Always do the right thing. We are drowning in information and starving for knowledge. Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much. As a ruling scheme of things is modified by inroads from outlying existence, it loses authority, is less able to banish dread; its adherents fall away. Eventually it fades, exists only in history, becomes quaint or primitive, becomes finally, a myth. Our myths were once blueprints of the architecture of reality. The Church, as defender of the regnant scheme of things, was right to stop Galileo; activities such as his import into the social order new orientations will destroy that order. For some, asceticism was a magnetic attraction because, carried to extremes and combined with proofs of divine favour, it could lead to sainthood. For the religious celibate who was exceedingly ambitious, this spiritual route had infinitely more appeal than that of complaint parenthood in a marriage. Some determined people indulged in marathon bouts of asceticism, fasting to starvation, mortifying their flesh, depriving their senses, even devising humiliations so repulsive that they could be assured few could replicate them. However, no individual would dream of drinking cancerous pus or the wash water of rotting, leprous limbs. Achieving sainthood was a serious business. Only 3,276 people who died from the beginning of Christianity to 1500 became saints, with only 87 successful candidates from 1350 to 1500. On the plus side for women, in that same period the male-to-female ratio of saints went from five to one to about two and a half to one. From 1350 to 1500—and this statistic is the most pertinent here—laywomen saints overtook males, though the greater number of clerical males gave male saints a clear lead over women in orders. For aspiring female saints, this was the most promising era ever. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23

Sainthood was that era’s great challenge, akin to aspiring to the Olympics or a Noble Prize today. For women severely limited in vocations other than drudging labour or motherhood, the stretch to being the very best practitioner of religion was appealing, especially to highly intelligent perfections such as Catherine of Siena, whose brief, bursting life won her the eternity of sainthood. I think these days we must particularly insist on that of the eyes. “The eye is the lamp of the body,” Jesus Christ says. “Now if your eye is clear, your whole body will be filled with light. But if your eye is not, your whole body will be darkness,” reports Matthew 6.22-23. In a civilization dominated by images, as our is today, images have become the privileged vehicle of ideology of a World saturated with sensuality, which has made human pleasures of the flesh its favourite theme, detaching it completely from the original meaning given to it by God. Today, healthy fasting from images has become more important than fasting from food. Food and drink, in itself, is never impure, but certain pictures and images are. St. John places “disordered desires of the eyes,” reports 1 John 2.16, among the three fundamental appetites, and St. Paul in turn exhorts us to “keep our eyes on what is seen rather than on what can be seen, for what can be seen is transitory but what is unseen is eternal,” reports 2 Corinthians 4.18. Visible things exert their formidable power of seduction over us precisely by making us forget that they are transitory. Their beauty is such that they appear, to a spirit still enslaved by matter, to be everlasting, although we can see with our own eyes that they wither and decay from one day to the next. St. Augustine, who was all too familiar with this struggle against the lure of material things and of deceptive beauty, can help us with his testimony. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

“Behold, You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for You. In my unloveliness, I plunged into the lovely things which You created. You were with me, but I was not with You. Created things kept me from You; yet if they had not been in You, they would not have been at all. I resist the allurements of my eyes, lest they entangle my feet. What countless seductions have men added to the things which entice the eyes, through the various arts and the works of craftsmen, in the form of clothes, shoes, vessels, and other artefacts of this kind, even in paintings and all sorts of representations—these things far overreach the bounds of necessary utility, moderation and faithful representation. Now I, who am speaking and seeing things clearly, get my steps entangled in these beautiful things…yet You pluck me out in Your mercy.” The best way to overcome the seductive power of images is not to “fix our gaze” on them, not to become “enchanted” by them. If you look at them, they have already won a victory over you. That, in fact, was all they wanted from you: that you would look at them. “Avert my eyes from pointless images,” we are taught to pray by one of the psalms (Psalms 119.37). The benefit derived from such mortification of the eyes is wonderful indeed! Through it we can experience something of tht ideal, so dear to the Fathers of the Church, of a “return to paradise,” to a time when all was pure and fresh and crystal-clear, as on a summer’s morning, “and the youthful body was so chaste that its manly gaze had the depths like a lake.” The motivation “for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven” is precisely the reason why we—especially we priests—are required to have this commitment to keep our eye and our whole body “in the life,” as Jesus Christ says. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23

