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Agent Orange: Hidden Heroes—What about the Real Heroes?
I was watching a commercial on the TV about a class action lawsuit for people exposed to Round UP, which is a weed killer, if they developed cancer. This commercial got me to thinking about my dad and how he, nor myself was every compensated from exposure to Agent Orange. Agent Orange is one of a series of defoliants used to clear dense jungles, riverbank vegetation and trees, and will rice paddies. Unfortunately, these agents were made from the deadliest dioxin known. Many soldiers serving in Vietnam were sprayed from the air with this poison, while they were defending our country, and they were told that the Agent Orange was harmless to humans. The chemical companies and our own government knew Agent Orange was deadly to humans, but used it anyway. Over twenty million gallons of agent orange was sprayed, over 4.5 million acres of land in Vietnam from 1961 through 1972. Once it was sprayed in the dense jungles by airplane and helicopter, it killed grass, palm trees, and all other vegetation in just two days. Everything would be brown and dead in a very short time and witnesses said it looked like a scene from a horror film. The defoliant eventually would wash down into the rivers and canals where the fishermen were fishing and little did they know the fish were also contaminated. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
Then, Agent Orange would eventually carry out to sea, where naval vessels would pull in the contaminated sea water for the crew to use. The sea water would be distilled for cooking, bathing, and drinking. However, the distillation process did not remove the dioxins of agent orange from the sea and river water, so people were drinking and bathing in poison. Once in your system, through skin contact or ingestion, Agent Orange manifests rashes and skin irritations, miscarriages, psychological symptoms, various cancers, diseases such as Parkinson’s, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, prostate cancer, leukemia and diabetes, and genetic alterations, resulting in birth defects for six generations. It is truly the gift the keeps on giving. Agent Orange diseases did not always manifest within just a few days of being exposed, some symptoms would take four or five decades to show up. My dad served in the Vietnam war and got cancer from agent orange and I was born with spinal bifida, which is caused by Agent Orange. An estimated 4 million people in Vietnam were exposed to Agent Orange and about 3 million suffered serious health problems, and this includes their children who were exposed. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
The chemical is capable of damaging genes, resulting in deformities among offspring of exposed victims. There are documented cases of still-births, cleft palate, and neural tube defects, with spina bifida being the mist statistically significant defect. Some children of veterans are given compensation and medical care because they were exposed to Agent Orange, and my father was in the process of filing a claim with the department of Veteran’s Affairs right before he passed away. It is really a sad story because it was around finals time, and I was in college preparing for my exams and I found out my dad was sick, but I did not think much of it because he had survived the cancer he got from Agent Orange and seemed to be doing really well much of his life, so I thought. He had initially been given three to five years to live after Vietnam and was told that he would never have kids, and he beat those odds. So anyway, my father’s caregivers did not want to tell me he was dying, and three days before he passed away, my mother told me he was in the hospital and to go visit him. They have not planned to tell me he was dying until after he passed away. And unfortunately, as he was dying, I turned my back for a moment, just to sit down, and then I heard him gasp for his last breath, and he died. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
His eyes were opened and I closed them for him, and his caregivers did not even want me to do that. Later on, I discovered that his air tube had been unplugged. They claimed the dog did it. Years later, they went on to say doctors in the hospital do that type of stuff all the time, but he died in his caregiver’s house, and they made sure to let me know I was not getting anything. Now that I reflect on what happened, I see why growing up my dad would flake out of coming to visit sometimes, he was not feeling well, but kept on living and working to support his kids. And right before finals, I thought he was being cheap, he would give me $5 a day for gas and I would have to come see him every day to get gas money, I had no idea that he was dying and he was doing that so he could see me every day before he died. And when I finally found out he was in the hospital, he could not even speak, he had no voice and was on a breathing machine. Unfortunately, my father nor myself were compensated for exposure to Agent Orange, nor were a lot of others. And some people are not satisfied with government research and want to conduct their own unethical and illegal experiments. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
It was really sad. I truly did not know how ill my father was, because to me, he was superman and could pull through anything, but apparently, years later that Agent Orange was still in his system and took him under. While he was in the hospital, he wrote me a note telling me he had put away some money in a CD, but who knows what happened to it because I was not allowed to find out much information. It is hard when you lose someone who is supporting you, but even more hard when you lose the only person in the World who truly loved you. My dad used to tell me stories about seeing his friends blown up right in front his eyes, while at war, dodging bullets and bombs, waking up to the stench of burning flesh, and how he was cut open from his neck to his stomach to remove the cancer he had and I did see the scar. My dad also told me to never buy Dole products because they manufactured Agent Orange. He was an amazing man and a truly kind guy. Those who you who still have your father’s in your life, be sure to treat them to a wonderful Father’s Day. In a way, I am happy my father never went through the hearings for this compensation for Agent Orange because the memories of war and knowing you passed on a birth defect to your son would probably drive a person insane. And could you imagine not having your father and being tormented by the media and local government…I am sure some have heard. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
Those who do Not Remember the Past are Condemned to Repeat it
Rituals are part of everyday life. They both constitute and celebrate defining group characteristics. Human beings require a rational soul that is immaterial, hence indivisible, hence immortal. The fundamental right to punish belongs to society. Society, alone, and not the individual, can mete out that amount of evil that is necessary to preserve the well-being of humanity, and can oppose the criminal impulse with a moral counterimpulse. Society develops through the synthesis of national character (tradition) with stimulation—spontaneous, free, and renewing—according to a law of convenience, with all parts of the nation tending toward an equilibrium of force and utility through the balance of interests and powers. This dialectic of civilization is a work of art, even the highest work of art of a humanity striving for perfection. Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you will put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you will hold on really hard and realize there is no choice, but to let go. Acceptance is a small quiet room. The decline of spiritual values is due to internal degeneration or disintegration within the person and the society, and only seldom to external pressure. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
Advertisers, politicians, educators, religious organizations, and others actively seek to alter attitudes and opinions. To an extent, their persuasive efforts resemble brainwashing, but there is an important difference: Brainwashing, or forced attitude change, requires a captive audience. If you are offended by a TV commercial, you can just tune it out. Prisoners in the POW (prisoner of war) camps in Korea (and later Vietnam) were completely at the mercy of their captors. Complete control over the environment allows a degree of psychological manipulation that would be impossible in a normal setting. How does captivity facilitate persuasion? The target person is isolated from other people who would support his or her attitude; the target is made completely dependent on his or her captors for satisfaction of basic needs; and the indoctrinating agent is in a position to reward the target for changes in attitudes or behavior. Brainwashing beings with attempts to make the target person feel completely helpless. Physical and psychological abuse, lack of sleep, humiliation, and isolation serve to unfreeze, or loosen, former values and beliefs. The benefits of rituals have been well documented. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
When exhaustion, pressure, and fear become unbearable, change occurs as the person abandons former beliefs. Typically, prisoners who reach the breaking point sign a false confession or cooperate to gain relief. When they do, they are suddenly rewarded with praise, privileges, food, or rest. Continued pairing of hope and fear with additional pressures to conform then serves to refreeze (solidify) new attitudes. There have been cases where people are virtually held hostage in society, and if they attempt to go anywhere other than where they are allowed, someone will run into their car, try to run them over or assault the target person. Fearing injury, the person stays within the boundaries, where they are tracked and subjected to other forms of abuse. However, dramatic shifts in attitudes induced by brainwashing are usually temporary. In the United States of America, an estimated 2 to 5 million people have succumbed to the lure of cults. A cult is a group in which the leader’s personality is more important than the beliefs she or he preaches. Cult members give their allegiance to this person, who is regarded as infallible, and they follow his or her dictates without question. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
Almost always, cult members are victimized by their leaders in one way or another. Recruiting new members, cults use a powerful blend of guilt, manipulation, isolation, deception, fear, and escalating commitment. In this respect, cults employ high-pressure indoctrination techniques similar to brainwashing. The cult can control the flow and interpretation of information individuals receive and there is a numbing effect of acceleration as autoamputation of the sense. The body as a sensing, experiencing, feeling, living totality has been autoamputated, an effect of fear spread throughout the World of an individual as a result of the power of destructiveness over all of life. The numbing of the body and emotions needs to be recognized and re-enlivening must occur. Some individuals lose themselves and overtime become automatons that look like human beings from the outside, but are hollow inside. Some people are recruited by cults, even in modern times, for human sacrifice, which is the act of killing one or more human beings, usually as an offering to a deity, as part of a ritual. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
In times of emotional and financial chaos, rituals offer the comfort and hope of stability. Rituals facilitate continuity, provide a link between past and future. Human sacrifice has been practiced in various cultures throughout history. Victims were typically ritually killed in a manner that was supposed to please or appease gods, spirits, or the deceased. In a society which condemns human sacrifice, the term ritual murder is used. Isolation from non-cult members is used. Drills, discipline, and rituals (all-night meditation or continuous chanting, for instance) keep recruits continuously occupied. These rituals also wear down physical and emotional resistance and generate feelings of commitment. Many cults make cleaver use of their foot-in-the-door technique. At first, recruits make small commitments (to stay after a meeting, for example). Then, larger commitments are encouraged (to stay an extra day, to call in sick at work, and so forth). Why do people stay in cults? Most former members mention guilt and fear as the main reason for not leaving when they wished they could. Most have been reduced to child-like dependency on the group for meeting all their daily needs. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
After they leave, many cult members suffer from anxiety, panic attacks, and emotional disturbances much like post-traumatic stress syndrome. Ritual killings are not that common in America, as they are in India. Because of blind superstitions and rampant illiteracy, a woman in India sacrificed a boy. Sumitra Bushan, in 2006, lived in Barha for most of her life, and at age 43, she thought she was cursed. Her husband left her, and she was deep in debt and was basically a slave. Her sons, Satbir, age 27, and Sanjay, age 23, were living a lifestyle of leisure. She and her family started having visions. And she was told by a travelling man that she must sacrifice a boy from her village. So they crept into their neighbour’s house and abducted three-year-old Aakash Singh, as he slept. They dragged him into their house and performed a puja ceremony, reciting a mantra and waving incense, and then they used a knife and mutilated him, and life him bleeding in from of an image of their goddess. This has been going on for centuries, as some people are still living in the dark ages. That same year, there were 28 human sacrifices in western Uttar Pradesh within four months. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
