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God Has Blessed You with Gifts and Talents so that You May Impress this Generation!

February 28, 2020 12:50 am

Whatever natural endowments we bring to the role of leadership, they can be enhanced; nurture is far more important than nature in determining who becomes a successful leader. The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it. God has in Himself all the power to defend you, all wisdom to direct you, all mercy to pardon you, all grace to enrich you, all righteousness to clothe you, all goodness to supply you, and all happiness to crown you. However, there are times that try human’s souls. Historically we saw how this has worked in the dialogue between masses and power figures; but we also saw how human energy and fear created evil on the simplest levels of social organization. We talked mostly about spirit-power motives and guilt, but sometimes it was more simple and direct: it could be a matter of sheer physical appetite. Some tribes loved the taste of human flesh and incorporated captive men, women, and children with joy and gusto, with simple stomach motives, we might say—as in Melanesia and among some South American tribes. Sometimes men went to war out of personal frustration in the tribe, to work off jealousy dealing with pleasures of the flesh and grief, or even simple boredom. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

Life on primitive levels could be monotonous, and warfare was often the main source of new experience, travel, real stimulation. In fact, on the primitive level it is almost transparent that warfare was a “game” for appropriating others and enmeshing one’s life with them; we see this clearly among the Plains Indians, where warfare was often really a kind of athletic contest between tribes. However, organismic urges are by their nature sadistic, and primitive beings often wreaked evil on a captured enemy because of one’s desire to gloat and strut; one tortured to affirm oneself, to increase one’s own sense of importance by humiliating others. And so we see that even without spiritual motives, without otherworldly ambitions of any kind, humans cause evil as an organism by enjoying their feelings of animal power. Again, sheer energy causes evil. We can have no psychological evil unless we stress the driving personal motives behind human’s urge to heroic victory. It may seem on the surface that empty, passive, disinterested people are led like sheep to perform vicious acts, that humans easily loses their judgment in the crowd, that one gets carried away by numbers, by shouts, by cleverly phrased slogans and colourful banners—this we might call the “impressionable spectator” theory of aggression. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

No doubt there is considerable stimulus given to humans by the size and enthusiasm of the group around one. After all, one worships power and had to respond to the obvious power of numbers, thrill to the spectacle of masses; it is visible proof that nature favours humans if she has made their kind multiply so; she seems on the side of human’s victory. Another thing we see is that humans are stimulated to believe in their heroic destiny by the sight of another human face: it shows the miracle of creation shining out of humans, and the fact that this miracle has deep in its eyes and in its head the same beliefs as you, gives you the feeling that your very beliefs are supported by natural creation. Little wonder that the sight and feel of thousands of such miracles moving together with you gives such absolute righteous conviction. So there is no argument about the fact of mass enthusiasm; the question is how important it is as a cause of aggression. Perhaps it is the most important case, due to mental contagion and the herd mind. Why the contagion from the herd? The motive is in the person and not the character of the herd. We know how mobs can be stopped by stopping their leaders, or how panic breaks out when the leader is killed. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

Mobs identify with the leader, but beyond that we also see that humans bring their motives in with them when they identify with power figures. One is suggestible and submissive because one is waiting for the magical helper. One gives in to the magic transformation of the group because one wants relief of conflict and guilt. One follows the leader’s initiatory act because one needs priority magic so that one can delight in holy aggression. One moves in to kill the sacrificial scapegoat with the wave of the crowd, not because one is carried along by the wave, but because one likes the psychological barter of another life for one’s own. “You die, not me.” The motives and the needs are in people and not in situations or surroundings. It is true that human’s urge to self-transcendence, one’s devotion to a cause, has made more butchery than private aggressiveness in history, and the devastating group is hatred is fed by the love of its members, their willingness even to die in its name. We know that as soon as primitives developed identifiable gods and a large social conglomerate to give their loyalty to, their own natural sadistic appetites were translated into the large-scale sacrifices of others that we see in history: one no longer looked for a skull to eat the brains from, or to shrink for magic power, or to plant in ground facing the enemy so as to mock them—one now could not get enough skulls for paving the temple floor, as in Polynesia or West Africa. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

It is true that Adolf Eichmann, a German-Austrian SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust, felt physically sick on the one occasion when he actually watched the deadly gas at work, which proves that he was not personally a sadist—but does not prove that he had no personal stake in the killing. People are torn in two by the contradictions that result from their needs and not by what they innocently get caught up in. When they are at their most sheepish and submissive, they are giving vent to the Agape urge in their nature; when they twist and turn to please the leader and the group, they are trying to qualify for absolute goodness and purity so as to be worthy of being included in their transcendence. The individual gives oneself to the group because of one’s desire to share in its immortality; we must say, even, that one is willing to die in order not to die. Another way of looking at this is to say that the basic general motive of humans—their need for self-esteem, for a feeling of primary value—is not a neural vessel. True, its contents vary with each individual and with each society; people learn different ways of feeling warm self-value. I myself have written and argued that the self-esteem motive is elastic and neutral, but I now see that this is not quite so. True, there are no instincts that absolutely determine when people should feel good about themselves. However, self-esteem is equivalent to “righteousness” or feeling “right.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

Because self-esteem is linked to righteousness or feeling right, this means that self-esteem is based on an active passion: humans cannot feel right unless they live for the heroic victory over evil, the assurance of immortality. From the beginning, then, the self-esteem is loaded with this task universally, and given its form by how it resolves this task. Which, of course, is another way of saying that the self-esteem is based on the cultural continuation of the causa sui project in the child. This is how it has always been understood, only now we add that the character of this causa sui project is definite and inflexible: the securing of immortality (in whichever way this is understood by the individual and the society). Along with the we have to make an important addition to the approach to aggression. It is true that frustrated, deprived, weak, unindividuated people commit aggression very readily; clinical records are eloquent on this. It is true too that there are mechanical people who fear life, who need to control things with secure sense of power, who prefer inanimate objects to living ones, excreta. These are call “necrophiles,” or lovers of death, in opposition to “biophiles,” or lovers of life. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

This is a valuable distinction in character structures because it helps us to focus on different ways of bringing up children which might lead to one or the other general orientation—to a love of life which develops sentiments of warm humanity or to a “syndrome of decay” which stifles these sentiments. If we could, we would certainly want to avoid raising generations of young who respect computers more than they do others. One explanation of the fact the World is now bordering on nuclear destruction, biological warfare, and the widespread prevalence of a modern Homo mechanicus. It may be that people do not fear total destruction because they do not love life, or are indifferent to it, or even are attracted to death, fascinated by the prospect of total destruction. From all we know, I think it would be nearer the truth to talk about a cultural type of being who earns ones immortality from identifications with the power of machines, rather than a simple lover of death, Mass destruction committed under the reign of God the Machine is a tribute to the expansion of an implacable, efficient force with which modern humans can identify—it would not be an attraction to the stillness of death itself. This attraction seems to me more of a Buddhistic sentiment—that is, the achievement of a certain kind of maturity and transcendence. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

The mechanical humans may scorn and fear living things, but I think it is precisely because one feels that they do not have the power over life and death that machines have; one’s eternity symbol is then the machine which transcends both life and death. Even for Hitler death was not an end in itself, but a power transformation. However, the fundamental Law of Nature, by which people are commanded to endeavour Peace, is derived that humans be willing, wen others are so too, as far-forth, as for Peace, and defence on oneself one shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other people, as one would allow other people against oneself. For as long as every being holdeth this Right, of doing anything one liketh; so long are all people in the condition of War. However, if other people will not lay down their Rights, as well as one; then there is no Reason for anyone, to devest oneself of one’s: For that were to expose oneself to Prey, (which no person is bound to) rather than to dispose oneself to Peace. This is that Law of the Gospel; “Whatsoever you require that others should do to you, that do ye to them. And that Law of all humans, Quod tibi feiri non vis, alteri ne feceris. To Lay Down a human’s Right to anything, is to Devest oneself of the liberty, of hindering another of benefit to one’s own Right to the same. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

For one that renounceth, or passeth away one’s Right, giveth not to any other human a Right which one had not before’ because there is nothing to which every human had not Right by Nature: but only standeth out of one’s way, that one may enjoy one’s own original Right, without hindrance from one; not without hindrance from another. So that the effect which redoundeth to one human, by another humans defect of Right, is but so much diminution of impediments to the use of one’s own Right original. Right is laid aside, either by simply Renouncing it; or by Transferring it to another. By Simply RENOUNCING; when one cares not to whom the benefit thereof redoundeth. By TRANSFERRING; when one intendeth the benefit thereof to some certain person, or persons. And when a human hath in either manner abandoned, or granted away one’s Right; then is one said to be OBLIGED, or BOUND, not to hinder those, to whom such Right is granted, or abandoned, from the benefit of it: and that one Ought and it one’s DUTY, not to make void that voluntary act of one’s own: and that such hindrance is INJUSTICE, and INJURY, as being Sine Jure; the Right being before renounced, or transferred. So that Injury, or Injustice, in the controversies of the World, is somewhat like to that, which in the disputations of Scholars is called Absurdity. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

For as it is there called an Absurdity, to contradict what one maintained in the Beginning one had voluntarily done. The way by which a person either simply Renounceth, or Transferreth one’s Right, is a Declaration, or Signification, by some voluntary and sufficient sign, or signs, that one doth so Renounce, or Transfer; or hath so Renounced, or Transferred the same, to one that accept it. And these Signs are either Words only, or Actions only; or (as it happeneth most often) both Words and Actions. And the same are the BONDS, by which people are bound, and obliged: Bonds, that have their strength, not from their own Nature, (for noting is more easily broken than a person’s word), but from Fear of some evil consequence upon the rupture. However, all this simply a minor dilemma of clarification of cultural and clinical types; it will take very much more work to sort these things out, and we may never be able to do it in any but a very gross and suggestive way. There is something much more crucial at stake. And we right away know what it is: not only weak, or mechanical, or pathological, or primitive and elemental types aggress, but also well fed, jolly ones—people who have had abundant childhood care and love. The man who dropped the atomic bomb is the warm, gentle boy who grew up next door. The kings of Dahomey who signaled annually for the heads of hundreds of murdered prisoners to be piled in heaps very likely had a child-rearing experience that could have been written about favourably. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

The reason is absolute and simple: people aggress not only out of frustration and fear but out of joy, plenitude, love of life. People kill lavishly out of the sublime joy of heroic triumph over evil. Voila tout. What are clinical classifications and niceties going to do with that? It is true, I think, that a weak being will more easily, if punished, buy off one’s own death by taking another, and that strong being will be less likely to do this. It is true, too, that most people will not usually kill unless it is under the banner of some kind of fight against evil; in which one is tempted to blame the banner, the propaganda and artificial belief system, and not the people. However, banners do not wrap themselves around people: people invent banners and clutch at them; they hunger for believable words that dress life in convincing meaning. If they did not have nice words to speak (to make sense out of their occasions), people would die. They would die, not because words are nice trimmings to life, but because without words action stop dead, and when actions stops the gnawing realization of impotency and the dumb futility of animal life beings. Words abolish fear and embody hope in themselves. I think it is time for social scientists to catch up with Hilter as a psychologist, and to realize that if people are persuaded about the legitimacy of a cause, they will do anything for heroic belonging to a victorious cause. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

