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You Buy Some Flowers for Your Table and Tend them Tenderly as You are Able!

A school without football is in danger of deteriorating into a medieval study hall. There are certain time-related principles that also can be used to select plans. The principle of postponement holds that, other things equal, rational plans try to keep our hands free until we have a clear view of the relevant facts. And the grounds for rejecting pure time preferences we have also considered. We are to see our life as one whole, the activities of one rational subject spread out in time. Mere temporal position, or distance from the present, is not a reason for favouring one moment over another. Future aims may not be discounted solely in virtue of being future, although we may, of course, ascribe less weight to them if there are reasons for thinking that, given their relation to other things, their fulfillment is less probable. The intrinsic importance that we assign to different parts of our life should be the same at every moment of time. These values should depend upon the whole plan itself as far as we can determine it and should not be affected by the contingencies of our present perspective. Two other principles apply to the overall shape of plans through time. One of these is that of continuity. It reminds us that since a plan is a scheduled sequence of activities, earlier and later activities are bound to one another. The whole plan has a certain unity, a dominant theme. “O the greatness and the justice of our God! for He executeth all His words, and they have gone forth out of His moth, and His law must be fulfilled,” reports 2 Nephi 9.17 #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
There is no, so to speak, a separate utility function for each period. Not only must effects between periods be taken into account, but substantial swings up and down are presumably to be avoided. A second closely related principle holds that we are to consider the advantages of rising, or at least of not significantly declining, expectations. There are various stages of life, each ideally with its own characteristic tasks and enjoyments. Other things equal, we should arrange things at the earlier stages so as to permit a happy life at the later ones. It would seem that for the most part rising expectations over time are to be preferred. If the value of an activity is assessed relative to its own period, assuming that this is possible, we might try to explain this preference by the relatively greater intensity of the pleasures of anticipation over those of memory. Even though the total sum of enjoyment is the same when enjoyments are estimated locally, increasing expectations provide a measure of contentment that makes the difference. However, even leaving this element aside, the rising or at least the nondeclining plan appears preferable since later activities can often incorporate and bind together the results and enjoyments of an entire life into one coherent structure as those of a declining plan cannot. This should present the notion of a person’s good. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25

If the future were accurately foreseen and adequately realized in the imagination, our good is determined by the plan of life that we would adopt with full deliberative rationality. The matters we have just discussed are connected with being rational in this sense. If certain conditions were fulfilled, it is worth stressing that a rational plan is one that would be selected. The criterion of the good is hypothetical in a way similar to the criterion of justice. When the question arises as to whether doing something accords with our good, the answer depends upon how well it fits the plan that would be chosen with deliberative rationality. Now one feature of a rational plan is that in carrying it out the individual does not change one’s mind and wish that one had done something else instead. A rational person does not come to feel an aversion for the foreseen consequences so great that one regrets following the plan one has adopted. The absence of this sort of regret is not however sufficient to insure that a plan is rational. There may be another plan open to us that were we to consider it we would find much better. Nevertheless, if our information is accurate and our understanding of the consequences complete in relevant respects, we do not regret following a rational plan, even if it is not a good one judged absolutely. In this instance the plan is objectively rational. We may, of course, regret something else, for example, that we have to live under such unfortunate circumstances that a happy life is impossible. Conceivably we may wish that we had never been born. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25

However, when judged by some ideal standard, we do not regret that, having been born, we followed the best plan as bad as it may be. A rational person may regret one’s pursuing a subjectively rational plan, but not because one thinks one’s choice is in any way open to criticism. For one does what seems best at the time, and if one’s beliefs later prove to be mistake with untoward results, it is through no fault of one’s own. There is no cause for self-reproach. There was no way of knowing which was the best or even a better plan. Putting these reflections together, we have the guiding principle that a rational individual is always to act so that one need never blame oneself no matter how one’s plans finally work out. Viewing oneself as one continuing being over time, one can say that at each moment of one’s life one has done what the balance of reason required, or at least permitted. Therefore any risks one assumes must be worthwhile, so that should the worst happen that one had any reason to foresee, one can still affirm that what one did was above criticism. One does not regret one’s choice, at least not in the sense that one later believes that at the time it would have been more rational to have done otherwise. This principle will not certainly prevent us from taking steps that lead to misadventure. Nothing can protect us from the ambiguities and limitations of our knowledge, or guarantee that we find the best alternative open to us. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
Acting with deliberative rationality can only insure that our conduct is above reproach, and that we are responsible to ourselves as one person over time. If someone said that one did not care about how one will view one’s present actions later any more than one cares about the affairs of other people (which is not much, let us suppose), we should indeed be surprised. One who rejects equally the claims of one’s future self and the interests of others is not only irresponsible with respect to them but in regard to one’s own person as well. One does not see oneself as one enduring individual. Now looked at in this way, the principle of responsibility to self resembles a principle of right: the claims of the self at different times are to be so adjusted that the self at each time can affirm the plan that has been and is being followed. The person at one time, so to speak, must not be able to complain about actions of the person at another time. This principle does not, of course, exclude the willing endurance of hardship and suffering; but it must be presently acceptable in view of the expected or achieved good. From the standpoint of the original position the relevance of responsibility to self seems clear enough. Since the notion of deliberative rationality applies there, it means that the parties cannot agree to a conception of justice if the consequences of applying it may lead to self-reproach should the least happy possibilities be realized. They should strive to be free from such regrets. And the principles of justice as fairness seem to meet this requirement better than other conceptions, as we can see from the earlier discussion of the strains of commitment. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25

A final observation about goodness as rationality. It may be objected that this conception implies that one should be continually planning and calculating. However, this interpretation rests upon a misunderstanding. The first aim of the theory is to provide a criterion for the good of the person. This criterion is defined chiefly by reference to the rational plan that would be chosen with full deliberative rationality. The hypothetical nature of the definition must be kept in mind. A happy life is not one taken up with deciding whether to do this or that. From the definition alone very little can be said about the content of a rational plan, or the particular activities that comprise it. It is not inconceivable that an individual, or even a whole society, should achieve happiness moved entirely by spontaneous inclination. With great luck and good fortune some humans might by nature just happen to hit upon the way of living that they would adopt with deliberative rationality. For the most part, though, we are not so blessed, and without taking thought and seeing ourselves as one person with a life over time, we shall almost certainly regret our course of actions. Even when a person does succeed in relying on one’s natural impulses without misadventure, we still require a conception of one’s good in order to assess whether one has really been fortunate or not. One may think so, but one may be deluded; and to settle this matter, we have to examine the hypothetical choices that it would have been rational for one to make, granting due allowance foe whatever benefits one may have obtained from not worrying about these things. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
The value of the activity of deciding is itself subject to rational appraisal. The efforts we should expend making decisions will depend like so much else on circumstances. Goodness as rationality leaves this question to the person and the contingencies of one’s situation. We need to learn that we cannot just have faith. We cannot have the miracle until after the exercise of faith. I am a product of a household of faith. I learned faith in my home. I was taught it. It was drilled into me. I need that faith now as much as I ever did. I think we all do. We are not going to survive in this World, temporally or spiritually, without increased faith in the Lord—and I do not mean an optimistic mental attitude—I mean downright solid faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. The Overself is not merely a mental concept for all humans but also a driving force for some humans, no merely a pious pleasant feeling for those who believe in it but also a continuing vital experience for those who have lifted the ego’s heavy door-bar. That is the one thing that gives vitality and power to otherwise weak individuals. I bear you my humble witness that I know that God lives. I know that He lives, that He is our Father, that He loves us. I bear witness that Jesus is the Christ, our Saviour and our Redeemer. I understand better what that means now. I am grateful for His atonement in our behalf and for knowing something about our relationship to Him and to our Heavenly Father and about the meaning and purpose of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I am grateful for Joseph Smith. I know that he was a prophet, and I know that President Ezra Taft Benson is a living prophet today. I bear that witness in the name of Jesus Christ, amen. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25

Whether are submitting masses of humans to information overload or not, we are affecting their behaviour negatively by imposing on them still a third form of overstimulation—decision stress. Many individuals trapped in dull or slowly changing environments yearn to break out into new jobs or roles that require them to make faster and more complex decisions. However, among the people of the future, the problem is reversed. “Decisions, decisions…” they mutter as they race anxiously from task to task. The reason they feel harried and upset is that transience, novelty and diversity pose contradictory demands and thus place them in an excruciating double bind. The accelerative thrust and its psychological counterpart, transience, force us to quicken the tempo of private and public decision-making. New needs, novel emergencies and crises demand rapid response. Yet the very newness of the circumstances brings about a revolutionary change in the nature of the decisions they are called upon to make. The rapid injection of novelty into the environment upsets the delicate balance of “programmed” and “non-programed” decisions in our organizations and our private lives. A programmed decision is one that is routine, repetitive and east to make. The commuter stands at the edge of the platform as the 8.05 rattles to a stop. One climbs aboard, as one has done every day for months are years. Having long ago decided that the 8.05 I the most convenient run on the schedule, the actual decision to board the train is programed. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25

It seems more like a reflex than a decision at all. The immediate criteria on which the decision is based are relatively simple and clear-cut, and because all the circumstances are familiar, one scarcely has to think about it. One is not required to process very much information. In this sense, programmed decisions are low in psychic cost. Contrast this with the kind of decisions that same commuter thinks about on one’s way to the city. Should one take the new job corporation Golden 1 Credit Union has offered as a Bank Secrecy Act Investigator making $97,983.00 annually or at Guild Mortgage Company as regional administrator making $118,887.00 annually? Should one buy a new Cresleigh Home? Should one have an affair with one’s secretary? How can one get the Management Committee to accept one’s proposals about the new ad campaign? Such questions demand non-routine answers. They force one to make one-time or first-time decisions that will establish new habits and behavioural procedures. Many factors must be studied and weighed. A vast among of information must be processed. These decisions are non-programmed. They are high in psychic cost. For each of us, life is a blend of the two. If this blend is too high in programmed decisions, we are not challenged; we find life boring and stultifying. We search for ways, even unconsciously, to introduce novelty into our lives, thereby altering the decision “mix.” However, if this mix is too high in non-programmed decisions, if we are hit by so many novel situations that programming becomes impossible, life becomes painfully disorganizes, exhausting and anxiety-filled. Pushed to its extreme, the end-point is psychosis. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25

Rudeness, talkativeness, destructiveness, meanness, belligerence, and stubbornness all add to the chronic problem of poor discipline. Such behaviour, in whatever form, greatly reduces the effectiveness of the teaching-learning process in the home and classroom or a work. Because many people no longer respond to an authoritarian adult, parent, teacher, or boss with obedience, more effective approaches are needed. One who tends to be effective with other rational individuals is one who encourages learning and good discipline by being warm, relaxed, friendly, flexible, a good communicator, well organized, confident in oneself, and reasonable in one’s request. One also strives to be consistent in one’s behaviour, curious about the World around one, able to smile readily, competent, approachable, and sincere. There is an advantage in people treating subordinates and peers with respect and maintaining routine being calm, casual, and orderly. In addition to being well prepared, an effective leader presents ideas in novel and stimulating ways. One is able to make them relevant to other’s concerns and interests. An effective adult has the courage to be imperfect oneself, admitting that one does not have all the answers. One’s children will then also have courage to admit their unenlightened ways and they will be more open to learning. “Rational behaviour,” write organization theorist Bertram M. Gross, “always includes an intricate combination of routinization and creativity. Routine is essential [because it] frees creative energies for dealing with the more baffling array of new problems which routinization is an irrational approach.” When we are unable to program much of our lives, we suffer. There is no more miserable person than one for whom the cooking of a meal, the drinking of every cup of coffee, the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of deliberation. For unless we can extensively program our behaviour, we waste tremendous amounts of information-processing capacity on trivia. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25

This is why we form habits. Watch a committee break for lunch and then return to the same room: almost invariably its members seek out the same seats they occupied earlier. Some anthropologists drag in the theory of “territoriality” to explain this behaviour—the notion that humans are forever trying to carve out for oneself a sacrosanct “turf.” A simpler explanation lies in the fact that programming conserves information-processing capacity. Choosing the same seat spares us the need to survey and evaluate other possibilities. In a familiar context, we are able to handle many of our life problems with low-cost programmed decisions. Change and novelty boost the psychic price of decision-making. When we move to a new neighbourhood, for example, we are forced to alter old relationships and establish new routines or habits. This cannot be done without first discarding thousands of formerly programmed decisions and making a whole series of costly new first-time, non-programmed decisions. In effect, we are asked to re-program ourselves. Precisely the same is true of the unprepared visitor to an alien culture, and it is equally true of the human who, still in one’s own society, is rocketed into the future without advance warning. The arrival of the future in the form of novelty and change makes all one’s painfully pieced-together behaviour routines obsolete. One suddenly discovers to one’s horror that these old routines, rather than solving one’s problems, merely intensify them. New and as yet unprogrammable decisions are demanded. Novelty disturbs decision mix, tipping the balance toward the most difficult, most costly form of decision-making. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25