Many people blame the turn to the occult on the increasing economic hardships, as people have debts spiraling out of control. Human sacrifices have also been happening along the U.S. Mexico border. An alleged member of a cult sacrificed, two 10-year-old boys and a 55-year-old woman to Santa Muerte, or Saint Death, a figure adored mostly by outlaws but whose popularity is growing across Mexico and among Hispanics in the United States of America. The throats and the wrists of the victims were cut with knives and axes and their blood was spread on a Santa Muerte altar. Their bodies where then buried near the shacks where the alleged cult members live. Cult members usually ask around to find the right person, and it usually only takes a week or so. There is an emphasis on virginity, and they do not believe in choosing victims based on outdated patriarchal belief, but rather on the basis of equality for all. These types of rituals are international, and not specific to either rural places or cities. They can happen anywhere, and there is usually some kind of symbolic evidence. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
In many ritual killings, there is usually symbols carved into the body, symbols painted on the floor, the body might be positioned a certain way. And there is usually a significance of dates, like significant holidays specific to different ideologies. These people have usually crossed over to the dark side, which would be Satanism. When a person is held captive, forced attitude change (brainwashing) is possible. However, in most cases the effects or brainwashing are only temporary. When people join cult-like groups, more profound and lasting alterations of their belief systems are possible. A lot of people do not believe that ritual killings happen in America. People do this because they are true believers, ritual killings are required as part of their belief system, like a sacrifice that is required on a Blue Moon. Or they may feel they have to target a certain person. If it is a true criminal, they might be doing it because it satisfies other needs and they are using it as sort of an excuse. However, most of the time, they motivation is they think magically and they think it is going to give them power or protect them. They believe that ritual killings will give them more control over their life. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
When poverty joins high levels of economic and social aspirations, the stage is set for criminal activities—particularly official corruption, ritual killings, robbery and dealing in illegal goods and services. People who are thwarted in attaining desired social and economic goals legally may seek to obtain them illegally. Psychologically, aggression is always a consequence of frustration while frustration leads to some form of aggression. Every day, police stations are inundated with reports of all manner of crimes involving fraudsters, missing persons many of whom end up in the hands of ritualists. Less than 10 percent of such missing persons return home. A scary percentage of them are not found and the bodies of negligible number that are eventually seen, are dumped either on the roadsides, bush paths or inside gutters, mutilated and their vital organs removed. Usually, victims are taken to the forests and butchered for money rituals. In countries like Nigeria, there are over 4,000 ritual killings a year, and not only civilians, but sometimes police personnel are victims. Sometimes even the rich engage in these practices to keep their wealth. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
Do you Believe you have a Soul?
Humans are beings of love through and through. Why? Because human beings are Earth beings. The Earth is the cosmos of love, meaning that wisdom, and the soul of the World, is destined to become consciousness and this takes place through wisdom transformed into love. While the constant flux of human relationships creates enormous variance that is problematical and troublesome from a scientific point of view, it also provides us with the best hope of understanding what it is about human companionship that prevents premature death. Who are we? Are we parasites living on Earth? Imagine someone incapable of developing the force of love. Without love we would actually perish, physically die. There are literally thousands of exceptions to the general statistical rule that unmarried men and women die prematurely. One cannot be blind to the fact that there are many happy and healthy 80- and 90-year-old unmarried individuals, and many people who live active, productive, and happy lives for decades after they have lost a husband or wife. Their physical and psychological adjustment must be carefully studied, for their lives clearly point out that being unmarried need not be a physical state itself that leads to disease and death, but rather one’s social adjustment to it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
The future of love concerns the full development of individuality, which is responsible for the creation of a new, conscious unity of the World, brought forth out of the freedom of love. It is amazing that some people love one so much that even though they see an individual trying to build a career, when they see that person is being used as a slave, they will remove them from that situation, which totally makes sense. If you want animals to stop attacking your house, you remove their food source. The forms of love from the past have been severely damaged as a result of the kind of consciousness responsible for nuclear weapons. None of these forms has the strength to hold together relationships without being renewed through the development of individual love. Individual love, on the other hand, cannot develop in isolation from the World because individual love is at the same time World oriented. One of the best things you can do when you are hurting is go out and help someone else who is in pain. Get your mind off your problems and pain by helping someone else in need. When you help others in your time of need, you are creating a separate, but equal reactions (Newton’s III Law of Physics) and God can use this to change your situation. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
There is much talk these days about the living Earth. When you walk on the Earth, imagine that this is the skin of a living being. Imagine the flow of the waters in the streams, ocean, and rivers as the blood of this being, and the air you breathe is the breath of the Earth. This simple act of caring will bring an uncanny experience that will help you love other living beings. What is it about human contact that makes it so important to our health? Why should marriage be statically so beneficial to the health of the heart? Why is loneliness so physically destructive? Why do people die of broken hearts? Human beings are a manifestation of consciousness. They are the quality of warmth, of feeling. The quality of warmth of consciousness, the feeling of this warm creates a dream like state and gives beings the motivation to keep on living. Money can only buy so much happiness and if you are poor it is the love of your family that gives you the drive to keep striving, the love of God the forces you to open your eyes and breath. When the source of love is not there, it is as if the dream is over, and one has difficulty in trying to consciously make the dream reappear or stay clear. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
When the attraction of love between people exists, the quality of love tends to be more permanent. We know that we cannot buy love, we cannot force people to love us, and even when we do kind things for others out of love, they may use us and expect our help and give nothing back in return, but pain. All human beings are bound by identical obligations, although these are performed in different ways according to particular circumstances. No human being, whoever he or she may be, under whatever circumstances, can escape them without being guilty of crime. It is eternal and unconditional, the World has an elementary sense of justice, the ability to see things as others do, a sense of transcendental responsibility, archetypical wisdom, good taste, courage, compassion, and faith in the importance of particular measures that do not aspire to be a universal key to salvation. Soul, individual spirituality, firsthand personal insight into things; the courage to be oneself and go the way of one’s conscience points, humility in the face of the mysterious order of being, confidence in its natural direction and, above all, trust in one’s own subjectivity as one’s principal link with the subjectivity of the World—these are qualities that people of the future should have? #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
All of the living makes the mistake of drawing too sharp distinctions. Angels (it is said) would be often unable to tell whether they moved among the living or dead. Our impoverished state is marked by our awareness that we are not very reliably at home in the interpreted World. Hence, in order to regain for ourselves something that would equal spiritual and existential fervor that characterized the ages of faith, we must take upon ourselves the task of endowing the World (the World of things of the intimate personal relations) with the inwardness of feeling that other ages directed toward a divinity. Joy, love, and above all suffering and pain should not diffuse sensations accompanying an unending series of vague hopes and regrets; they must become the objects of a total commitment. Thus, since we are not yet strong enough to give ourselves totally in love, we have better follow the example of the lover and draw our strength from an unrequited, uninterrupted feeling, or indeed of Narcissus, who used the natural World as a magnifying mirror of his feelings. In a World in which all actions are liable to remain uncompleted, I know my redeemer lives. God will pay you back double what you have loss and the rest of your life will be the best of your life. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
God will always have another plan in store for you. The truth is you need prayer more than a friend. Arise from the depression in which the circumstances have kept you. Rise to a new life. Notice, if you want a new life, there is something you have to do. You cannot sit back and focus on negativity. You have a full life ahead of you. God will bind up your broken heart, and help you proclaim freedom as you are released from darkness. We must pray for the grace to endure problems as our spiritual will is perfected. This is not a social phenomenon, but a pageant of situations and persons in whom the ideal of completion and strength of feeling is realized, just as the contemporary World is a series of images that portray our deprivations and stunted responses. To make something of one’s fate, of one’s experiences, is to give them the permanence (essentially poetic) of a moment of intensity. Similarly, the supreme task, set by the imminence of death, is to repair the adventitiousness of death by drawing into my life, by making of it my own death. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
The immensity of the task of creating a new spirituality is betrayed by the complex, and quite conscious, ambiguities of transcendence, chief of which is the image of the Angel. He is a messenger (angelos) from another sphere; hence, there must be one who spent him. However, the Angel comes upon us with a terrible majesty and strength which, to us who are weak, is all his own. The Angel is pure and necessary contradiction and he sees the foundation of our being: only living in total commitment to the Earth, the here and now, can we transform it into the heart’s inner space, and thus wrest some eventual transition into a soundless Beyond. This is the creative act, stills all strife by transforming it into a song, eternalizes the moment by making of it a monument of inwardness, and transfixes suffering into the eternally valid image of God. In a World of yearning for the security of faith and finding it in ideology, there is a new purpose for living, as all concerted action is an escape from defective selfhood. God has a specific plan by which great blessing will come out of difficulty. Arise and wipe away your tears and press on. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
This is a kind of Spiritual Adultery that is Spearing Across the Earth
By withdrawing oneself from society and into contemplation, the social nature of human beings and one’s ability to perform good works becomes insignificant, unimportant, and irrelevant. How can we then uphold the requirement of performing good works found in the scriptures? The mysterious process by which our Earthly life instructs us for another state of being tells of that our action obey an unknow law, implicit in ourselves, but which does not conform to our logic. We know that every creature has a private good and interest of one’s own, which nature has compelled one to seek. We know that there is in reality a right and a wrong state of every creature; and that one’s right state is forward by nature and affectionately sought by oneself. And because every creature has a certain interest or good, there must be also a certain end or purpose to which everything in one’s constitution must naturally be related. If anything in one’s appetites, passions, or affections runs contrary to this end, we must count it as being bad for one. In this way, one can be bad with respects to oneself; just as one is certainly bad with respects to other of one’s kind when any of one’s appetites or passions make one any way injurious to them. Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into still subtler form. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