When brothers or sisters come to us, struggling, weak, and tempted by the flesh, they expect to find a safe hand to help them out of the quicksands of sensuality. However, to do this we need to have our feet on solid ground, otherwise we will tend to be drawn in after them ourselves. We are now seeing the spread of a repulsive impurity that threatens the very sources of human life. The Church, today as in the past, needs people who are austere with themselves, humble but sure of the inherent strength of grace, to oppose this flood of “debauchery, desire, revelry, carousing, and disgusting idolatry,” as Scripture calls in in 1 Peter 4.4, which is rushing the World to ruin. Today this is one of the most urgent services we must render, not only to the Kingdom of Heaven but to society itself. The “quality of life” truly is at stake! However, if we ourselves are defiled, or worse still engulfed and inflamed, by those quicksands, what help can we give? I believe that no motives of prudence or closing of ranks should silence the cry that is rising from the heart of our Mother the Church. If we have no qualms about denouncing the sins of others and of society, we should be equally frank in denouncing our own. There are too many priestly lives compromised, too many failures, too much depletion of energies in the Church, caused by the weaknesses of priests in this area! My brother priests, we with fear and trembling act quickly to put things right, as far as is necessary, because great is God’s pain and anger over these things. It is written that our God is a “jealous God,” reports Exodus 20.5. Who are we to defy God’s jealousy? We are the “friends of the Bridegroom,” and this title should fill us with joy, but also with a holy trepidation and with infinite respect for souls. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

It is a kind of blessed mortification of the flesh, that gains for us, with the Holy Spirit’s help, the grace of being truly “fathers,” our hearts free to love everyone without wanting to possess anyone. No price should seem to high to us, for a vocation that someone has summarized in the following words: “To live in the midst of the World, with no desire for its pleasures; to be a member of every family, yet belong to none; to share all sufferings, to penetrate all secrets, to heal all wounds; to go daily from men to God, to offer Him their homage and petitions, to return from God to men, to being them His pardon and His hope; to have a heart of iron for chastity and a heart of flesh for charity; to teach and to pardon, console and bless and to be blessed forever. O God, what a life is this, and it is thine, O priest of Jesus Christ.” When the ruling scheme of things comes to seem untrue or unimportant, one’s efforts within it become meaningless. One’s whole life becomes meaningless. The Heavenly City falls into ruins. The avenue to immortality ends on an abyss. One is cast back on one’s individual life, stares ahead through a transparence of days to death, which stands at the end. One enters a state of dread. Life then is borne forward on waves of cynicism and despair. One seeks distraction, death-defying games perhaps which invoke the specter from which one flinches. By surviving the heightened risk, one may achieve briefly the illusion of mastery. However, not for long. Within the confines of a single life death is unmasterable. Sometimes the distraction is less desperate and may contain creative possibilities. What began as a distraction from the loss of meaning and the dread of death may come to itself to have meaning and to protect against dread. The distraction, that is, becomes a new scheme of things. A committed chess player may finally lose awareness that life contains anything other than chess. A new defense against Ruy Lopez may be monument enough. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

In such a recovery one may move to a scheme of things larger than the one that has crumbled; the crumbling itself may then be seen in a perspective that makes it meaningful, perhaps even inevitable. So the Marxists of the thirties become the Freudians of the forties, and the politics is subsumed under psychology. A. A. Brill was able to comprehend the rash of strikes during the Depression as rebellious sons acting out their defiance of fathers. For a thousand years Christianity was for the New World the scheme of things organizing man’s Worldview. It stood at the apex of a hierarchy within which were included all other schemes, fraternal, artistic, scholastic, political. That World order is now irretrievably lost. I come back to Eliot’s dictum that culture is the incarnation of religion. If that is true—and I believe it is true—a culture cannot forever survive the loss of its religion; for the lesser scheme of things which that culture will still be able to offer will, whatever their merits, lack that element of the sacred which previously had derived from religion, and without which no one of the lesser schemes will be able to achieve the unification of the whole. Science, like religion, is a scheme of things hierarchically ordered, including many subordinate schemes. The compelling paradigm of one age may, like phlogiston, be but a quaint superstition for the next, without disturbing the overriding rational-scientific scheme of things of which the varying paradigms are subordinate schemes. However, science has never, not even in its greatest ascendancy, claimed such cosmic scope as Christianity. Some of the joys and sorrows of man’s condition have not, within science, found a place or an accounting. Most particularly now do they find no place; for the rational-scientific scheme of things is itself on the decline. Fewer people now see it as coextensive with reality. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23

