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We Mortals Cross the Ocean of this World Each in One’s Average Cabin of Life!

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A smile confuses an approaching frown. Mirth can be a major tool for insight, changing “ha ha” to “aha.” The illuminate prefers to pull strings from behind the curtain of obscurity. One does not want to impose oneself where one may not be wanted. One does not want to intrude on the mental privacy of others. It is this quality of remoteness in one which baffles some people, provokes others, antagonizes many, but attracts a few. It makes one profoundly different from the average being, foreign to one and hard to understand. The self-actualized is built too high for ordinary beings to appreciate one and too remote for them to understand one. it is inevitable that one should dwell isolated and aloof from all except those whose great aims justify the contact. One will descend into the arena of this World only by the direct order of God. One dwells apart in solitude. Why? “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me leadeth me beside the still waters,” reports Psalms 23.1. The World cannot grant the existence of one’s tremendous modesty, one’s perfect poise, one’s freedom from chatter, one’s vast self-restraint, and so, failing to understand, it would misunderstand. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them,” reports Genesis 1.27. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

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The self-actualized prefers to remain anonymous, but if the mission requires it, one submits to publicity’s glare. Restrained in speech, withdrawn in self, one comes out of one’s inner World to meet one’s fellows only so far, and therefrom will not further descend. For it is a lofty World. If, in their discretion, they suppress their true beliefs and hide their inmost mind from the masses as behind a veil, it must be granted that both history and psychology justify this caution. They are reluctant to tell others about their inmost experiences; if the questioner is unsympathetic or uncomprehending, some even refuse absolutely to admit they have had such experiences. One’s rare experience, one’s precious wisdom, one’s special knowledge of life’s higher laws are not put on parade to impress others. Rather does one have among them as if one were, had, knew nothing exceptional. The other strong influence on late nineteenth-century culture was eating and the home-economics movement. Well-educated, middle-class, nonimmigrant women not only created a profession of their own, but also sought to Americanize urban slum dwellers. Home economists and social workers tried to teach immigrant women about nutrition and tried to wean them away from the “hot,” spicy cuisine of their homelands. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

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The favourite foods of the home economics movement were gelatin salads and boiled dressings. A blanket of white sauce covering a slab of boneless protein was the ideal dish. Salads were orderly, encased, cool, and controllable rather than hot, sloppy, and sensuous. Jello, after all, is a Victorian product invented during the 1890s by the Genesee Pure Food Company of Leroy, New York, and was usually served in the dining room, as the dappled light of Gothic stained glass fell across the table. The elegance and refinement of manners in the dining room were, in fact, brand new, developed in the previous forty years. Nonetheless, this change in cuisine was not all one-way bullying. Cookbooks like Fannie Farmer’s and Mrs. Beeton’s, as well as manners books like Emily Post’s, were eagerly bought by immigrant women who wanted to fit into American culture. These books gave advice on food, eating, and household management to Europeans who wanted to know how things were “done” in American. Silver-plate manufacturers were constantly on the lookout for new objects and new shapes to send to market, such as the bell and Adirondack style stand was popular. Although transfer-printed chinaware existed before the Industrial Revolution, it was the establishment of transportation networks that made large-scale factories possible. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

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The decoration of the parlor and the choice and arrangement of the furniture reflect the changing role of women in the nineteenth century. Woman as the embodiment of purity and high moral virtue was a theme which nineteenth-century popular culture adopted with obsessive fevour. Before the middle of the century the image of woman was what it has been since the Middle Ages. She was the daughter of Eve, the embodiment of wantonness. Before the Industrial Revolution, misogynic literature always pictured woman as less than human beings, closer to animals, and less able to control their lusts by exercise of their intellect or moral powers, but some say this is more applicable to the average male than a female. By the 1880s, the myth of the pure Victorian woman was fully formed, and the transformation of woman’s image was complete. Late nineteenth-century reformers wrote that women hard no libido; that, in fact, it was replaced by a “maternal instinct,” and that women only consented to pleasures of the flesh to please their husbands and to have children. Women were also said to be the kinder, gentler gender with higher moral standards and greater self-control. Men were thought of as smarter and more competent but more lustful and “primitive” with less ability to control their passions. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

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Two dramatic changes took place in gender roles in the middle of the nineteenth century. Not only did men and women trade places as the moral force in society; but also the accepted roles of men and women grew further apart and took distinctly different paths. Imagine life in American in the 1830s and ‘40s. Most people lived on farms. While there were areas of market economy farming like cotton, tobacco, and wheat, the majority of people still grew most of their own food. There were some cities in America, but they were small commercial cities at harbours and along rivers. Men, women, and children had separate and unequal roles in the family, but the family was still an economic unit that worked together. The “little commonwealth” of the family needed each member to survive. It is true that the growing of the major crop was the “man’s job,” along with his children’s labour, while the growing of vegetables, fowl, and livestock; preserving food; and maintaining clothing was the “woman’s job.” However, no one would survive without both contributions. The garden, the chickens, and the food preservation ensured the family’s survival as much, if not more, than the cash crop. “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord,” reports Psalms 19.14. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

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Life in the 1830s and ’40 was limited in scope for everyone. Individuals were known by all their neighbours and restricted by the mores of the culture. Men and women were very unequal under law but were more alike in real life. Society was not under great pressure; men and women had a much more even balance of power than they were to have fifty years later. The 1830s saw Watt’s improvement of the steam engine which made the railroads and steamboats possible. The completion of the Erie canal in the 1820s opened the near Midwest and the Great Lakes to commerce and settlement. The 1850s saw the discovery of coal and iron together in Pennsylvania, which permitted the cast-iron and steel industries to produce factories in cities and to produce railroads to ship their raw materials and manufactured goods. The Civil War caused the railroads to boom and heavy industry to flourish. As a result, everything changed in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. American became urbanized. The 1870 census revealed that, for the first time, most Americans lived in cities. In a small town or a farm village, everyone knew each other, and behaviour was controlled by the neighbours. In a big city each person was anonymous, and standards for behaviour had to be internalized and enforced by the individual. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

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For most of history right and wrong were external rules; now personal morality had to prevail. The ideal of “self-control” for modern people became widespread in the late nineteenth century. At the same time, the family as an economic unit, a “little commonwealth,” disappeared. It was replaced by the modern cash economy where each person is an individual. By the turn of the century in American, most people worked in manufacturing or in offices. The new middle class worked in skyscrapers and took a commuter railroad or “el” (elevated railroad) or trolley to work. “Home” was an apartment or flat of row house. Rococo Revival chairs by Henry Belter represented the Victorian ideal—modern high technology in historic costume. Belter developed a process for gluing mahogany veneers in a curved mould, creating fancy plywood. He then carved them into caricature of eighteenth-century, French Rococo chairs, much stronger and more elaborate than the originals. This was a new class of people. They were not the gentry of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century who made their living from owning land that others farmed or from shipping. They were not the “yeoman farmers” who grew their food with their own hands. They were clerks and office workers whose work was not manual and who saw themselves as newly arrived gentry. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

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The Irish potato famine of the 1840s drove millions of immigrants to America, including the paternal ancestors of actress Tia and Tamera Mowry, while revolutions and repressions pushed millions out of Eastern Europe in the 1850s through the ‘80s. Thus, labour was cheap. Even clerical, white-collar workers could have several servants, either live-in maids or daily cleaning ladies who returned to their (newly invented) tenements at night. In the Victorian estates, the parlor was the heart of the home and the piano the heart of the parlor. “Will you walk into my parlor?” said the spider to the fly; “’Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy.” –“The Spider and the Fly,” Mary Howitt (1799-1888). Perhaps this poem holds a clue as to significance to the spiderweb pattern, which is a common feature on windows and fireplaces in the Winchester mansion. The kaleidoscope of home designs paralleled changes effected by the Industrial Revolution: mass production; railroad, telegraph, and telephone connecting East Coast to West; the development of water and sewer systems, and the progression of lighting from kerosene to gas to electricity. All these changes, and their resulting social ramifications, were reflected in the ways the Victorians lived. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

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By the end of the century, an agrarian society had moved into the cities and created new communities called suburbs. People began vigorously consuming the natural resources around them and outputting new, consumer goods. Family-oriented households turned outward to involvement in social movements and to work outside the home, for money to buy consumer goods. When the Victorian era ended, electric light had turned night into day, forever disrupting nature’s rhythms. Some have divided the era of 1837-1901 into a Romanic and a Victorian period, separated by the Civil War, calling Victorian only those houses with flamboyant styles made possible by balloon framing and technology that eliminated the need for the handcraftsmanship of timber frame building. However, most writers and scholars of that era merely ascribe a romantic aspect to the beginning of the period, adding the moniker “The Gilded Age,” coined by Mark Twain, to aptly describe the heyday of the Victorians, 1870 through the end of the century. When the words “Victorian house” are uttered, an image instantly springs to mind, though in truth, there is no architectural category by the name “Victorian.” The fanciful gingerbread clapboard dwelling, with its dizzy array of towers, gables, spindles, and porches is but one of many architectural genres, or combinations of genres, that existed during that era. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

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Since the Victorian period began in 1837 and lasted until 1901, it is impossible that any one style of architecture could have dominated for that long. What was a predominant feature of that era was how classical British and European architectural models were adapted to suit North American tastes, raw materials, and technology. The advent of new technologies such as the balloon framed houses, where standardized pieces of machine-cut lumber, uniformly spaced, and held together by machine-made nails, replaced the hand-hewn post and beam structures of the past, meant that more people could own homes. House plans by mail, at the end of the 1840s, when readers of Godey’s Lady’s Book could order any one of 450 house styles, followed by mail order catalogs of houses themselves, after the Civil War, also played a part in the evolution and proliferation of house styles. The millennium will be at hand when everyone agrees that beauty and human scale are as important as efficiency in anything designed for human consumption. By painting Victorian houses with extraordinary attention to details and in every colour that hand, mind, and eye can conceive, San Francisco’s Colourist Movement is bringing that new age closer house by house. Why did the Colourist Movement arise in San Francisco? #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

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San Francisco is a unique architectural museum. Its 16,000 redwood Victorians constitute one of the World’s architectural treasures. Brilliant Sunshine and crystal clarity are the natural medium of this hill-filled, fog-washed Baghdad-by-the-Bay. The warmth of these houses reflects as it enhances the city’s great natural beauty. There once were some 48,000 Victorian houses built in San Francisco during the 65 years between the Gold Rush and the Panama Pacific International Exposition in 1915. Nearly all sumptuous palaces on Nob and Rincon Hills were destroyed by the 1906 Earthquake and fire. The smaller mansions, town houses, row houses, and mass-produced Victorians that remained, in sections west and south of the burned-out downtown area, survived. Since the early 1970s, San Francisco’s Victorian houses have been shining forth in blazing colors. The city is a haven for people who can appreciate as well as create Painted Ladies. In American architecture, the painted ladies are enchanting, three-story, Queen Anne Victorian houses, which were built in the late 1880s. They are a row of multimillion dollar, colourful Victorian houses located at 710-720 Steiner Street in San Francisco, California. Each house usually has three vibrant colours and are famous Worldwide. If you like Victorian architecture, consider studying Trigonometry. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

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To people feeling increasingly like helpless victims of big corporations, big government, and jobs which are means not ends, painting their homes is a satisfying form of self-expression. Nothing in San Francisco has been as effective in making people take pride in their homes, streets, neighbourhoods, and city as paint applied with imagination. (And if that gives the bureaucrats any ideas on urban renewal, and increasing unemployment, so be it!) The Colourist Movement developed spontaneously but haltingly in the 1960s. Isolated beacons of colour painted by a few courageous souls cropped up and immediately aroused the ire Pained Ladies still do on the grounds of tradition and aesthetics. Nevertheless, the momentum of the movement accelerates, spurred by the creative tension of beauty and money. Thanks to the passion and creativity of painters, colorists, and homeowners, the Painted Ladies will not only survive the evils of modernization but are now more beautiful than ever. Tradition is not only preserved but enriched with a fresh eye and bright coat of paint. The Painted Ladies are exquisite examples of how an American tradition worth preserving can be revitalized and made meaningful to a new generation. Because they are a breathtakingly beautiful lesson in renewing a tradition and a city, they have additional significance for this and future generations. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

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Yet even these dazzling damsels cannot be taken for granted. San Francisco has not been granted immunity from the inevitable Earthquake. The right of these Victorians to exist must also be balanced against the need for adequate housing for all income levels, a reality which the success of the Colourist Movement has paradoxically made more difficult to achieve by rapidly escalating the cost of a house. The immortalized Painted Ladies must be seen in person to really appreciate them. Nothing can match the experience of encountering three stories of bright colours against a clear blue San Francisco sky. And few urban delights equal wandering around the town’s Painted Ladies on a sunny day. If you are still wondering what makes San Francisco so special, all you have to do is go look. The combined effect of colour and scale is, like inhaling pure oxygen, irresistibly exhilarating. To come upon one of these houses unexpectedly is to experience a sudden rush of pleasures. As you stroll along a street like Fair Oaks in the Mission District, your eyes develop greater sensitivity to felicities of colour and design. You sense how one house being painted led to another, creating an endless series of gems in the variegated necklace of Victorian San Francisco. However, do not wait. Colours face the same need for protection and artistic expression which inspired homeowners to paint these Victorians will inspire them again. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

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By the time you see these houses, some will be repainted. Painted Ladies only captures a moment in time. Painted Ladies is a collection of the best houses, details, and rows of houses our search uncovered. The aim in selecting was that each house be unique in color and architecture. Some are stronger on colour, others on architecture, but most are a happy marriage of both. “Wherefore, my beloved brethren, have miracles ceased because Christ hath ascended into Heaven, and hath sat down on the right hand of God, to claim of the Father his rights of mercy which he hath upon the children of humans? For he hath answered the ends of the law, and he claimeth all those who have faith in him; and they have faith in him will cleave unto every good thing; wherefore he advocateth the cause of the children of humans; and he dwelleth eternally in the Heavens. And because he hath done this, my beloved brethren, have miracles ceased? Behold I say unto you, Nay; neither have Angels ceased to minister unto the children of humans. For behold, they are subject unto him, to minister according to the word of his command, showing themselves unto them of strong faith and a firm mind in every form of Godliness,” reports Moroni 7.27-30. The self-actualized enlightenment, like the being, eludes the unenlightened observer, who cannot comprehend this kind of being, and so usually ends by misunderstanding one. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

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Wisdom is called mobile by way of similitude, according as it diffuses its likeness even to the outermost of things; for nothing can exist which does not proceed from the divine wisdom by way of some kind of imitation, as from the first effective and formal principle; as also works of art proceed from the wisdom of the artist. And so in the same way, inasmuch as the similitude of the divine wisdom proceeds in degree from the highest things, which participate more fully of its likeness, to the lowest things which participate of it in a lesser degree, there is said to be a kind of procession and movement of the divine wisdom to things; as when we say that the sum proceeds to the Earth, inasmuch as the ray of light touches the Earth. Every procession of the divine manifestation comes to us from the movement of the Father of light. These things are said of God in Scriptures metaphorically. For as the Sun is said to enter a house, or to go out, according as its rays reach the house, so God is said to approach to us, or to recede from us, when we receive the influx of His goodness, or decline from Him. “And the office of their ministry is to call humans unto repentance, and to fulfill and to do the work of the covenants of the Father, which he hath made unto the children of humans, to prepare the way among the children of humans, by declaring the word of Christ unto the children of humans, by declaring the word of Christ unto the chosen vessels of the Lord, that they may bear testimony of him,” Moroni 7.31. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

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Lost persons, in Christian terms, are precisely the ones who mistake their own person for God. They falsely identify, and cannot recognize, what is closet to them—themselves. Then, as we have noted, everything becomes delusional. Such a one really does think one is in charge of one’s life—though, admittedly, to manage it “successfully,” one may have to bow outwardly to this or that person or power. However, one is in charge (one believes), and one has no confidence in the one who really is God. As we have seen, such ones “do not see fit to center their knowledge upon God.” Their god, as Paul elsewhere wrote, is their “belly” (Philippians 3.19), the feeling center of the self. They are willing slaves of their feelings or appetites (Romans 16.18). They “want what they want when they want it,” as the song says, and that is the ultimate fact about them. If they do not get it, they become angry and depressed, and are a danger to themselves and others. The philosophy of living with an underlying motive of doing everything for one’s own personal peace and comfort rapidly colours everything that might formerly have come under the headings of right and wrong. This new way of thinking adds entirely new shades, often in blurring brushstrokes of paint that wipe out the existence of standards or cast them into a shadow that pushes them out of sight. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

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If one’s peace, comfort, way of life, convenience, reputation, opportunities, job, happiness, or even ease is threatened, “Just abort it.” Abort what? Abort another life that is not yet born. Yes, but also abort the afflictions connected with having a disabled child, and abort the burdens connected with caring for the old or invalid. Added swiftly are the now supposedly thinkable attitudes of aborting a child’s early security in one’s rights to have two parents and a family life; aborting a wife’s need for having her husband be someone to trust and lean upon; aborting the husband’s need for having a companion and friend as well as a feminine mate; aborting any responsibility to carry through a job started. Thus self-idolatry rearranges the entire spiritual and moral landscape. It sees the whole Universe with different eyes. If it is not abortion that is at the center, it will be something else; but the fundamental pride of putting oneself at the center of the Universe is the hinge upon which the entire World of the ruined self turns. The surest source of destruction to humans is to obey themselves. Yet, self-obedience seems the only reasonable path for nearly everyone. So blindly do we all rush in the direction of self-love, that every one thinks one has a good reason for exalting oneself and despising all others in comparison. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

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Whereas the primal relationship of human to human is giving one, in the state of sin it is purely demanding. Every person exists in a state of complete voluntary isolation; each being lives one’s own life, instead of all living the same God-life. Well, of course. Each is a god unto oneself. “And by so doing, the Lord God prepareth the way that the residue of beings may have faith in Christ, that the Holy Ghost may have place in their hearts, according to the power thereof; and after this manner bringeth to pass the Father, the covenants which one hath made unto the children of humans. And Christ hath said: If ye will have faith in me ye shall have power to do whatsoever thing is expedient in me. And he hath said: Repent all ye ends of the Earth, and come unto me, and be baptized in my name, and have faith in me, that ye may be saved,” reports Moroni 7.32-34. O God, Who gavest the Holy Spirit to Thine Apostles, vouchsafe a good effect to Thy people’s devout prayer; that as Thou hast given them faith, Thou mayest also bestow on them peace, through Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, O Lord, let the Holy Spirit enkindle in us that fire which our Lord Jesus Christ sent upon the Earth, and ardently desired to see enkindled, Who with thee will allow of to see deeply into the hidden meaning of life for ye are the best qualified to guide us in matters of conduct and motive. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

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My Father, enlarge my heart, warm my affections, open my lips, supply words that proclaim “Love lusters at Calvary.” There grace removes my burdens and heaps them on thy Son, made a transgressor, a curse, and sin for me; there the sword of thy justice smote the man, thy fellow; there thy infinite attributes were magnified, and infinite atonement was made; there infinite punishment was due, and infinite punishment was endured. Christ was all anguish that I might be all joy, cast off that I might be brought in, trodden down as an enemy that I might be welcomed as a friend, surrendered to hell’s worst that I might attain Heaven’s best, stripped that I might be clothed, wounded that I might be healed, athirst that I might drink, tormented that I might be comforted, made a shame that I might inherit glory, entered darkness that I might have eternal light. My Saviour wept that all tears might be wiped from my eyes, groaned that I might have unfading healthy, bore a thorny crown that I might have a glory-diadem, bowed his head that I might uplift mine, experienced reproach that I might receive welcome, closed his eyes in death that I might gaze on unclouded brightness, expired that I might for ever live. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

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O Father, who spared not thine only Son that thou mightiest spare me, all this transfer thy love designed and accomplished; help me to adore thee by lips and life. O that my every breath might be ecstatic praise, my every step buoyant with delight, as I see my enemies crushed, Satan baffled, defeated, destroyed, sin buried in the ocean of reconciling blood, hell’s gates closed, Heaven’s portal open. Go forth, O conquering God, and show me the cross, might to subdue, comfort and save. The Lord wants us to bring our children up with tenderness, discipline, and instruction. The words “bring them up” mean “to nourish or feed.” Bring them up also means to let them be kindly cherished, and to speak to one’s children with gentleness and friendliness. When I was a teenager, my best friend’s father was a man’s man. He had spent thirty-two years in the Coast Guard as a noncommissioned officer, a chief bosun’s mate. He was a big man, and in his prime he had put on the gloves with Joe Louis. When he walked down the street, officers greeted him first. He could be rough and tumble. However, do you know what he called his 165-pound son? “Dear Ken.” I was “Mr. Randy,” and I did not mind at all. In fact, it made me feel great. He was not hung up on “Real men do not show affection.” In fact, he still hugs his grown son—a man’s man himself. We are to be tender. Men are never manlier than when they are tender with their children—whether holding a baby in their arms, loving their grade-schooler, or hugging their teenager or adult children. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

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A child needs also to know that one’s father and one’s mother are happily married, and supportive of their children. A child who comes from a happy home is more likely to be stable. Tenderness—verbal and physical—comes naturally to a father living under God’s Word. Men, how do we measure up? Next there is training. This is a strong word which means discipline, even by punishment. Discipline certainly includes corporal discipline as needed. However, it encompasses everything necessary to help train a child in the way one should go. The tragedy is that so many men have left this to their children’s mothers. Not only is this unfair to the mother, but it robs the child of the security and self-esteem which come from being disciplined by the father. Men, do you leave the discipline of your sons and daughters to your wives? If so, that is a sad breach of domestic responsibility. You are not living under God’s Word! O God, the Enlightener and the Life of believers, the ineffable greatness of Whose gifts is celebrated by the testimony of this day’s festival; grant unto Thy people to apprehend in their understandings what they have learned by a miracle, that Thine adopted children, whom the Holy Spirit has called together, may love Thee without any lukewarmness, and confess Thy Faith without any dissension; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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Cresleigh Homes

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You can see Bear River Park from here! 🤩 The #Meadows and #Riverside neighborhoods are now selling! Check out our website for floor plans, contact info, and more.
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My Heart is a Lonely Hunter that Hunts on a Lonely Hill!