When first formed visionary schemes, we know them to be absurd, but familiarize them by degrees, and in time lose sight of their folly. This is unacceptable because any interpretation that disallows humans their ability to understand the scriptures produces moral ramifications. Religion undoubtedly contains some perfect daemonists, people who believe that the governing mind or minds are not absolutely and necessarily good—are not confined to what is best, but are capable of acting according to mere will or fancy, because we know whole nations who worship the devil or fiend to who they sacrifice and offer prayers and supplications, really just because they fear him. And we know very well that in some religious there people who do not proclaim any idea of God except that of a being who is arbitrary, violent, a cause of bad, and condemning people to misery—which amounts to substituting a daemon or devil in place of God. One who has nothing external that can divert one must find pleasure in one’s own thoughts, and must conceive oneself what one is not, for who is pleased with what one is? A person can be more an atheist than a theist, or more a daemonist than a theist, depending on which of the relevant opinions predominates thought. Moral standards are to be severe and rigorous in order to prevent condemning the masses to Hell. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
This globe, the Earth, appears to have a real dependence on something beyond it (e.g. the Sun, the Galaxy, or its fellow planets), then it—the Earth—really is only a part of some other system. And if there is similarly a system of all things, and a Universal nature, every particular being or system must be either good or bad in that general system of the Universe. What about something insignificant and useless? That would be an imperfection, and so would be bad in the general system. Therefore, a being cannot be wholly and really bad except by being bad with respect to the Universal system; and in that case the system of the Universe is bad or imperfect. However, if the evil of one private system is the good of others, if it contributes still to the good of the general system (as when one creatures lives by the destruction of another, one thing is generated from the corruption [= ‘rotting’] of another, or one planetary system or vortex swallows up another) then the evil of that private system is not really bad in itself; any more than the pain of cutting new teeth is bad in a system or body which is so constituted that without this episode of pain it would suffer worse by being defective. The Bible is for everyone to understand and practice, including the poor and uneducated. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
So we cannot say of any being that it is wholly and absolutely bad unless we can show for certain that what we are calling bad is not also good in some other system or in relation to some other order or economy. However, if the World contained one species of animals that were destructive to every other species, that could rightly be called a bad species, because it is bad in the animal system. And if in any species of animals (for example the human species) one person has a nature that makes one pernicious to the rest, then one can in this respect rightly be called a bad person. Prediction is vague. The notion of prediction is unquestionably an essential part of the subject matter of logic, but the predicates might be extralinguistic and even extramental entities. Thus crucial vagueness, which was to some extend also the source of the medievals’ concer with universals, left open to the possibility that logic might be essentially a science of reality, resembling or subsumed under metaphysics. Prediction occurs only in a proposition, and the only constituents of propositions are utterances; thus, only utterances may be predicated. Some utterances are significant; some are not. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and will all thy mind. You do not need me to go through envy, malice, ill-temperament, or other such hateful passions to show how each is bad and makes the creatures that has them bad. However, perhaps I should point out that even kindness and love of the most natural sort (e.g. a creature’s love for its offspring) is vicious if it is immoderate and beyond a certain degree of intensity. Why? Because excessive tenderness destroys the effect of love, and excessive pity makes us incapable of giving help. Thus, excessive motherly love is a vicious fondness; excessive pity is effeminacy and weakness; undue concern for self-preservation is meanness and cowardice; having too little concern for self-preservation, or none at all, is rashness; and the opposite concern (namely a passion leading to self-destruction) is a mad and desperate depravity. God was manifest in flesh, justified by the Spirit, seen of angels, preached to the Gentiles, believed on in the World, and received up into glory. With God all things are possible, but oftentimes he does his work with awful instruments, there is a peacemaker called Death. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
To be sure, proof in existence of the ineligible World, also known as the mind of God, the environmental movement protested the consequences of abundant consumption. Yet, it did not therefore, rethink the practices and aims of living itself, but only those of living too extravagantly. Air, water, space, nature: these are the subject of scarcity. Economics focuses on the scarcity of time in which to enjoy abundance. Thus, for the first time ever, humans are faced with this real, permanent problem—the World being overpopulated and there not being enough money nor resources to take care of the rapidly expanding population. While people demand letting illegal immigrants inhabit America, they are not paying attention to the fact that we are losing jobs, for instance, Sears is closing 149 stores this year. Also, new houses, which are 300 square feet, and would not uphold in a storm and have no foundation, are being built in parking lots because people with jobs can no longer afford food and a traditional house or an apartment, but yet Americans want to keep adding more of a strain on their resources. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
The permanent problem on Earth—how to use this freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy leisure which science and compound interest will have won for them, to live wisely and agreeably and well. A builder of larger social whole, the instinct for peace and quiet, for respite for respite from stimulation and disturbances, in short, for death (not in death as destruction, but death as peace) is an expression that has emerged out of the experiences of immature minds as mediator between this pleasure-seeking mass of instinct and of the reality principle. You cannot always get what you want, but if you try some time, you might just find what you need. We must turn work into something enjoyable. We must treat the World as a garden to cultivate, not as a storehouse to pillage. For as by the existence of the creatures, we come to know there is a creator, so by their loveliness is that we come to know that their Author, and come to love him. We must first experience and come to know the things on Earth before we can come to know and love God. Experience is not only critical to general knowledge, but it is absolutely necessary to our ability to know God and to know the duties of a good life. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
Love is to be inherently centered upon God. Love is the movement of the soul towards good, or God. Love is a disposition or act of the mind as a reaction to anything which we find pleasure. When we love the creature, we are then wishing something good for it, that is be improved or endure; this love is referred to as benevolence and charity. This love cannot apply to God because we cannot wish upon God anything more since he is absolute. Thus, our love for creatures is the love of benevolence (since we wish them well), but this is not equivalent to what we might call real live, these are only acts of charity. Therefore, we must love God with the love of desire. For our love of God brings no additional goodness to God, but benefits only us; to love creatures would be sinful. Love of desire is a complete love, while benevolence is only partial love. We cannot love something fully if it is not completely loveable. Our heart is so much God’s property and peculiar, and out so entirely to be devoted to him, that this is a kind of Spiritual Adultery to admit any creature in a partnership with one in our love. It is in loving something partially that is completely loveable that we are depriving it of our love and committing ourselves to sin. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
This World and this life matters. God created our sense organs and real flowers. This World is not just an illusion. The material World is important. If none of this matter, if Earth was not our home, then there would be no reason at all for God to have created our sense organs or any real flowers to begin with. God could easily produce in us the ideas and sensations of flowers with or without there being actual flowers. Likewise, God would have worked in vain in creating our sense organs since these would have nothing to contribute in our experience of the World. For if we must love nothing but what is lovely, and nothing is lovely but what is our good, and nothing is our good but what does us good, and nothing does us good but what causes pleasure in us. I fear so many people live and die as idolaters, and the greatest part of the future will do so; since I guess not one in a million will be found capable of apprehending, and being convinced of this new hypothesis of seeing all things in God. The purpose of Christian doctrine is to enable its subscribers the opportunity for a good life entailing the need for good actions. Turn your heart over to God and know that he is the creator of all that is good and pleasurable and the rest of your life will be the best of your life. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
The Morning Star is the Evening Star
Life and the World around us is a painted veil, an illusion though which we penetrate to the reality behind. Religion and virtue seem in many respect to be so nearly related that they are generally presumed to be inseparable companions. We are so willing to think well of their union that we hardly allow it to be permissible to speak or even think of them separately. However, it may by questioned whether this attitude can be theoretically justified. We certainly do sometimes encounter cases that seem to go against this general supposition. We have known people who have the appearance of great zeal in religion, but have lacked even the common affections of humanity, and shown themselves extremely degenerate and corrupt. Others who have paid little regard to religion and been considered as mere atheists have been seen to practice the rules of morality and in many cases to act with such good meaning and affection towards humankind that one seems forced to admit that they are virtuous. In our everyday lives, our wiliness to have dealings with someone may depend on one’s answer to “What are his or her morals?” A person who is aware of the superior pleasures to be found in virtuous action will naturally prefer virtue to mere self-interest. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Our notions of God are projections of our own humor, as we are, so shall we think God to be. God must necessarily be good humored. However, we can never understand this quality unless we possess it ourselves. Hence, the necessity for permitting good humor in the discussion of religion. I give a lot of credence to the grace of God because much of what we do, in fact, more of what we do than we do not do has to do with our fortune and misfortune. And I think there are people who the miseducation has taken a greater toll on than me. And you know, but for the grace of God, I would have been confused about my identity. We cannot understand qualities of mind and character which we do not possess ourselves. The best foundation for rendering a just account of human nature is thorough knowledge of oneself. No one who knows oneself can possibly believe that all human action stem from selfish motives. God is a good-tempered, benevolent being who orders the World. Sincere the affection for virtue is natural, religion is unnecessary to its presence in us. However, theistic opinions about a benevolent God may reinforce the affection. Yet, so many the good example of others and rewards and punishment. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