It is true that some people can tolerate more novelty than others. The optimum mix is different for each of us. Yet the number and type of decision demanded of us are not under our autonomous control. It is the society that basically determines the mix of decisions we must make and the pace at which we must make them. Today there is a hidden conflict in our lives between the pressures of acceleration and those of novelty. One forces us to make faster decisions while the other compels us to make the hardest, most time-consuming type of decisions. The anxiety generated by this head-on collision is sharply intensified by expanding diversity. If one needs to deal with them, incontrovertible evidence shows that increasing the number of choices open to an individual also increases the amount of information one needs to process. Laboratory tests on humans and animals alike prove that the more the choices, the slower the reaction time. It is the frontal collision of these three incompatible demands that is now producing a decision-making crisis in the techno-societies. Taken together these pressures justify the term “decisional overstimulation,” and they help explain why masses of humans in these societies already feel themselves harried, futile, incapable of working out their private futures. The conviction that the way of life in which people are caught up in a fiercely competitive struggle, exhausting, and usually routine to obtain wealth, power, and success is too touch, that things are out of control, is the inevitable consequence of these clashing forces. For the uncontrolled acceleration of scientific, technological and social change subverts the power of the individual to make sensible, competent decisions about one’s own destiny. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
Many have certain patterns of disturbing behaviour that have been successfully used elsewhere to achieve the goals, and they may attempt to use them again. An individual’s behaviour is purposeful. One behaves or misbehaves in order to achieve the goals one sets for oneself. Only if one perceives oneself achieving one’s goals through such behaviour, one will set a pattern of behaving or misbehaving. This is called opportunity costs. The opportunity cost of an item is what you give up to get that item. When making any decision, such as whether to attend college, decision makers should be aware of the opportunity costs that accompany each possible action. In fact, they usually are. Singers who can earn millions if they drop out of school and perform preform professionally are well aware that their opportunity costs of college are very high. It is not surprising that they often decide that the benefit is not worth the cost. However, it should be remembered that many are only dimly aware of their goals. Each individual has an overriding goal to belong, to have a place, to be noticed, to be a concern of those who one respects and considers important in one’s life. An individual who sets a pattern of disturbing in the home, classroom, community, or workplace is misbehaving in order to belong. It is one’s way, logical or not, of having a place in the group. Opportunity costs for one is when parents, authority figures, community members, teachers or peers focus their positive or negative attention on one when one is misbehaving. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
An individual has a certain amount of free agency and, therefore, is actively engaged in influencing the behaviour of others interacting with one. However, one is ultimately responsible for one’s own behaviour. One’s parents, teachers, and associates also share responsibility with one, however, for one behaves in a social context where all persons influence one another, and their actions influence one’s perfections of how one can best belong. If they pay off one’s misbehaviour, one will tend to be stimulated to belong through misbehaviour; but if they pay off one’s good behaviour, one will be encouraged to belong through good behaviour. The payoff matrix is a tool used to simplify all of the possible outcomes of a strategic decision. It is a visual representation of all the possible strategies and all of the possible outcomes. It is the obligation of authority figures, guardians, leaders, teachers, and peers to show one that one can belong by behaving and that one will not find a place through misbehaving. It is the obligation of the individual to strive to belong in cooperative ways. The specific goal of the disturbing individual may be to get our attention, to be boss, to counter hurt, or to appear disabled. In general, it is recommended that authority figures, parents, leaders, teachers and peers disengage themselves from an individual who is misbehaving. If one removes the focus of one’s involvement from a misbehaving individual and places it elsewhere, the misbehaving individual will see in the payoff matrix, their behaviour has bad consequences, and one will find no value in expending energy to misbehave. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25

When one is no longer able to achieve one’s goals through disturbing behaviour, the misbehaving individual may be worse because one can no longer achieve one’s goals through the usual form of conflict habitual, but those who refuse to pay off for misbehaviour can be certain that the induvial is on one’s way to becoming more effective. The individual may be saying, “It has worked in the past. Maybe I am not trying hard enough.” It is important that leaders, teachers, and peers be firm with their own behaviour at this time. If one gives in and reverts to one’s old behaviour, one will have paid off the misbehaving individual for one’s increased misbehaviour, thus stimulating one’s personal economy to supply more misbehaviour because them seems to be a marginal increase in demand and this may lead to more misbehaviour than ever. Bad behaviour is contagious. Conduct disorder is a psychiatric syndrome occurring in childhood and adolescence, and is characterized by a longstanding patter of violations of rules and antisocial behaviour. Symptoms typically include aggression, frequently lying, running away from home overnight and destruction of property. Adults who have conduct disorder may have difficulty holding down a job or maintaining relationships and may become prone to illegal or dangerous behaviour. Symptoms of conduct disorder in an adult may be diagnosed as adult antisocial personality disorder. They often bully, threaten, or intimate others. Often initiates physical fights. Has used a weapon that can cause serious physical harm to others, et cetera. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
With the rise of rebellion and rebel culture, more of our leaders, authority figures, community members, media personalities and others display signs of conduct disorder. Professionalism has gone out the window. It is now all about raging and making innocent people feel your vengeance. Sometimes therapy is not enough and some children and adults need medication to help reduce dangerous behaviours. If you are someone you know may be suffering from conduct disorder, you should talk to your doctor about atypical antipsychotics such as risperidone or methylphenidate. Although church and state stand separate, the political order cannot be renewed without theological virtues working upon it. It is from the church that we receive our fundamental postulates of order, justice, and freedom, applying them to our civil society. When state policy decides what shall be taught and studied, the seemingly omnipotent State doctrine is for its part manipulated in the name of State policy by those occupying the highest positions in the government, where all the power is concentrated. Whoever, by election or caprice, gets into one of these positions is subject to no higher authority; one is the State policy itself and within the limits of the situation can proceed at one’s own discretion. With Louis XIV one can say, “L’etat c’ est moi.” One is thus the only individual or, at any rate, one of the few individuals who could make use of their individuality if only they knew how to differentiate themselves from the State doctrine. They are more likely, however, to be the slaves of their own fictions. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
Such one-sidedness is always compensated psychologically by unconscious subversive tendencies. Slavery and rebellion are inseparable correlates. Hence, rivalry for power and exaggerated distrust pervade the entire organism from top to bottom. Furthermore, in order to compensate for its chaotic formlessness, a mass always produces a “Leader,” who infallibly becomes the victim of one’s own inflated ego-consciousness, as numerous examples in history show. This development become logically unavoidable the moment the individual combines with the mass and thus renders oneself obsolete. Apart from the agglomeration of huge masses in which the individual disappears anyway, one of the chief factors responsible for psychological mass-mindedness is scientific rationalism, which robs the individual of one’s foundations and one’s dignity. As a social unit one has lost one’s individuality and become a mere abstract number in the bureau of statistics. One can only play the role of an interchangeable unit of infinitesimal importance. Looked at rationally and from outside, that is exactly what one is, and from this point of view it sees absolutely absurd to go on talking about the value or meaning of the individual. Indeed, one can hardly imagine how one ever came to endow individual human life with so much dignity when the truth to the contrary is as plain as the palm of your hand. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
Seen from this standpoint, the individual really is of diminishing importance and anyone who wished to dispute this would soon find oneself at a loss for arguments. The fact that the individual feels oneself or the members of one’s family or the esteemed friends in one’s circle to be important merely underlines the slightly comic subjectivity of one’s feeling. For what are the few compared with ten thousand or a hundred thousand, let alone a million? This recalls the argument of a thoughtful friend with whom I once got caught up in a huge crowd of people. Suddenly he exclaimed, “Here you have the most convincing reason for not believing in immortality: all that lot wants to be immortal!” The bigger the crowd the more negligible the individual becomes. However, if the individual, overwhelmed by the sense of one’s own puniness and impotence, should feel that one’s life has lost its meaning—which, after all, is not identical with public welfare and higher standards of living—then one is already on the road to State slavery and, without knowing or wanting it, has become its proselyte. The person who looks only outside and quails before the big battalions has nothing with which to combat the evidence of one’s senses and one’s reason. However, that is just what is happening today: we are all fascinated and overawed by statistical truths and large numbers and are daily apprised of the nullity and futility of the individual personality, since it is not represented and personified by any mass organization. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
Conversely, those personages who strut about on the World stage and whose voices are heard far and wide seem, to the uncritical public, to be borne along on some mass movement or on the tide of public opinion and for this reason are either applauded or execrated. Since mass suggestion plays the predominate role here, it remains a moot point whether their message is their own, for which they are personally responsible, or whether they merely function as a megaphone for collective opinion. Under these circumstances it is small wonder that individual judgment grows increasingly uncertain of itself and that responsibility is collectivized as much as possible, id est, is shuffled off by the individual and delegated to a corporate body. In this way the individual becomes more and more a function of society, which in its turn usurps the function of the real-life carrier, whereas, in actual fact, society is nothing more than an abstract idea like the State. Both are hypostatized, that is, have become autonomous. The State in particular is turned into a quasi-animate personality from whom everything is expected. In reality it is only a camouflage for those individuals who know how to manipulate it. Thus the constitutional State drifts into the situation of a primitive form of society—the communism of a primitive tribe where everybody is subject to the autocratic rule of a chief or an oligarchy. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
If Solzhenitsyn, MacArthur, and many of the great political philosophers since Cicero are right that society cannot survive without a vital religious influence, then where does this leave us? Will any religion or belief do? No. I believer as a matter of faith and intellect that the Judeo-Christian religion must be that transcendent base. However—and I cannot emphasize this too strongly—even if I did not, I would still argue that Christianity is the only religious system that provides for both individual concerns and the ordering of a society with liberty and justice for all. A creed alone is not enough, nor is some external law code. If Christianity were merely another creed, it would have no superior claim over Hinduism and Buddhism, for example. Or if it were merely another prescriptive order for society, it would have no advantage over Islam. Instead, Christianity alone, as taught in Scripture and announced in the Kingdom context by Jesus Christ, provides both a transcendent moral influence and a transcendent ordering of society without the repressive theocratic system of Islam. Humanists fail to understand human nature just as Christians fail to understand Christianity, just as professional fail to understand professionalism. Ignoring and ignorance and corruption is not the key to life. This is particularly true when it comes to the presence of the Kingdom of God in this World. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
Christians tend to see their faith as either a belief system or a religious palliative for all life’s ills. Secularists see it, most often, through the pejorative pen or the selective lens of the media, which portray the Christian activist as a religious Archie Bunker—a Bible-thumping, red blooded, American patriot, who believed in hard work, home ownerships, owning a business, speaking his mind and a deep love for White America, while he seemed to condemn everyone, expounding simplistically on everything from evolution, war, gun control, diversity, and morals with a steadfast devotion to the Republican part. He was often seen as a bigot, but the only White with Black friends, and Hispanic people living in his house, a Jewish doctor and a Jewish niece living with him, and also at one time an Asian pastor. He also supported his daughter’s Polish boyfriend by providing him with a place to stay and pay for his medical care, while he went to college and his daughter worked. He even has a friend who was reassigned a new gender, when it was unheard of, and Mr. Bunker also kissed Sammy Davis on the cheek, and went on to hire a Black nanny, who took the place of his wife Mrs. Bunker after she passed away. Nonetheless, many people in the church have perpetuate this negative stereotype of Archie Bunker, and preach thoughtless rhetoric and posturing. However, no one sees that Archie Bunker was actually a good person. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
When you look beyond Mr. Bunker’s words and pay attention to his actions, he did not assault people, was very understanding and even at one point thought God was Black. Mr. Bunker also explained that he only said hurtful things because that is the way his father raised him, and the man that loves you, puts a roof over your head, buys you your first ice cream, loves you, and teaches you to throw a baseball can never be wrong. This paradoxically bears some resemblance to Christianity because the Bible tells us to love our parents and respect them and our days on this Earth will be long. The show was set in the 1940s, I believe, and immigration and America was still pretty new. Some people have never even seen a person of colour before. So, it was going to take some time to adapt. The Kingdom of God provides unique moral imperatives that can cause men and women to rise above their natural egoism to serve the greater good. God intends His people to do this; furthermore, He commands them to influence the World through their obedience to Him, not by taking over the World through the corridors of power. No one can be coerced into truth faith, and the last people who even ought to try to do so are Christians, either individually or as members of the institutional Church. As the Westminster Confession states, “God alone is the Lord of conscience.” #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
God alone being the Lord of conscience is the conviction that lies at the heart of the agreement reached by American’s Founding Fathers and their wives. For them, secularists and believers alike, freedom of conscience was the first liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. This means religious liberty for all—Jewish, Muslim, Pagan, Wiccan, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, atheists, or California Victorian Worshiper. However, fundamentally, America is a Christian nation. This is One Nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all and it has a code of conduct called the United States Constitution that every American Citizen is required to memorize and practice. The Christian, knowing that the will of the majority cannot determine truth, seeks no preferential favour for one’s religion from government. We do not force the government to block programs that are not Christian, or censor music that is not Christian, or decorations that are not Christian. Our confidence, instead, is that truth is found in Christ alone—and this is so no matter how many people believe it, no matter whether those in power believe it. You can strip every Christian object from public display, but you can never strip Christianity out of America. Christianity is as important to Americans as the American flag. While this may sound exclusivist, it is this very assurance that makes (or should make, when properly understood) the Christian the most vigorous defender of human liberty. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
And those who resent the exclusive claims of Christianity are practicing the same intolerance they profess to resent. The essence of pluralism is, after all, that each person respects the other’s right to believe in an exclusive claim to truth. If society’s well-being depends on the presence of a healthy religious influence, then, it is crucial that Christians understand their responsibilities in the kingdom of man as mandated by the Kingdom of God. It is equally imperative that the rest of society realize the benefits those responsibilities, when properly carried out, offer them. We are a benefit-driven society. How will this move benefit us? we ask. What benefits come with this plan? What benefits does this company offer if I take the job? Does it come with medical, dental, vision, company-paid Life and Long-Term Disability Insurance, and various Supplemental Cover Programs, Flexible Spending Accounts, Wellness Incentive Programs, In-House Fitness Center, Paid Sick Leave, Short Term Disability, Employee Assistance Program, 401(k) with an automatic 3 percent contribution by Corporation with dollar per dollar matching up to a certain percent, Paid Vacation, 10 Paid Holidays Annually, Home Loan discounts for first mortgages, and Fond Perks? It should come as welcome news to the pragmatists of the World that the Kingdom of God offers benefits no society can afford to be without. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
No one can explain what the Overself is, for it is the origin, the mysterious source, of the explaining mind, and beyond all its capacities. However, what can be explained are the effects of standing consciously in its presence, the conditions under which it manifests, the ways in which it appears in human life and experience, the paths which lead to its realization. It is a state of pure intelligence but without the working of the intellectual and ideational process. Its product may be named intuition. There are no automatically conceived ideas present in it, no habitually followed ways of thinking. It is pure, clear stillness. The very essence of that Stillness is the Divine Being. Yet from it come forth the energies which makes and break Universes, which are perpetually active, creative, inventive, and mobile. The Lord is with me, I will not fear; what can man do unto me? The Lord is with me as my helper, I shall see my adversaries discomfited. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes. Many nations beset me; verily, in the name of the Lord, I will overcome them. They are beset me, yea, they compassed me about; verily, in the name of the Lord, I will overcome them. They compassed me about like bees, but they were extinguished like a fire of thorns; verily, in the name of the Lord I did subdue them. Thou, O foe, didst thrust at me that I might fall; but the Lord helped me. He shut my eyes—then placed a compass in my hands. Only one with a heart at each of the cardinal points instead of the four directions. This became my new compass for life, my heart guiding me every step—in any direction. Praise the Lord. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
Cresleigh Homes

