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And Now the Purple Dusk of Twilight Time Steals Across the Meadows of My Heart!
Civilization beings with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos. If one is always a little hungry, never quite warm enough, and never falling prey to the dangers of the soft life of self-gratification, a person can think and meditate better. Meditation is just oiling the machinery and making the unused parts come into use. You have not done enough, you have never done enough, so long as it is possible that you have something of value to contribute. Let us now consider whether justice requires the toleration of the intolerant, and if so under what conditions. There are a variety of situations in which this question arises. Some political parties in democratic states hold doctrines that commit them to suppress the constitutional liberties whenever they have power. Again, there are those who reject intellectual freedom but who nevertheless hold positions in the university. It may appear that toleration in these cases is inconsistent with the principles of justice, or at any rate not required by them. I shall discuss the matter in connection with religious toleration. With appropriate alterations the argument can be extended to these other instances. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Several questions should be distinguished. First, there is the question whether an intolerant sect has any title to complain if it is not tolerated; second, under what conditions tolerant sects have a right not to tolerate those which are intolerant; and last, when they have the right not to tolerate them, for what ends it should be exercised. Beginning with the first question, it seems that an intolerant sect has no title to complain when it is denied an equal liberty. At least this follows if it is assumed that one has no title to object to the conduct of others that is in accordance with principles one would use in similar circumstance to justify one’s action toward them. A person’s right to complain is limited to violations of principles one acknowledges oneself. A complaint is a protest addressed to another in good faith. It claims a violation of a principle that both parties accept. Now, to be sure, an intolerant human will say that one acts in good faith and that one does not ask anything for oneself that one denies to others. One’s view, let us suppose, is that one is acting on the principle that God is to be obeyed and the truth accepted by all. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
This principle is absolute authority is perfectly general and by acting on it one is not making an exception in one’s own case. As one sees that matter, one is following the correct principle others reject. The reply to this defense is that, from the standpoint of the original position (designed to be a fair and impartial point of view that is to be adopted in our reasoning about fundamental principles of justice), no particular interpretation of religious truth can be acknowledged as binding upon citizens generally; nor can it be agreed that there should be one authority with the right to settle questions of theological doctrine. Each person must insist upon an equal right t decide what one’s religious obligations are. One cannot give up this right to another person or institutional authority. In fact, a human exercises one’s liberty in deciding to accept anther as an authority even when one regards this authority as infallible, since in doing this one in no way abandons one’s equal liberty of conscience as a matter of constitutional law. For this liberty as secured by justice is imprescriptible: a person is always free to change one’s faith and this right does not depend upon one’s having exercised one’s powers of choice regularly or intelligently. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
We may observe that human beings having an equal liberty of conscience is consistent with the idea that all humans ought to obey God and accept the truth. The problem of liberty is that of choosing a principle by which the claims humans make on one another in the name of their religion are to be regulated. Granting that God’s will should be followed and the truth recognized does not as yet define a principle of adjudication. From the fact that God’s intention is to be complied with, it does follow that any person or institution has authority to interfere with another’s interpretation of one’s religious obligations. This religious principle justifies no one in demanding in law or politics a greater liberty for oneself. The only principles which authorize claims on institutions are those that would be chosen in the original position. Let us suppose, then, that an intolerant sect has no title to complain of intolerance. We still cannot say that tolerant sects have the right to suppress them. For one thing, others may have a right to complain. They may have this right not as a right to complain on behalf of the intolerant, but simply as a right to object whenever a principle of justice is violated. For justice is infringed whenever equal liberty is denied without sufficient reason. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
The question, then, is whether being intolerant of another in grounds enough for limiting someone’s liberty. To simplify things, assumes that the tolerant sects have the right not to tolerate the intolerant in at least one circumstances, namely, when they sincerely and with reason believe that intolerance is necessary for their own security. This right follows readily enough since, as the original position is defined, each would agree to the right of self-preservation. Justice does not require that humans must stand idly by while others destroy the basis of their existence. Since it can never be to human’s advantage, from a general point of view, to forgo the right of self-protection, the only question, then, is whether the tolerant have a right to curb the intolerant when they are of no immediate danger to the equal liberties of others. Suppose that, in some way or other, an intolerant sect comes to exist within a well-ordered society accepting the two principles of justice. How are the citizens of this society to act in regard to it? Now certainly they would not suppress it simply because the members of the intolerant sect could not complain were they to do so. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Rather, since a just constitution exists, all citizens have a natural duty of justice to uphold it. We are not released from this duty whenever others are disposed to act unjustly. A more stringent condition is required: there must be some considerable risks to our own legitimate interests. Thus just citizens should strive to preserve the constitution with all its equal liberties as long as liberty itself and their own freedom are not in danger. They can properly force the intolerant to respect the liberty of others, since a person can be required to respect the rights established by principles that one would acknowledge in the original position. However, when the constitution itself is secure, there is no reason to deny freedom to the intolerant. The question of tolerating the intolerant is directly related to that of the stability of a well-ordered society regulated by the two principles. We can see this as follows. It is from the position of equal citizenship that persons join the various religious associations, and it is from this position that they should conduct their discussions with one another. Citizens in a free society should not think one another incapable of a sense of justice unless this is necessary for the sake of liberty itself. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
If an intolerant sect appears in a well-ordered society, the others should keep in mind the inherent stability of their institutions. The liberties of the intolerant may persuade them to a belief in freedom. This persuasion works on the psychological principle that those whose liberties are protected by and who benefit from a just constitution will, ceteris paribus (other things equal), acquire an allegiance to it over a period of times. So even if an intolerant sect should arise, provided that it is not so strong initially that it can impose its will straightway, or does not grow so rapidly that the psychological principle has no time to take hold, it will tend to lose its intolerance and accept liberty of conscience. This is the consequence of the stability of just institutions, for stability means that when tendencies to injustice arise other forces will be called into play that work to preserve the justice of the whole arrangement. Of course, the intolerant sect may be so strong initially or growing so fast that the forces making for stability cannot convert it to liberty. This situation presents a practical dilemma which philosophy alone cannot resolve it. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Whether the liberty of the intolerant should be limited to preserve freedom under a just constitution depends on the circumstances. The theory of justice only characterizes the just constitution, the end of political action by reference to which practical decisions are to be made. In pursuing this end the natural strength of free institutions must not be forgotten, nor should it be supposed that tendencies to depart from them go unchecked and always win out. Knowing the inherent stability of a just constitution, members of a well-ordered society have the confidence to limit the freedom of the intolerant only in the special cases when it is necessary for preserving equal liberty itself. Therefore, while an intolerant sect does not itself have title to complain of intolerance, its freedom should be restricted only when the tolerant sincerely and with reason believe that their own security and that of the institutions of liberty are in danger. The tolerant should curb the intolerant only in this case. The leading principle is to establish a justice constitution with the liberties of equal citizenship. The just should be guided by the principles of justice and not the fact that the unjust cannot complain. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
It should be noted that even when the freedom of the intolerant is limited to safeguard a just constitution, this is not done in the name of maximizing liberty. The liberties of some are not suppressed simply to make possible a greater liberty for others. Justice forbids this sort of reasoning in connection with liberty as much as it does in regard to the sum of advantages. It is only the liberty of the intolerant which is to be limited, and this is done for the sake of equal liberty under a just constitution the principles of which the intolerant themselves would acknowledge in the original position. The argument in this and in the preceding sections suggests that the adoption of the principle of equal liberty can be viewed as a limiting case. Even though their differences are profound and no one knows how to reconcile them by reason, humans can, from the standpoint of the original position, still agree on this principle if they can agree on any principle at all. This idea which arose historically with religious toleration can be extended to other instances. Thus we can suppose that the persons in the original position know that they have moral convictions although, as the veil of ignorance requires, they do not know what these convictions are. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
They understand that the principles they acknowledge are to override these beliefs when there is a conflict; but otherwise they need not revise their opinions nor give them up when these principles do not uphold them. In this way the principles of justice can adjudicate between opposing moralities just as they regular the claims of rival religions. Within the framework that justice established, moral conceptions with different principles, or conceptions representing a different balancing of the same principles, may be adopted by various parts of society. What is essential is that when persons with different convictions make conflicting demands on the basic structure as a matter of political principle, they are to judge these claims by the principles of justice. The principles that would be chosen in the original position are the kernel of political morality. They not only specify the terms of cooperation between persons but they define a pact of reconciliation between diverse religions and moral beliefs, and the forms of culture to which they belong. If this conception of justice now seems largely negative, we shall see that it has a happier side. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
When we overcome our own selfish desires and put God first in our lives and covenant to serve God regardless of the cost, we are then living the law of sacrifice. One of the best ways to be sure we are keeping the first great commandment is to keep the second. “I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt not have any strange god before me. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” The faithful are required to honour the name of God. If we are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, it makes sense that we are naturally to respect the name of God with equal passion and vigour. The law of sacrifice provides an opportunity for us to prove to the Lord that we love Him more than any other thing. As a result the course sometimes becomes difficult since this process of perfection that prepares us for the celestial kingdom to “dwell in the presence of God and His Christ forever and ever,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 76.62. The sacred mission of the Church is to “invite all to come unto Christ,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 20.59. Come unto Christ and be perfected in Him. In that light, the law of sacrifice has always been a means for God’s children to come unto the Lord Jesus Christ. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Let us here observe, that a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation; it is though the medium of the sacrifice of all Earthly things that humans do actually know that they are doing the things that are well pleasing in the sight of God. When a human has offered in sacrifice all that one has for the truth’s sake, not even withholding one’s life, and believing before God that one has been called to make this sacrifice because one seeks to do one’s will, one does know, most assuredly, that God does and will accept one’s sacrifice and offering, and that one has not, nor will seek one’s face in vain. Under these circumstances, then one can obtain the faith necessary for one to lay hold on eternal life. We know what we do is pleasing before God and understand that this knowledge comes to us through sacrifice and obedience. Those who come unto Christ in this way receive a confidence that whispers peace to their souls and that will eventually enable them to lay hold upon eternal life. Sacrifice allows us to learn something about ourselves—what we are willing to offer the Lord through our obedience. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Through sacrifice and service, one comes to know the Lord. As we sacrifice our selfish desires, serve our God and others, we become more like Him. We do this by our obedience to the commandments of God. Thus, the laws of obedience and sacrifice are indelibly intertwined. As we comply with these and other commandments, something wonderful happens to us. We become more sacred and holy—more like our Lord! In fact, the word sacrifice means literally “to make scared,” or “to render sacred.” Our first lessons about the law of sacrifice, as well as other gospel principles, began in our premotal life. We were taught the fulness of the gospel and the plan of salvation. We knew of the Saviour’s mission and of His futre atoning sacrifice, and we willingly sustained Christ as our Saviour and our Redeemer. In fact, we learn from Revelation 12.9, 11 that it is by “the blood of the Lamb” (Christ’s atoning sacrifice) and our testimony that we are able to overcome Satan. The Lord designed in the beginning to place before humans the knowledge of good and evil, and gave one a commandment to cleave to good and abstain from evil. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
However, if one should fail, God would give unto one the law of sacrifice and provide a Saviour for one, that one might be brought back again into the presence and favour of God and partake of eternal life with God. This is the plan of redemption chosen and instituted by the Alight before human was placed on Earth. Adam and Eve were taught the law of sacrifice and were commanded to practice it by giving offerings. These included two emblems: the firstlings of the flock and the first fruits of the field. They obeyed without questioning. The effect of this law was that the best of the Earth produced, the best specimen in the flock or heard should not be sued for self, but for God. At a time in history when it was a struggle to make sure the family had food, those who sought to worship the Lord were asked to sacrifice the best part of their source of life. It was the real test of Adam and Eve’s faith, and they obeyed. “And now I speak concerning baptism. Behold, elders, priests, and teachers were baptized; and they were not baptized save they brought forth fruit meet that they were worthy of it. Neither did they receive any unto baptism save they came forth with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, and witnessed unto the church that they truly repented of all their sins. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
“And none were received unto baptism save they took upon them the name of Christ, having a determination to serve him to the end. And after they had been received unto baptism, and were wrought upon and cleansed by the power of the Holy Ghost, they were numbered among the people of the church of Christ; and their names were taken that they might be remembered and nourished by the good word of God, to keep them in the right way, to keep them continually watchful unto prayer, relying alone upon the merits of Christ, who was the author and the finisher of their faith. And the church did meet together oft, to fast and to pray, and to speak one with another concerning the welfare of their souls. And hey did meet together oft to partake of bread and wine, in remembrance of the Lord Jesus. And they were strict to observe that there should be no iniquity among them; and whoso was found to commit iniquity, and three witnesses of the church did condemn them before the elders, and if they repented not and confessed not, their names were blotted out, and they were not numbered among the people of Christ. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
“However, as oft as they repented and sought forgiveness, with real intent, they were forgiven. And their meetings were conducted by the church after the manner of the workings of the Spirit, and by the power of the Holy Ghost; for as the power of the Holy Ghost led them whether to preach, or to exhort, or to pray, or to supplicate, or to sing, even so it was done,” reports Moroni 6.1-9. It is especially in our families and similarly close associations that we must identify the elements of assault and withdrawal that defeat love and right relation to others. By insight and practice we must break away from them and reserve them, first by learning a calm but firm non-cooperation with those poisonous elements, and then by initiatives of goodwill and blessing in the midst of them. What we do in our meetings as Christians should be focused on enabling us to do this effectively wherever we are. Those meetings should and could be centers from which powerfully redemptive community spreads. Where to start? In various parts of the United States of America, publicly owned vehicles (police, street maintenance, schools) wear a bumper sticker that proclaims, “There is No Excuse for Domestic Violence.” It is a wonderful idea. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
However, we need to go deeper, of course. We need to become the kind of people whom domestic violence is unthinkable and never an option. We must be transformed in such a way that our minds and bodies—our very souls—simply do not have the makeup for it. This is the work of the Christian spiritual formations. We must begin in the family. Now the slogan must be, “There is No Excuse for Assault or Withdrawal in the Home.” Do you think that would take care of intimate partner violence? Of course it would. However, the reserve is not true: merely avoiding the subject of intimate partner violence, domestic violence or assault can still leave the home a hell of cutting remarks, contempt, coldness, and withdrawal or noninvolvement. Such a hell is often found in the homes of Christians and even of Christian leaders. Frequently they seem to honestly think that such a condition is normal, and they have no knowledge of any other way. Their very theology may strengthen this tragically false outlook. If I were married, I would seek the help of my spouse in this matter. If not, then a trusted friend who is spiritually mature and not abusive. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
I would then number my areas of need in order of importance, say: Purity, Mind, Prayer, Witness, Giving, Work, Friendship, and Leadership. Then, beginning with the first need, Purity, I would look over the suggested sub-disciplines and choose one to three things which I think would best help me improve. In doing this, I would resist the temptation to commit myself to too many disciplines. Better to succeed in a few than to assure failure by overcommitment. Perhaps, regarding the discipline of Purity I would choose to commit myself, first, to memorizing Scripture which help steel me to temptations, and second, to not watching anything sensual on TV or at the movies. Perhaps under Witness, I would make commitments to pray that God would give me someone to share Christ with and to join an interest club to meet unchurched people. After going through my life I would have perhaps twenty specific things which I could do to improve my eight weakest areas. However, before commitment to the specifics, I would look at the whole list with honest realism, asking, “Are the things which I am about to commit to really within my reach with the help of God?” #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Perhaps, regarding the discipline of Mind, I have become so convicted that I am considering committing myself to reading the Old Testament once and the New Testament twice, plus reading The Book of Mormon. Make sure your commitments make you sweat, but also make sure that taken together they are manageable. It is better to increase your commitments as you succeed than to bite off more than you can do. Success begets success. Before setting your commitments in concrete, give yourself a week to think about them and pray over them. Seek the Holy Spirit’s guidance for other ways of personal discipline not mentioned in this essay. Ask your spouse of friend to hold you accountable for your disciplines. Even if it has to be over the phone, make sure you regularly confer and pray. Be honest about your success and failures. And be willing to take advice and make adjustments. You may have some complications, no doubt, and may not succeed at time. When this happens, wounded pride and embarrassment can make you want to take your marbles and go home. We do not like to do things which we fail. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
However, we must realize that failure is a part of succeeding, provided we admit our failures and go at it again. Moreover, we are not under Law but grace. God is not counting our failure against us, and we are not building a treasure of merit with our success. We are simply trying to live a disciplined life which pleases our loving Father—and He understands our failures better than we understand our own children’s. When the movement in one direction has exhausted itself, there is a pause, and then a reversal directs the movement into the opposite direction. The flow of Nature follows the course indicated by the Principle of Reversion, which throws it back after a time in the opposite direction. When the point of farthest travel is reached, the forces reverse themselves. In this way, excess disciplines and even defeats itself. In this way too the Universe and all the different kinds of existence in it are kept in equilibrium. In the to-and-fro movement of human breathing, we have a kay to human development. Study it well with this assistance and you will discern a forward and backward movement, a pendulum-like swing, here too. Everything in the Universe is subject to a pendulum-like movement. It shuttles to and from with a coming-to-be and a ceasing-to-be effect. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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The Fateful Call Came During Dinner with All My Family as Witnesses!