When religion and morality are separated, a selfish interest in one’s own welfare is not all that is left to provide a foundation for morality. There is more than accounting for the possibility of morality than a simple choice of religion. It is the function of both poetry and religion to provide people with a coherent view of the World that will help them understand both themselves and their fellow human beings, and to provide it in a form that will kindle the imagination as well as the intellect. The ultimate solution is a community small enough for each member to know the other members as individuals. Such intimate person knowledge will bring understanding and sympathy, so that people will be prepared to cooperate for the common good, without the coercion of law. People will indeed value their neighbors’ opinions, but they will not take their neighbors’ opinion on trust. To do so would be useless, because even a true opinion is of little value unless one understands the grounds for holding it. It is only when people see things as they are, in all their intricate interconnections, that they will feel the right emotions and thus lead happy and virtuous lives. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
People see life as if through a veil—the veil of their own prejudices, which are imposed by social institutions. We must transcend their prejudices in order to understand and love our fellow humans. If we are to fear the wrath of God, then there must be some principle by which we regulate our fears. If we are to fear God’s blame, we must already know what is blame worthy. Nothing is blameworthy simply because it displeases God. God and human beings must share a sense of deformity which enables them to identify the morally odious. There is no divine monopoly here. Morality may arise independently of religion. Virtue is natural because human nature provides a foundation for virtue. Why should selfishness or self-interest be the only natural passion? Social feeling or sense of partnership with humankind may be natural. The social feeling must be natural, for how could there be society if this feeling did not exist first? If society is a set of conventional arrangements, then the existence of society implies the pre-existence of a disposition among people to make conventions. Thus, the selfish picture of human nature cannot be the whole story, for if selfishness were the only natural feeling, there would be no society. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
What is more, since the existence of a social feeling is sufficient to account for the origin of society, appeals to the religious sanctions for society are necessarily subsequent to the actual foundation of society and therefore of secondary importance. Virtue is the pursuit of the public interest. There is no real love of virtue without the knowledge of public good. We are disposed to act virtuously by our affection for virtue. This affection for virtue is called the moral sense. This sense is like a harmony in music and a sense of proportion in architecture and art. In a creature capable of forming general notions of things, not only the outward beings which offer themselves to the sense are objects of the affection, but the very actions themselves and the affections of pity, kindness, gratitude, and their contraries, being brought into the minds by reflection become objects. So that by means of this reflected sense, there arise another kind of affection towards those very affections themselves, which have been already felt, and are now become the subject of a new liking or dislike. One way we evaluate ourselves is to compare ourselves to others and to our own ideal self-image. If an ideal image cannot be met, it may have to be discarded or revised, but this is not easy to do. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
Once we remove the veil of unreality, the World will be seen as a unity—both in the sense in which science may be said to be a unity (the truth about one field of study cohering with and illuminating the truth about another), and in the sense that a true understanding of our fellow humans will give rise to virtuous behavior. This is the indestructible order that it is the business of poetry to reveal. We live surrounded by an infinite multitude of mysteries. For God, all things are possible, even what one may considered a logical absurdity, that is, causing what has in fact happened not to have happened. The fundamental property of life is daring; all life is creative daring and this an eternal mystery, irreducible to anything finished or intelligible. In human’s very existence, thought has discovered something improper, a defect, a sickness, or sin, and has demanded that this be overcome at its foundation by a renunciation of existence. Disclosure by talking seriously and honestly together on an equal level is the necessary condition for reducing the mystery that one person is for another. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
We need to take better care of ourselves mentally, physically, and spiritually. Because the times that are coming up are going to be challenging times. Progress come both in the realization of the need for re-education and further in the re-education process itself. A good beginning to understanding and appreciating life fully is knowing that at some point it will end. Games prevent honest, intimate, and open relationships between the players. Yet people play them because they fill up time, provoke attention, reinforce early opinions about self and others, and fulfill a sense of destiny. We have to learn to make the time period between life’s only two certainties, birth and death meaningful and significant. Human beings place far too much stress upon defining the purpose in and of our lives. Our only purpose in life if purpose is needed, is to be what we are fully, vitally and in context of other people having the same right. We each need to find a purpose or goal in our existence but we should not dwell on it. People are known and respected for their commitment and dedication to the uplift of people. Each of us must know that others may try to push us down or disqualify us, but we will be able to fulfill our destinies. The rest of your life will be the best of your life. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
Imagined Security is the Forerunner of Destruction
When each individual has subdued one’s own spirits, then there will be no war and no other enemies to conquer. Life and mind, being closely connected with the functioning of the body, must be conceived of in a way that does justice to the peculiar intimacy of this relationship. The fundamental issue in resolving traumatic stress is to restore the proper balance between the rational and emotional brains, so that you can feel in charge of how you respond and how you conduct your life. When we are provoked into states of hyper—or hypoarousal, we are pushed into an uncomfortable zone, where we are not able to tolerate as much as we usually are able to, and we are no longer in a range of optimal functioning. We become reactive and disorganized; we are not always able to hold back our emotions and may say things out of anger or react unusually. Sounds and lights bother us, unwanted images from the past invade our minds, and we panic, get nervous or become outraged. Our bodies may feel numb, our minds may slow down, and we may not be able to process information as easily, we may lose balance and have trouble standing, sitting, and walking because the chemistry in our bodies is in a state of shock. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
The noblest of all victories, that over ourselves. Human behavior falls under the concept of motion, which is widely applicable in the natural World. The soul is virtually the principal of all life, and there are different levels of life. The soul is that which keeps a person alive and it leaves the body when a person dies. It is connected with breathing. Spirit, on the other hand, is thought of as the generator of movement; it is connected with the movement of the limbs and with emotional states. The spirit is quite distinct both from the soul and from the mind, which is regarded as the source of images and ideas. In mathematics, the soul grasps forms that are eternal and nondeceptive. As like can be known only by like, the soul, in its rational aspect, must also be eternal. The slave is being made to remember what one had known previous to one’s embodiment. Reason, spirit, and desire represent different levels of being alive. To be alive is to possess a self-originating tendency toward an end. This is exhibited at the lowest level in nutrition and reproduction. Thus, plants have a low-grade soul. Animals have sensation, locomotion, and desire superimposed upon nutrition and reproduction. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Humans, in addition, have reason, or mind, by means of which a rule or plan is imposed upon desire. By mind is meant self-direction in accordance with a rational formula. The lower soul is a necessary condition for the higher and the possession of a higher type of soul also changes the way in which the lower functions. Because people are rational, they feed, reproduce, perceive and act in a manner which differs from that of animals. The rational soul is an active agency which inhabits the body for a brief period, it is located in the head because the head is round (the most perfect shape, and hence, an appropriate place for the seat of reason) and the part of the body nearest the Heavens. It makes contact with the brain, which is conceived as a kind of marrow encased in the skull. The irrational soul makes contact with the marrow of the spinal cord in its bony sheath. The better part of the irrational soul, spirit, inhabits the heart and functions in such manifestations of life as energy, courage, and ambition; the worse part, desire, functions below the diaphragm, in appetite nutrition, and reproduction. The rational and irrational parts affect each other through the liver, which acts as a sort of mirror of thought. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Over their passions and their weaknesses, mortals cannot keep a curb too strong. In sleep, the soul is shut up, and its motions subside. A few agitations remain, however, and produce dreams. Usually dreams are the expressions of desires which are suppressed. The good person controls their desires sensibly and so is not unduly disturbed by them in sleep. In sleep, the rational soul, if not troubled by irrational desires, can attain truths not otherwise revealed. It is not the dream that creates the phantasy, but the activity of unconscious phantasy that plays the leading part in the formation of the dream-thoughts. Almost everything that is ascribed to the dream-work is attributable to the activity of the unconscious during the day, which instigates dreams no less than neurotic symptoms. We have involved ourselves by our advance into the dark regions of psychology. This proves that the most complex mental operations are possible without the cooperation of consciousness—a truth which we have had to learn anyhow from every psychoanalysis of a patient suffering from hysteria or obsessions. These dream-thoughts are certainly not in themselves incapable of consciousness; if we have not become conscious of them during the day, this may have been due to various reasons. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
The act of becoming conscious depends upon a definite psychic function—attention—being brought to bear. This seems to be available only in a determinate quantity, which may have been diverted from the train of thought in questions by other aims. If we want to change posttraumatic reactions, we have to access the emotional brain and do limbic system therapy: repairing faulty alarm systems and restoring the emotional brain to its ordinary job of being a quiet background presence that takes care of the housekeeping of the body, ensuring that you eat, sleep, connect with intimate partners, protect your children, and defend against danger. Learning how to breathe calmly and remaining in a state of relative physical relaxation, even while accessing painful and horrifying memories, is an essential tool for recovery. We believe that a certain quantity of excitation, called cathectic energy is displaced from a purposive idea along the association paths selected by this directing idea. The only way we can consciously access the emotional brain is through self-awareness, i.e. by activating the medial prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that notices what is going on inside of us and thus allows us to feel what we are feeling. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
Most of our conscious brain is dedicated to focusing on the outside World: getting along with others and making plans for the future. However, that does not help us manage ourselves. Neuroscience research shows that the only way we can change the way we feel is becoming aware of our inner experience and learning to befriend what is going on inside of ourselves. Sensation is a transmission of motions. The human body receives an impression from without and responds with an inner motion. Some parts of the body—for instance, the hair and the nails—are subject to shock but do not respond with inner movements. Sense organs, however, are good conductors of motion. Thus, hearing, for instance, is the end product of a kind of shock. By means of air in the cavities of the body a blow transmitted through the ears to the blood and brain and then the soul. Knowledge does not consist just in sensation, but in the activity of the soul in relation to what is transmitted. This transmission is complicated by the intervention of memory, imagination, feeling, and association, all of which act as intermediaries between reason and sensation. Emotional regulation is the critical issue in managing the effects of trauma and neglect. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Is the Sun of Blue Heaven Guilty of the Shadow it Casts?