All that natural light in Mills Station Residence 2 helps us start the day on the right foot. 💪 A bath in that gorgeous tub is the way to end the day. 😴 Start to finish, this bathroom will give you every reason to enjoy the weekly grind.
Residence Two at Mills Station is a two story home that has all the conveniences of a single story! At 2,317 square feet, this home features the Owner’s suite on the first floor with two secondary bedrooms on the “pop top” second story. Take advantage of the vaulted ceilings offered in this plan! The open floor plan includes three bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, Home Hub, Loft and more! Walk into the great room and feel the height of the ceilings and all the light brought in from the high windows.
The kitchen opens directly to the dining room allowing for perfect flow. The large kitchen island makes food prep and entertaining easy while the walk in pantry provides ample storage. The kitchen comes fully equipped with a large eat-in island, stainless steel appliances, and quartz counters. The great room is spacious and full of natural light with a covered patio! The Owner’s suite is located on the first floor of this home providing easy access and eliminating the hassle of climbing stairs daily. The Owner’s bathroom is spacious and tranquil including a large free standing soaking tub, walk in shower and large walk-in closet.

This home is designed with Universal Design concepts meaning that its well equipped for life’s transitions and aging in place. Learn more about this unique feature by speaking with a sales associate today! https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/residence-2/
Luxury appointments include gourmet kitchens, spacious living areas, and private primary bedroom suites. Ideally located close to upscale shopping and dining, major highways, and world-famous attractions. Top-rated public and private schools are within minutes of the community.
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Like a Diamond in the Sky Discipline Must be Maintained!
Every time I open a book, I risk my life…Every work of imagination offers another view of life, an invitation to spend a few days inside someone else’s emotions. The wise person lets the Overself’s presence flow through one’s life, never blocks it by one’s ego nor turns it aside by one’s passions. The ego can no longer foresee what will happen to the outer course of its personal life when the Overself takes the lead, nor can it dictate what that course should be. With all one’s humility before the Overself, one will bear oneself among one’s fellow human beings with serene self-assurance and speak with firm conviction of that which one knows. When these experiences increase and multiply to such an extent that they accumulate into a large body of evidence, one will become convinced that some power is somehow using one as a beneficent channel. It is the real originator of these experiences, the real bestower of these blessing, the real illuminator of these other people. What is this power? Despite its seeming otherness, its apparent separateness, it is really one’s own higher self. Humanity is one, with psyche. Humility is a not inconsiderable virtue which should prompt Christians, for the sake of charity—the greatest of all virtues—to set a good example and acknowledge that though there is only one truth it speaks in many tongues, and that if we still cannot see this is simply due to lack of understanding. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
No one is so godlike that one alone knows the true word. All of us gaze into that “dark glass” in which the dark myth takes shape, adumbrating the invisible truth. In this glass the eyes of the spirit glimpse an image which we call the self, fully conscious of the fact that it is an anthropomorphic image which we have merely named but not explained. By “self” we mean psychic wholeness, but what realities underlie this concept we do not know, because psychic contents cannot be observed in their unconscious state, and moreover the psyche cannot know itself. The conscious can know the unconscious only so far as it has become conscious. We have only a very hazy idea of the changes an unconscious content undergoes in the process of becoming conscious, but no certain knowledge. The concept of psychic wholeness necessarily implies an element of transcendence on account of the existence of unconscious components. Transcendence in this sense is not equivalent to a metaphysical postulate or hypostasis; it claims to be no more than a borderline concept, to quote Kant. That there is something beyond the borderline, beyond the frontiers of knowledge, is shown by the archetypes and, most clearly of all, by numbers, which this side of the border are quantities but on the other side are autonomous psychic entities, capable of making qualitative statements which manifest themselves in a priori patterns of order. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
These patterns include not only causally explicable phenonmena like dream-symbols and such, but remarkable relativizations of time and space which simply cannot be explained causally. They are the parapsychological phenomena which I have summed up under the terms “synchronicity” and which have been statistically investigated by Rhine. The beneficial results of experiments elevate these phenomena to the rank of undeniable facts. This brings us a little nearer to understanding the mystery of psychophysical parallelism, for we know that a factor exists which mediates between the apparent incommensurability of body and psyche, giving matter a kind of “psychic” faculty and the psyche a kind of “materiality,” by means of which the one can work on the other. That the body can work on the psyche seems to be a truism, but strictly speaking all we know is that any bodily defect or illness also expresses itself psychically. Naturally this assumption only holds good if, contrary to the popular materialistic view, the psyche is credited with an existence of its own. However, materialism in its turn cannot explain how chemical changes can produce a psyche. Both views, the materialistic as well as the spiritualistic, are metaphysical prejudices. It accords better with experience to suppose that living matter has a psychic aspect, and the psyche a physical aspect. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
If we give due consideration to the facts of parapsychology, then the hypothesis of the psychic aspect must be extended beyond the sphere of biochemical process to matter in general. In that case all reality would be grounded on an as yet unknown substrate possessing material and at the same tie psychic qualities. In view of the trend of modern theoretical physics, this assumption should arouse fewer resistances than before. It would also do away with the awkward hypothesis of psychophysical parallelism, and afford us an opportunity to construct a new World model closer to the idea of the unus mundus. The “acausal” correspondence between mutually independent psychic and physical events, id est, synchronistic phenomena, and in particular psychokinesis, would then become more understandable, for every physical event would involve a psychic one and vice versa. Such reflections are not idle speculations; they are forced on us in any serious psychological investigation of the UF phenomenon. Undoubtedly the idea of the unus mundus is founded on the assumption that the multiplicity of the empirical World rests on an underlying unity, and that not two of more fundamentally different Worlds exist side by side or are mingled with one another. Rather, everything divided and different belongs to one and the same World, which is not the World of sense but a postulate whose probability is vouched for by the fact that until now one has been able to discover a World in which the known laws of nature are invalid. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
That even the psychic World, which is so extraordinarily different from the physical Word, does not have its roots outside the one cosmos is evidence from the undeniable fact that causal connections exist between the psyche and the body which point to their underlying unitary nature. All that is is not encompassed by our knowledge, so that we are not in a position to make any statements about its total nature. Microphysics is feeling its way into the unknow side of matter, just as complex psychology is pushing forward into the unknown side of the psyche. Both lines of investigation have yielded findings which can be conceived only by means of antinomies, and both have developed concepts which display remarkable analogies. If this trend should become more pronounced in the future, the hypothesis of the unity of their subject-matters would gain in probability. Of course there is little or no hope that the unitary Being can ever be conceived, since our powers of thought and language permit only of antinomian statements. However, this much we do know beyond all doubt, that empirical reality has a transcendental background—a fact which, as Sir James Jeans has shown, can be expressed by Plato’s parable of the cave. The common background of microphysics and depth-psychology is as much physical as psychic and therefore neither, but rather a third thing, a neutral nature which can at most be grasped in hints since in essence it is transcendental. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
The background of our empirical World thus appears to be in fact a unus mundus. This is at least a probable hypothesis which satisfies the fundamental tenet of scientific theory: “Explanatory principles are not to be multiplied beyond the necessary.” The transcendental psychophysical background corresponds to a “potential World” in so far as all those conditions which determine the form of empirical phenomena are inherent in it. This obviously holds good as much for physics as for psychology, or, to be more precise, for macrophysics as much as for the psychology of consciousness. Only when we act in and from the Overself can we really be said to act aright, for only then shall our deeds be wise and virtuous, most beneficial in the ultimate sense both to our own self and to others. What the ego thinks and feels and does is to reflect the Overself’s dominion. The ego itself is now to be subsidiary. Every thought or feeling or act is to be dedicated one, every place where is finds itself a consecrated one. The Overself is not merely a transient intellectual abstraction but rather an eternal presence. For those who have awakened to the consciousness of this presence, there is always available its mysterious power and sublime inspiration. It is the divine moment; no longer foes speech come forth humanly not action individually: the God within has taken over. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
At some mysterious moment a higher power takes possession of one, dictates one’s thoughts, words, and acts. Sometimes one is amazed by them, by their difference from what one would normally have thought, spoken, or done. The unfoldment of intuitive action, intuitive thinking, and intuitive feeling means that the Overself and the personality are then in accord and working together. The little circle of the ego then lies within the larger circle of the Overself, in harmony and in co-operation. It does not matter than whether a human lives as a monk or as a householder, whether one is engaged in the World’s activity, or whether one is in retirement. Of course, such a condition is not attained without a full and deep transformation of the human. It is necessary to point out that the mere removal of thoughts by itself is not enough and could only give an illusory illumination and not the kind of peace which one feels after a dreamless sleep—passive, but not positive. There are various tricks. Some are of a hypnotic nature, whereby thoughts can be kept out of the mind and an apparent stillness obtained; but the mediator who only uses these tricks and nothing more deceives oneself. One might as well go to sleep and then wake up. The spiritual value is about the same, while the psychological value is definitely adverse to one. One will ten be in danger of becoming a dreamer with a dulled mind. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
One must look forward hopefully to the day when one can actually feel the higher self present within all one’s activity. It will reign in one’s inner World and thus be the real doer of one’s actions, not the ego in the outer World. It is not easy to subordinate oneself to this inner voice. However, where can one hide from it? We are to exalt life, not to degrade it. There are times when the Overself accepts no resistance, when it acts with such compelling force that the human is unable to disobey. However, such happenings are special ones. Some elf other than one’s familiar one will rise up within one, some force—ennobling, masterful, and divine—will control one. When a human’s consciousness, outlook, and character are so exalted as this, altruistic duty becomes not a burden to be carried irksomely but a part of one’s path of self-fulfillment from which one would not wish to be spared. There is a strange feeling that not one but somebody else is living and talking in the same body. It is somebody nobler and wiser than one’s own ego. The feeling of being possessed for a while by a holy other-Worldly presence comes over one. One is now under the influence, and later may be under the control, of a superior power. One becomes a vessel, filled from time to time with spiritual presence. One’s words, one’s feelings, and one’ actions will ten not only be expressions of one’s human self but also of that self united indissolubly with one’s divine self. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Mind is the aspect of reality. When this intellectual understanding is brough within one’s own experience as fact, when it is made as much one’s own as a bodily pain, then it becomes direct insight. Such thinking is the most profitable and resultful in which one can engage, for it brings the student to the very portal of Mind where it stops activity by itself and where the differentiations of ideas disappears. As the mental muscles strain after this concept of the Absolute, the Ineffable and Infinite, they lose their materialist rigidity and become more sensitive to intimations from the Overself. When thinking is able to reach such a profound depth that it attains utter impersonality and clam universality, it is able to approach the fundamental principle of its own being. When hard thinking reaches a culminating point, it then voluntarily destroys itself. Such an attainment of course can take place deep within the innermost recesses of the individual’s consciousness alone. One will arrive at the firm unshakable conviction that there is an inward reality behind all existence. If one wishes one may go farther still and seek to translate the intellectual idea of this reality into a conscious fact. In that case the comprehension that is the quest of pure Mind one is in quest of that which is alone the Supreme Reality in this entire Universe, must possess one. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
