No probing for secrets, no. No searching for a lost child yet, no. No going home to the mansion, no. I told them I would meet them tomorrow at dusk. Now I had to leave, had to. Had to get out of here. Had to get out of there. Had to get out of everywhere. The open country. Near the Winchester Mansion. Distant rumble of trucks on the River Road. Smell of the River. Smell of the Grass. Walking. Grass wet. Field of scattered redwood evergreens. White clapboard house tumbling to ruin, the way they do in Louisiana, swaying walls and steeply pitched roof embraced and held suspended by the vines. Walking. I spun around. He was there. Technicolour ghost, black tailcoat, waling as I had been, through the grass, tossing aside the champagne glass, coming on. Stopped. I lunged at him, grabbed him before he could vanish, had him by the throat, fingers dug into what sought to be invisible, holding him, hurting what would be immaterial. Yeah, got you! You impudent phantom, look at me! #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
You think you can haunt me! I growled. You think you can do that to me! And just what crazy half-illuminated Afterlife are you from! What are your half-baked mystical promises! What are your half-baked mystical promises! Yeah, come on, what Other Side are you hawking, yeah, spill it, let us hear about Leo Winterland, yeah, testify, how many ectoplasmic Angels are on your side, give me the splendiferous images of your famous fabulous friggin’ self-created, self-sustained astral plane! Where the Hell were you going to take him! You going to tell me some Lord of the Universe sends spooks like you to take little boys to Heaven! (I was clutching nothing.) I was all alone. It was sweetly warm and there was a numbing quiet in the vibration of the distant trucks, a winking beauty in the passing headlights. Who missed the deep silence of so many past centuries? Who missed the deep darkness of the long pre-electric nights? Not me. When I reached Winchester Mansion, Randolph was standing on the terrace. Loose gray hair mussed, cotton pajamas, sashed robe, bare feet. A mortal could not have discovered him, standing in the shadows, waiting. An empathetic face, patient celibate alertness. Self-discipline is a genuine virtue, but it denies desire only when this is necessary to achieve an inclusive and harmonious satisfaction. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
Until the late fifteenth century, drawing was generally considered a student medium Copying a master’s work was the means by which a student learned the higher art of painting. Thus, in 1493, the Italian religious zealot Savonarola outlined the ideal relation between student and master: “What does the pupil look for in the master? I will tell you. The master draws from his mind an image which his hands trace on paper and it carries the imprint of his idea. The pupil studies the drawing, and tries to imitate it. Little by little, in this way, he appropriates the style of his master. That is how all natural things, and all creatures, have derived from the divine intellect.” Savonarola thus describes drawing as both the banal, everyday business of beginners and also as equal in its creativity to God’s handiwork in nature. For Savonarola, the master’s idea is comparable to divine intellect. The master is to the student as God is to humanity. Drawing is, furthermore, autographic: it bears the master’s imprint, his style. By the end of the fifteenth century, then, drawing had come into its own. It was seen as embodying, perhaps more clearly than even the finished work, the artist’s personality and creative genius. As one watched an artist’s ideas develop through a series of preparatory sketches, it became possible to speak knowingly about the creative process itself. By the time Giorgio Vasari wrote his famous Lives of the Painters in 1550, the tendency was to see, in drawing, the foundation of Renaissance painting itself. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
Giorgio Vasari had one of the largest collections of fifteenth-century—or so-called quattrocento—drawings ever assembled, and he wrote as if these drawings were a dictionary of the styles of the artists who had come before him. In Lives he recalls how, in 1501, crowds rushed to see Leonardo’s Virgin and Child with St. Anne and Infant St. John, a cartoon (from the Italian cartone, meaning paper), a drawing done to scale for a painting or a fresco. “The work not only won the astonished admiration of all the artists, but when finished for two days it attracted to the room where it was exhibited a crowd of men and women, young and old, who flocked there, as if they were attending a great festival, to gaze in amazement at the marvels he had created,” reports Giorgio Vasari. Though this cartoon apparently does not survive, we can get some notion of it from the later cartoon illustrated here. Giorgio Vasari’s account, at any rate, is the earliest recorded example we have of the public actually admiring a drawing. The two works shown here illustrate why drawing merits serious consideration as an art form in its own right. In Leonardo’s Study for a Sleeve, witness the extraordinary fluidity and spontaneity of the master’s line. In contrast to the stillness of the resting arm (the hand, which is comparatively crude, was probably added later), the drapery is portrayed as if it where a whirlpool or vortex. The directness of the medium, the ability of the artist’s hand to move quickly over paper, allows Leonardo to being this turbulence out. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
Through the intensity of his line, Leonardo imparts a degree of emotional complexity to the sitter, who is revealed in the part as well as in the whole. However, the drawing also reveals the movements of the artist’s own mind. It is s if the still sitter were at odds with the turbulence of the artist’s imagination, an imagination that will not hold still whatever its object of contemplation. Movement, in fact, fascinated Leonardo. And nothing obsessed him more than the movement of water, in particular the swirling forms of the Deluge, the great flood that would come at the end of the World. It is as if, even in this sleeve, we are witnesses to the artist’s fantastic preoccupation with the destructive forces of nature. We can see it also in his famous notebooks, where he instructs the painter how to represent a storm. Rustlings, as if the house was full of ghosts. Glance of the real true hateful Randolph was out of the corner of my eye. It was Leonardo who turned. Then Randolph on the other side, and then there was Aaliyah, and the sound of taffeta as though from an old-fashioned floor-length dress. Leonardo turned again. His blue eyes fastened on me. He was worn down yet immeasurably strong, proud of the house and mildly happy with the way I looked at it. The night outside beat hard on the windows, the song of the winged things, throb of the frogs, with the full authority of the big garden. Narrow hallway, soaring walls. Evil stairs. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