And I know no psychology, and so far no conditions on this Earth, which would exempt people from fulfilling one’s urge to cosmic heroism, which means from identifying evil and moving against it. In all cases but one this means moving also against individuals who embody evil. The one case, of course, is the teaching of the great religions, and in its modern guise pacifism, no nonviolence. This is a 2,000-year-old ideal at which descriptive psychology stops, since it is an ideal that has hardly yet made a dent in the affairs and minds of people. If you give people political and economic equality, they will still welcome unfreedom in some form. Conservatives must know that the freedom to obey or not to obey, to delegate one’s power to authority, is not so free: it is coerced in the very beginning and by the very nature of human’s perceptions of power and majesty. The talents that people use to amass wealth and social privilege may be due to some real differences in quality of mind and body; but the talent to mystify others is the queen of tyranny, and it is not all natural and neutral, but partly human-made—made by ignorance, thirst for illusion, and fear. As such, it is part of the scientific problem of human liberation, and is not destined to remain wholly in the natural order of things. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

If the complexities of the psychological dimensions of inequality and the unfreedom at the heart of human nature are sure to please no one who is firmly embedded in an ideological camp, then it becomes even more difficult to know what we are going to do about them or how we are going to approach them. However, few things seem clear: although the radicals may not like it, the science of society will have to go much more slowly and modestly than was at first realized by Rousseau and Marx. Unless, of course, it subserves violent revolution—in which case, as we have learned to our sorrow, the new society that comes into beings has even less a chance of being scientific. As for the conservatives, although they may shrink back in fear, there is nothing to prevent the science of humans from being absolutely critical and meliorative science of society that was envisioned in the Enlightenment. There is nothing in human nature that dooms in advance the most thoroughgoing social changes and utopian ambitions. It used to be thought, for example, that if human’s innate aggressiveness was a drive that had to find expression, then all societies had to have some means of “hate satisfaction.” Many of our best minds have been tortuously struggling with the implications of this: it did not seem possible to have any kind of humanistic, liberating social theory if humans carried within themselves the seeds of destructiveness. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

And certain the facts of history of war and scapegoating seem to have been born out of a basic drive r a quantum of instinct, or instead results from the fear of death and impotency and can be relieved by a heroic victory over a hate object. A science of humans in society is possible even while admitting the most destructive motives of humans, precisely because these motives become open and amenable to clear analysis, to a tracing out of their total structure in the full field of human affairs as those affairs reflect the torments of human’s inner life, one existential paradoxes. A social ideal could be designed that takes into account human’s basest motives, but now an ideal not directly negated by those motives. In other words, hate object need not be any special class or race or even human enemy, but could be things that take impersonal but real forms, like poverty, disease, oppression, natural disasters excreta. Or, if we know that evil takes human form in oppressors and hangmen, then we could at least try to make our hatreds of people intelligent and informed: we could work against the enemies of freedom, those who thrive on slavery, on the gullibilities and weaknesses of their fellow humans. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

People hate and love according to their individual understandings and personal needs. The whole thrust of the science of humans since the Enlightenment has been after all a promise that objectivity about evil is possible. This objectivity about evil introduces what we might call the possibility of objective hatred. This clarification of hatred allows us, once more, to makes the circle on the timeless pleas for a moral equivalent to natural sadism, to hope to translate our self-expansion into a furtherance of life instead of the destruction of it. Finally, if we know that we ourselves hate because of the same needs and urges to heroic victory over evil as those we hate, there is perhaps no better way to begin to introduce milder justice into the affairs of humans. This is the great moral that was drew from our demonic times. when we expressed the moving hope that a day would come when each person would proclaim in one’s own fashion the superiority of being wrong without killing others than being right in the quiet of the charnel house. It is imperative that we grown in grace. The term growing in grace is most often used to indicate growth in Christian character. While I think that usage has merit, a more accurate meaning is to continually grow in our understanding of God’s grace, especially as it applies to us personally, to become progressively more aware of our own continued spiritual bankruptcy and the unmerited, unearned, and undeserved favour of God. May we all grow in grace in this sense. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

As we grow in grace this way, we will grow in our motivation to obey God out of a sense of gratitude and reverence to Him. Our obedience will always be imperfect in performance in this life. We will never perfectly obey Him until we are made perfect by Him. In the same way, our motives will never be consistently pure; there will frequently be some “merit points” mentality mixed in with our genuine reverence for God. So, if you realize your motives have been largely merit-oriented, do not be discouraged. Just begin now to move toward grace motives. Begin to think daily about the implications of the grace of God in your life. Memorize and pray frequently on such Scripture passages as Romans 12.1 and 2 Corinthians 5.14-15. Pray about the aspects of truth in those passages and ask God to motivate you by His mercy and love. When you recognize merit-oriented motives at work in you, renounce them and cast yourself completely on the grace of God and the merit of Jesus Christ. As you grown in grace in this way, you will indeed discover that His love compels you to live, not for yourself, but for Him who died for you and was raised again. The cultivation of a disposition to glorify God saves souls, as well does a knowledge of Scriptures. However, to imagine that none can teach you but those who are themselves saved form sin, is a very great and dangerous mistake. Give not place to it for a moment. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

This over-idealization of the guru, so widespread could indicate an elementary stage. We may extend great reverence to the person who is worthy of it—saint or self-actualized—but we may bend the knee in worship only to the everlasting Spirit. No human being has the right to receive it, much less demand it, and it is idolatry to give it. One is a human being, after all, a person not a demigod. Worship of the human is not only irrelevant but also, in a sense, irreverent. We may admire one for one’s fine qualities but that does not mean we have to agree with one in all one’s views. So many teachers come to us with their doctrines. Who of them is right and who is wrong? Not because you think, “Our teacher is one to whom great deference is due,” should you accept a doctrine. A superficial emotional approach to truth is less concerned with the message than with the messenger, with thee ideas taught than with their human origin. Many people suffer from the bad consequences of an exaggerated respect for their spiritual guides whereas others may suffer from the consequences of an insufficient respect for them. “And I exhort you to remember these things; for the time speedily cometh that ye shall know that I lie not, for ye shall see me at the bar of God; and the Lord God will say unto you: Did I not declare my words unto you, which were written by this man, like as one crying from the dead, yea, even as one speaking our of the dust?” reports Moroni 10.27. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

In Thy mercy and majesty, O Lord, behold Thy household, that they may be neither stained with vices of their own, nor held in bondage by the sins of others; but that being ever freed and cleansed from both, they may do service unto Thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Hear us, O Lord our God, and separate the hearts of Thy faithful people from the wickedness of the World; that they who call thee Lord with their own voice may not fall back into the service of the devil; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O Lord, bend my hands and cut them off, for I have often struck thee with a wayward will, when these fingers should embrace thee by faith. I am not yet weaned from all created glory, honour, wisdom, and esteem of others, for I have a secret motive to eye my name in all I do. Let me not only speak the word sin, but see the thing itself. Give me to view a discovered sinfulness, to know that though my sins are crucified they are never wholly mortified. Hatred, malice, ill-will, vain-glory that hungers for and hunts after human’s approval and applause, all are crucified, forgiven, but they rise again in my sinful heart. O my crucified but never wholly mortified sinfulness! O my life-long damage and daily shame! O my indwelling and besetting sins! O the tormenting slavery of a sinful heart! Destroy, O God, the evil guest within whose hidden presence makes my life a hell. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

Yet Thou hast not left me here without grace; the cross still stands and meets my needs in the deepest straits of the soul. I thank thee that my remembrance of it is like David’s sight of Goliath’s sword which preached forth thy deliverance. The memory of my great sins, my many temptations, my falls, bring afresh into my mind the remembrance of thy great help, of thy support from Heaven, of the great grace that saved such a wretch as I am. There is no treasure so wonderful as that continuous experience of thy grace toward me which alone can subdue the risings of sin within: Give me more of it. “I declare these things unto the fulfilling of the prophecies. And behold, they shall proceed forth out of the mouth of the everlasting God; and his words shall hiss forth from generation to generation. And God shall show unto you, that that which I have written is true. And again I would exhort you that ye would come unto Christ, and lay hold upon every good gift, and touch not the evil gift, not the unclean thing,” reports Moroni 10.28-30. Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that pressing onwards in Thy way with devout minds, we may escape the snares of the sins that beset us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. We pray Thee, O Lord, be present to Thy suppliants; and amid the snares of a wicked World, protect our weakness with never-failing love; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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Only the Strong Person Can be Ethical, Not the Weak One!

February 19, 2020 1:34 am

Words and plans are not enough. Leaders stand up for their beliefs. They practice what they preach. They show others by their own example that they live by the values that they profess. If there are degrees in the power of being become manifest and how can it be measured? The answer is that the power of being becomes manifest only in the process in which it actualizes its power. In this process its power appears and can be measured. Power is real only in its actualization, in the encounter with other bearers of power and in the ever-changing balance which is the results of these encounters. Life is the dynamic actualization of being. It is not a system of solutions which could be deduced from a basic vision of life. Nothing can be deduced from a basic vision of life. Nothing can be deduced in a life process, nothing is determined a priori, nothing is final except those structures which make the dynamics of life possible. Life includes continuous decisions, not necessarily conscious decisions, but decisions which occur in the encounter between power and power. Every encounter of somebody who represents a power of being leads to a decision about the amount of power embodied in each of them. These decisions cannot be deduced a priori. Life is tentative. Everybody and everything has chances and must take risks, because one’s power and its power of being remains hidden if actual encounters do not reveal it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

The typical forms in which powers of being encounter each other are a fascinating subject of phenomenological descriptions: life, exempli gratis, in a human individual, transcends itself. It pushes forward, it runs ahead, and it encounters life in another human individual which also pushes forward, or which withdraws or which stands and resists. In each case another constellation of power is the result. One draws another power into oneself and is either strengthened or weakened by it. One throws the foreign power of being out or assimilates it completely. One transforms the resisting powers or one adapts oneself to them. One is absorbed by them and loses one’s own power of being, one grows together with them and increases their and one’s own power of being. These processes are going on in every moment of life, in all relations of all beings. They go on between those powers of being which we call nature, between human and nature, between human and human, between individuals and groups, between groups and groups. The power struggle is taking place in the accidental look of a human at another human, as well as in the most complex forms of love relationships. In these examples the continuous struggle of power of being with power of being is described in a way which does not need to take into consideration hostilities, neuroses, or pacifist ideologies. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

The power of being is simply a description of life processes which occur in Heaven as well as in Hell. They belong to the structure of being. This vision of life is confirmed when we consider the phenomenology of power-relations for the interpretation of all important historical movements. Categories such as challenge, reaction, withdrawal, return, belong to a phenomenology of encounters. And it is not only the encounter of groups with groups, it is also the encounter of groups with nature for which one develops one’s phenomenology relations. In the works of the historians and depth-psychologists we find the material for a complete phenomenology of power relations. Everything real is an individual power of being within an embracing whole. Within the whole of power the individual can gain or lose power of being. Whether the one or the other happens is never decided a priori, but is a matter of continuous concrete decisions. A child, in one’s early years, has power of being only within the embracing power of being which is called “family”. However, at a certain moment most children have the tendency to withdraw from the family unity to themselves and their self-realization. They feel that participation in the family life means a loss of their individual power of being. So they withdraw, mostly internally, sometimes also externally. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