This mystery Mind is a theme upon which no aspirant can ever reflect enough: first, because of its importance, and second, because of its capacity to unfold one’s latent spirituality. One will doubtless feel cold on these lofty peaks of thought, but in the end one will find a Heavenly reward whilst still on Earth. We are not saying that something of the nature of mind as we humans know it is the supreme reality of the Universe, but only that it is more like that reality than anything else we know of and certainly more like it than what we usually call by the name of “matter.” The simplest way to express this is to say that Reality is of the nature of our mind rather than of our body, although it is Mind transcending the familiar phases and raised to infinity. It is the ultimate being the highest state. This is the Principle which forever remains what it was and will be. It is in the Universe and yet the Universe is in it too. It never evolves, for it is outside time. It has no shape, for it is outside space. It is beyond human’s consciousness, for it is beyond both one’s thoughts and senseless humans may enter into its knowledge, many enter into its Void, so soon as one can drop one’s thoughts, let go one’s sense-experience, but keep one’s sense of being. Then one may understand what Jesus meant when saying: “One that loseth one’s life shall find it.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Such an accomplishment may appear too spectral to be of any use to one’s matter-of-fact generation. What is their madness will one one’s sanity. One will know there is reality where they think there is nothingness. To keep this origin always at the back of one’s mind because it is also the end of all things, is a necessary practice. However, this can only be done if one cultivates reactionlessness to the happenings of every day. This does not mean showing no outward reactions, but it does mean that deep down indifference has been achieved—not an empty indifference, but one based on seeing the Divine essence in all things, all creatures, and a Divine meaning in all happenings. There is only this one Mind. All else is a seeming show on its surface. To forget the ego and think of this infinite and unending reality is the highest kind of meditation. First, remember that It is appearing as ego; then remember to think tat you are It; finally cease to think of It so you may be free of thoughts to be It! To attach oneself to a guru, an avatar, one religion, one creed, is to see stars only. To put one’s faith in the Infinite Being, and in its presence within the heart, is to see the vast empty sky itself. The stars will come and go, will disintegrate and vanish, but the sky remains. In a World of constantly changing scenes, fortunes, health, and relationships, a precious possession is the knowledge that there is the unseen Unchanging Real. Still more precious is awareness within oneself of ITS ever-presence. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
In the moment that there dawns on one’s understanding the fact of Mind’s beginninglessness and deathlessness, one gains the second illumination, the first being that of the ego’s illusoriness and transiency. Not to find the Energy of the Spirit but the Spirit itself is the ultimate goal—not its power or effects or qualities or attributes but the actuality of pure being. The aspirant is not to stop short with any of these but to push on. One will have gone far intellectually when one can understand the statement that mind is the seeker but Mind is the sought. One who puts one’s mind on the Unlimited instead of on the little parts, who does not deal with fractions but with the all-absorbing Whole, gains some of Its power. What we need to grasp is that although our apprehension of the Real is gradual, the Real is nonetheless with us at every moment in all its radiant totality. Modern science has filled our heads with the false notion that reality is in a state of evolution, whereas it is only our mental concept of reality which is in a state of evolution. Thinking can, ordinarily, only produce more thoughts. Even thinking about truth, about reality, however correct it be, shares this limitation. However, if properly instructed it will know its place and understand the situation, with the consequence that at the proper moment it will make no further effort, and will seek to merge into meditation. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
When the merger is successfully completed, a holy silence will pervade the consciousness which remains. Truth will then be revealed of its own accord. When all thought are gone, when all vibration, movement, or activity of thinking faculty has ceased, then is the self-revealing possible of Mind-in-itself, of Consciousness with its states. Where the intellect is active it creates a double result—the thought and thinker. Where the enlightened human goes into the Stillness this duality does not appear but Consciousness remains. It contains nothing created by one. It is the Alone. Every creature, from the most primitive amoeba up to the most intellectual human, has some kind and degree of awareness; but only the Illuminate has that toward which awareness itself is striving to attain—Consciousness. The “Void” means void of all mental activity and productivity. It means that the notions and images of the mind have been emptied out, that all perceptions of the body and conceptions of the brain have gone. The Mind is here, now. However, as soon as any thought arises you miss it. It is like space…unthinkable. The great Emptiness is the Ultimate Being, without form, Matterless and Motionless, ineffable, and undescribable except by statements of what it is not. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Those who study can lead them to this high level must then let go of ward, abandon images, representations, symbols, numberings, divisions, and dualities; must be ready to enter the Stillness. This means being able to attain the utmost Vacuity. Cling single-heartedly to Quietude. Mentalism is the study of Mind and its product, thoughts. To separate the two, to disentangle them, is to become aware of Awareness itself. This achievement comes not by any process of intellectual activity but by the very opposite—suspending such activity. And it comes not as another idea but as extremely vivid, powerfully compelling insight. Nothing that the mind can think into mental existence is IT. Mind in its most unlimited sense is reality. A human can know it only be the intuitive process of being it, in the same manner in which one know one’s name, which is not an intellectual process but an immediate one. We shall never grasp that totality of being with out intellect, but we shall grasp it with the only thing capable of holding it, with Consciousness. The awareness of It as being It is something other, and more, than the mere emptiness of Mind. God in unfathomable and unknowable. Every idea of Him is a false idea, created to satisfy our little human mental need but also sharing our finite human limitations. That is, the idea describes something about humans, nothing about God. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
We prefer to delude ourselves with such images and idols, rather than to take off our shoes at the very remembrance of God and enter the temple of the Silenced Mind. Here, at least, we get no untrue concepts which have to be discarded in the end. Here the wakened faint or strong intuition may bet intimations Godlike in quality, of THAT which must always remain incomprehensible to the intellect. Those who look to God as a healer, or as a mother, or as a father, or as a teacher are still looking for God within the ego. They are thinking of God only in relation to themselves because their first interest is in themselves. However, those who look to God in the Void, and not in any relationship or under any image or idea, really find God. Therefore they really find “the peace which passeth understanding.” If they begin and end in words, all attempts to explain the inexplicable, to describe the inscrutable, to communicate the ineffable must end in failure. For then it is merely intellect talking to intellect. However, let the attempts be made in the stillness, let “hear speak to heart,” and the Real may reveal itself. All talk of things being inside or outside the mind is submission to the spell of a vicious spatial metaphor. All language is applicable to things and thoughts, but not to the august infinite of mind. Here every word can be at best symbolic and at worst irrelevant, while remaining always as remote from definable meaning as unseen and unseeable Universes are from our own. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
We have lived in illusions long enough. Let us not yield the last grand hope of humans to the deceptive sway of profane words. Here there must and shall be SILENCE—serene, profound, mysterious, yet satisfying beyond all Earthly satisfactions. It is not possible for a finite human being to grasp the infinite significance of the Infinite Being, nor to gather any true idea about such Being. One can only think what It is not: otherwise one must retreat into utter silence, not merely of speech alone but also of mental imaginative and passional activity. Awareness alone is whatever it turns its attention to, seems to exist at the time: only that. If to Void then there is nothing else. If to World, then World assumes reality. What is it that is aware? The though of a point of awareness create, gives reality at the lowest level to ego, and at the highest to Higher Self but when the thought itself is dropped there is only the One Existence, Being, in the divine Emptiness. It is therefore the Source of all life, intelligence, form. The idea held becomes direct experience for the personality, the awareness becomes direct perception. Awareness is the very nature of one’s being: it is the Self. Every human credits oneself with having consciousness during the wakeful state. One never questions or disputes the fact. One does not need anyone else to till it to one, not does one tell it to oneself. It is the surest part of one’s knowledge. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Yet this is not a knowing which one brings into the field of awareness. It is known differently from the way other facts are known by one. The difference is that the ego is absent from the knowledge—the fact is not actually perceived. Reason tells us that pure Thought cannot know itself because that would set up a duality which would be false if pure though is the only real itself. Although all ordinary experience confirms it, extraordinary experience refutes it. Consciousness is the best witness to its own existence. When we experience Mind through the sense we call it matter. When we experience it trough imagination of thinking we call it idea. When we experience it as it is in its own pure being, we call it Spirit, or better Overself. Humans are not the authors of nature; but one uses natural things in applying art and virtue to one’s own use. Hence human providence does not reach to that which takes place in nature from necessity; but divine providence extends thus far, since God is the author of nature. Apparently it was this argument that moved those who withdrew the course of nature from the care of divine providence, attributing it rather to the necessity of matter, as Democritus, and others of the ancients. When it is said that God left humans to themselves, this does not mean that humans are exempt from divine providence; but merely that one has not a prefixed operating force determined to only the one effect; as in the case of natural things, which are only acted upon though directed by another towards an end; and do not act of themselves, as if they directed themselves towards an end, like rational creatures, though the possession of free will, by which these are able to take counsel and make choice. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Hence it is significantly said: “In the hand of one’s own counsel.” However, since the very act of free will is traced to God as to a cause, it necessarily follows that everything happening from the exercise of free will must be subject to divine providence. For human providence is included under the providence of God, as a particular universal cause. God, however, extends His providence over the just in a certain more excellent way than over the wicked; inasmuch as He prevents anything happening which would impede their final salvation. For “to them that love God, all things work together unto good,” reports Romans 8.28. However, from the fact that God does not restrain the wicked from the evil of sin, He is said to abandon them: not that He altogether withdraws His providence from them; otherwise they would return to nothing, if they were not preserved in existence by His providence. This was the reason that had weight with Tully, who withdrew from the care of divine providence human affairs concerning which we take counsel. Since a rational creature has, through its free well, control over its action, as was said above, it is subject to divine providence in an especial manner, so that something is imputed to it as a fault, or as a merit; and there is given it accordingly something by way of punishment or reward. In this way, the Apostle withdraws oxen from the care of God: not, however, that individual irrational creatures escape the care of divine providence; as was the opinion of the Rabbis Moses. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Dear Lord in the shining Heaven, during today’s negotiations, please make me eloquent. God, please ease the way, please remove all obstacles, opening the path for a smoothly accomplished deal, opening the path for a profitable outcome. I take up my pen and invoke the Spirit of God, the God of writing, please make my way smooth. I take up the pen and invoke Jesus Christ: Inspiring Saviour, please enflame my words. O Lord our God, please bestow upon us the blessing of Thy festivals for life and peace, for joy and gladness, even as Thou hast graciously promised to bless us. [Our God and God of our fathers, please accept our rest.] Please sanctify us through Thy commandments, and please grant our potion in Thy Bible; please give us abundantly of Thy goodness and please make us rejoice in Thy salvation. Please purify our hearts to serve Thee in truth. In Thy loving favour, O Lord our God, please let us inherit with joy and gladness Thy holy [Sabbath and] festivals; and may America who sanctifies Thy name, rejoice in Thee. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who hallowest [the Sabbath and] America and the festivals. O Lord our God, please be gracious unto Thy people of America and please accept their prayer. Please restore the worship to Thy sanctuary and receive in love the supplications of America; and may the worship of Thy people be ever acceptable unto Thee. O may our eyes witness Thy return to America. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who restorest Thy divine presence unto America. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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The Cresleigh Collection showcases seven luxury single-family home designs in the Mills Station of Cresleigh Ranch, and is conveniently located close to major employment centers, scenic parks, and recreation.
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Give Me a Laundry-List and I Will Set it to Music!