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The workers have nothing to lose but their chairs. They have a World to gain. Worrying is like a rocking chair—it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere. “Take therefore no thought for the morrow for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself,” reports St. Matthew 6.34. There are many insights laid out by Paul which asks of the Christian that they be watchful. He strong being is strong only if one watches one’s strength, aware of the fact that there is weakness in one’s strength. There is a non-Christian in every Christian. There is a weak being in every strong one. There is cowardice in every courage, and unbelief in every faith, and hostility in every love. Watchfulness means that the Christian never can rest on one’s being a Christian, that one who is strong can never rely on one’s strength. One can be strong by subjecting oneself to a strong discipline. By suppressing much in oneself one may become powerful in relation to others. It is often this type that is called a strong personality. And, certainly, strength without the ability to direct oneself is no strength. However, those who have this ability and are admired as strong personalities should be watchful: they should watch whether their strength has weakness at its basis, whether it excludes elements of life that constitute the richness and the glory of life. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16

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If they do not watch their hidden weakness, it may flow forth as hatred for those who affirm the abundance of life. This abundance they cannot endure, because it reveals the weakness on which their strength is built. In order to reassure themselves, they force upon others the same restrictions they have imposed on their life. Their domineering strength creates weakness in others. There is a profound ambiguity about the strong Christian personality: Christianity could not live, society could not go on, without them. However, many other Christians, many persons, who perhaps could have become strong themselves, are destroyed or reduced to mental weakness and often illness by them. They are the bearers of Christianity and society; but their victims among Christians and non-Christians, beginning with their children, their wives or their husbands, are numerous. Be watchful when you are considered, or consider yourself, strong. Be watchful, and do not demand of those around you to be what you are, and what they are not. You will destroy them by your strength. Those who are considered strong usually have a strong conviction. They seem to do what Paul asks them to—namely, to “stand in the faith.” Everybody needs place to stand upon. Without a foundation no strength is possible. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16

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In the physical Universe it is a place on the well-grounded Earth, as the Greeks said; no experience seems more disturbing, even for the strongest mins, than the shaking of the ground in an Earthquake. In the social Universe it is the home—the home town country on which we stand; and from earliest times those who lost their homeland were considered weakest and most unprotected. What about the spiritual Universe? Language is the place we stand on in the spiritual Universe. For out of the word by which we grasp our World and our own being all other spiritual creations grow: knowledge and the arts, social traditions and philosophical beliefs. The word gives beings the strength to build a World above the given World. It makes one the ruler of nature, as in the paradise story: one becomes the ruler over other living beings by giving them names. One who is strong in the spiritual Universe is strong in the power of the word. A profound insight into human strength and human weakness is expressed in the story of the tower of Babel. Humankind was strong as long as it was united in one language. Its strength impelled it to enter the Heavenly sphere. However, when God wanted to destroy human’s self-elevation and reveal one’s weakness, one confused the one language so that people no longer understood each other. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16

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We are in a similar situation today. Our period is weak, because we can no longer speak to each other. Each one has one’s own language, and the word has lost its power. It has become shallow and confused. We have experienced Earthquake and exile in the spiritual World. Paul asks the Corinthians to stand on something that is deeper than the physical and social and spiritual Universe, something that cannot be shaken, because all levels of the Universe rest upon it, their divine Ground. To stand on this Ground is, in Paul’s words, to stand in the faith. One, of course, thinks of the faith in the form in which one has brought it to the Corinthians. However, in this faith, faith itself is present—namely, the standing on the ultimate Ground below any shaking and changing ground. Breaking the way to this Ground is the meaning of the appearance of the Christ. “Stand firm in your faith” means—do not give up that faith that alone can make your ultimately strong, because it gives you the ultimate Ground on which to stand. Standing firm in one’s faith does not mean adhering to a set of beliefs; it does not require us to suppress doubts about Christian or other doctrines, but points to something which is possessed beyond doubt in the depth in which human’s being and all being is rooted. To be aware of this Ground, to live in it and out of it is ultimate strength. “Be strong” and “stand in the faith” are one and the same command. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16

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However, remembering now the word “be,” some may reply—“Then the demand to be strong is not for us, because we do not stand in any faith. Doubt or unbelief is our destiny, not faith. We know you are right, there is no strength where there is no faith. However, we have neither. And if there is some strength in us, it is the strength of honesty, the unwillingness to submit to a faith that is not ours, either for conventional reasons, or because of our longing for strength, or because of being taken in by our contemporary emotion-arousing evangelists. Our strength is to resist and to reject strength that is born of dishonesty. Some of the best minds of our time would speak thus. To them I answer—Your honesty proves your faith and therefore your honesty is your strength! You may not believe in anything that can be stated in doctrines or symbols. However, you stand on the ultimate Ground, you stand firm in your faith as long as you sand in honesty and take your doubt and your unbelief seriously without restriction. Become aware of the faith that you have, and you will find words for it, perhaps even Christian words. However, with or without words, be strong; for you are strong. Strength, according to Paul’s words, includes courage. For human strength is built on human anxiety. Insecurity takes many forms. One of the most dangerous is the experience of being split within ourselves. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16

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One who is united with oneself is invincibly strong. However, who is? We are all dominated by forces that conquer parts of our being and split our personality. We have not merely lost the power of the word; we also have lost the strength that is given with a united, centered personality. We are disrupted by compulsions, known formerly as demonic powers. And who can command a split personality—“Be strong!” To which side of the personality can such a command be addressed? Yet, there is the possibility of something else. Healing power, coming ultimately from the Ground on which we stand in the faith, can enter the personality and unite it in an act of courage. It is the courage that takes upon itself the anxiety of our disruptions. This courage is the innermost center of faith. It dares to affirm our being, while simultaneously rejecting it. Out of this courage the greatest strength emerges. It is the strength that overcomes the powers splitting World and soul. Be courageous! Say Yes to yourselves in spite of the anxiety of the No. So Paul finishes his description of the strong personality: a courageous, watchful hero, firm in faith, worthy of great praise. However, that is just what Paul has in mind is based on something beyond courage and faith and watchfulness. It is not the strength of a hero. It is the strength of one who surrenders the praise one could receive as a hero to the humility of love. They may be friendly and be willing to help. This they demand of themselves. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16

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However, everything they demand of themselves they also demand of others. They use the word “be” without hesitation. They become tyrants through personal strength. Without love one who is strong becomes a law for the weak. And the law makes those who are weak even weaker. It drives them into despair, or rebellion, or indifference. Strength without love destroys, first others, then itself. For love is not something that may or may not be added to strength in its fullest sense; it is an element of strength. One cannot be strong without love. For love is not an irrelevant emotion; it is the blood of life, the power of reunion of the separated. Strength without love leads to separation, to judgment, to control of the weak. Love reunites what is separated; it accepts what is judged; it participates in what is weak, as God participates in our weakness and gives us strength by His participation. “When he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in Heaven about the space of half an hour,” reports Revelations of St. John. If you are a thoughtful and observant person you will probably recognize in this description the usual course of human affairs—thank God for any exceptions there may be! And if you find yourself substantially exempted from this picture, you can say thankfully, “There, but for the grace of God, go I. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16

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Paul, at least, was not hopeful that things would get better as human history moved along. He was not a believer in “progress” as it has been humanly understood. In what seems to have been his last letter, perhaps the very last thing he wrote, he warned Timothy that “in the last days difficult times will come. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding to a form of Godliness, although they have denied its power,” reports 2 Timothy 3.1-5. One could be forgiven for thinking that this certainly looks like “now.” Who does not recognize in these words the prevailing tone and texture of contemporary life? Who does not know that such behaviour, if not approved outright, is excused or even justified by clever psychological, legal, and moral maneuvers, often reciting elevated “principles.” In fact this has been the end stage f every successful human society that has arisen on Earth. Invariably, such a society begins to believe it is responsible for its success and prosperity and begins to worship itself and rebel against the understandings and practices that allowed it, under God, to be successful in the first place. “Jeshurun grew fat and kicked,” the prophetic analysis states Deuteronomy 32.15. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16

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The human decline into what was expressed in the words of Paul to Timothy is inevitable. However, underneath it all is the radical evil of the human heart—a heart that would make me God in place of God. The prophetic clarity still stands for all to read and test. Our human “righteousness” is like “filthy rags” reports Isaiah 64.6. And over against this we hear intoned: “I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind, even to given to each being according to one’s ways, according to the results of one’s deeds,” reports Jeremiah 17.10. Some fathers exasperate their children by being overly strict and controlling. They need to remember that rearing children is like holding a wet bar of soap—too firm a grasp and it shoots from your hand, too loose a grip and it slides away. A gentle but firm hold keeps you in control. We cannot begin to estimate the ravages of overstrictness on the evangelical Christian community over the years. I have had occasions in my ministry to bury people who lived virtually all of their seventy years in reaction to the harsh legalism of their upbringing—lost bars no one could manage to pick up. Others were not so tragic. They came to renounce legalism Biblically and theologically, but still wrestled with it emotionally for the rest of their lives. Why are some fathers overly strict? Many because they are trying to protect their children from an increasingly Philistine culture—and smothering rules seem the best way to accomplish that. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16

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Others are simply controlling personalities who use rules, money, friendship, or clout to rule their children’s lives. The Bible, read through their controlling grid, becomes a license to own and dominate. Still others wrongly understand their faith in terms of Law rather than grace. Some men are overly strict because they are concerned about what others will think. “If my child goes to this place or wears this clothing, or is heard listening to that music, what will they think?” Not a few preacher’s kids have been catapulted into rebellion because their fathers squeezed their lives to fit their parishioners’ expectations. What a massive sin against one’s children! Rather, we ought to begin our fatherhood by holding the tiny helpless bar snugly, but as it grows, gradually and wisely loosen our grip. As conscientious fathers we have to say “no” to many things. Thus we should try to say “yes” to as much as possible, and save our no’s for the really important situations. We must be Biblical in regard to our no’s—and as our children grow, be prepared to discuss the rules Biblically and principally. We must learn to trust God with our children, realizing they must learn to make decision for themselves. Fathers, do not exasperate your children by being overly strict. Learn to hold their lives with God’s pressure and to mold it with His love. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16

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Seeking the Master: Great possibilities attach themselves to the first interview between the student earnestly seeking direction, needing guidance, or requesting counsel, and the illuminate who has established communion with God. These possibilities do not depend upon the length of time it takes nor upon what is said during the actual conversation itself. They depend upon the attitude which a student silently brings with one and upon the power which the illuminate silently expresses. In other words, they depend upon invisible and telepathic factors. Only when one is finally ready for a master will one find a true one. However, to be ready the aspirant must bring his character to its highest possibility. When that is done then even at the first meeting the power of attraction will speak silently yet eloquently. Both will know, before that first meeting ends, that the other is the right one; there will be no doubts, no hesitations; they can exist only when judgement is wrong. One will know an affinity of soul that can and has previously been experienced with no one else. Affinity has its own clear language. It will put both people at perfect ease. When a sensitive heart, a receptive mind, and a strong yearning for spiritual perfection meet a being who embodies such perfection to a large degree, there is or should be some recognition, some brief purification, some intellectual clarification, some emotional exaltation, amounting in all to a miniature mystical experience. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16

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When the predestined disciple meets the master for the first time, one may feel either that one has known the individual before or else that one has known one always. Sometimes we have the feeling on meeting a stranger for the first time, one may feel either that one has known one before or else that one has known one always. Sometimes we have the feeling on meeting a stranger for the first time, that we have known one long and known one well. The feeling on first meeting the destined master is much the same but greatly expanded and deeply intensified. The feeling which is aroused on this contact—whether affinity or antipathy—must be one’s first guide to the choice of a master. One may feel the force of a real attraction when first meeting one’s master, in most cases, but it is just possible one may not. The human in whose presence your character rises to its best and your faith to its highest, is the being who can help you spiritually. Without this inward affinity it is of not much use to attach yourself to a guide, however reputed one may be. “And now, my brethren, how is it possible that ye can lay hold upon every good thing? And now I come to that faith, of which I said I would speak; and I will tell you the way whereby ye may lay hold on every good thing. For behold, God knowing all things, being from everlasting to everlasting, behold, he sent Angels to minister unto the children of humans, to make manifest concerning the coming of Christ; and in Christ there should come every good thing,” reports Moroni 7.20-22. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16

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Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that the splendour of Thy brightness may shine upon us, and the light of Thy Light confirm with the illumination of the Holy Spirit the hearts of those who have been born again through Thy grace: for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that we who celebrate the solemnity of the gift of the Holy Ghost, may be kindled with Heavenly desires, and thirst for the fountain of life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Everlasting Creator-Father, I have destroyed myself, my nature is defiled, the powers of my soul are degraded; I am vile, miserable, strengthless, but my hope is in thee. If ever I am saved it will be by goodness undeserved and astonishing not by mercy alone but by abundant mercy, not by grace but by exceeding riches of grace; and such thou hast revealed, promised, exemplified in thoughts of peace, not of evil. Thou hast devised means to rescue me from sin’s perdition, to restore me to happiness, honour, safety. I bless thee for the everlasting covenant, for the appointment of a mediator. I rejoice that he failed not, nor was discouraged, but accomplished the work thou gavest him to do; and said on the cross, “It is finished.” I exult in the thought that thy justice is satisfied, thy trust established, thy la magnified, and a foundation is laid for my hope. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16

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I look to a present and personal interest in Christ and say, surely he has borne my griefs, carried my sorrows, won my peace, healed my soul. Justified by his blood I am saved by his life, glorying in his cross I bow to his scepter, having his Spirit I possess his mind. Lord, grant that my religion may not be occasional and partial, but Universal, influential, effective, and may I always continue in thy words as well as thy works, so that I may reach my end in peace. Almighty and everlasting God, Who in the fulness of this day’s mystery hast completed the secret work of the Paschal solemnity; grant, we beseech Thee, that we who have been made Thine adopted sons may obtain that peace which our Lord Jesus Christ left unto us when He came to Thee; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, O Lord, let the Holy Spirit prepare our minds by Divine mysteries, forasmuch as He Himself is the remission of all sins; through Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, O Lord, let the power of the Holy Spirit be present with us, that it may both mercifully cleanse our hearts, and protect us from all adversities; through our Lord Jesus Christ. O God, Who by the mystery of this day’s festival dost sanctify Thy Universal Church in every race and nation, shed abroad throughout the whole World the gift of the Holy Spirit; that the work wrought by Divine goodness at the first preaching of the Gospel may now also be extended among believing hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16

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With these sobering vistas of the human heart and soul before us, we need now to rethink for our time what it means to be lost. For a ruined soul is a lost sou. What is a lost soul? Just someone God is mad at? When is a person lost? And is anyone lost today? Considerable confusion on this topic has resulted from trying to think of being lost in terms of its outcome. Theologically, that outcome is Hell—a most uncomfortable notion. Certainly, if you are lost in any sense there is a little likelihood of your arriving where you want to be. However, the condition of lostness is not the same as the outcome to which it leads. We are not lost because we are going to wind up in the wrong place. We are going to wind up in the wrong place because we are lost. TO be lost means to be out of place, to be omitted. “Gehenna,” the term often used in the New Testament for the place of the lost, may usefully be thought of as the cosmic dumb for the irretrievably useless. Think of what it would mean to find you have become irretrievably useless. Something that is lost is something that is not where it is supposed to be, and therefore it is not integrated into the life of the one to whom it belongs and to who it is lost. Think of what it means when the keys to your house or are lost. They are useless to you, no matter how much you need them and desire to have them and no matter what fine keys they may be. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16

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And when we are lost to God, we are not where we are supposed to be in his World and hence are not caught up into his life. We are not “partakers of the divine nature,” have not “escaped the corruption that is in the World” through lust reports 2 Peter 1.4. We are our own god, and our god does not amount to much. When we are lost to God, we are also lost to ourselves: we do not know where we are or how to get where we want to go. We may know we are lost or we may not. Many a driver is lost long before one knows one his—though rarely before one’s wife knows it. Many are lost before God but do not know it. They sincerely believe that they know where they are, where they are going, and how to get there; but in fact they do not, and they often find out too late. Disorientation to moral, personal, and divine reality, as well as to the physical, sometimes leads us across lines that cannot be recrossed. This is part of the tragic meaning of human time and action. Almighty and everlasting God, Who in the fulness of this day’s mystery hast completed the secret work of the Paschal solemnity; grant, we beseech Thee, that we who have been made Thine adopted sons may obtain that peace which our Lord Jesus Christ left unto us when He came to Thee; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, O Lord, let the Holy Spirit prepare our minds by Divine mysteries, forasmuch as He Himself is the remission of all sins; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16

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Watch and Pray that Ye Enter Not into Temptation: that Spirit Indeed is Willing, but the Flesh is Weak!

ImagePlots, true are false are necessary things, to raise up commonwealths, and ruin kings. One’s power of keeping one’s knowledge a secret from those who are unready for or uninterested in it is perfect. Nothing in one’s words or manner may lead them to think that the self-actualized knows immensely more than one tells them. One knows how to protect one’s status well. In the presence of sceptics and scoffers, or the unevolved and unready, neither one’s outward manner nor one’s uttered talk will give any hint of it. With all one’s reclusive habits, the self-actualized is compassionate in temperament, benevolent in personality. Even when one avoids people, one does not hate them. They feel tense, uneasy, and unsure in the presence of a superior class of beings. This one knows by experience and this is one reason why one keeps apart and alone; yet paradoxically it is also why one is kinder to them than a situation calls for, why one then behaves as if one were an equal and not on a different level. In one sense, the self-actualized consciousness is insulated by its own superior quality from that of others, but in another sense it fleetingly registers or lengthily holds their states through one’s compassion, sympathy, or understanding. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

ImageThe self-actualized has no intention of meddling in other people’s personal lives, no conceit that one’s duty is to change them, no willingness to take on responsibility for them. One commits them to God and commends them to it. However this it done, if intuitively or rationally one is led to suggest a purpose or remind them of a truth or point to a beneficial course or utter a warning, one will bey the leading—but always in response to their approach. If fate will let the self-actualized being, one is happier to move through this World incognito, than celebrated. Most people are always more impressed by outward show than by inner worth. However, when the show is philanthropic service and benevolent activity dramatically performed, they are even more impressed. The recognition and appreciation are immediate. The being whose inner stillness admit spiritual forces into one’s surroundings remains unnoticed. Nor is the people’s judgment always true; the most may err as grossly as the few. Beware the fury of a patient person. Experience is something you do not get until just after you need it. I maintain that there is a desperate social need for the creative behavior of creative individuals. It is this which justifies the setting forth of a tentative theory of creativity—the nature of the creative act, the conditions under which it occurs, and the manner in which it may constructively be fostered. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

ImageSuch a theory of creativity may serve as a stimulus and guide to research studies in this field of therapy.  Many of the serious criticisms of our culture and its trend may best be formulated in terms of a dearth of creativity. Let us state some of these briefly: In education we tend to turn out conformists, stereotypes, individuals whose educations is “completed,” rather than freely creative and original thinkers. In our leisure time activities, passive entertainment and regimented group action are overwhelmingly predominant while creative activities are much less in evidence. In the sciences, there is an ample supply of technicians, but the number who can creatively formulate fruitful hypotheses and theories is small indeed. In industry, creation is reserved for the few—the manager, the designer, the head of the research department—while for the many life is devoid of original or creative endeavor. In individual and family life the same picture holds true. In the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the books we read, and the idea we hold, there is a strong tendency toward conformity, toward stereotypy. To be original, or different, is felt to be “dangerous.” Why be concerned over this? If, as a people, we enjoy conformity rather than creativity, shall we not be permitted this choice? In my estimation such a choice would be entirely reasonable were it not for one great shadow which hangs over all of us. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

ImageIn a time when knowledge, constructive and destructive, is advancing by the most incredible leaps and bounds into a fantastic atomic age, genuinely creative adaptation seems to represent the only possibility that beings can keep abreast of the kaleidoscopic change in the World. With scientific discovery and invention proceeding, we are told, at the rate of geometric progression, a generally passive and culture-bound people cannot cope with the multiplying issues and problems. Unless individuals, groups, and nations can imagine, construct, and creatively revise new ways of relating to these complex changes, the lights will go out. Unless beings can make new and original adaptations to one’s environments as rapidly as one’s science can change the environment, our culture will perish. Not only individual maladjustment and group tensions, but international annihilation will be the price we pay for a lack of creativity. Consequently it would seem to me that investigations of the process of creativity, the conditions under which this process occurs, and the ways in which it may be facilitated, are of the utmost importance. It is in the hope of suggestion a conceptual structure under which such investigations might go forward will help facilitate necessary changes. “Be watchful, stand firm in your faith, be courageous, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love,” reports 1 Corinthians 16.13-14. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