You really have to experience the feeling of being with the president in the oval office. If he hears the lark singing and notes its joy, he hears also the captured prey of hawk and owl and notes their screams. If he admires the beauty of the Himalaya, he remembers the large number of living creatures buried at its upheaval. When it comes to equal liberty, one might say that those who hold this belief regard themselves as having moral or religious obligations which they must keep themselves free to honour. Of course, from the standpoint of justice as fairness (a society of free citizens holding equal basic rights and cooperating within an egalitarian economic system), these obligations are self-imposed; they are not bonds laid down by this conception of justice. The point is rather that the persons in the original position (which focuses on the concept of what is fair in terms of social cooperation for free and equal citizens) are not to view themselves as single isolated individuals. To the contrary, they assume that they have interests which they must protect as best they can and that they have ties with certain members of the next generation who will also make similar claims. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
Once the parties consider these matters, the case for the principles of justice (reconciliation of liberty and equality that is meant to apply to the basic structure of a well-ordered society) is very much strengthened. The question of equal liberty of conscience is settled. It is one of the fixed points of our considered judgments of justice. However, precisely because of this fact it illustrates the nature of the argument for the principle of equal liberty. The reasoning in this case can be generalized to apply to other freedoms, although not always with the same force. Turning then to liberty of conscience, it seems evident that the parties must choose principles that secure the integrity of their religious and moral freedom. They do not know, of course, what their religious or moral convictions are, or what is the particular content of their moral or religious obligations as they interpret them. Indeed, they do not know that they think of themselves as having such obligations. The possibility that they do suffices for the argument, although I shall make the stronger assumption. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
Further, the parties do not know how their religious or moral views fares in their society, whether, for example, it is in the majority or the minority. All they know is that they have obligations which they interpret in this way. The question they are to decide is which principle they should adopt to regulate the liberties of citizens in regard to their fundamental religious, moral, and philosophical interests. Now it seems that equal liberty of conscience is the only principle that the persons on the original position can acknowledge. If wishes be, they cannot take chances with their liberty by permitting the dominant religious or moral doctrine to persecute or to suppress others. Even granting (what may be questioned) that it is more probable than not that one will turn out to belong to the majority (if a majority exists), to gamble in this way would show that one did not take one’s religious or moral convictions seriously, or highly value the liberty to examine one’s beliefs. Nor on the other hand, could the parties consent to the principle of utility. If, in this case, it would lead to a greater net balance of satisfaction, their freedom would be subject to the calculus of social interests and they would be authorizing its retraction. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
Of course, as we have seen, a utilitarian (a view that the morally right action is the action that produces the most good) may try to argue from the general facts of social life that when properly carried out the computation of advantages never justifies such limitations, at least under reasonably favourable conditions of culture. However, even if the parties were persuaded of this, they might as well guarantee their freedom straightway by adopting the principle of equal liberty. There is nothing gained by not doing so, and to the extent that the outcome of the actuarial calculation is unclear a great deal may be lost. Indeed, if we give a realistic interpretation to the general knowledge available to the parties, they are forced to reject the utilitarian principle. These considerations have all the more force in view of the complexity and vagueness of these calculations (if we can so describe them) as they are bound to be made in practice. Moreover, the initial agreement on the principle of equal liberty is final. An individual recognizing religious and more obligations regards them as binding absolutely in the sense that one cannot qualify one’s fulfillment of them for the sake of greater means for promoting one’s other interests. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
Greater economic and social benefits are not a sufficient reason for accepting less than equal liberty. Only if there is a threat of coercion which it is unwise to resist from the standpoint of liberty itself, then it seems possible to consent to an unequal liberty. For example, the situation may be one in which a person’s religion or one’s moral view will be tolerated provided that one does not protest, whereas claiming an equal liberty will bring greater repression that cannot be effectively opposed. However, from the perspective of the original position there is no way of ascertaining the relative strength of various doctrines and so these considerations do not arise. The veil of ignorance leads to an agreement on the principle of equal liberty; and the strength of religious and moral obligations as humans interpret them seems to require that the two principles be put in serial order, at least when applied to freedom of conscience. It may be said against the principle of equal liberty that religious sects, say, cannot acknowledge any principle at all for limiting their claims on one another. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
The duty to religious and divine law being absolute, no understanding among persons of different faiths is permissible from a religious point of view. Certainly humans have often acted as if they held this doctrine. It is unnecessary, however, to argue against it. It suffices that if any principle can be agreed to, it must be that of equal liberty. A person may indeed think that others ought to recognize the same beliefs and first principles that one does, and that by not doing so they are grievously in error and miss the way to their salvation. However, an understanding of religious obligation and of philosophical and moral first principles shows that we cannot expect others to acquiesce in an inferior liberty. Much less can we ask them to recognize us as the proper interpreter of their religious duties or moral obligations. We should now observe that these reasons for the first principle receive further support once the parties’ concern for the net generation is taken into account. Since they have a desire to obtain similar liberties for their descendants, and these liberties are also secured by the principle of equal liberty, there is no conflict of interests between generations. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Moreover, only if the prospects offered by some other conception, say that of utility or perfection, were so attractive that the persons in the original position must not have properly considered their descendants wen they rejected it, the next generation could object to the choice of this principle. We can express this by nothing that were a father, for example, to asset that one would accept the principle of equal liberty, a son could not object that were he (the father) to do so he would be neglecting his (the son’s) interests. The advantages of the other principles are not this great and appear in fact uncertain and conjectural. The father could reply that when the choice of principles affects the liberty of others, the decision must, if possible, seems reasonable and responsible to them once they come of age. Those who care for others must choose for the in the light of what they will want whatever else they want once they reach maturity. Therefore following the account of primary goods, the parties presume that their descendants will want their liberty protected. At this point we touch upon the principle of paternalism that is to guide decisions taken on behalf of others. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
If they were at the age of reason and deciding rationally, we must choose for others as we have reason to believe they would choose of themselves. Trustees, guardians, and benefactors are to act in this way, but since they usually know the situation and interests of their way, but since they usually know the situation and interests of their wards and beneficiaries, they can often make accurate estimates as to what is or will be wanted. The persons in the original position, however, are prevented from knowing any more about their descendants than they do about themselves, and so in this case too they must rely upon the theory of primary goods. Thus, if he were not to guarantee the rights of his descendants by adopting the principle of equal liberty, the father can say that he would be irresponsible. From the perspective of the original position, one must assume that this is what they will come to recognize as for their good. By taking liberty of conscious as an example, this shows how justice as fairness provides strong arguments for equal liberty. The same kind of reasoning applies, I believe, in other cases, though it is not always so convincing. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
I do not deny, however, that persuasive arguments for liberty are forthcoming on other views. As understood by Dr. Mill, the principle of utility often supports freedom. Dr. Mill defines the concept of value by reference to the interests of humans as progressive beings. By this idea he means that interest men would have and the activities they would rather pursue under conditions encouraging freedom of choice. Dr. Mill adopts, in effect, a choice criterion of value: if it is preferred by those who are capable of both and who have experience each of them under circumstances of liberty, one activity is better than another. Using this principle Dr. Mill adduces essentially thee grounds for free institutions. For one thing, they are required to develop human’s capacities and powers, to arouse strong and vigorous natures. Unless their abilities are intensely cultivated and their abilities are intensely cultivated and their natures enlivened, humans will not be able to engage in and to experience the valuable activities of which they are capable. Secondly, if human’s preferences among different activities are to be rational and informed, the institutions of liberty and the opportunity for experience which they allow are necessary, at least to some degree. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Human beings have no other way of knowing what things they can do and which of them are most rewarding. Thus if the pursuit of value, estimated in terms of the progressive interests of humankind, is to be rational, that is, guided by a knowledge of the human capacities and well-formed preferences, certain freedoms are indispensable. Otherwise society’s attempt to follow the principle of utility proceeds blindly. The suppression of liberty is always likely to be irrational. Even if the general capacities of humankind were known (as they are not), each person has still to find oneself, and for this freedom is a prerequisite. Finally, Dr. Mill believes that human beings prefer to live under institutions of liberty. Historical experience shows that humans desire to be free whenever they have not resigned themselves to apathy ad despair; whereas those who are free never want to abdicate their liberty. Although humans may complain of the burdens of freedom and culture, they have an overriding desire to determine how they shall live and to settle their own affairs. Thus by Dr. Mill’s choice criterion, free institutions have value in themselves as basic aspects of rationally preferred forms of life. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
These are certainly forceful arguments and under some circumstances anyway they might justify many if not most of the equal liberties. They clearly guarantee that in favourable conditions a considerable degree of liberty is a precondition of the rational pursuit of value. However, even Dr. Mill’s contentions, as cogent as they are, will not, it seems, justify an equal liberty for all. We still need analogues of the standard utilitarian assumptions. One must suppose a certain similarity among individuals, say their equal capacity for the activities and interests of humans as progressive beings, and in addition a principle of the diminishing marginal value of basic rights when assigned to individuals. In the absence of these presumptions the advancement of human ends may be compatible with some persons’ being oppressed, or at least granted but a restricted liberty. Whenever a society sets out to maximize the sum of intrinsic value or the net balance of satisfaction of interests, it is liable to find that the denial of liberty for some is justified in the name of this single end. When founded upon teleological principles, the liberties of equal citizenship are insecure. The argument for them relies upon precarious calculations as well as controversial and uncertain premises. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Moreover, as if they were part of utility, nothing is gained by saying that persons are of equal intrinsic value unless this is simply a way of using the standard assumptions. That is, as if these assumptions were true, one applies this principle. Doing this certainly has the merit of recognizing that we have more confidence in the principle of equal liberty than in the truth of the premises from which a perfectionist or utilitarian view would derive it. The grounds for this confidence, according to the contract view, is that the equal liberties have a different basis altogether. They are not a way of maximizing them sum of intrinsic value or of maximizing the sum of intrinsic value or of achieving the greatest net balance of satisfaction. The notion of maximizing a sum of value by adjusting the rights of individuals does not arise. Rather, when each is fairly represented as a moral person, these rights are assigned to fulfill the principles of cooperation that citizens would acknowledge. The conception defined by these principles is not that of maximizing anything, except in the vacuous sense of best meeting the requirement of justice, all things considered. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
Now, here in America we pledge our allegiance to a flag that represents “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” However, who has any idea of what this would mean for real life on the street and how it applies to them? And the biblical vision of human unity under God is even more so one that few people today can even imagine, much less regard as realistically possible for themselves or others. Only the message and people of Jesus Chris can give it substance. Perhaps someone with no real knowledge of Christ could imagine that kind of “communal solidarity” for a few people, carefully selected—people of “the right kind.” However, certainly not for people generally, and especially not for those imposed upon us by “accidents” of birth, and thereby of history and society. Sin structures embedded deeply in our souls and bodies have almost totally disabled us for those relationships to others that our hearts desire and that were meant by God to be—relationships that our public discourse in American idealizes without understanding what they are. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
When two people connect, when their beings intersect as closely as the clouds and the sky on a rainy day, something is poured out of one and into the other that has power to heal the soul of its deepest wounds and restore it to health. The one who receives the experiences the joy of being healed. The one who gives knows the even greater joy of being used to heal. Something good is in the heart of each of God’s children that is more powerful than everything bad. It is there, waiting to be released, to work its magic, but it rarely happens. For people who claim the name of Christ, there are two distinct courses of life available. One is to cultivate a small heart. This by far seems the safest way to go because it minimizes the sorrows of life. If our ambition is to dodge the troubles of human existence, the formula is simple: avoid entangling relationships, do not give yourself to others, and be sure not to seriously embrace elevated and noble ideals. If we do this, we will escape a host of afflictions. This life principle bears out in other logics of life as well. Cultivated deafness and we will be spared hearing the discords of life. Cultivate blindness and we will be shielded from seeing ugliness. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
If we want to get through life with a minimum of trouble, all we have to do is wear blinders. This is how many people, even those who profess to be Christians, get through life with such ease—they have successfully nurtured smallness of heart. The other path is to cultivate a ministering heart. Open yourself to others, and you will become susceptible to an index of sorrows scarcely imaginable to a shriveled heart. Enlarge and ennoble your ideals, and your vulnerability will increase proportionately. In the shape of converts I have seen no result. “I have not, as far as I am aware, seen anyone who even wanted to be a Christian.” Painful words. However, the depth of this pain can only be seen dimly until one turns to the opening words of his diary, written when I first arrived in Sacramento: “Several beautiful, expansive, custom homes, with green laws and three slots for a garage, maybe one is the laundry room, even a mail box for the Sacramento Bee Newspaper on the lawn. I wonder what these people in this peaceful community do for a living? O Lord, suggest by the Spirit how I should come among them, and in preparing myself to teach the life and love of Christ Jesus.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
“Most of the people have changed so much, I have not, as far as I am aware, seen anyone who even wanted to be a Christian.” His throbbing words ooze his life’s blood. We naturally think “poor Dallas.” However, in truth the case lay in Dallas himself, for he had a “problem”—an enlarged heart. If he had not cared, Dallas would never have penned those pathos filled lines. If he had not cultivated a ministering heart, if he had not cared. If he had listened to the counsel of his friends, he would have remained in comfortable England instead of going to that hostile land. Enlarge your heart, cultivate your heart, discipline yourself for ministry, and you will enlarge your experience of pain. This is an irrefragable spiritual axiom. No one has ever cultivated a ministering heart and lived to tell of a life of ease. Of course, the effects of these two kinds of hearts are drastically different. Little hearts, though safe and protected, never contribute anything. No one benefits from their restricted sympathies and vision. On the other hand, hearts that have embraced the disciplines of ministry—though they are vulnerable—are also the hearts which possess the most joy and leave their heart print on the World. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
Cultivate deafness and we will never hear discord, but neither will we hear the glorious strains of a great symphony. Cultivate blindness as we will never see ugliness, but we also will never hit a home run in the bottom of the nineth with bases loaded to win the game! Never climb a mountain and you will never get banged up on the mountain’s side, but you will also never stand on an alpine peak exulting in abundant natural beauty. Years ago I experience the grand reality of this principle. My wife, Bianca, informed me that she had received a call from our local youth soccer league, with which my boys were signed up to play, notifying her there were a shortage of coaches and that some boys would have to be left out—unless some fathers (like me!) would take a team. Bianca indicated I might be interested. My response was that I was too busy and that she would have to tell them so. She replied that I could do it myself, and that a call was coming that evening. I said, “Fine, no problem.” The fateful call came during dinner with all my family as witnesses. As the caller explained the league’s plight, I found myself nodding assent and committing myself to be coach of the Las Plumas Thunderbirds Varsity Soccer. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
The Scriptures wisely say, “If the trumpet does not sound a clear call, who will get ready for battle?” reports 1 Corinthians 14.8—and that was the initial experience of my poor Thunderbirds. I did not even know what a fullback was, the offside rule remained inscrutable for most of the season, and we got clobbered in our first few games. Humbled and desperate, I checked out soccer films and spent some evenings late in frantic reading. I also recruited a retired Scotsman who has once played professionally and persuaded another father to assist me. We discovered we had some good athletes, and we began to win. We did so well that we went to the play-offs. And it was here that I had one of the great experience in my life when I played Nick Oliver’s team in the opening round. Mr. Oliver was the founder of the league, at the time, and a perennial winner. However, miracles of miracles, we were ahead 1.0 at halftime. In the third quarter Mr. Oliver’s team tied it up, and the 1-1 tie held deep into the fourth quarter. Five minutes were left—then three—then one—thirty seconds—ten—two—and we scored just before time ran out! There is no describing the thrill of that moment. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
Never coach soccer and you will never know the ignominy of being the league doormat, but you will never know the thrill of beating Mr. Oliver either! Cultivate a small heart and life may be smooth sailing, but you will never know the heady wind of the Holy Spirit in your sails and the exhilaration of being used by God. Cultivate a small heart and you will never be the heroic likes of Dallas Brunton, and you will certainly never have the heart God desires for you. We only have to glance at a newspaper to be reminded that we live in a time when there is an urgent need for enlarged, caring hearts which are disciplined for ministry. Some of you are experiencing the elevating, frightening stirrings which accompany the enlarging of the heart, and you need to be encouraged to cultivate your expanding sympathies and broadening horizons. If so, the Biblical account we are about to consider—the story of Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well—is for you because it brilliantly showcases Jesus’ own discipline of ministry, one we are to imitate as His followers. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
God wills His own goodness necessarily, even as we will our own happiness necessarily, and as any other faculty has necessary, and as any other faculty has necessary relation to its proper and principal object, for instance the sight to colour, since it tends to it by its own nature. However, God wills things apart from Himself in so far as they are ordered to His own goodness as their end. Now in willing an end we do not necessarily will things that conduce to it, unless they are such that the end cannot be attained without them; as, we will take food to preserve life, or to take ship in order to cross the sea. However, we do not necessarily will things without which the end is attainable, such as a horse for a journey which we can take on foot, for we can make the journey without one. The same applies to other means. Hence, since the goodness of God is perfect, and can exist without other things inasmuch as no perfection can accrue to Him from them, it follows that His willing things apart from Himself is not absolutely necessary. Yet it can be necessary by supposition, for supposing that God wills a thing, then He is unable not to will it, as His will cannot change. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
God wills from eternity whatever He wills, it does not follow that He wills it necessarily; except by supposition. God of Liberty, we pray to you today. Please grant freedom to all your children, no matter their country. We take time today to remember the examples of freedom we have seen in our time. We think of the citizens of America, who are locked in their homes and being forced out of work and out of business, and unable to pay their rents and mortgages and car notes, unable to buy food and pay the electricity bill, kids who are unable to attend school, college, and medical school and wish for them to experience a Christmas blessing and have a financial miracle. We remember how people have burned the America flag, that stands for freedom, but refuse to leave the country, as people have been deployed to fight for their freedom. And remember those who struggled and failed, such as the martyrs in America in 2020, who have demanded freedom and equality. We remember those who lost their lives on September 9, 2001 in the towers, on the planes, and on the streets or in their homes, and the first responders who lost their lives that day and due to subsequent injuries. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
Please, Lord, give us the courage to earn our freedom and to regain it as it has been stolen. We ask this of you, Who are the source of all freedom. And may the tears from Heaven rain down on us, soaking the Earth so we have a pleasant spring and summer. American, your beacon of hope shines undimmed by the years. If our eyes have lost sight of you, it is our fault and not yours. We have turned our vision away from being “One Nation Under God with Liberty and Justice for All,” including all Americans, and we are missing the heights from which your streets paved with gold shine, and seen only that which divides us. Be our beacon, Father God of our nation, and show us the way again. Father of the Peoples, please unite your scattered children unto one tribe, one people, one country. “The words of Christ, which he spake unto his disciples, the twelve whom he had chosen, as he laid his hands upon them—and he called them by name, in mighty prayer; and after he have done this ye shall have power that to one upon whom ye shall lay your hands, ye shall give the Holy Ghost; and in my name shall ye give it, for thus do mine apostles. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
“Now Christ spake these words unto them at the time of his first appearing; and the multitude heard it not, but the disciples heard it; and on as many as they laid their hands, fell the Holy Ghost,” reports Moroni 2.1-3. Revere the Lord, all that inhabit the Earth; the World is firmly established that it cannot be moved. Let the Heavens be glad, and the Earth rejoice; let them declare among the nations: “The Lord reigneth.” Let the sea roar and all within it give praise; let the field, and all within it exult. Then shall the trees of the forest sing before the Lord, as He cometh to judge the Earth. O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good; for His lovingkindness endureth forever. And say: “Save us, O God of our salvation, please gather us and deliver us from among the nations, that we may give thanks unto Thy holy name, and find honour in praising Thee.” Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting even to everlasting. And all the people said: “Amen,” and praised the Lord. Exalt the Lord our God, and worship at His footstool; holy is He. Exalt the Lord our God, and worship at His holy mountain; for the Lord our God is holy. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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Let Go of the Past, but Keep the Lessons it Taught!