Oh, what fearful noises were heard throughout the dark air as it was pounded by the discharged bolts of thunder and lightening that violently shot through it to strike whatever opposed their course. Oh, how many you might have seen covering their ears with their hands in abhorrence at the uproar….Oh, how much weeping and wailing! Oh, how many terrified beings hurled themselves from the rocks! Let there be shown huge branches of great oaks weighed down with men and borne through the air by impetuous winds…You might see herds of horses, oxen, goats and sheep, already encircled by waters left marooned on the high peaks of the mountains. Now they…huddled together with those in the middle clambering on top of the others, and all scuffling fiercely amongst themselves…The air was darkened by heavy rain that, driven aslant by the crosswinds and wafted up and down through the air, resembled nothing other than dust, differing only in that this inundation was streaked through by the lines drops of water makes as they fall. The alien fragrance again. However, more than that the smell of mortal death. How did I come by thus? Hand touching the newel post, sparked off it. Mortal tumbling down and down. Stairs made for the word headlong. These doors like temple doors rise up in protest to this domestic constriction. Added in 1868, everything just a little smaller in this room, but the best plasterwork in all the house. A wall of books, old leather. A magnificent ceiling. Tiny faces up there in the plaster medallion. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
Red carpet, went to the long window that opened on the small side porch and peered out as though measuring the World specifically by these particular lace curtains. Peacocks in the lace curtains. Because we can see in the earlier drawing of the sleeve a fascination with swirling line that erupts in the later drawings of the Deluge, we feel we know something important not only about Leonardo’s technique but about what drove his imagination. More than any other reason, this was why, in the sixteenth century, drawings began to be preserved by artist and, simultaneously, collected by connoisseurs, experts on and appreciators of fine art. One might regard the ascetic life as a means to liberation from this World suffering. It would be unrealistic to deny that we all suffer from time to time and that there are those for whom life is mostly suffering. It would be equally unrealistic, however, to deny that for mist of us the evils we experience are more than balanced by the genuine values we enjoy. Granted the existence of evil, the obvious expedient is to improve our World rather than to make it even worse by adding the sufferings involved in ascetic practices. If escape were desirable, there is no guarantee that the ascetic life would actually lead to freedom. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
My Worthiness is All My Doubt–Conform My Soul as it Were a Church unto Her Sacrament
Spontaneous creativity of the individual soul makes a work of art and that work of art is the human body. The soul forms a continuous spectrum, a rainbow in which the blue end is consciousness and the red end instinct. The body and consciousness together as both being soul manifestations. The body that the soul creates is the whole cosmos in microcosmic form. The display of the soul in the World, brought about through the act of human making, constitutes culture. Education in tis sense concerns the drawing out of soul to conjoin with World soul, and participation in culture consists of living in the unity of soul visible in the World. If we substitute for the World soul the word force, then we get just the principle which underlies the physics of the skies. The motive force is a soul; yet the force diminishes in proportion to distance, just as light diminishes in proportion to distance. This force must be something substantial—substantial not in the literal sense but in the same manner as we say that light is something substantial, meaning by this unsubstantial entity emanating from a substantial body. The impulse for learning originates in an alluring display of the beauty of the World, which evokes desire for intimate connection with the soul of the World. “Because of meekness and lowliness 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. #RandolphHarris 1 of 27
The Heavenly machines is not a kind of divine, live being, but a kind of clockwork (and one who believes that a clock has a soul, attributes that maker’s glory to the work), insofar as nearly all manifold motions are caused by a most simple, magnetic, and material force, just as all motions of the clock are caused by a simple weight. These physical causes are to be numerical and geometrical expression. The Holy Ghost no longer merely fills the space between the motionless Sun and the fixed stars. It has become an active agent, a vis mortix that derives the planets. Nobody before had suspected the existence of such a force emanating from the Sun. The moving force of the Sun is similar with the light emitted by it. Things draw us to intimate knowledge as if they need us for their completion. Much like God—he needs humans for a reason. The beauty of the World draws the soul out of an inclination toward self-enclosing mastery of the World through disengagement and into engagement with reality. This living desire to experience the World pulsing through the body wants to initiate in us a care for all things. “Wo be unto them that shall pervert the ways of the Lord after this manner, for they shall perish except they repent. Behold, I speak with boldness, having authority from God; and I fear not what man or woman or child can do; for perfect love casteth out all fear,” reports Moroni 8.16. Loving the hand that sent it. Vanquished, my soul will know. #RandolphHarris 2 of 27