ImageOut of this well-known passage, I chose two word on which I want you to center your attention in this hour—be strong! They are surrounded in our text by other qualities that makes strength possible—watchfulness, faith, courage, love. All together, they describe the strong Christian personality. How can we attain strength? This is a question asked in all ages of a being’s life and in all periods of human history. It is a question asked with passion and despair in our time, and most impatiently by those who are no longer children and not yet adults. In our texts Paul uses the word “be” several times: “be strong,” he says to the Corinthians. We easily slip over it. However, it should arrest our attention as fully as, and perhaps even more than, the main words of our text. Fore the word “be” contains in its two letters the whole riddle of the relation of beings to God. Paul does not ask of the Christians in Corinth something that is strange to them. He asks them to be what they are, Christian personalities. All the imperatives he uses are descriptions of something that is, before they are demands for what ought to be. Be what you are—that is the only thing one can ask of any being. One cannot ask of a being to be something it was not before. It is as if life in all its forms desires to be asked, to receive demands. However, no life can receive demands for something which it is not. It wants to be asked to become what it is and nothing else. This seems surprising, but a little thought shows us that it is true. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

ImageWe know that one cannot ask fruits from thorns, or grain from weeds, or water from a dry fountain, or love from a cold heart, or courage from a cowardly mind, or strength from a weak life. If we ask such things from beings who do not have them, we are foolish; and either they will laugh at us or condemn us as unjust and hostile towards them. We can ask of anything or anyone only to bring forth what one has, to become what one is. Out of what is given to us, we can act. Receiving precedes acting. “Be strong,” says Paul. He says it to those who have received strength as he himself received strength when the power of a new reality grasped him. Now some of us will ask—“what about us who feel that we have not received, and that we do not have faith and courage and strength and love? We are wanting in all these, so the commanding ‘be’ of Paul is not said to us. Or if it is said to us we remain unconcerned or become hostile towards one who says it. We are not strong, so nobody should ask us to be strong! We are weak. Shall we remain weak? Shall we fall into resignation, and become cynical about your demands? They may be for others. They are not for us.” I hear many people, more than we imagine, saying this. I hear whole classes of young people speaking thus. I hear many individuals in older generation repeating these words. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

ImageAnd I do not find any consolation in the Bible There is the parable of the different soils on which the seed of the divine message falls and of which only one brings fruit. There is the word of the many who are called and few who are elected. There is the terrifying, realistic statement of Jesus that those whom much is given will receive more, and that from those who little is given, even this will be taken away. There is the contrast between those who are born of light and have become its children and those who are born out of darkness and have become its children. There is the parable of the man as clay which cannot revolt against God the potter, no matter what the potter does to the clay. We would like to revolt, when we hear this. However, if we look around us into the lives of beings we are forced to say—“So it is, the Bible is right!” We would like to say in a god democratic phrasing—“Everyone has a God-given chance to reach fulfillment, but not everybody uses it. Some do, some do not. Both have their ultimate destiny in their own hands.” We would like that to be so. However, we cannot escape the truth that it is not so. The changes are not even. There is only a limited number of human beings to whom we can say—“Be strong,” because they are strong already. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

Image And the only honest thing I could say to the others, to whom many of us belong, is—“Accept that you are weak. Do not pretend that you are strong. And perhaps if you dare to be what you are, your weakness will become your strength. Accept that you are weak”—that is what we should say to those who are weak. “Accept that you are a coward”—that is what we should say to those who are cowardly. “Accept that you are wavering in the faith—that is what we should say to those who are not firm in it. And to those who do not love, we should say—“Accept that you are not able to love.” This sounds strange! However, everyone who knows the human soul, and knows one’s own soul above all, will understand what is meant. One will understand that the first step in becoming strong is to acknowledge and accept one’s weakness. One who does so will cease to deceive oneself by saying to oneself—“I have at least something of what the apostle demands. One can demand it from me, for somehow I have it.” There are people who could rightly speak so to themselves. Yet there are others for whom such a judgment would be a self-deception. To them we must say—“Accept that you are weak; be honest towards yourselves.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

ImageLet me say to those who are responsible for others, as parents, teachers, ministers, counselors, friends: do not say the demanding “be” to anybody without fear and hesitation. If you use it, you approach the mystery of the divine election and you may destroy a life by demanding something of a person that one is not! There are various ways of defining creativity. In order to make more clear the meaning of what is to follow, let me present the elements which, for me, are part of the creative process, and then attempt a definition. In the first place, for me as a scientist, there must be something observable, some product of creation. Though my fantasies may be extremely novel, they cannot usefully be defined as creative unless they eventuate in some observable product—unless they are symbolized in words, or written in a poem, or translated into a work of art, or fashioned into an invention. These products must be novel constructions. This novelty grows out of the unique qualities of the individual in one’s interaction with the materials of experience. Creativity always has the stamp of the individual upon its product, but the product is not the individual, nor one’s materials, but partakes of the relationship between the two. Creativity is not, in my judgment, restricted to some particular content. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

ImageI am assuming that there is no fundamental difference in the creative process as it is evidenced in painting a picture, composing a symphony, devising new instruments of killing, developing a scientific theory, discovering new procedures in human relationships, or creating new formings of one’s own personality at in psychotherapy. (Indeed it is my experience in this last field, rather than in one of the arts, which has given me special interest in creativity and its facilitation. Intimate knowledge of the way in which the individual remolds oneself in the therapeutic relationship, with originality and effective skill, gives one confidence in the creative potential of all individuals.) My definition, then, of the creative process is that it is the emergence in action of a novel relational product, growing out of the uniqueness of the individual on the one hand, and the materials, events, people, or circumstances of one’s life on the other. Let me append some negative footnotes to this definition. It makes no distinction between “good” and “bad” creativity. One being may be discovering a way of relieving pain, while another is devising a new and more subtle form of torture for political prisoners. Both these actions seem to me creative, even though their social value is very different. Though I shall comment on these social valuations later, I have avoided putting them in my definition because they are so fluctuating. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

ImageGalileo and Copernicus made creative discoveries which in their own day were evaluated as blasphemous and wicked, and in our day as basic and constructive. We do no want to cloud our definition with terms which rest in subjectivity. Another way of looking at this same issue is to note that to be regarded historically as representing creativity, the product must be acceptable to some group at some point of time. This fact is not helpful to our definition, however, both because of the fluctuating valuations already mentioned, and also because many creative products have undoubtedly never been socially noticed, but have disappeared without ever having been evaluated. So this concept of group acceptance is also omitted from our definition. In addition, it should be pointed out that our definition makes no distinction regarding the degree of creativity, since this too is a value judgment extremely variable in nature. The action of the child inventing a new game with one’s playmates; Einstein formulating a theory of relativity; the housewife devising a new sauce for the meat; a young author writing one’s first novel; all of these are, in terms of our definition, creative, and there is no attempt to set them in some order of more or less creative. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

ImageThe motivation for creativity—the mainspring of creativity appears to be the same tendency which we discover so deeply as the curative force in psychotherapy –human’s tendency to actualize oneself, to become one’s potentialities. By this I mean the directional trend which is evident in all organic and human life—the urge to expand, extend, develop, mature—the tendency to express and activate all the capacities of the organism, or the self. This tendency may become deeply buried under layer after layer of encrusted psychological defenses; it may be hidden behind elaborate facades which deny its existence; it is my belief however, based on my experience, that it exists in every individual, and waits only the proper conditions to be released and expressed. It is this tendency which is the primary motivation for creativity as the organism forms new relationships to the environment in its endeavour most fully to be itself. Let us now attempt to deal directly with this puzzling issue of the social value of a creative act. Presumably few of us are interested in facilitating creativity which is socially destructive. We do not wish, knowingly, to lend our efforts to developing individuals whose creative genius works itself out in new and better ways of robbing, exploiting, torturing, killing, other individuals. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

ImageNor do we wish to lend our efforts to developing individuals whose forms of political organization or art forms which lead humanity into paths of physical or psychological self-destruction. Yet how is it possible to make the necessary discriminations such that we may encourage a constructive creativity and not a destructive? The distinction cannot be made by examining the product. The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it. Indeed history points up the fact that the more original the product, and the more far-reaching its implications, the more likely it is to be judged by contemporaries as evil. The genuinely significant creation, whether an idea, or a work of art, or a scientific discovery, is more likely to be seen at first as erroneous, bad, or foolish. Later it may be seen as obvious, something self-evident to all. Only still later does it receive its final evaluation as a creative contribution. It seems clear that no contemporary mortal can satisfactorily evaluate a creative product at the time that it is formed, and this statement is increasingly true the greater the novelty of the creation. Nor is it of any help to examine the purposes of the individual participating in the creative process. “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are the Caesar’s; and into God the things that are God’s,” reports St. Matthew 22.21. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

ImageMany, perhaps most, of the creations and discoveries which have proved to have great social value, have been motivated by purposes having more to do with personal interest than with social value, while on the other had history records a somewhat sorry outcome for many of those creations (various Utopias, Prohibitions, and so forth) which has as their avowed purpose the achievement of the social good. No, we must face the fact that the individual creates primarily because it is satisfying to one, because this behavior is felt to be self-actualizing, and we get nowhere by trying to differentiate “good” and “bad” purposes in the creative process. Must we then give over any attempt to discriminate between creativity which is potentially constructive, and that which is potentially destructive? I do not believe this pessimistic conclusion is justified. It is here that recent clinical findings from the field of psychotherapy give us hope. It has been found that when the individual is “open” to all of one’s experience (a phrase which will be defined more fully), then one’s behavior will be creative, and one’s creativity may be trusted to be essentially constructive. The differentiation may be put very briefly as follows. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

Image To the extent that the individual is denying to awareness (or repressing, if you prefer the term) large areas of one’s experience, then one’s creative formings may be pathological, or socially evil, or both. To the degree that the individual is open to all aspects of one’s experience, and has available to one’s awareness all the varied sensings and perceivings which are going on within one’s organism, then the novel products of one’s interaction with one’s environment will tend to be constructive both for oneself and others. To illustrate, an individual with paranoid tendencies may creatively develop a most novel theory of the relationship between oneself and one’s environment, seeing evidence for one’s theory in all sorts of minute clues. One’s theory has little social value, perhaps because there is an enormous range of experience which this individual cannot permit in one’s awareness. Sokrates, on developed novel ideas which have proven to be socially constructive. Very possibly this was because he was notably nondefensive and open to one’s experience. The reasoning behind this will perhaps become more clear in the remaining sections of this paper. Primarily however it is based upon the discovery in psychotherapy, that as the individual becomes more open to, more aware of, all aspects of one’s experience, one is increasingly likely to act in a manner we would term socialized. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

ImageIf one can be aware of one’s hostile impulses, but also of one’s desire for friendship and acceptance; aware of the expectations of one’s culture, but equally aware of one’s own purposes; aware of one’s selfish desires, but also aware of one’s tender and sensitive concern for another; then one behaves in a fashion which is harmonious, integrated, constructive. The more one is open to one’s experience, the more one’s behavior makes it evident that the nature of the human species tends in the direction of constructively social living. The eros quality of love is in a polar way related to what could be called the philia quality of love. While eros represents the transpersonal pole, philia represents the personal pole. Neither of them is possible without the other. There is eros quality in philia. And there is philia quality in eros. They are in a polar way interdependent. This implies that without the radical separation of the self-centered self neither the creative nor the religious eros is possible. Beings without a personal centre are without eros, although they are not without epithymia. One cannot relate oneself as an “I” to a “thou” cannot relate oneself to the true and the good and to the ground being in which they are rooted. One who cannot love the friend cannot love the artistic expression of ultimate reality. Stages of the aesthetical and the ethical and the religious are not stages but qualities which appear in structural interdependence. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

ImageConversely, philia is dependent on eros. Concepts like participation and communion point to the eros quality in every philia relation. It is the desire to unite with a power of being which is both most separated and mist understandable and which radiates possibilities and realities of good and the true in the manifestation of its incomparable individuality. However, eros and philia are not only united in the individual relation. They are also united in the communion of social groups. In families, and national groups, the desire for participation is directed towards the power of being which is embodied in the group, even if special relations of the philia type are lacking. The very fact that such groups consist of individual with whom an I-thou relation is potentially given, distinguishes the eros within a group from the eros which is effective, for instance, in artistic creations. Love as a philia presupposes some amount of familiarity with the object of love. For this reason Aristotle asserted that philia is possible only between equals. This is true if “equal” is defined in a sufficiently large way and not in terms of an esoteric group. “For behold, the Spirit of Christ is given to every being, that one may know good from evil; wherefore, I show unto you the way to judge; for every thing which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ; wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge of it is of God,” reports Moroni 7.16. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

ImageBe present, O Lord, to our supplications; that as we trust that the Saviour of humankind is seated with Thee in Thy Majesty, so we may feel that, according to His promise, He abideth with us unto the end of the World; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Almighty and everlasting God vouchsafe unto us, by the gift of this day’s festival, that the aims of Thy children may thither be directed, where our substance, in Thine Only-begotten Son, is with Thee; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Thou blessed spirit, author of all grace and comfort, come, work repentance in my soul; represent sin to me in its odious colours that I may hate it; melt my heart by the majesty and mercy of God; show me my ruined self and the help there is in Him; teach me to behold my Creator, His ability to save, His arms outstretched, His heart big for me. May I confide in His power and love, commit my soul to Him without reserve, bear His image, observe His laws, pursue His service, and be through time and eternity a monument to the efficacy of His grace, a trophy of His victory. Make me willing to be saved in His way, perceiving nothing in myself, but all in Jesus: Help me not only to receive Him but to walk in Him, depend upon Him, commune with Him, be conformed to Him, follow Him, imperfect, but still pressing forward, not complaining of labour, but valuing rest, not murmuring under trials, but thankful for my state. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

ImageGive me that faith which is the means of salvation, and the principle and medium of all Godliness; may I be saved by grace through faith, live by faith, feel the joy of faith, do the work of faith. Perceiving nothing in myself, my I find in Christ wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, redemption. Hear us, O merciful God, and grant our minds to be lifted up, whither our Redeemer hath ascended; that at the second coming of the Mediator we may receive from Thy manifested bounty what we now venture to hope for as promised gift; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that the faithful members of Thy Son may tither follow, whither our Head and Chief has gone before, Who with Thee, we shall be blessed with eternal life and everlasting grace. O God, Who, to show forth the wonders of Thy Majesty, didst after Thy Resurrection from the dead ascend this day into Heaven, in the presence of Thine Apostles, grant us the assistance of Thy loving kindness; that according to Thy promise Thou mayest ever dwell with us on Earth, and we with Thee in Heaven; where with the Father, we shall live in his mansions and have an abundance of blessings. “Though I speak with the tongues of humans and of Angles, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal,” Reports 1 Corinthians 13.1. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19Image

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 Knowledge of the HOLY One is Understanding—I Know that is a Secret, for it is Whispered Everywhere!

85War is an invention of the human mind. The human mind can invent peace. You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late. The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism. Today’s pressures on the principalship show no signs of decreasing their intensity. Future challenges include encouraging dispersed yet centered leadership, creating a cohesive community out of increasingly diverse populations, being responsible without being in charge, changing rapidly in response to social needs without leaving people behind, building trust and confidence in an openly cynical society, and caring for people while challenging them to grow. Together, these challenges will continue to fill every day with problems to solve, puzzles to unravel, and paradoxes to manage and endure. The whole ask of psychotherapy is the task of dealing with a failure in communication. The emotionally maladjusted person, the “neurotic,” is in difficulty first, because communication within oneself has broken down, and second because, as a result of this, one’s communication with others has been damaged. If this sounds somewhat strange to you, then let me put it in other terms. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

ImageIn the “neurotic” individual, parts of oneself which have been termed unconscious, or repressed, or denied to awareness, become blocked off so that they no longer communicate themselves to the conscious or managing part of oneself. As long as this is true, there are distortions in the way one communicates oneself to others, and so one suffers both within oneself, and in one’s interpersonal relationships. The task of psychotherapy is to help the person achieve, through a special relationship with a therapist, good communication within oneself. Once this is achieved one can communicate more freely and more effectively with others. We may say then that psychotherapy is good communication, within and between people. We may also turn that statement around and it will still be true. Good communication, free communication, within or between beings, is always therapeutic. It is, then, from a background of experience with communication in counseling and psychotherapy, that I want to present to you tonight two ideas. I wish to state what I believe is one of the major factors in blocking or impeding communication, and then I wish to present what in our experience has proven to be a very important way of improving or facilitating communication. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

ImageI would like to propose, as an hypothesis for consideration, that the major barrier to mutual interpersonal communication is our very natural tendency to judge, to evaluate, to approve or disapprove, the statement of the other person, or the other group. Let me illustrate my meaning with some very simple examples. As you leave the meeting tonight, one of the statements you are likely to hear is, “I did not like that man’s talk.” Now what do you respond? Almost invariably your reply will be either approval or disapproval of the attitude expressed. Either you respond, “I did not either. I thought it was terrible,” or else you tend to reply, “Oh, I thought it was really good.” In other words, your primary reaction is to evaluate what has been said to you, to evaluate it from your point of view, your own frame of reference. Or take another example. Suppose I say with some feeling, “I think the Republicans are behaving in ways that show a lot of good sound sense these days,” what is the response that arises in your mind as you listen? The overwhelming likelihood is that it will be evaluative. You will find yourself agreeing, or disagreeing, or making some judgment about me such as “He mist be a conservative,” or “He seems solid in his thinking.” Or let us take an illustration from the international scene. Russian says vehemently, “The treaty with Japan is a war plot on the part of the United States.” We rise as one person to say “That is a lie!” #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

ImageThis last illustration brings in another element connected with my hypothesis. Although the tendency to make evaluations is common in almost all interchange of language, it is very much heightened in those situations where feelings and emotions are deeply involved. So the stronger our feelings the more likely it is that there will be no mutual element in the communication. There will be just two ideas, two feelings, two judgments, missing each other in psychological space. I am sure you recognize this from your own experience. When you have not been emotionally involved yourself, and have listened to a heated discussion, you often go away thinking, “Well, they actually were not talking about the same thing.” And they were not. Each was making a judgment, an evaluation, from one’s own frame of reference. There was really nothing which could be called communication in any genuine sense. This tendency to react to any emotionally meaningful statement by forming an evaluation of it from our own point of view, is, I repeat, the major barrier to interpersonal communications. However, is there any way of solving this problem, of avoiding this barrier? I think that we are making exciting progress toward this goal and I would like to present it as simply as I can. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

ImageReal communication occurs, and this evaluative tendency is avoided, when we listen with understanding. What does this mean? It means to see the expressed idea and attitude from the other person’s point of view, to sense how it feels to one, to achieve one’s frame of reference in regard to the thing one is talking about. Stated briefly, this may sound absurdly simple, but it is not. It is an approach which we have found extremely potent in the field of psychotherapy. It is the most effective agent we know for altering the basic personality structure of an individual, and improving one’s relationships and one’s communications with others. If I can listen to what one can tell me, if I can understand how it seems to one, if I can see its personal meaning for one, if I can sense the emotional flavor which it has for one, then I will be releasing potent forces of change in one. If I can really understand how one hates one’s father, or hates the university, or hates corruption—if I can catch the flavor of one’s fear or of insanity, or one’s fear of atom bombs, or of Russia—it will be of the greatest help to one in altering those very hatreds and fears, and in establishing realistic and harmonious relationships with the very people and situations toward which one has felt hatred and fear. We know from our research that such empathic understanding—understanding with a person, not about one—is such an effective approach that it can bring about major changes in personality. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

ImageSome of you may be feeling that you listen well to people, and that you have never seen such results. The changes are very great indeed that your listening has not been of the type I have described. Fortunately I can suggest a little laboratory experiment which you can try to test the quality of your understanding. The next time you have words with your wife, or your friend, or with an experiment, institute this rule. “Each person can speak up for the previous speaker accurately, and to that speaker’s satisfaction.” You see what this would mean. It would simply mean that before presenting your own point of view, it would be necessary for you to really achieve that other speaker’s frame of reference—to understand one’s thoughts and feelings so well that you could summarize them for the individual. Sounds simple, does it not? However, if you try it you will discover it is one of the most difficult things you have ever tried to do. However, once you have been able to see the other’s point of view, your own comments will have to be drastically revised. You will also find the emotion going out of the discussion, the differences being reduced, and those differences which remain being of a rational and understandable sort. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

ImageIf it were projected into larger areas, can you imagine what this kind of an approach would mean? What would happen to a labor-management dispute if it was conducted in such a way that labor, without necessarily agreeing, could accurately state management’s point of view in a way that management could accept; and management, without approving labor’s stand, could state labor’s case in a way that labor agreed was accurate? It would mean that real communication was established, and one could practically guarantee that some reasonable solution would be reached. If then this way of approach is an effective avenue to good communication and good relationships, as I am quite sure you will agree if you try the experiment I have mentioned, why is it not more widely tried and used? I will try to list the difficulties which keep it from being utilized. In the first place it takes courage, a quality which is not too widespread. If you really understand another person in this way, if you are willing to enter one’s private World and see the way life appears to one, without any attempt to make evaluative judgments, you run the risk of being changed yourself. You might see it one’s way, you might find yourself influenced in your attitudes or your personality. This risk of being changed is one of the most frightening prospects most of us can face. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