Life is what happens to you when you are making other plans. The use of dream-analysis in psychotherapy is still a much debated question. Many practitioners find it indispensable in the treatment of neuroses, and consider that the dream is a function whose psychic importance is equal to that of the conscious mind itself. Others, on the contrary, dispute the value of dream-analysis and regard dreams as a negligible by-product of the psyche. Obviously, if s person holds the view that the unconscious plays a decisive part in the aetiology of neuroses, one will attribute a high practical importance to dreams as direct expressions of the unconscious. Equally obviously, if one denies the unconscious or at least thinks it aetiologically insignificant, one will minimize the importance of dream-analysis. Although the unconscious, as some say is unjustly, controversial, we are going to deal exclusively with a few practical questions. Without it, the dream is a mere freak of nature, a meaningless conglomeration of fragment left over from the day. Were that really so, there would be no excuse for the present discussion. The attempt at analyzing and interpreting dreams is theoretically justified from a scientific standpoint point. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
If we are successful at analyzing and interpreting the dream, we may expect this attempt to give us scientific insight into the structure of psychic causality, quite apart from any therapeutic results that may be gained. The practitioner may believe that the explanatory insight so gained is of therapeutic value, in which case one will elevate dream-analysis to a professional duty. It is well known that the Freudian school is of the firm opinion that very valuable therapeutic results are achieved by throwing light upon the unconscious causal factors—that is, by explaining them to the patient and thus making one fully conscious of the sources of one’s trouble. When one is projecting one’s intimate feelings and the caring of their cultural tradition onto the symbols of one’s dream, one is able to integrate cognitively and affectively one’s tribal moral tradition as it was expressed in the dream. Dreams can make a person aware that the choices one was making had been taking one away from one’s “path of life,” causing one to be psychologically and spiritually out of balance. Sometimes an individua may use alcohol and drugs to mask the pain of one’s feelings of disharmony, discomfort, and suffering. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
I was consulted by a man who held a prominent position in the World. He was afflicted with a sense of anxiety and insecurity, and complained of dizziness sometimes resulting in nausea, heaviness in the head, and constriction of breath—a state that might easily be confused with mountain sickness. One had had an extraordinarily successful career, and had risen, by dint of ambition, industry, and native talent, from one’s humble origins as the son of a poor peasant. Step by step one had climbed, attaining at last a leading position which held every prospect of further social advancement. One has now in fact reached the spring-board from which one could have commenced one’s flight into the empyrean, had not his neurosis suddenly intervened. At this point in his story the patient could not refrain from that familiar exclamation which begins with the stereotyped words: “And just now, when…” The fact that one had all the symptoms of mountain sickness seemed highly appropriate as a drastic illustration of is peculiar impasse. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
He had also brought to the consultation two dreams from the preceding night. The first dream was as follows: “I am back again in the small village where I was born. Some peasant lads who went to school with me are standing together in the street. I walk past, pretending not to know them. Then I hear one of the say, pointing at me: ‘He does not often come back to our village.’” It requires no feat of interpretation to see in this dream a reference to the humble beginnings of the dreamer’s career and to understand what this reference means. The dream says quite clearly: “You forgot how far down you began.” Here is the second dream: “I am in a great hurry because I want to go on a journey. I keep on looking for things to pack, but can find nothing. Time flies, and the train will soon be leaving. Having finally succeeded in getting all my things together, I hurry along the street, only to discover that I have forgotten a brief-case containing important papers. I dash back all out of breath, find it at last, then race to the station, but I make hardly any headway. With a final effort I rush on to the platform only to see the train just steaming out of the station yard. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
“It is very long, and it runs in a curious S-shaped curve, and it occurs to me that if the engine-driver does not look out, and put on steam when he comes int the straight, the rear coaches will still be on the curve and will be thrown off the rails by the gathering speed. And this is just what happens: the engine-driver puts on steam, I try to cry out, the rear coaches give a frightful lurch and are thrown off the rails. There is a terrible catastrophe. I wake up in terror.” Here again no effort is needed to understand the message of the dream. It describes the patient’s frantic haste to advance oneself still further. However, since the engine-driver in front steams relentlessly ahead, the neurosis happens at the back: the coaches rock and the train is derailed. It is obvious that, at the present phase of his life, that patient has reached the highest point of his career; the strain of the long ascent from his lowly origin has exhausted his strength. He should have rested content with his achievements, but instead of that his ambition drives him on and one, and up and up into an atmosphere that is too thin for him and to which he is not accustomed. Therefore his neurosis comes upon him as a warning. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
Circumstances prevented me from treating the patient further, nor did my view of the case satisfy him. The upshot was that the fate depicted in the dream ran its course. He tried to exploit the professional openings that tempted his ambition, and ran so violently off the rails that the catastrophe was realized in actual life. Thus, what could only be inferred from the conscious anamnesis—namely that the mountain sickness was a symbolic representation of the patient’s inability to climb any further—was confirmed by the dreams as a fact. Here we come upon something of the utmost importance for the applicability of dream-analysis: the dream describes the inner situation of the dreamer, but the conscious mind denies its truth and reality, or admits it only grudgingly. Consciously the dreamer could not see the slightest reason why he should not go steadily forward; on the contrary, he continued his ambitions climbing and refused to admit his own inability which subsequent events made all too plain. So long as we move in the conscious sphere, we are always unsure in such cases. The anamnesis can be interpreted in various ways. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
After all, the common soldier carries the marshal’s baton in his knapsack, and many a son of poor parents has achieved the highest success. Why should it not be the case here? Since my judgment is fallible, why should my conjecture be better than his? At this point the dream comes in as the expression of an involuntary, unconscious psychic process beyond the control of the conscious mind. It shows the inner truth and reality of the patient as it really is: not as I conjecture it to be, and not as he would like it to be, but as it is. I have therefore made it a rule to regard dreams as I regard physiological facts: if sugar appears in the urine, then the urine contains sugar, and not albumen or urobilin or something else that might fit in better with my expectations. That is to say, I take dreams as diagnostically valuable facts. As is the way of all dreams, my little dream example gives us rather more than we expected. It gives us not only the aetiology of the neurosis but a prognosis as well. What is more, we even know exactly where the treatment should begin: we must prevent the patient from going full steam ahead. This is just what he tells himself in the dream. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
As one’s story unfold and the healing process beings, one should find expressed the feelings of safety, security, belonging, and love the one receives from the experience of being known by the Creator. Being known by the Creator allows a unity of consciousness and a peak experience for one in the concrete reality of life. Of course we are all aware that we have certain boundaries. The Creator sometimes reminds us of these boundaries to keep us in touch within the sacred cathedral of our path. The symbols can bring about a psychological transformation of our attitude from one of the depression, constriction, and limitedness to one of joyfulness, expansiveness, and freedom. Dreams can sometimes tell us that we are losing our sense of being and our sense of identity. When we see out limitedness within our dreams, we should also be inspired and excited about claiming our freedom by not feeling driven down to conform to standards that are not within our realm of possibility. Whereas before one may have felt driven to contract or enlarge, inhibit or stand out, one will learn that is it okay to be more flexible about our capacities—more deliberate. An individual’s life is a rich tapestry of experience. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
Some of the experiences that make up our tapestry of life are composed of threads that we weave with our own hands, and some that the hands of fate weave for us. One needs to grow up to this truth, and in that way it will reach one’s heart, and the appeal goes deeper and works more powerfully. God, the infinite power, is everywhere present and always active. All beings draw their little power for the purposes of their transient self-centered lives from it. In the same way the infinite Mind provides the mainspring for the activity of each little egotistic mind. The smallest one-celled creature is alive with an energy which comes from the universal energy that is the expression of the World-Mind. The same energy which runs in waves or flows in streams of particles through the Universe’s atoms courses through human beings. In both cases it issues forth from a center which is divine. There is no moment when the unseen divine activity is not present in the Universe. Everything is being carried on by the divine Power and divine Wisdom. The secret stream of a diviner life flows ceaselessly beneath our blessed existence. It is a process that requires the individual to face one’s problems and that taxes one’s powers of conscious judgement and decision. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
Coming to understand our place in the Universe is nothing less than a direct challenge to one’s ethical sense, a call to arms that must be answered by the whole personality. As regards the maturation of the personality, therefore, the analytical approach is of a higher order than suggestion, which is a species of magic that works in the dark and makes no ethical demands upon the personality. The view that dreams are merely repressed wishes is hopelessly out of date. There are, it is true, dreams which manifestly represent wishes or fears, but what about all other things? Dreams may contain ineluctable truths, philosophical pronouncements, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, anticipations, irrational experiences, even telepathic visions, and Heaven knows what besides. One thing we ought never to forget: almost half our life is passed in a more or less unconscious. Just as the psyche has a diurnal side which we call consciousness, so also it has a nocturnal side: the unconscious psychic activity which we apprehend as dreamlike fantasy. The cosmic order is divine intelligence expressed, equilibrium sought through contrast and complementaries. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
It is certain that the conscious mind consists not only in wishes and fears, but of vastly more besides; and it is highly probable that our dream psyche possesses a wealth of contents and living forms equal to or even greater than those of the conscious mind, which is characterized by concentration, limitation, and exclusion. God multiplies Himself in countless forms, the Supreme will establish according to higher laws. The World-Mind is hidden deep within our individual minds. The World-Idea begets all our knowledge. Whoever seeks aright finds the sacred stillness inside and the sacred activity in the Universe. It is not only humans that are made in the image of God: the whole Universe likewise is also an image of God. It is not only by coming to know oneself that human beings discover the divine life hidden deep in one’s heart: it is also by listening in the stillness of Nature to what she is forever declaring, that one discovers the presence of an infinite World-Mind. One comes to see the whole cosmos as a manifestation of the Supreme Being. It follows that involuntarily, spontaneously, one brings oneself—mind and body, heart and will—into harmony with this view. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
Each individual center of life and intelligence is a replica in minuscule of the World-Mind itself. Humans and nature are metaphysically an appearance, physically an expression, and religiously a creative projection of God. The World-Idea is slowly but rhythmically unfolded from the Infinite Mind. Yet if we could speak in spatial terms of what transcends space, we could say that the Idea and its process of unfoldment occupy no more than a single point in that vast Mind. Although the Universe expressed Mind, it does not exhaust it. The Universe is not the entire God-Consciousness. If the Infinite Being is represented by an infinite number of atoms, ways, creatures, and relationships, both harmonies and oppositions, this is only to be expected. If it is itself inexhaustible, its manifestations must be the same. The Universe only partially expresses the characteristics of the World-Mind. Its own tremendous spaciousness strives—but of course always strives in vain—to unfold the infinite of World-Mind. Not only were humans made in the image of God, but also the Universe. It is as geometrically infinite as God is absolutely infinite. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
There is no limit to the number of things in the Universe, no limit to the differences among those things, and no limit to the space it occupies. The number of objects and creatures, stars and suns is by a natural necessity infinite. Infinite being can only express itself infinitely. The Worlds cannot be counted; the space which contains them cannot be measured. No one doubts the importance of the conscious experience; why then should we doubt the significance of our psychic existence of the unconscious which overshadows our daily lives? They are also part of our life, and sometimes more truly a part of it for weal or woe than any happenings of the day. Compensation is not as a rule merely an illusory wish-fulfilment, but an actual fact that becomes still more actual the more we repress it. We do not stop feeling thirsty by repressing our thirst. In the same way, the dream-content is to be regarded with due seriousness as an actuality that has to be fitted into the conscious attitude as a codetermining fact. If we fail to do this, we merely persist in that eccentric frame of mind which evoked the unconscious compensation in the first place. It is then difficult to see how we can arrive at a sane judgment of ourselves or at a balanced way of living. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
The unconscious does not harbour in itself any explosive materials unless an overweening or cowardly conscious attitude has secretly laid up stores of explosives there. All the more reason, then, for watching our step. This gives expression to the view that the ultimate aim and strongest desire of all humankind is to develop that fulness of life which is called personality. Nowadays, “personality training” has become an educational ideal that turns its back upon the standardized, mass-produced, “normal” human being demanded by the machine age. It thus pays tribute to this historical fact that the great liberating deeds of World history have sprung from leading personalities and never from the inert mass, which is at all times secondary and can only be prodded into activity by the demagogue. Much of the vastness of humanity lies dormant, like a Sleeping Beauty, in our brains. Obviously, this is why there are half-baked educators who are not human beings at all, but walking personifications of method. Anyone who wants to educate must oneself be educated. However, the parrot-like fake news and book learning and mechanical use of methods that is still practiced today is no education either for the child or for the educator. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
People are everlastingly saying that the child’s personality must be trained, but so must the adult’s personality. What are some things that can be done to place our body and is parts full at the disposal of the redeeming power that God intends to live in them? It is extremely helpful in thinking about our body and our spiritual life. We must actually release our body to God. That is what Paul means when he tells us “to present our body to God as a living sacrifice,” reports Romans 12.1. It needs to be a definite action, renewed as appropriate, perhaps on a yearly basis. You will not drift into this position before God, and you will not, without decisive action, stay there. Perhaps you could do like this. Decide to give your body to God on the basis of understanding how important it is and the scriptural teachings requires it. Know, therefore, that it is a good and indispensable thing to do. Then take a day in silent and solitary retreat. Quiet your soul and your body, and let them get clear of the fog of your daily burdens and preoccupations. Meditatively pray some central Scriptures before the Lord, especially those dealing directly with the body. What you want to do is ask God to take charge of your body and each part, to fill it with his life and use it for his purposes. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
Accentuate the good; do not just think of not sinning with your body. You will find this following naturally from active consecration of it to God’s power and his purposes. Remember, a sacrifice is something to be take up in God. No longer idolize your body. Do not worry what will happen to it—sickness, repulsiveness, aging, death—for you have placed God in charge of all that, and any issues that arise in this area you freely take up with him in prayer. You take good care of your body, but only within the framework of values clearly laid down by God and exemplified in Jesus Christ. You do not live in fear of your body and what it might “do to you.” Closely allied with the above is that you do not misuse your body. This means primarily two things: First, you do not use it as a source of sensual gratification, and you do not use it to dominate or manipulate others. Addictions of various kinds are cases where sensual gratification is accepted as a necessity. Theses are, whatever else must be said about them, misuses of the body. Bodily pleasure is not in itself a bad thing. However, when it is exalted to a necessity and we become dependent upon it, then we are slaves of our body and its feelings. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
Also, do not overwork your body. In our current World this is a primary misuse of the body. It is now said that work is the new “drug of choice. Other this is associated with excessive competition and trying to beat others out in some area of our common life. Sometimes this is just a matter of wearing our body out in order to succeed—often in circumstances that we regard (perhaps rightly) as imposed upon us by others. It is still a misuse of the body and a failure to work things out with God. God never gives us too much to do. He long ago gave us these words: “It is vain for you to rise early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep,” reports Psalm 127.2. The body is to be properly honoured and care for. That is, the body is to be regarded as holy, because it is owned and inhabited by God. We live in a Universe which is only one amid an infinity of other Universes whose patterns, as we find with individual living things, show infinite difference of detail while sharing certain basic general forms. If there is infinite variety in the teeming life of the Universe, this arises partly because of the need to satisfy the infinite number of possibilities through which the infinite life can alone express itself. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
In the World’s life there is every kind of joy and every kind of suffering, because there is every kind of creature. If it had not manifested infinite variety as an expression of infinitude of the divine power behind it, the World could not have been manifested at all. Surely this is what Plato saw when he described tie as the moving image of eternity. “And it came to pass that Shule begat Omer, and Omer reigned in his stead. And Omer begat Jared; and Jared begat sons and daughters. And Jared rebelled against his father, and came and dwelt in the land of Heth. And it came to pass that he did flatter many people, because of his cunning words, until he had gained the half of the kingdom. And wen he had gained the half of the kingdom he gave battle unto his father, and he did carry away his father into captivity, and did make him serve in captivity; and now, in the days of the reign of Omer he was in captivity the half of his days. And it came to pass that he begat sons and daughters, among whom were Esrom and Coriantumer; and they were exceedingly angry because of the doings of Jared their brother, insomuch that they did raise an army and gave battle unto Jared. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
“And it came to pass that they did give battle unto Jared by night. And it came to pass that then they had slain the army of Jared they were about to slay him also; and he pled with them that they would not slay him, and he would give up the kingdom unto his father. And it came to pass that they did grant unto him his life. And now Jared became exceedingly sorrowful because of the loss of the kingdom, for he had set his heart upon the kingdom and upon the glory of the World. Now the daughter of Jared being exceedingly expert, and seeing the sorrows of her father, thought to devise a plan whereby she could redeem the kingdom unto her father. Now the daughter of Jared was exceedingly fair. And it came to pass that she did talk with her father, and said unto him: Whereby hath my father so much sorrow? Hath he not read the record which our fathers brought across the great deep? Behold, is there not an account concerning them of old, that they by their secret plans did obtain kingdoms and great glory? And now, therefore, let my father send for Akish, the son of Kimnor; and behold, I am faire, and I will dance before him, and I will please him, that he will desire me to wife; wherefore if he shall desire of thee that ye shall give unto him me to wife, then shall ye say: I will give her if ye will bring unto me the head of my father, the king. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
“And now Omer was a friend to Akish; wherefore, when Jared had sent for Akish, the daughter of Jared danced before him that she pleased him, insomuch that he desired her to wide. And it came to pass that he said unto Jared: Give her unto me to wife. And Jared said unto him: I will give her unto you, if ye will bring unto me the head of my father, the king. And it came to pass that Akish gathered in unto the house of Jared all his kinsfolk, and said unto them: Will ye swear unto me that ye will be faithful unto me in the thing which I shall desire of you? And it came to pass that they all sware unto him, by the God of Heaven, and also by the Heavens, and also by the Earth, and by their heads, that whoso should vary from the assistance which Akish desired should lose his head; and whoso should divulge whatsoever thing Akish made known unto them, the same should lose one’s life. And it came to pass that thus they did agree with Akish. And Akish did administer unto them the oaths which were given by them of old who also sought power, which had been handed down even from Cain, who was a murderer from the beginning. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
And they were kept up by the power of the devil to administer these oaths unto the people, to keep them in darkness, to help such as sought power to gain power, and to murder, and to plunder, and to life, and to commit all manner of wickedness and whoredoms. And it was the daughter of Jared who put it into the heart of Akish; wherefore, Akish administered it unto his kindred and friends, leading them away by fair promises to do whatsoever thing he desired. And it came to past that they formed a secret combination, even as they of old; which combination is most abominable and wicked above all, in the sight of God; for the Lord worketh not in secret combinations, neither doth he will that man should shed blood, but in all things hath forbidden it, from the beginning of man. And now I, Moroni, do not write the manner of their oaths and combinations, for it hath been made known unto me that they are had among people, and they are had among the Lamanites. And they have caused the destruction of this people of whom I am now speaking, and also the destruction of the people of Nephi. #RnadolphHarris 21 of 24
“And whatsoever nation shall uphold such secret combinations, to get power and gain, until they shall spread over the nation, behold, they shall be destroyed; for the Lord will not suffer that the blood of his saints, which shall be shed by them, shall always cry unto him from the ground for vengeance upon them and yet he avenge them not. Wherefore, O ye Gentiles, it is wisdom is God that these things should be shown unto you, that thereby ye may repent of your sins, and suffer not that these murderous combinations shall get above you, which are built up to get power and gain—and the work, yea, even the work of destruction come upon you, yea, even the sword of the justice of the Eternal God shall fall upon you, to your overthrow and destruction if ye shall suffer these things to be. Wherefore, the Lord commandeth you, when ye shall see these things come among you that ye shall awake to a sense of your awful situation, because of this secret combination which shall be among you; or wo be unto it, because of the blood of them who have been slain; for they cry from the dust for vengeance upon it, and also upon those who built it up. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
“For it cometh to pass that whoso buildeth it up seeketh to overthrow the freedom of all lands, nations, and countries; and it bringeth to pass the destruction of all people, for it is built up by the devil, who is the father of all lies; even that same liar who beguile our first parents, yea, even that same lair who hath caused man to commit murder from the beginning; who hath hardened the hearts of humans that they have murdered the prophets, and stoned them, and cast them out from the beginning. Wherefore, I, Moroni, am commanded to write these things that evil may be done away, and that the time may come that Satan may have no power upon the hearts of the children of humans, but that they may be persuaded to do good continually, that they may come unto the fountain of all righteousness and be saved,” reports Ether 8.1-26. Lord, please open our hearts and keep them aware of you. Please change in us what changes in you. Bring us through dark times. Bring rebirth. During our dark ours, may we glimpse the mystery and see ahead of the newly rising light. From this dark time, please bring light to our World. It is good to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto Thy name, O Most High. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
To declare Thy lovingkindness each morning, and Thy faithfulness every night, with an instrument of ten strings and the lute, with sacred music upon the harp. For Thou, O Lord, hast made me rejoice in Thy work; I will glory in the works of Thy hands. How great are Thy deeds, O Lord! Thy thoughts are very deep. The ignorant human does not know, nor does the fool understand this—the wicked may spring up as the grass, and the workers of iniquity may flourish, only to be destroyed forever. However, Thou, O Lord, shalt be exalted forever. For lo, Thine enemies, O Lord, for lo, Thine enemies shall perish; all the workers of iniquity shall be scattered. However, Thou, doest raise me to high honour; I am anointed with fragrant oil. Mine eyes have seen the defeat of my foes, mine ears have heard the doom of evil doers that rise up against me. The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree, and grown might like a cedar in the forest of the Eternal Trees. Planted in the house of the Lord, they shall flourish in the courts of our God. Even in old age they shall bring forth fruit, they shall be full of vigour and strength, declaring that the Lord is just, my Rock in whom there is no unrighteousness. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
BRIGHTON STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH
Rancho Cordova, CA |
Now Selling!