The beauty and loveliness of friendship is too strong for dim eyes. The soul is form giving being to humans, and it assists in operation of the body and mind as a sailor presides over the operation of an already formed ship. It is important to control the mind, and for an individual to have a rapport with nature. God is identified with the regularity governing the World, and must be thought of as the essence or embodiment of regularity in general; as the totality of logical regularity, of natural laws, and of the laws of mental and spiritual life. All moral values disappear if God does not exist. Therefore, it is important for people to believe in God. Christ and his disciples through the ages have experienced the divine presence of God the loving Father and with it a sense of moral repentance and an inner energy of the spirit. As with all personal experience, no symbolic structure can act as substitute. Such structures are, in every field, merely hypothetical attempts to grasps experience. God lives in human’s consciousness. Before a new direction is sought, it is necessary to discern the error of the old and awaken a desire to transcend that error. This requires courage and fearless honesty. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
The recovery from many serious and incurable, potentially fatal disorders is based on the willingness and capacity to face the truth and choose a different pathway. To break down denial and admit the truth takes one above the lower levels of humanity. Spiritual awakening is fostered by a desire for salvation and peace. The Human need for and experience of God’s presence proves his existence. Science and philosophy are masters of their own proper domain. Thus, God is the final reason of everything, but not necessarily the scientific explanation of anything. The idea of God is so embedded in the consciousness of human beings that we find some version of it in most legends. One knows but little of human nature who has not discovered that, to all who rise one step above the brutes, it is far pleasanter to starve and freeze after their own fashion than to be fed and clothes and worked upon compulsion. Friendship is a mighty pretty invention, and, next to love, gives of all things the greatest spirit to society. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
We lie in nature very close to God; and though, further on, the stream may be corrupted by the banks it flows through; yet at the fountain’s rim, where humankind stand, there the stream infallibly bespeaks the fountain. Whatever the number of a person’s friends, there will be times in one’s life when one has too few; but if one has only one enemy, one is lucky indeed if one has not one too many. In life, however, it is sometimes difficult to say who does you the most mischief, enemies with the worst intentions, or friends with the best. Friendship is a passion. It entrances the being; it tears the soul. All loves of after life can never bring its rapture, or its wretchedness; no bliss so absorbing, no pangs of jealousy or despair so crushing and so keen! Our consciousness rarely registers the beginning of a growth within us any more than without us: there have been many circulations of the sap before we detect the smallest sign of the bud. What we say is important for in most cases the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. Equality is the soul of friendship. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
When I do entertain, in the Summer, which is rare, I receive my guest on the front porch, set up wicker trays found at Draper James, and serve ice cold sweet tea, cucumber finger sandwiches, and miniature chess pies. The ice tea is so delicious that it can stand alone as a refreshment, but we like to embellish things a bit. There are different reasons for receiving guest. Visits of congratulations are paid after the birth of an infant; when it is also customary to send tasteful and elegant baskets or bouquets of flowers. Also, upon friends who have received an appointment to any office or dignity in the community, state, or government. If a friend has published a book, you call to congratulation him or her upon its success; or if one has delivered a lecture, sermon, or oration, which has elicited your applause, you express your high estimation of the discourse. A good orator is pointed and impassioned, and they get their subjects into the heart of the audience. It is also a good idea to pay visits of congratulation when you hear that your friends are intending to marry, and take upon themselves new responsibilities. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
There are times when people must act as though life were equally sweet in any company. In this World, sometimes we experience sickness, sorrow, and bereavement, visits of condolence must occasionally be made; and, if possible, they should be paid within a week after death has entered the family circle. If your acquaintance is ceremonious, it is the custom, however, to wait until the family has appeared at church. One should send up your card, and ask if your friends will receive you; and it is in good taste for ladies to be attired in quiet apparel, rather than in bright, beautiful colours. And you do not necessarily have to wear black. In formal visiting, a card can be left in lieu of a call. In many places, it is customary to send invitations to friends to attend a funeral, and only those receiving cards are expected to attend. Notes are also usually sent to those who are requested to serve as pall-bearers. One should always leave it to those who are in affliction to make the first allusions to their bereavement. Grief is an experience common after the passing of a loved one. There is a crying for someone to help because we cannot do anything about it. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
My idea of good company is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation. That is the best. When calling upon friends at hotels, or boarding houses, always send up by an assistance, a request to see them; and never enter a room until you have received an invitation to do so. When a gentleman calls upon a lady, and finds a lady friend also visiting her, he should rise when she takes her leave, and accompany her to the hall door; and is she has a carriage, should hand her into it. Also, when arriving at someone’s house, do not blow the horn of the carriage, nor holler and scream like you lost your mind for them to open the door. Get out of the carriage, and ring the doorbell like a well-bred person with sanity. People generally want to keep their communities as quiet and peaceful as possible. Gentlemen should always carry their hats in their hands when paying morning or evening calls, but should not place them on the chairs or parlor table. Every well-bred man knows that a hat can be made a very graceful part of his attire, especially if he knows how to hold it. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
In our country, we are allowed considerable freedom in receiving and paying visits, and can appear, in the daytime, in all public places. It is actually becoming proper for ladies and gentlemen to have brothers, husbands, or friends of either gender attend meetings with them for safety reasons. It was a common practice for women, in the Victorian ages, but people are now always preying on men. I had a friend who went to meet up with people I thought he knew well, and he came back with a missing tooth. I did not expect he would actually keep company with someone he was unfamiliar with, and thought it was some kind of skit. Nonetheless, it was not my business to advise him. People used to be able to attend public exhibitions, libraries, etc., and appear on the promenades alone, but this may no longer be the case. If you attempt such proceedings in a World class city, or even a small rural town, you may expose yourself to indignities which would annoy you sadly. In the United States of America, women and men, who behave with discretion, can go wherever they please without molestation; but an escort is always desirable, especially in the evening. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
There is no light without its shade, no good without its inconvenience. It is not considered comme il faut for the lady of the house to accompany ceremonial visitors to the door; she merely rises from her seat, bows, or shakes hands, according to her intimacy when the persons, and if her ménage supplies a parlor assistance, she rings the bell to summon him to open the outer door. With intimate friends, one can do as they please, either accompanying them to the door, or leaving them to find their way out of the house alone, or calling an assistant to escort them. However, in these modern times, with people changing like the seasons and acting all brand new when you least expect it, it is best to be safe and see your guest find them way out. In almost everything, we act on probabilities. Good sense will shew you the power of self-conquest, and point out its means. It should be the desire of us all to be well-bred, but it is not a veneering that can be applied, or laid aside at pleasure. Keeping witty company sharpens the apprehension. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
More light a candle and fewer to curse the darkness. We should carry our good manners everywhere; and unless we cultivate them constantly, and exercise them upon all occasions, and towards all persons, they can never become a part of ourselves; and when we try to assume them, they will often fail us at our greatest need. If you are impolite to your washerwoman, or to your maid, you are in great danger of being so to those whose good opinion your desire to possess. Life is full of the saddest and the strongest contrasts. The charm which true politeness sheds over its possessors, is not easily described; yet, it is felt by everyone, and invariably responded to by the best feelings of their nature. It is the secret sympathy, the silver link, like the silken tie, which heart to hearts, and mind to mind, in body and in soul can bind. A companionable man or woman will put up with many inconveniences for the sake of enjoying agreeable society. The wine cannot be bad where the company is agreeable. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
Glorious Father in Heaven, filled with compassion for those who invoke you and with love for those who suffer, heavily laden with the weight of our troubles, we cast ourselves at your feet and humbly beg you to take the present affair which we recommend to you under your special protection and make the rest of our lives the best of our lives. When we realize God’s favor is upon you, you will accomplish your dreams faster than you ever thought possible. telling yourself the wall is too big, the dream is too great, or the obstacles are too high. It will not happen in your own strength. It will not happen in your own powers. It will happen because Almighty God favors you. Try claiming God’s blessing instead of longing for them. The humblest painter of real life, if he could have his desire, would select a picturesque background for his figures; but events have an inexorable fashion of choosing their own landscape. Success if for everyone and your life becomes better the moment you become better. There is no success without sacrifice. You will be as small as your controlling desire, as great as your dominant aspiration. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
Opportunities are a Lot Like Work—they are Everywhere
Difficulties and sufferings help to forge the human soul. Without effort and sacrifice nothing really great can be accomplished; even a good song cannot be created without pain, have you heard The One I gave my Heart to by Aaliyah? So, people should not hesitate to fight against evil and tyranny and to overcome fear. There are objective laws governing social progress but they depend on the laws of human nature, which can be discovered by an analysis of the history of humankind. Genuine intellectuals help their people to become aware of their sufferings and their real needs and to produce a radical change in their conditions. A social revolution, therefore, presupposes the total intellect power of the people. Education is a revolutionary act and leads to the growth of civilization and an increasing social justice and the elimination of irrationality in human life. Thinking consists of both abstract and concrete concepts; it is not only generalization of the experience, but also immediate consciousness of reality. Behind me is infinite power. Before me is endless possibility. Around me is boundless opportunity. Why Should I fear? #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