Image It I enter, as fully as I am able, into the private World of a neurotic or psychotic individual, is not there a risk that I might become lost in that World? Most of us are afraid to take that risk. Or if we had a Russian communist speaker here tonight, or Senator Joseph McCarthy, how many of us would, after the shock of him being alive wore off, dare to try to see the World from each of these points of views? The great majority of us could not listen; we would find ourselves compelled to evaluate, because listening would seem too dangerous. So the first requirement is courage, and we do not always have it. However, there is a second obstacle. It is just when emotions are strongest that it is most difficult to achieve the frame of reference of the other person or group. Yet, if communication is to be established, this is the time the attitude is most needed. We have not found this to be an insuperable obstacle in our experience in psychotherapy. A third party, who is able to lay aside one’s own feelings and evaluations, can assist greatly by listening with understanding to each person or group and clarifying the views and attitudes each holds. We have found this very effective in small groups in which contradictory or antagonistic attitudes exist.  When the parties to a dispute realize that they are being understood, that someone sees how the situation seems to them, the statements grow less exaggerated and less defensive, and it is no longer necessary to maintain the attitude, “I am 100 percent tight and you are 100 percent wrong.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

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The influence of such an understanding catalyst in the group permits the members to come closer and closer to the objective truth involved in the relationship. In this way mutual communication is established and some type of agreement becomes much more possible. So we may say that though heightened emotions make it much more difficult to understand with an opponent, our experience makes it clear that a neutral, understanding, catalyst type of a leader or therapist can overcome this obstacle. This last phrase, however, suggests another obstacle to utilizing the approach I have described. Thus far all our experience has been with small face-to-face groups—groups exhibiting industrial tensions, religions tensions, racial tensions, and therapy groups in which many personal tensions are present. In these small groups our experience, confirmed by a limited amount of research, shows that a listening, empathic approach leads to improved communication, to greater acceptance of others and by others, and to attitudes which are more beneficial and more problem-solving in nature. There is a decrease in defensiveness, in exaggerated statements, in evaluative and critical behavior. However, these findings are from small groups. What about trying to achieve understanding between larger groups that are geographically remote? Or between face-to-face groups who are not speaking for themselves, but simply as representatives of others, like the delegates at the United Nations?  #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

ImageFrankly we do not know the answers to these questions. I believe the situation might be put this way. As social scientists we have a tentative test-tube solution of the problem of breakdown in communication. However, to confirm the validity of this test-tube solution, and to adapt it to the enormous problems of communication breakdown between classes, groups, and nations, would involve additional funds, much more research, and creative thinking of a high order. Even with our present limited knowledge we can see some steps which might be taken, even in large groups, to increase the amount of listening with, and to degrease the amount of evaluation about. To be imaginative for a moment, let us suppose that a therapeutically oriented international group went to the Russian leaders and said, “We want to achieve a genuine understanding of your views and even more important, of your attitudes and feelings, toward the United State of American. We will summarize and resummarize these views and feelings if necessary, until you agree that our description represents the situation as it seems to you.” Then suppose they did the same thing with the leaders in our own country. If they then gave the widest possible distribution to these two views, with the feelings clearly described but not expressed in name-calling, might not the effect be very great? It would not guarantee the type of understanding I have been describing, but it would make it much more possible. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

ImageWe can understand the feelings of a person who hates us much more readily when one’s attitudes are accurately described to us by a neutral third party, than we can when one is shaking one’s fist at us. However, even to describe such a first step is to suggest another obstacle to this approach of understanding. Our civilization does not yet have enough faith in the social sciences to utilize their findings. The opposite is true of the physical sciences. During the war when a test-tube solution was found to the problem of synthetic rubber, millions of dollars and an army of talent was turned loose on the problem of using that finding. If synthetic rubber could be made in milligrams, it could and would be made in the thousands of tones. And it was. However, in the social science realm, if a way is found of facilitating communication and mental understanding in small groups, there is no guarantee that the finding will be utilized. If may be a generation or more before the money and the brains will be turned loose to exploit that finding. Our research and experience to date would make it appear that breakdowns in communication, and the evaluative tendency which is the major barrier to communication, can be avoided. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

ImageThe solution is provided by creating a situation in which each of different parties comes to understand the other from the other’s point of view empathically, and who thus acts as a catalyst to precipitate further understanding. This procedure has important characteristics. It can be initiated by one party, without waiting for the other to be ready. It can even be initiated by a neutral third person, provided one can gain a minimum of cooperation from one of the parities. This procedure can deal with the insincerities, the defensive exaggerations, the lies, the “false fronts” which characterize almost every failure in communication. These defensive distortions drop away with astonishing speed as people find that the only intent is to understand, not judge. This approach leads steadily and rapidly toward the discovery of truth, toward a realistic appraisal of the objective barriers to communication. The dropping of some defensiveness by one party leads further dropping of defensiveness by the other part, and truth is thus approached. This procedure gradually achieves mutual communication. Mutual communication tends to be pointed toward solving a problem rather than toward attacking a person or a group. It leads to a situation in which I see how the problem appears to you, as well as to me, and you see how it appears to me, as well as to you. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

ImageThus accurately and realistically defined, the problem is almost certain to yield to intelligent attack, or if it is in part insoluble, it will be comfortably accepted as such. This then appears to be a test-tube solution to the breakdown of communication as it occurs in small groups. Can we take this small scale answer, investigate it further, refine it, develop it and apply it to the tragic and well-nigh fatal failures of communication which threaten the very existence of our modern World? It seems to me that this is a possibility and a challenge which we should explore. When my first wife—who is not with the Lord—and I were married, we asked that the following Scripture, which we felt God had given us as a promise, be read at our wedding: “They will by my people, and I will be their God, I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me. I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul,” reports Jeremiah 32.28-41. Note the expression of God’s goodness. He will give us singleness of heart for our own good of our children. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

ImageGod will never stop doing good to us, in fact He will rejoice in doing us good. This sounds appropriate, does it not, for two young people committed to service in full time? However, this assurance of God’s goodness was not originally given to people who were serving God or who “deserve” His goodness. Instead it was given to a group of people who were described by God as those who “have done nothing but evil in my sight from their youth” (verse 30). These people were in captivity in Babylon because of their sins over many generations. Just a few chapters before in Jeremiah, God has said to these people: This is what the LORD says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future,” reports Jeremiah 29.10-11. The goodness of God is demonstrated in His assurance of plans to prosper them and not to harm them. Note in verse 10 that God refers to His gracious promise, that is, a promise given freely without regard to the fact that they obviously did not deserve it. Here we see a vivid illustration of the truth of Samuel Storms’ statement that grace is no longer grace if God is compelled to withdraw it in the present of human demerit. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

ImageIf anyone qualified for demerits, surely the Israelites in captivity did. Yet God promised to prosper them, to rejoice in doing them god. Another insight into God’s gracious disposition is found in the prophecy of Joel. Joel prophesied judgment through a tremendous invasion of locusts that would devour all the trees and plants, resulting in widespread famine in the land. Then Joel looked forward to a day of restoration, a day when the trees would again bear fruit, the threshing floors would again be filled with grain, and the vats overflow with new wine and oil. In the midst of the prophecy of restoration, God made the following promise: “I will replay you for the years the locusts have eaten—the great locust and the young locust, the other locust and the locust swarm—my great army that I sent among you,” reports Joel 2.25. Consider the amazing generosity of God. He does not limit His promise merely to restoring the land to its former productivity. He says He will repay them for the years the locusts have eaten, years that they themselves forfeited to the judgment of God. God could well have said, “I will restore your land to its former productivity, but it is too bad about those years you lost. They are gone forever. That is the prince you pay for sin.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

14God would have been generous just to have restored them, but He went beyond that. God would cause their harvests to be so abundant they would recoup the losses from the years of famine. God says He will repay them, though He obviously owes them nothing. From time to time I have opportunity to minister individually to people who in some way have really “blown it” in life. For some, it may have been before they became Christians; for others it occurred while they were believers. Usually these people lament their “lost” years, the years when they served sin instead of God, or years that were wasted as Christians. I try to encourage these people about the grace of God. I cannot promise them God will “repay” those lost years as He did for the Israelites, but I can assure them that it is God’s nature to be gracious. I encourage them to pray to this end and to realize, as they pray, that they are coming to a God who does not withhold His grace because of demerits. “For behold, if a person being evil giveth a gift, one doeth it grudgingly; wherefore it is counted unto one the same as if one had retained the gift; wherefore one is counted evil before God. And likewise also is it counted evil unto a being, if one shall pray and not with real intent of heart; yea, and it porfiteth one nothing, for God recevieth none such,” reports Moroni 7.8-9. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

ImageAlmighty and everlasting God, Who hast vouchsafed the Paschal mystery in the covenant of a being’s reconciliation; grant unto our souls, that what we celebrate by our profession we may imitate in our practice; through Jesus Christ our Lord who will bless us with everlasting love and eternal life. O God the Holy Spirit, Thou who dost proceed from the Father and the Son, have mercy on me. When thou didst first hover over chaos, order came to birth, beauty robed the World, fruitfulness sprang forth. Move, I pray thee, upon my disordered heart; take away the infirmities of unruly desires and hateful lusts; life the mists and darkness of unbelief; brighten my soul with the pure light of truth; make it fragrant as the garden of paradise, rich with every goodly fruit, beautiful with Heavenly grace, radiant with rays of divine light. Fulfill in me the glory of thy divine offices; be my comforter, light, guide, sanctifier; take of the things of Christ and show them to my soul; through thee may I daily learn more of God’s love, grace, compassion, faithfulness, beauty; lead me to the cross and show me His wounds, the hateful nature of evil, the power of Satan; may I there see my sins as the nails that transfixed him, the cords that bound him, the thorns that tore him, the sword that pierced him. Help me to find in his death the reality and immensity of his love. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

12Open for me the wondrous volumes of truth in his, “It is finished.” Increase my faith in the clear knowledge of atonement achieved, expiation completed, satisfaction made, guilt done away, my debt paid, my sins forgiven, my person redeemed, my soul saved, hell vanquished, Heaven opened, eternity made mine. O Holy Spirit, deepen in me these saving lessons. Write them upon my heart, that my walk be sin-loathing, sin-fleeing, Christ-loving; and suffer no devil’s device to beguile or deceive me. O God, Who by Christ’s Resurrection restores us to life eternal; raise us up to the Author of our salvation, Who is seated at Thy right hand that He Who came to be judged for our sake, may come to judge in our favour, Jesus Christ Thy Son our Lord, Who with thee we may enter he shrine of Heaven, and that we may abandon bleak despair and hard cynicism. Lord, please keep us from becoming engulfed in the agency of moral wickedness. Let us take your unseen hand and may you be our personal saviour or spiritual guide, whether dead or alive—someone who we believe to have come to enlighten human kinds. Lord, become our secret refuge, and may we deserve your grace. May our intellectual effort be sustained beyond the stage of ordinary beings in which we now rest. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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Each Person is an Architect of One’s Own Fate!

EN5MisFU0AIvjUkI am as sober as a judge. Some folks rail against other folks, because other folks have what some folks would be glad of. Societies of beings are just like individuals, in that both at any given moment offer ambiguous potentialities of development. Whether a young man enters business or the ministry may depend on a decision which has to be made before a certain day. He takes the place offered in the counting-house, and is committed. Little by little, the habits, the knowledges, of the other career, which once lay so near, cease to be reckoned even among his possibilities. At first, he may sometimes doubt whether the self he murdered in that decisive hour might not have been the better of the two; but with the years such questions themselves expire, and the old alternative ego, once so vivid, fades into something less substantial than a dream. It is no otherwise with nations. They may be committed by kinds and ministers to peace or war, by generals to victory or defeat, by prophets to this religion or to that, by various geniuses to fame in art, science, or industry. A war is a true point of bifurcation of future possibilities. Whether it fail or succeed, its declaration must be the starting-point of new policies. Just so does a revolution, or any great civic precedent, become a deflecting influence, whose operations widen with the course of time. Communities obey their ideals; and an accidental success fixes an ideal, as an accidental failure blights it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15

ImageThe fermentative influences of geniuses must be admitted as, at any rate, one factor in the changes that constitute social evolution. The community may evolve in many ways. The accidental presence of this or that ferment decides in which way it shall evolve. Why the very birds of the forest, the parrot, the mino, have the power of human speech, but never develop it of themselves; some one must be there to teach them. So with us individuals. Rembrandt must teach us to enjoy the struggle of light with darkness, Wagner to enjoy the peculiar musical effects; Dickens gives a twist to our sentimentality, Artemus Ward to our humor; Emerson kindles a new moral light within us. But it is like Columbus’s egg. “All can raise the flowers now, for all have got the seed.” But if this be true of the individuals in the community, how can it be false of the community as a whole? If shown a certain way, a community may take it; if not, it will never find it. And the ways are to a large extent indeterminate in advance. A nation may obey either of many alternative impulses given by different people of genius, and still live and be prosperous, just as a being may enter either of many businesses. Only, the prosperities may differ in their type. Sometimes when you think about all the bad things that you read in the newspaper and then you walk inside a classroom and see this you realize that there are so many good things in the World. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15

ImageFew, if any, of us ever realize the far-reaching effects of our existence. The consequences of our choices and actions spread out into the World like ripples of water, affecting many people in ways we could never imagine. Your influence is etched in the lives of those who have been fortunate to be in your presence. Therefore, never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow. A community is a living thing. It is the peculiarity of living things not merely that they change under the influence of surrounding circumstances, but that any change which takes place in them is not lost but retained, and as it were built into the organism to serve as the foundation for future actions. If you cause any distortion in the growth of a tree and make it crooked, whatever you may do afterwards to make the tree straight the mark of your distortion is there; it is absolutely indelible; it has become part of the tree’s nature…Suppose, however, that you take a lump of gold, melt it, and let it cool…No one can tell by examining a piece of gold how often it has been melted and cooled in geologic ages, or even in the last year by the hand of beings. Any one who cuts down an oak can tell by the rings in its trunk how may times Winter have frozen it into widowhood, and how many times Summer has warmed it into life. A living being must always contain within itself the history, not merely of its own existence, but of all its ancestors. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15

ImageEducation makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave. The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community. Many wonder, where do we find great people? The question has two conceivable answers: one’s origin is supernatural, or it is natural. Is one’s origin supernatural? Then one is a deputy god, and we have theocracy once removed—or, rather, not removed at all…Is this an unacceptable solution? Before one can remake one’s society, one’s society must make one. All those changes of which one is the proximate initiator have their chief causes in the generations one descended from. Of there is to be anything like a real explanation of those changes, it must be sought in that aggregate of conditions out of which both one and they have arisen. If anything is humanly certain it is that the great person’s society, properly so called, does not make one before one can remake it. Physiological forces, with which the social, political, geographical, and to a great extent anthropological conditions have just as much and just as little to do as the condition of the crater of Vesuvius has to do with the flickering of this gas by which I write, and what make one. Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better. Do your duty, and leave the rest to the gods. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15

ImageThe differences between one nation and another, whether in intellect, commerce, art, morals, or general temperament, ultimately depend, not upon any mysterious properties of race, nationality, or any other unknown and unintelligible abstractions, but simply and solely upon the physical circumstances to which they are exposed. No geographical environment can produce a given type of mind. It can only foster and further certain types fortuitously produced, and thwart and frustrate others. Once again, its function is simply selective, and determines what shall actually be only by destroying what is absolutely incompatible. An Arctic environment is incompatible with improvident habits in its denizens; but whether the inhabitants of such a region shall unite with their thrift the peacefulness of the Eskimo or pugnacity of the Norseman is, so far as the climate is concerned, an accident. Evolutionists should not forget that we all have five fingers not because four or six would not do just as well, but merely because the first vertebrate above the fishes happened to have that number. One owed one’s prodigious success in founding a life of descent to some entirely other quality—we know not which—but the inessential five fingers were taken in tow and preserved to the present day. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15

ImageSo of most social peculiarities. Which of them shall be taken in tow by the few qualities which the environment necessarily exacts is matter of what physiological accident shall happen among individuals. The illiterate of the future will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. Simply because no individuals were born there with patriotism and ability enough to inflame their country’s people with national pride, ambition, and thirst for independent life does not mean that patriotism cannot appeal or inspire one’s mental attitude of faith in devotion towards their nation. Some people gain this devotion towards their country, together with obedience to their nation by drawing inner help and inspiration telepathically from others. Thus they create for themselves a mental relationship which, to that extent, is not different from what would have come into being as part of the regular instruction that their ancestors received. Youth need also to be reminded that even after instruction on why national pride is import, they must also be sufficiently sensitive to have the capacity to feel this patriotism within themselves and display that power in the things they produce, and always engage in the work of self-improvement. The best wood-pile will not blaze till a torch is applied, and the appropriate torches seem to have been wanting. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15

ImageSporadic great people come everywhere. However, for a community to get vibrating through and through with intensely active life, many geniuses coming together and in rapid succession are required. This is why great epochs are so rare—why the sudden bloom of Egypt, Greece, an early Rome, a Renaissance, Victorian America, is such a mystery. Blow must follow blow so fast that no cooling can occur in the intervals. Then the mass of the nation grows incandescent, and many continue to glow by pure inertia long after the originators of its internal movement have passed away. We often hear surprise expressed that in these high tides of human affairs not only the people should be filled with stronger life, but that individual geniuses should seem to exceptionally abundant. This mystery is just about as deep as the time-honored conundrum as to why great rivers flow by great towns. All mental progress must result from a series of adaptive changes, in the sense already defined of that word. We know what a vast part of our mental furniture consists of purely remembered, not reasoned, experience. It is one of the tritest of truisms that human intelligences of a simple order are very literal. Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it. People have to live with themselves, and they should see to it that they always have good company. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15

ImageMany are slaves of habit, doing what they have been taught without variation; dry, prosaic, and matter-of-fact in their remarks; devoid of humor, except of coarse physical kind which rejoices in practical joke; taking the World for granted; and possessing in their faithfulness and honesty the single gift by which they are sometimes able to warm us into admiration. However, even this faithfulness seems to have a sort of inorganic ring, and to remind us more of the immutable properties of a piece of inanimate matter than of the steadfastness of a human will capable of alternative choice. When we descend to the brutes, all these peculiarities are intensified. And every notice of their ways must receive a deep impression of the fatally literal character of the few, simple, and treadmill-like operations of their minds. However, turn to the highest order of minds, and what a change! Instead of thoughts of concrete things patiently following one another in a beaten track of habitual suggestion, we have the most abrupt cross-cuts and transitions from one idea to another, the most rarefied abstractions and discriminations, the most unheard of combinations of elements, the subtlest associations of analogy; in a word, we seem suddenly introduced into a seething caldron of ideas, where everything is fizzling and bobbing about in a state of bewildering activity, where partnerships can be joined or loosened in an instant, treadmill routine in unknown, and the unexpected seems the only law. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15

ImageAlways do right. That will gratify some people and astonish the rest. We are drowning in information and starving for knowledge. Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another. According to the idiosyncrasy of the individual, the scintillations will have one character or another. They will be sallies of wit and humor; they will be flashes of poetry and eloquence; they will be constructions of dramatic fiction or of mechanical device, logical or philosophic abstractions, business projects, or scientific hypotheses, with trains of experimental consequences based thereon; they will be musical sounds, or images of plastic beauty or picturesqueness, or visions of moral harmony. However, whatever their differences may be, they will all agree in this—that their genesis is sudden and, as it were, spontaneous. That is to say, the same premises would not, in the mind of another individual, have engendered just that conclusion; although, when the conclusion is offered to the other individual, one may thoroughly accept and enjoy it, and envy the brilliancy of one to whom it first occurred. Genius flashes out of one brain, and no other, because the instability of that brain is such as to tip and upset itself in just that particular direction. However, the important thing to notice is that the good flashes and the bad flashes, the triumphant hypotheses and the absurd conceits, are on an exact equality in respect of their origin. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15

ImageAristotle’s absurd Physics and his immortal Logic flow from one source: the forces that produce the one produce the other. When walking along the street, thinking of the blue sky or the fine spring weather, I may either smile at some grotesque whim which occurs to me, or I may suddenly catch an intuition of the solution of a long-unsolved problem, which at that moment was far from my thoughts. Both notions are shaken out of the same reservoir—the reservoir of a brain in which the reproduction of images in the relations of their outward persistence or frequency has long ceased to be the dominant law. However, to the thought, when it is once engendered, the consecration of agreement with outward relations may come. The conceit perishes in a moment, and is forgotten. The scientific hypothesis arouses in me a fever of desire for verification. I read, write, experiment, consult experts. Everything corroborates my notion, which being then published in a book spreads from review to review and from mouth to mouth, till at last there is no doubt I am enshrined in the Pantheon of great diviners of nature’s ways. The environment preserves the conception which it was unable to produce in any brain less idiosyncratic than my own. Originally, machines, instruments, preservative power of the social environment and all other institutions were flashes of genius in an individual head, of which the outer environment showed no sign. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15

ImageAdopted by the race and become its heritage, they then supply instigations to new geniuses whom they environ to make new inventions and discoveries; and so the ball of progress rolls. However, take out the geniuses, or alter their idiosyncrasies, and what increasing uniformities will increasing uniformities will the environment show? Over and over again the Bible portrays God as gracious and generous, blessing His people freely without regard to their demerits, rather than because of their merits. (I use the word gracious not in its commonly accepted meaning of kindness and courtesy, but in the biblical sense of one disposed to deal with others on the basis of grace.) We see God’s gracious disposition even before the Fall in the Garden of Eden when as yet there were no merits or demerits. The Scripture says, “And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food,” reports Genesis 2.9. It was not just the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that was good for food and pleasing to the eye (see 3.6). God did not place only one desirable tree in the garden with a “look but do not eat,” sign hung on it just to tempt Adam and Eve. Rather He placed all kinds of trees in the garden that were delightful to see and to eat from. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15