This living desire to experience the World pulsing through the body wants to initiate in us a care for all things. When aspects of life are approached with the care of the soul, their Heavenly spirit shines forth. In the ancient World each thing was seen as inhabited by a supernatural force. What we see is not the God himself, but an emanation from him which is partly mortal, partly divine, and even this we do not see with our physical eyes, but with the eyes of our spirit, and it is an intermediary between the gods and the Earthly World, according to the reflective property, like is perceived by like. Learning the gospel is discipline required to awaken the astral or soul body, the capacity to perceive the other World as image. In modern times, humans have taken the nature out of life. In the past, people believe that thunder was God’s voice. The central task of learning is not accumulation of information, but learning to learn. This process consists of coming to realize the individual body in conjunction as container and reflector of soul. God is primordial being (Orweesn), the being without contrariety; he is the unity of all that exists. #RandolphHarris 3 of 27
Though the light of the Sun cannot itself be the moving force, it may perhaps represent a kind of moving force, it may perhaps represent a kind of vehicle, or tool, that the moving force uses. However, the first following considerations seems to contradict this. First, the light is arrested in regions that lie in shade. If, then, the moving force were to use light as a vehicle, darkness would bring the planets to a standstill. This kind of force, just like the kind of force that is light, can be regarded not as something that expands into the space between its source and the movable body, but something that the movable body, such as a planet. The answer to this is: although the moving force has no substance, it is aimed at substance, i.e., at the planet-body to be moved. Who will pretend that light has substance? Yet, nevertheless it acts and is acted upon in space, it is refracted and reflected, and it has quality, so that it may be dense or sparse and can be regarded as a plane where it is received by something capable of being lit up. The same thing applies to light as to our moving force: it has no present existence in space between the source and the object it lights up, although it has passed through that space in the past; it is not, it was, so to speak. Evil appears as the individual organism tears itself lose from the harmony of the whole. Finally, the organism achieves a loving reunion with other beings (human, for example, becomes reunited with Nature, Reason, Humanity, and God), and with the rediscovery of harmony, all evil is negated. #RandolphHarris 4 of 27
Gravity is the mutual bodily tendency between cognate [i.e., material] bodies toward unity or contact (of which kind of the magnetic force also is), so that the Earth draws a stone much more than the stone draws the Earth. If the Earth and the Moon were not kept in their respective orbits by a spiritual or some equivalent force, the Earth would ascend toward the Moon 1/54 of the distance, and the Moon would descend the remaining 53 parts of the interval, and thus they would unite. However, this calculation presupposes that both bodies are of the same density. If the Earth ceased to attract the waters of the sea, the sea would rise and flow into the Moon. If the attractive force of the Moon reaches down to the Earth, it follows that the attractive force of the Earth, all the more, extends to the Moon and even farther. If two stones were placed anywhere in space near to each other, and outside the reach of force of a third cognate body, then they would come together, after the manner of magnetic bodies, at an intermediate point, each approaching the other in proportion to the other’s mass. After, however, the historical path leads downward, to a final involution which is both the ending of a career and the birth of a new nice. Since the transition is gradual, and older age may survive for a time in a newer age. #RandolphHarris 5 of 27
Each development, nevertheless, exhibits genuine, unforeseeable novelty. “On the contrary, when he was in Rome, he searched hard for me until he found me. May the Lord grant that he will find mercy from the Lord on that day,” reports 2 Timothy 1.17. There were others species of human like beings, in the past, which coexisted with humans. Such a Neanderthals. However, their nature was extremely naïve and childlike. In ancient times, many died through clumsiness and accidents. Research suggests, however, they Neanderthals were telepathic, curious by nature and hardwired with a tremendous amount of basic historical and intellectual knowledge. It is born knowing all about the species itself, the island continent from which they came, and the places in the British Isles to which they migrated after the island was destroyed by the same volcanos. Some of these volcanoes must have also created land bridges, and perhaps these beings that moved about them did so with incredible speed because they were not all fully human. Remember Angels mated with humans and created Nephilim, which in many cases turned out to be giants. Some of them were as tall as street lights, according to ancient legends. They had an extraordinary reproductive advantage and that is what made them so dangerous. However, their naivete, simplicity and lack of aggression are were their vulnerabilities. #RandolphHarris 6 of 27
Just stop a moment; both St. Januarius and St. Augustine have something to do with the calendar. Will you recall the blood miracle? Do you not know about it? The blood of St. Januarius is preserved in a phial in a church in Naples, and on a certain holiday, a miracle takes place causing it to liquefy. The people think a great deal of this miracle, and become very excited if the liquefying process is retarded, as happened once during the French occupation. The General in command—or Garibaldi, if I am not mistaken—then took the priest aside, and with a very significant gesture pointed out to him the soldiers arrayed without, and expressed his hope that the miracle would soon take place. And it actually took place. Just think of the saints of the calendar, the liquefying of the blood on a certain day, the excitement if the event does not take place, and the distinct threat that the miracle must take place. “I have such a need of you. I come to you ashamed of my failures. I come to you as the Prince of Blood. I do not claim to be anything better or worse. Listen to me. Help me. Help me for the sake of others. I beg you. Hear my prayer.” I was in this dark frame of mind, along with this message, which engaged my soul completely, when I hear a step on the iron stairs outside. However, what was all this to me with my broken hear, and illegitimate soul? #RandolphHarris 7 of 27