Residence Three at Brighton Station boasts 2,757 square feet in this expansive two story home. There are four bedrooms, three and a half bathrooms, and a three car garage!
The kitchen comes fully equipped with a large eat-in island, stainless steel appliances, quartz counters, and large walk in pantry. The openness in the design allows the Great Room and kitchen to interact with each other seamlessly. This home comes with an en suite bedroom on the first floor making it ideal for guests, or multi-generational living.
Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier. Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Google Mini to help connect everything together! https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/residence-3/
Cresleigh features exquisitely designed homes in peaceful communities that help residents relax, and enjoy the perfect combination of luxury and nature that make living here so special. https://cresleigh.com/blog/
Full Golden—In Her Eyes a Brighter Day Dawned Blue and Full of Love!
If you wander around in enough confusion, you will soon find enlightenment. Life is an unanswered question, but let us believe in the dignity and importance of questions. When one finds one’s life unlivable, a person needs a place to go. When you want to be offstage, free from your usual roles, free to discover and define your being-for-yourself, society seems to conspire such that there is nowhere to go. Judges, critics, and commissars are omnipresent. If a human steps out of line and departs from one’s usual roles, someone is there to remind one of who one is, to define one, and to punish one for daring to define oneself. The upshot is many wives and mothers find they cannot face their families another moment without shrieking in protest against the sameness of their unappreciated daily grind. However, they stifle the shriek and carry on. Fathers and husbands become bored with the wives, infuriated by their children, and worn out by the work that lacks joy—continued only because there is no other work to do, and the bills fall due each day, week, month, quarterly, semi-annually, and annually. The children, in turn, cannot get along with each other, or with their parents. Grandparents, aunts, and uncles live a thousand miles away and cannot take the youngsters in for a day, week, or a month of respite. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Without anyone to help with housing, new employment opportunities, bills, nor child care, the trapped ones persist on their joyless, desperate treadmills until physical illness grants them a ticket admission to a hospital emergency room. Or they “blow up,” suffer from a case of neurosis, and are treated as “not in their right minds.” They may manifest a physical condition that takes years to recover from, or could lead to permeant disability, where they truly are unable to work. Or they many enter a mental hospital, there to be placed in storage until the regime of shock, tranquilizers, and periodic consultations with an overworked psychiatrist bring them “to their senses.” However, even in the hospital, there in no respite from roles; patients are cast into new ones and lack the freedom to choose their being. They return to the way of life they lived before, perhaps with the protest in them electroshocked or drugged out of existence. If new alternatives could be provided, before this drama reached its climax in the sickroom or the sanitarium, it would be helpful. If we had acceptable “checkout places,” what would life in our society be like? In moments of reverie, I have invented some. Let me describe one such, a healing-house that appeals to me. It is probably healing only for middle-class people. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
It is a place where one can enter and find confirmation for any way one has chosen to be, or any way that circumstances have brought to one. If a human wises solitude, one can find it there; and if one wishes to remain silent, no one will speak to one. If one wishes congenial and enlivening body-contact, a masseur or masseuse (one can choose which) is available to provide the physical therapy. If a housewife or househusband wants to paint, listen to music, or just sit and have intercessory prayer, there is a room for one to do so. The place would be like a brand-new mansion in the suburbs, with all the amenities one could imagine, and close to shopping centers. It would be like an upscale bed and breakfast, a social club, where people could check-in, their medical insurance, employer, or government subsidy would pay for the cost of the vacation to help reduce the strain on health care system. Each person would be entitled to a rom with inviolate privacy. There one could go, and stay for a day, a week, a month, or years. It would be like an extended family with people who actually like each other and can respect others. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
In this home, no one would enter your room without your invitation; and once a person closed the door, no one else could enter. There would be dinner, breakfast and lunch served as a group, or one could eat their mean in a private area of the house. Otherwise, the pantry would be always available, with abundant supplies of milk and honey, fruit, bread, raw vegetables, various kinds of meats, juice, water, and similar snacks. A resident could come and go, nibbling as one wished. If one wised conversation, one could go to the great room, where one could sit; and one’s presence alone would signify that one would be willing to talk. Or if one wished to enter into uninterrupted dialogue, one could invite someone to the privacy of the upstairs lobby, or home hub. The rule of the house would be freedom for the self, with respect for the freedom of the other. People who entered would leave their roles at the doorstep. No status, no rank, would interpose itself between the guests—who would have a first name, or surname, or no name, or a pseudonym, if that is what they chose. This would be a place where people could quite freely go out of their minds and roles, as these were known outside. All the paperwork would be handled by a confidential office before anyone reached the house so no one would know what anyone’s status and rank in society is, and all people would be screened to make sure they are safe. Also, office stand would be required to be bonded. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
It would be a place for people to unwind, relax, and get cozy before they had a nervous breakdown. Kind of like going home to your mother’s house and knowing you are safe and welcomed as long as you want to stay. It would also be a place where creative people—writers, painters, dancers, architects, lawyers, cooks, poet, et cetera—could go to live awhile and present their more tender creations in an accepting, or better, honest milieu, where commercial criteria for judging art and ideas are irrelevant. This would be a place where one could go to redefine oneself, apart from the people “back home,” who have a vested interest in keeping the person in the roles by which they knew one, but which were sickening to one. It would be a place where people could reach their ideal body image. The tense and nervous could find surcease and relaxation; the aimless might meet people with aims that could inspire and redirect their lives. These houses would be the place for one went for recreation. The directors would eschew drugs and medicines. They would heal by letting healing take place. The houses would be places where joy could be experienced, and peace. The staff of permanent residents, which would be the goal because people like stable communities, could include professional psychotherapists, resident artists, playwrights, dancers, masseurs, writers and teachers, and musicians. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Some of these residents might come and go; but all would provide seekers with an atmosphere of spiritual freedom, and examples of the quest for new avenues of being and expression. A working persons, professional person, wife or mothers, or lonely person could come daily for an hour or so, or weekly, and find relaxation, edification, or companionship. Much like a house-church, there could be a book club or house-coffee shop for friends. If they were on a private, pay-as-you-go basis, I have little doubt that such houses would pay for themselves. And I suspect that is they were underwritten by some grant, or by public-health moneys—but with their operation strictly in the hands of the director of each house—they would more than pay for themselves, in the for of physical breakdown that did not happen and a mental breakdown that would not materialize. I suspect that for the people who patronized such a house, intake of drugs and medicines would diminish radically. The mass invasion of physicians’ clinics and waiting-rooms would be reduced to manageable dimensions. And the waiting lists of practicing psychotherapists would doubtless be less packed with names. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Such houses of retreat and healing will, alas, not become part of every village, town, or city neighbourhood. However, sensible people will find ways to pool resources so that they can organize them by themselves. Or if they can afford it, they will buy or rent a “pad” on the other side of town, away from family and friends. Perhaps some organizational genius will find the necessary staff, and the capital to invest; and one will become a millionaire by providing what everyone needs, at a price all can afford to pay. If such places came into being as a normal part of society, I suspect psychotherapists would lose some of their present raison d’etre, and would have to apply their knowledge of how people sicken and become whole to teaching, and to living fulfilled lives themselves, so that by their being, they would represent viable ways. And I suspect that physicians would find their practices confined to delivering babies, setting broken bones, and stanching the flow of blood. Sales of drugs would diminish, and people could return to work or home refreshed. Transcendent-behaviour has been shown to occur most usually in persons who are committed to some goal to which they assign high value. Commitment implies price. The more fully a person is committed to some project, problem, or outcome, the more of one’s time, energy, and personal resources one freely devotes to the quest on which one is launched. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
The conditions under which people are able to become strongly committed to their work, or to truth, justice, beauty, or goodness, are not as yet fully understood. When there have been leaders or predecessors who provide an inspiring example to imitate, since values are created by humans, it is most likely that an individual will become committed to some goal, achievement. Another factor which seems to promote commitment is the promise of large rewards, whether immediate or remote, concrete or symbolic. The persons who become committed to some unpopular cause—who have to fight public opinion, poverty, and even danger to life without support—are more difficult to explain. People in whom transcendent behaviour is relatively frequent occurrence likely are persons who trust themselves and have developed some measure of confidence in their powers to themselves. Self-confidence seems to derive both from history of graduated successes in coping with increasingly difficult and complex problems, and from the experience of being seen by other people as competent and trustworthy. Lack of self-doubt, is often characteristic of explorers, daredevils, and others whose achievements transcend their own previous exploits, as well as the achievements of many of their fellow humans. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Any experiences which permit average people to diminish their distrust of their own capacities and their own worth, and which permit them to attribute power to themselves, probably would contribute to the frequency with which they transcend their own usual levels of functioning. The self-concept, which, as we have seen, is a limiting factor in behaviour, can also be a freeing factor for transcendent achievement. If it is true, as existential thinkers insist, that human cannot define oneself in any fixed way, but is always in process of creating and then re-creating oneself, then it follows that the most accurate self-concept is one which permits a human to see oneself as a being with relatively unplumed capacities for all modes of function. Humans have powers of survival and adaptation which they have never imagined. It seems likely that any person who formulates a fixed concept of oneself, including a concept of one’s powers to cope, is doing oneself an injustice. Since humans tend to behave in accordance with their concepts of themselves, then they will not rise to meet a challenge that calls for behaviour in conflict with one’s present self-concept. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
If a human sees oneself as weak, one will not take challenges posed by life, but will instead avoid them. If a human sees oneself as always in process of being challenged and “tested” by life, and one’s capacities as always in process of unfolding, one probably has a self-concept more closely in tune with reality. Transcendent-behaviour has been portrayed as the release of modes of behaviour that ordinarily are suppressed by habit. Challenges can release transcendent behaviour in a person, but so also can symbols like mandalas, cameos, metaphors such as the flag, the Star of David, the name God, or the image of a loved person to whose well-being one has pledged oneself. When he was in the army, my father said that a few of the things that inspired him to actions which kept him alive where thinking about God, his family, and house. Deeply religious people report that they experience God as a Being who perpetually challenges them; and under the instigation of this challenge, they continually bring forth from themselves achievements and feats of endurance which might be impossible for persons less challenged. It may be proposed as a hypothesis that challenge, however brought about, is a highly important condition for some types of transcendent behaviour. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
One of the aims of the field of personality hygiene, beyond that of preventing mental illness, should be to understand and master the conditions for transcendent-behaviour, so that, ultimately, the average person will not be a mere non-candidate for a psychiatric hospital, but instead a being who can release one’s capacities for transcendent functioning as needed. Therapists of personality then would not be experts at restoring those with neurosis or psychosis to “normal” levels of function; rather, they would be more like those few inspired and inspiring teachers who are able to elicit transcendent performance from their students, to the surprise and delight of all. I suspect that our heroes of the playing field, of the cultural arena, of the study, or of the laboratory are persons whose fulfillment is a proof or pledge of hidden potentiality in the broad mass of the population. Too few people have any idea of their latent possibilities. Perhaps their concepts of their powers are false, and perhaps they are false because our educational procedures and fake news media indoctrinate people with a view of themselves as beings with sclerosed possibility. However, we can, indeed, seek to learn more about helping humans to experience their will and to eschew resignation to the thrust of determining forces. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
If it is possible for multibillion-dollar education program to train people to see themselves as limited beings, it should be also possible for that program to encourage people to see themselves as embodiments of the capacity to transcend their present concepts of themselves and their powers. They can explore the path to those possibilities for optimal functioning that lie buried beneath habit and socialized being, so that more can realize the experience of liberation, satori, awakening, or the attainment of selfhood. I would like to see more psychotherapists functioning as gurus and as protectors of human freedom and enlightenment, as disclosers of humans to themselves, to balance the efforts of those of us whose work has served as guidance for industrial, business, political, and institutional leaders in ways to direct masses of little humans. I would like to see psychology leading psychiatry in the arts of evoking potentials for health and full functioning, rather than following psychiatry in its search for pockets of pathology. I think the concern for human possibilities that marks a humanistic psychologist makes one an important resource person to such agencies as the Office of Education, offering guidance and suggestions as to means for enriching our present institutions. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
We need to have teachers who can guide, educate, and liberate people as well as presently they indoctrinate and socialize them. We are on the brink of new leaps in the evolution of humans—because of the fantastic development of technology. We must welcome this possibility, and those of us who study humans can help our fellows and ourselves to find our ways and our possibilities in an unprecedented era. It is either that, or be grim, soulless mortals, furiously busy with irrelevant issues in the backwaters of the swamp, not the crisp, clean, waters of the mainstream, of the human course. A person’s experience with one’s attachment figures during the years of immaturity—infancy, childhood, and adolescence—are the principal determinants of the pathway along which that person’s attachment develops. When things go wrong this is due to the psychological development having somehow followed a deviant pathway. It is not due to a fixation at, or a regression to, some earlier stage of development. Disturbed patterns of attachment behaviour can be present at any age, due to a deviant development. When attachment behaviour is overreadily called forth, resulting in over-anxious attachments, a common form of disturbance occurs. Another common form is the partial or total de-activation of attachment behaviour. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
However, children do suffer when removed from their parents, and this must be taken seriously. Even now, as those know who have been an inkling of what goes on in some nursery schools, day-centers and creches, there are many misconceptions about the norms of behaviour to be expected of young children when left, even briefly, in a strange place with strange people. Misconceptions persist, especially among professional people. Again and again it is implied that a healthy normal child should not make a fuss when mother leaves, and that is one does so it is an indication either that mother spoils one or that one is suffering from some pathological anxiety. When the natural history and function of attachment-behaviour are understood, it is hoped that such reactions will be seen in a new and more realistic light. When no special effort has been made to prepare and cushion the child: yearning and searching for the missing mother, sadness, increasing protest at her absence and growing anger with her for staying away, increase ambivalence on return home and evident fear of being separated again become ingrained in the child’s consciousness. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Whenever young children who have had an opportunity to develop an attachment to a mother-figure are separated from her unwillingly, they show distress: and should they also be placed in a strange environment and cared for by strange people such distress is likely to be intense. The way they behave follows a typical sequence. At first they protest vigorously and try by all the means available to recover the mother. Later they seem to despair of recovering her but nonetheless remain preoccupied with her and vigilant for her return. Later they seem to lose interest in the mother and to become emotionally detached from her. Each of the three main phases of the response of a young child to separation is related to one or another of the central issues of psycho-analytic theory. Thus the phase of protest is found to raise the problem of separation anxiety; despair that of grief and mourning; detachment that of defence. In view of the damage done by this early separation is totally reparable, and always leaves some mark on the adult personality, in severe cases having so strong an effect as to be the main determinant of the adult’s thought and feeling. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Attachment behavior has deep biological roots, and therefore the anxieties which attend separation from an attachment figure must also have deep biological roots. The deepest anxieties with the currently more widely held view that the deepest anxieties concern the fear that the organized self may be disrupted when the nervous system has to handle more stimulus than it can manage at a time, so that the emerging neural structuring disintegrates. In that view, the mother’s function is to take the overload and prevent disintegration. (There is, of course, no reason why there should be just one basic anxiety: it can certainly be argued that both may be aspects of the same anxiety.) Many take for granted the stimulus-situations that arouse fear can be regarded as naturally occurring clues to events that constitute a potential danger to the species in question. This applies especially to situations that arouse fear on the first occasion that an individual encounters them. A number of these are strangeness, being unsupported on a height, being alone, having something zoom rapidly into view, and other such. None of these is intrinsically dangerous, but to the being they indicate the possibility of an increased risk of danger. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
A natural clue is associated as a rule with a raised degree of risk, and this can make a child’s behaviour appear phobic when it occurs in situations which appear incomprehensible to the adult World. Anxiety has a survival function for the species. Anxiety motivated action to remove the painful stimulus. The person would prefer less and less stimulation till the peace of death overs all. The human being is naturally equipped to relate, indeed, to cling, and naturally equipped to move about and explore and seek stimulus, always providing that there was a person or a place of safety to move back to. However, we are not done yet! Beyond contentment lies intelligent, energetic participation in accomplishing God’s will in our World. We are no longer spectators, but are caught up in a vivid and eternal drama in which we play an essential part. We embrace our imposed circumstances, no matter how tragic they seem, and act for the good in a power beyond ourselves. “We are reigning—exercising dominion—in life by One, Christ Jesus,” reports Romans 5.17. We are “looking toward an eternity of reigning with God through ages of ages,” reports Revelation 22.5. We take action to accomplish the will of God in his power. Our tiny “willpower” is not the source of our strength. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
We hardly notice any exercise of our willpower, though it is fully dedicated to carrying out God’s purposes in every respect. However, we are carried along by the power of the divine drama within which we live actively engaged. So far from struggling to resist sin, we are devoted to realization of righteousness all around us. This is the real meaning of “Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” The strongest human will is always the one that is surrendered to God’s will and acts with it. This progress toward full identification of our will with God’s will is one that, perhaps for most people, may not be fully realized in this life. However, that does not really matter. It is a progression that tis there for us to enter into now, through the power at work within us as disciples of Jesus Christ. It may be that at present we cannot even imagine what it would be like for us to have a will significantly identified with God’s will as just described. However, we must never forget that He “is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, in terms of the power that is working within us,” reports Ephesians 3.20. Our part is to begin as best we can. “Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him” reports Isaiah 64.4. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
At any given time there are several spiritual shepherds in the World, each with one’s own distinct and separate flock. It is inevitable and right that one should sieve humanity for those alone who need one or who were born to follow one or who seek the kind of guidance which one especially can give. One’s compassion is broad-based; it is for all. However, one’s personal work is extremely narrow for it is only for the few who will receive it most readily. This implies that one works among the sympathetic and mature, not among the hostile and immature. The reason for this is the need to practise economy of time and energy that one may not waste one’s arrows of effort on the vacant air. For a similar reason one prefers to enlighten the leaders, and let the flocks alone. “For behold, the day cometh that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of Hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. However, unto you that fear my name, shall the Son of Righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth and grow up as calves in the stall. And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the Lord of Hosts. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
“Remember ye the law of Moses, my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with that statues and judgments. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord; and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their father, les I come and smite the Earth with a curse,” reports 3 Nephi 25.1-6. Darkness descends, as the Sun lowers itself behind the horizon and I stand facing the last light, with my shadow at my back. Farewell to you, Lord of Light, as you go to your rest. I turn to face the darkness and greet it without fear. O Lord and King who art full of compassion, in whose hand is the soul or every living thing and the breath of all flesh, to Thine all-wise care do we commit the souls of our dear ones, who have departed from this Earth. Teach all who mourn to accept the judgment of Thine inscrutable will and cause them to know the sweetness of Thy consolation. Quicken by Thy holy words those bowed in sorrow, that like all the faithful in Israel who have gone before, they too may be faithful to Thy Torah and thus advance the reign of Thy Kingdom upon Earth. In solemn testimony to that unbroken faith which links the generations to one another, let those who mourn now rise to magnify and sanctify Thy holy name. I bow to the setting Sun, lowering myself as it descends over the World’s edge. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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The kitchen comes fully equipped with a large eat-in island, stainless steel appliances, and quartz counters. The great room is spacious and full of natural light with a covered patio! The Owner’s suite is nestled in the rear of the home separate from the secondary bedrooms, providing maximum privacy. Enjoy a spa like experience in the Owner’s bathroom with a large walk in shower, dual vanities, and makeup counter.