ImageI enjoy fresh fruit, and I like to go to the supermarket in the Summer when all the peaches, plums, pears, strawberries, and cantaloupes are on display. I am dazzled. I want some of all of them. Think what it must have been like for Adam to have all kinds of trees that not only produced delectable food but were also beautiful to behold. If I am dazzled today, think of what Adam’s reaction must have been. However, God did still more for Adam. God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him,” report Genesis 2.18. God knew Adam needed a companion, and He graciously met that need, because it is His disposition to be generous. God anticipated and provided for every need Adam could possibly have. Then Adam sinned. What would happen now to the gracious and generous disposition of God? Would God cease to be gracious? Would God say, “I was generous to you, giving you everything you needed, and yet you disobeyed Me. From now on you are on your own. Fend for yourself”? God did not say that. Instead He dealt mercifully and graciously with Adam and Eve. Yes, today we are still living with the eternally cataclysmic consequences that came out of the Fall; God did judge Adam as He has said He would. However, in the midst of all that God did one more thing: “The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them,” reports Genesis 3.21. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15

ImageRight in the midst of fulfilling His role as Judge, God took note of Adam and Eve’s need for clothes, and for a little while, He assumed the role of a tailor. Why, in the midst of all the weighty and eternal issues, did God take time to make clothes for two people who had just flagrantly disobeyed Him, and who through that had brought sin and misery upon the whole human race? God did it because it is His nature to be gracious and to meet our needs without regard to our deserts. Neither Adam’s innocence nor his sin were the cause of God’s grace. God was gracious because it is part of His eternal nature to be so. Fear of God, however, is the beginning of wisdom. Although not the end or outcome of wisdom, to be sure, it is the indispensable beginning, I believe, and the principle part. One begins to get smart when he or she fears being crosswise of God: fear of not doing what one wants and not being as one requires. Fear is the anticipation of harm. The intelligent person recognizes that his or her well-being is possessed in being in harmony with God and what God is doing in the Kingdom. God is not mean, but he is dangerous. It is the same with other great forces he has placed in reality. Electricity and nuclear power, for example, are not mean, but they are dangerous. One who does no, in a certain sense, “worry” about God, simply is not smart. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15

ImageMeditation does not mean surrender. Nor does it mean building walls where bridges are needed. My growing inclination toward the old Church and her solutions of the problems of God and the World, state and Church, were nourished by the overwhelming impression made upon me by early Christian art in Italy. What no amount of study of Church history has brought about was accomplished by the mosaics in ancient Roman basilicas. What was once the life-substance and inheritance of us all and what we have lost, and a deep yearning awakens in us for the departed youth of our culture. The result of this tension was either a decision against the one or the other side, or a general scepticism or a split-consciousness which drove one to attempt to overcome the conflict constructively. The latter way, the way of synthesis, was my own way. Nevertheless, I was and I am a theologian, because the existential question of our ultimate concern and the existential answer of the Christian message are and always have been predominant in my spiritual life. We beseech Thee, O Lord, be pleased by the Paschal remedies to grant unto us that we may learn to scorn Earthly desires, and to long after things Heavenly; though Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant, O merciful God, that in the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ we may indeed have our portion; through the same our Lord who will remove all obstructions and bless us with eternal life. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15

ImageLord Jesus Christ, fill me with thy Spirit that I may be occupied with hid presence. I am blind—send him to make me see; dark—let him say, “Let there be light!” May God give me faith to behold my name engraven in thy hand, my soul and body redeemed by thy blood, my sinfulness covered by the life of pure obedience. Replenish me by his revealing grace, that I may realise my indissoluble union with thee; that I may know thou hast espoused me to thyself for ever, in righteousness, love, mercy, faithfulness; that I am one with thee, as a branch with its stock, as a building with its foundation. May his comforts cheer me in my sorrows, his strength sustain me in my trails, his blessings revive me in my weariness, his presence render me a fruitful tree of holiness, his might establish me and peace and joy, his incitements make me ceaseless in prayer, his animation kindle un me undying devotion. Send him as the searcher of my heart, to show me more of my corruptions and helplessness that I may flee to thee, cling to thee, rest on thee, as the beginning and end of my salvation. May I never vex him by my indifference and waywardness, grieve him by my cold welcome, resist him by my hard rebellion. Answer my prayers, O Lord, for thy great name’s sake. “I remember the word of God which saith by their works ye shall know them; for if their works be good, then they are good also,” reports Moroni 7.5. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15Image

 

BRIGHTON STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH

Rancho Cordova, CA |

Now Selling!

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NOW SELLING! Brighton Station at Cresleigh Ranch is Rancho Cordova’s newest home community! This charming neighborhood offers an array of architectural gems with eye catching architecture styles such as Mid-Century Modern, California Modern, Prairie, and Contemporary Farmhouse.

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Located off Douglas Road and Rancho Cordova Parkway, the residents of Cresleigh Ranch will enjoy, being just minutes from shopping, dining, and entertainment, and quick access to Highway 50 and Grant Line Road providing a direct route into Folsom. Residents here also benefit from no HOA fees, two community parks and the benefits of being a part of the highly-rated Elk Grove Unified School District. https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/

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Tell Me that I Will Always be the One that You Want, Do Not Know What I Would do if I Ever Lose You!

EN5MisFU0AIvjUkWell, now, there is a remedy for everything except death. Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to stay in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that! It is not what name others call you that matters, but name you respond to that truly determines who you are.  If asked in a poll, although most people would say they believe in God, and though church attendance still remains high and confessions of atheism are relatively rare, it is still perfectly clear that the crisis in modern society has also had a negative effect on religion. Theologians themselves have realized this and have spoken quite openly about the anguish religion as we know it is currently going through. The development began centuries ago, but the closer we come to the present, the greater its rate of acceleration has been. Because religion fulfills a double function, its collapse leaves us with a double loss. Our religion, based primarily on the Judeo-Christian tradition, provides us with both an explanation of the natural World and moral principles—an ethic. Those two functions have nothing to do with each other, for how you explain the natural World is one thing, and what moral principles and values you have is quite another. However, the two functions were not originally separated, and there are a number of reasons why not. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

ImageFirst of all, the idea that the World was created by a God who incorporated in Himself the highest intelligence, wisdom, and power was a plausible, indeed, a rational hypothesis. And even if you are a convinced Darwinist who sees the development of the World and of humans as a consequence of natural selection or mutation, you may still feel that the population of God the Creator is much easier to understand and accept than the rather complex alternative; for evolutionary theory claims that humans in their present form are the product of certain principles that went into effect hundreds of millions of years ago and that are to some degree subject to pure chance or, at best, to the laws of natural selection. Dr. Darwin’s explanation of the natural World seems altogether logical and plausible, but despite that it remains alien to our minds. Here is a story illustrating the profound corruption of the soul. It is a story about a church that would generally be regarded as successful or prosperous. Whether real or imagined, I leave you to ponder. In actuality you will find many churches that are a close fit to this description. The church in question was founded out of conflict in another church. It called its first pastor, and things seemed to be going well until that pastor committed adultery, and used to church funds to buy a brand new Mercedes Benz because one of the young women in the church had the most expensive Mercedes-Benz. The pastor also committed various other improper financial acts. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

ImageThe congregation dismissed the pastor, and a second pastor was appointed. He was very popular and the church grew, but he resigned after four years from stress, or an episode of neurosis, depending on whom you believed. A third pastor came and was quite popular. Again, the church grew, but after a while he started giving himself salary raises, which the congregation did not knowingly approve. After ten years he left, started another church within ten miles of his former church, and took three hundred members with him. A fourth pastor was called. Everything seemed fine. Then he has an affair involving pleasures of the flesh with another man, which he eventually disclosed to his board and staff, after being caught in the church bathroom with his britches down around his ankles in the throes of passion, and he expected them to cover it up. In the midst of much lying and discord in the board and staff, the church seemed to go on as before. Of course the people in the community came to know about the affair anyway. A year or so later the pastor received a call from a larger church a two-hour drive away. He took the position, leaving behind a congregation, board, and staff full of strife and anger. This all happened in cone congregation over a period of thirty-six years. I use this story because, in the language of Peter, “judgment must begin at the house of God.” It is there we see soul ruin at its greatest. If we cannot simply do what is right there, where can we? #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

ImageThe story is also illustrative of the extent to which sin, in a form everyone plainly recognizes as such, undermines even the efforts of Christ’s own people to be his people. That is its power. Although the degree and details differ, the story of this church is—in spite of come very fine exceptions—all too common. (Leading Christian magazines now feature regular sections where the sad story is told month by month.) I have also chosen the story as an illustration because a major part of the response by Christians to manifest sin, in this case, was to cover it up. This is not uncommon. No doubt it was “for the sake of the ministry,” as is usually said. The “confessions” of various pastors were often half-truths or less and were clearly matters of a formality which would, supposedly, allow the pastors and staff members to “get on with God’s business.” The exist of the last pastor left the church board and staff bitterly divided over the issues of loyalty to the former pastor and over whether or not the truth of what had happened should be publicly stated. A long period followed in which almost every meeting was filled with anger and tension and in which people retreated into their various camps, hardly speaking to each other. The words of James ring true: “Where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice,” reports James 3.16. Most Christians have never been in an intimate fellowship where the corrupted condition of the human soul did not in fact prevail—that is, in a fellowship in which they could assume that everyone would do what everyone knew to be right. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

ImageAnd many people in our culture have, on the basis of their experiences, simply given up on the church—many of them in the name of God and righteousness. However, it is still a known fact that you have had church members who have tried to kill others by poisoning them and stating that they have a right to do so. What kind of God are those type of people serving? Satan. In a period of a few weeks, some years back, three nationally known pastors in California were publicly exposed for sins involving pleasures of the flesh. That is wat is now called “news.” However, pleasures of the flesh are far from being the only problem. The presence of vanity, egotism, hostility, fear, indifference, racism, homophobia, class discrimination, and down right meanness can be counted on among professing Christians. Maybe the need artificial sweetener in their sweet tea to add a little more Southern charm and pleasantness to their personality? Their opposites cannot be counted on or simply assumed in the “standard” Christian group; and the rare individual who exemplified them—genuine purity and humility, death to selfishness, freedom from rage and depression, and so on—will stand out in the group with all the obtrusiveness of a sore thumb. He or she will be a constant hinderance in the group process and will be personally conflicted by those processes, for he or she will not be living on the same terms as the others. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

ImageNow for the rest of the verse from Peter: “If judgment first begins at the house of God, what shall be the outcome for those who give no heed to the gospel of God? And if it is difficult for the righteous to be saved, what will happen to the Godless and rebellious,” reports 1 Peter 4.17. It really may be about the same outside as within. The daily news, courts, law offices, community, family, and educational and penal institutions provide a constant outpouring of wrongness and wrongdoing that wells up from the malformed human spirit, mind, soul, body, and social context. Diogenes, the ancient Greek, lit a lantern and walked the streets of Athens at noonday looking for an honest man. He never found one, it is said. However, as in the church, so in life generally, a few ready to deal with the realities of the deeper self, in themselves or in others. And those few are not exactly welcomed by others. Sokrates tried to deal with the realities of the soul Athens and was killed for it. This is the customary fate of the “prophet.” Jesus was not crucified for saying, “Behold the lilies of the field, how they toil not, neither do they spin,” but for saying, “Behold the Pharisees, how they steal.” Humans have always had a need, even in their earliest, most primitive stages, to form a picture of the World and of its creation. One version of the creation that goes back in time claims that human beings were made out of blood that flowed from someone who had been killed. Not everyone was made of that blood, however. Only the brave were. Cowards and women were made from the flesh of the two legs. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

ImageThat is an ancient version of the theory that Konrad Lorenz has put forward, namely, that human beings have n inborn instinct to kill, a blood lust. It was nice, of course, of the people who believed in the myth to exempt women from that blood lust, but it was not so nice of them then to throw women in with the cowards. Things have not changed much even today. According to the prejudices of modern society, women have less conscience, are more vain and cowardly, and are less realistic than men. Now all those claims are notoriously false. In many cases the shoe could easily be put on the other foot. Most women know what a pathetic figure a man can cut when he is unwell. He is much more given to self-pity and much less secure than a woman, in some cases. However, no one admits that for fear of destroying the myth. We see the same thing happening here that we see in racial stereotypes. What men say about women has no more basis in fact that what democrats say about republicans. Even Dr. Freud claimed that women have less conscience than men. Now I find it hard to imagine how anybody could have less conscience than men. What those claims, are, of course, is nothing more than propaganda about the inferiority of an enemy, which is a tactic the main stream media uses against anyone they do not like these days. The news should actually be called the propaganda department, much of what they report is sleezy gossip and malicious lies. The meteorologist used to be considered the biggest liars and unreliable, now it is the anchors and field reporters who are consider liars and incompetent. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

ImageThat kind of propaganda turns up whenever one group dominates another and discourages rebellion by holding the self-confidence of the dominated group down to an absolute minimum. That is by way of a little footnote to one of the functions of religion I mentioned above, to wit, an explanation of the natural World. Everything went along just fine until sin and dysfunction became acceptable. Dr. Darwin taught us that if we looked at creation of the World and of humans from a rational and scientific point of view we could dispense with the idea of God and explain those phenomena by the laws of evolution. It is easier for the average person to grasp the idea of God, but for science after Dr. Darwin the creation was no longer a mystery. In the light of the theory of evolution, “God” was reduced to a working hypothesis and the story of the creation of the World and of humans to a myth, a poem, a symbol, which clearly expressed something but could no longer be regarded as scientific truth. We have rejected the attempt to restrict love to its emotional element. However, there is no love without the emotional element, and it would be a poor analysis of love which did not take this element into consideration. The question is only how to relate it to the ontological definition of love. One can say that love as an emotion is the anticipation of the reunion which takes place in every love-relation. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

ImageLove, like all emotions, is an expression of the total participation of the being which is in an emotional state. In the moment in which one is in the fulfillment of the desire for reunion is anticipated and the happiness of this reunion is experienced in imagination. This means that the emotional element in love does no precede the others ontologically but that the ontologically founded movement to the other one expressed itself in emotional ways. Love is a passion: this assertion implies that there is a passive element in love, namely the state of being driven towards reunion. Infinite passion for God, no less then the passion of the flesh, a consequence of the objective situation, namely of the state of separation of those who belong together and are drive towards each other in love. The ontology of love is tested by the experience of love fulfilled. There is a profound ambiguity about this experience. Fulfilled love is, at the same time, extreme happiness and the end of happiness. The separation is overcome. However, without the separation there is no love and no life. It is the superiority of the person-to-person relationship that it preserves the separation of the self-centered self, and nevertheless actualizes their reunion in love. The highest form of love and that form of it which distinguishes the Old World and the New World cultures is the love which preserves the individual who is both the subject and the object of love. In the loving person-to-person relationship Christianity manifests its superiority to any other religious tradition. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

ImageTo be everywhere primarily and absolutely, is proper to God. Now to be everywhere primarily is said of that which in its whole self is everywhere; for if a thing were everywhere according to its parts in different places, it would not be primarily; thus if a being has white teeth, whiteness belongs primarily not to the man but to his teeth. However, a thing is everywhere absolutely when it does not belong to it to be everywhere accidentally, that is, merely on some supposition; as a grain of millet would be everywhere, supposing that no other body existed. It belongs therefore to a thing to be everywhere absolutely when, on any supposition, it must be everywhere and this properly belongs to God alone. For whatever number of places be supposed, even if an infinite number be supposed besides what already exist, it would be necessary that God should be in all of them; for nothing can exist except by Him. Therefore to be everywhere primarily and absolutely belongs to God and is proper to Him: because whatever number of places be supposed to exist, God must be in all of them, not as to a part of Him, by as to His very self. The universal, and also primary matter are indeed everywhere; but not according to the same mode of existence. Number, since it is an accident, does not, of itself, exist in place, but accidentally; neither is the whole but only part of it in each of things numbered; hence it does not follow that it is primarily and absolutely everywhere. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

ImageThe whole body of the Universe is everywhere, but not primarily; forasmuch as it is not wholly in each place, but according to its parts; nor again is it everywhere absolutely, because, supposing that other places existed besides itself, it would not be in them. If an infinite body existed, it would be everywhere; but according to its parts. Were there one animal only, its soul would be everywhere primarily indeed, but only accidentally. When it is said that the soul sees anywhere, this can be taken in two senses. In one sense the adverb “anywhere” determines the act of seeing on the part of the object; and in this sense it is true that while it sees the Heavens, it sees in the Heavens; and in the same way I feels in the Heavens; but it does not follow that it lives or exists in the Heavens, because to live and to exist do not import an act passing to an exterior object. In another sense it can be understood according as the adverb determines the act of the seer, as proceeding from the seer; and thus it is true that where the soul feels and sees, there it is, and there it lives according to this mode of speaking; and thus it does not follow that it is everywhere. Once the religious explanation of the natural World lost its power to convince, religion lost some authority. All that remained for it to stand on was the propagation of moral postulates. “Love thy neighbor,” the Old Testament says. “Love the stranger.” The New Testament says, “Love your enemies.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

ImageHow can anyone who takes those instructions seriously be successful in modern society? Anyone who follows those precepts is a fool. One will fall behind, not get ahead. We preach the moral precepts of the Bible but do not practice them. We run on two separate tracks. Altruism is praised; we are supposed to have love for our neighbors. However, at the same time the pressure to succeed keeps us from practicing these virtues. In my opinion it is altogether possible in our society to be a good Christian or a good Jew, that is, a loving human being, without starving to death. What matters is your level of competence and the courage needed to adhere to the truth and persist in love rather than give yourself up for the sake of your career. However, all that notwithstanding, it remains a fact that Christian or Jewish morality maybe incompatible with the morality of success, of ruthlessness, of selfishness, of not giving, of not sharing. Since that point will be obvious to anyone who reflects on it, I need not dwell on it here. Anyway, this double standard in our morality has been described and criticized often. To sum up, then, the ethic that dominates in modern capitalism has amputated religion’s others foundation of authority. Religion no longer functions as a promulgator of values, for people no longer trust it in that role either. God has abdicated both as the creator of the World and as the spokesperson for values like love of neighbor and the overcoming of greed. However, humanity does not seem either willing or able to do without religion entirely. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

ImageHumans do not live by bread alone. One has to have a vision, a faith, that awakens one’s interest and elevates one above mere animal existence. A regression to earlier heathenism and worship of idols holds no attraction for modern humans, but I think we can say that our century is developing a new religion, one I would like to call the religion of technology. There are two particular aspects of this religion I would like to mention here. One is the promise the Trump Tower, the dream of unlimited and instant gratification. New needs are being produced every minute; there is no end to them; and humankind, like an eternal suckling babe, waits with an open heart, expecting to receive consideration and concern and unconditional love, and expecting to be fed more and more delicious food and sweet, nourishing nectar. This is a paradise of total gratification, a paradise of superfluity that makes us lazy and passive. Technology’s goal becomes the elimination of effort. The other aspect of this religion is more complex. Ever since the Renaissance, humanity has concentrated its intellectual efforts on penetrating and understanding nature’s secrets. However, nature’s secrete were, at least to some extent, also the secrets of nature’s creator. For four hundred years humans have invested their energies in plumbing nature’s mysteries so that one will be able to control nature. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

ImageOne’s most deep-seated motive was to cease being a mere spectator of the natural World and to become able to create that World oneself. It is difficult to express precisely what I want to say here, but if I were to state what I mean in its most radical form, I would have to say: Humans wanted to become God. What God was able to do, humans wanted to be able to do, too. I think the spectacle and the enthusiasm we witnessed when the astronauts first set foot on the Moon had the quality of a pagan religious ceremony. That moments represented the human’s first step on the way to overcoming one’s human limitations and becoming God. Even Christian newspapers were saying that the conquest of the Moon was the greatest thing to happen since the creation of the Universe. Now it is a bit imprudent of Christians to say that—after the creation itself—there is another event more important tan the Incarnation. However, that was all forgotten in the moment when people were themselves witness to the fact of human’s stepping outside the laws that hard limited one before, overcoming the force of gravity, and setting on a path to infinity. It is God making the impossible possible, much like he may one day allow humans to discover the secrete to resurrection and immortality. I mean, in the 1970s, liver transplants where not possible, in the 1800s, humans could not fly into space and now they can. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

ImageTechnology emerging as a new God, perhaps an extension of God’s power. That is why scientists have to coverup what they are doing and humans rationalize their advancements because there are things most people do not have the mental ability to recreate. Technology is becoming the Great Mother who will feed all her children and satisfy all their demands. Technological capability has become a moral obligation, and has become the very source of our morality. If God is dead, then anything would be permitted, but then the World He created would also cease to exist. If people no longer believe in God, if God was no longer a reality that forms their thoughts and actions, then we have a good reason to ask whether they will not become totally immortal, whether they will not stop looking to any kind of moral principles for guidance. That is a question we have to take seriously, and if we are feeling pessimistic, we may conclude that it is exactly what has happened and that our morality is continuing to decline all the time. There are significant differences between now and earlier times. In 1914, for example, the warning nations adhered to two internationally accepted rules. Civilians were not killed, and no one was tortured. Today it is taken for granted that civilians will be killed in the course of any and all hostilities, because warring parties no longer accept any limitations on their use of forces. Then, too, technology cannot make allowances for that kind of differentiation. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