The child wants to increase their power of being which, they feel, is being reduced within the group. However, it may happen that after a certain time they return to the family because they feel that without the power of being of the group their own power of being is severely endangered. And again, after a certain tie they may realize that they have surrendered too much to the group and that this self-surrender not only weakens their own being but also that of the group to whose power they have surrendered. Again they withdraw and the conflict continues. The problem implied in this situation is sharpened by the “hierarchical” structure of life. The more centred a being is the more power of being is embodied in it. The completely centred, self-related and self-aware being, human, has the greatest power of being. One has a World, not only an environment, and with it infinite potentialities of self-realization. One centredness makes one the master of one’s World. However, where there is centredness there is a hierarchical structure of power. The nearer to the centre an element is, the more it participated in the power of the whole. The ancient parable of the revolt of the members of the body against the stomach and the answer of the stomach, that without its central position all other members would starve, shows the decisive importance of the centre for the power of being for every part. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

Centred structures are present not only in the organic but also in the inorganic realm, notably in the atomic and subatomic elements of matter. And even the most egalitarian societies have centres of power and decisions, in which the large majority of the people participate only indirectly and in degrees. Theses centres are strengthened in the moment in which the fullest development of power by a social group is demanded, in emergency situations. The need for an acting centre makes even an egalitarian group hierarchical. The centre of power is only the centre of the whole as long as it does not degrade its own centrality by using it for particular purposes. In the moment in which the representatives of the centre use the power of the whole for their particular self-realization they cease to be the actual centre, and the whole being, without a centre, disintegrates. Certainly, it is possible for a ruling group to force its will upon the whole, even if its will is not the expression of the whole. However, this is possible only for a limited time. Finally, the loss of the power of the whole, through internal or external causes, is unavoidable. Since no being has a natural authority over one’s fellow, and force creates no right, we must conclude that conventions form the basis of all legitimate authority among humans. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

If an individual can alienate one’s liberty and make oneself the slave of a master, why could not a whole people do the same and make itself subject to a king? There are in this passage plenty of ambiguous words which would need explaining; but let us confine ourselves to the word alienate. To alienate is to give or to sell. Now, a being who become the salve of another does not give oneself; one sells oneself, at the least for one’s subsistence: but for what does a people sell itself? A king is so far from furnishing one’s subjects with their subsistence that one gets one’s own only from them; and, kings do not live on nothing. Do subjects then give their persons on condition that the king takes their goods also? I fail to se what they have left to preserve. It will be said that the despot assures one’s subjects civil tranquility. Granted; but what do they gain, if the wars one’s ambition brings down upon them, one’s insatiable avidity, and the vexatious conduct of one’s ministers press harder on them than their own dissension would have done? If the very tranquility they enjoy is one of their miseries, what do they gain? Tranquility is found also in dungeons; but is that enough to make them desirable places to live in? The Greeks imprisoned in the cave of the Cyclops lived there very tranquilly, while they were awaiting to be devoured. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

To say that a human gives oneself gratuitously, is to say what is absurd and inconceivable; such an act is null and illegitimate, from the mere fact that one who does it is out of one’s mind. To say the same of a whole people is to suppose a people of madmen; and madness creates no right. Even if each being could alienate oneself, one could not alienate one’s children: they are born human and free; their liberty belongs to them, and no one but they have the right to dispose of it. Before they come to years of discretion, the father can, in their name, lay down conditions for their preservation and well-being, but one cannot give them irrevocably and without conditions: such a gift is contrary to the ends of nature, and exceeds the rights of paternity. It would therefore be necessary, in order to legitimise an arbitrary government, that in every generation the people should be in a position to accept or reject it; but, were this so, the governed would be no longer arbitrary. To renounce liberty is to renounce being a human, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties. For one who renounces everything no indemnity is possible. Such a renunciation is incompatible with human’s nature; to remove all liberty form one’s will is to remove all morality from one’s acts. Finally, it is an empty and contradictory convention that sets up, on the one side, absolute authority, and, on the other, unlimited obedience. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

Is it not clear that we can be under no obligation to a person from whom we have the right to exact everything? Does not this condition alone, in the absence of equivalence or exchange, in itself involve the nullity of the act? For what right can my slave have against me, when all that he has belongs to me, and, his right being mine, this right of mine against myself is a phrase devoid of meaning? War is found in another origin for the so-called right of slavery. The victor having, as they hold, the right of killing the vanquished, the latter can buy back one’s life at the price of one’s liberty; and this convention is the more legitimate because it is to the advantage of both parties. However, what is clear that this supposed right to kill the conquered is by no means deducible from the sate of war. Humans, from the mere fact that, while they are living in their primitive independence, they have no mutual relations stable enough to constitute either the state of peace or the state of war, cannot be naturally enemies. War is constituted by a relation between things, and not between persons; and, as the state of war cannot arise out of simple personal relations, but only out of real relations, private way, or war of human with human, can exist neither in the state of nature, where there is no constant property, nor in the social state, were everything is under the authority of the laws. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

Individual combats, duels and encounters, are acts which cannot constitute a state; while the private wars, authorised by the Establishments of Louis IX, King of France, and suspended by the Peace of God, are abuses of feudalism, in itself an absurd system if ever there was one, and contrary to the principles of natural right and to all good polity. War then is a relation, not between human and human, but between State and State, and individuals are enemies only accidentally, not as humans, nor even as citizens, but as soldiers; not as members of their country, but as its defenders. Finally, each State can have for enemies only other States, and not humans; for between things disparate in nature there can be no real relation. Furthermore, this principle is in conformity with the established rules of all times and the constant practice of all civilised peoples. Declarations of war are intimations less to powers than to their subjects, without declaring way on the prince, is not an enemy, but a brigand. Even in real war, a just prince, while laying hands, in the enemy’s country, on all that belongs to the public, respects the lives and goods of individuals: he respects rights on which his own are founded. The object of the war being the destruction of the hostile State, the other side has a right to kill its defenders, while they are bearing arms. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

However, as soon as its defenders lay down their arms and surrender, the hostile State sees that they cease to be its enemies or instruments enemy, and become once more merely humans, whose lives no one has any right to take. Sometimes it is possible to kill the State without killing a single one of its members; and war gives no right to which is not necessary to the gaining of its object. These principles are not based on the authority of poets, but derived from the nature of reality and based on reason. The right of conquest has no foundation other than the right of the strongest. If war does not give the conqueror the right t massacre the conquered peoples, the right to enslave them cannot be based upon a right which does not exist. No one has a right to kill an enemy except when one cannot make one a slave, and the right to enslave one cannot therefore be derived from the right to kill one. It is accordingly an unfair exchange to make one buy at the price of one’s liberty one’s life, over which the victor holds no right. It is not clear that there is a vicious circle in founding the right of life and death on the right of slavery, and the right slavery on the right of life and death? Even if we assume this terrible right to kill everybody, I maintain that a slave made in war, or a conquered people, is under no obligation to a master, expect to obey one as far as he is compelled to do so. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

By taking an equivalent for one’s life, the victor has not done one a favour; instead of killing one without profit, one has killed one usefully. So far then is one from acquiring over one any authority in addition to that of force, that the state of war continues to subsist between them: their mutual relation is the effect of it, and the usage of the right ward does not imply a treaty of peace. A convention has indeed been made; but this convention, so far from destroying the state of war, presupposes its continuance. So, from whatever aspect we regard the question, the right of slavery is null and void, not only as being illegitimate, but also because it is absurd and meaningless. The words slave and right contradict each other, and are mutually exclusive. It will always be equally foolish for a being to say to a being or to people: “I make with you a convention wholly at your expense and wholly to my advantage; I shall keep it as long as I like, and you will keep it as long as I like.” The question of the origins of inequality is only half of the problem of a sophisticated Marxist philosophy of history. The other half is that Rousseau’s argument with Hobbes has never been satisfactorily settled. The Marxists have said, with Rousseau, that because human nature is a blank slate, neutral, even good; evil exists because of social institutions that encourage it. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

Evil also exists because of social classes and the hate, envy, competition, degradation, and scapegoating that stem from them; change society and human’s natural goodness will flower. Not so, say the conservatives, and they point for proof at those revolutionary societies which have abolished social class but which continue to express personal and social evil; evil, then must be in the heart of the creature; the best that social institutions can do is keep it blunted; and social institutions that already effectively do this without excessive repression and within legal safeguards for individual rights—why, such social institutions should not be changed. So argue the conservatives. This question has been the central one of science of human, and as such the knottiest in its whole career; thus it is logical that it is the last problem to be solved. I myself have been coming back to it again and again for a dozen years now, and each time I thought there was a clear solution I later discovered that vital things had been left unsaid. At first it seemed to me that Rousseau had already won the argument with Hobbes: had he said that evil is a robust child? Then, as Rousseau argued, children are clumsy, blustering organisms who must take some toll of their environment, who see activity and self-expansion in an innocent way, but who cannot yet control themselves. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

Their intentions are not evil, even if their acts cause damage. In this view, humans are an energy-converting organism who must exert one’s manipulative powers, who must damage one’s World in some ways, who must make it uncomfortable for others, excreta, by one’s own nature an active being. One seeks self-expansion from a very uncertain power base. Even if humans hurt others, it is because one is weak and afraid, not because one is confident and cruel. Only the strong person can be ethical, not the weak one. Hate and violent aggression could be developed in humans as a special kind of cultural orientation, something people learned to do in order to be big and important—as some primitive tribes learned warfare and won social esteem because of their cruelty to enemies, excreta. It was not that humans had instincts of hate and aggression, but rather that one could easily be molded in that way by the society which rewarded them. The thing that characterized humans is one’s need for self-esteem, and one would do anything one’s society wanted in order to earn it. From this point of view, even scapegoating and the terrible toll it has taken historically seemed to be explainable in terms of the thing that humans wanted most was to be part of a close and loving ingroup, to feel at peace and harmony with others of one’s kind. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

And to achieve this intimate identification it was necessary to strike at strangers, pull the group together by focusing it on an outside target. The sacrificial ravages of the Nazis could be approached in terms of neutral motives or even altruistic ones: love, harmony, unity. Eichmann was a simple bureaucrat who wanted only to be admired and rewarded for a job efficiently done and wielded his rubber stamp on the death of millions with the nonchalance of a postal clerk. We could even, as we have seen, subsume this under the Agape motive: humans want to merge with a larger whole, have something to dedicate one’s existence to in trustfulness and in humility; one wants to serve the cosmic powers. The most noble human motive, then, would cause the greatest damage because it would lead people to find their highest use as part of an obedient mass, to give their complete devotion and their lobes to their leaders. It is not aggressive drives that have taken the greatest toll in history, but rather unselfish devotion, hyper-dependence combined with suggestibility. Humans are less driven by adrenalin than one is drugged by symbols, by cultural belief systems, by abstractions like flags and anthems: Wars are fought for words. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