The Spirit of God witnesses to the redemption of our Lord and to nothing else. To find a tribe of tall beings, tender of bone, ancient, simple, tangled with my fledgling, unknown to the World of records, history and location essential to the sanity of those I love. Guidance. Mistake I have made with my fledgling spiraling out of control. Give to me your wisdom, your keen hearing, your vision Where are all the tall creatures? I am your loyal subject. More of less. I send my love. “And I seal up these records, after I have spoken a few words by way of exhortation unto you. Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hat been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts. Ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not truth; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost. And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things,” reports Moroni 10.2-5. The only way is by allowing nothing of the old life to remain and by having only simple, perfect trust that we no longer want God’s blessings, but only want God Himself. #RandolphHarris 8 of 27
Yesterday is still clear in our memory–keep it; may we have a bright suture with beauty, joy, happiness, and honestness. Thousands of rivers separate us and thousands of mountains are boundless. I can only trust my missing to the clouds, may you find a happy life and come back with a successful study earlier than anticipated. The hose is glittering and blessings are the huge streamer for a a safe voyage like the eyes of the sea; the Sun is also my eyes glittering like the diamond ball. I sing high praise for the party and its holy mission: a little sparkle results in a the Sunshine and beauty. You are the founder of the future making each young soul full of wisdom. The knowledge of this last hour belongs to God and no one else. Human beings have made many predictions that have never come true. Not be astonished in trouble, not panic in danger; look into the mountains from the low valley; show high ideals by simple life; kindly accept the bitterness in setback. We admire your state. It is up to us if we can survive this. You cast light on the soul of wisdom like morning Sunshine, and support people with water unselfishly like the spring. You give us direction like a compass. Your love educates many people. #RandolphHarris 9 of 27
The first natural impulses of the distressed heart often point out the best alleviation. You preach a doctrine which you know you do not believe, it is the way with you all. If you know that there is no Earthly happiness, why do you long to be a bishop or dean? Why do you want lands and income? Customers, employees, suppliers—all the participants in the World of Business—come in different ages, genders, races, and ethnicities, nationalities, and abilities, a truth that business has come to label diversity. Understanding this diversity means recognizing and accepting differences as well as valuing the unique perspectives such differences can bring to the workaday. For every advantage she imparts, Civilization holds a hundred evils in reserve. When managers speak of diversity, in the workforces, these experts typically mean differences in gender and race. While gender and race are important characteristics of diversity, others are also important. We can collect these differences into primary and secondary characteristics of diversity. Age, gender, race, ethnicity, abilities, and sexual orientation represent primary characteristics of diversity, which are inborn and cannot be changed. Secondary characteristics of diversity—work background, income, material statues, military experience, religious beliefs, geographic location, parental status, sexuality (who you are attracted to) and education—which can be changed. We acquire, change, and discard them as we progress through our lives. #RandolphHarris 10 of 27
No bond unites congenial hearts more firmly than that of a common great aim. The American workforce is becoming increasingly diverse. Once dominated by the mainstream culture, today’s workforce includes significantly more women, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Veterans and the disabled, as well as senior citizens. As of 2014, women make up 51 percent of the workforce, and that is up from 47.9 percent in 2010, so clearly American is changing. The population in American is 75.1 percent European American, 12.3 percent African American, 0.9 percent American Indian, 3.6 percent Asian persons, 0.1 percent Native Hawaiian/other Pacific Islander, and 12.5 persons of Hispanic or Latino origin. However, it is estimated that within the next 50 years, Hispanics will represent 24 percent of the population, while African Americans will make up 9 percent, and Asians 9 percent. In the past, these groups may have faced some mild discrimination and higher unemployment rates and possibly were denied opportunities to assume leadership roles, in corporate America. Consequently, more and more companies are trying to improve Human Resources Management (HRM) programs to recruit, develop, and retain more diverse employees to better serve their diverse customers. #RandolphHarris 11 of 27
Some firms are providing special programs such as sponsored affinity groups, mentoring programs, and special career development opportunities. At US West, each manager’s contributions to the company’s diversity efforts are measure by a 16-point scorecard called the Diversity Accountability Tool. Managers implement the scorecard to rate their own efforts to foster diversity and then explain their score in a meeting with the company’s Chief Executive Officer. The manager receives an official diversity scores that is one factor in determining the manager’s annual bonus. Since the program was instituted, scores have jumped 60 percent. McDonald’s, Fannie Mae, Denny’s, Union Bank of California, Sempra Energy, Southern California-Edison, SBC Communications, Freddie Mac, PepsiCo, PNM Resources, and the Golden 1 Credit Union (the leading credit union in California) Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency and Wal-Mart are known for effectively managing diversity in the Workforce by cultivating and valuing its benefits and minimizing its problems. They take customer concerns very seriously and are extremely professional. #RandolphHarris 12 of 27