Chemistry is applied theology. In order to actualize our potentialities, in order to become fully human and completely ourselves, we must not merely think; we must also permit ourselves to be thoughts. Both the historical record of creative thought and the laboratory report of its appearance today, indicate clearly that creative intelligence can spring from the mind that is not strained to its highest pitch, but is utterly ease. Our is a civilization in which vast numbers of children and adults are so chronically bored that they have to resort during their leisure hours to a regimen of non-stop distractions. Any method which promises to make life seem enjoyable and the commonplaces of everyday experience more interesting should be welcomed as a major contribution to culture and morality. It is most certainly very difficult, perhaps quite impossible, to serve two gods simultaneously—to pursue the most sordid interests while aspiring to realize the highest ideals. This is obvious. Only a little less obvious, however, is the fact that it is very hard, perhaps quite impossible, to serve God wile failing to make the best of both Worlds—of all the World of which, as human beings, we are the inhabitants. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
Rightness as fairness is to be understood as a replacement for existing conceptions There is no necessity to say that sameness of meaning holds between the word “right” (and its relatives) in its ordinary use and the more elaborate locutions needed to express this ideal contractarian concept of right. If the theory of justice as fairness, or more generally of rightness as fairness, fits our considered judgments in reflective equilibrium, and if it enables us to say all that on due examination we want to say, then it provides a way of eliminating customary phrases in favour of other expressions. So understood one may think of justice as fairness and rightness as fairness as providing a definition or explication of the concepts of justice and right. we are not to gain from the cooperative labours of others without doing our fair share. The two principles of justice guarantees the equal basic rights and liberties needed to secure the fundamental interests of free and equal citizens and to pursue a wide range of conceptions of the good. These two principles of justice define what is a fair share in the case of institutions belonging to the basic structure. So if these arrangements are just, each person receives a fair share wen all (one’s self included) do their part. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25

Further, the content of obligation is always defined by an institution or practice the rules of which specify what it is that one is required to do. And, obligations are normally owed to definite individuals, namely, those who are cooperating together to maintain the arrangement in question. As an example illustrating these features, consider the political act of running for and (if successful) holding public office in a constitutional regime. This act gives rise to the obligation to fulfill the duties of office, and these duties not as moral duties but as takes of responsibilities assigned to certain institutional positions. It is nevertheless the case that one may have a moral reason (one based on a moral principle) for discharging these duties, as when one is bound to do so by the principle of fairness. Also, one assumes public office is obligated to one’s fellow citizens whose trust and confidence one has sough and with whom one is cooperating and running a democratic society. Similarly, we assume obligations when we marry as well as when we accept positions of judicial, administrative, or others authority. We acquire obligations by promising and by tacit understandings, and even when we join a game, namely, the obligation to play by the rules and to be a good sport. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25

All of these obligations are, I believe, covered by the principle of fairness. There are two important cases though that are somewhat problematical, namely, political obligation as it applies to the average citizens, rather than, say, to those who hold office, and the obligation to keep promises. In the first case it is not clear what is the requisite binding action or who has performed it. There is, I believe, no political obligation, strictly speaking, for citizens generally. Psychologically, humans are highly educated products of the twenty-first century civilization, chained, in a state of uneasy and hostile symbiosis, to a disturbingly dynamic unconscious, a wild phantasy and an unpredictable id—and yet capable of falling in love, writing string quartets, and having mystical experiences. They feel pride. They are proud to be members of a community where there is so much caring and concern for others, a caring that is broader and more sensitive than one individual is capable of. However, at times people are so frustrated with life because they work so hard and are tired and do not realize that they are burnt out and need a vacation that it can make them wonder if coming to the community is worth it. However, the other reaction they have is much stronger. People watch with awe the birth pangs of something new in the World. And their earlier state of mind returns. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25

If humanity can live together without destroying one another, can live together with a caring concern for the full development of each person, can live together in the richness of diversity instead of the sterility of conformity, then we may have found a truth with many, many implications. Some people themselves are painfully confused, uncertain where they stand or who they really are. To provide themselves with a recognizable identity, a niche in the scheme of things that they can call “home,” they will give assent to the unlikeliest dogmas, conform to the most absurd and even harmful rules of thought, feeling, and conduct, put on the most extravagant fancy dress and identify themselves with masks that bear almost no resemblance to the faces they cover. The inhabitants of all these personal ideologies must somehow learn to make the best of the community in an ability to discover anything that is approximately true and Earthshaking as revolutionary power. And I believe we are making some such discovery. So there is hope that some of the overwhelming World issues may be touched, in ways we cannot even dream of now, by what we are doing. However, a good education may be defined as one which helps the boys and girls subjected to it make the best of all the Worlds in which, as human beings, they are compelled, willy-nilly, to live. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25

An education that prepares them to make the best of only one of their Worlds, or of only a few of them, is inadequate. Mens sana in corpore sano (a Latin phrase, which means “a healthy mind in a healthy body”) is an ancient educational ideal and a very good one. Unfortunately, good ideals are never enough. Unless they are accompanied by full instructions regarding the methods by which they maybe realized, they are almost useless. Hell is paved with good intentions, and whole periods of history have been made hideous or grotesque by enthusiastic idealists who failed to elaborate the means whereby their lofty aspirations might be effectively, and above all harmlessly, implemented. Just how good is modern education? How successful is it in helping young people to make the best of all the Worlds which they all have to live in? At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in other schools where similar problems have arisen, the answer to this question has found expression in a renewed interest in the humanities. Excessive scientific specialization is tempered by courses in philosophy, history, literature, and social studies. All this is excellent so far as it does. However, does it go far enough? #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
Do courses in the humanities provide a sufficient antidote for excessive scientific and technical specialization? Do they, in the terminology we have been using, help youth to make the best of a substantially greater number of their Worlds? Our natural duties are to help one another when one is in need or jeopardy, provided that ne can do so without excessive risk or loss to oneself; the duty not to harm or injure another; and the duty not to cause unnecessary suffering. The first duty is a positive duty, the duty of mutual assistance. We have a duty to do something good for one another. Whereas the last two duties are negative in that they require us not to do something that is bad. The distinction between positive and negative duties is intuitively clear in many cases, but often gives way. Now in contrast with obligations, it is characteristic of natural duties that they apply to us without regard to our voluntary acts. Moreover, they have no necessary connection with institutions or social practices; their content is not, in general, defined by the rules of these arrangements. Thus we have a natural duty not to be cruel, and a duty to help another, whether or not we have committed ourselves to these actions. It is no defense or excuse to say that we have made no promise not to be cruel or vindictive, or to come to another’s assistance. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25

Indeed, a promise not to kill, for example, is normally ludicrously redundant, and the suggestion that it establishes a moral requirement where none already exited is mistaken. Such a promise is in order, if it ever is so, only when for special reasons one has the right to kill, perhaps in a situation arising in a just war. Another further feature of natural duties is that they hold between persons irrespective of their institutional relationships; they obtain between all as equal moral persons. In this sense the natural duties are owed not only to definite individuals, say to those cooperating together in a particular social arrangement, but to persons generally. This feature in particular suggests the propriety of the adjective “natural.” One aim of the law of nations is to assure the recognition of these duties in the conduct of states. This is especially important in constraining the means used in war, assuming that, in certain circumstances anyway, wars of self-defense are justified. From the standpoint of justice as fairness, a fundamental natural duty is the duty of justice. This duty requires us to support and to comply with just institutions that exist and apply to us. It also constrains us to further just arrangements not yet established, at least when this can be done without too much cost to ourselves. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25

Thus is the basic structure of society is just, or as just as it is reasonable to expect in the circumstances, everyone has a natural duty to do one’s part in the existing scheme. Each is bound to these institutions independent of one’s voluntary acts, performative or otherwise. Thus even though the principles of natural duty are derived from a contractarian point of view, they do not presuppose an act of consent, express or tacit, or indeed any voluntary act, in order to apply. The principles that hold for individuals, just as the principles for institutions, are those that would be acknowledged in the original position. These principles are understood as the outcome of a hypothetical agreement. If their formulation shows that no binding action, consensual or otherwise, is a presupposition of their application, then they apply unconditionally. The reason why obligations depend upon voluntary acts is given by the second part of the principle of fairness which states this condition. It has nothing to do with the contractual nature of justice as fairness. In fact, once the full set of principles, a complete conception of right, is on hand, we can simply forget about the conception of original position and apply these principles as we would any others. There is nothing inconsistent, or even surprising, in the fact that justice as fairness allows unconditional principles. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25

It suffices to show that the parties in the original position would agree to principles defining the natural duties which as formulated hold to principles defining the natural duties which as formulated hold unconditionally. The same principle of fairness may establish a bond to existing just arrangements, the obligations covered by it can support a tie already present that derives from the natural duty of justice. Thus a person may have both a natural duty and an obligation to comply with an institution and to do one’s part. The thing to observe here is that there are several ways in which one may be bound to political institutions. For the most part the natural duty of justice is the more fundamental, since it binds citizens generally and requires no voluntary acts in order to apply. The principle of fairness, on the other hand, binds only those who assume public office, say, or those who, being better situated, have advanced their aims within the system. There is, then, another sense of noblesse oblige: namely, that those who are more privileged are likely to acquire obligations trying them even more strongly to a just scheme. I shall say very little about the other kind or principles for individuals. For while permissions are not an unimportant class of actions, I must limit the discussion to the theory of social justice. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
It may be observed, though, that once all the principles defining requirements are chosen, no further acknowledgments are necessary to define permissions. This is so because permissions are those acts which we are at liberty both to do and not to do. They are acts which violate no obligation or natural duty. In studying permissions one wishes to single out those that they significant from a moral point of view and to explain their relation to duties and obligations. Many such actions are morally indifferent or trivial. However, among the permissions is the interesting class of supererogatory actions. These are acts of benevolence and mercy, of heroism and self-sacrifice. It is good to do these actions but it is not one’s duty or obligation. Supererogatory acts are not required, though normally they would be were it not for the loss or risk involved for the agent oneself. A person who does a supererogatory act does not invoke the exemption which the natural duties allow. For while we have a natural duty to bring about a great good, say, if we can do so relatively easily, we are released from this duty when the cost to ourselves is considerable. Supererogatory acts arise questions of first importance for ethical theory. For example, it seems offhand that the classical utilitarian view cannot account for them. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25

It would appear that we are bound to perform actions which bring about a greater good for others whatever the cost to ourselves provided that thus sum of advantages altogether exceeds that of other acts open to us. There is nothing corresponding to the exemptions included in the formulation of the natural duties. Thus some of the actions which justice as fairness counts as supererogatory may be required by the utility principle. I shall not, however, pursue this matter further. Supererogatory acts are mentioned here for the sake of completeness. Children should be taught that words are indispensable but also can be fatal—the only begetters of all civilization, all science, all consistency of high purpose, all angelic goodness, and the only begetters are the same time of all superstition, all collective madness and stupidity, all worse-then-bestial diabolism, all the dismal historical succession of crimes in the name of God, King, Queen, Nation, Party, Doctrines, Beliefs. Never before, thanks to the techniques of mass communication, have so many listeners been so completely at the mercy of so few speakers. Never have misused words—those hideously efficient tools of all the tyrants, war-mongers, persecutors, and heresy-hunters—been so widely and so disastrously influential as they are today. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25

Generals, clergymen, advertisers, and the rulers of totalitarian states—all have good reasons for disliking the idea of universal education in the rational use of language. To the military, clerical, propagandist, and authoritarian mind such training seems (and rightly seems) profoundly subversive. To those who think that liberty is a good thing, and who hope that it may some day become possible for more people to realize more of their desirable potentialities in a society fit for free, fully human individuals to live in, a thorough education in the nature of language, in its uses and abuses, seems indispensable. Whether in fact the mounting pressures of overpopulation and overorganization in a World still enthusiastically dedicated to nationalistic idolatry will permit this kind of subversive linguistic education to be adopted by even more democratic nations remains to be seen. Make the body capable of doing many things, this will help you to perfect the mind and come to the intellectual love of God. Education is desirable and indeed, if the child is to grow into a fully human being, absolutely necessary. The detailed curriculum for an education in what maybe called the nonverbal humanities has still to be worked out. Humanities is a process that should be started in the kindergarten and continued through all the years of school and college—and thereafter, as self-education, throughout the rest of life. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25