Much of aggression is due to the way children are brought up and the kind of life experiences people have. On this view, the most twisted and vicious people are those who have been most deprived, most cheated of love, warmth, self-realization. Dr. Strangelove would be the paradigm of the kind of mechanical coldness and life frustration which leads to World destruction. Again, this is a pure Marxist view: changing the life-denying institutions of modern society would enable a new type of human being to take shape. The hope of the Enlightenment in its full development is to show clinically what prevents self-reliant humans. This has been the burden—to argue for the ideal of autonomy while showing precisely what hinders it in the interplay of the individual psychology and society. In this way the whole historical problem of slavishness is attacked. People were always ready to yield their wills, to worship the hero, because they were not given a chance for developing initiative, stability, and independence. Humans are still a tool of others because one has not developed self-reliance, full and independent insides. In this way can human get some kind of even keel, some sort of inner gyroscope that will keep one from alternating eternally between the poles of sadism and masochism. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

Still, holiness and edification in all lands would not be perfect joy. Nor would a great ministry of healing and raising the dead. Nor would possession of all languages and all science, nor all understanding of prophecy and Scripture, and insight into the secrets of every soul. Nor would even the conversion of all unbelievers to faith in Christ! Perfect joy is wherein when they come to their quarters—dirty, wet, and exhausted from hunger—they are rejected, repeatedly, rebuffed, and finally driven away by force, then if we accept such injustice, such cruelty, and such contempt with patience, without being ruffled and without murmuring, and if we bear all these injuries with patience and joy, thinking of all the sufferings of our Blessed Lord, which we would share out of love for God, here, finally, is perfect joy. Giving and forgiving are of course central to the divinely restricted life, as we take on the character truly suited to the human soul. Even from one’s strictly humanistic perspective, the most widespread misunderstanding is that which assumes that giving is giving up something, being deprived of, sacrificing. People whose main orientation is a non-productive one feel giving as an impoverishment; the virtue of giving, to them, is possessed in the very act of acceptance of sacrifice. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

This certainly fits in with the purely negative understanding of self-denial discussed above. In fact, it has become a part of our ethical culture. For the productive character giving has an entirely different meaning. Giving is the highest expression of potency. In the very act of giving I experience my strength, my wealth, my power. The experience of heightened vitality fills me with joy. I experience myself as overflowing, spending, alive, hence as joyous. Giving is more joyous than receiving, not because it is a deprivation, but because in the act of giving is possessed the expression of my aliveness. The apostle Paul wrote the entire sixth chapter of Romans to answer the question, “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?’ Why did he have to deal with such a question? What had he said to even raise the issue? His whole teaching to that point in Romans was that justification is by faith in Jesus Christ alone, culminating in his sweeping statement in Romans 5.20: “But where sin increased, grace increased all the more.” Paul realized his unqualified presentation of the grace of God left him open to being misunderstood. Paul himself knew that his insistence on the pure grace of God without any admixture of commitment or discipline or obedience on our part could cause us to misunderstand him. He knew his readers could respond with this attitude: “Well, if that is true, let us go out and sin all we want. The more we sin, the more we cause God’s grace to abound.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

This type of response is always a possibility. In fact, if our concept of grace does not expose us to that possibility. In fact, if our concept of grace does not expose us to that possible misunderstanding, then we do not thoroughly understand grace. I believe it is because we are afraid of this attitude that we often change the doctrine of grace into a doctrine of works. “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?” The true preaching of the gospel of salvation by grace alone always leads to the possibility of this charge being brought against it. There is no better test as to whether a person is really preaching the New Testament gospel of salvation that this, that some people might misunderstand it and misinterpret it to mean that it really amounts to this, that because you are saved by grace alone it does not matter at all what you do; you can go on sinning as much as you like because it will be redound all the more to the glory of grace. Obviously this does not mean that we should try to confuse people with our presentation of the gospel. However, the presentation of salvation by grace alone, apart from any preconditions on the part of our hearers, leaves us open to the possibility that people may charge us with saying, “It does not matter what you do; sin as much as you like.” But you know doing evil does not result in good, and that one’s condemnation is deserved. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

The grace of salvation is the same grace by which we live the Christian life. We have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. We are not only justified by grace through faith, we stand every day in this same grace. And just as the preaching of jusitification by grace is open to misunderstanding, so is the teaching of living by grace. The solution to this problem is not to add legalism to grace. Rather, the solution is to be so gripped by the magnificence and bondless generosity of God’s grace that we respond out of gratitude rather than out of a sense of duty. “And if they perish it will be like unto the Jaredites, because of the willfulness of their hearts, seeking for blood and revenge. My son, be faithful in Christ; and may not the things which I have written grieve thee, to weigh thee down unto death; but may Christ lift thee up, and may his suffering and death, and the showing his body unto our fathers, and his mercy and long-suffering, and the hope of his glory and of eternal life, rest in your mind forever. And may the grace of God the Father, whose throne is high in the Heavens, and our Lord Jesus Christ, who sitteth on the right hand of his power, until all thing shall become subject unto him, be, and abide with your forever. Amen,” reports Moroni 9.23 and 25-26. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

Show the light of Thy countenance upon us, O Lord, that the going-forth of Thy word may give light and understanding, to nourish the hearts of the simple; and that while our desire is set on Thy commandments, we may receive with open heart the Spirit of wisdom and understanding. O God, with Whom if the well of life, and in Whose light we see light; increase in us, we beseech Thee, the brightness of Divine knowledge, whereby we may be able to reach Thy plenteous fountain; impart to our thirsting souls the draught of life, we restore to our darkened minds the light from Heaven. Bless God, ten thousand snares are mine without and within, defend thou me; when sloth and indolence seize me, give me views of Heaven; when sinners entice me, give me disrelish of their ways; when sensual pleasures tempt me, purify and refine me; when I desire Worldly possessions, help me to be rich toward thee; when the vanities of the World ensnare me, let me not plunge into new guilt and ruin. May I remember the dignity of my spiritual release, never be too busy to attend to my soul, never be so engrossed with time that I neglect the things of eternity; thus may I not only live, but grow towards thee. For my mind to right notions of religion, that I may not judge of grace by wrong conceptions, not measure my spiritual advances by the efforts of my natural being. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

May I seek after an increase of divine love to thee, after unreserved resignation to they will, after extensive benevolence to my fellow creatures, after patience and fortitude of soul, after a Heavenly disposition after a concern that I may please thee in public and private. Draw on my soul the lineaments of Christ, in every trace and feature of which thou wilt take delight, for I am thy workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, thy letter written with the Holy Spirit’s pen, thy tilled soil ready for the sowing, then harvest. We have paid, and are still paying, a heavy price for our comfortable conviction that the philosophic illuminate is a fool, to whom it is unnecessary to pay serious attention. It is such people who ought to be made, not the leaders of humankind, but the counsellors to the leaders. A single meeting with the self-actualized brings forth our involuntary respect. A long association with one brings forth our loving devotion also. If anyone brings one homage or reverence one takes it, not to oneself but to the Unseen Higher Power of God, before whom one lays it. Most people make their appeal t authority and are constantly at pains to quote letter and script for their words; others will gaze into their own glasses of vision and report upon the reflections of Truth that they descry within: but the illuminated one live the life and so declare only that which they have experience themselves; indeed what they say comes as form on high for us. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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February 14, 2020 1:55 am

Some people drink at the fountain of knowledge while others just gargle. When you use your sense of humor, be sure that you use your sense as well as your humor. What can we say fundamentally about the nature of being? And the answer is nothing in terms of a definition, but something in terms of metaphorical indication. The concept of power for this purpose: Being is the power of being! Power, however, presupposed, even in the metaphorical use of the word, something over which it proves its power. The dynamic self-affirmation of life is overcoming internal and external resistance. By what measures can people judge in reality which is unseen and not in illusion, the moral rectitude of a being who has been sent among them with a mission, who has not only secretly dissolved one’s human “I” but has secretly taken and faithfully kept the self-actualized person’s vows? The vast reticence of such a being will be respected by those who are sensitive but may infuriate those who are not. Because of the many seeming contradictions in one’s nature one may be much misunderstood by others. Humanity venerates the memory of these prophets, but in decreasing degree. For they incarnate values, attainments, and qualities which most people feel are far above any likelihood of their own coming even remotely near. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

Contrary to common belief, the illuminate is not a joyless griefless human who has crushed all human affection, sterilized all human feelings, sunk oneself in physical inertia, and habituated oneself to insensitivity toward the sufferings of others. Such a being cannot be really known by those who have not themselves touched one’s height; part of one—the most important and precious part—must always remain an inscrutable stranger to them. To one observer such a being seems to live inside oneself, to another outside oneself. To the first, one is held fast to some internal power; to the second, one is constantly practising self-identification with others. One’s followers expect too much from one, perhaps because they credit one with powers far beyond what one does possess. This leads to a measure of disappointment. If others think one aloof, cold, even unsympathetic, they may go further and misunderstand the individual. One is not shut stonily in one’s ego, as they think, but on the contrary, is much freer from it than they are. It is possible that one’s actions sometimes puzzle those who put their trust in one. Those who judge only by appearances may be surprised and aggrieved at one’s seeming indifference. However, with the efflux of time they may get to know more or all the facts, and then their puzzlement will vanish. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

They come to inspect the great soul, as if they could really see one. They bring out heir measuring equipment and pronounce verdict on one’s littleness or greatness. Their opinion is based on an appearance that is a possible illusion. Just as Pythagoras and Sokrates were maligned and even put to death by those who either misunderstand or misrepresented their teachings, so Epicurus, another Greek, has been maligned ever since one’s own time, although one fortunately died a natural death. Incidentally, he died of the stone. It could be that there was an excess of calcium in his body and that it had got concentrated in the wrong place, producing the stone in the bladder or the kidney—for he tried to live a simple life and ate only barely, bread, and cheese and drank only water. There was probably an excess of cheese in his diet, producing the excess of calcium. However, it is supposed that he preached heathenism, the pursuit of pleasure and enjoyment as being the highest good, but the truth is, as demonstrated by his simple life, that he was an ascetic. Epicurus did not believe in cluttering himself up with a lot of possession and he sought the freedom from anxiety which this gave him. The freedom from those desires for luxuries and comforts which fill most people left him with a serene mind. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

This serenity was enjoyable and pleasant; so what one meant by pleasure was a pleasure of living the good life, not the pleasure of living the terrestrial life. However, if Epicurus is to be judged by his diet, his philosophy was incomplete and imbalanced. Because he ever practices calmness, other persons may think of him to be indifferent to them, to what is happening, and to one’s own actions, as if he were performing them somewhat casually; but in this they would be mistaken. For the detachment within Epicurus was possessed deep down and consisted in a general attitude towards Worldly life based upon knowledge, understanding, philosophy. He was not heedless but attentive, not unresponsive but touched by situations calling for sympathy, not neutral where right or wrong are concerned, not neglectful of duties and responsibilities, not careless in work but carefree. When it comes, suffering is real and painful. The self-actualized is not heartless to its appearance in other people, but understands it somewhat better than they do. Such a being has enigma and paradox between one and the World’s understanding. It is easy for the populace to be deceived by one’s unassuming manners and unpretentious speech into thinking one to be anything but what one really is. One and the same Master will appear to one’s followers as an incarnation of God, but to the Worldly as a wise lunatic, if not a fraud. None of these views may be correct. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