Success supposed endeavor. There are a number of benefits to fostering and valuing workforce diversity, including the following: More productive use of a company’s human resources and revenue. More harmony and fellowship among employees of different ethnicities, cultures, religions, and sexual orientations as they learn to respect each other’s differences; other benefits include more productive working relationships among diverse employees as they learn more about and accept each other. There is also increased innovation and creativity as diverse employees bring new, unique perspectives to decision-making and problem-solving tasks. There is also an increased ability to serve the needs of an increasingly diverse customer base. Make ambition your business and indifference your relaxation and you will fail; however, make indifference your business and ambition your relaxation and you will succeed. So impish are the ways of the gods. Nothing is so dangerous, especially to those who are not much accustomed to it, as a little success. #RandolphHarris 13 of 27
Success in projects is everything—companies that do not value their diverse employees are likely to experience greater conflict, as well as prejudice and discrimination. CBS13, in West Sacramento, California is a perfect example, they even slander their own employees; Tony Lopez is one of the worst offenders. However, no matter how many times you ask them to stop or report to their parent corporation, they will keep doing what they want and will even threaten to have you arrested or fired if you speak up. Among individual employees, for example, racial slurs and gestures, sexist comments, and other behaviors by co-workers harm the individuals at whom such behavior is directed. The victims of such behavior may feel hurt, depressed, or even threatened and suffer from lowered self-esteem, all of which harm their productivity and morale. No evil is insupportable, but that which is accompanied with consciousness of wrong. In such cases, women and other employees may simply leave the firm, wasting the time, money, and other resources spent on hiring and training them. #RandolphHarris 14 of 27
When discrimination comes from a supervisor, employees may also fear for their career and life. A discriminatory atmosphere not only can harm productivity and increase turnover, but it may also subject a firm to costly lawsuits and negative publicity. The conscience is, like the spleen, a function whose uses are only to be understood in its derangement. A good conscience is the best of all narcotics. Astute businesses recognize that they need to modify their human resources management programs to target the needs of all their diverse employees, as well as the needs of the firm itself. These prestigious corporations realize the benefits of diversity are long term in nature and come only to those organizations willing to make the commitment. Most importantly, as workforce diversity becomes a valued organizational asset, corporations spend less time managing conflict and more time accomplish tasks and satisfying customers, which is, after all, the purpose of business. #RandolphHarris 14 of 27
We live in a physical World whose properties are familiar, and, it is around us all the time. We cherish our own space. If you would have your son or daughter to walk honorably through the World, you must not attempt to clear the stones from his or her path, but tech your children to walk firmly over them—not insist upon leading a child by the hand, but let your child learn to go alone. Artists as reporters represent their World, and they even expect their work to have an impact on the World, to reveal hidden or universal truths. The work is about knowing and appreciating the beautiful, and that is how we can make the World a better place. Each photograph represents a particular intellectual, emotional, or expressive quality of the subject, they represent powerful emotions and feelings and passions. In 1666, Sir Isaac Newton demonstrated that objects appear to be a certain color because they absorb and reflect different parts of the visible spectrum. Obviously, not all artists are able to utilize light as fully as architects. Architects, particularly, must concern themselves with light. However, especially if artist and photographers are interested in representing the World, they must learn to imitate the effects of light in their work. There is something called the atmospheric perspective or aerial perspective, and these rules state that the quality of the atmosphere (the haze and relative humidity) between us and large objects, such as mountains, changes their appearance. #RandolphHarris 15 of 27
Objects further away from us appear less distinct, often cooler, or bluer in color, and the contrast between light and dark is reduced. Some of these photographs throw a veil of matchless color, that lucid interval of Morning dawn and dewy light on which the Eye dwells…and it is a sacrilege to pierce the mystic shell of color in search of form. With linear perspective one might adequately describe physical reality—a building, for instance—but through light one could reveal a greater spiritual reality. In this photograph, the light is much more expressive. It is, in large part, the dramatic play of light and dark in the photograph that contributes to this expressivity. The perspective system employed is used to focus our attention on the building, it is light that draws our attention to the grandeur and beauty. The Heavenly light surrounding the Capitol contrasts dramatically with the darkness of the rest of the composition. The building is symbolically offering you its body as nourishment. This purely spiritual act contracts with the gluttonous Worldly activity going on in the foreground, where a dog knaws at a bone, and a cat searches for leftovers. Light here symbolizes the spiritual World, and darkness our Earthly home. #RandolphHarris 16 of 27
Light and dark have traditionally had strong symbolic meaning in Western culture. We have only to think of the Bible, and the first lines of the Book of Genesis, which very openly associates the dark with the bad and the light with good. In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth. And the Earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that is was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. In the history of art, this association of light or white with good and darkness or black with evil was first fully developed in the late eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century color theory of the German poet and dramatist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. For Goethe, colors were not just phenomena to be explained by scientific laws. They also had moral and religious significance, existing halfway between the goodness of pure light and the damnation of pure blackness. In Heaven, there is only pure light, but the fact that we can experience color—which, according to the laws of optics, depends upon light mixing with darkness—promises us at least the hope of salvation. #RandolphHarris 17 of 27