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O, thus be it ever when free humans shall stand, between their loved homes and the war’s desolation; blest with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land. Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause is just, and this be our motto: “In God is our trust.” And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave over the land of the free and the home of the brave!
For the Greeks “Original Sin” was Lack of Knowledge, Not Eating from the Tree of Knowledge!
You should not have to buy a marriage off the rack; it should conform exactly to the contours of those who chose to clothe themselves in it. Friendship is everything. Friendship is more than talent. It is more than government. It is almost the equal of family. It is the hardest thing in the World to explain. It is not something you can learn in school. However, if you have not learned the meaning of friendship, you really have not learned anything. Yet, not matter what you have learned, much like family, real friendship should not be a “Door Way to Hell.” True friendship is based on love of God and sharing that love with others. Think for a minute what it means to know you have someone standing right by you, someone you can trust to be your friend on good days and bad, someone who values you and supports you even when the two of you are apart. Our most prized friend is Jesus Christ Himself. Is there any greater assurance than His commitment, “I will be on your right hand and on your left, and mine Angels are round about you, to bear you up,” reports Doctrines and Covenants 84.88? So often those “angels round about” are our friends. Therefore choose good friend. In today’s World so many people willingly sell their souls for money, gifts, video games, car, cosmetic procedures, video games, text messages, jobs, and even houses. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
These individuals spend their time identifying with the television personalities who for them are not only faces on the screen, but people they imagine the friends, family, neighbours and coworkers to be. As a result of television intoxication, people can become insane. What people see on television affects viewers behaviour, attitudes, and values. Generally, research has demonstrated 3 main effect of watching television too frequently: Aggression, desensitization, and fear. Humans are the only being for whom life poses the existential question most starkly: “What shall I do and be?” So long as one answered, “Live!,” for millennia the questioned was settled; because securing the means for living always commanded the greater part of every person’s time and energy. The biblical injunction to observe the Sabbath was epochal because it enjoined humans to pause, so that one might realize there are other things to do besides work to stay alive, amass power, and indulge senses. However, what will happen when every day could be a Sabbath, when work is obsolete, and the prospect of leisure, that abyss of freedom, confronts us? This is a freedom at its most dizzying. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
It is at once a horrifying and challenging future horrifying because few are ready for leisure and freedom and challenge because of the promise imminent of a bold leap into as yet unfathomed possibilities of being. The horror is warranted. Society condemns our “senior citizens” to a residual life sentence of “leisure” as soon as they are about seventy-years old. This liberation from work operates as a rapid death sentence for many. And for sill more, release from the experience of feeling useful brings on either the living death of boredom, or the rapid encroachment of gibbering senility in hitherto vigorous humans. A friend of mine, a survivor of a death-camp, once visited a community and he saw the people shuffling or siting about, drinking and partying and arguing and fighting like street dogs. They were fatter than the people in the death camps, to be sure; but the aimless and lifeless expressions of the faces were the same. Next to our prisons and mental hospitals, the retirement centers for those awaiting death are surely American equivalents of concentration camps. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
About twenty five hundred years ago, the Greeks lived in nearly automated society—their work-producing “machines” were slaves and women—and the men produced a flowering of consciousness such as has not existed since. Liberated as they were from the menial cores of producing and distributing goods, humans were free to think, imagine and explore, to perfect themselves in their World. For the Greeks “original sin” was lack of knowledge, not eating from the tree of knowledge. We still have not, today, exhausted all the beginnings they laid down. Right now, our technology advances inexorably toward near-total automation, and we have responded, not by flights of creative imagination, not by liberation of our spirits to soar to new heights of possibility, as was true in ancient Greece. We have instead responded by becoming increasingly like our slaves, the machines. We have mechanized more and more of our relationships with each other; these become role-bound, boring, far departures from the “swing” of true dialogue. We manipulate ourselves in order to present attractive packages to others. We allow ourselves to be manipulated by the news, politicians, sales people, moviemakers. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
We routinize our daily round of existence so we will the better fit into timetables for transportation from suburb to place of body-work. We eat, not to nourish and perfect our bodies, but to keep up with the Hiltons, to consume the overproduction of our farms, or to palliate nagging feelings of loneliness. We do not embrace one another in love, despite the liberation permitted by the courts and church—rather many fornicate in order to feel, or to feel alive, or to reassure themselves that they are attractive and desirable. Every aspect of our loves aims at turning us off, numbing us, so that we will keep our once-born, programmed status in the social system, and not rock boat. The other mornings, I found myself wondering why did God just not make us robots because that is what we are trying to become. A pill to sleep, a shot of espresso to wake up, medication to help with digestion—at some point the human body needs to rest and relax and function naturally before it drowns. Many people think a pill or a drink or an injection can save them from anything, but God is our Saviour and we need to listen to our bodies and not abuse them. Often after a banana is bruised, one cannot reverse the damage. If you can so much about how your fruit looks, think about your internal organs and live right. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
From my earliest days of growing up, friends have been special blessing to me. The closet friends made in my youth remain my friends to this day. We have always been there for each other. And I have been grateful to make new friends who have been a strength and a blessing to me as well. Friends hep to determine your future. You will tend to be like them and to be found where they choose to go. Remember, the path we follow in this life leads to the path we follow in the next. The friends you choose will either help or hinder your success. These are sobering words. I even wish I could live next door to a prophet because I know we would learn to become good friends. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of being good friends. Becoming such friends is not always easy. The only way to have a friend is to be one. To have friends who live high standards, who stand for virtue and goodness, who are faithful and true to their covenants, you must be such a person to them. In this World where people are addicted to sleaze, permissiveness, and immorality, having good friends will go a long way in ensuring our ability to withstand the evils of society. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
Having good friends will put us in a position to attract the kind of eternal companion one will hope to find. It was the Saviour who proclaimed to His disciples, “Ye are my friends,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 84.63. It was the Saviour who taught, “Great love hath no one than this, that one lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” reports John 15.13. It was the Saviour who beckoned, “Come unto me,” Matthew 11.28. When you accept the Saviour as your friend, you will always be in favour with Him and His Father, so it does not matter who likes you. You have already won the popularity contest with the Divine Source, and is all that matters. In friendship, as in every other principle of the gospel, Jesus Christ is our Exemplar. Modern science, in all its specializations, aims at understanding Nature in order to manipulate and control her. This may be fine, for botany, zoology, climatology, physics and chemistry. However, the same definition of science, with the same aims, has been extended to the human sciences—especially psychology, but also pedagogy, sociology, political science, economic, and psychiatry. Now no human will consent to be understood, in order to be manipulated and controlled by someone, unless one is mystified and stupefied, so that one does not know what is going on. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
Yet people are being manipulated and controlled daily, and seem unaware that it is going on. Somebody or some institution is playing games with human consciousness, seeking to control it, so that behaviour will thereby be controlled, and fit into systems. When humans are thus controlled, one has changed in ontological status from person to thing. I submit that this transmutation of humans into things has been going on for a few centuries of western history, but it is continuing today at an accelerated pace. I will even indulge a taste for prophecy, and predict that in the next few years, in American, we will witness a struggle between those who would keep human’s consciousness and action to limits that fit a status quo, and those who see in automation the signal for inventing new Worlds, for the flowering once again of human potentialities comparable to the fantastic creativity of ancient Greece. The struggle, as a matter of fact, may be bloody. I hope the champions of human growth in diversity win. I am on that side. What light might psychology shed on this matter? And what role might schools and universities play in increasing the odds that we will enter a magnificent age of enlightenment rather than an age where each human is even more stringently shaped to roles and statuses that makes one useful to the State, but not potentiating of oneself in one’s personal life. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
Frist, a perspective on social systems. These come into being because humans cannot live alone. Originally, they are instituted because they seem efficient ways to divide labour, and maximize freedom from want and danger. However, then, a struggle for control over goods, wealth, and power takes place and some few gain control over the many, by gaining control over wealth and hence the means of socialization. The major institutions of society are a means for maintaining the status quo. The aim of socialization practices, beginning in the rearing of infants, but extending to formal schooling, is so to train people that they will habitually experience and behave in the ways they must behave or so they will be afraid to behave in any way other than those ways which maintain the status quo. Mass media, religion, the law, custom, public opinion, even the healing professions all collude to keep people behaving, and what is even more insidious, experiencing the World in the ways that keep the present social structure intact. Human’s highest purpose and duty in America, so it would seem, is to consume, so factories will not close down. Advertising inusres that one will: more money is spent on that means of “shaping” than is spent on education. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
If anyone misses being so brainwashed, one is invalidated—encountered with threats and actualities of imprisonment, ostracism, poverty, or hospitalization—unless one is very enlightened, or very cunning. This is the way societies maintain themselves. This is the way they resist change, whether it be change in national purpose, change in means of production, or changes in class structure. However, when change in the productive base takes place, as is occurring with expanding automation, these ways have become irrelevant and obsolete. A “World” (the term “World (in quotes) refers to the World as experience by humans or by a particular human) has truly come to an end, though few realize it. However, what is it that we know? This is a question about the specific items of knowledge we possess and about the extent or limits of our knowledge. And second: How do we decide in any given case whether or not we have knowledge in that case? What are the criteria for knowledge? This is a question about our criteria for knowledge. Now suppose we wan to sort all of our beliefs into two groups—the true of justified ones and the false or unjustified ones—in order to retain the former and dispose of the latter in our entire set of beliefs. Such a sorting would allow us to improve our rational situation and grow in knowledge and justify belief. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
However, now a problem arises regarding how we are to proceed in this sorting activity. It would seem that we would first need an answer to at least one of our two questions. Yet, before we can answer our first question about the extent of our knowledge, we would seem to need to answer our second question about our criteria for knowledge. Still, before we can answer the second question, we seem to require an answer for our first question. This is the problem of the criterion. If we do not know how we know things, how can we know anything at all or draw limits to human knowledge? However, if we do not know some things before we ask ourselves how can we have knowledge in the first place, on what basis will we answer that question? There are no truths apart from scientific truths, and even if there were, there would be no reason to believe them is how many people think. However, advocates of weak scientism allow for the existence of truth apart from science and are even willing to grant that they can have some minimal, positive rationality status without the support of science. Nonetheless, advocates of weak scientism still hold that science is the most valuable, most serious, and most authoritative sector of human learning. Every other intellectual activity is inferior science. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
Further, there are virtually no limits to science. There is no field upon which scientific research cannot shed light. To the degree that some issues or belief outside science can be given scientific support or can be reduced to science to that degree the issue or belief becomes rationally acceptable. Thus we have an intellectual, and perhaps, even a moral obligation to try to use science to solve problems in fields heretofore untouched by scientific method. For example, we should try to solve problems about the mind by the methods of neurophysiology and computer science. Since true and false are opposed, and since opposites stand in relation to the same thing, we must needs seek falsity, where primarily we find truth; that is to say, in the intellect. Now, in things, neither true nor falsity exists, expect in relation to the intellect. And since every thing is denominated simply by what belongs to it per se, but is denominated relatively by what belongs to it accidentally; a thing indeed may be called false simply when compared with the intellect on which it depends, and to which it is compared per se, but may be called false relatively as directed to another intellect, to which it is compared accidentally. Now natural things depend on the divine intellect, as artificial things on the human. Wherefore artificial things are said to be false simply and in themselves in so far as they fall short of the form of art; whence if it falls short of the proper operation of one’s art a craftsman is said to produce a false work. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
In things that depend on God, falseness cannot be found, in so far as they are compared with the divine intellect; since whatever takes place in things proceeds from the ordinance of that intellect, unless perhaps in the case of voluntary agents only, who have it in their power to withdraw themselves from what is so ordained; where in consists the evil of sin. Thus sins themselves are called untruths and lies in the Scriptures, according to the words of the text, “Why do you love vanity, and seek after lying?” (Ps. 4.3): as on the other hand virtuous deeds are called “truth of life” as being obedient to the order of the divine intellect. Thus it is said, “One that doth truth, cometh to the light,” reports John 3.21. However, in relation to our intellect, natural things which are compared thereto accidentally, can be called false; not simply, but relatively; and that in two ways. In one way according to the thing signified, and thus a thing is said to be false as being signified or represented by word or thought that is false. In this respect anything can be said to be false as regards any qualitied not possessed by it; as if we should say that a diameter is false commensurable thing, as the Philosopher. So, too Augustine says (Soliloq. Ii, 10): “The true tragedian is a false Hector”: even as, on the contrary, anything can be called true, in regard to that which is becoming to it. In another way a thing can be called false, by way of cause—and this a thing is said to be false that naturally begets a false opinion. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
And whereas it is innate in us to judge things by external appearances, since our knowledge takes its rise from sense, which principally and naturally deals with external accidents, therefore those external accidents, which resemble things other than themselves, are said to be dales with respect to those things; this gall is falsely honey; and tin, false gold. Regarding this, Augustine says (Soliloq. ii 6): “We call those things false that appear to our apprehension like true:” and the Philosopher says (Metaph v, 34): “Things are called false that are naturally apt to appear such as they are not, or what they are not.” In this way a human is called false as delighting in false opinions or words, and not because one can invent them; for in this way many wise and learned persons might be called false, as stated in Metaph. V 34. A thing compared with the intellect is said to be true in respect to what it is, and false in respect to what it is not. Hence, “The true tragedian is a false Hector,” as stated in Soliloq. ii, 6. As therefore, in things that are is found a certain non-being, so in things that are is found a degree of falseness. Things do not deceive by their own nature, but by accident. For they give occasion to falsity, by the likeness they bear to things which they actually are not. Things are said to be false, not as compared with the divine intellect, in which case they would be false simply, but as compared with our intellect; and thus they are false only relatively. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
Likeness or defective representation does not involve the idea of falsity except in so far as it gives occasion to false opinion. Hence a thing is not always said to be false, because it resembles another thing; but only when the resemblance is such as naturally to produce a false opinion, not in any one case, but in the majority of instances. Moral reformers are members of a society who stand outside that society’s code and pronounce a need for reform and change in that code. However, if an act is right is and only if it is in keeping with a given society’s code, then the moral reformer oneself is by definition an immoral person, for one’s views are at odds with those of one’s society. Moral reformers must always be wrong because they go against the code of their society. However, any view that implies that moral reformers are impossible is defective because we all know that moral reformers have actually existed. Put differently, moral relativism implies that neither cultures (if conventionalism is in view) nor individuals (if subjectivism is in view) can improve their moral code. The only thing they can do is change it. Why consider any change in a code from believing, say, racism is right to racism is wrong. How should we evaluate this change? #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
All the moral relativist can say is that, from the perspective of the earlier code, the new principle is wrong, and from the perspective of the new code, the old principle is wrong. In short, here has merely been a change in perspective. No sense can be given to the idea that a new code reflects an improvement on an old code because this idea requires a vantage point outside of and above the society’s (or individual’s) code from which to make that judgment. And it is precisely such a vantage point that moral relativism disallows. Some relativists respond to this claiming that moral reformers are allowed in their view because all moral reformers do is make explicit what was already implicit but overlooked in the society’s code. Thus, if a society already has a principle that persons ought to be treated equally, then this implicitly contains a prohibition against racism even though it may not be explicitly noted. The moral reformer merely makes this explicit be calling people to think more carefully about their code. Unfortunately, this claim is simply false. Many more reformers do in fact call people to alter their codes. They do not merely make clear what was already contained in preexisting codes. Every powerful movement has had its philosophy which has gripped the mind, fired the imagination and captured the devotion of its adherents. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
Lord and Saviour, true and kind be the master of my mind; bless and guide and strengthen still all my powers of thought and will. While I play the scholar’s task, Jesus Christ please be near, I ask; please help the memory, clear the brain, knowledge still to seek gain. Please take my intellect, and use every power as Thou shalt choose. If there is a religion in the World which exalts the office of teaching, it is safe to say that it is the religion of Jesus Christ. A religion divorced from earnest and lofty thought has always, down the whole history of the Church, tended to become weak, jejune and unwholesome, while the intellect, deprived of its rights within religion, has sought its satisfaction without, and developed into a godless rationalism. Unbelievers watch us while we are at work and they notice the forms that our worship and fellowship take. If unbelievers do not see a vibrant intellectual life when they observe Christians at work, or engaged in fellowship and worship, are they to be blamed if they conclude that truth and rationality do not matter much to us? God created us to be rational creatures. We have a religious duty to think and to think well. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
The essence of worship is the intentional ascription of worth, service, and reverence to the Lord. Worship can take place in public or private, individual or corporate ways. In fact, for the integrated believer, in one way or another, everything in life can be understood as an act of worship. In this sense, worship is expressed in one’s overall approach to life and every area of life. “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this World, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not thing yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. Just as each one of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If one man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
“If it is serving, let one serve; if it is teaching let one teach; if it is encouraging, let one encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let one give generously; if it is leadership, let one govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let one do it cheerfully,” reports Romans 12.1-8. Worship creates a home for the soul as it learns to rest in God. A more specific form of worship occurs in specific acts of praise and exultation, especially in the assembly with the people of God. Of special importance to this later understanding is the conscious expression of worship in the very act of study in high school or college or in and through the vocation a believer selects. God is a maximally perfect being. This means that God is not merely the greatest, most perfect being who happens to exist. He is the greatest being that could possibly exist. I bear witness that a very important element of your experience in the gospel is the friends you make and the mentors you follow, just as I was promised. I pray that each of us will have the privilege of enjoying righteous friendships and mentoring relationships as we grow together in the gospel of Jesus Christ. “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honour one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervour, serving the Lord. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality,” reports Romans 12.9-13. In these cases, our degree of worship ought to increase and, therefore, a God who just happened to be the greatest being around (and who could be surpassed in excellence) would not be a worthy object of total worship. Fortunately, the God of the Bible is a maximally perfect being; that is, He is the greatest being that could possibly exist. It is impossible for a greater being to supersede God or for God Himself to improve Himself in any way. Thus, God is owed our supreme, total worship. This is why Scripture calls idolatry the activity of giving more dedication to something finite than to God. God is worthy of the very best efforts we can give Him in offering our respect and service through the cultivation of our total personality, including our mins. Seen in this light, dedicated to intellectual growth is not merely to be done for the edification of the worshipper, but as an act of service rendered to God. Halfhearted study in high school or college represents a failure to grasp the fact that loving God with the mind is part of worship. Such halfhearted study is an unworthy offering to the Lord. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
With this as a background, let us look at how we can better bring our minds into our corporate and individual acts of adoration and praise. Worship should never be reduced to an act of intellect—it involves all that we are—but the intellect is more central to worship than we often realize. “And then shall that which is written come to pass: Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child; for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord. Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thy habitations; spare not, lengthen thy cords and strengthen thy stakes; for thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left, and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles and make the desolate cities to be inhabited. Fear not, for thou shalt not be ashamed; neither be thou confounded, for thou shalt not be put to shame; for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy widowhood any mire. For they maker, thy husband, the Lord of Hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer, the Holy one if Israel—the God of the whole Earth shall he be called. For the Lord hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth, when thou wast refused, saith thy God. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
“For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment, but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer. For this, the waters of Noah unto me, for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the Earth, so I have sworn that I would not be wroth with thee. For the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee. O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted! Behold, I will lay thy foundations with sapphires. And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones. And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord; and great shall be the peace of thy children. In righteousness shalt thou be established; thou shalt be far from oppression for thou shalt not fear, and form terror for it shall not come near thee. Behold, they shall surely gather together against thee, not by me; whosoever shall gather together against thee shall fall for thy sake. Behold, I have created the smith that bloweth the coals in fire, and that bringeth forth an instrument for his work; and I have created the waster to destroy. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
“No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall revile against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord,” reports 3 Nephi 22.1-17. Far too often, when we come to worship God in the assembly of His people, we are allowed to leave our minds at the door. This is simply unacceptable and beneath God’s dignity as a maximally perfect being. What we need to do is plan more carefully and think harder about how we can engage the intellects of our brothers and sisters as part of our collective offerings of praise to our Father. “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth,” reports John 4.24. This verse is well known. Worship is to be rooted in the inner being; it should be sincere and earnest; and it ought to be in accordance with the true nature of God, His revelation, and His acts. At the close of the day, I face the west, the direction of rest, and raise my hands in prayer to the Sun. Great shining one, may I go to rest with your regards as you go to yours with mine. As you lower yourself through the Sky toward the horizon, I hold your red disk between my hands. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
You who fill my hands, fill my heart and stay with me through the dark time, until morning comes again. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast sanctified us with Thy precepts and commanded us to dwell in the Sukkah. It is for us to praise the Lord of all, to proclaim the greatness of the Creator of the Universe for He hath not made us like the unbelievers of the World, nor placed us like heathen tribes of the Earth; God hath not made our destiny as theirs, nor cast our lot with all their multitude. We bend the knee, worship and give thanks unto the King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He. God stretched forth the Heavens and laid the foundations of the Earth. His glory is revealed in the Heavens above, and His might is manifest in the loftiest heights. God is our God; there is none else. In truth He is our King; there is none besides Him; as it is written in His Torah: Know this day, and consider it in thy hear that the Lord is God in the Heavens above and on Earth beneath; there is none else. God will illuminate and exert His influence upon His children consistently and effortlessly. His power and light will radiate naturally from Him. It is not by our heart, but by our faith and devotion that we receive help and healing. God has thought about us and remembers us for we are all held within His Mind. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
Cresleigh Homes
The kitchen comes fully equipped with a large island, stainless steel appliances, and quartz counters with a butler’s pantry to provide easy access to the dining room. The great room is spacious and its open floor plan allows all parts of the home to flow. The Owner’s suite nestled away from the secondary bedrooms allowing for maximum privacy, yet still accessible.