Education is to life in general—an indispensable condition for any kind of improvement. School children need to learn a kind of internal awareness that can lead to a creative conscious control. All our mental processes depend upon perception. Inadequate perceiving results in poor thinking, inappropriate feeling, diminished interest in and enjoyment of life. Systematic training of perception should be an essential element in all education. Awareness has to be assigned to each special significance and value for the human being who aspires to make the bet of both Worlds and so, by teaching one’s psychophysical organism to do many things to perfect the mind and come to the intellectual love of God. It is a strange thing how little in general people know about the sky. It is the part of creation in which nature has done more for the sake of pleasing humans, more for the sake and evident purpose of talking to one and teaching one, than in any of her other works, and it is just the part in which we least attend to her. There is not a moment in any day of our lives in which nature is no producing (in the sky) scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory, and working always upon such exquisite and constant principles of the most perfect beauty, that it is quite certain it is all done for us and intended for our perpetual pleasure. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25

We never attend to the sky, we never make it a subject of thought. We look upon it….only as a succession of monotonous and meaningless accident, too common or too vain to be worthy of a moment of watchfulness of a glance of admiration. Who, among the chattering crowd, can tell me of the forms and the precipices of the chain of tall white mountains that girded the horizon at noon yesterday? Who saw the narrow Sunbeam that came out f the south and smote their summits until they melted and mouldered away in a dust of blue rain? All has passed unregretted as unseen; or if the apathy be ever shaken off, if even for an instant, it is only by what is gross or what is extraordinary. A habit of wise passiveness in relation to the everyday drama of the clouds and mist and Sunshine can become a source of endless pleasures. However, most of the products of our educational system prefer Westerns and alcohol. In the United States of America, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are constitutionally guaranteed. However, if life hardly seems worth living, if liberty is used for subhuman purposes, if the pursuers of happiness know nothing about the nature of their quarry or the elementary techniques of hunting, these constitutional rights will not be very meaningful. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25

An education in that wise passiveness recommended by the saints and the poets, by all who have lived fully and worked creatively, might help us to transform the papers promises of a democratic constitution into concrete contemporary fact. The mentally ill are the victims of their phantasy, and even more or less normal people find themselves tempted into folly, or inhibited from behaving as they know they ought to behave, by what goes on in the superreal but unrealistic World of their imagination. How can we make the best of this odd, alien, almost autonomous Universe that we carry about with us inside our skulls? Truth lives, proverbially, at the bottom of a well, and wells are often muddy. No genuinely scientific investigator has any right to be squeamish about anything. Made the worst of, our imagination will destroy us; made the best of, it can be used to break up long-established habits of undesirable feeling, to dissipate obsessive fears, to provide symbolic outlets for anger and fictional amends for real frustrations. In the course of the last three thousand years how many sermons have been preached, how many homilies delivered and commands roared out, how many promises of Heaven and threats of hell-fire solemnly pronounced, how many good-conduct prizes awarded and how many immature buttocks lacerated with whips and canes? #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
And what has been the result of all this incalculable sum of moralistic words, and of the rewards and savage punishments by which the verbiage has been accompanied? The result has been history—the successive generations of human beings comporting themselves virtuously and rationally enough for the race to survive, but badly enough and madly enough for it to be unceasingly in trouble. Can we do better in the future than we are doing today, or than our fathers did in the past? Can we develop methods more effective than pious talks and Pavlovian conditioning? Moral equivalents must be found not only for war but also for delinquency, family squabbles, bullying, puritanical censoriousness, and all the assorted beastliness of daily life. Hope is anticipation of good not yet here, or as yet “unseen.” It is of course inseparable from joy. Sometimes the good in question is just deliverance from evil, which is here. Then “we are saved by hope,” (Romans 8.24), and “we rejoice in hope,” (Romans 12.12), because “if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it,” (Romans 8.25). That eager anticipation strengthens us to stay faithful to God and to stay on the path of what is right. One of the remarkable changes brought by Jesus and his people into the ancient World concerned the elevation of hope into a primary virtue. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25

Hope was not well regarded by the Greco-Roman World. It was thought of as a desperation measure. And whole, according to the myth of Pandora’s box, it may be all we have left with which to endure the agonies of life, it must be grimly held in check or it will give rise to vain expectations that only cause more misery. Christ, by contrast, brings solid hope for humanity. Clearly, then, hope also is closely related to faith. Faith is confidence grounded in reality, not a wild, desperate “leap.” It is, as Hebrews 11.1 says, substance, and evidence, or poof, not—as contemporary translations usually have it—subjective psychological states such as “being such of” or “having a conviction of.” Rather, faith sees the reality of the unseen or invisible, and it includes a readiness to act as if the good anticipated in hope were already in hand because of the reality of God (compare 2 Corinthians 4.17-18). One that believes dare trust God for the morrow, and is not more solicitous for the next year than one is for that which is past. No one worries about what was going to happen last year. Accordingly, Moses “left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king,” reports Hebrews 11.27. Egypt and its king were in the realm of “the seen.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 25

Moses was able to disregard them to stick with his goal because he saw the One who is invisible but none the less real for that. For one endured, as seeing Him who is unseen” (Hebrews 11.27). That is faith as the Bible portrays it. “And now it came to pass in the seventy and second year of the reign of the judges that the contentions did increase, insomuch that there were wars throughout all the land among all the people of Nephi. And it was this secret band of robbers who did carry on this work of destruction and wickedness. And this war did last all that year; and in the seventy and third years it did also last. And it came to pass that in this years Nephi did cry unto the Lord, saying: O Lord, do not suffer that this people shall be destroyed by the sword; but O Lord, rather let there be a famine in the land, to stir them up in remembrance of the Lord their God, and perhaps they will repent and turn unto tee. And so it was done, according to the words of Nephi. And there was a great famine upon the land, among all the people of Nephi. And thus in the seventy and fourth year the famine did continue, and the work of destruction did cease by the sword but became sore by famine. And this work of destruction did also continue in the seventy and fifth year. For the Earth was smitten that it was dry, and did not yield forth grain in the season of grain. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25

“And the whole Earth was smitten, even among the Nephites, so that they were smitten that they did perish by thousands in the more wicked parts of the land. And it came to pass that the people saw that they were about to perish by famine, and they began to remember the Lord their God; and they began to remember the words of Nephi. And the people began to plead with their chief judges and their leaders, that they would say unto Nephi: Behold, we know that thou art a man of God, and therefore cry unto the Lord our God that he turned away from us this famine, lest all the words which thou hast spoken concerning our destruction be fulfilled. And it came to pass that the judges did say unto Nephi, according to the words which had been desired. And it came to pass that the people had repented and did humble themselves in sackcloth, he cried: again unto the Lord, saying: O Lord, behold this people repenteth; and they have swept away the band of Gadiantion from amongst them insomuch that they have become extinct, and they have concealed their secret plans in the Earth. Now, O Lord, because of this their humility wilt thou turn away thine anger, and let thine anger be appeased in the destruction of those wicked humans whom thou hast already destroyed. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
“O Lord, wilt thou turn away thine anger, yea, thy fierce anger, and cause that this famine may cease in this land. O Lord, wilt thou hearken unto me, and cause that it may be done according to my words, and send forth rain upon the face of the Earth, that she may bring forth her fruit, and her grain in the season of grain. O Lord, thou didst hearken unto my words when I said, Let there be a famine, that the pestilence of the sword might cease; and I know that thou wilt, even at this time, hearken unto my words, for thou sadist that: If this people repent I will spare them. Yea, O Lord, and thou seest that they have repented, because of the famine and the pestilence and destruction which has come unto them. And now, O Lord, wilt thou turn away thine anger, and try again if they will serve thee? And if so, O Lord, thou canst bless them according to thy words which thou hast said. And it came to pass that in the seventy and sixth year the Lord did turn away his anger from the people, and caused that rain should fall upon the Earth, insomuch that it did bring forth her fruit in the season of her fruit. And it came to pass that it did bring forth her grain in the season of her grain. And behold, the people did rejoice and glorify God, and the whole face of the land was filled with rejoicing; and they did no more seek to destroy Nephi, but they did esteem him as a great prophet, and a man of God, having great power and authority given unto him from God. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25

“And behold, Lehi, his brother, was not a whit behind him as to things pertaining to righteousness. And thus it did come to pass that the people of Nephi began to prosper again in the land, and began to build up their waste places, and began to multiply and spread, even until they did cover the whole face of the land, both on the northward and on the southward, from the sea west to the sea east. And it came to pass that the seventy and sixth year did end in peace. And the seventy and seventh year began in peace; and the church did spread throughout the face of all the land; and the more part of the people, both the Nephites and the Lamanites, did belong to the church; and they did have exceedingly great peace in the land; and this ended the seventy and seventh year. And also they had peace in the seventy and eighty years, save it were a few contentions concerning the points of doctrine which had been laid down by the prophets. And in the seventy and ninth year there began to be much strife. However, it came to pass that Nephi and Lehi, and many of the brethren who knew concerning the true points of doctrine, having many revelations daily, therefore they did preach unto the people, insomuch that they did put an end to their strife in that same year. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25

“And it came to pass that in the eightieth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi, there were a certain number of the people of Nephi, there were a certain number of the dissenters from the people of Nephi, who had some years before gone over unto the Lamanites, and taken upon themselves the name of Lamanites, and also a certain number who were real descendants of the Lamanites, being stirred up to anger by them, or by those dissenters, therefore they commenced a war with their brethren. And they did commit murder and plunder; and then they would retreat back into the mountains, and into the wilderness and secret places, hiding themselves that they could not be discovered, receiving daily an addition to their numbers, inasmuch as there were dissenters that went forth unto them. And thus in time, yea, even in the space of not many years, they became an exceedingly great band of robbers; and they did search out all the secret plans of Gadianton; and thus they became robbers of Gadianton. Now behold, these robbers did make great havoc, yea, even great destruction among the people of the Lamanites. And it came to pass that it was expedient that there should be a stop put to this work of destruction; therefore they sent an army of strong humans into the wilderness and upon the mountains to search out this band of robbers, and to destroy them. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
“However, behold, it came to pass that in that same year they were driven back even into their own lands. And thus ended the eightieth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And it came to pas in the commencement of the eighty and first year they did go forth again against this band of robbers, and did destroy many; and they were also visited with much destruction. And they were again obliged to return out of the wilderness and out of the mountains unto their own lands, because of the exceeding greatness of the numbers of those robbers who infested the mountains and the wilderness. And it came to pass that thus ended this year. And the robbers did still increase and wax strong, insomuch that they did defy the whole armies of the Nephites, and also of the Lamanites; and they did cause great fear to come unto the people upon all the face of land. Yea, for they did visit many parts of the land, and did do great destruction unto them; yea, did kill many, and did carry away others captive into the wilderness, yea, and more especially their women and their children. Now this great evil, which came unto the people because of their iniquity, did stir them up again in remembrance of the Lord their God. And thus ended the eighty and first year of the reign of the judges. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
“And in the eighty and second year they began again to forget the Lord their God. And in the eighty and third year they began to wax strong in iniquity. And in the eighty and fourth year they did not mend their ways. And it came to pass in the eighty and fifth year they did wax stronger and stronger in their pride, and in their wickedness; and thus they were ripening again for destruction. And thus ended the eighty and fifth year,” reports Helaman 11.1-38. I am praying to God of Heaven, may the Earth be blessed with a sweet smell and bring Him to mind, to give Him the best of what I have, as is only His proper share. Our God and God of our fathers, accept our rest. Sanctify us through Thy commandments, and grant our portion in Thy Torah. Please give us abundantly of Thy goodness and make us rejoice in Thy salvation. Purify our hearts to serve Thee in truth. In Thy loving favour, O Lord our God, grant that Thy holy Sabbath be our joyous heritage, and may Israel who sanctifies Thy name, rest thereon. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who hallowest the Sabbath. Magnified and sanctified be the name of God throughout the World which He hath created according to His will. May He establish His kingdom during the days of your life and during the life f all the house of Israel, speedily, yea, soon; and say ye, Amen. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25

Cresleigh Homes

When planning #MillsStation Residence 1, we did not *just* create an open floor plan—we incorporated windows, lighting, and slanted ceilings to maximize light and space in this room! This charming home is 1,932 square feet, three bedrooms, two bathroom, and a home hub, which could function as a den, playroom, fourth bedroom, office or formal dining room. There is also a private backyard and a two car garage.
We have two move-in ready homes with this floor plan at Homes Sites 17 & 77! Take a virtual tour of this home on our website. Link in bio. 🏡 https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/move-in-ready-home-site-77/
This home is designed with Universal Design concepts meaning that its well equipped for life’s transitions and aging in place. Learn more about this unique feature by speaking with a sales associate today!
Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier. Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Google Mini to help connect everything together!