In the first, the figures are all passive, sleeping, or dead. In the second, the figures are bathed in an almost pure white light and barely recognizable at the top center of the painting. Figures swirl around him as if life itself is being born out of a vortex. Although this opposition between dark and light is taken for granted in our culture, many people of color, with reason, find such thinking offensive. They are especially offended by the use of the term value to describe gradations of light and dark, so that black is low, and white is high in value. Artists and art historians alike use the term as a part of a specialized descriptive vocabulary that, in itself, would seem to be art the furthest remove from issues of race and the relative worth of human beings. Nevertheless, it is clear that since Biblical times, Western culture has tended to associate blackness with negative qualities and whiteness with positive ones, and it is understandable why people might take offense at this usage. For this reason, we use the word key instead of value, substituting the musical metaphor for the moral and economic one. #RandolphHarris 18 of 27
If for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, blackness is not merely the absence of color, but the absence of good, for African Americans, blackness is just the opposite. Mighty drums echoing the voices of Spirits…these sounds are rhythmic, the rhythm of vitality, the rhythm of exuberance and the rhythms of Life. These are the sounds of blackness. Blackness—the presence of all color. When restoring some artwork, technicians found that the dull, somber hues always associated with Michelangelo were not the result of his palette, that is, the range of colors he preferred to use, but of centuries of accumulated dust, smoke, grease, and varnishes made of animal glue painted over the ceiling by earlier restorers. The colors are in fact much more saturated and intense than anyone had previously supposed. Some experts, in fact, find them so intense that they seem, beside the golden tones of the unrestored surface, almost garish. As a result, there has been some debate about the merits of the cleaning. However, it is not a controversy. It is a culture shock. #RandolphHarris 19 of 27
Therefore, agree with your adversary quickly. Do it quickly—bring yourself to judgment now. In moral and spiritual matters, you must act immediately. God is determined to have His child as pure, clean, and white as driven snow, and as long as there is disobedience, God will allow His Spirit to use whatever process it may take to bring us to obedience. The fact that we insist on proving that we are right is almost always a clear indication that we have some point of disobedience. Assuredly, I say to you, you will by no means get out of there until you have paid the last penny. God urged you to come to judgment immediately when He condemned you, but you did not obey. Then the inevitable process began to work, bringing its inevitable penalty. The moment you are willing for God to change your nature, His re-creating forces will begin to work. He will reach to the very limits of the Universe to help you take the right road. #RandolphHarris 20 of 27
God never tells us to give up things just for the sake of giving them up, but God tells us to give them up for the sake of the only thing worth having, namely, life with God. It is a matter of loosening the bands that hold back our lives. Those bands are loosened immediately by identification with the death of Jesus. It is of no value to God to give Him your life for death. God wants you to be a living sacrifice. Poison wrapped up in sugared pills is but half a poison: the fear of death’s looks are more terrible than his stroke. Whom we fear more than love, we are not far from hating. Religion is not about forcing our wills on others, it is about spreading kindness. Just because we have the right to do something, does not mean it is the right thing. Freedom is speech is not about putting someone’s life in danger, it is about having the freedom to peacefully express yourself. If you know a person well, you may be able to detect deception from expressive changes. However, do not count on it. Most people learn to maintain careful control over their facial expressions. A good example is smiling, so you will not hurt someone’s feelings when you receive a disappointing gift. Because of such control, deception is often best revealed by body language. Even a good con artist may be too busy attending to his or her words and face to control certain bodily clues. #RandolphHarris 21 of 27
The reporter swears he is doing the community justice by sharing messages about cartoons. If you cannot touch his tongue to a hot knife, how else can you tell if he is lying? Most people assume that shifty eyes and squirming are clear signs of lying. However, neither of these clues increases when a person is fibbing. Also contrary to what you might expect, nervous movements such as hand rubbing, grooming, scratching, hair twisting, lip biting, chin stroking, and so on, are not consistently related to lying. On the other hand, illustrators (the gestures people use to illustrate what they are saying) may reveal lying. These gestures tend to decrease when a person is telling a lie. In other words, persons who usually talk with their hands may be much less animated when they are lying.Among the best clues to lying are the signs of strong emotion produced by the ANS. These include blinking, blushing, blanching, pupil dilation, rapid or irregular breathing, perspiration, frequent swallowing, speech errors, and a louder, higher pitched voice. All of these clues are hard for the liar to censor. However, such clues are like the polygraph: They reveal emotions; they do not always mean a person is lying. Remember, good liars can fool most people most of the time—and that is no lie. #RandolphHarris 22 of 27