The Great Room in this #Meadows Residence 2 home at #PlumasRanch is looking mighty comfy right now… 😍 And the green mid-mod dining chairs are just the pièce de résistance!
Utilize the interactive floor plan for this Residence on our website to plan where your furniture will go! Link in bio. https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/residence-2/
How Long Must I Remain in Jeopardy of Blank Amazements that Amaze No More?
The pain of leaving those you grow to love is only a prelude to an understanding of yourself and others. Finding out what your real desires and characteristics are, and being able to live in a way that expresses them is how one finds one’s identity. One learns to be authentic, to be honest in the sense of allowing one’s behaviour and one’s speech to be the true and spontaneous expression of one’s inner feelings. Survey of efforts at self-analysis, self-therapy and self-growth uncovered that dreams are psychological symbols; peak, spiritual and psychedelic experience; archaic and prerational cognition. Recovery of the preconscious. That is why it is important to become an expert on one’s self. Think of yourself as a collaborator in an enterprise in which one wants to learn as much as one can learn so that one can pass this on to other people. The goal of therapy and self-discovery is the recovery of experiences—in particular, the recovery of feelings, emotions, subtle impulses and inner voices. They are believed to be the essential part of human nature and yet are so easily forgotten, denied or suppressed in the course of socialization. To be experientially alive means to renew a contact with our essential nature, and the first step in that direction is to pay greater attention to the concrete, pre-abstract, preverbal and the unconscious. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
There are two aspects of the unconscious. The unconscious is said to be the seat of drives and needs—especially irrational needs—whereas the preconscious has more to do with the ways of sensing (id est, primary process cognition). It has often been said that a map is not a territory and a label (words and concepts) must not be confused with the reality it stands for. However, if we can use the map in the exploration of an external environment, why cannot we use words and concepts for the discovery of inner space? We find that thoughts, feelings, and affects are alive in us which would never have believed possible. Naturally, possibilities of this sort seem utterly fantastic to anyone who had not experienced them oneself, for a normal person “knows what one thinks.” Such an immature attitude on the part of the “normal person” is simply the rule, so that no one without experience in this field can be expected to understand the real nature of their being. With these reflections one gets into an entirely new World of psychological experience, provided of course that one succeeds in realizing it in practice. Those who do succeed can hardly fail to be impressed by all that the ego does not know and never has known. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
This increase in self-knowledge is still very rare nowadays and is usually paid for in advance with a neurosis, if not something worse. The tension that arises from lack of self-understanding is so profound that it can be harmless until it is confronted in the conscious mind in personified form and behaves rather like systems split off from the personality, or like part souls. The most important tasks of psychic hygiene is to pay continual attention to the symptomatology of unconscious contents and processes, for the good reason that the conscious mind is always in danger of becoming one-sided, of keeping to well-worn paths and getting stuck in blind alleys. The complementary and compensating function of the unconscious ensures that these dangers, which are especially great in neurosis, can in some measure be avoided. It is only under ideal conditions, when life is still simple and unconscious enough to follow the serpentine path of instinct without hesitation or misgiving, that the compensation works with entire success. The more civilized, the more unconscious and complicated living conditions and the influence of one’s environment are so strong that they drown the quiet voice of nature. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
Opinions, belief, theories, and collective tendencies appear in its stead and back up all the aberration of the conscious mind. Deliberate attention should then be given to the unconscious so that the compensation can set work. Hence it is especially important to picture the archetypes of the unconscious not as a rushing phantasmagoria of fugitive images but as constant, autonomous factors, which they indeed are. The archetypes are universal symbols such as The Great Mother (a mother goddess who is a personification of the natural World), the Wise Old Man (a profound philosopher distinguished for wisdom and sound judgment), the Shadow (everything of which a person is not fully conscious of, the unknown side), the Tree of Life (representing sacred life, religion, spirituality, the divine), the Tower (an extension of consciousness achieved in maturity), and Water (valley of the spirit). This is why education is a lifelong process. There is evidence that the materials we learn and insight we gain are not likely to dissipate easily, since participation in gaining lifelong knowledge involves a change in attitude, beliefs, values, and even a radical change in the fundamental outlook on life. The goal of education is to refocus itself on the joy of personal discovery, the sense of awe and mystery in life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
When education regains an accurate objective, the process of learning can then become as meaningful and exhilarating as those moments wen we are having peak-experiences. Do you remember how exciting it was as a kid in elementary when at the beginning of the school year, the teacher handed out those big, colourful, glossy books. How they made you feel excited and curious to know what was inside. Well, that is how learning is supposed to be for adults also. Many of those authors are writing as communication to future generations. It is an expression of love for them, giving them the tools required to improve their lives and the World. In effect, the textbooks are affectionate notes, bits of counsel, lessons others have learned that might help us. Imaginative activity is joined with belief of that which is to come. Take the case of two images, one involving the idea that humans will cause their own destruction and the other the idea that Zeus hurled thunderbolts when he was displeased with human’s doings. Both images, one purely verbal, the other pictorial, are due to the power of imagination. However, does the pictorial image more readily secure or enhance belief than the verbal image? If it does, what property or feature of it is responsible? #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
The phenomenon is referred to as the power and act imagination intensive, and is also called by a more intriguing name, Fascination. Belief in the imagination intensive is rational because there is an observed phenomenon and these participate in the power of things in fact. According, those effects which are wrought by the percussion of the sense, and by things in fact, are produced likewise in some degree by the imagination. The image of a man eating a sour pickle may be just as effective in setting one’s teeth on edge as does the act of eating the pickle itself. The effect is due not only to the figure but to the force and intensity of it. This is very close to an ideo-motor theory of voluntary movement and to the role imagination plays in it. Indeed, the imagination is as it were the director and driver of this motion [voluntary motion], insomuch that when the image which is the object of the motion is withdrawn the motion itself is immediately interrupted and stopped (as in walking, if you begin to think eagerly and fixedly of something else, you immediately stand still). Again, stamping, and bending of the fist, are caused by an imagination of the act of revenge. If the image thus affects action, why should it not be a belief? And would not a striking feature of the experience be responsible for its impact? Indeed it would. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Force or intensity are recognized as a special property or dimension of the image and this is nowhere more evident than when we talk of strengthening or exalting or fortifying the imagination. To strengthen the imagination is not to help in the making of images but to increase the effectiveness of them. Authority, for example, will fortify an image, whether verbal or pictorial, but it will do nothing to produce the image. If a person believes that a ring or charm will bring one good luck, one may hold to that belief—and act upon it—because of one’s faith in the art of magic, or a practitioner thereof, not because of experience or of logic. Authority carries weight, as it were, and impart weight. Various kinds of objects enhance imagery in the same way, and one can form a list of them drawn from natural magic. Rituals and ceremonies are not only imageful but they carry the authority of their sources. Scriptural words have the authority of God. Words of similitude—that is, pictorial images produced through words—are stronger than verbalizations without pictures. There is another quality of the image, possibly associated with intensity and certainly contributing to the strength of imagery. It is called a binding or limiting effect. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
When speculating about the ways of strengthening the memory, we find in the art of memory, that images visible work better than other conceits; as if you would remember the word philosophy, you shall more surely do it by imagining that such a human (for humans are best places) is reading upon Aristotle’s Physics; than if you could imagine one to say, I will go study philosophy. The reasons are two: the more lustrous the imagination is, it filleth and fixeth the better, and there is a binding of thoughts. One has to aim to prepare the way and clear the ground, and one would uncover directions and hints for systematic and experimental investigation into the phenomenon of the imagination. If serious study undertaken the chief problem would be that of disentangling a maze of cause and effect. It would be proper to focus on two matters: the effects of imagery on the imaginant oneself, and the effect of one human’s imagery on another. However, the whole enterprise has been confounded and confused by those who merely desire to exploit it for the end of magic, witchcraft, myth and mystery, dreams and visions. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
If they would, three established studies could make contributions, for those sciences which have had been intelligence and confederacy with the imagination of humans than with their reason, are three in number: Astrology, Natural Magic, and Alchemy; of which sciences the ends or pretenses are noble. The imagination may become hyperactive in eloquence. It is no small dominion which imagination holds in persuasions that are wrought by eloquence; for when by arts of speech human’s minds are soothed, inflamed, and carried hither and hither, it is all done by stimulating the imagination till it becomes ungovernable, and not only sets reason at nought, but offers violence to it, partly by blinding, partly be incensing it. Such effects may be due in part to the agitation of the spirit or of the affections. There is no doubting that both imagination and vehement affection work greatly upon the body of the imaginant. Emissions of the spirits and their affects is connected to the operations of the spirits of the mind of humans upon other spirit. Imagination may be the instigator of both spirit activity and emotional behaviour. Such a monstrous imagination was attributed to the school of Pythagoras for it was cultivated by Platonists, and made the basis of Paracelsian magic that exalting the imagination with the power of miracle-working faith. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
If there be communication between the spirit of the World and the spirit of humans, it is probably directly from spirit to spirit. An imaginant can be primarily influencing oneself: If a person carrying a planet’s seal, or a ring, or some part of a beast, believing strongly that it will help one to obtain more active and industrious, and again more confident and persisting than one would otherwise be. Imagination is the power of representing thought. It is the power of reproducing and creating images, verbal, and pictorial, from the products of sensory experience and the products of the understanding and reason. Its images have a kind of force or strength that can stir the human spirit and rouse the affections. By and large, the imagination serves rational life. It illuminates and illustrates abstract thought in much the same way it lights up divine spirit and grace in moments of revelation and inspiration. If understanding and reason may be said to form experience, imagination may be said to give it shape. “If this World were mine, I’d make you a king with wealth untold, you could have anything. If this World were mine, I’d give you each day so sunny and blue. If you wanted the moonlight, I’d give you that too. If this World were mine, I’d give you anything.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
The lyrics above are from a duet by Luther Vandross and Cheryl Lynn called If this World were Mine. They are singing a beautiful ballot and used imagery to express how in love they are with each other. The imagery is more powerful than say, “I love you,” because one had to put their thought and heart into those eloquent lyrics and they are more likely to have much more of an impact because it causes the imagination to ponder how much one is loved. Reason and imagination join in creative activity that bears the marks of both faculties, reason rendering the product plausible, imagination rendering it sensible. Together they give rise to the fitting and the appropriate. Yet in their creativity, neither reason nor imagination works independently. Imagination is not merely processing the work of reason; it is not translating. Rather, there is a sort of transmutation, perhaps transtantiation, going on between them. The colour of imagination and the colour of reason are present, but one sees neither distinctly; they are blended in any creative product that humans judge to be fitting and appropriate. In rhetorical and poetical creativity, as distinguished from scientific creativity, the imagination is responsible for, is the immediate cause of, that quality of argument, example, and style that we label “appropriateness.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Imagination always has something to work with, whether the sayable simply made the work of understanding and reason accessible to sense or was the product of reason and imagination’s creating something appropriate. What should be distrusted and feared are the imaginations of bad people, practitioners of artificial magic and alchemy. The content aspect of a sign or statement is due to the imagination and the formal aspect of the understanding. The denial of equal liberty, for example, can be defended only if it is necessary to raise the level of civilization so that in due course these freedoms can be enjoyed. The maximin rule uses the imagination, for a solution to the problem of social justice, tells us to rank alternatives by their worst possible outcomes: we are to adopt the alterative the worst outcome of which is the superior to the worst outcomes of the others. The original position is designed to be a fair and impartial point of view that is to be adopted in our reasoning about fundamental principles of justice. The persons in the original position do not, of course, assume that their initial place in society is decided by a malevolent opponent. However, if parties were forced to protect themselves against such a contingency, the maximum rule explains the sense in which this conception is the maximin solution. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
In business and life, decisions have to be made and they must be rational. The maximin rule is not, in general, a suitable guide for choices under uncertainty. However, it is attractive in situations marked by certain special features. The aim, then, is to show that a good case can be made for the two principles based on the fact that the original position manifests these features to the fullest possible degree, carrying them to the limit, so to speak. A gain-and-loss table represents the gains and losses for a situation which is not a game of strategy. There us no one playing against the person making the decision; instead one is faced with several possible circumstances which may or may not obtain. Which circumstances happen to exist does not depend upon what the person choosing decides or whether one announces one’s moves in advance. The numbers in the gain-and-loss table below are monetary values (in millions of dollars) in comparison with some initial situation. The gain (g) depends upon the individual’s decision (d) and the circumstances (c). Thus g = f (d, c). Assuming that there are three possible decisions and three possible circumstances, we might have this gain-and-loss table. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
#RandolphHarris 14 of 23
The maximin rule requires that we make the third decision. For in the case the worst that can happen is that one gains $5,000,000.00, which is better than the worse for the other actions. If we adopt one of these, we may lose either $8,000,000.00 or $7,000,000.00. Thus, the choice of d3 maximizes f (d, c) for that value of c, which for a given d, minimizes f. The terms “maximin” means maximum minimorum; and the rule directs our attention to the worst that can happen under any proposed course of action, and to decide in the light of that. Now there appear to be three chief features of situations that give plausibility to this unusual rule. First, since the rule takes no account of the likelihoods of the possible circumstances, there must be some reason for sharply discounting estimates of these probabilities. Offhand, the most natural rule of choice would seem to be to compute the expectation of monetary gain for each decision and then to adopt the course of action with the highest prospect. However, it must be, for example, that the situation is one in which a knowledge of likelihoods is impossible, or at best extremely insecure. In this case it is unreasonable not to be skeptical or probabilistic calculations unless there is no other way out, particularly if the decision is a fundamental one that needs to be justified to others. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
The second feature that suggest the maximin rule is the following: the person choosing has a conception of the good such that one cares very little, if anything, for what one might gain above the minimum stipend that one can, in fact, be sure of by following the maximin rule. It is not worthwhile for one to take a chance for the sake of a further advantage, especially when it may turn out that one loses much that is important to one. This last provision brings in the third feature, namely, that the rejected alternatives have outcomes that one can hardly accept. The situation involves grave risks. Of course these feature work most effectively in combination. A maxim, a rule of thumb comes into its own in special circumstances. Its application depends upon the qualitative structure of the possible gain and losses in relation to one’s conception of the good, al this against a background in which it is reasonable to discount conjectural estimates of likelihoods. The parties have no basis for determining the probable nature of their society, or their place in it. Thus they have strong reasons for being wary of probability calculations is any other course is open to them. They must also take into account that fact that their choice of principles should seem reasonable to others, in particular their descendants, whose rights will be deeply affected by it. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
Therefore, the objective is to limit loss and maximize gain, not gamble because the parties are unable to conjecture, they cannot say much about what the possible circumstances are, much less enumerate them and foresee the outcome of each alternative available. Finally, the third feature holds if we can assume that other conceptions of justice may lead to institutions that the parties would find intolerable. For example, it has sometimes been held that under some condition the utility principle justifies, if not slavery or serfdom, at any rate serious infraction of liberty for the sake of greater social benefit. We need not consider here the truth of this claim, or the likelihood that the requisite conditions obtain. For the moment, this contention is only to illustrate the way in which conceptions of justice may allow for outcomes which the parties may not be able to accept. And having the ready alterative of the two principles of justice which secure a satisfactory minimum, it seems unwise, if not irrational, for them to take a chance that these outcomes are not realized. We must make a distinction between a doctrinal principle and the human personality who serves as the vehicle for such principles. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
The principles will live when the personality is dead. Our absolute rationality and loyalty, therefore, must be bestowed on what is immortal, not on what is mortal, but we still have to make the most reasonable decisions while we are alive. The human disseminator of the principle should receive only a conditional allegiance. The pure Idea may incarnate itself in the human but only may sully, betray, or pollute it with one’s human error, prejudice, or selfishness. The embodies master, being human, will have some or other of the human imperfections. Sooner or later the disciple will note and become critical of them or disturbed by them. However, the inner Light is perfect and will rouse only admiration, devotion, and satisfaction. “And now it came to pass that when Jesus has spoken these words he turned again to the multitude, and did open his mouth unto them again, saying: Verily, verily, I say unto you, Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
“Or how wilt thou say to thy brother: Let me pull the mote out of thine eye—and behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast the mote of out thy brother’s eye. Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you. Ask, and it shall be given unto you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh, receiveth; and one that seeketh, findeth; and to one that knocketh, it shall be opened. Or what human is there of you, who, if your child ask bread, will give one a stone? Or what if your child ask a fish, will one give one a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father who is in Heaven give good things to them that ask him? Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that humans should do to you, do ye even so to them, for this is the law and the prophets. Enter ye in at the strait gate; for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, which leadeth to destruction, and many there by who go in threat; because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do humans gather grapes of thorns, of figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore, by their fruits ye shall know them. Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of Heaven; but one that doeth the will of my Father who is in Heaven. Many will say to me in that day: Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy name have cast out devils, and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them; I never knew you; depart from me, ye that work iniquity. Therefore, whoso heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them, I will liken one unto a wise human, who built one’s house upon a rock—and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
And every one that heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them shall be likened unto a foolish human, who built one’s house upon the sand—and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell, and great was the fall of it,” reports 3 Nephi 14.1-27. Now we ask, What does a will or heart look like that has been transformed into Christlikeness? How is it to be characterized? Jesus said himself—and of course he is always the pattern—“One who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him,” reports John 8.29. And Paul has this to say: “I haven been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the fait of the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me,” reports Galatians 2.20. The only haven of safety is to have no other will, no other wisdom, than to follow the Lord wherever he leads. Let this, then, be the first step, to abandon ourselves, and devote the whole energy of our minds to the service of God. So we have the answers to our question: Single-minded and joyous devotion to God and his will, to what God wants for us—and to service to him and to others because of him—is what the will transformed into Christlikeness looks like. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
That is the outcome of Christian spiritual formation with reference to the will, heart, or spirit. And when it has become the governing response of every dimension of our being, this outcome becomes our character. Then we can truly said to have “put on Christ.” However, how far this is from the usual human will and character we hardly need say! Instead of being simple and transparent through a constant and coherent devotion to God, the usual human will is a place of chaotic duplicity and confusion if not darkness, because it is the playing field of pride and fear and lack of confidence in God, shrouded in layer upon layer of destructive habits. Your blood is my blood, flowing out of past, through me, to the future. Through my actions, you live. Please guide me, then, in the decisions I face today, making clear to me the safe path between obstacles and keeping me from false steps along the way. Please grant lasting peace unto Israel Thy people, for Thou art the Sovereign Lord of peace; and may it be good in Thy sight to bless Thy people Israel at all times with Thy peace. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who blesses Thy people Israel with peace. O Lord, please guard my tongue from evil and my lips from speaking guile, and to those who slander me, let me give no heed. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
May my soul be humble and forgiving unto all. Please open Thou my heart, O Lord, unto Thy sacred Law, that Thy statutes I may know and all Thy truths pursue. Please bring to naught designs of those who seek to do me ill; speedily defect their aims and thwart their purposes for Thine own sake, for Thine own power, for Thy holiness and Law. That Thy loved ones be delivered, please answer us, O Lord, and save with Thy redeeming power. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable unto Thee, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Thou who establishest peace in the Heavens, please grant peace unto us and unto all Israel. Amen. May it be Thy will, O Lord our God and God of our Fathers, to grant our portion in Thy Torah, and may the Temple be rebuilt in our day. There we will serve Thee with awe as in the days of old. After the Sun has risen, I am here to pray long hours. While the day began, I was still asleep, still walking in the land of dreams. Know this, bright Sun, that though I slept, you were still in my heart. Now, when I am finally awake, I take up my daily responsibilities. First, though I will stand here and praise God and drink in your warmth and drink in all the light you give so freely to arm myself for the say’s struggles. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
Cresleigh Homes
Enjoying a morning in bed at Plumas Ranch is that much better with all the natural light that streams in through the windows. ☀️
To schedule a private viewing of any of our model homes at Plumas Ranch, contact us at 530-870-8748 or PlumasRanch@Cresleigh.com
This modern house offers plenty of room for a delightful diversion. Inside, a large living area with an optional fireplace affords grand lounging; dining room, cozy interludes.