ImageTechnology kills anonymously, like Agent Orange, which was manufactured by Dole, the same people you buy fruits and vegetables from. And if you did not know, Agent Orange not only killed people, but it caused cancer and alter army’s DNA and some of them passed on birth defects to their children. Leaders kill these days with sprays or by pressing a button, and unlike people impacted by 9/11 or other weed killer, Dole has never had to compensate their victims.  Because people do not see their opponent of their fighter supporting them, they are not moved by sympathy or compassion. Some people actually find it funny to tease people who have cancer or who have been injured because of war, because it makes them feel better about their pathetic lives, unattractiveness and lack of success. And torture is the rule today, not the exception. Everyone tries to deny that, but it is generally known fact. The use of torture to obtain information is widespread and even used by politics like Jerry Brown, Kevin Johnson, Gavin Newsom and Darrel Steinberg. We would be astonished to know in how many counties, cities, states, and countries of the World torture is used. Perhaps we need not say that cruelty is on the increase, but it would be hard to deny that humanity and the moral prohibitions that go with it are declining. That has brought about a great change in the World, but on the other hand we can see that new moral principles are coming to the fore; we find them in the younger generation, for example, in their struggle for peace, for life, against destruction and war. They are not just mouthing empty phrases. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

ImageMany people and not just young ones are insisting that we learn to live in a World of law and order, kindness and fairness, love and harmony. They are reestablishing their allegiance to God. Billions of people have become sensitive to the destruction of life on so many fronts, to inhumane wars in which there is not even a pretense of self-defense. We see a new mortality of love taking shape, too, in opposition to the consumer society. The new morality may have its flaws, but it remains impressive in its protest against empty forms and words. We see evidence of a new morality, too, in the self-sacrifices made in the political realm, in the numerous struggles for liberation and self-determination that are going on today. Those are encouraging developments. God and other religions like Buddhism provide us with a glowing example of how come cultures develop moral principles. Those principles are rooted and flourish in humane soil. Human beings cannot live and be happy without God because when they do not acknowledge His authority, they seem to lose sight of what is good and righteous. We cannot, however, force God on people, he granted them free will. To be of God is something that has to emerge from them. People have to be deeply rooted in need to act morally. Immortality cases them to lose their inner harmony and balance. And it is immortality going under the guise of mortality if people are told that they have to kill, that they have to obey, that they should pursue only their own selfish interests, that sympathy will be a hindrance to them, and so forth. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

ImageIf voices of that kind grow too loud they can drown out a person’s own inner voice, the voice of one’s humanistic conscience. That it why so many people are turning the news and radio off. It is evil mixed in with entertainment. Otherwise they will get the idea that God is dead, politicians are their only hope, and everything is permitted. “And the church did meet together off, to fast and to pray, and to speak one with another concerning the welfare of their souls. And they did meet together oft to partake in nourishment in remembrance of the Lord Jesus,” reports Moroni 6.5-6. It is very meet and right, with all powers if heart and mind, and with the service of the lips, to praise the invisible God, the Father Almighty, and His Only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ, Who paid the debt of Adam for us to the eternal Father, and effaced the bond of the ancient guilt by the Blood poured forth in loving-kindness. For this is the Paschal festival in which that true Lamb is slain, and the door-posts hallowed by His Blood: in which first Thou didst bring our fathers, the children of Israel, out of Egypt, and madest them to pass over the Red Sea dry-shod. This then is the night which cleared away the darkness of sin by a pillar of radiance. This is the night which now throughout the World restores to grace and unties to holiness believers in Christ, separated from Worldly vices and from the gloom of sin. This is the night in which Christ broke the bonds of death, and ascended a Conqueror from the grave. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

ImageFor to be born had been no blessing to us, unless we could have been redeemed. O the wonderous condescension of Thy loving-kindness towards us! O the inestimable tenderness of Thy love! To redeem the servant, Thou gavest up the Son. This holy night, then, puts to flight offences, washes away sins, and restores innocence to the fallen, and joyousness to the sad. O truly blessed night which spoiled the Egyptians and enriched the Hebrews—the night in which Heaven and Earth are reconciled! We pray Thee therefore, O Lord, that Thou wouldest preserve Thy servants in the peaceful enjoyment of this Eternal happiness, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Lord Jesus, if I love thee my soul shall seek thee, but can I seek thee unless my love to three is kept alive to this end? Do I love thee because thou art good, and canst alone do me good? It is fitting thou shouldest not regard me, for I am vile and selfish; yet I seek thee, and when I find thee there is no wrath to devour me, but only sweet love. Thou dost stand as a rock between the scorching Sun and my soul, and I live under the cool lee-side as one elect. When my mind acts without thee it spins nothing but deceit and delusion; when in my affections act without thee noting is seen but dead works. O how I need thee to abide in me, for I have no natural eyes to see thee, but I live by faith in one whose face to me is bright than a thousand Suns! #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

ImageWhen I see that all sin is in me, all shame belongs to me; let me know that all good is in thee, all glory is thine. Keep me from the error of thinking thou dost appear gloriously when some strange light fills my heart, as if that were the glorious activity of grace, but let me see that the truest revelation of thyself is when thou dost eclipse all my personal glory and all the honour, pleasure and good of this World. The Son breaks out in glory when he shows himself as one who outshines all creation, makes people poor in spirit, and helps them to find their good in one. Grant that I may distrust myself, to see my all in thee. It is my experience of World-wandering that those who most know truth are themselves the least known among people. This is partly because so few seek that kind of truth which is theirs—the highest—partly because it is their own wish to remain inaccessible to all except these few seekers, and partly because their completely ego-free character is utterly without any ambition to put themselves forward in public under any pretext whatsoever, whether to gain the benefits and advantages of such a position or to practise so-called service. However, eager a Master may be to reveal truth, one is forced, by indifference and miscomprehension of the World, to conceal it. It is not an isolation due to arrogance, to too high a notion of one’s own status. It is the others who are really apart, by their animalism or egotism. One is not alien to humanity but only alien to what is low and bestial in humanity. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20Image

 

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A Well-Written Life is Almost as Rare as a Well-Spent One!

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And I Want Just to Call You ‘Cause We Go Together Just Like Jam and Bread or Maybe Birds of a Feather!

ImageAccept the pain, cherish the joys, resolve the regrets; then can come the best of benedictions. As you simplify your life, the laws of the Universe will be simpler. There is only a slight difference between keeping your chin up and sticking your neck out, but it is a difference worth knowing. All of us try to feel, and pretend to feel, but we seldom do so alone. Most often we do it when we exchange gestures or signs of feelings with others. Taken together, emotion work, feeling rules, and interpersonal exchange make up our private emotional system. We bow to each other not only from the waist but from the heart. Feeling rules set out what is owed in gestures of exchange between people. They enable us to assess the worth of an outward tear or an inward attempt to feel sad for people who are inappropriate behavior. Looking at a bright light to make a tear glisten is a mark of homage, a way of paying respect to those who proclaim that sadness is owed. More generally, it is a way of paying respects to a rule about respect paying. In psychological “bowing,” feeling rules provide a baseline for exchange. There are two types of exchange—straight and improvisational. In straight exchange, we simply use rules to make an inward bow; we do not play with them. In improvisational exchange, as in improvisational music, we presuppose the rules and play with them, creating irony and humor. However, in both types, it is within the contact of feeling rules that we make our exchange and settle our accounts. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

ImageIn our society, some unmeant gestures occur in such a wide variety of performances and convey impressions that are in general so incompatible with the ones being fostered that these inopportune events have acquired collective symbolic status. First, performer may accidentally convey incapacity, impropriety, or disrespect by momentarily losing muscular control of oneself. One may trip, stumble, fall; one may belch, yawn, make a slip of the tongue, scratch oneself, or be flatulent; one may accidentally impinge upon the body of another participant. Secondly, the performer may act in such a way as to give the impression that one is too much or too little concerned with the interaction. One may stutter, forget one’s lines, appear nervous, or guilty, or self-conscious; one may give way to inappropriate outbursts of laughter, anger, or other kinds of affect which momentarily incapacitate one as an interactant; one may show too much serious involvement and interest, or too little. Thirdly, the performer may allow one’s presentation to suffer from inadequate dramaturgical direction. The setting may not have been put in order, or may have become readied for the wrong performance, or may become deranged during the performance; unforeseen contingencies may cause improper timing of the performer’s arrival or departure or may cause embarrassing lulls to occur during the interaction. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

ImagePerformances differ, of course, in the degree of item-by-item expressive care required of them. In the case of some international cultures, we are ready to see a high degree of expressive coherence. Granet, for example, suggests this of filial performances in China: Their fine toilet is in itself a homage. Their good deportment will be accounted an offering of respect. In the presence of parents, gravity is requisite: one must therefore be careful not to belch, to sneeze, to cough, to yawn, to blow one’s nose nor to spit. Every expectoration would run the risk of soiling the paternal sanctity. It would be a crime to show the lining of one’s garments. To show the father that one is treating him as a chief, one ought always to stand in his presence, the eyes right, the body upright upon the two legs, never daring to lean upon any object, to bend, nor to stand on one foot. It is thus that with the low and humble voice which becomes a follower, one comes night and morning to pay homage. After which, one waits for orders. Wen we commence a relationship with somebody for some purpose, we begin in a role, as teacher, or as customer, or as helper. In that sense each participant has a role to fulfill. A third party looking at this transaction can watch it and say, “You are fulfilling the role of the helper, and he or she is fulfilling the role of the helpee.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

Image  I may be aware I am supposed to fulfill the role of helper, but I can do this in a way that expressed my genuine commitments and intentions and in my idiosyncratic way. It is the difference between taking a role and playing a role. To take a role is a commitment to a task; to play a role is a charade. Some people lose zest when they feel they can only work in a cut-and-dried, stereotyped way. In due time one outgrows that stereotype way. If one feels one must stick to that stereotyped way, it makes one sick. This is why many nurses, psychotherapists, doctors, and teachers ultimately get fed up with their professions. They lose zest because they feel that they have got to keep up the appearance of the role of a teacher, a nurse, a doctor, a therapist in some stereotyped way. When they do that, what they are telling you is that they are more committed to imitating the role than they are carrying out their professional commitment, that is [to] bring about results. When your commitment is to goals, and not means, you cannot help but be eccentric, idiosyncratic, offbeat, oddball, and creative. In contrast, in persons in whom the craving for prestige is uppermost, hostility usually takes the form of a desires to humiliate others. This desire is paramount in those persons whose own self-esteem has been wounded by humiliation and who have thus become vindictive. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

ImageUsually they have gone through a series of humiliating experiences in childhood, experiences that may have had to do either with the social situation in which they grew up—such as belonging to a underrepresented group, or being themselves poor but having wealthy relatives—or with their own individual situation, such as being discriminated against for the sake of other children, being spurned, being treated as a plaything by the parents, being sometime privileged, and other times shamed and snubbed. Often experience of this kind are forgotten because of their painful character, but they reappear in awareness if the problems concerning humiliation are clarified. In adult neurotics, however, never the direct but only indirect results of these childhood situations can be observed, results which have been reinforced by passing through a “vicious circle”: a feeling of humiliation; a desire to humiliate others; enhanced sensitivity to humiliation because of a fear of retaliation; enhanced wish to humiliate others. The tendencies to humiliate are deeply repressed, usually because the neurotic, knowing from one’s own sensitivity how hurt and vindictive one feels when humiliated, is instinctively afraid of similar reactions in others. Nevertheless some of these tendencies may emerge without one’s being conscious of it: in an inadvertent disregard of others, such as letting them wait, in inadvertently bringing others into embarrassing situations, in letting others feel dependent. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

ImageEven if the neurotic is completely unaware of wishing to humiliate others or of having done so, one’s relations with them will be pervaded by a diffuse anxiety which is revealed in a constant anticipation of rebuke or humiliation for oneself. Inhibitions resulting from this sensitivity to humiliation often appear in the form of a need to avoid anything which might possibly seem humiliating to others; such a neurotic, for example, may be incapable of criticizing, of refusing an offer, of dismissing an employee, with the result that one often appears overconsiderate or over-polite. Finally, a tendency to humiliate may be hidden behind a tendency to admire. Since inflicting humiliation and bestowing admiration are diametrically opposed, the latter offers the best means of eradicating or concealing tendencies toward the former. This is the reason also why both these extremes are frequently to be found in the same person. There are several ways in which the two attitudes may be distributed, the reasons for the distribution being dependent on the individual. They may appear separately in different periods of life, a period of a general contempt for people succeeding a period of hero-worship; there may be admiration for men and contempt for women, or vice versa; or there maybe blind admiration for one or two persons, and just as blind a contempt for the rest of the World. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

ImageIt is in the process of analysis that one can observe that the two attitudes in reality exist together. A patient may at the same time blindly admire and despise the analyst, either suppressing one of the two feelings or vacillating between them. In the striving for possession hostility usually takes the form of a tendency to deprive others. The wish to cheat, steal from, exploit or frustrate others is not in itself neurotic. It may be culturally patterned, or it may be warranted by the actual situation, or it may normally be considered a question of expediency. In the neurotic person, however, these tendencies are highly charged with emotion. Even if beneficial advantages one derives from them are sight or irrelevant one will feel elated and triumphant if one meets with success; in order to find a bargain, for example, one may spend time and energy entirely disproportionate to the amount saved. One’s satisfaction at success has two sources: a feeling that one has outwitted others, and a feeling that one has injured others. This tendency to deprive others takes many forms. The neurotic person will feel resentment toward a physician if one is not treated gratuitously, or for less than one is able to pay. One will feel anger toward one’s employees if they are not willing to work overtime without pay. In relations with friends and children the exploiting tendency is often justified by alleging that they have an obligation toward one. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

ImageThe ordinary aspirant, whose intuition is not sufficiently developed, should test the person one proposes to accept as one’s master. This will require one to watch the other closely for a period of time. In some cases a week will give the answer, in others three months will be needed. In all cases, the aspirant ought not to commit oneself until one has enough evidence that one is committing oneself rightly. Those who lack the innate discernment or wide experience needed to detect the real character and true capacity of a master, should wait sufficiently long an seek outside advice before entrusting themselves to one. The faith that God is working through a particular being can be tested for its validity by watching one, for a sufficient length of time, what happens to those who reject one utterly or respond to one ardently. In their excessive eagerness to discover a master, they fail to practice discernment. However, wait for the true master requires a certain patience and strength. A true self-actualized person is hard to find. A  false one, drooling one’s plagiarism or one;s platitudes, is easy to find. Do not fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

ImageParents may actually destroy their children’s lives by demanding sacrifices on such a basis, and even if the tendency does not appear in such destructive forms, any mother who acts according to the belief that the child exist to give her satisfaction is bound to exploit the child emotionally. A neurotic of this kind may also tend to withhold things from others, withhold money which one ought to pay, information which one could give, pleasures of the flesh which one has led another to expect. The presence of robbing tendencies may be indicated by repeated dreams of stealing or one may have conscious impulses to steal, which one checks; one may actually have been a kleptomaniac at some period. Persons of this general type are often unaware that they purposely deprive others. The anxiety connected with their wish to do so may result in an inhibition as soon as something is expected of them, so that, for example, they forget to buy an expected birthday present, or they become impotent if a woman is willing to yield to them. This anxiety, however, does not always lead to an actual inhibition, but may become apparent in a lurking fear that they are exploiting or depriving others, as indeed they are, though consciously they would indignantly repudiate such an intention. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

ImageA neurotic may even have this fear concerning certain of one’s activities in which these tendencies are actually not present, at the same time remaining unaware that in other activities one does exploit or deprive other people. These tendencies to deprive others are accompanied by an emotional attitude of begrudging envy. Most of us will feel some envy if others have certain advantages which we should like to have ourselves. With the normal person, however, the emphasis lies on the fact that one wishes to have these advantages oneself; with the neurotic the emphasis lies on the fact that one begrudges them to others, even if one does not want them at all. Mothers of this kind often begrudge the gaiety of their children and tell them that “those who sing before breakfast will cry before supper.” The neurotic will try to disguise the crudity of one’s begrudging attitude by putting it on the basis of a justified envy. The advantage of others, whether it concerns a doll, a girl, leisure or a job, appears so glorious and desirable that one feels entirely justified in one’s envy. This justification is possible only with the help of some inadvertent falsification of facts: an under-estimation of what one has oneself, and an illusion that the advantages of others are the really desirable ones. The self-deception may go so far as to make ne actually believe that one is in a miserable state because one fails to have the one advantage in which another person surpasses one, completely forgetting that in all other respects one would not like to change with the other. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

ImageThe price one has to pay for this falsification is incapacity to enjoy and appreciate the possibilities for happiness that are available. This incapacity, however, serves to protect one from the much-feared envy of others. One does not deliberately keep oneself from satisfaction with what one has, as many normal persons who have good reason to protect themselves against the envy of certain persons, and therefore misrepresent their real situation; one does a thorough job of it, and really deprives oneself of any enjoyment. Thus one defeats one’s own ends: one wants to have everything, but in consequence of one’s destructive drives and anxieties one emerges at the end with empty hands. Love, power, and justice are metaphysically speaking as old as being itself. They preceded everything that is, and they cannot be derived from anything that is. They have ontological dignity. And before having received ontological dignity they had mythological meaning. They were gods before they became rational qualities of being. The substance of their mythological meaning is reflected in their ontological significance. Dike, the goddess of justice, receives Parmenides when he is introduced into truth itself. For there is no truth without the form of truth, namely justice. And being-itself, according to the same philosopher, is kept within the bondage of eternal laws. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

ImageThe logos of being is the power which keeps the World going and the city alive, according to Heraclitus, and Mind is the divine power which swings the wheel of being, according to Xenophanes. According to Empedocles, it is hate and love, separation, and reunion which determine the movements of the elements. Love, power, and justice are ever repeated subjects of ontology. There is hardly a leading philosopher who does not put them into they very foundations of one’s thought. In Plato we find the doctrine of eros as the power which drives to the union with the true and the good self. In his interpretation of ideas as the essences of everything, he sees them as the power of being. And justice for him is not a special virtue, but the uniting form of the individual and the social body. In Aristotle we find the doctrine of the universal eros which derives everything towards the highest form, the pure actuality which moves the World not as a cause (kinoumenon) but as the object of love (eromenon). And the movement he describes is a movement from the potential to the actual, from dynamis to energeia, two concepts which include the concept of power. Marriage under the Lordship of Christ is a mutually sanctifying relationship—it moves us toward holiness. Most of us, by the time we get married, are like a well-furnished home—and a lot of furniture needs to be tossed out to make room for the other person. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

ImageMarriage helps empty those rooms. Genuine marital love reveals rooms of self-centeredness. Beyond these are autonomy and self-will—an ongoing house cleaning. Marriage certainly did that for me. I had no idea how self-centered I was until I married! In fact, marriage is the one institution which tames the inveterate barbarianism of man. Over the years a good marriage can change us for the better—almost beyond recognition. There is indeed a mutual sanctification in marriage. However, the emphasis in the Scriptures is on the responsibility of a husband’s love for his wife: “to make her holy, cleansing her by he washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless,” reports Ephesians 5.21-6.9. This is what Christ will do through our divine married to Him, for at His return the washed and regenerated Church will be presented to Him in absolute perfection. This is the dealing of the romance of the ages. Meanwhile, these divine nuptials are a parable of what ought to be the loving husband’s elevating effect on his wide. He is to be the man ff the Word who lives a Godly life, praying and sacrificing for his wife. His authentic spirituality is meant to buoy her onward and upward toward the image of Christ. The man who sanctifies his wife understands that this is his divinely ordained responsibility. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

ImageMen (ignoring for the moment our wives’ spiritual responsibility to us), do you realize it is your responsibility to seek your wife’s sanctification? Even more, honestly, do you accept it? Marriage will reveal something about her which you already know about yourself—that she is a sinner. Marriage reveals everything: her weaknesses, her worst inconsistencies, the things others never see. Loving your spouse is not to love as a saint, but as a sinner. If we love her for her saintliness, we do not love her at all. You see your wife as you see yourself, and you love her as yourself. You realize your mutual need, and you delve into God’s Word, to listen to it with your heart and try, by His grace, to love out so that she will be encouraged by your life—and thus become an even more beautiful bride for Christ. This brings up some hard questions: Is my wife more like Christ because she is married to me? Or is she like Christ in spite of me? Has she shrunk from His likeness because of me? Do I sanctify her or hold her back? Is she a better woman because she is married to me? Is she a better friend? A better mother? Men, our call is clear: sanctifying love. A passage emphasizing the complete and absolute forgiveness of our sins is Isaiah 43.25, “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.” Here God uses two expressions: He blots out our transgressions—that is, He removes them from the record—and He remembers them no more. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

ImageA friend of mine, because of a teenage “prank,” had a felony conviction in Canada. Later, he received a Queen’s pardon. Now, if his past is ever investigated for criminal activity, the response given is, “We have no record of this person.” His record has not just been marked “pardoned,” it has been completely removed from the file and destroyed. It has been blotted out, never to be seen again. This is what God does with our sins. When you trust in Jesus Christ as you Savior, God removes your record from the file. He does not keep it there or daily add the long list of sins you continue to commit even as a Christian. God not only blots our sins from His record, He also remembers them no more. This expression means God no longer holds them against us. The blotting out of our transgressions is a legal act. It is an official pardon from the Supreme Governor. The remembering them no more is a relational act. It is the giving up by an injured party of all sense of being offended or injured. It is a promise never to bring up, either to Himself or to you, your sins. There is a difference between not remembering and forgetting. Forgetting is passive and is something that we human beings, not being omniscient, so. “Not remembering” is active; it is a promise whereby one person (in this case, God) determines not to remember the sins of another against him. To “not remember” is simply a graphic way of saying, “I will not bring up these matters to you or others in the future.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