Perception and cognition are not a mere reflection of the external World, but a creative interpretation and transformation of data in the light of language, previous experience, and the practical needs and values of the subject. Knowledge is therefore a historical category and contains subjective, human elements. It is a picture of the World in the perspective of a limited cognitive apparatus and a limited set of goals. However, whenever human practice is repeatedly and intersubjectively successful, this can be explained only on the assumption that in all such cases it was guided by an objective knowledge of the corresponding parts of the World. There is a real possibility for humans to become a free creative being who rationally controls natural and social processes and lives in solidarity with other people in real human community. In the contemporary World humans have lost control over the products of their physical and mental activity (the state, political parties, nuclear weapons, religion). They have become enslaved by dull imposed labor and has reduced all the richness of life to an artificial need to possess as many objects as possible and other people to the status of things to be used. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
Humans are alienated: they are not what people could be and ought to be. The supreme value for contemporary philosophy is therefore desalination, the progressive liberation from all forms of slavery and poverty, both material and spiritual, and the fulfillment of all the potential of the individual. Humans live in a World where there is both order and change, and they can therefore behave as a relatively free agent insofar as one becomes aware of external and internal compulsions and is ready to resist them. From this conviction that within certain objective limits humans can be free and can create history, contemporary philosophers are led to a profound optimism and activism. There are various kinds of visits: visits of ceremony, visits of condolence, visits of congratulations, and visits of friendship, and each has its different custom or etiquette. These visits, however, are all essential, in order to maintain good feeling between the members of society; and, therefore, they should be carefully attended to, even if they do occupy a large portion of your time. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
Visits of ceremony, are those which are paid after receiving attentions at the hands of your acquaintances; after dining, or supping at a friend’s house; after attending an evening party; etc.; and they should invariably be of short duration; and one should never take either children or dogs when making them. Hand your card to the assistant at the door, and ask if the lady or ladies are in. When other visitors are announced, it is better to wait until they are seated, and then rise from your seat and take leave of your hostess, and bow politely to the guests; but never leave while others are entering the room, as it produced a needless confusion. Many well-bred persons do not introduce their visitors to each other; but if you are left in the parlor with strangers, while the servant summons his mistress, it is not impolite to enter into conversation with them, and when the lady enters, the conversation would be mutual. You should always call at an hour when you would expect to find ladies prepared to receive visitors, and not at lunch, or dinner-time. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
In most cities, regular reception days are a la mode, and are engraved upon the visiting cards, thus – “At home Mondays, from 12 o’clock till 4.” And then it is needful to call upon that day, and between the hours prescribed. Only very intimate friends would call at any other time. After attending a dinner-party, or a ball, you should call within the week upon your hostess. When you are going to be absent from your house for months, or years, you should call upon all your friends and acquaintances, or send your card, enclosed in an envelope, with the letters, T.T.L. (“to take leave”) or P.P.C. (“Pour prendre conge), written at the right hand lower corner. In taking leave of a family, you send or leave as many cards as there are members; but if the call is upon intimate friends, you need only turn down the left-hand edge. If, previous to a long voyage, or absence, or on the occasion of your marriage, you omit to call or send a card to your friends, it is understood that the acquaintance ceases. When you return to the house, those to whom you have sent cards, or paid visits, will pay the first visit to you. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
When a lady intends to give a large party or ball, she calls or leaves cards at the houses of those whom she intends to invite, from ten days to a week before the invitations are issued. A slip of thin card-board with the name, and the number of residence and street engraved upon it, is accepted as a substitute for a ceremonious visit, and its shape and lettering varying with the fashion. It is usual, however, to prefix the titles of Mr., Mrs., and Miss to the name, but young gentlemen omit the Mr., and; the professional ones, such as Right Rev., Rev, and Dr., are also given, but we omit the prefix of Hon. and Excellency. Military and naval titles are added to the cards of those in the service of the United States of America. A card can be left or sent by an assistant, in lieu of a formal visit; but it is not well-bred to send it through the post. In leaving your card for a stranger, you may not want to add your address, but it used to be custom to do so. Keep an account of your ceremonial visits. A visiting-list, or book, is indispensable if one possesses a large circle of acquaintances. This is needful, because time passes so rapidly; and then you note down at what time your visits were returned. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
And you can graduate your visits by it; yet there may be circumstances, such as ill healthy, or age, which would render it desirable for you to call again without reference to the return of your visits. The courtesies of society should ever be respected among the nearest friends, and even in the domestic circle; but among relations and intimate friends, visits of ceremony are not needed. Yet, one should endeavor to pay even social visits at suitable hours, and never make one’s self a bore by staying too long. To continue working with the crochet needle, typewriter, telegraph machine, telephone, or television when visits of ceremony are paid, would be extremely uncourteous; but when intimate friends are present, it is not always necessary to lay aside any light kind of work which does not interfere with your conversation. However, you guests are not indentured servants. It is decidedly inconsistent, however, with good-breeding to have your eyes fixed upon a crochet, or worsted pattern, and attempt to count its stitches while receiving a call from the most intimate friend. If your visitors come from a distance, be sure to offer then some refreshments, or urge them to remain to lunch; and is those call who are ill in health, offer a glass of wine, with a biscuit or cracker. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
We admire learning in a pig; and undervalue it in a human. We once heard a lady say:– “I never attempted now to pay visits in the downtown or midtown of this city, because it entails upon me long drive, traffic, difficult parking, and something of a walk into the bargain, and as few ladies ever think of offering their friends either a glass of wine or a cup of coffee or tea, with a biscuit, scone, biscotti, or a bit of cake, I should return to my house half famished, and a severe headache would be the result. I am always glad to see my friends, but I cannot return their visits.” A slight lunch would be always agreeable after the exertion. In the same town or village, of course, such an attention is needles; yet, if aged persons call, it is pleasing courtesy to them. Do not pass gas in the phone booth, and it is polite to have a stool only in your own bathroom, if possible. And it is important that you never date more than one person from the same family. Never make fancy with the former romantic interest of your friends, and never date more than one person at a time. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
Find your own vision. Three important rules for breaking up. Do not put off breaking up when you know you want to. Prolonging the situation only makes it worse. Tell him honestly, simply, kindly, but firmly. Do not make a big production. Do not make an elaborate story. This will help you avoid a big tear-jerking scene. If you want to date other people, say so. Be prepared for the man to feel hurt and rejected. Even, if you have gone together for only a short time, and have not been too serious. There is still a feeling of rejection when someone says she preferred the company of others to your exclusive company. However, if you are honest, and direct, and avoid making a flowery emotional speech when you break the news, the man will respect you for your frankness and honesty. And honestly, he will appreciate the kind of straightforward manner in which you told him your decision, unless he is a real jerk or a crybaby, you will remain friends. When you face situations that seem impossible in your everyday life, pray. When you ask, God releases favor and angles to go to work and strongholds are broken. You will see the greatness of God’s power and the rest of your life will be the best of your life. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
A Vital Doctrine—God Manifest in the Flesh
Never in a human head was contemplation more separated from desire. The Architects and advocates of the modern English translations of the Holy Scriptures unequivocally declare that Christ was God manifest in the flesh. He appeared in body. Two whole, perfect, and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined together in one Person, without conversion, composition, or confusion. Which person is very God and very man, yet one Christ, the only Mediator between God and human beings. The Westminster Divines evidently regarded this verse as one of the essential proofs of the Trinitarian doctrine of the Bible, that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. The first Reason, why the then Greatness of the Roman Empire was a fit Circumstance of Time for the Mission, of Christ, is that he might better manifest his Divine Authority and Commission to the civil Powers of the World. Hell, Satan, and the devils are in reality sates of the mind. However, some events can never be explained. When we limit the mental to the realm of conscious events (the actual), it is called psychology without a soul. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
Faithfulness to fact is raised to the level of genius. Behavior at the house is one of the best touchstones of good manners; for many persons will appear well abroad, and yet cannot exhibit any degree of ease at their own fireside table. However, to entertain company without embarrassment or excitement, is an art which it requires some usage to perfect. Company, various company, is the only school of this knowledge. Nothing forms a young person so much as being used to keep respectable and superior company, where a constant regard and attention is necessary. It is true, this is at first a disagreeable state of restraint; but it soon grows habitual, and consequently easy; and you are amply paid for it by the improvement you make, and the credit it gives you. Hospitality is also a Christian duty, and all homemakers should exercise it to some extent. We were not designed to live alone, to shut ourselves up in our houses, and enjoy the blessings up in our houses, and enjoy the blessings which have been given us in a spirit of exclusiveness. The idea is therefore essentially the divine nature and formally the ratio according to which God intelligizes creatures. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