Mysteries Whispered in their Presence–A Person Clamoured for Love and Attention but I Did Not Hear!
No one knows what to say in the loser’s room. Divulging any client’s financial secrets is a criminal act and bank officers or employees can be punished by up to five years imprisonment and a fine of up to $5000.00. This secrecy requirement does not end with bank employment but goes with the employee to one’s grave. One study shows that only 30 percent of U.S. employers believe school graduates are literate and numerate; but 70 percent of students and 60 percent of parents think their schools are fine. This points to the core problem with U.S. education: low intensity, in all but sport, and low expectations, for all but the brightest students in honours classes. Also, the cost of private health insurance, mostly borne by industry, is doubling every seven years. What is more significant is that health is now a common-middle class headache for the first time. Employers are forcing their employees to contribute more and take less generous benefits; the high cost of insurance squeezes wages; people who have a poor health history, even if fully cured, find themselves locked into their jobs, because prospective new employers refuse to take them on. Many believe this added government control of an industry which comprises one fifth of the American economy has only meant higher taxes and reduced quality of medical care for everyone. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Now, a hypothesis. I believe that independent learning, the embodiment of the state of being fascinated, involves six stages. The first is the experience of the impasse. The next stage we will provisionally call the stage of detachment, a kind of dying. The third is immersion in oneself—an entry into one’s center, one’s source of experiencing. Next is an emergence, or rebirth. Fifth is the experience of new possibilities. Sixth is the selection and pursuit of one of these. I shall attempt to illustrate this hypothesis with examples from several realms: religious conversion, brainwashing, research in psychedelic drugs, psychotherapy, and dialogue. I base my hypothesis upon personal experience, buttressed by reading that has seemed related, and the reported experience of others. It appears to me that fascination-with-something, the process of being turned on, has a certain “natural” history in adults. It is the natural state with healthy children who have not yet been “turned off.” The “turning off” begins with the experience of despair, boredom, or meaninglessness as one continues one’s habitual way of life—acting in one’s roles, doing one’s work, being one’s public self. Friendships grow stale. Work becomes meaningless and pointless. One feels dead, or deadened. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
The World looks stale, and music loses its savour. Nothing changes. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose. I am doing something for everybody, and nothing for me. One feels trapped. No way out seems apparent. Each step out of the circle encounters dread or a sense of hopelessness, and futility. One tries new hobbies, new friends, new within which one feels like a robot. The depression deepens. One becomes afraid one is losing one’s mind. It is at this point that one’s friends, family, conventional psychiatry, and religion may enter. They try, and in this state gradually “loses interest,” “stops caring about thing.” One is regarded as sick, in need of “treatment” to stop one from going out of one’s mind. Actually, the “not-caring” is a self-initiated process of detachment from previous concerns, a phase in the death-rebirth process we are concerned with. If nothing stops the process, the person gradually enters one’s own experience more and more. One’s self-structure dissolves. One detaches oneself from one’s image of oneself, from previous friendships—which, after all, have been stabilizing one, keeping one in sameness, which is not the same as sanity. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
This person may become panicky, as the process of detachment continues; and one finds oneself experiencing emotions, fantasies and memories, that ordinarily have been repressed. One surely needs reassurance here, to let the process unfold rather than shut it off. One is encountering one’s possibilities. If one lets go enough, one will fully enter the realm of experiencing that mystics have described as “transcendental,” like a homecoming, a visit to the course, rather than a hell to be avoided. It is, in fact, the way of experiencing that we all shared as children, before we were wholly engulfed by the culture. One cannot, and does not long stay in this realm. One re-enters one’s ego, but with a new perspective. The self-structure is redefined. I choose a new identity for myself and present it to others who may confirm it or not. The World does not look the same now. It is not the same because I am not the same, and it is my World. I look at the old things and the old people; and new features, new possibilities disclose themselves to me. I commit myself to some of these, and I am renewed, until some later time; when the new fascinations, values, and projects go stale, I must begin the process again. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
When I am reborn and awakened, I experience the World and the people in it as a constant and varied calling, a constant source of invitations to become involved. The calls and invitations that were always there, but I never heard them before. The sky called to be looked at. A person clamoured for love and attention but I did not hear. Mysteries whispered their presence, but I did not notice; I thought what was mysterious was actually known and understood. In short, I begin once again to encounter the World, and the people in it. In the encounter, I let myself experience the varied reality of the World, a reality that I did not experience the varied reality of the World, a reality that I did not experience so richly, or in so many dimensions, as I do. Renewed by the plunge into the depths of my own experiencing, I survey the World that I am encountering. Some invitation, some call, some challenge, fascinates me more than the others. Nobody can predict what will now fascinate or repel me, not even me. I commit myself to this one, and off I go until I become deadened once again by a new set of habits. It has just occurred to me, after completing a year of sabbatical leave in England, that the process I just described is a sabbatical leave of one’s mind, of one’s personality structure. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
The academic sabbatical is a removal from one’s usually surroundings, but I discovered it is easier to get out of one’s surroundings than to get them out of oneself so that new surroundings can invite one into encounter. Many of my American colleagues in England successfully shielded themselves from fascination with and involvement in the English experience, because of the panic they felt when invited to let go their usual preoccupations. They carried America with them. Indeed, the phenomenon of “culture shock,” long noted by anthropologists, is another dimension of the experience of leaving, not just one’s country, but one’s mind. One has to let the American in one die in order to become a participant in a new experience, to be reborn. Indeed, initiation ceremonies of all kinds recognize the, like fraternity initiation rites or Marine boot-camp training. The hazing, in whatever form, is a symbolic killing-off of a previous incarnation, to abet the reincarnation in the way of being. However, we are as afraid of dying as we are of leaving our minds. We equate habitual ways of valuing, construing, and acting with life itself. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
Therefore, to stop these, even when they cease to yield satisfaction and meaning, is experienced as the end of life. It is equated with death. We are afraid to explore the possible experience beyond the tether. In the act of love, the climax is frequently experience as a “dying.” And after the successful act of love, a person feels oneself reborn, ready to respond anew to new dimensions of the World that suddenly, magically, have disclosed themselves to the person. However, many acts of love are climaxed not by ego-shattering orgasm; but only by localized, pleasurable twitching. Evidently one has to be ready to go out of one’s mind to make love the love that renews and revivifies. In the psychedelic-drug experience a person ingests a substance; and then, if one lets go, one commences a voyage into depth of experiencing of which one never would have dreamed oneself capable. However, taking one dose or consistent and frequent doses of any drug, especially one as potent as LSD or PCP, is by no means safe for all individuals and may put certain people at high risk of a psychotic episode they may never recover from or cause one to develop a drug addiction. People may believe the marijuana is a safe drug, but it is not. It is bad your lungs and could cause schizophrenia, or lead to the use of more dangerous and addictive drugs. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
It may cause one to feel as if one is looking through a fogged-up window with only a tiny spot wiped clean. With religion, however, a rebirth is caused and the whole window is wiped clean; and the World stands forth. The World will disclose itself to one in different dimensions than it had disclosed itself hitherto, and one will select some aspects of it with which to involve oneself. Brainwashing is a corruption of the death and rebirth theme. There, the commissars, who know what they want a person to do and be, convince one that one (one’s old self) is dead. Under the regime of torture, a person may indeed enter the transcendental realm, but one re-enters a new “robot,” into new roles that have been ready-made for one. Doubtless, they seem as real and meaningful to the brainwashee as did one’s previous incarnation which had been made untenable and unlivable for one by one’s captors. In religious conversion, the common denominator seems to be the despair at continuing in the old way. The person enters one’s experience after leaving the World. If one’s background and present associates are appropriate, then, like the brainwashee, one enters a new way of being that is more or less ready-made for one. In good psychotherapy, the therapist lets one’s patient enter one’s experience deeply. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
One remains present to help the patient cope with the terrors that arise as one lets go and experiences feelings, memories, and the like that have been long suppressed. With one’s interpretations, the therapist may assist the process of symbolic dying and facilitate the onset of the therapeutic despair, or the therapeutic psychosis which is part of every effective psychotherapy sequence. Then the person is reborn, and one faces the World with the capacity to respond to its invitations in new ways. In good teaching, after the fashion of Sokrates, the skilled and compassionate dialectician will challenge every assertion and belief of one’s pupil until the pupil feels one is going to go out of one’s mind. One may balk at this point. However, one may also flip into a realization of infinite possibility, and be thus turned on. This is my hypothesis restated: independent learning entails the experience of fascination. Fascination is a response to an invitation or challenge disclosed by the World. The invitation and challenge were always there, but the person could not experience them so long as one remained “hung up” or fixated in one’s usual roles, self-structure, and preoccupations. It is necessary that the usual attachments be suspended, and raw experiencing be turned on. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
This disengagement from usual concerns is fostered by entrapment and despair (it can be fostered in dialogue); and it maybe experienced with dread, as a going out of one’s mind, or a dying, followed by rebirth or re-entry into an enlarged self-structure. In the reborn state, the person is now more open to one’s experience of the World. While one is in this “open” condition, a challenge appears, and the person responds. One may or may not be confirmed by others in one’s new being. I would propose that something like this happens repeatedly in those healthier personalities for whom independent learning is no problem. I would propose further that a variety of factors militate against this complete process of death and rebirth. And so, practically speaking, the renovation of the heart in the dimension of feeling is a matter of opening ourselves to and carefully cultivating love, joy, and peace: first by receiving them from God and from those already living in Him, and then as we grow, extending love, joy, and peace to others and everything around us in attitude, prayer, and action. Following our VIM (Vision, Integrity, and Mission) pattern, we must intend this and decide that it shall be in all we are and do. Of course our thought life, as already described, will be focused upon God. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
Then through grace we can translate this intention to dwell in love, joy, and peace into the fine texture of daily existence. Our walk with Jesus and the Father will teach us and show us the details of the means required to bring it to pass. The conscious personal mind of the teacher may know nothing of the help that is radiating from one to one who silently calls on one from a long distance, yet the reality of that help remains. If the requisite condition exist, only then can this internal quickening and intense telepathy between the master and the disciple can occur. Even at the beginning of probation (spiritual probation) the seeker will often be given a hint of what awaits one later through the spiritual experience resulting out of the contact with the teacher. However, whether one gets it or not, from the moment of acceptance there will come to every student a sense of peace, and above all, an inner stability and certitude which will become one of the greatest assets in one’s life. Again and again the novice falls into mistakes about the telepathic communications which one feels one is receiving from the master. One regains them as such when they are nothing of the sort, or one interprets them in too material or too egoistic a manner. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
The master sends a thought-current to one which is intended to lift one up to a diviner, hence more impersonal level. One, however, drags it down to a lower, more egocentric level. The telepathic impulses which one sends out to others during these times of prayer or meditation are most often received quite subconsciously. Only later is their effect felt or their origin suspected. One’s disciples may not be aware of any new reception of truth or beatitude at the time. However, increasing clarification or growing liberation may slowly change their course. It is also possible to take any revered person as a master and, in one’s own mind, make one the teacher. Even though no meeting on the physical level may occur, one’s attitude of attention and devotion in meditation will draw from one a reaction which will telepathically give whatever guidance is needed at the time. Just as the glance, the touch, or the spoken word may carry the ardour of mutual desire from to woman so may it also carry the initiatory blessing or the spiritual gift from master to disciple. Like the message of God to a praying spiritual person, the help which comes from such a teacher is above thinking but it translates itself into terms of thinking. In this process of translation, it is seized n by the ego and interfered with. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
The guide may send one’s blessing telepathically only once but if it is powerful enough it may work itself out through a hundred different experiences extending over several years. Because one identifies oneself with the timeless spaceless soul, one’s blessing may express itself out through a hundred different experience extending over several years. Because one identifies oneself with the timeless spaceless soul, one’s blessing may express itself anywhere in space and anywhen in time. Moreover one may formulate it in a general way but it may take precise shapes unconsciously fashioned by and suited to the recipient’s own mentality and degree of development. Here is some of the work to be done. For many of us, just coming to honest terms with what our feelings really are will be a huge task. Paul says in Romans 12.9, “Let love be without hypocrisy.” That is, let it be genuine or sincere. To do only this will require serious effort, deep learning, and quantities of grace. Our ordinary life and our religious associations are so permeated with insincere expressions of love, often alongside of contempt and anger, that it is hard not to feel forced into hypocrisy in some situations. However, we can learn to avoid it, and we shall immediately begin to see what a huge difference that alone makes. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
However, there is much more to do. Very few people are without deep negative feelings towards others who are or have been closely related to them. Wounds carried steadily through the years have weighed us down and prevented spiritual growth in love, joy, and peace. They may have seeped over into our identity. We would not know who we are without them. However, they can be healed or dismissed, if we are ready to give them up to God and receive the healing ministry of His Word and Spirit. This applies similarly to hopelessness over not achieving things long sought or long lost. In general, the task, once we have given ourselves to Christ, is to recognize the reality of our feelings and agree with the Lord to abandon those that are destructive and that lead us into doing or being what we know to be wrong. This one will then help us with. We may need to write out what those feelings are in a “letter to the Lord,” or perhaps confer about them with wise Christian friend who knows how to listen to us and to God at the same time. Perhaps individuals or our fellowship group can have a prayer ministry to us. Journaling about progress with feelings can also help. It can bring to light the ideas and images or past events on which destructive feelings are based. Those, too, will need to be replaced or revised. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
Many such details may play a role as we progress toward predominance of love, joy, and peace in that dimension of our mind and our self that is our feelings. We can be very sure that this is our feelings. We can be very sure that this is God’s intent for us. Thus Paul prayed for his friends in Ephesus that they would be “rooted and grounded in love” and “know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God,” reports Ephesians 3.17-19. And we have seen the intent of Jesus: “That My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full,” reports John 15.11. Also his, “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the World gives, do I give you. Let not your heart be troubled nor let it be fearful,” reports John 14.27. And here is Paul’s benediction to the Romans: “Now may the God of hope fill you with al joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit,” Romans 15.13. There are the same dispositions of things in being and truth. As good has the nature of what is desirable, so truth is related to knowledge. Now everything, in as far as it has being, so far is it knowable. The soul is in some manner all things through the senses and the intellect. And therefore, as good is convertible with being, so is the true. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
However, as good adds to being the notion of desirable, so the truth adds relation to the intellect. “And it came to pass that there was a voice heard among all the inhabitants of the Earth, upon all the face of this land, crying: Wo, wo, wo unto this people; wo unto the inhabitants of the whole Earth except they shall repent; for the devil laugheth, and his Angels rejoice, because of the slain of the fair sons and daughters of my people; and it is because of their iniquity and abominations that they are fallen! Behold, that great city Zarahemla have I burned with fire, and the inhabitants thereof. And behold, that great city Moroni have I caused to be sunk in the depths of the sea, and the inhabitants thereof to be drowned. And behold, that great city Moronihah have I covered with Earth, and the inhabitants thereof, to hide their iniquities and their abominations from before my face, that the blood of the prophets and the saints shall not come any more unto me against them. And behold, the city of Gilgal have I caused to be sunk, and the inhabitants thereof to be buried up in the depths of the Earth; yea, and the city of Onihah and the inhabitants thereof, and the city of Mocum and the inhabitants thereof, and the city of Jerusalem and the inhabitants thereof. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
“And water have I caused to come up in the stead thereof, to hide their wickedness and abomination from before my face, that the blood of the prophets and the saints shall not come up any more unto me against them. And behold, the city of Ganiandi, and the city of Gadiomnah, and the city of Gimgimno, all these have I caused to be sunk, and made hills and valleys in the places thereof; and the inhabitants thereof have I buried up in the depths of the Earth, to hide their wickedness and abominations from before my face, that the blood of the prophets and the saints should not come up any more unto me against them. And behold, that great city Jacobugath, which was inhabited by the people of the king Jacob, have I caused to be burned with fire because of their sins and their wickedness, which was above all the wickedness of the whole Earth, because of their secret murders and combinations; for it was they that did destroy the peace of my people and the government of the land; therefore I did cause them to be burned, to destroy them from before my face, that the blood of the prophets and the saints should not come up uno me any more against them. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
“And behold, the city of Laman, and the city of Josh, and the city of Gad, and the city of Kishkumen, have I caused to be burned with fire, and the inhabitants thereof, because of their wickedness in casting out the prophets, and stoning those whom I did send to declare unto them concerning their wickedness and their abominations. And because they did cast them all out, that there were none righteous among them, I did send down fire and destroy them, that their wickedness and abomination might be hid from before my face, that the blood of the prophets and the saints whom I sent among them might not cry unto me from the ground against them. And many great destructions have I caused to come upon this land, and upon this people, because of their wickedness and their abominations. O all ye that are spared because ye were more righteous than they, will ye not now return unto me, and repent of your sins, and be converted, that I may heal you? Yea, verily I say unto you, if ye will come unto me ye shall have enteral life. Behold, mine arm of mercy is extended towards you, and whosoever will come, one will I receive; and blessed are those who come unto me. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
“Behold, I am Jesus Christ the Son of God. I created the Heavens and the Earth, and all things that in the are. I was with the Father from the beginning. I am in the Father, and the Father in me; and in me hath the Father glorified His name. I came unto my own, and my own received me not. And the scriptures concerning my coming are fulfilled. And as many as have received me, to them have I given to become the sons of God; and even so will I to as many as shall believe on my name, for behold, by me redemption cometh, and in me is the law of Moses fulfilled. I am the light and the life of the World. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. And ye shall offer up unto me no more the shedding of blood; yea, your sacrifices and your burnt offerings shall be done away, for I will accept none of your sacrifices and your burnt offerings. And ye shall offer for a sacrifice unto me a broken heart and a contrite spirit. And whoso cometh unto me with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, one will I baptize with fire and with the Holy Ghost, even as the Lamanites, because of their faith in me at the time of their conversion, were baptized with fire and with the Holy Ghost, and they knew it not. Behold, I have come unto the World to bring redemption unto the World, to save the World from sin. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
“Therefore, whoso repenteth and cometh unto me as a little child, one will I receive, for of such is the kingdom of God. Behold, for such I have laid down my life, and have taken it up again; therefore repent, and come unto me ye ends of the Earth, and be saved,” reports 3 Nephi 9.1-22. Some critics reject the idea of Grace and declare its impossibility in a World governed by strict cause and effect. The meaning of the word suggests something or anything of an immaterial moral or material nature. That is given to humans. Why should not the Master who has attained a higher strength wisdom and moral character than that which is common to the human race, give assistance freely out of one’s beneficent compassion for others struggling to climb the peak one has surmounted? One certainly cannot transmit one’s own inner life to another person in its fullness. However, one can receptive, sensitive, and in inward affinity with one. If this too is denied then let the objector explain why both the feeling of and the sense of the Master’s presence pervade the disciple’s existence for many years after one’s initiation, if not the rest of one’s life. The master, by process of telepathic transfer, enables the disciple to get a glimpse of what the realization of one’s own spiritual possibilities can lead to. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
The pupil who has been allowed to sit in deep conversational prayer with God should be able to carry on with this impetus, even though it happened only once. It is really an initiation. During this intercession, the disciple may actually feel a stream of power flowing out to one from the master, but it is not essential that one do so. What the master reflects and radiates into the disciple’s deeper mind at this sitting, will necessarily incubate for a period of time which may be measurable in minutes, days, months, or even years. No one can predict how long it will be, for not only are the disciple’s readiness, capacity, and affinity determining factors but also one’s destiny. Nor can anyone predict whether the result will appear slowly, gently, little by little, or suddenly, with violent jolting force. The master is forever after present in the disciple’s heart, whether the disciple see one again or not. From the hour of this initiation the master will be much in one’s thoughts and the sense of affinity will be often in one’s heart. The experience which the candidate has at the initiatory intercession with the master is often (but not always) a herald and token of one’s possibilities of later attainment under this particular master. One must work harder than ever on one’s character and, by crushing one’s ego, sensitize one’s mind for the reception of the spiritual Grace that is to come during initiation. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
It seems as if the Master has come into one’s consciousness and thereby changed its quality and area. If the change is necessarily for a brief while only, it is still a memorable one. Father of All, Father of All: as I go through the day, keep my eyes open wide. May I not miss beauty. May I not miss joy. May I not miss wonder. Please keep me away and aware of the World. Thou hast made known unto us, O Lord our God, Thy righteous judgments, and hast taught us to perform Thy statutes. Thou hast given us, O Lord our God, ordinances that are just and true, statutes and commandments that are good. Thou hast enriched our lives with joyous seasons and holy days and festivals to bring free will offerings, giving us as a sacred possession the Sabbath Day and Holy Days, and the joyous delight of the Three Festivals. Thou hast made distinction, O Lord our God, between the sacred and the secular, between light and darkness, between Israel and the heathens, between the seventh day of rest and the six days of work. Thou hast set a distinction between the higher sanctity of the Sabbath and the lesser sanctity of the Festival, and hast hallowed the seventh day above the six days of work. Thus hast Thou distinguished and sanctified Thy people Israel through Thy holiness. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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I Hold it True, what’er Befall; I feel it when I Sorrow Most; ‘Tis Better to Have Loved and Lost!