More and more frequently people look away from science, or around its edges, in search of some new vision, some new scheme of things with which to order their lives. When there is not enough man’s work, it is hard to grow up. There is “nearly full employment” (with highly significant exceptions), but there get to be fewer jobs that are necessary or unquestionably useful; that require energy and draw on some of one’s best capacities; and that can be done keeping one’s honour and dignity. In explaining the widespread troubles of adolescents and young men, this simple objective factor is not much mentioned. Let us here insist on it. By “man’s work” I mean a very simple idea, so simple that it is clearer to ingenuous boys than to most adults. To produce necessary food and shelter is man’s work. During most of economic history most men have done this drudging work, secure that it was justified and worthy of a man to do it, though often feeling that the social conditions under which they did it were not worthy of a man, thinking, “It is better to die than to live so hard”—but they worked on. When the environment is forbidding, as in the Swiss Alps or the Aran Islands, we regard such work with poetic awe. In emergences it is heroic, as when the bakers of Paris maintained the supply of bread during the French Revolution, or the milkman did not miss a day’s delivery when the bombs recently tore up London. Many also for get about the labour of the enslaved Africans. For some reason, they are always depicted working in the hot sun, as if they only had to do forced labour during the summer, but they also had to work in the winter without shoes or shirts. Just something to consider. At present there is little such subsistence work. In Communitas my brother and I guess that one-tenth of our economy is devoted to it; it is more likely one-twentieth. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

Production of food is actively discouraged. Farmers are not wanted and the young men go elsewhere. (The farm population is now less than 15 percent the total population.) Building, on the contrary, is immensely needed. California needs 200,000 new units each year to keep up with expected population growth and prevent prices from further increasing, and needs increase that rate of production to 400,000 new units of housing production over the next seven years in order for prices to decline. However, because of rising house costs, the California population is seeing a decline. From 2020 to 2021, California lost 350,000 people. One would think that ambitious boys would flock to work. However, here we find that building, too, is discouraged. In a great city, for the last twenty years, hundreds of thousands in Sacramento have been ill housed, yet we do not see science, industry, and labour enthusiastically enlisting in finding the quick solution to a definite problem. The promoters are interested in long-term investments, the real estate men in speculation, the city planners in votes and grafting. The building craftsmen cannily see to it that their own numbers remain few, their methods antiquated, and their rewards high. None of these people is much interested in providing shelter, and nobody is at all interested in providing new manly jobs. Once we turn away from the absolutely necessary subsistence jobs, however, we find that an enormous proportion of our production is not even unquestionably useful. Everybody knows and also feels this, and there has recently been a flood of books about our surfeit of honey, our insolent chariots, the follies of exurban ranch houses, our hucksters and our synthetic demand. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

 Many acute things are said about this useless production and advertising, but not much about the workmen producing it and their frame of mind; and nothing at all, so far as I have noticed, about the plight of young fellow looking for a manly occupation. The eloquent critics of the American way of life have themselves been so seduced by it that they think only in terms of selling commodities and point out that the goods are valueless; but they fail to see that people are being wasted and their skills insulted. (TO give an analogy, in the many gleeful onslaughts on the Popular Culture that have appeared in recent years, there has been little thought of the plight of the honest artist cut off from his audience and sometimes, in public arts such as theater and architecture, from his medium.) What is strange about it? American society has tried so hard and so ably to defend the practice and theory of production for profit and not primarily for use that now it has succeeded in making its jobs and products profitable and useless. Faced by the failures of the Second Wave strategy, rocked by angry demands by the poor countries for a total overhaul of the global economy, and deeply worried about their own future—the rich nations hammered out a new strategy. Almost overnight many governments and “development agencies,” including the World Bank, the Agency for International Development, and the Overseas Development Council, switched to what can only be called a First Wave strategy. This formula is almost a carbon copy reverse of the Second Wave strategy: Instead of squeezing the peasants and forcing them into the overburdened cities, it calls for a new emphasis on rural development. Instead of concentrating on cash crops for export, it urges food self-sufficiency. Instead of striving blindly for higher GNP (Gross National Product) in the hopes that benefits will trickle down to the poor, it calls for resources to be channeled directly into “basic human needs.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