The Spirit of Liberty is the Spirit Which is Not too Sure that it is Right and Seeks to Understand Minds
The great want which humankind labours under at this present moment is sleep. The World should recline its vast head on the first convenient pillow and take an age-long nap. Which is a more effective learning strategy: reward or punishment? This question is still undecided. At present, evidence for each side is about equal. The following guidelines, however, can be applied in teaching situations, especially those involving young children. In general, rewarding desired behaviours is more effective than punishing undesired behaviours—you can still catch more files with honey than with vinegar. If punishment is necessary, it is most effective if used immediately after the undesired response. For instance, if a child must be punished, it is best done right after the child has acted incorrectly. If one parents says to the child, “Just wait until your father (or mother) gets home—then, you will get it,” the child learns to fear the arrival of the punisher and, in the process, often forgets the offense for which he or she is being punished. If punishment must be used, the reason for the punishment should be explained. “I am only doing this for your own good,” or “This hurts me more than it does you,” is less likely to teach a child a specific behaviour than saying, “I am not letting you go to the movies because you socked your little brother. This hurts him and makes him cry, and I do not want you to do it again.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
If it is possible, combine reward and punishment. If necessary, punish the undesired behaviour, but also be sure to reward the desired behaviour. For example, do not just spank a child for playing in the street; also praise and reward the child for playing in the yard instead. Punish the undesired behaviour, not the behaver. For instance, communicate to a child that you feel his or her behaviour is “bad”—not that you think the child is bad. Most punishment do not work on very young children. Under about one year of age, children do not understand that some behaviours are acceptable and some are not and why this is so. They may think they are being punished just for being there, and more often than not they begin to associate the punisher with punishment. When you feel emotionally charged, especially if you are filled with rage, never, never, never punish a child. Adults often forget their own strength. Children are fragile and easily hurt. The only thing a child learns through abuse is hatred and fear. There is a great distinction between negative reinforcement and abusive punishment. In many cases, punishment only suppresses or limits the undesired behaviour; it does not really extinguish it. The self-actualized open to all qualified and eager seekers the mysteries and treasures of one’s own inner experience, that they may profit by one’s past struggles and present success. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
The self-actualized brings revelations to meet our gropings, inspirations to meet our doubts. One becomes, for those docile enough to receive them, a bearer of grace and a vessel of truth, a bestower of comfort and a dispenser of confidence. Prophets and the self-actualized, teachers and saints receive the urge to share their knowledge and experience with others. Whence does this urge derive? Both lower and higher, personal and nonpersonal sources are possible. However, if from the highest, then we may say that God sends His messages to humankind through these channels. The self-actualized who starts a movement or puts one’s thoughts out, acts as a lighthouse which guides many a fumblings but aspiring soul. If one does not accept disciples individually it is because one serve humans otherwise. Those who try to get such acceptance and find themselves rebuffed may consider one selfish, cold, remote. However, they will be greatly mistaken. One can serve humankind—not each person separately but in groups or masses—and one may do this by lecturing, by writing or simply by directing one’s prayer in the appropriate way. For a writer’s books spread not only one’s ideas but also something of oneself. One can put thought on a high level but the way in which one does this depends upon one’s circumstances. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
The self-actualized can put thought on a high level personally as a private teacher, impersonally as a public lecturer or writer, or anonymously as a proficient contemplative. All these people who have attained Reality inevitably leave a record for others or for posterity, but not necessarily with their name attached. Has anyone of the self-actualized ever vanished without leaving behind a trace of Power, knowledge, goodness, and inspiration? Even if not in words or deeds, something is left in the unseen atmosphere. They are not usually members of any sect, but circumstances or necessity may sometimes render it desirable that they be such. The self-actualized may or may not descend into the arena of action but if not one will still find ways and means to inspire, guide, or ennoble the actions of other people. One does this by teaching them and travelling among the, or by sitting still and meditating alone, or by disseminating writings among them. Even when one is unheard publicly one can help by the concentrated mind’s great power. One does what one can to introduce here and there into the consciousness of others, through whatever means one possesses, the seeds of higher ideas. These seeds may not grow and certainly may not fructify for many years, but that is not one’s affair. One knows that the vitality in these seeds and depth of mental ground in which they have been sown will inevitably lead to some result. It is enough. One has sown seed. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
One does not have to wait for roots to form, stems to grow, fruits to appear. One’s work is done. In this momentous period the true self-actualized has special work to do in trying to protect the human race from its own folly. One way is intercessory prayer which may help to mitigate the effects of the World crisis. This requires solitude. It is an impersonal contemplation and must not be disturbed by those who break into it, either to unload their personal problems or to offer personal service which in the end has the same result. Yes, some of us are genuinely aware of the soul’s existence and intimately know its freedom and blessedness. Modesty has hitherto imposed silence upon us about the fact, although compassion induced us to break it on occasions. However, we mystics must now stand on our own dignity. It is time that the World, brough to its inevitable and by us expected materialistic dead-end, should realize at last that we are not talking out of our hats but out of a real and impeccable experience. It would be an unpardonable treachery to our duty in the final and terrible World-crisis of this materialistic age if, out of false modesty or fear of intimidation by a cynical society, we who daily feel and commune with the divine presence, who realize its tremendous importance for humanity’s present condition and future life, fail to testify to its existence and reality. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
If today we venture to speak more freely and frequently, our ideas may drop into a few hospitable minds and sublimely penetrate their consciousness. It is not the self-actualizer’s function to tackle the Worldly problems which governments usually deal with: the social, political, economic, and technical ones. One’s particular work is concerned with, first, one’s ordinary duty of professional service through whatever skill one possesses to earn one’s livelihood, and second, making truth available. The mere existence of one who succeeds in identifying oneself with God benefits every sensitive person who meets one, even for a minute or two. Further, it inspires spiritual seekers who never get the chance to meet one but who hear favourably about one and respectfully receive what they hear. Finally, posterity benefits from the records left about one. Each teacher—if one is divinely commissioned—leaves a deposit of truth after he or she dies. The Master who leaves a record of one’s own climb, or a testimony to the goal’s existence, or a path pioneered for those who would follow, or an instructed disciple here and there, leaves something of oneself. Even where help may not directly and outwardly be given when difficult circumstances press on a human, it may yet be indirectly and inwardly given to one’s mind, which has to deal with, or endure, them. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
One can awaken some persons to this divine presence within themselves, but not all. One may do this mysteriously by some unknown process, or one may do it deliberately and with the display of one’s technique. The abstract does not appeal to the masses, because it gives them nothing. However, an embodied human can be seen, heard, and touched, to that extent can be understood, to that extent one gives them something; one can be followed, admired, feared, reverenced, or worshipped. Secure as one is in one’s own peace of mind, it is inevitable that the more sensitive among those who meet one feel it too. However, those who come with hostility, personal or intellectual, will be avoided if possible or find their time cut to the shortest if not. Such a person has a catalytic action on the minds and even on the lives of those who come into sympathetic contact with one. Just by being oneself one makes the philosophic virtues real to others. One does not need to be conscious of a clearly defined mission before one sets about doing something for the enlightenment of others. There is always some means open to one, some little thing one can do to make this knowledge available or to set an example of right living. It is one’s duty to communicate what one feels there, what one finds there, to those who are excluded from it. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
If at times, and with sympathetic auditors, one’s duty becomes one’s joy, at other times and with insensitive auditors it becomes one’s cross. Jesus exemplified this in His own history. The illuminate practices a wiser philanthropy than those who are presented as models of this virtue. One has no wish to take charge of anyone’s life or undertake the management of anyone’s affairs. One is not allowed by the code of ethics corresponding to one’s knowledge to make other people’s decisions for them. Hence one can say neither yes nor no to such highly personal questions. However, one can point out the consequences which are likely to follow in each case. Basically, people are just like children. They need attention. Sometimes people are really nervous when meeting people or dealing with new situations. And some of the troublemakers really just want your attention. The people-as-child analogy can be extended to cover sibling rivalry: You cannot play cards with just one person because the other people will get jealous. Think of unruly people just as you would think of a child and that will widen tolerance of them. If their needs are like those of a child, those needs are supposed to come first. The worker’s right to anger is correspondingly reduced; as an adult one must work to inhibit and suppress anger at children. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Should the analogy to children fail to induce the necessary deep acting, surface-acting strategies for handling “irate” can be brought into play. People are urged to “work” the customers name in, as in “Yes, Mr. Camdenski,” it is true construction of your new home is talking a little longer than expected.” This reminds the individual that he is not anonymous, that there is at least some pretension to a personal relation and that some emotion management is owed. Again, workers are told to use terms of empathy. Whatever happens, you are supposed to say, I know just how you feel. Lost your light fixture? I know just how you feel? Late for a walk though? I know just how you feel. Did not get that lot you were counting on? I know just how you feel. Employees reports that such expressions of empathy are useful in convincing people that they have misplaced the blame and misaimed their anger. Remember, to treat people like they are guests in your living room, and guests are to be made comfortable and their emotional outburst are expected to be met by support. Never get super angry with a customer, they are the source of revenue. Supervisors never speak officially of an obnoxious or outrageous customer, only of an uncontrolled customer. The term suggests that a fact has somehow attached itself to this customer—not that the customer has lost control or even had any control to lose. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Again, the common phrase “mishandled customer” suggests a bungle somewhere up the line, by someone destined to remain lost in the web of workers that stretched from curbside to architecture. By linguistically avoiding any attribution of blame, the idea of a right to be angry at the customer is smuggled out of discourse. Linguistically speaking, the customer never does anything wrong, so he or she cannot be blamed or made the object of anger. One time, a man was waiting for a special ordered light fixture, and one of the other home buyers sagged it and had it installed in her house. The builder responded by saying politely, “I notice this man’s light fixture was installed in your house.” The dirty deed was done, but, the implication was, by no one in particular. Such implicit reframing dulls a sense of cause of effect. It separates object from verb and verb from subject. The home buyer does not feel accused, and the builder does not feel as if he or she is accusing. Emotion work has been accomplished, but it has hidden its tracks with words. Company language is aimed not only at diffusing anger, but at minimizing fear. As in the case when a refrigerator was specially ordered and delivered to the wrong address. This was labeled an incident. The term incident calms the nerves. How could we be terrified at an incident? #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
Thus, the words that workers use and do not use help them avoid emotions inappropriate to a living room full of guest. Dealing with difficult people is part of the job. It makes us angry sometimes. And anger is part of stress. So that is why I would like to talk to you about being angry. I am not saying you should do this [work on your anger] for your corporation. I am not saying you should do it for the home buyers. I am saying do it for yourselves. The only question to be seriously discussed is “How do you rid yourself of anger?” From my experience in supervisory work I know that the problem of hopelessness is often not clearly envisaged by the analyst and hence not properly dealt with. Some of my colleagues have been so overwhelmed by the individual’s hopelessness—which they recognized but did not see as a problem—that they became hopeless themselves. This attitude is of course fatal to an analysis, for no matter how good the technique or how brave the effort, the individual senses that the analyst has really given him or her up. The same holds true outside the analytical situation. Nobody can be a constructively helpful friends or mate who does not believe in the possibility of the companion’s fulfilling one’s own potentialities. Sometimes colleagues have made the opposite mistake of not taking the individual’s hopelessness seriously enough. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
They felt the individual needed encouragement and gave it—which is commendable, but quite insufficient. When this happens, the individual, even if one appreciates the analyst’s good intentions, is quite justified in being annoyed with one, since deep down one knows that one’s hopelessness is not just a mood that can be dissipated by well-meant encouragement. In order to take the bull by the horns and tackle the problem directly, it is necessary first to recognize from indirect indications like the ones cited above that the individual feels hopeless and the extent to which one feels so. Then it must be understood that one’s hopelessness is fully warranted by one’s entanglements. The analyst must realize and explicitly convey to the individual that one’s situation is hopeless only so long as the status quo persists and is regarded as unchangeable. In simplified form, the whole problem is illustrated by a scene from Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard. The family, faced with bankruptcy, are in despair at the thought of leaving their estate with its beloved cherry orchard. A man of affairs offers the sound suggestion that they build modest homes for rent on a part of the estate. With their hidebound views, they cannot countenance such a project, and since there is no other solution they remain without hope. They ask helplessly, as if they had not heard the suggestion, whether nobody can advise or help them. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