ImageConsider a rebellious, recalcitrant student in a classroom. His acts of defiance toward the teacher may have both legal and relational consequences. Legally, he may be expelled from school. Relationally, the teacher may feel a deep sense of hostility toward the student. Even if the student is allowed to return to school (the equivalent of a pardon), the teacher may continue to hold hostility toward the student, “remembering” his rebellion and defiance. In order to gain a good standing in the classroom, the rebellious student needs to be both pardoned by the school authorities and forgiven by the teacher. On needs to have the teacher give up al sense of being offended and agree “not to remember”—for instance, not to bring up—his poor behavior. (Obviously, for this to happen, the student’s attitude and future conduct must change. However, still, the teacher must decide to not remember the past.) This, then, is similar to what God does when He blots out our transgressions and remembers our sins no more. As the Supreme Governor and Judge, God pardons us. As the offended party, God forgives us and He promises never to bring up our sins again. Through His death, Jesus not only secured our pardon with God, He also reconciled us to God. However, Paul said, “All this from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ,” reports 2 Corinthians 5.18. God, acting in grace through the giving of His Son to die for us, was the initiator of reconciliation. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

ImageIf you have trusted in Jesus Christ alone for your salvation, you are both justified (a legal act) and reconciled (a relational act). You are no longer condemned by God. As Paul said, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” Romans 8.1. In addition, you are no longer estranged from God. God is no longer against you; God is now for you. Again as Paul said, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (8.31). Both of these wonderful changes occurred because of God’s grace and despite our sin and guilt: “[For] where sin increased, grace increased all the more” (5.20). Those who hate you do not win unless you hate them—and then you destroy yourself. Most people ask for happiness on condition. Happiness can be felt only if you do not set conditions. Come live with me, and be my love, and we will some new pleasure prove of golden sands and crystal brooks with silken lines, and silver hooks. “And there shall be a new Heaven and a new Earth; and they shall be like unto the old save the old have passed away, and all things have become new,” reports Ether 13.9. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, Who didst descend from Heaven to Earth, out of the bosom of the Father, and didst sustain five wounds upon the wood of the Cross, and shed thy precious Blood for the remission of our sins. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

ImageWe humbly beseech Thee, God, that at the day of judgment we may be set at Thy right hand and be thought worthy to hear those sweetest words, “Come, ye blessed, into the kingdom of My Father:” Who with the same Father, who will save all beings. O Father, Thou hast made man from the glory of thyself, and when not an instrument of that glory, he is a thing of nought; no sin is greater than the sin of unbelief, for if union with Christ is the greatest good, unbelief is the greatest sin, as being cross to thy command; I see that whatever my sin is, yet no sin is like disunion from Christ by unbelief. Lord, keep me from committing the greatest sin in departing from him, for I can never in this life perfectly obey and cleave to Christ. When thou takest away my outward blessings, it is for sin, innot acknowledging that all that I have is of thee, in not serving thee through what I have, in making myself secure and hardened. Lawful blessings are the secret idols, and do mist hurt; the greatest injury is in the having, the greatest good in the taking away. In love divest me of blessings that I may glorify thee the more; remove the fuel of my sin, and may I prize the gain of a little holiness as overbalancing all my losses. The more I love thee with a truly gracious love the more I desire to love thee, and the more miserable I am at my want of love; the more I hunger and thirst after thee, the more I faint and fail in finding thee, the more my heart is broken for sin, the more I pray it may be far more broken. My great evil is that I do not remember the sins of my youth, nay, the sins of one day I forget the next. Keep me from all things that turn to unbelief or lack of felt union with Christ. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

ImageBy the shedding of the Blood of Christ our Lord, peace has been established in Heaven and Earth.  O truly precious is the Covenant of peace, which was made by the offering of that holy Blood! Not with gold, nor silver, nor gems, nor pearls, but with the Blood that gushed from the side of the Saviour. That Blood-shedding gladdened Heaven, purified Earth, and terrified hell. Today, O good Jesus, for us Thou didst not hide Thy Face from shame and spitting. Today, Jesus our Redeemer, for us Thou wast mocked, buffeted by unbelievers, and crowned with thorns. Today, O good Shepherd, Thou didst lay down Thy life on the Cross for the sheep, and wast crucified with robbers, and hadst Thy sacred hands nailed through. Today Thou was laid in the guarded sepulcher, and the Saints burst open their tombs. Today, O good Jesus, put an end to our sins, that no the day of Thy Resurrection we may joyfully receive Thy holy Body, and be refreshed with Thy sacred Blood. O Christ, the Only-begotten Son of the Unbegotten Father, Who for us wast this say slain, the Innocent for the ungodly; remember the price of Thy Blood, and bout out the sins of Thy people; and as Thou wast pleased to endure for us reproaches, spitting, bonds, blows, the scourge, the cross. The nails, the bitter cup, death, the spear, and lastly burial, vouchsafe to us wretched ones for whom Thou didst suffer this, the infinite blessedness of Heavenly kingdom; that we who bow down in reverence for Thy Passion, may be raised up to things Heavenly in the joys of Thy Resurrection. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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I Used to think Love was Something I Could Take or Leave Alone but Now I Could Not do without My Supply!

ImageFinish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you should begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new end. We should be lenient in our judgment, because often the mistakes of others would have been ours had we had the opportunity to make them. What is food to one being is bitter poison to others. Every negative development in a person is to be understood as the result of damaging influences in early childhood. This has led sometimes to irrational self-accusation on the part of parents who feel guilty for every undesirable or pathological trait that appears in a child after birth, and to a tendency of people in analysis to put the blame for all their trouble on their parents, and to avoid confronting themselves with the problem of their own responsibility. Good intentions mean noting if they cover up the unconscious intentions; “honest” dishonesty demonstrates that it is not enough to have “meant” well consciously. Forces operate in beings of which one is not aware and rationalization protects one from awareness; unconscious forces are integrated in a system to which we call character. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

ImageCharacter syndromes are rooted and nourished in the particular forms of relatedness of the individual to the outside World and oneself; furthermore, inasmuch as the social group shares a common character structure (“social character”) the socioeconomic conditions shared by all members of a group mold the social character. That is where the saying, “birds of a feather flock together” comes from. Love, tenderness, sadism, masochism, ambition, curiosity, anxiety, rivalry—these and many other drives are no longer each attributed to a special instinct, but to the influence of the environment (essentially the significant persons in early childhood) via the psyche. The description given thus far suggest that character determines, the character trait, whether loving or destroying, drives a person to behave in a certain way, and the person is acting according to one’s character feels satisfied. Indeed, the character traits tells us how a person would like to behave. However, we must add an important qualification: if one could. The conflict between what we would like to do and the demands of self-interest remains crucial. We cannot always behave as we are driven to by our passions, because we have to modify our behavior to some extent in order to remain alive. The average person tries to find a compromise between what one’s character would make one want to do and what one must do in order not to suffer more or less harmful consequences. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

ImageThe degree to which a person follows the dictates of self-preservation (ego interest) varies, of course. At one extreme the weight of the ego interest is zero; this holds true for the martyr and a certain type person who targets and terminates prominent people. At the other extreme is the opportunist for who self-interest includes everything that could make one more successful, popular, or comfortable. Between these two extremes all people can be arranged, characterized by a specific blend of self-interest and character-rooted passions. How much a person represses one’s passionate desires depends not only on factors within oneself but on the situations; if the situation changes, repressed desires become conscious and are acted out. This holds true, for instance, for the person with a sadistic-masochistic character. Everybody knows the type of person who is submissive to one’s boss and sadistically domineering to one’s wife and children. Another case in point is the change that occurs in character when the total social situation changes. The sadistic character who may have posed as a meek or even friendly individual may become a fiend in a terroristic society in which sadism is valued rather than deplored. Another may suppress sadistic behavior in all visible actions, while showing it in a subtle expression of the face or in seemingly harmless and marginal remarks. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

ImageRepression of character traits also occurs with regard to the most noble impulses. In spite of the fact that the teachings of Jesus are still part of our moral ideology, a being acting in accordance with them is generally considered a fool or a neurotic; hence many people still rationalize their generous impulses as being motivated by self-interests. These considerations show that the motivating power of character traits is influenced by self-interest in varying degrees. They imply that character constitutes the main motivation of human behavior, but restricted and modified by the demands of self-interest under varying conditions. Here is possessed the fundamental difference between behaviorism and psychoanalytic characterology. Conditioning works through its appeal to self-interest, such as the desire for food, security, praise, avoidance of pain. In animals, self-interest proves to be so strong that by repeated and optimally spaced reinforcements that interest for self-preservation proves to be stronger than other instincts like pleasures of the flesh or aggression. Humans of course also behave in accordance with one’s self-interest; but not always, and not necessarily so. One often acts according to one’s passions, one’s meanest and one’s noblest, and is often willing—and able—to risk one’s self-interest, one’s fortune, one’s freedom, and one’s life in the pursuit of love, truth, and integrity—or for hate, greed, sadism, and destructiveness. In this very difference is possessed the reason conditioning cannot be a sufficient explanation for human behavior. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

ImageThe discovery of unconscious processes and of the dynamic concept of character were radical because they went to the roots of human behavior; they were disquieting because nobody can hide any longer behind one’s good intentions; they were dangerous, because if everybody were to know what one could know about oneself and others, society would be shaken to its very foundations. Psychoanalysts is essentially a theory of unconscious strivings, of resistance, of falsification of reality according to one’s subjective needs and expectations (transference), of character, and of conflicts between passionate strivings embodied in character traits and the demands for self-preservation. Thus far, feelings of inferiority have nothing to do with any factual inferiority, but have been discussed only as the effects of a tendency to recoil from competition. Do they then have nothing to do with existing shortcomings, with a realization of actual flaws? They are in fact the result of both actual and imagined inadequacies: feelings of inferiority are a combination of anxiety-motivated belittling tendencies and a realization of existing defects. As I have emphasized several times, we cannot ultimately fool ourselves, though we may be successful in shutting certain impulses out of awareness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

Image And therefore a neurotic person of the character we have been discussing will know, deep down, that one has anti-social tendencies which one must conceal, that one is far from genuine in one’s attitudes, that one’s pretenses are quite different from the undercurrents below the surface.  One’s registering of all these discrepancies is an important cause for one’s feelings of inferiority, even though one never recognizes clearly the source of the discrepancies because they arise from repressed drives. Not recognizing their source, one gives to oneself reasons for feeling inferior which are rarely the real reasons, but only a renationalization. There is another reason why one feels that one’s inferiority feelings are the direct expression of an existing deficiency. On the basis of one’s ambition one has built up fantastic notions of one’s own value and importance. One cannot help measuring one’s realistic accomplishments against one’s notions of being a genius or a perfect human being, and in this comparison one’s real acts or one’s real possibilities appear inferior. The total result of all these recoiling tendencies is that the neurotic incurs real failures, or at most does not get on as well as one should, considering one’s opportunities and one’s gifts. Others who started with one get ahead of one, have better careers, greater success. This lagging behind does not concern only external success. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

ImageThe older one becomes the more one feels the discrepancy between one’s potentialities and one’s achievements. One feels keenly that one’s gifts, whatever they may be, are going to waste, that one is blocked in the development of one’s personality, that one does not mature as time goes on. The problem of persons around the age of forty is that they become blocked in their development. However, one has not recognized the conditions leading up to such a situation, and therefore has not found any satisfactory solution. And one reacts to the realization of this discrepancy with a vague discontent, a discontent which is not masochistic but real and proportionate. A discrepancy between potentialities and achievement may be due, as I have already pointed out, to external circumstances. However, the discrepancy which develops in a neurotic person, and which is a never-failing character of neuroses, is due to one’s internal conflicts. One’s actual failures and the consequent increasing discrepancy between potentialities and achievements inevitably give even greater force to one’s existing inferiority feelings. Thus one not only believes oneself to be, but actually is inferior to what one might be. The impact of this development is all the greater since it puts the inferiority feelings on a realistic basis. Meanwhile the other discrepancy which I have mentioned—that between high-flown ambitions and the comparatively poor reality—becomes so unbearable that it demands a remedy. As such a remedy fantasy offer itself. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

ImageMore and more the neurotic substitutes grandiose ideas for attainable goals. The value they have for one is obvious: they cover up one’s unendurable feelings of nothingness; they allow one to feel important without entering into any competition and thus without incurring the risk of failure or success; they allow one to build up a fiction of grandeur far beyond attainable goal. It is this blind-alley value of grandiose fantasies that makes them dangerous, because the blind alley has a definite advantage for the neurotic when compared with the straightforward road. These neurotic ideas of grandeur should be distinguished from those of the normal person and those of the psychotic. Even the normal person will at times think oneself wonderful, attribute undue importance to what one is doing, or indulge in fantasies of what one might do. However, these fantasies and ideas remain decorative arabesques and one does not take them too seriously. They psychotic person with ideas of grandeur is at the other end of the line. One is convinced that one is a genius, the Emperor of Japan, Napoleon, Christ, and will reject all evidence of reality which tends to disprove one’s conviction; one will be wholly unable to comprehend any reminder that one is actually a less affluent doorman, or  patient in an asylum or the object of disrespect and ridicule. If one become aware of the discrepancy at all one will decide in favor of one’s grandiose ideas, and will believe that the others do not know any better, or that they are deliberately treating one with disrespect in order to hurt one. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

ImageHowever, if therapy enables the individual to reorient one’s pattern of life and to reduce the tension and anxiety one feels regarding one’s personal problems, then the reactions of one’s automatic nervous system in, for example, a situation of stress, should also be altered. Essentially, if a change in life pattern and in internal tension occurred in therapy, this should show up in organismic changes in autonomic functioning, an area over which the individual has no conscious control. Individual who have experienced therapy develop a higher frustration threshold during their series of therapeutic contacts, and are able to recover their homeostatic balance more rapidly following frustration. After therapy, the individual is able to meet, with more tolerance and less disturbance, situations of emotional stress and frustration or stress was never considered in therapy; the more effective meeting of frustration is not a surface phenomenon but is evident in autonomic reactions which the individual cannot consciously control and of which one is completely unaware. Thus, it is predicted that if therapy enabled the individual to better handle stress at the psychological level, then this should be evident also in one’s autonomic functioning. Therefore, do not major in the minors. Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. Remember to breathe not weak, snatched gasps, but deep riveting drafts. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

ImageAnother point in which the impossibility of the theory of addition of love and justice becomes visible is the relation of love and justice to the concrete situation. Justice is expressed in principles and laws none of which can ever reach the uniqueness of the concrete situation. Every decision which is based on the abstract formulation of justice alone is essentially and inescapably unjust. Justice can be reached only if both the demand of the universal law and the demand of the particular situation are accepted and made effective for the concrete situation. However, it is love which created participation in the concrete situation. It would be completely wrong to say that love must be added to justice if the uniqueness of the situation is to be reached. For this would mean that justice as such is impossible. Actually the situation shows that justice is just because of the love which is implicit in it. However, this can e understood fully only in the context of an ontological analysis of the root meanings of both love and justice. The weight of the problems and the dangerous character of the confusions is equally obvious when we finally confront power and justice. It is in this realm of problems that the relation of law and order to justice and of all of them to power is discussed and more often confused than illuminated. The first questions is: Who gives the law in which justice is supposed to be expressed? #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

ImageTo give a law is the basic manifestation of power. However, if a group which has power gives laws, how are they related to justice? Are they not simply the expression of the will to power of this group? The Marxist theory of the State asserts that the laws of the State are tools which give social control to a ruling group. The origin of its power may be military invasion or it may be socioeconomic stratification. In both cases justice is possible only if the State has withered away and has been replaced by an administration without political power. The justice of the ruling class is injustice and, if defended, ideology. The laws it gives preserve a social order, and as long as there is no alternative social order, the laws of the ruling classes are better than chaos. The more cynical representatives of this theory interpret justice exclusively as a function of power and in no way as its judge. They accept the Marxist analysis without the Marxist expectation, and reduce justice completely to a function of power. In reaction against this removal of justice as an ultimate principle a theory has been developed which tries to separate justice from power and completely and to establish it as a self-contained system of valid judgements. Justice is an absolute, without any relation to structures of power. The absolute law, derived from the principles of the natural or rational law, does not express wat is, but it demands what should be. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

ImageIrrespective of power it commands and expects obedience because of its intrinsic validity. It does not express but it judges power. The contrast of these two theories about the relation of power to justice reveals the difficulty of the problem and the necessity of an ontological research into the rot meanings of power and justice. As announced before, I have led you into a jungle of problems and confusions, and, at every point, I have indicated the way out; namely, the ontological analysis of love, power, and justice. When the God we love chose to reveal Himself, He did so in creation itself and in more specific, special ways—most importantly, in the Scriptures and Jesus Christ. When we affirm that the Bible is a revelation from God, we do not simply assert that God as a person is known in and through it. We also mean that God has revealed understandable, objectively true propositions. The Lord’s Word is not only practically useful, it is also theoretically true (John 17.17). God has revealed truth to us and not just Himself. This truth is addressed to our minds and requires an intellectual grasp to understand and then apply. Because of the Bible’s nature, serious study is needed to grasp what it says. Of course, the Scripture contains easily grasped portions that are fairly straightforward. However, some of it is very difficult, intellectually speaking. In fact, Peter one said that some of Paul’s writings were intellectually challenging, hard to understand, and easily distorted (that is, uneducated in Christian theology) and unstable people (2 Peter 3.16). #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

ImageThe more a person develops the mind and the understanding of hermeneutics (the science of interpreting the Scriptures), the more one will be able to understand the meaning and significance of the Scriptures. Unfortunately, many today apparently think that hard intellectual work is not needed to understand God’s propositional revelation to us. Instead, they believe that the Holy spirit will simply make know the meaning of a text if it is implored to do so. Tragically, this represents a misunderstanding of the Spirit’s role in understanding the Scriptures. In my view, the Spirit does not help the believer understand the meaning of Scripture. Rather, He speaks to the believer’s soul, convicting, comforting, opening up applications of His truths through His promptings. On the evening Christ gave Himself up for us, John 17 tells us, He prayed in succession for Himself, for His twelve disciples, and for all of us who would later believe. When He finished praying for His future bride, He went to the cross. Then came Hos death, His resurrection, His ascension, and His enthronement at the right hand of the Father, where He constantly makes intercession for us. Thus we understand that giving ourselves for our brides involves prayerful intercession. Men, do you pray for your wives with something more than, “Bless good Meghan in all she does”? If not, you are sinning against her and against God. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

ImageMost Christian men who claim to love their wives never offer more than a perfunctory nod to their wives’ needs before God. Men, you ought to have a list of her needs, spoken and unspoken, which you passionately hold up to God out of love for her. Praying is the material work of a Christian husband! The most basic command is, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave up himself for her.” Men, we are divinely called to die for our brides, to take on her sufferings as our own, and to make intercession for her. You are supposed to be her ride or die man. When it is said that the readiness of the seeker determines the appearance of the master, this applies to the first fundamental initiation of one’s spiritual life. It does not mean that a master will come into one’s own town and seek one out, but that one will come into one’s life. And this may be brought about in various ways—as by the seeker oneself being led, either by Worldly circumstances or by one’s own seeking, out of one’s own town to the town or country where the master is living. The location of one’s spiritual guide will in part be the accident of one’s own geographical situation, for one will obviously be limited in one’s selection to possibilities and reputations in one’s own country or nation or race. The sheer physical and financial difficulties of traveling throughout the World—not to mention the obstacles of personal circumstance, family obligations, and ignorance of where to search and whom to approach in foreign lands, combine to set this limitation upon one’s inquiry and hence upon one’s opportunity. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

ImageIt is foolish to seek holiness geographically or holy beings in particular places. I have found that one being may live in a Himalayan abode and be a scoundrel and another being may live in a Bowery slum and be a saint. Wherever the live, people always carry their own thoughts and their own selves with them. The Soul, which is the object of our quest, is within us. The Master, who is to guide us upon our quest, will appear whenever we are ready for one and wherever we happen to live—or else we will be led to one. There are beings in the New World and the Old World, not less wise and noble than each other. If we have not met them, “the fault, Dear Brutus is…in ourselves,” primarily in our unworthiness, and secondarily in our incapacity to recognize what is beneath the surface. All speculation upon the motives and the methods of the illuminate will avail little. The light by which one works is denied to ordinary beings. We should not try to bind one down to qualities which fit only those who grope in the dark or move in twilight. We should trust where we cannot see and wait patiently for the day of revilement, when we will find all made clear and all riddle solved to our satisfaction. It is an old truism in the Old World that it takes an adept to understand an adept, but the New World will have to learn this truth by bitter experiences with pseudo-adepts. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