These ideas make up the creative mind of God. In a parallel fashion the universal (on human level) is its singular. The singular participates in its universal, which is by nature a projection of an idea in the mind of God. As a creation of God’s mind, the singular is incapable of annihilation. For God to allow a singular to be annihilated would be to permit the annihilation of a part of himself—an obvious impossibility. Nature teaches us a lesson in this direction. She keeps open house for innumerable winged and creeping insects, and their banquets are always spread among the beautiful, fragrant flowers, whose hospitable abodes are every filled with guests, from the bees and the butterflies to the tiniest winged fairy. Elegant hospitality can be exercised at a moderate expense; and those of us who cannot afford to give costly dinner or evening parties, can surely entertain a few friends at tea or coffee, or of an evening, and this promote a social feeling among neighbors and acquaintances. It is not well for young persons to entertain too much company when they first commence housekeeping, but neither is it well to pay no heed to hospitality. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
God’s intellection, his knowledge, his will, the Trinity, his ideas and his power to create outside himself is the grand design. Young people should live frugally and you will live happily; shut not your doors or hearts against those who have a claim upon your hospitality;–but remember, that if they really esteem and love you, they will come not to look at your table or your furniture, but to enjoy your society. Psychology is the common basis for all scientific and cultural knowledge and the bond uniting all the individual sciences, and therefore as the science directly preparatory to philosophy. Certain knowledge is possible for humans of one realm but not of the other, where only opinion is possible, although God may be able to have the knowledge of both. The chief art of pleasing is to make everyone feel at home; that is, at one’s ease. And if anything has occurred in your ménage to ruffle your temper, do not annoy your guest by telling your grievances. Of course, they cannot be interested in such petty details; and the relation may tend to mar their pleasure. We can improve our understanding, but this will always fall short of knowledge. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
The most perfect being must owe one’s exemption from vice to the absence of temptation. We never quite understand why another dislikes what we like. There are those who are born with the faculty of rendering everyone happy who comes in contact with them, and they seem endowed with great discernment of character, and can encourage the timid, repress the encroaching, and call forth the peculiar talents and perfections of all. Such persons can always make themselves agreeable; while there are others who, strive as they can, can never attain to the same position. Yet, a desire to please—a desire to entertain one’s guest, will usually prove successful; and if you are cheerful, animated and pleasant yourself, you cannot fail to shed a halo of pleasure upon those around you. People of an enormously strong moral character have an unselfishness and self-control. It is important to be ambitious generals and politicians to acquire knowledge, and draw analogies to show that all skills must be learned. The significance of your knowledge can be usefully increased by deeper understanding of the purposes of your various crafts. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
If your friends become your guests for awhile, it is well to give them some insight into your mode of life. Then they will readily comprehend your duties, and will often think it advisable not to encroach too much upon your morning hours, which may be required for some domestic occupations. After luncheon, or early dinner, your time, however, should be given up to them; either to drive out, walk, shop, or in some entertainment in the house. Of course, you will always attend to the arrangement of their sleeping-rooms, and provide everything that is essential for their comfort before they arrive, unless you are blessed with a most superior housekeeper. It is merciless to invite friends to visit you in cold weather, without providing a fire in their bedroom or dressing-room (heat). Neither is it courteous to wait until they arrive, and then inquire—“Would you like a fire?” Therefore, if you cannot afford to make your friends comfortable, do not invite them; at least in the wintry season. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
There are temptations which it is not in the power of human nature to resist. Let your guest see, by your manner, that their presence is a decided pleasure to you; and make it also an incentive to recreations and amusements which do not belong to the common routine of your life. One should try to make their visits as agreeable as possible, but without any apparent effort; so that they many not think that you are putting yourself out of the way to afford them pleasures in which you do not often indulge. It is your duty to endeavor to make the time pass pleasantly, but if your visitors perceive that you are altering the daily tenor of your life on their account, it will detract greatly from their happiness. Mental training is paramount; serenity, sincerity, magnanimity, introspection, and self-restraint are the virtues to be cultivated. An ethical formula of devotion within, righteousness without is a virtue to be cultivated. Learning is knowing and practice. Therefore, we must rely on intelligence rather than strength. Intelligence is a great asset in the struggle for existence. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
We do not injure others, nor harm ourselves in the pursuit of fame, wealth, and rank. These are to be avoided as temptations external to one’s nature. On the other hand, there is inherent in human beings a craving for the pleasures of this World. To seek the gratification of one’s desires for such things as fine food and beautiful objects is to yield to one’s original nature and in this way to work for its completion. We must seek happiness to our heart’s content, as well as longevity and immortality. One should not unnecessarily shorten one’s life. It is a good plan, when inviting guests to visit you, to state a given period for their visit. Mention the day when you would be happy to receive them, and the length of time of their visit. Perhaps a young lady is invited to make a visit in the country, or in the city, and no mention is made of days, weeks, or months, for its limit, and, therefore, she is utterly at a loss to know what amount of clothing to bring. It is impossible to study the human frame without a little studying the human mind. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
The imprudence of our thoughts recoils upon our heads. When your guests intimate their intention of leaving you, if you really desire them to remain longer, say so frankly, and urge them to prolong the visit; but if you do not care for their society any longer, do not be so insincere as to urge it; or, on the other hand, if they cannot prolong their visit, do not worry them by your pertinacity in urging them to do so—but, while you invite them to renew their visit at their earliest convenience, facilitate their departure by every means in your power, and give them all needful information as to routes, times tables, etc. Of course, no guest will leave a friend’s house without some expression of regret and good-will. A good warm heart will, however, dictate the forms of speech requisite upon such occasions. And when you are at the house, be sure and inform your friends of your safe arrival, and express the gratification you have received from your visit, and gracefully allude to different members of the family, while you thank them for their kindly hospitality. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
The transcendental knowledge attained involves a vivid awareness of the nature of the soul and its essential distinctness from the psychophysical organism. This bring liberation. No well-bred person will ever fail to acknowledge your hospitality and charming family; and a failure to do so, is a decided mark of ignorance of both etiquette and politeness. Guests will never take the part of either host or hostess in any trifling disagreement or opinion. As visitors, they can express their ideas upon various matters, of course; but shun any partisanship. And they will also scrupulously respect the rights of their entertainers, and never criticize their surroundings and manners to other persons. A house guest never speaks ill of those whose food one has tasted; and well-bred persons will never repeat what Mrs. Hearst said, nor tell what Mr. Hearst. did, when they were visiting. There has been some investigation of the physiology, and there seems little doubt that a kind of hibernation can be achieved and that the control over lungs, heartbeat, and the viscera organs is, by ordinary standards remarkable. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
Some of the ore spectacular physical claims, however (such as levitation), are unconfirmed, and some of them are mythological in style. The ascription of magical powers to the host or hostess is part of the traditional tendency in India to think that with austerity and mental discipline can create a force which can even threaten the gods. This in turn both reflects and generates the view that mystical experience is the supreme religious goal, transcending the cult of supernatural beings. Such discrepancies of good manners are perfectly unendurable, and no respectable person will excuse them. Visitors should always give the housekeepers who waited upon them some little presents, either in money or its equivalent. They have had extra work in waiting upon them, and, therefore, deserve extra compensation. The chain which binds society together is composed of innumerable links, and it should be the part of hosts and guest to keep them uniformly bright; and to let neither moth nor rust corrupt them. There is nothing so difficult as to manage the public mind. The rest of your life will be the best of your life, which is socially engaged, but still retains its intellectual independence and freedom of social criticism. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
Seeing may be contrasted both with hearing and with feeling by touching. One way in which seeing differs from hearing follows from the truth of our language that we hear an object if and only if we hear a sound which is made by the object. There is no comparable linguistic practice in the case of seeing. This may lead us to think of sight as presenting objects to us directly, hearing only indirectly. One way in which seeing differs from feeling by touching is that if we feel something by touching it, our experience is of feeling it with a particular part of the body. Our visual experience, however, is not of seeing with our eyes. We can imagine a disembodied mind having visual experiences but not having tactile ones. Sight does not require our being part of the material World in the way in which feeling by touching does. One way in which seeing differs from both hearing and feeling by touching is in respect to time. It takes time to hear a tune or to feel the shape of a statue, but one seems to be able to see a landscape instantaneously. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