That makes sense because if the poor have no cash, they need an infusion of money, over a short-term duration, not just sporadically, and then a percentage increase to sustain them over the long term. It is the say way a trickle charger/battery maintainer works. Instead of pushing for labour-saving technologies, the new approach stresses labour-intensive production with low capital, energy, and skill requirements. Instead of building giant steel mills or large-scale urban factories, it favours decentralized, small-scale facilities designed for the village. Turning Second Wave arguments upside down, the advocates of the First Wave strategy were able to show that many industrial technologies were a disaster when transferred to poor communities. Machines broke down and went unrepaired. They needed high-cost, often raw materials. Trained labour was in short supply. Hence, the new argument ran, what was needed were “appropriate technologies.” Sometimes called “intermediate,” “Soft,” or “alternative,” these would lie, as it were, “between the sickle and the combine harvester.” Many less affluent communities actually preferred low technology equipment. Farmers and trucking companies still reeling from oil and fertilizer price hikes and from disappointments with supply chain shortages and the pandemic, actually banded further expansion into new industries and regions and urged increased production of products they knew how to produce and handle well. The intent was not merely to increase employment but to stifle urbanization by favouring rural cottage industry. There is much about this new formula that admittedly makes excellent sense. It confronts the need to slow down the massive migration to the cities. It aims to make the villages—where the bulk of the World’s less affluent live—more livable. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23

This method is more sensitive to ecological factors. It stresses the use of inexpensive local resources rather than expensive imports. It challenges conventional, all-too-barrow definition of “efficiency.” It suggests a less technocratic approach to development, taking local customs and culture into account. It emphasizes improving the conditions of the poor rather than passing capital through the hands of the rich in the hopes some will trickle down. Yet after all due credit is given, the First Wave formula remains just that—a strategy for ameliorating the worst of the First Wave conditions without ever transforming them. It is a Band-Aid, not a sure, and it is perceived in exactly these terms by many governments around the World. The sudden love affair with labour-intensivity is also subject to the charge that it is self-serving for the rich. The longer the poor countries and communities remain under First Wave conditions, the fewer competitive goods they are likely to shove onto an overloaded World market. The longer they stay down on the farm, so to speak, the less oil, gas, and other scare resources they will siphon off, and the weaker and less troublesome they will remain politically. There is also, built deep into the First Wave strategy, a paternalistic assumption that while other factors of production need to be economized, the time and energy of the labourer need not be—that unrelieved backbreaking toil in the field or rice paddies is fine—so long as it is done by somebody else. Labour-intensive techniques have suddenly been rendered attractive, thanks to a medley of hippie ideology, return to the myth of the golden age and noble savage, and criticism of the reality of the capitalist World. Much of what we now call “advanced science” was developed by scientists in rich countries to solve the problems of the rich countries. Precious little research has been addressed to the everyday problems of the World’s poor. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

Nonetheless, any “development policy” that begins by blinding itself to the potentials of advanced scientific and technology knowledge condemns hundreds of millions of desperate, hungry, toiling peasants to perpetual degradation. In some places, and at certain times, the First Wave strategy can improve life for large numbers of people. Yet there is painfully little evidence to show that any sizable country can ever produce enough, using premechanized First Wave methods, to invest in change. Indeed, a mass of evidence suggests the exact opposite. However, the World already has 8 billion people. If we are having problems feeding and housing all these people, perhaps more communities and countries need to promote abstinence and celibacy. We want to reduce everything from having a strain on the planet, from cows to automobiles, but maybe humans need to practice self-control and realize it is a good idea to stop reproducing because they are fruitful, but no longer prospering. In a World of exploding diversity we shall have to invent scores of innovative strategies and stop looking for models ether in the industrial present—or in the preindustrial past. It is time we began to look at the emergent future. Once the legislative power has been well established, it is a matter of establishing the executive power in the same way. For this latter, which functions only by means of particular acts, not being of the essence of the former, is naturally separate from it. Were it possible for the sovereign, considered as such, to have the executive power, right and fact would be so completely confounded that we would no longer know what is law and what is not. And the body of politic, thus denatured, would soon fall prey to the violence against which it was instituted. Since the citizens are all equal by the social contract, what everyone should do can be prescribed by everyone. On other hand, no one has the right to demand that someone else do what one does not do for oneself. Now it is precisely this right, indispensable for making the body politic live and move, that the sovereign gives the prince in instituting the government. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