Although the self-actualized can understand the points of view of the unwise, the ignoramus, the Worlding and the bigot, they cannot understand one’s own. When one’s name is vilified, it is the wise guidance of God which persuades such a being to walk indifferently, and when one’s character is slandered, to hold one’s tongue. Those who do not understand and appreciate this great control of feeling, and especially those who are highly emotional themselves, will see one merely from the outside and consequently misunderstand one’s character. They will consider one to be a cold, shut-in type. The World will assess one’s motives at the lowest level, interpret one’s actions in the basest way. If one were to let it rot in its own ignorance, one would be well justified. To evaluate the work and word of these beings is to judge by appearances alone. For there is in both an incalculable element, a hidden worth. The initiate does not waste one’s time in arguing with others, either to attack their beliefs or defend one’s Own. If one seems outwardly distant and indifferent, we should understand that one’s distance and one’s indifference are not egoistic, and consequently are worthy of close examination and deep study. They contain a mystery as well as a paradox. For in one’s heart there flows, side by side, both a pure love for humanity and an utter detachment from humanity. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

It is in the very nature of one’s attainment of a true philosopher’s status that one should be able to fulfill oneself only by going beyond all selves—ours as well as one’s own. The World should be more grateful for the presence of such people. The good they do is mostly indirect, however, through intermediaries, or mostly hidden because psychological, so it escapes the World’s notice. Light the lamps and it will spread out its rays by itself. We are indeed blessed by the presence of these great souls on this Earth and doubly so if we meet in person. They deserve not merely our respect but our veneration. However, even if we are never fortunate enough to meet one of these masters, the mere knowledge that such beings do exist and live demonstrates the possibility of spiritual achievement and proves that the quest is no chimera. It should comfort and encourage us to know this. Therefore we should regard such a being as one of humanity’s precious treasures. We should venerate one’s sayings or writings as whispers out of the eternal silence. However, if everything that is participate in it, we must ask, what can resist the power of being? If all possible places are established by the power of being, where is the ontological place of that which the power of being is able to overcome. What can that be which is conquered by the power of being is non-being. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

It is an old answer, given in the myth long before the dawn of philosophy, repeated in rational terms by philosophers in all cultures and centuries, brought to a renewed attention in our time by the leading Existentialist philosophers. However, if one tries to relate to that answer that the power of being is conquered by non-being, one must be aware that one has touched at the basic mystery of existence and that one has no chance to explain the riddle of non-being in terms which do not bear in themselves the scars of non-being, namely the language of the paradox. Nobody can fail to ask the question: How can non-being have the power to resist being? Does it not appear in such a statement as a part of being itself, and if so, is it not swallowed up into being, so that the metaphor “power of being” become meaningless? It is understandable that the analytic logic of our time becomes impatient if such language is used and speaks of meaningless sentences. However, if it becomes impatient with present-day ontology it must become impatient with all ontology and reject the works of almost all philosophers of past and present. And that is what logical affirmations have done. However, such a procedure does not defeat philosophers of the past. It defeats those who try to defeat them. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

The answer to the question how non-being can resist the power of being, can only be that non-being is not foreign to being, but that it is that quality of being by which everything that participates in being is negated. Non-being is the negation of being within being itself. Each of these words is, of course, used metaphorically. However, metaphorical language can be true language, pointing to something that is both revealed and hidden in this language. Being which includes non-being is finite being. “Finite” means carrying within one’s being the destiny not to be. It designates a limited power of being, limited between a beginning and an end, between non-being before and non-being after. This, however, is only a part of the answer. The other part must explain why in the balance of being and non-being, being prevails. The answer is both logical and existential. Logically (and linguistically) it is obvious that non-being after. This, however, is only a part of the answer. The other part must explain why in the balance of being and non-being, being prevails. The answer is both logical and existential. Logically (and linguistically) it is obvious that non-being is possible only as the negation of being. Being logically precedes non-being. That which is and comes to an end logically precedes the end. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

The negative “lives” by the absolute it negates. However, these answers, evident as they are, do not satisfy the question of the prevalence of being over non-being. Could one not speak of a balance in which neither prevails? To this only an existential answer is possible. It is what one has called the answer of faith or courage. Courage, and that in faith which is courage, affirms the ultimate prevalence of being over non-being. It affirms the presence of the infinite in everything finite. And a theology which is based on such a courage tries to show that, as non-being is dependent on the being it negates, so the awareness of finitude presupposes a place above finitude from which the finite is seen as finite. However, the act in which the place is occupied is courage and not reasoning. Every being affirms its own being. Its life is its self-affirmation—even if its self-affirmation has the form of self-surrender. Every being resists the negation against itself. The self-affirmation of a being is correlate to the power of being it embodies. It is greater in humans than in animals and in some people greater than in others. A life process is the more powerful, the more non-being it can include in its self-affirmation, without being destroyed by it. The neurotic can include only a little non-being, the average person a limited amount, the creative being a large amount, God-symbolically speaking—an infinite amount. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

The self-affirmation of a being in spite of non-being is the expression of its power of being. Power is the possibility of self-affirmation is spite of internal and external negation. It is the possibility of overcoming non-being. Human power is the possibility of humans to overcome non-being infinitely. In several places in this history of philosophy, notably in the Platonic school, degrees of being have been spoken of. This concept is difficult and highly controversial. It appears to be meaningless if being is identified with existence in time and space. There are no degrees in existing, but an either-or. If, however, being is described as the power of being, the idea of degrees of being loses its difficulty. There are, certainly, degrees in the power of being, namely in the power of taking non-being into one’s own self-affirmation. I tried years ago to describe the process of change as it is inwardly experienced by the client in a person-centered therapy with a male therapist: “I am afraid of the therapist. I want help, but I do not know whether to trust him. He might see things which I do not know in myself—frightening and bad elements. He seems not to be judging me, I am sure he is. I cannot tell him what really concerns me, but I can tell hum about some past experiences that relate to my concerns. He seems to understand those, so I can reveal a bit more of myself. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

“However, not that I have shard with him some of this bad side of me, he despises me. I am sure of it, but it is strange I can find little evidence of it. Do you suppose that what I have told him is not so bad? It is possible that I need not be ashamed of it as a part of me? I no longer feel that he despises me. It makes me feel that I want to go further, exploring me, perhaps expressing more of myself. I find him a sort of companion as I do this—he seems really to understand. However, not I am getting frightened again, and this time deeply frightened I did not realize that exploring the unknown recesses of myself would make me feel feelings I have never experienced before. It is very strange because in one way these are not new feelings. I sense that they have always been there. However, they seem so bad and disturbing I have never dared to let them flow in me. And now as I live these feelings in the hours with him, I feel terribly shaky, as though my World is falling apart. It used to be sure and firm. Now it is loose, permeable and vulnerable. It is not pleasant to feel things I have always been frightened of before. It is his fault. Yet curiously I am eager to see him and I feel more safe when I am with him. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

“I do not know who I am any more, but something when I feel things I seem solid and real for a moment. I am troubled by the contradictions I find in myself—I act one way and feel another—I think one thing and feel another. It is very disconcerting. It is also sometimes adventurous and exhilarating to be trying to discover who I am. Sometimes I catch myself feeling that perhaps the person I am is worth being, whatever that means. I am beginning to find it very satisfying, though often painful, to share just what it is I am feeling at this moment. You know it is really helpful to try to listen to myself, to heart what is going on it me. I am not so frightened any more of what is going on in me. It seems pretty trustworthy. I use some of my hours with him to dig deep into myself to know what I am feeling. It is scary work, but I want to know. And I do trust him most of the time, and that helps. I feel pretty vulnerable and raw, but I know he does not want to hurt me, and I even believe he cares. It occurs to me as I try to let myself down and down, deep int myself, that maybe if I could sense what is going on in me, and could realize its meaning, I would know who I am, and would also know what to do. At least I feel this knowing sometimes with him. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

“I can even tell him just how I am feeling toward him at any given moment, and instead of this killing the relationship, as I used to fear, it seems to deepen it. Do you suppose I could be my feelings with other people also? Perhaps that would not be too dangerous either. You know, I feel as if I am floating along on the current of life very adventurously, being me. I get defeated sometimes, I get hurt sometimes, but I am learning that those experiences are not fatal. I do not know exactly who I am, but I can feel my reactions at any given moment, and they seem to work out pretty well as a basis for my behaviour from moment to moment. Maybe this is what it means to be me. However, of course I can only do this because I feel safe in the relationship with my therapist. Or could I be myself this way outside of this relationship? I wonder. I wonder. Perhaps I could.” The initial element in a great friendship is a mutuality of soul. People are sometimes able to become one spirit. Their souls will be bound together. This type of bonding usually happens when people view life from the same divine perspective (God is sovereign and does as He pleases, and all of life is to be lived from Him). And when people see this, their soul reflexively clings to someone else’s. Here is a person with a heart that beats with one’s own heart. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

This is the way it is with deep friendships. It is not that friends think alike on everything. Often it is quite the opposite. However, they do share the same Worldview and approach to life. And this is why a Christian friendship exceeds anything that exists between nonbelievers—for such a friendship is founded on a supernatural mutuality of soul. They Holy Spirit makes your souls chorus the same cries. You assent to the same authority. You know the same God. You are going the same way. You long for the same things. You dream mutual dreams. Mutuality of soul is followed by love. as the next phrase indicates—and one is able to love their friend as one loves oneself. This is an amazing statement because of its immediacy. This type of love does not develop in a month or even a day, but in a flash. It is usually because your kind soul meets such a deep need in another person’s—”At last I have found someone who lives like me!” When one is able to love oneself, in doing so one is also able to love one’s neighbor as oneself—and thus fulfilling the Law of God. His love would pay great dividends because honest, unselfish love has an irresistible drawing power. You will one day also be drawn to the same love. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

The same tone applies to Jesus’ teaching about who can be his disciple or apprentice. This too is put in very shocking language: “If you come to me,” he said, “and do not prefer me over (do not hate) your own father, mother, wife, children, brothers and sisters—yes, and your very own life (soul)—you cannot be my apprentice,” reports Luke 14.26. And then he uses an absolutely shocking image—one all too familiar to his hearers, but rather hard for us fully to appreciate today. It was that of a man carrying on hi back the lumber that would be used to kill him when he arrived at the place of execution. “Whoever does not come after me carrying one’s own cross cannot be my apprentice,” reports Luke 14.27. The cross is an instrument of death, of “losing your life.” The teaching here is exactly the same as in the statements about losing and finding our lives. It is one of comparative costs, as the verses that follow in Luke 14 show. Those who are not genuinely convinced that the only real bargain in life is surrendering ourselves to Jesus and his cause, abandoning all that we love to him and for him, cannot learn the other lessons Jesus has to teach us. They cannot proceed to anything like total spiritual transformation. Not that he will not let us, but that we simply cannot succeed. If I tell you that you cannot drive a BMW M760Li automobile unless you can see, I am not saying I will not let you, but that you cannot succeed even if I do. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