ImageThere are many signs of one’s spiritual status in the dignity and composure of one’s bearing, the deliberateness and truthfulness of one’s speech, and the impressiveness of one’s tension-free face. Helter Skelter is a phrase taken from a song performed by a well-known rock music group. Charles Manson used it to characterize that state of confusion in which he kept his followers, and himself as well. In the state of helter-skelter nothing makes sense, and everything makes as much sense as anything else. Manson was able to use this ideology to brainwash his followers and make them believe they were not responsible for their actions and they were not doing anything wrong when the ended the life of an individual. He taught them they if harm came to a person by means of his follower’s hands, then it was meant to be, it was in divine order and they did no really harm the individual and the individual was still alive on a different plane of existence. Aldous Huxley, in one of his retrospective writings, commented on how, among the associates of his youth, the endless talk of meaninglessness—the meaninglessness of life and therefore of everything in it—was merely an excuse to permit them to do whatever they wanted. Their life was organized (or, more properly, disorganized) around their feelings and wayward thoughts, with their will in two. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

ImageHowever, resolute action for the good requires that things make sense. You would not want someone caught up in helter-skelter to work on your lawn mower, do your gastrointestinal examination, nor work on your computer. Life makes sense only if you understand its basic components and how they interrelate to form the whole. Evil, on the other hand, thrives on confusion. God is not the author of confusion (1 Corinthians 14.33). Frankly, our visible Christian World is not too far from helter-skelter with reference to its understanding of the makeup of the person and therefore of the spiritual life and spiritual formation. We need to access the fullness of biblical teachings on these matters. We suffer far too much from the influence of a surrounding culture that thrives on confusions. (And therefore its denial that human beings have a nature.) This may seem like a harsh thing to say about our “Christian World,” and I am sorry to day it; but the issues here are too important to mince words. Accordingly, much of what we do in Christian circles with very good intentions—hoping, we say, to see steady, significant growth in Christlikeness—simply makes no sense and lead nowhere so far as substantive spiritual formation is concerned. What a brutal thing to say! However, we need to recognize this, or show why it is not the case. I hope we have taken significant first steps toward a clarity that can serve as a foundation for the effectual practice of Christian spiritual formation. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

ImageYou live longer once you realize that any time spent being unhappy is wasted. “As far as the East is from the West, so far has he removed our transgression from us,” reports Psalm 103.12. How far is the East from the West? If you start due north at any point on Earth, you would eventually cross over the North Pole and start going south, but that is not true when you go East or West. If you start West and continue in that direction you will always be going West. North and South meet at the North Pole, but East and West never meet. In a sense, they are an infinite distance apart. So when God says He removes our transgressions from us as far as the East is from the West, He is saying they have been removed an infinite distance from us. However, how can we get a handle on this rather abstract truth in such a way that it becomes meaningful in our lives? When God uses this metaphorical expression describing the extent of His forgiveness of our sin, He is saying His forgiveness is total, complete, and unconditional. God is saying He is not keeping score with regard to our sins. “He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities,” reports Psalm 103.10. Yes, God actually says that! I know it seems too good to be true. I confess I almost hesitate to write those words because they are so foreign to our innate concepts of reward and punishment. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

ImageHowever, those gracious words are right in the Bible, and they are God’s words. How can God possibly do this? How can He so completely disregard our transgressions as to say He removes them an infinite distance from us? The answer is by His grace through Jesus Christ. God laid our sins on Christ and He bore the penalty we should have borne. Because of Christ’s death in our place, God’s justice is now completely satisfied. God can now, without violating His justice or His moral law, forgive us freely, completely and absolutely. He can now extend His grace to us; He can show favor to those who, in themselves, deserve only wrath. O Loving Wisdom of the living God, O living everlasting Word and everlasting Power of God the eternal Father—for everlasting is Thy birth, Who art the everlasting Son of God the everlasting Father, and art God; without Whom is nothing, by Whom are all things; in Whom consisteth whatever is; Who art God above us, and Man for our sakes; for Thou hast willed for us to be what we are: grant us what Thou hast promised; give to us, although unworthy, what Thou hast offered to all alike; that is, that Thy Passion may be our deliverance, and Thy Death our life, and Thy cross our redemption, and Thy Wound our healing; that being crucified with Thee, we may by Thy gift be lifted up on high to Thy Father, with Whom in bliss Thou livest and reignest. “And it is by faith that my fathers have obtained the promise that these things should come unto their brethren through the Gentiles; therefore the Lord hath commanded me, yea, even Jesus Christ,” reports Ether 12.22. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

ImageO Source of All Good, what shall I render to three for the gift of gifts, then own dear Son, begotten, not created, my redeemer, proxy, surety, substitute, his self-emptying incomprehensible, his infinity of love beyond the heart’s grasp. Herein is wonder of wonders: he came below to rise me above, was born like me that I might become like him. Herein is love; when I cannot rise to him he draws near on wings of grace, to raise me to himself. Herein is power; when Deity and humanity were infinitely apart he untied them in indissoluble unity, the uncreated and the created. Herein is wisdom; when I was undone, with no will to return to him, and no intellect to devise recovery, he came, God-incarnate, to save me to the uttermost as man to die my death, to shed satisfying blood on my behalf, to work out a perfect righteousness for me. O God, take me in spirit to the watchful shepherds, and enlarge my mind; let me hear good tidings of great joy, and hearing, believe, rejoice, praise, adore, my conscience bathed in an ocean of repose, my eyes uplifted to reconcile Father; place me with ox, mule, camel, goat, to look with them upon my redeemer’s face, and in him account myself delivered from sin; let me with Simeon clasp the new-born child to my heart, embrace him with undying faith, exulting that he is mine and I am his. In him thou hast given me so much that Heaven can give no more. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20Image

CRESLEIGH MEADOWS AT PLUMAS RANCH

Plumas Lake, CA | from the mid $300’s

NOW AVAILABLE!

ImageCresleigh Meadows is NOW AVAILABLE!! Found just north of Feather River Boulevard, Cresleigh Meadows is home of the largest neighborhood in Plumas Ranch as well as the popular Bear River Park. Good interiors have a soul. With four floor plans available, ranging from approximately 2,000 – 3,500 square feet offering, three to five bedrooms, we are certain you will find the home that fits your needs and lifestyle. ImagePopular design elements include open floor plans, large kitchen islands, and flex spaces are staples in Cresleigh homes. Multi-generational living options also available in select homes. These homes are a crisp American take–spirited, clean, bright, optimistic and never age and are always beautiful. They are a daydream come true.   https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/

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Oh, I Cannot Break Away I Must Have You Everyday as Regularly as Coffee or Tea!

ImageWhen bad people combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. Successful change requires: painstakingly laying a foundation; planning in incredible detail; tediously covering and recovering all the bases; continuously explaining and re-explaining; dealing with naysayers; playing politics; soothing egos; dispelling fears; cheerleading; troubleshooting; communicating; compromising; coaxing; cajoling; and ultimately, dragging a few stragglers kicking and screaming into the future. That is hard work. It is also leadership! And, the curious paradox is that when one accepts one’s self just as he or she is, then one has the ability to change. Many people are advocating members of society to get mental help, but no one is opening up with a testimony about their experience and what helped them. Drug therapy is not the only form of therapy. Sometimes all a person needs is someone to talk to and express what they are going through so they can feel like an accepted member of the population. Also, old theories about if you seem to have a problem with everyone, then you are likely the problem is an outdated hypothesis because tribalism and pack mentality has become a common expression for many groups in American culture. Therefore, some people are actually singled out and made to feel like misfits when nothing is actually wrong with them. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14

ImageWhen the initial self-picture of someone has been in a therapeutic program is compared with those after therapy, it is found that after therapy the client sees himself or herself as changed in a number of ways. One feels one is more self-confident and self-reliant, understands oneself better, has more inner comfort, and more comfortable relationships with others. One feels less guilty, less resentful, less driven and insecure, and feels lees need for self-concealment. It is also an expectation that one will achieve greater congruence of self and ideal primary through alteration of their values, others through the alteration of self. Evidence supports this conclusion, and it appears that the concept of the self is what exhibits the greater change. Some change, however, does occur in the ideal self in the case of our client and the direction of this slight change is of interest. In other words, the self-deal has becomes less perfectly adjusted, or more attainable. It is to some degree a less punishing goal. We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden. Most people are willing to adapt not because they see the light but because they feel the heat. It is better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one than to have an opportunity and not be prepared. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14

ImageAnother finding in connection with therapy has to do with the “remembered self.” This remembered self turns out to be very different from the self-picture one gives at the time of entering therapy. Usually people need about eighteen months of therapy to see a significant change. In sorting of for the remembered self we have a crude objective measure of the reduction in defensiveness which occurs. One is usually able to give a considerably truer picture of the maladjusted and disturbed person that one was when he or she entered therapy, a picture which is confirmed by other evidence. In client-centered therapy our theory is that in the psychological safety of the therapeutic relationship the client is able to permit in one’s awareness feelings and experiences which ordinarily would be repressed, or denied to awareness. These previously denied experiences now become incorporated into the self. For example, a client who has repressed all feelings of hostility may come, during therapy, to experience one’s hostility freely. One’s concept of oneself then becomes reorganized to include this realization that one has, at times, hostile feelings towards others. One’s self-picture becomes to that degree a more accurate map or representation of the totality of one’s experience. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14

ImageThe most significant change in a person’s life is a change of attitude. Right attitudes produce right actions. All change in involves problems, and all successful change involves solving those problems. If you do not tackle problems, you might have less conflict, but you do not get anywhere in terms of change. That is why risk-taking is important. Those who are successful at implementing change do not have fewer problems. The difference is they have a problem-solving attitude and a problem solving mechanism. During and after therapy there will be an increasing congruence between the self as perceived by the client and the client as perceived by a diagnostician. The assumption is that a skilled person making a psychological diagnosis of the client is more aware of the totality of the client’s experience patterns, both conscious and unconscious, than is the client. Hence if the client assimilates into one’s own conscious self-picture many of the feelings and experiences which previously one has repressed, then one’s picture of oneself should become more similar to the picture which the diagnostician has of one. Thus we may say that the objective evidence indicates that the client has become, in one’s self-perception and in one’s total personality picture, substantially the person one wished to become when one entered therapy. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14

ImageThe individuals who will succeed and flourish will also be masters of change: adept at reorienting their own and other’s activities in untried directions to bring about higher levels of achievement. They will be able to acquire and use power to produce innovation. You may have habits that weaken you. The secret of change is to focus all your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new. Advice is like the snow. The softer it falls, the deeper it sinks into the mind. Among the many ways of thus recoiling from competition, perhaps the most important is that by which the neurotic creates in one’s imagination such a distance from one’s real or alleged competitor that any competition appears absurd, and is thereby eliminated in consciousness. This distance may be achieved either by setting the other person on a pedestal high out of reach, or by putting oneself so far below all others that any competitive thoughts or attempts seems impossible and ridiculous. The latter process is called “belittling.” Belittling oneself may be a conscious strategy, practiced merely for reasons of expediency. If the disciple of a great painter has done a good picture but has reason to fear the begrudging attitude of one’s master, one may belittle one’s work in order to allay the master’s envy.  Always imitate the behavior of winners when you lose. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14

ImageThe neurotic person, however, has only the vague notion of a tendency to undervalue oneself. If one has done a good job one will seriously believe that others would have done better, or that one’s success was an accident and that one probably could not do so well again. Or, having done well, one may pick out some flaw, such as having worked too slowly, and use this to devaluate one’s entire accomplishment. A scientist may feel ignorant about questions concerning one’s own field, so that one’s friends have to remind one that one’s self has written about them. When asked a question which is unwise or unanswerable one will be inclined to react with a feeling of one’s own folly; when reading a book with which one dimly disagrees one will be inclined, instead of thinking it through critically, to infer that one is not intelligent enough to understand it. One may perhaps cherish the belief that one has managed to preserve a critical and objective attitude toward oneself. However, not only will such a person take one’s inferiority feelings at their face value; one will insist on their validity. In spite of one’s complaints about them and the sufferings they cause one, one is far from accepting any evidence to disprove them. If regarded as a highly competent worker one will maintain that one is being overvalued or that one has succeeded in bluffing others. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14

ImageFor instance, there was a girl I mentioned heretofore, who developed an inordinate ambition at school after the humiliating experience with her brother, was always the first in her class and was regarded by everyone as a brilliant student, but was still convinced in her own mind that she was stupid. Although a glance into a mirror or the attention paid by men might be enough to convince a woman that she is attractive, she may still cling with an iron conviction to the belief that she is unattractive. A person may be convinced until he is forty that he is too young to assert his opinion or take a lead, and after forty he may switch to a feeling that he is too old. A well-known scholar was continually amazed at the reverence shown him, and in his own feelings insisted on being an insignificant mediocrity. Compliments are discarded as empty flattery or as prompted by ulterior motives, and may even result in anger. Observations of this kind, which can be made almost without limit, show that inferiority feelings, perhaps the most common evil of our times, have an important function, and for that reason are maintained and defended. Their value consists in the fact that by lowering one’s self in one’s own mind and thereby putting one’s self below other people and checking one’s ambition, the anxiety connected with competitiveness is allayed. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14

ImageFor one young lady, this strange sense of cruelty and ugliness always imminent, ready to seize hold upon her, who was the exception, formed one of the deepest influences of her life. Wherever she was, a school, among friends, in the street, in the train, she instinctively abated herself, made herself smaller, feigned to be less than she was for fear that her undiscovered self should be seen, pounced upon, attacked by brutish resentment of the commonplace, the average Self. Incidentally is should not be overlooked that inferiority feelings may factually weaken one’s position for the reason that self-belittling leads to an impairment of self-confidence. A certain amount of self-confidence is a prerequisite for any achievement, whether it be in varying a standard recipe for salad-dressing, selling merchandise, defending an opinion, or making a good impression on a potential relative. A person with strong tendencies to belittle oneself may have dreams in which one’s competitors excel, or in which one is at a disadvantage. Since there is no doubt that one subconsciously wishes for a triumph over competitors such dreams might look like a contradiction of Dr. Freud’s contention that dreams represent wish fulfillments. Dr. Freud’s view must not, however, be taken too narrowly. If direct wish-fulfillment involves too much anxiety, the allaying of that anxiety will be more important than a direct fulfillment of the wish. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14

ImageThus when a person who is afraid of one’s ambition has dreams in which one id defeated, one’s dreams are the expression not of a wish to fail but of a preference for failure as the lesser evil. A patient of mine was scheduled to give a lecture during a period of her treatment when she was desperately fighting to defeat me. She has a dream that I was giving a successful lecture and that she was sitting in the audience humbly admiring me. Again, an ambition teacher dreamed that one’s pupil was the teacher and that he failed to know his assignment. The degree to which self-belittling serves as a check on ambitions is shown also by the fact that the capacities that are belittled are usually the ones in which the individual desires most ardently to excel. If one’s ambition is of an intellectual character, intelligence is its instrument and hence is belittled. This connection is so usual that one may guess from the focus of the self-belittling tendency where the greatest ambitions are possessed. The ambiguities in the meaning of love, power, and justice have confusing consequences and produce new problems as soon as the relation of the three concepts to each other is considered. Love and power are often contrasted in such a way that love is identified with a resignation of power and power with a denial of love. Powerless love and loveless power are contrasted. This, of course, is unavoidable if love is understood from its emotional side and power from its compulsory side. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14

ImageHowever, such an understanding is error and confusion. It was this misinterpretation which induced the philosopher of the “will-to-power” to reject radically the Christian idea of love. And it is the same misinterpretation which induces Christian theologians to reject the philosophy of the “will-to-power” in the name of the Christian idea of love. In both cases an ontology of love is missing and in the second case power is identified with social compulsion. In the same period the theological school which has been created by Albrecht Ritschl dominated the field of Protestant theology. The anti-metaphysical bias of this school caused it to contrast the love of God with His power in such a way that the power actually disappeared and God became identified with love in its ethical meaning. The consequence was an ethical theism which neglected almost completely the divine mystery and majesty. God as the power of being was discarded as a pagan invasion. The trinitarian symbolism was dissolved. The kingdom of God was reduced to the ideal of an ethical community. Nature was excluded because power excluded. And power was excluded because the question of being was excluded. For if the question of being is asked and concepts like love and power are seen in the light of the ontological question, the unity of their root meanings can become visible. Yet most important are the problems in social ethics which result from the confrontation of love and power. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14

ImageOne could say that constructive social ethics are impossible as long as power is looked at with distrust and love is reduced to its emotional or ethical quality. Such a division leads to a rejection of or indifference to the political realm on the side of religion. And it leads to the separation of the political from the religious and the ethical and to the politics of mere compulsion on the political side. Constructive social ethics presuppose that one is aware of the element of love in structure of power and of the element of power without which love becomes chaotic surrender. It is the ontological analysis of love and power which must produce this awareness. The problems and confusions which characterize the discussion of love in its relation to power, characterize equally the discussion of love in its relation to justice. One does not usually contrast love with justice in the way in which one contrast love with power. However, it is commonly accepted that love adds something to justice that justice cannot do by itself. Justice, one says, demands that an inherited fortune is distributed in equal parts amongst those who have the same legal claim. However, love may induce one of the heirs to surrender one’s right to one of the other heirs. In this case one acts in a way which is not demanded by justice, but may be demanded by love. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14

ImageLove transcends justice. This seems rather evident, but it is not! If justice is not limited to proportional distribution, the act of resignation might have been an act of non-proportional justice, or it might have been an act of injustice against oneself, as in the first act of Shakespeare’s King Lear, when Lear surrenders all his powers to his daughters. The relation of love to justice cannot be understood in terms of an addition to justice which does not change its character. Only an ontology of justice can describe the true relation of the root concepts. Another example supports this view. A man may say to another: “I know your criminal deed and, according to the demand of justice, I should bring you to trial, but because of my Christian love I let you go.” Through this leniency, which is wrongly identified with love, a person may be driven towards a thoroughly criminal career. This means that one has received neither justice nor love, but injustice, covered by sentimentality. One might have been saved by having been brought to trial after his first fall. In this case the act of being just would have been the act of love. In classical theology the tension between love and justice is symbolized in the doctrine of atonement as developed by Anselm of Canterbury. According to Anselm, God Himself must find a way to escape the consequences of His retributive justice which conflicts with His merciful love. He is subject to the law of justice which is given by Himself. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14

ImageAnd this law would cause the eternal death of all beings in spite of His desire to save humans according to His love. The solution is the undeserved, substitutional death of the God-man, Jesus Christ. In spite of its theological weakness this remained the predominant doctrine in Western Christianity because of its psychological power. It implies the ontological insight, which it explicitly contradicts, that ultimately love must satisfy justice in order to be real love, and that justice must be elevated into unity with love in order to avoid the injustice of eternal destruction. However, this is not manifest in the legal form in which the doctrine is developed. O God, Who for us hast willed Thy Son to endure the gibbest of the Cross, that Thou mightiest drive away from us the power of the enemy; grant to us Thy servants to attain the grace of resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. “Our Lord, thy righteous will be done, for I know that thou workest unto the children of men accord to their faith,” reports Ether 12.29. O my God, thou fairest, greatest, first of all object, my heart admires, adores, loves thee, for my little vessel is as full as it can be, and I would pour out all that fullness before thee in ceaseless flow. When I think upon and converse with thee ten thousand delightful thoughts spring up, ten thousand sources of pleasure are unsealed, ten thousand refreshing joys spread over my heart, crowding into every moment of happiness. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14

ImageI bless thee for the soul thou has created, for adorning it, sanctifying it, though it is fixed in barren soil; for the body thou hast given me, for preserving its strength and vigour, for providing senses to enjoy delights, for the ease and freedom of my limbs, for hands, eyes, ears that do thy bidding; for they royal bounty providing my daily support, for a full table and overflowing cup, for appetite, taste, sweetness, for social joys of relatives and friends, for ability to serve others, for a heart that feels sorrows and necessities, for a mind to care for my fellow-humans, for opportunities of spreading happiness around, for loved ones in the joys of Heaven, for my own expectations of seeing thee clearly. I love thee above the powers of language to express, for what thou art to thy beings. Increase my love, O my God, through time and eternity. O God, Who for our redemption hast received the Blood of Jesus Christ, destroy the works of the devil, and break through all the snares of sin; that those who have been created by a new birth may not be defiled by the old contagion. Lord Jesus Christ, Who didst stretch out Thine hands on the Corss, and redeem us by Thy Blood, forgive me a sinner, for none of my thoughts are hid from Thee. Pardon I ask, pardon I hope for, pardon I trust to have. Thou Who art pitiful and merciful, spare and forgive me. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14Image

Cresleigh Homes

ImageThis is absolutely a jewel, something truly special. You cannot help but fall under its spell.  Residence Three is the largest of the single story homes offered in Cresleigh Meadows. At 2,781 square feet you will be hard pressed to a contemporary floor plan that offers this much space. There are four bedrooms, two and one half bathrooms, and a three car garage. Utilize the den as your own private study or convert into an optional fifth bedroom if needed. The Dining Room and Kitchen are well situated to make entertaining a breeze.

ImageCresleigh conjured up a home worthy of the site and its myriad allurements. It is glamorous yet inviting, with lots of places to read and enjoy a quiet moment. With nearly 2,800 square feet being on one level, it really feels like a sprawling estate. The location of the Master Suite makes it feel like a separate wing from the rest of the home allowing for maximum privacy and retreat. There is something about this house that feels like a throwback to a bygone era of glamour.

ImageWe are so excited to share! The first release at Meadows at #PlumasRanch is NOW AVAILABLE! It is our largest neighborhood, offering four floor plans ranging from approximately 2,000 – 3,500 square feet — we a’re certain you will find the home that fits your needs! 😍

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Contact us at 916-661-7554 or sign up for our interest list to stay up to date! https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/residence-3/

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