Several people have clamed that this act of establishment was a contract between the populace and the leaders it gives itself, a contract by which are stipulated between the two parties the conditions under which the one obliges itself to command and the other to obey. It will be granted, I am sure, that this is a strange way of entering into a social contract! However, let us see if this opinion is tenable. First, the supreme authority cannot be modified any more than it can be alienated; to limit it is to destroy it. It is absurd and contradictory for the sovereign to acquire a superior. To obligate oneself to obey a master is to return to full liberty. Moreover, it is evident that his contract between the people and some or other persons would be a particular act. Whence it follows that this contract could be neither law nor an act of sovereignty, and that consequently it would be illegitimate. It is also clear that the contracting parties would, in relation to one another, be under only the law of nature and without any guarantee of their reciprocal commitments, which is contrary in every way to the civils state. Since the one who has force at one’s disposal is always in control of its employment, it would come to the same thing if we were to give the name contract to the act of a human who would say to another, “I am giving you all my goods, on the condition that you give me back whatever you wish.” There is only one contract in the state, that of the association, and that alone excludes any other. It is impossible to imagine any public contract that was not a violation of the first contract. The act that institutes the government is not a contract but a law.  The trustees of the executive power are not the masters of the populace but its officers; the populace can establish and remove them when it pleases; for them there is no question of contracting, but of obeying; and in taking on the functions the state imposes on them, they merely fulfill their duty as citizens, without in any way having the right to dispute over the conditions. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

Thus, when it happens that the populace institutes a hereditary government, whether it is monarchial within a single family or aristocratic within a class of citizens, this is not a commitment it is entering. It is a provisional form that it gives the administration, until the populace is pleased to order it otherwise. It is true that these changes are always dangerous, and that the established government should never be touched except when it becomes incompatible with the public good. However, this circumspection is a maxim of politics and not a rule of law [droit], and the state is no more bound to leave civil authority to its leaders than it is to leave military authority to its generals. Again, it is true that in such cases it is impossible to be too careful about observing all the formalities required in order to distinguish a regular and legitimate act from a seditious tumult, and the will of an entire people from the clamour of a faction. And it is here above all tht one must not grant anything to odious cases except what cannot be refused according to the full rigour of the law [droit]. And it is also from this obligation that the price derives a great advantage in preserving his power in spite of the people, without anyone being able to say that he has usurped it. For in appearing to use only his rights, it is quite easy for him to extend them, and under the pretext of public peace, to prevent assemblies destined to reestablish good order. Thus he avails himself of a silence he keeps from being broken, or of irregularities he causes to be committed, to assumes that the opinion of those who are silenced by fear is supportive of him, and to punish those who dare to speak. This is how the decemvirs, having been first elected for one year and then continued for another year, tried to retain their power in perpetuity by on longer permitting the comitia to assemble. And it is by this simple means that all the governments of the World, once armed with the public force, sooner or later usurp the public authority. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

The periodic assemblies I have spoken of earlier are suited to the prevention or postponement of this misfortune, especially when they have no need for a formal convocation. For then the prince could not prevent them without openly declaring himself a violator of the laws and an enemy of the states. The opening of these assemblies, which have as their sole object the preservation of the social treaty, should always take place through two propositions which can never be suppressed, and which are voted on separately: The first: Does it please the sovereign to preserve the present form of government? The second: Does it please the people to leave its administration to those who are now in charge of it? I am presupposing here what I believe I have demonstrated, namely that in the state there is no fundamental law that cannot be revoked, not even the social compact. For if all the citizens were to assemble in order to break this compact by common agreement, no one could doubt that it was legitimately broken. Grotius even thinks that each person can renounce the state of which one is a member and recover one’s natural liberty and one’s goods by leaving the country. (On the understanding that one does not leave in order to evade one’s duty and to be exempt from serving the homeland the moment it needs us. In such circumstances, taking flight would be criminal and punishable; it would no longer be withdrawal, but desertion.) However, it would be absurd that all the citizens together could not do what each of the can do separately. Looking at Census facts, what I found interesting were the demographics. In California, 72 percent of the population is White alone, 6.5 percent is Black, alone. 1.6 percent is American Indian. 15.5 percent is Asian alone. Less than 1 percent is Native Hawaiian. 4 percent is two or more races. 40 percent is Hispanic. We have seen a huge decline in the Black population. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