Still, from within the life that remains “lost” to God, the teaching of the Cross and of abandoning all that is “first” in ordinary human life seems repulsive and impossible. And it has often been disastrously misinterpreted, resulting in the destruction, not the renovation, of the human heart and life. It remains a dangerous half-truth if left to stand on its own. It is a negation that in practice can only rest on an affirmation. “Brethren, do not be children in your thinking; be babes in evil, but in thinking be mature,” 1 Corinthians 14.20. In thinking be mature! Such an admonition one would hardly expect in the context of apostolic writing. However, here it is, appearing in the same letter of Paul in which he contrasts sharply the wisdom of the World with that foolishness of God that is wiser than the wisdom of humans. And he points to the fact that not many wise humans belong to the ranks of the congregation, but that God has chosen what is foolish in the World. Maturity on the basis of divine foolishness—this is hard to understand—not only for the first readers of the letter to the Corinthians, but for all generations of Christians and non-Christians in the history of Christianity. In some way, the whole problem of the possibility of Christian existence is implied in this combination of divine foolishness and humanity. However, perhaps it is not only the problem of the possibility of Christian existence; perhaps it is the problem of human existence as such—how to unite divine foolishness with human maturity. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

From the distinct rights, one of punishing crimes for restraint, and preventing the like offense, which right of punishing is in every body; the other of taking reparation, which belongs only to the injured party, comes to pass the magistrate, who by being magistrate hath the common right of punishing put into one’s hands, can often, where the public good demands not the execution of law, remit the punishment of criminal offenses by one’s own authority, but yet cannot remit the satisfaction due to any private being for the damage one has received. That, one who has suffered the damage has a right to demand in one’s own name, and one alone can remit: the damnified person has this power of appropriating to oneself the goods or service of the offender, by right of self-preservation, as every being has, in the state of nature, has a power to kill a murderer, both to deter others from doing like injury, which no reparation can compensate, by the example of the punishment that attends it from everybody, and also to secure beings from the attempts of a criminal, who having renounced reason, the common rule and measure God hath given to humankind, hath, by the unjust violence and slaughter one hath committed upon one, declared war against all humankind. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

And therefore, because one has declared war against all humankind, one may be destroyed as a lion or a tyger, one of those wild savage beasts, with whom human can have no society nor security: and upon this grounded that the great law of nature, Whoso sheddeth human’s blood, by human shall one’s blood be shed. And Cain was so fully convinced, that every one had a right to destroy such a criminal, that after the murder of his brother, he cries out, Everyone that findeth me, shall slay me; so plain was it writ in the hearts of all humankind. The fact is, of course, God is gracious and generous to all who are his children. God is not only sovereign, but He also dispenses His grace to people who do not even feel or know they deserve it. God is fully of gracious generosity. The Bible is full of God’s promises to provide for us spiritually and materially, to never forsake us, to give us peace in times of difficult circumstances, to cause all circumstances to work together for our good, and finally to bring us safely home to glory. Not one of those promises is dependent upon our performance. Hey are all dependent on the grace of God given to us through Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul wrote, “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ. And so through him the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God,” reports 2 Corinthians 1.20. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

O God, Who art One and True, we humbly beseech Thee that the Catholic Faith, which is acceptable to Thee, may continue for ever in us all; through Jesus Christ our Lord. “For behold that all little children are alive in Christ, and also all they that are without the law. For the power of redemption cometh on all them that have no law; wherefore, one that is not condemned, or one that is under no condemnation, cannot repent; and unto such baptism availeth nothing—but it is mockery before God, denying the mercies of Christ, and the power of his Holy Spirit, and putting trust in dead works. Behold, my son, this thing ought not to be; for repentance is unto them that are under condemnation and under the curse of a broke law. And the first fruits of repentance is baptism; and baptism cometh by faith unto the fulfilling the commandments; and the fulfilling the commandments brings the remission of sins. And the remission of sins bringeth meekness, and lowliness of heart; and because of meekness and lowliness of heart cometh the visitation of the Holy Ghost, which Comforter filleth with hope and perfect love, which love endureth by diligence unto the prayer, until the end shall come, when all the saints shall dwell with God,” reports Moroni 8.22-26. O Holy Father, thou hast freely given thy Son, O Divine Son, thou hast freely paid my debt, O Eternal Spirit, thou hast freely bid me come, O Triune God, thou dost freely grace me with salvation. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

Prayers and tears could not suffice to pardon my sins, nor anything less than atoning blood, but my believing is my receiving, for a thankful acceptance is no paying of the debt. What didst thou see in me? than I a poor, ailing, despised sinner should be clothed in thy bright glory? that a creeping worm should be advanced to this high state? that one lately groaning, weeping, dying, should be as full of joy as my heart can hold? that a being of dust and darkness should be taken like Mordecai from captivity, and set next to the king? should be lifted like Daniel from a den and be made ruler of princes and provinces? Who can fathom immeasurable love? As far as the rational soul exceeds the senses, so does the spirit exceed the rational in its knowledge of thee. Thou hast given me understanding to compass the Earth, measure the Sun, Moon, Stars, Universe, but above all to know thee, the only true God. I marvel that the finite can know the Infinite, here a little, afterwards in full-orbed truth; now I know but a small portion of what I shall know, here in part, there in perfection, here a glimpse, there a glory. To enjoy thee is life eternal, and to enjoy is to know. Keep me in the freedom of experiencing thy salvation continually. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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All We Ask is to be Let Alone—God Made this Country and Humans Made this Town!

February 6, 2020 2:48 am

We do not lose our sense of humour when we get older—we get older when we lose our sense of humour. It is great to be great, but it is greater to be human. “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove,” reports St. Matthew 17.20. Today I want to consider the question of how we—as individuals, as groups, as a culture—will live in, will respond to, will adapt to, this brave new World. What stance will we take in the face of these new developments? Deny and Ignore—one attitude which we can take is to deny that these scientific advances are taking place, and simply take the view that there can be no study of human behaviour which is truly scientific. We can hold that the human being cannot possibly take an objective attitude toward oneself, and that therefore no real science of behaviour can exist. We can say that humans are always a free agent, in some sense that makes scientific study of one’s behaviour impossible. Not long ago, at a conference on the social sciences, curiously enough, I heard a well known economist take just this view. And one of this country’s most noted theologians writes, “In any event, no scientific investigation of past behaviour can become the basis of predictions of future behaviour.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

This attitude of the general public is somewhat similar. Without necessarily denying the possibility of a behavioural science, the being in the street simply ignores the developments which are taking place. To be sure one becomes excited for a time when one hears it said that the Communists have attempted to change the soldiers they have captured, by means of “brainwashing.” One may show a mild reaction of annoyance to these revelations which show how heavily, and in what manipulative fashion, the findings of the behavioural sciences are used by modern industrial corporations. However, by and large one sees nothing in all this to be concerned about, any more than one did in the first theoretical statements that the atom could be split. We may, if we wish, join one in ignoring the problem. We may go further, like the antiquated intellectuals, and looking at the behavioural sciences may declare that “there ain’t no such being.” However, since these reactions do not seem particularly intelligent I shall leave them to describe a much more sophisticated and much more prevalent point of view. Among behavioural scientists it seems to be largely taken for granted that the findings of such science will be used in the prediction and control of human behaviour. Yet most psychologists and other scientists have given little thought to what this would mean. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

An exception to this general tendency is Dr. B.F. Skinner of Harvard who has been quite explicit in urging psychologists to use the powers of control which they have in the interest of creating a better World. In an attempt to show what he means Dr. Skinner wrote a book some years ago entitled Walden Two, in which he gives a fictional account of what he regards as a Utopian community in which the learnings of the behavioural sciences are fully utilized in all aspects of life—marriage, child rearing, ethical conduct, work, play, and artistic endeavour. There are also some writers of fiction who have seen the significance of the coming influence of the behavioural sciences. Aldous Huxley, in his Brave New World, has given a horrifying picture of saccharine happiness in a scientifically managed World, against which humans eventually revolt. George Orwell, in 1984, in which the behavioural sciences are used as instruments of absolute control of individuals so that not behaviour alone but even thought is controlled. The writers of science fiction have also played a role in visualizing for us some of the possible developments in a World where behaviour and personality are as much the subject of science as chemical compounds or electrical impulses. I should like to try to present, as well as I can, a simplified picture of the cultural pattern which emerges if we endeavour to shape human life in terms of the behavioural sciences. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

There is first of all the recognition, almost the assumption, that scientific knowledge is the power to manipulate. We must accept the fact that some kind of control of human affairs is inevitable. We cannot use good sense in human affairs unless someone engages in the design and construction of environmental conditions which affect the behaviour of humans. Environmental changes have always been the condition for the improvement of cultural patterns, and we can hardly use the more effective methods of science without making changes on a grander scale…Sciences has turned up dangerous processes and materials before. To use the facts and techniques of a science of humans to the fullest extent without making some monstrous mistake will be difficult and obviously perilous. It is not time for self-deception, emotional indulgence, or the assumption of attitudes which are no longer useful. The next assumption is that such a power to control is to be used. It is seen as being used benevolently, though we recognize the danger of its being misused. Even if control is used with benevolent intent, it could actually create a nightmare. If such power of the behavioural sciences is used malignantly, the results will be that it will enhance the degree of regulation exercised by a dictatorial government. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

Let us look at some of the elements which are involved in the concept of the control of human behaviour as mediated by the behavioural sciences. What would be the steps in the process by which a society might organize itself so as to formulate human life in terms of the science of humans? First would come the selection of goals. One possible goal is to be assigned to the behavioural technology is this: Let humans be happy, informed, skillful, well-behaved, and productive. Well, what do you say to the design of personalities? Would that interest you? The control of temperament? Give me the specifications, and I will give you the man! What do you say to the control of motivation, building the interests which will make humans most productive and most successful? Does that seem to you fantastic? Yet some of the techniques are available, and more can be worked out experimentally. Think of the possibilities! Let us control the lives of our children and see what we can make of them. What is essentially being said here is that the current knowledge in the behavioural sciences plus that which the future will bring, will enable us to specify, to a degree which today would seem incredible, the kind of behavioural and personality results which we wish to achieve. This is obviously both an opportunity and a very heavy burden. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

The second element in this process would be one which is familiar to every scientist who has worked in the field of applied science. Given the purpose, the goal, we proceed by the method of science—by controlled experimentation—to discover the means to these ends. If for example our present knowledge of the conditions which cause humans to be productive is limited, further investigation and experimentations would surely lead us to new knowledge in the field. And still further work will provide us with the knowledge of even more effective means. The method of science is self-correcting in thus arriving at increasingly effective ways of achieving the purpose we have selected. The third element in the control of human behaviour through the behavioural sciences involves the question of power. As the conditions or methods are discovered by which to achieve our goal, some person or group obtains the power to establish those conditions or use those methods. There has been too little recognition of the problem involved in this. To hope that the power being made available by the behavioural sciences will be exercised by the scientists, or by a benevolent group, seems to me a hope little support by either recent or distant history. It seems far more likely that behavioural scientists, holding their present attitudes, will be in the position of the rocket scientists specializing in guided missiles. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