If their mentor were a good analyst he would say: “Of course the situation is difficult. However, what makes it hopes is your own attitude toward it. If you would consider changing your claims on life there would be no need to feel hopeless.” The belief that the individual can really change, which means essentially that one can really resolve one’s conflicts, is the factor that determines whether or not the therapist dare to tackle the problem and whether one can do it with a reasonable chance of success. It is here that my differences with Dr. Freud come into clear relief. Dr. Freud’s psychology and the philosophy underlying it are essentially pessimistic. This is patent in his outlook on the future of humankind as well as in his attitude toward therapy. And on the basis of his theoretical premises, he cannot be anything but pessimistic. Humans are driven by instincts which at best are only to be modified by “sublimation.” His instinctual drives for satisfaction are inevitably frustrated by society. His “ego” is helplessly tossed about between instinctual drives and the “superego,” which itself can only be modified. The superego is primarily forbidding and destructive. True ideals do not exist. The wish for personal fulfillment is narcissistic. Humans are by nature destructive and a death instinct compels them either to destroy others or to suffer. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
All these theories leave little room for an optimistic attitude toward change and limit the value of the potentially splendid therapy Dr. Freud originated. In contrast, I believe that compulsive trends in neuroses are not instinctual but spring from disturbed human relationships; that they can be changed when these improve and that conflicts of such origin can really be resolved. This does not mean that therapy based on the principles I advocate has no limitations. Much work remains to be done before we can clearly determine these limitations. However, it does mean that we have well-founded reasons for believing in the possibility of radical change. Why, then, is it so important to recognize and tackle an individual’s hopelessness? In the first place, this approach is of value in dealing with special problems like depression and suicidal tendencies. We can, it is true, lift an individual depression by merely uncovering the particular conflicts in which the person is caught at the time, without touching upon one’s general hopelessness. However, if we want to prevent recurring depressions it has to be tackled because it is the deeper source from which the depressions emanate. Nor can insidious chronic depression be coped with unless one goes to this original source. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
The same hold true for suicidal conditions. We know that such factors as acute despair, defiance, and vindictiveness lead to suicidal impulses; but it is often too late to prevent suicide after the impulse has become manifest. By paying minute attention to the less dramatic signs of hopelessness and by taking up the problem with the patient at the proper time, it is probable that many suicides could be averted. It is not that collective talk determines the mood of the workers. Rather, the reverse is true: the needed mood determines the nature of the worker’s talk. To keep the collective mood stripped of any painful feelings, serious talk of death, divorce, politics, religion, and news is usually avoided. People want to forget about COVID-19 and feel safe in the modest castles, which they imagine to be in a storybook fairytale. On the other hand, when there is time for it, mutual morale raising is common. As one said: “When one sales agent is depressed, thinking, ‘I am ugly, what am I doing as a sales representative?’ other sales representatives, even without quite knowing what they are doing, try to cheer her up. They straighten her collar for her, to get her up and smiling again. I have done it too, and needed it done.” Once established, team solidarity can have two effect. It can improve morale and thus improve service. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
However, team solidarity can also become the basis for sharing grudges against the homebuyers or the corporation. Perhaps it is the second possibility that manager meant to avoid wen in Recurrent Training they offered examples of “bad” social emotion management. One teacher cautioned her students: “When you are angry with a homebuyer, do not head for the galley to blow off steam with another sales representative.” In the galley, the second sales representative, instead of calming the angry worker down, may further rile him or her up; one may become an accomplice to the aggrieved worker. Then, as the instructor put it, “There will be two of you hot to trot.” The message is, when you angry, go to a trusted therapist who will calm you down. Consider calling him or her for a phone appoint so not to drive while angry. Even if you are not suicidal, but cannot afford a therapist, a suicide hotline may be worth trying out. Support for anger or a sense of grievance—regardless of what inspires it—is bad for service and bad for the corporation. Thus, the informal ways in which workers check on the legitimacy of a grievance or look for support in blowing off steam become points of entry for company suggestions. Corporations sometimes have Ghost-Buyers who occasionally Ghost-Buy a house, and there may be senior representative on the crew, the base supervisor, and the plainclothes company supervisors who occasionally monitor employee behaviour. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
One homebuyer was asked to fill out a company-elicited passenger opinion poll and fill out a questionnaire, and the results were presented by letter to the workers. As one male sales representative, seven years with the corporation describes it: We get told how we are doing twice a year when we are sent homebuyer evaluations. They show how the builder is competing. Oh, the homebuyers are asked to rank sales representatives: “genuinely concerned, made me feel welcome. Spoke to me more than required. Wide awake, energetic, eager to help. Seemed sincere when talking to the potential homebuyers and confirmed homebuyers. Helped established a relaxed community atmosphere. Enjoying their jobs. Treated homebuyers as individuals.” We see how this builder is doing in the competition. We are supposed to really get into it. Supervision is thus more indirect than direct. It relies on the sales representative’s sense of what homebuyers will communicate to management, who will, in turn, communicate to workers. Supervisors do more than oversee workers. Even when people are paid to be nice at all times, and when their efforts succeed, it is a remarkable accomplishment. This is possible because of emotion work, feeling rules, and social exchange. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
A profit motive is slipped in under acts of emotion management, under the rules that govern them, under the gift exchange. Who benefits now, and who pays? The lesson in deep acting—acting “as if the office is your home” and “as if this unruly homebuyer has a traumatic past”—are themselves a new development in deskilling. The mind of the emotion worker, the source of the ideas about what mental moves are needed to settle down an irate, has moved upstairs in the hierarchy so that the worker is restricted to implementing standard procedures. Of more general significance is the fact that the individual’s hopelessness constitutes a hindrance to the cure of any severe neurosis. We have to deal with a counterplay of meticulous and forward-moving forces, with resistance and incentive. Resistance is a collective term for all the forces within the individual that operate to maintain the status quo. One’s incentive, on the other hand, is produced by the constructive energy that urges one on toward inner freedom. This is the motive power with which we work and without which we could do nothing. It is the force that helps that individual overcome resistance. It makes one’s associations productive, there by giving the analyst a chance for better understanding. It gives one the inner strength to endure the inevitable pain of maturing. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
It makes one willing to take the risk of abandoning attitudes that have given one a feeling of safety and to make the leap into the unknown of new attitudes toward oneself and others. The analyst cannot drag the individual through this process; the individual oneself must want to go. It is this invaluable force that is paralyzed by a condition of hopelessness. And in failing to recognize and tackle it the analyst deprives oneself of one’s best ally in the battle against the individual’s neurosis. The individual’s hopelessness is not a problem that can be solved by any single interpretation. There is already a substantial gain if, instead of being engulfed by a feeling of doom that one regards as unalterable, the individual begins to recognize it as a problem that may eventually be solved. This step liberates one sufficiently to go ahead. There will, of course, be ups and downs. One may feel optimistic, even overoptimistic, if one acquires some helpful insight, only to succumb to one’s hopelessness again as soon as one approaches a more upsetting one. Each time the matter must be tackled anew. However, the hold it has on the individual will relax as one realizes that one can really change. One’s incentive will grow accordingly. It may be limited, at the beginning of the analysis, to a mere wish to get rid of one’s most disturbing symptoms. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
However, the incentive gains strength as the individual becomes increasingly aware of one’s shackles, and as one gets a taste of how it feels to be free. When we shall apprehend the meaning of life, we may discover that it provides its pre-self-actualized in such prodigies. The highest service one can render is in silent contemplation, which inspires so many aspiring souls to a higher life. This is the truth. If one is sensitive, reflective, and penetrative, the mere fact that these prophets, these light-bringers and way-showers have exited at all is enough to change a human’s life. Even if one does no more than open the human mind to its higher possibilities, one does enough. Angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost—humans must pray and gain knowledge for themselves from the Holy Ghost. About 559-545 Before Christ. “And now, behold, my beloved brethren, I suppose that ye ponder somewhat in your hearts concerning that which ye should do after ye have entered in by the way. However, behold, why do ye ponder these things in your hearts? Do ye not remember that I said unto you that after ye had received the Holy Ghost ye could speak with the tongue of Angels? And now, how could ye speak with the tongue of Angels save it were by the Holy Ghost? Angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost; wherefore, they speak the words of Christ. Wherefore, I said unto you, feast upon the words of Christ; for behold, the word of Christ will tell you all things what ye should do. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
“Wherefore, now after I have spoken these words, if ye cannot understand them it will be because ye ask not, neither do ye knock; wherefore, ye are not brought into the light, but must perish in the dark. For behold, again I say unto you that if ye will enter in by the way, and receive the Holy Ghost, it will show unto you all things what ye should do. Behold, this is the doctrine of Christ, and there will be no more doctrine given until after he shall manifest himself unto you in the flesh. And when he shall manifest himself unto you in the flesh, the things which he shall say unto you shall ye observe to do. And now I, Nephi, cannot say more; the Spirit stoppeth mine utterance, and I am left to mourn because of the unbelief, and the wickedness, and the ignorance, and the stiffneckedness of humans; for they will not search knowledge, when it is given unto them in plainness, even as plain as word can be. And now, my beloved brethren, I perceive that ye ponder still in your hearts; and it grieveth me that I must speak concerning this thing. For if ye would hearken unto the Spirit which teacheth a human to pray, ye would know that ye must pray; for the evil spirit teacheth not a human to pray, but teacheth one that one must not pray. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
“However, behold, I say unto you that ye must pray always, and not faint; that ye must not perform anything unto the Lord save in the first place ye shall pray unto the Father in the name of Christ, that he will consecrate thy performance unto thee, that thy performance may be for the welfare of thy soul,” reports 2 Nephi 32.1-9. Please send forth, O Lord, we beseech Thee, the Holy Spirit, to make these present offerings Thy Sacrament unto us, and purify our hearts for its reception. Privileges—O Lord God, please teach e to know that grace precedes, accompanies, and follows my salvation, that it sustains the redeemed soul, that not one link of its chain can ever break. From Calvary’s cross wave upon wave of grace reaches me, deals with my sin, washes me clean, renews my heart, strengthens my will, draws out my affection, kindles a flame in my soul, rules throughout my inner human, consecrates my every thought, word, work, teaches me Thy immeasurable love. How great are my privileges in Christ Jesus! Without him I stand far off, a stranger, an outcast; in him I draw near and touch his kingly sceptre. Without him I dare not lift up my guilt eyes; in him I gaze upon my Father-God and friend. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Without him I hide my lips in trembling shame; in him I open my mouth in petition and praise. Without him all is wrath and consuming fire; in him is all love, and the repose of my soul. Without him is gaping hell below me, and eternal anguish; in him its gates are barred to me by his precious blood. Without him darkness spreads its horrors in front; in him an eternity of glory is my boundless horizon. Without him all within me is terror and dismay, in him every accusation is charmed into joy and peace. Without him all things external call for my condemnation; in him they minister to my comfort, and are to be enjoyed with thanksgiving. Praise be to thee for grace, and for the unspeakable gift of Jesus. Although by the revelation of grace in this life we cannot know of God “what He is,” and thus are united to Him as to one unknown; still we know Him more fully according as many and more excellent of His effects are demonstrated to us, and according as we attribute to Him some things known by divine revelation, to which natural reason cannot reach, as, for instance, that God is Thee and One. For the images either received from sense in the natural order, or divinely formed in the imagination, we have so much more excellent intellectual knowledge, the stronger the intelligible light is in humans; and thus through revelation given by the images a fuller knowledge is received by the infusion of the divine light. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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Cans. Beer cans. Glinting on the verges of a million miles of roadways, lying in scrub, grass, dirt, leaves, sand, mud, but never hidden. Piel’s, Rheingold, Ballantine, Schaefer, Schlitz, shinning in the Sun, or picked by Moon or the beam of headlights at night; washed by rain or flattened by wheels, but never dulled, never buried, never destroyed. Here is the mark of savages, the testament of wasters, the stain of prosperity. These wise souls contemplated their past lives in a long wrathless reverie, and sought to answer prayers from below as I have said. They watched over their kindred, their clansmen, their own nations; they watched over those who attracted their attention with accomplished and spectacular displays of religiosity; they watched with sadness the suffering of humans and wished they could help and tried to help by thought when they could. However, who are these beings who defile the grassy borders of our roads and lanes, who pollute our ponds, who spoil the purity of our ocean beaches with the empty vessels of their thirst? Who are the beings who make these vessels in millions and then say, “Drink—and discard”? What society is this that can afford to cast away a million tons of metal and to make of wild and fruitful land a garbage heap? #RandolphHarris 1 of 14