Psychological problems are entangled with interpersonal problems beyond those in the family of origin or orientation. This is a point that is sadly overlooked by those who seek to explain psychopathology by looking back to early childhood experiences with parents. For example, young adults who are unmarried place a great deal of importance on dating/romantic relationships and platonic friendships. For such people, social support from family members can do little to minimize their loneliness; what they seek are rewarding relationships with dating/romantic partners and friends. When these relationships are unavailable or distressed, psychological problems are often evident. The ill effects of conflict on personal relationships are well established. The experience of excessive and hostile conflict can have equally severe intrapersonal consequences. Themes of destructive conflict are evident in the findings on eating disorders, personality disorders, alcoholism, schizophrenia, psychogenic sexual dysfunction, and somatoform disorders. Conflict is an interpersonal phenomenon that appears heightened in both family and other relationships. In a very fundamental way, most people appear to seek and desire some form of harmony with at least a few other people with whom they share their lives. When this harmony is corroded by conflict, mental health problems often emerge. At the same time, the experience of a mental healthy problem such as alcoholism or a personality disorder can also disrupt the harmony inherent in close personal relationships. This itself has the potential to propagate intense interpersonal conflict. Interpersonal rejection is a social phenomenon that purses most mental health problems. Although depression is one of the problems that has focused most attention on interpersonal rejection, thanks to Coyne’s interactional theory, this phenomenon is evident among people with schizophrenia, eating disorders, and personality disorders. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

Human beings can be remarkably intolerant of those who present a less than “normal,” competent, or personal image. The social-interactional goals of most people leave little room for significant communication with others who have obvious symptoms of psychopathology. Consequently, psychologically distressed individuals are often shunned and rejected by others—even those with whom they have share close relationships. The phenomenon of interpersonal rejection can be devastating to one’s sense of self-worth. The realization that others do not like, care for, or want to spend time with the self is profoundly distressing for all but the most pathologically avoidant individuals. The anguish that is perpetuated by interpersonal rejection can exacerbate minor psychological frailty into full-blown mental disorder. Of course, as the symptoms of poor mental health become more prominent, the likelihood of eliciting further rejection is increased. Again, the potential for a vicious cycle between psychological and interpersonal problems is clearly evident. Interpersonal rejection may play a role in more macroscopic interpersonal issues, such as availability of close relationships. One of the most fundamental and basic interpersonal problems associated with psychopathology is a lack of general personal relationships. The social networks of people with schizophrenia, depression, social anxiety, and eating disorders, for example, are notoriously impoverished. Once again, there is reason to suspect that this interpersonal problem is both a cause and a consequence of psychological problems. By their social nature, most humans have a very basic need to seek out and form relationships with others. Mental health appears to deteriorate in parallel with the disappearance of opportunities for experiencing the pleasures of personal relationships. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

Like interpersonal rejection, experiencing the unavailability of personal relationships can lead to feelings of worthlessness, despair, and grief. Over time, situational attributions for such a state of affairs may be difficult to sustain and eventually give way to feelings of personal blame and responsibility. A deficiency in personal relationships may be taken as evidence of personal deviance or defectiveness. This mental anguish—coupled with the absence of opportunities to share optimistic or negative affective states with other people, and to enjoy their company and social support—is a potent recipe for serious psychological problems. Certain interpersonal processes that have been implicated in mental health problems, such as rejection and conflict, are fairly ubiquitous in that they occur in both family and other relationship context. However, other processes, such as unavailability of personal relationships and loneliness, appear to be largely unrelated to family issues. In many cases, these processes are present in the lives of people with psychological problems, maintaining, prolonging, and exacerbating their condition. The fears which war engenders and the deprivations which it causes are painful. Yet for those who are too attached to outward things they are often necessary teacher. Out of the fears, great heroism has been learned; out of the deprivations, great unselfishness; but those who respond to such lessons are too few, the influence of the lessons themselves too ephemeral. When it is said that way is a purifying agent, it is not meant that our morals are purified; on the contrary, war notoriously makes them temporarily worse. By enthroning passion and displacing reason, by generating wild fears and brutal hatreds, the very smoke of war tends to smother those civilized self-disciplines which make for a decent living during the normal times of peace. This is a World of struggle. The word “peace” has only a relative meaning. The notion that a society, a civilization, or an individual can exist in a continuously inert state is an illusory one. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