First they worked devotedly for the aggressor to destroy Russia and the United States. Now depending on who captured them, they work devotedly for Russian in the interest of destroying the United States, or devotedly for the United States in the interest of destroying Russia. If behavioural scientists are concerned solely with advancing their science, it seems most probable that they will serve the purposes of whatever individual or group has the power. However, this is, in a sense a digression. The main point of this view is that some person or group will have and use the power to put into effect the methods which have been discovered for achieving the desired goal. The fourth step in this process whereby a society might formulate its life in terms of the behavioural sciences is the exposure of individuals to the methods and conditions mentioned. As individuals are exposed to the prescribed conditions this leads, with a high degree of probability, to the behavioural which has been desired. People then become productive, if that has been the goal, or submissive, or whatever it has been decided to make them. To give something of the flavour of this aspect of the process as seen by one of its advocates. Now that we know rewarding reinforcement works, and why negative does not, we can be more deliberate and hence more successful, in our cultural design. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

We can achieve a sort of control under which the controlled, though they are following a code much more scrupulously than was ever the case under the old system, nevertheless feel free. They are doing what they want to do, not what they are forced to do. That is the source of the tremendous power of using rewards as a way to reinforce behaviour you want—there is no restraint and no revolt. By a careful design, we control not the final behaviour, but the inclination to behave—the motives, the desires, the wishes. The curious thing is that in that cause the question of freedom never arises. The neurotic, in contrast to the psychotic, cannot help registering with painful accuracy all the thousand little incidents of real life which do not fit in with one’s conscious illusion. Consequently one wavers in one’s self-valuation between feeling great and feeling worthless. At any minute one may shift from one extreme to the other. At the same time that one feels most convinced of one’s exceptional value one may be astonished that anyone takes one seriously. Or at the same time that one feels miserable and down-trodden one may feel furious that anyone should think one in need of help. One’s sensitivity can be compared with that of a person who is sore all over one’s body and flinches at the slightest touch. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

One easily feels hurt, despised, neglected, slighted, and reacts with proportionate vindictive resentment. Here again we see a “vicious circle” at work. While grandiose ideas have a definite reassurance value and afford some support, even though only in an imaginary way, they not only reinforce the tendency to recoil, but through the medium of sensitivity create greater rage and thereby greater anxiety. This is, to be sure, the picture of severe neuroses, but in minor degrees it can also be seen in less serious cases, where it may not even be recognized by the person concerned. On the other hand, however, a sort of lucky circle may start as soon as the neurotic is able to do some constructive work. By this means one’s self-confidence grows, and there is thus less necessity for one’s grandiose ideas. The neurotic’s lack of success—one’s falling behind others in any respect, whether it concern career or marriage, security or happiness—makes one envious of others and thus reinforces the attitude of begrudging envy which has developed from other sources. Several factors may lead one to repress one’s begrudging attitude, factors such as inherent nobility of character, a deep conviction that one has no right to demand anything for oneself, or simply failure to recognise one’s existing unhappiness. However, the more it is repressed the more it may be projected on others, resulting in a sometimes almost paranoid fear that others begrudge one everything. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

If something goof happens to one, a new job, a flattering recognition, a fortunate acquisition, good fortune in a love-relationship, this anxiety may be so great that one feels absolutely uneasy. Hence it may greatly reinforce one’s tendencies to refrain from having anything or getting anywhere. Leaving out all details, the main outlines of the “vicious circle” which develops out of the neurotic striving for power, prestige and possession may roughly indicate as follows: anxiety, hostility, impaired self-esteem; striving for power and the like; enhanced hostility and anxiety; tendency to recoil from competition (with accompanying tendencies toward self-belittling); failures and discrepancies between potentialities and achievements; enhanced grandiose ideas (with fear of envy); enhanced sensitivity (with renewed tendency to recoil); enhanced hostility and anxiety, which starts the cycle all over again. In order, however, to understand fully the role hat envy plays in neuroses, we have to regard it from a more comprehensive viewpoint. The neurotic, whether or not feels it consciously, is not only a very unhappy person indeed, but one does not see any chance of escaping one’s misery. What the outside observer describes as vicious circles developing out of attempts to get reassurance, the neurotic oneself feels as being hopelessly caught in a net. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

As a patient of mine has described it, he feels tied up in a Brooklyn Basement with many doors, and whichever door he opens leads only into new darkness. And all the time he knows that others are walking outside in Sunshine. All because he was looking for love in all the wrong places and ended up at the wrong place at the wrong time. Family secrets are revealed and he learns blood is not always thicker than water! I do not believe that one can understand any severe neurosis without recognizing the paralyzing hopelessness which it contains. Some neurotic persons express their exasperation in no uncertain terms, but in others it is deeply covered by resignation or by a show of optimism. It may be difficult then to see that behind all the odd vanities, demands, hostilities, there is a human being who suffers, who feels excluded from all that makes life desirable, who knows that even if one gets what one wants one cannot enjoy it. When one recognizes the existence of all this hopelessness it should not be difficult to understand what appears to be an excessive aggressiveness or even meanness, unexplainable by the particular situation. A person so shut out from every possibility of happiness would have to be a veritable Angel if one did not feel hatred toward a World one cannot belong to. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

Coming back now to the problem of envy, this gradually developing hopelessness is the basis from which envy is constantly generated. It is not so much an envy of something special, but what is described as Lebensneid, a very general envy of everyone who feels more secure, more poised, more happy, more straightforward, more self-confident. If such a feeling of hopelessness has developed in a person, regardless of whether it is close to one’s awareness or far away, one will attempt to account for it. One does not see it—as the analytical observer does—as the outcome of an inexorable process. Instead one sees it as caused either by others or by oneself. Often one will blame both sources, though usually one or the other is in the foreground. When one puts the blame on others an accusatory attitude results, which may be directed toward fate in general, toward circumstances, or toward special persons: parents, teachers, husband, physician. Neurotic demands on others, as we have pointed out frequently, are to be understood largely from this point of view. It is as if the neurotic thought along these lines: “Since you are all responsible for my suffering, it is your duty to help me, and I have a right to expect it from you.” In so far as one seeks the source of evil in oneself, he feels that one has deserved one’s misery. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

Speaking of the neurotic’s tendency to put the blame on others may give rise to a misunderstanding. It may sound as if one’s accusations were unwarranted. As a matter of fact one has definite good reasons to feel accusatory, because one has indeed been dealt with unfairly, particularly in childhood. However, there are also neurotic elements in one’s accusations: they often take the place of constructive efforts toward beneficial goals and usually they are blind and indiscriminate. They may be directed, for example, toward persons who want to help one and at the same time one may be entirely incapable of feeling and expressing accusations against those persons who really injure one. When the floodtides of evil break across the television screen or wash the pages of print media in what is now called “news,” people roll their eyes helplessly and say, “Why?” They never say “Why?” when something good happens. However, they would if they ever faced up to the reality of the ruined soul. However, they simply cannot deal with the actual content of the human heart, mind, body, social context, and soul. In intellectual circles (and do not we all live there now?) evil, like sin, is a non-category. It is impolite and politically incorrect to speak seriously of it, even if it is the most tragic event that has ever taken place in modern history. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

Some years ago a leading media personality had a high-level conference in Aspen, Colorado USA, on the topic of evil. (Should not that meeting have been held elsewhere? South Los Angeles or Sacramento?) The outcome was that one or two participants out of a large group thought that there was such a thing as evil. However, most were either noncommittal on the point or certain that evil did not exist at all. When you heard their comments it was clear that they simply could not conceptualize the evil to be seen flourishing abundantly around them in the twentieth century. One of the most glaring evidences of the bankruptcy of contemporary ethical thinking is that it cannot deal with evil. A recent proposal to found a field of “Evil Studies” within academia will not be enthusiastically received. We should be very sure that the ruined soul is not one who has missed examination at the end of life. Hell is not an “oops!” or a slip. One does not miss Heaven by a hair, but by constant effort to avoid and escape God. “Outer darkness” is for one who, everything said, wants it, whose entire orientation has slowly and firmly set itself against God and therefore against how the Universe actually is. It is for those who are disastrously in error about their own life and their place before God and humans. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

The ruined soul must be willing to hear of and recognize its own ruin before it can find how to enter a different path, the path of eternal life that naturally leads into spiritual formation in Christlikeness. Spiritual formation is not something that may, or may not, be added to the gift of eternal life as an option. Rather, it is the path that the eternal kind of life “from above” naturally takes. It is the path one must be on if one is to be an eternal kind of life. It is not a project of life enhancement, where the life in question is the usual life of normal human beings—that is, life apart from God. It is, rather, the process of developing a different kind of life, the life of God himself, sustained by God as a new reality in those who have confidence that Jesus is the anointed One, the Son of God. “Believing in him we have life in his name,” reports John 20.31. Those “in Christ”—that is, caught up in his life, in what he is doing, by the inward gift of birth from above—“are of a new making. The ‘old stuff’ no longer matters. It is the new that counts,” reports 2 Corinthians 5.17. Here in this new creation is the radical goodness that alone can thoroughly renovate the heart. “Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which one hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye may become the sons (and daughters) of God; that when he shall appear we shall be like hum, for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as one is pure. Amen,” Moroni 7.48. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

Almighty and everlasting God, Who adornest the sacred body of Thy Church by the confessions of holy Martyrs; grant us, we pray Thee, that both by their doctrines and their pious example, we may follow after what is pleasing in Thy sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Mercifully give us, O Lord, an increasing of faith in Thee; that as it glorifies Thy holy Martyrs who held it fast even unto blood, it may also justify us who follow it in truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord our God, that as we welcome with a temporary service the commemoration of Thy Saints, so we may rejoice in beholding them perpetually; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God of my exodus, great was the joy of Israel’s sons, when Egypt died upon the shore, far greater the joy when the redeemer’s foe lay crushed in the dust. Jesus strides forth as the victor, conqueror of death, hell, and all opposing might; He bursts the bands f death, tramples the powers of darkness down, and lives for ever. He, my gracious surety, apprehended for payment of my debt, comes forth from the prison house of the grave free, and triumphant over sin, Satan, and death. Show me herein the proof that his vicarious offering is accepted, that the claims of justice are satisfied, that the devil’s sceptre is shivered, that one’s wrongful throne is levelled. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

Give me the assurance that in Christ I died, in him I rose, in his life I live, in his victory I triumph, in his ascension I shall be glorified. Adorable redeemer, thou who wast lifted up upon a cross art ascended to highest Heaven. Thou, who as Man of sorrows wast crowned with throns, art now as Lord of life wreathed with glory. Once, no shame more deep than thine, no agony more bitter, no death more cruel. Now, no exaltation more high, no life more glorious, no advocate more effective. Thou art in the triumph BMW M5 leading captive thine enemies behind thee. What more could be done than thou hast done! Thy death is my life, thy resurrection my peace, thy ascension my hope, thy prayers my comfort. Grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord our God, that the examples of Thy Saints may stir us up to a better life, so that we who celebrate their solemnities, may also imitate their actions; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, Who permittest us to celebrate the commemoration of all Thy Saints, grant that we Thy servants may enjoy their fellowship in eternal gladness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Almighty and everlasting God, Who dost enkindle the flame of Thy love in the hearts of the Saints, grant to our minds the same faith and power of love; that as we rejoice in their triumphs, we may profit by their examples; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

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Lord, I Have Done this Sacrificial Service for You, and Now I am in Need of this Special Answer to Prayer!