Most people agree that health is important—especially their own. Yet, almost one half of all deaths, in North America, are primarily due to unhealthy behavior. Health psychology aims to do something about deaths. Health psychologist use behavioral principles to promote health and prevent illness. Psychologists working in the allied field of behavioral medicine apply psychology to manage medical problems, such as diabetes or asthma. Their interest include pain control, helping people cope with chronic illness, stress-related diseases, self-screening for diseases (such as breast cancer), and similar topics. Behavioral risk factors—around the turn of the twentieth century, people primarily died from infectious diseases and accidents. Today, people generally die from lifestyle diseases, which are related to health-damaging person habits. Examples include heart disease, stroke, and lung cancer. Clearly, some lifestyles promote health, whereas others lead to illness and death. As the cartoon character Pogo out it, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” #RandolphHarris 23 of 27
What kinds of behavior are you referring to as unhealthy? Behavioral risk factors are behaviors that increase the chances of disease, injury, or early death. Each of the following is a major behavioral risk factor: high levels of stress, untreated high blood pressure, cigarette smoking, and abuse of alcohol or other drugs, overeating, inadequate exercise, unsafe sexual behavior, exposure to toxic substances, violence, driving at excessive speeds, and disregarding personal safety. Protect your virginity. When many risk factors are present, a person is more likely to have medical problems. Many high school students in the United States of America engage in risky behaviors. As you can see, health-damaging behaviors are usually well established before adulthood. In addition to specific risk factors, a disease-prone personality type also exists. Such people tend to be chronically depressed, anxious, hostile, and…frequently ill. In contrast, people who are intellectually resourceful, compassionate, optimistic, and non-hostile tend to enjoy good health. #RandolphHarris 24 of 27
Lifestyles—in your mind’s eye, fast-forward an imaginary film of your life all the way to old age. Do it twice—once with a lifestyle including a large number of behavioral risk factors, and again without them. It should be obvious that countless small risks can add up to dramatically raise the chance of illness. If stress is a frequent part of your life, visualize your body seething with emotion, day after day. If you smoke, picture a lifetime’s worth of cigarette smoke blown through your lungs in a week. If you drink, take a lifetime of alcohol’s assaults on the brain, stomach, and liver and squeeze them into a month: Your body would be poisoned, ravaged, and soon dead. If you eat a high-fat, high-cholesterol diet, fast-forward a lifetime of heart-killing plaque clogging your arteries. #RandolphHarris 25 of 27
Although it may sound like it, discussion is not meant to be a sermon. It is merely a reminder that risk factors do make a difference. To make matters worse, unhealthy lifestyles almost always create multiple risks. That is, people who smoke are also likely to drink excessively. Those who overeat usually do not get enough exercise. And so on. Health-promoting behaviors—to prevent disease and promote well-being, health psychologists first try to remove behavioral risk factors. All the medicine in the World may not be enough to restore health without changes in behavior. We all know someone who has had a heart attack or lung disease who cannot or will not change the habits that led to their illness. #RandolphHarris 26 of 27
Beyond this, psychologists are also interested in getting people to increase behaviors that promote health. Health-promoting behaviors include such obvious practices as getting regular exercise, controlling smoking and alcohol use, maintaining a balanced diet, getting good medical care, and managing stress. Even something as simple as using seat belts in a car greatly ups life expectancy. Basic health practices should extend a person’s life. However, do they? A major study done in California provides an answer. People who get 7 to 8 hours of sleep at night, have a balanced diet, do not some, use alcohol moderately or not at all and get physical exercise had death rates 4 times lower than people who do not live a healthy lifestyle. Happy are they who are blessed with the power of making happy. #RandolphHarris 27 of 27
If Only Centuries Delayed, I Would Count them on My Hand—What Fortitude the Soul Contains
Have no motivation other than to know your Father in Heaven. As we increase our faith in God’s power to give rest unto our souls by forgiving our sins, redeeming imperfect relationships, healing the spiritual wounds that stifle growth, and strengthening and enabling us to develop the attributes of Go, we will more deeply appreciate the justice. Justice consists in treating equals equally and unequals unequally but in proportion to their relevant differences. This involves, first, the idea of impartiality; the honest judge considers only the features of the case that are relevant in law. Justice is no respecter of persons; wealth or status will influence judgment only if it makes a difference in law. Impartiality implies a kind of equality—not that all cases should be treated alike but the onus rests on whoever would treat them differently to distinguish them in relevant ways. It is not for a judge to decide the respect in which people are equal but to decide whether the respects in which they are unequal are relevant to the issues in the case. That is what is really meant by the right to equal consideration—to be treated alike unless relevant differences have been proved. During the coming weeks, find the time to review your life’s goals and your planes, and make sure they align with our Heavenly Father’s great plan for our happiness. If one needs to repent or change, then consider doing so now. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Justice is one of the most basic and potentially important social psychological areas of inquiry. Take the time to prayerfully think about what adjustments are needed in order to one keep focused on God’s glory. People care not only about the content of decisions; they also care about how the decisions are made. Much of psychological science and knowledge is significantly relevant to social justice. The goal is to decrease human suffering and to promote human vales of equality and fairness. A commitment to social justice has evolved as a more important value in the last few decades for psychology. An important goal is that we continue to find ways to agree or disagree in respectful manner regardless of where each of us stands on an issue. A number of studies showed that people will remain attached to their groups and satisfied with the authority figures as long as they think the authorities have followed fair procedures, even when they authorities have rendered a decision that adversely affects them. Research indicates that documented procedures communicate important information about social worth and value to involved parties. People need to feel they are valued and respected members of the group, and they need to take pride in their group membership. A just person is an individual in the right place, doing one’s best and giving the equivalent of what one has received. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Justice considered as reciprocity is often held to require returning evil for evil as much as good for good (lex talionis). In this case punishment would be paying back what is due. However, if law can be too rigid to do justice, does this not imply some extralegal canons of justice, by which perhaps the rules of law themselves might be assessed? There are many people who seem to rely solely on the Lord’s mercy rather than on accomplishing their own repentance. The Lord may temper justice with mercy, but he will never supplant it. Mercy can never replace justice. God is merciful, but he is also just. “God is not mocked: for whatsoever a person does to others, one shall also reap the consequences,” reports Galatians 6.7. That is an eternal aspect of justice that has been declared by divine law. Justice is an unchanging law that brings consequences for actions. Because of the law of justice, one receives blessings when one obeys God’s commandments. The law of justice also demands that a penalty be paid for every sin a person commits. It requires that no unclean thing be permitted to dwell with God. Justice is preeminently a matter of significance for everyone, no matter what stage in the life-cycle, social circumstances or nationality. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Justice assures personal and communal security, and is manifest in the way countries deal with crime, civil conflict and social strife within their borders or by agreement beyond. Justice is the maintenance of legal, social, or moral principles by the exercise o authority or power. The concept has a foundation at the core of moral philosophy and jurisprudence, and underpins the law that every community develops to fulfills their obligations and objectives. However, constitution such as courts and legal systems which start off sometimes with high and romantic origins, intents and aspirations, can, with passing of time, if we are not constantly alert and on guard, become disfigured, unreconisable and untrue to which benignant intentions which brought them into being. The of justice is to personalize the behaviour by making offenders more responsive to the human effects of their crimes. It also gives victim a role in the judicial procedure beyond laying the initial complaint and obliged judges to apply a remedial function on the court in helping to change the lives of offenders for the better. Justice and mercy are attributes of God They are also eternal principles. The Justice of God is a principle so fundamental that without it, God would cease to be God. On one hand, justice rewards righteousness. On the other hand, justice requires penalties as consequences of disobedience to the laws of God. “I the Lord cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 1.31. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
The actions of a living being are regarded as having a special class of casual effects which determine one’s future spiritual condition, both in this life and in succeeding ones. These effects are known as the products of action. Good deeds lead to progress toward liberation.Each person will thus be judged according to his or her works. Although the degree of accountability varies according to the extent of each person’s knowledge and culpability. However, in the material World, ignorance of the law is not an excuse for not knowing the laws. We cannot reasonable expect people to respect our interests unless we are prepared to respect theirs. It would be generally agreed that doing justice means treating equals equally and unequals according to their relevant inequalities. The Christian lives before God by faith alone. One’s awareness of God is always an awareness of one’s own infinite distance from God. Closure forms when one is in some way incomplete and through spiritual development becomes complete—it is like a circle with a small arch missing and then becomes a full circle. Humans are the supreme unification of Reason and Nature, for the possess the highest sort of mind joined to the highest sort of body. The individual souls that make up humanity are eternal, uncreated, immortal. Their number can neither be increased nor diminished. Humanity is thus complete at every moment. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
When people should strive for is the imitation of the divine life in their own inner lives and in their social organizations. God is good, and people should participate in this goodness. The inner union with God (Gottesinnigkeit), or fervor for the divine, is the foundation of ethics, and ethics is the heart of religion. However, individuals cannot achieve the moral life alone, since they are what they are only as parts of the whole. The community and its various institutions are thus indispensable. Ideally, the community is governed by Right, which is the organic whole of all of the internal and external conditions necessary for the completion of life that are dependent on freedom. This supernational law is grounded in the nature of the divine; it expresses the right of Humanity, not simply the right of the individual human beings. The rights of the individuals, groups, and nations can be recognized, but only as subordinate to the right of Humanity as a while. Humanity is divided into a series of social organisms. Human beings are inhabitants in many cosmic systems. These human beings are subdivided into nations, races, communities, families, and so forth. There is an aesthetic community, a scientific community, a religious community, and a moral community. Each community has rights, although the right of Humanity takes precedence. Though God contains the World, he is nevertheless other than and superior to it. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Randolph Harris II International Institute 