As soon as one kind of war ends, another kind of war begins. A peace of endless stagnation is impossible. That last kind of peace is that wherein the forces which must inevitably contend against each other are properly balanced. A great war brings humanity to an emotional crisis. Such a crisis shakes it out of complacency and indifference toward religious values. War, with its frightful threat to life and possessions, its dreadful menace to personal relations, forces humankind to revise long-established attitudes for better or worse. If it opens one door to atheism, it also opens another door to religion and still another to mysticism. We live in a state of perpetual war. Like the Winchester Mansion, back and forth go the ghostly armies of construction and destruction. Sometimes one and sometimes the other holds the field in triumph. Death seekers clearly intend to end their lives at the time they attempt suicide. This singleness of purpose may last only a short time. It can change to confusion the very next hour or day, and then return again in a short order. Dave, a middle-aged executive, was a death seeker. He was devoted to his wife and two teenage sons who respected him. They lived in an upper-middle-class neighbourhood, had a spacious house, and enjoyed a life of comfort. He had many misgivings about suicide and was ambivalent about it for weeks, but on Tuesday night he was a death seeker—clear in his desire to die and acting in a manner that virtually guaranteed a fatal outcome. Death ignorers do not believe that their self-inflicted death will mean the end of their existence. They believe they are trading their present lives for a better or happier existence. Billy never truly recovered from his mother’s death. He was only 7 years old and unprepared for such a loss. His father sent him to live with his grandparents for a time, to a new school with new kind and a new way of life. In Billy’s mind, all these changes were for the worse. He missed the joy and laughter of the past. He missed his home, his father, and his friends. Most of all he missed his mother. He did not really understand her death. His father said that she was in Heaven now and at peace, happy; that she has not wanted to die or to leave Billy; that an accident had taken her life. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23

Billy’s unhappiness and loneliness continued day after day and he began to put things together in his own way. If he could join his mother, Billy believed that he could be happy again. He felt she was waiting for him, waiting for him to come to her. These thoughts seemed so right to him; they brought him comfort and hope. One evening, shortly after saying good night to his grandparents, Billy climbed out of bed, went up the stairs to the roof of their apartment house, and jumped to his death. In his mind, he was joining his mother in Heaven. Billy was a death ignorer, like many other adult believers in a hereafter who experience death by suicide to reach another form of life. To further highlight this illustration, in 1997, the World was shocked to learn that 39 members of an unusual cult named Heaven’s Gate had experienced death by suicide at an expensive house outside San Diego, California. It turned out that these members had acted out of the belief that their deaths would free their spirits and enabled them to ascend to a “Higher Kingdom.” It is a simple yet profound truth: Happiness ins a choice. When you get up in the morning, you can choose to be happy and enjoy that day, or you can choose to be unhappy and go around with a sour attitude. It is up to you. If you make the mistake of allowing your circumstances to dictate your happiness, then you risk missing out on God’s abundant life. You might as well choose to be happy and enjoy your life! When you do that that, not only will you feel better, but your faith will cause God to show up and work wonders. God knows that we have difficulties, struggles, and challenges. However, it was never His intention for us to live one day “on cloud nine,” and the next day down in the dumps, defeated and depressed because we have problems. God want us to live consistently. He wants us to enjoy every single day of our lives. To do so, one must learn to live in today, one day at a time; better yet, make the most of this moment. It is good to have a big picture outlook, to set goals, to establish budgets and make plans, but if you are always living in the future, you are never really enjoying the present in the way God wants you to. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

When we focus too much on the future, we are often frustrated because we do not know what is coming. Naturally, the uncertainty increases our stress level and creates a sense of insecurity. We need to understand, though, that God has given us the grace to live today. He has not yet given us tomorrow’s grace. When we get to tomorrow, we will have the strength to make it through. God will give us what we need. However, if we are worried about tomorrow right now, we are bound to be frustrated and discouraged. By an act of your will, choose to start enjoying your life right now. Learn to enjoy your family, your friends, your health, your work, the blue sky, green grass, and trees; enjoy everything in your life. Happiness is a decision you make, not an emotion you feel. Certainly there are times in all our lives when bad things happened, or things do not turn out as we had hoped. However, that is when we must make a decision that we are going to be happy in spite of our circumstances. God would not let us go through something that is too difficult to handle. And if your desire is great enough, you can stay calm and cool no matter what comes against you in life. God gives us His peace on the inside, but it is up to us to make use of that peace. Especially in the pressure points of life, we have to learn how to tap into God’s supernatural peace. The way you do that is by making a conscious choice, a calculated decision if you will, choosing to stay happy. Life is flying by, so do not waste another moment of your precious time being angry, unhappy, or worried. “This is the day which the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it,” reports Psalm 118.24. When we are blessed with grace, we find ourselves loved and affirmed in such a way that we love God and others more than ever. The Christian may receive this grace through prayer, inspiration from the Scriptures, meditation, church services, or daily Spirit-led interactions with others. However, the essential ingredient, which then becomes an irreversible aspect of our own core, is that such love is by nature unmerited—we are loved by the grace of God, not because of our achievements or what we do. We are simply loved. And such love radiates outward in the same way. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