February 4, 2020 2:37 am

Absence of occupation is not rest, a mind quite vacant is a mind distressed. “The Lord bless thee, and keep thee. The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee,” reports Numbers 6.24. The illumined being gives oneself, the unenlightened one gives one’s possessions. If they are judged by appearances only, the truth of the situation will become reserved, and falsity will appear as truth. That is, the illumined being will seem the most uncharitable. They master’s motive may easily remain unknown to others, especially when one has a mission to fulfill for them, and by this unenlightenment they may just as easily misunderstand one’s actions. If this happens and they turn away from one, an opportunity for their higher growth will be missed. The distorted reading of one’s actions will also cause them to judge one unfairly and incorrectly. One will accept this injustice as part of the price of descending into an evil World where one does not really belong. T expect from such a being at all times and in all places, as both sceptics and followers often expect, a pharisaical propriety of conduct simply shows how little they have comprehended the perfect selflessness and utter purity of one’s character. For they expect ne to behave rigidly according to the patterns of conventional morality, although these are not always sincere or generous or wise. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10

Because one’s guidance must come from within, from one’s diviner consciousness and not from outside, from a society led by its ego consciousness, these will be occasions when one’s actions will not conform to these patterns. And this is so in spite of the fact that one knows well, and obeys where possible, the requirement that one shall set an example to others. One’s nonconformity will then be denounced or misunderstood, reviled or viewed with bewilderment. There are those who lightly appraise such a being’s spiritual worth by the superficial signs which accident throws their way or by the stories gossip brings to their ears. They are wasting their time. To offer no contradiction to false or slanderous statements made by others in their presence about a Spiritual teacher, is silently to consent to such criticism. It is such a being who most serves one’s fellows yet who least receives the recognition of one’s service. This is because humanity fails to understand where its true interests are possessed, what its true goal is, and why it is here at all. One will be the victim on one side of friendly enthusiasts who credit one with powers and adorn one with virtues which one does not possess, and on the other side of prejudiced enemies who malign one with motives and besmirch one with weaknesses which are wholly foreign to one’s temperament. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10

One’s illusionless life may not seem attractive to the mass of people who cannot afford the high cost of truth. Why do so many people stumble over this parable in the Holy Bible, Matthew 20.12-15, about the labours who did less work being paid as much as the one who worked twelve hours, and consider the landowner to be unfair? I believe it is because we Christians instinctively identify with the workers who had worked all day. We place ourselves in their shoes instead of in the shoes of those who worked only one hour. We look at society around us, instead of at Jesus Christ, and we begin to feel pretty good about ourselves. We consider ourselves to be twelve-hour workers, and we expect to be rewarded accordingly. That is the way Peter felt and that is the way many people feel today. I was talking one day with a man whose mother, a faithful servant of God for over forty years, was dying of painful cancer. He said, “After all she has done for God, this is the thanks she gets.” Such a statement sounds irreverent to us, but the man did not intend it to be that way. He simply thought God owed hos mother a better life. He only verbalized what many people feel in their hears. There are other occasions when we remind God of the sacrifices we have made to serve him. “Lord, I have done this sacrificial service for You, and now I am in need of this special answer to prayer.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 10

When we assume such an attitude, we are putting ourselves in the position of the twelve-hour workers. We suggest to God that we deserve this answer to prayer because of our sacrificial service. With such an attitude we may grumble about blessings not received instead of being grateful for those we have received. We need to adopt the attitude of the Roman centurion described in Luke 7. The man sent some of the Jewish elders to Jesus asking Him to come and heal his sick servant. When the elders came to Jesus, they pleaded earnestly with Him: “This man deserves to have you do this, because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue” (verses 4-5). Notice the Jewish elders’ emphasis on deserving. The centurion surely was a remarkable man. He was an officer in the Roman occupation army, yet he served the occupied people by building a synagogue for them. Think of an occupying army in today’s culture and ask yourself how many “enemy” officers would do such a thing. However, the centurion’s attitude about oneself is even more remarkable than one’s deeds. Instead of thinking of what one should receive because of what one deserved, one freely confessed one did not deserve anything. He sent word to Jesus, saying, “I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you” (verses 6-7). #RandolphHarris 4 of 10

The centurion placed oneself in the shoes of the eleventh-hour workers. Because of this he not only experienced the joy of having one’s request granted, but also the added joy of knowing he had received what he did not deserve. He experienced the joy of knowing he had received a gift—not a repayment of a debt. Thus no one chooses in the abstract to go to hell or even to be the kind of person who belongs there. However, their orientation toward self leads them to become the kind of person for whom away-from-God is the only place for which they are suited. It is a place they would, in the end, choose for themselves, rather than come to humble themselves before God and accept who he is. Whether or not God’s will is infinitely flexible, the human will is not. There are limits beyond which it cannot bend back, cannot turn or repent. One should seriously inquire if to live in a World permeated with God and the knowledge of God is something they themselves truly desire. If not, they can be assured that God will excuse them for his presence. They will find their place in the “outer darkness” of which Jesus spoke. However, the fundamental fact about them will not be that they are there, but that they have become people so locked into their own self-worship and denial of God that they cannot want God. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10

A well-known minister of other years used to ask rhetorically, “You say you will accept God when you want to?” And then he would add, “How do you know you will be able to want to when you think you will?” The ultimately lost person is the person who cannot want God. Who cannot want God to be God. Multitudes of such people pass by every day, and pass into eternity. The reason they do not find God is that they do not want him or, at least, do not want him to be God. Wanting God to be God is very different from wanting God to help me. Is it insulting to suggest that someone is or may be lost? That his or her soul is ruined? There are so many fine-looking people all about us! Well, is it insulting to say, in appropriate circumstances, that someone has poor social hygiene and it could be fatal, when you know it to be true? Perhaps treatment depends upon coming to know it. Say it is cancer or worst? No doubt, in our hypersensitive, egotistical age, that could be insulting to some people. However, that merely illustrates the delusional human condition that has been described earlier. If I am god, people should not say such things to me. Lostness is a factual condition of the self, of the ruined soul. You either have it or not, just as you either have or do not have a certain physical disease that can kill you. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10

If you have that condition of lostness, you may not know it. Indeed, it is most likely you will not know it, because it is inherently a condition of self-blindness. You need treatment nevertheless, if you are not to be lost forever; and being informed of your condition and what to do about it can help you find relief. Should I say nothing to you merely because you might find it insulting? I must think more highly of you than that. The reality of evil in the human heart is not something to be ignored or treated lightly. God is supremely immutable, it supremely belongs to Him to be eternal. Nor is He eternal only; but He is His own eternity; whereas, no other being is its own duration, as no other is its own being. Now God is His own uniform being; and hence as He is His own essence, so He is His own eternity. The “now” that stands still, is said to make eternity according to our apprehension. As the apprehension of time is causes in us by the fact that we apprehend the flow of the “now,” so the apprehension of eternity is caused in us by our apprehending “now” standing still. God is the author of eternity, and this is to be understood of participated eternity. For God communicate His eternity to some in the way as He communicates His immutability. God is before eternity, according as it is shared by immaterial substances. That is why intelligence is equal to eternity. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10

In the words of Exodus, “The Lord shall reign for eternity, and beyond,” eternity stands for age, as another rendering has it. Thus it is said that the Lord will reign beyond eternity, inasmuch as He endures beyond every age, for instance, beyond every kind of duration. For age is nothing more than the period of each thing. Or to reign beyond young eternity can be taken to mean that is any other thing were conceived to exist forever, as the movement of the Heavens according to some philosophers, then God would still reign beyond, inasmuch as His reign is simultaneously whole. Eternity is noting else but God Himself. Hence God is not called eternal, and if He were in any way measured; but the idea of measurement is there taken according to the apprehension of our mind alone. Words denoting different times are applied to God, because His eternity includes all times; not as if He Himself were altered through present, past, and future. “And again, behold I say unto you that one cannot have faith and hope, save one shall be meek, and lowly of heart. If so, one’s faith and hope is vain, for none is acceptable before God, save the meek and lowly in heart; and if a human be meek and lowly in heart, and confess by the power of the Holy Ghost that Jesus is the Christ, he must needs have charity; for if her have not charity he is nothing; wherefore he must needs have charity,” reports Moroni 7.43-45. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10

O Lord, the Saviour and Guardian of such as fear Thee, turn away from Thy Church the deceitful allurements of this World’s wisdom; that under the teaching of Thy Spirit, we may find pleasure in the prophetic delineations and the apostolic instructions, rather than in the terms of philosophy; lest the vanity of falsehoods should deceive those whom the teaching of truth illuminates; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Blessed and glorious Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, thanks be to Thee, very and one Trinity, one perfect Godhead. Thee, God the Father Unbegotten; Thee, the Only-begotten Son; Thee, the Holy Spirit the Paraclete; the Holy and Undivided Trinity, do we confess and praise with heart and mouth; to Thee by glory forever Alleluia. O God, the Strength of all Thy Saints, Who hast granted them in Thine abundant bounty the grace to come to their present glory; vouchsafe, we beseech Thee, pardon to our sins, that we may be able worthily to celebrate their solemnities; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God of unsearchable greatness, before thee I am nothing but vanity, iniquity, perishing; sin has forfeited thy favour, stripped me of thy image, banished me from thy presence, exposed me to the curse of thy law; I cannot deliver myself, and am in despair. However, a resource is found in thee, for without my desert or desire thou didst devise an everlasting plan, honourable to thy perfections, and which Angels desired to look into. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10

And the word which announces all the glory of this goodness is nigh me, invite me, beseeches me. May I, a convinced and self-despairing sinner, find Jesus as the power unto salvation, his death the centre of all relief, the source of all gospel-blessings. Help me to repair to that cross, be crucified to the World by it, and in it find deepest humiliation, motives to patience and self-denial, grace for active benevolence, faith to grasp eternal life, hope to lift up my head, love to bind me forever to him who died and rose for me. May his shed blood make me more thankful for thy mercies, more humble under thy correction, more zealous in thy service, more watchful against temptation, more contented in my circumstances, more useful to others. The seeker whose preconceived picture of what constitutes a master is correct—but this is uncommon—will be able to recognize one at their first meeting. One will feel with absolute certainty the inner greatness of the master of the master. Yet it does not follow that this is one’s particular master. There must also be a feeling of personal affinity as well as an intellectual appeal f the doctrines taught. Without this feeling of affinity and the considerable satisfaction which derives from it, one would be prudent to look elsewhere and not accept this person as guru. Take that person as your teacher whose character mentality approach the ideal you have formed, and with whose doctrine and personality you feel in sympathy. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10

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

January 31, 2020 2:04 am

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

January 25, 2020 5:31 am

Plots, 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

The 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

Such 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

In 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

Out 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

We 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

And 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

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

Let 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

I 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

Galileo 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

The 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

Nor 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

Many, 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

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

If 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

Conversely, 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

Be 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

Give 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 19

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

January 21, 2020 2:35 am

War 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

In 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

I 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

This 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

Real 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

Some 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

If 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

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

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

Frankly 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

We 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

The 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

Thus 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

God 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

If 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

God 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

Almighty 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

Open 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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Welcome to the Neighborhood!

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!

January 9, 2020 1:39 am

Accept 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

In 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

Performances 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

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

Usually 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

Even 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

It 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

The 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

Parents 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

A 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

The 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

The 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

Marriage 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

Men (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

A 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

Consider 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

If 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

We 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

By 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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Randolph Harris II International Institute

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