Sweet pliability of a human’s spirit, that can at once surrender itself to illusions, which cheat expectations and sorrow of their weary moments! Thus, the directness of seeing when contrasted with hearing, its noninvolvement with its object when contrasted with feeling by touching, and its apparent temporal immediacy when contrasted with both hearing and feeling by touching are features that may partly explain the belief that sight is the most excellent of the senses; this envied in the use by ancient and modern philosophers of predominantly visual metaphors to describe intellectual apprehension. Pray that we may finally receive the consolations and the succor of Heaven in all our necessities, tribulations and sufferings, particularly in Sacramento, and that we may bless God with the Elect through eternity. As mere human knowledge can split a ray of light and analyze the manner of its composition, so sublime intelligence may read in the feeble shining of this Earth of ours, every thought and act, every vice and virtue, of every responsible creature on it. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
There is No Secret of Success—Success is for Everyone
No advice on success works unless you do. Your life becomes better only when you become better. Beware of the barrenness of an overcrowded life. The secret of the heart is its pressing love of self. The purpose of history—what happens at any time is not simply or wholly the effect of what has already happened; and event is dependent upon its past as the material upon which activity may be expended, but it is also a new and fresh expenditure of activity upon that material. What occurs is reconstruction, transformation, remaking. What was is thus pushed back into the past, and what becomes takes the place of what was. Time does not move from past through present to future; rather, it moves from the possible to the actual, that is, from one of the potentialities of what formerly was to a single actuality which is brought into existence by an action (whether that action be unconscious chance or conscious choice) upon what was. What comes to us from the past offers us opportunities and often imposes cruel limitations, but it does not make our choices for us. Rather, it allows us to realize our ends insofar as we have understanding of the potentialities it contains. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
History has no one end; it includes many processes with their many, often incompatible, ends. And human choices, insofar as they are intelligent, may well be effective to some degree. A naturalistic theory of nature thus issues in a humanistic theory of man. Habitual inattention is sometimes attributed to great genius, but we cannot endorse that idea. Such a peculiarity of manner is subversive of all politeness, and tends to shut a person within oneself, and make one of little importance in life. There are some young persons, however, who delight to pass for geniuses or originals, and they think it very interesting to appear as if in a “brown study” while in the company of others. They like to seem entirely absorbed, and are delighted if anyone observes their eccentricities. Such manners are entirely at variance with good-breeding. If a person speak to you ever so foolishly or frivolously, it is the height of ill manners not to heed what he or she says; and if he or she every forces conversation upon you, it is unkind, to say the least, to assume a perfectly indifferent demeanor. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
Besides, you cannot offer anyone more flattering attention than by that pleasing deference which, though it may involve somewhat of a sacrifice yet, is worth making. It is a good rule to endeavor to please everyone as far as is possible for us to do without too great a breach of sincerity. In this country, free and easy manners are too prevalent; but space would fail us to particularize all the little trifles in which even well-bred persons sometimes fall short. We will, however, briefly remark, that nothing can be more adverse to good manners than the habit of sitting with the hat on in the house—be it in the parlor, dining-room, kitchen, store, or office; or then yawning and whispering in company, lounging upon the chairs, by tipping them back upon two legs; taking the best seat in the room, and keeping them when your elders enter; or standing with the back to an open fire, when other persons are near it; and last, but not least, spitting into the fire, etc. These practices are deemed almost peculiar to our country, and have been severely animadverted upon by European travelers in our midst. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
Not only that, but during police investigations, when people are suspected of crimes and refuse to give a DNA sample (in order to match the blood or body fluid to a crime scene) investigators will be undercover, watching you and waiting for you to spit on the ground or drop a cigarette so that they can collect your DNA and tie you to the crime. They will photograph or video tape you so they can prove that they legally obtained the same from you, even without you knowing. The evidence can be disputed. However, if you do not know the victim, then your DNA has no business being at the crime scene. And if you know the victim, you better hope you have a good reason for living your DNA behind. So be care when you spit or liter, and realize there is usually a witness to everything that happens. A man or woman may have virtue, capacity, and good habits, and yet his or her lack of good-breeding may made him or her unendurable to those who are well-bred. There are three classes of people; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. If a person neglects education, one walks lame to the end of one’s life. The style and manner which we neglect as too trifling for us to heed, are often the things by which the World judges us. There are many little matters of personal bearing and conduct which must be attended to, if we desire to be agreeable to society. It is useless to say that such a man or woman, whose attire is neglected, whose whole appearance bespeaks the sloven, is a good and able man or woman and therefore must be agreeable and pleasing. His or her ability and goodness are, doubtless, desirable qualities, but the personal juxtaposition of the individual is insupportable to those who are accustomed to cleanliness and refinement. Not that it is essential that every person should be externally elegant, or an adept in the rules which constitute good-breeding; but no one can hope to be admired and sought after, who is addicted to conspicuous uncleanliness, the special tendency of which is to inspire painful feelings in those around him or her. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
Never by monkeyish or clownish—attempting to introduce the manners of the circus into the house. Some rude boys and girls seem to ride themselves upon their exhibitions of low, vulgar tricks, antic gestures, foolish jests, and odd, slangy expression. This is an example of the contrast between the brilliant skill, ingenuity, and care bestowed upon observation and experiment in biology, and the almost complete neglect of caution in regard to the definition and use of etiquette and good breeding. The effect of this has been to arrest the development of the life sciences. They cause chronic controversies and antitheses of biology, such as those between mechanism and vitalism, preformation and epigenesist, teleology and causation, structure and function, organism and environment, and body and mind. Such low, shameful vulgarity may excite the laughter of foolish persons, for the mouth of fools feedeth on foolishness; but no one possessing common sense can see such behavior without disgust and abhorrence. And every person that acts like the buffoon puts oneself on the level with a clown, and lowers oneself in the estimation of the good and the wise. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue. Be polite, respectful and modest to all, and especially to your elders and superiors. There is nothing more disgusting than a youth who assumes an air of disrespect and self-importance towards one’s superiors, equals, or inferiors. Never stare people in the face. It is exceedingly impolite, and a certain mark of ill-breeding to stare idly at strangers or anyone, as though you were entirely unused to seeing visitors. In conversing with anyone, however, it is right to look him or her in the face, with cheerful, dignified and respectful assurance. Never jerk, twitch or slam doors or window blinds; but endeavor to be cautious and gentle in all your motions. No well-bred child will ever slam a door in anger, or even give it a strong twitch. Never enter a house or parlor with your boots all mud and slush, or sit down with your hat or cap on. Never go up and down stairs, or about the house, with the speed or a trotting horse and the tread of an elephant; step lightly, quickly, and orderly. Never be rude and boisterous with your young friends. You can share in all kinds of sports, and yet never lose the command of yourself so as to become hoydenish and bold. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge. Avoid loud screaming and rude merriment. Remember what Lear says of Aaliyah: “Her voice was ever sweet, gentle and low; and excellent thing in a woman. If we will study to introduce home etiquette into our families; to learn to be always courteous—always conciliatory—always well-bred—we should find that we had gained an immeasurable amount of happiness and the rest of our lives will be the best of our lives. Negligence and carelessness with regard to the little amenities of life, are the fruitful source of much domestic unhappiness. Good manners are to the family, what good morals are to society, their cement and their security. We think not that we daily see about our hearts—angels that are to be, or may be if they will, and we prepare their souls and ours to meet in happy air—a child, a friend, a wife whose soft heart sings in unison with ours, breeding its future wings. We should continue to turn to God as children, being continuously converted every day of our lives. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
Almighty God, who, when the hearts of your people have grown cold, send your Holy Spirit to relight the flame of your love in their hearts, and raise up faithful ministers to recall your people to their former devotion and service. Mercifuly grant that we, following the teachings and example of Teresa of Avila, may be filled with your Holy Spirit, may be aflame with zeal for your glory and love for your goodness and hunger for your love, and that our feet may be set upon the path that leads to true holiness. We ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Bless it be. You may be discouraged because your plans did have not worked out, but those closed doors were not an accident. That was God directing your steps. The reason God closed them because he has something better in store. Will you trust God? Gods ways are not our ways, they are better than our ways. There will be times when you do not get what you want, and you cannot understand why not. You may be experiencing that right now. Will you stay in faith while you wait to see what God is up to? #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
Our first scrape generally leads to our first travel. Disappointment requires change of air; desperation change of scene. God is wonderful in his design and excellent in his process and projects and houses. Believer, God overrules all things for your good. Your course is mapped out by your Lord. Nothing will take God by surprise. There will be no novelties to God. Real satisfaction comes not in understanding God’s motives, but in understanding his character, in trusting in his promises, and in leaning on him and resting in God as the Sovereign who knows what he is doing and does all things well. Perhaps there is a pattern set up in the Heavens for one who desires to see it, and having seen it, to find one in oneself. Time—I see it not, I feel it not: it is but a shadowy name—a succession of breathings measured forth by night by the clank of a bell, by day by a shadow crossings along a dialstone. Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul; the blueprints of your ultimate achievements. Protect your dreams. Feed them. Nurture them. Encourage them to grow, Care for them. For someday, they may take care of you. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
Randolph Harris II International Institute 