Others need not merit our love—we simply love them, too. One is most grace-full when one experiences others in their essential core, loving them as purely as God does. God has the power to do anything. He has the ability to destroy the devil, but He cannot do it now because of His Word. His Word is out and He will not go against it. We know what the end is going to be because the overall picture is in the Bible. Read the back of the book—we win! The devil will be put in the pit for a thousand years, then loosed for a little time, and finally cast into the lake of fire. However, until that time, God has done all He is going to do about the devil. It is your responsibility to take care of him. You have dominion. You are to cast him out. God’s Word gives us instructions on how to use our authority to defeat satan: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you,” reports James 4.7. “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: whom resist steadfast in the faith,” reports 1 Peter 5.8-9. God walks in His garden still, not necessarily with soupy intellectuals from the University, but with salt-of-the-Earth people from everyday life. He reveals Himself as a long-lost friend to the Humble. He teaches the Terrible Tots their Aleph-Beth’s, as He taught the Psalmist his (119.130). He filters human knowledge for the Pure of Mind, as Luke recorded (24.25). The Curious and the Proud—well, they require special attention. He gives them grace, yes, but He just makes it harder for them to find. In conclusion—and I do have a conclusion—Human Reason is frail and fallible; True Faith, however, never fails, never falls. Every ratiocination and investigation into the nature and work of the Sacrament ought to follow the guidelines established by Faith. That is to say, they should preempt Faith’s prerogatives; nor should they infringe on any Faith’s boundaries. Why? In the realm of this Most Holy Superexcellent Sacrament, Faith and Love rule. And it is quite clear to Me that not all of their machination are clear to you. “Peace I leave you; My peace I give to you; not as the World gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful,” reports John 14.27. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23

Dear Lord in Heaven, when things happen that would normally bother me, please help me to put my foot down and says, “No, I am not going to let that take my peace. I am not going to rule over my emotions. I am not going to allow myself to get upset and aggravated. I am going to choose to be happy.” The completeness of the mystic experience is proportionate to and measurably by, intensity. So long as it remans a passing and temporary state, so long ought it be regarded by the human who has had it as affording an incomplete enlightenment. The mystic experience is not necessarily complete in itself when it happens to a human for the first time—or for the fourth time. Nor are its effects necessarily permanent. They may disappear even after a whole year’s existence. Unless the personal human has matured in brain and heart and balance, the efforts to transcend ego will necessarily be premature and the glimpse, if it happens, will be of a mixed character. We return thanks to our mother, the Earth which sustains us. We return thanks to the rivers and streams, which supply us with water. We return thanks to all the herbs, which furnish medicines for the cure of our aliments. We return thanks to the corn, and to her sisters, the beans and squashes, which give us life. We return thanks to the wind, which moving the air has banished diseases. We return thanks to the moon and stars, which have given us their light when the sun was gone. We return thanks to the sun, that he has looked upon the Earth with a beneficent eye. Lastly, we return thanks to the Great Spirit, in whom is embodies all goodness, and who directs all things for the good of His children. O Lord our God, please be gracious unto Thy people America and please accept their prayer. Restore the worship to Thy sanctuary and receive in love and favour the supplication of America. May the worship of Thy people be ever acceptable unto Thee. Our God and God of our Fathers, may our remembrance and the remembrance of our forefathers comes before Thee. Please remember the Messiahs of the house of America, Thy servant, and Thy Holy City, and all Thy people, the house of America. Please grant us deliverance and well being, lovingkindness, life and pace on this day of the New Moon; the Feast of Unleavened Bread; the Feast of Tabernacles. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23

MILLS STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH

Rancho Cordova, CA |

Now Selling!

Yesterday you came my way, and when your smiled at me, in my heart I felt a thrill to see this Cresleigh Homes at Mills Station was meant to be. Mills Station at Cresleigh Ranch is Rancho Cordova’s newest home community! This charming neighborhood offers an array of home types with eye catching architecture styles such as Mission, Mid-Century Modern, California Modern, and Contemporary Farmhouse.

Located off Douglas Road and Rancho Cordova Parkway, the residents of Cresleigh Ranch will enjoy, being just minutes from shopping, dining, and entertainment, and quick access to Highway 50 and Grant Line Road providing a direct route into Folsom.

Residents here also benefit from no HOA fees, two community parks and the benefits of being a part of the highly-rated Elk Grove Unified School District. https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/

#CresleighHomes

#CresleighRanch