Youth is not chronological age but the state of growing, learning, and changing. All people must be helped to regain the condition of youth. The two principles of justice: The first guarantees the equal basic rights and liberties needed to secure the fundamental interests of free and equal citizens and to pursue a wide range of conceptions of the good. The second principle provides fair equality of educational and employment opportunities enabling all to fairly compete for powers and positions of office; and it secures for all a guaranteed minimum of the all-purpose means (including income and wealth) that individuals need to pursue their interests and to maintain their self-respect as free and equal persons. In applying the two principles of justice to the basic structure of society one takes the position of certain representative individuals and considers how the social system looks to them. The difference, for example, requires that the higher expectations of the more advantaged contribute to the prospects of the least advantaged. Or as I sometime say more lightly, social and economic inequalities must by in the interests of the representative people in all relevant social positions. The perspective of those in these situations defines a suitably general point of view. #RandolphHarris 1 of 26
However, certainly not all social positions are relevant. For not only are there farmers, say, but dairy farmers, wheat farmers, farmers working on large tracts of land, and so on for other occupations and groups indefinitely. If we must take such a multiplicity of positions into account, we cannot have a coherent and manageable theory. Therefore we need to identify certain positions as more basic than the others and as providing an appropriate standpoint for judging the social system. Thus the choice of these positions becomes part of the theory of justice. On what principle, though, are they to be identified? We must keep in mind the fundamental problem of justice and the manner in which the two principles cope with it. The primary subject of justice, is the basic structure of society. The reason for this is that its effects are so profound and pervasive, and present from birth. This structure favours some starting places over others in the division of the benefits of social cooperation. It is these inequalities which the two principles are to regulate. Once these principles are satisfied, other inequalities are allowed to arise from human’s voluntary actions in accordance with the principle of free association. #RandolphHarris 2 of 26
Thus the relevant social positions are, so to speak, the starting places properly generalized and aggregated. By choosing these positions to specify the general point of view one follows the idea that the two principles attempt to mitigate the arbitrariness of natural contingency and social fortune. I suppose, then, that for the most part each person holds two relevant positions: that of equal citizenship and that defined by one’s place in the distribution of income and wealth. The relevant representative humans, therefore and the representative citizens and those who stand for the various levels of well-being. Since I assume that in general other positions are entered into voluntarily, we need not consider the point of view of humans in these positions in judging the basic structure. Indeed, we are to adjust the whole scheme to suit the preferences of those in the so-called starting places. In judging the social system we are to disregard our more specific interest and associations and look at our situation from the standpoint of these representative humans. Now as far as possible the basis structure should be appraised from the position of equal citizenship. This position is defined by the right and liberties required by principle of equal liberty and the principle of fair equality of opportunity. #RandolphHarris 3 of 26
When the two principles are satisfied, all are equal citizens, and so everyone holds this position. In this sense, equal citizenship defines a general point of view. The problems of adjudicating among the fundamental liberties are settled by reference to it. Many questions of social policy can also be considered from this position. For there are matters which concern the interests of everyone and in regard to which distributive effects are immaterial or irrelevant. In these cases the principle of the common interest can be applied. According to this principle institutions are ranked by how effectively they guarantee the conditions necessary for all equally to further their sims, or by how efficiently they advance shared ends that will similarly benefit everyone. Thus reasonable regulations to maintain public order ad security, or efficient measures for public health and safety, promote the common interest in this sense. So do collective efforts for national defense in a just war. It may be suggested that maintaining public health and safety, promote the common interest in this since. So do collective efforts for national defense in a just war. It may be suggested that maintaining public health and safety or achieving victory in a just war have distributive effects: the affluent benefit more than the less affluent since the have more to lose. #RandolphHarris 4 of 26
However, if social and economic inequalities are just, these effects may be left aside and the principle of the common interest applied. The standpoint of equal citizenship is the appropriate one. The definition of representative humans for judging social and economic inequalities is less satisfactory. For one thing, taking these individuals as specified by the levels of income and wealth, I assumed of power and authority to avoid an index problem. That is, I suppose that those with greater political authority, say, or those higher in institutional forms, are in general better off in other respects. On the whole, this assumption seems safe enough for our purposes. There is also a question about how many such representative humans to single out, but this is not crucial because the difference principle selects one representative for a special role. The serious difficulty is how to define the least fortunate group. Here is seems impossible to avoid certain arbitrariness. One possibility is to choose particular social position, say that of the unskilled worker, and then to count as the least advantaged all those with the average income and wealth of this group, or less. The expectation of the lowest representative human is defined as the average taken over this whole class. #RandolphHarris 5 of 26
Another alternative is a definition solely in terms of relative income and wealth with no reference to social position. Thus all persons with less than half of the median income and wealth may be taken as the least advantaged segment. This definition depends only upon the lower half of the distribution and has the merit of focusing attention on the social distance between those who have least and the average citizen. Surely this gap is an essential feature of the situation of the least favoured members of society. I suppose that either of these definitions or some combination of them, will serve well enough. In any case we are to aggregate to some degree over the expectations of the worst off, and the figure selected on which to base these computations is to a certain extent ad hoc. Yet we are entitled at some point to plead practical considerations in formulating the difference principle. Sooner or later the capacity of philosophical or other arguments to make finer discriminations is bound to run out. I assume therefore that the persons in the original position understand the difference principle to be defined in one of these ways. They interpret it from the first as a limited aggregative principle and assess it as such in comparison with other standards. #RandolphHarris 6 of 26
It is not as if they agreed to think of the least advantaged as literally the worst off individual and then in order to make this criterion work adopted in practice some form of averaging. Rather, it is the practicable criterion itself that is to be evaluated from the perspective of the original position. It may turn out that a more exact definition of the least favoured proves unnecessary. As far as possible, then, justice as fairness appraises the social system from the position of equal citizenship and the various levels of income and wealth. Sometimes, however, other positions may need to be taken into account. If, for example, there are unequal basic rights founded on fixed natural characteristics, these inequalities will single out relevant positions. Since these characteristics cannot be changed, the position they define count as starting places in the basic structure. Distinctions based on gender are of this type, and so are those depending upon race and culture. Thus is, say, humans are favoured in the assignment of basic rights, this inequality is justified by the difference principle (in the general interpretation) only if it is to the advantage of women and acceptable from their standpoint. And the analogous condition applies to the justification of caste systems, or racial and ethic inequalities. #RandolphHarris 7 of 26
Such inequalities multiply relevant positions and complicate the application of the two principles. On the other hand, these inequalities are seldom, if ever, to the advantage of the less favoured, and therefore in a just society the smaller number of relevant positions should be ordinarily suffice. Now it is essential that the judgments made from the perspective of the relevant positions override the claims that we are prone to make in more particular situations. If we think of ourselves in terms of our more specific positions, not everyone always benefits by what the two principle require. And unless the viewpoint of the relevant position has priority, one still has a chaos of competing claims. Thus the two principles express, in effect, an understanding to order our interests by giving certain of them a special weight. For example, persons engaged in a particular industry often find that free trade is contrary to their interests. Perhaps the industry cannot remain prosperous without tariffs or other restrictions. However, if free trade is desirable from the point of view of equal citizens or of the least advantaged, it is justified even though more specific interests suffer. For we are to agree in advance to the principles of justice and their consistent application from the standpoint of certain positions. #RandolphHarris 8 of 26
There is no way to guarantee the protection of everyone’s interests over each period of time once the situation of representative humans is defined more narrowly. Having acknowledged certain principles and a certain way of applying them, we are bound to accept the consequences. This does not mean, of course, that the rigors of free trade should be allowed to go unchecked. However, the arrangements for softening them are to be considered from an appropriately general perspective. The relevant social positions specify, then, the general point of view from which the two principles of justice are to be applied to the basic structure. In this way everyone’s interests are taken into account, for each person is an equal citizen and all have a place in the distribution of income and wealth or in the range of fixed natural characteristics upon which distinctions are based. Some selections of relevant positions is necessary for a coherent theory of social justice and the ones chosen should accord with its first principles. By selecting the so-called starting places one follows out the idea of mitigating the effects of natural accident and social circumstance. No one is o benefit from these contingencies except in ways that redound to the well-being of others. #RandolphHarris 9 of 26
The very first character trait that should flow out of experiencing God’s grace is gratitude to Him. Everything we are and everything we do that is of any value, we owe to the grace of God. This, of course begins with our salvation. The longer I live the Christian life, the more grateful I am for the salvation God gave to me when I was an eighteen-year-old college student. Years ago I memorized Mark 8.36-37: “For what shall it profit a human, if one shall gain the whole World, and lose one’s own soul? Or what shall a human give in exchange for one’s soul?” Initially, I memorized that passage to take the gospel offer seriously. However, in recent years I have begun t mediate on those verses for my own benefit to help me realize what an infinitely priceless gift I have received in God’s gracious gift of eternal life. As I think of the message of those verses, I visualize a balance scale with all the treasures of the entire World on one tray and eternal life on the other tray. The two rays are not balanced. Rather the scale is bottomed out on the side of eternal life. In the gift of eternal life, God has given us greater treasure than all the accumulated wealthy of the whole World. Are we sufficiently grateful for this priceless gift? Do we take time to actually give thanks to God for the gift that cost Him so much? #RandolphHarris 10 of 26
Are we as grateful today as we were the day we initially experienced the forgiveness of our sins and peace with God? If we are truly living by the transforming grace of God in our daily lives, gratitude for God’s gif of eternal life through Jesus Christ will be a growing experience. We should have a greater sense of gratitude, and be more desirous of expressing that attitude to God, today than the day we were brought out of the kingdom of sin into the Kingdom of grace. God has, of course, given us so much else in Christ. Have we grown in the Christian life so that we are a bit more mature today than we were a year ago? Are we perhaps more loving and gentler today than we were a year ago? If so, where did this growth come from? It did not come from ourselves, because as Paul said, “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature,” reports Romans 7.18. There are only two moral forces within us: our sinful nature and the Holy Spirit empowering our new nature. If we are more Christlike today than a year ago, it is because of the work of the Holy Spirit within us, and this is by the grace of God. Certainly, we must clothe ourselves with Christlike virtues, but these same virtues are also called the fruit of the Spirit—that is, the result of His work in us. #RandolphHarris 11 of 26
One great paradox of the Christian life is that we are fully responsible for our Christian growth and at the same tie fully dependent upon the Holy Spirit to give us both the desire to grow and the ability to do it. God’s grace does not negate the need for responsible action on our part, but rather makes it possible. What about ministry? Have we accomplished some specific work for God? As we have already seen, we must admit to God, “All that we have accomplished you have done for us,” reports Isaiah 26.12. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, we are or we have done that is worthwhile, that is not the result of God’s Spirit working in us and through us. I fear that often we Christians begin to think our spiritual growth and “success” in ministry is due, at least in large measures, to our own goodness and hard work. The irony is, the more committed and diligent we are, the more susceptible we are to that temptation. We face the same temptation in a spiritual sense that Israel faced in a material way when God warned them they would be prone to say, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me,” reports Deuteronomy 8.17. Let us go on to the temporal blessings of life. Are we comfortably situated in a nice home with plenty of food in the cupboard and the refrigerator? #RandolphHarris 12 of 26
Do we enjoy a reasonable degree of health? Do we have our own personal copy of the Bible (aside from the half dozen or so different translations some of us have)? Are we able to gather with other believers for worship and study of the Scriptures without fear of religious persecution? All of these blessings come to us by God’s grace, and all of them are occasions for gratitude and giving thanks to Him. It is interesting that some people use the expression “saying grace,” for the prayer of thanksgiving at meal time. I have no idea of that expression’s origin, but I suspect it was born out of a recognition that the food on the table was not only from God, but that it was there by His grace. We actually ought to “say grace” continually throughout the day for the temporal and spiritual blessings that come our way so abundantly. I know many of us are going through some difficult times, and it is tough to have a grateful spirit. However, if we stop and consider, we will recognize that we are still recipients every day of the amazing grace of God. If we are truly growing in grace, gratitude—and its expression in actually giving thanks to God—will be an ever-growing characteristic in our lives. Many adult learners have a deep sense of insecurity about their own mental abilities. #RandolphHarris 13 of 26
Defensiveness and a false sense of pride can arise to protect one from feeling embarrassed about not knowing something. Intellectual embarrassment is one of the worst forms of humiliation—no one wants to come off as stupid or uninformed. I think our adult Sunday school classes have unintentionally contributed to this false sense of pride. I have spoken in hundreds of churches and have regularly observed Sunday school classes which divine into small groups to reflect on a passage or discuss an idea. Later, when the groups recombine to share their observations with the entire class, group feedback is almost always affirming no matter how inaccurate or poorly reasoned the point is. Over the years, this creates a feeling of safety in the class but at the price of generating both a false sense of pride and the mistaken notion that all opinions are equal, whether spontaneous and quickly conceived or the result of detailed study prior to class time. It also keeps adults from learning how to receive criticism for their ideas in the interest of truth and stifles growth in the ability to respond nondefensively. If we do not work on this in the safety of the company of our own brothers and sisters, we will come off as small, reactionary, and inarticulate in the public square. #RandolphHarris 14 of 26
We need to give one another permission to express inadequately thought-out points to each other and create the expectation that we can learn to argue with one another, critique and defend ideas, or leave class with more work to do on a subject. All of this is in the interest of learning to reason carefully to get to the truth of what we study together. This may be a bit threatening at first, but over the long haul it will produce a church filled with people who are more secure about what they believe and why. The very forms that define our periods of study together often institutionalize false pride and a lack of intellectual growth. There is absolutely nothing wrong with admitting you do not know something or that you are currently inadequately equipped to think a topic through. What is unacceptable, however, is running from this fact and thereby giving up on intellectual and spiritual growth in the interest of avoiding embarrassment or possible rejection. We all need help in this area, and we should care enough about truth and reason to give that help. Even if we agree with one another’s conclusions, we need to dedicate ourselves for Christ’s sake to refusing to allow each other to reach those conclusions with poor argumentation and sloppy treatment of data. #RandolphHarris 15 of 26
Another form of inferiority comes from the simple fact that we are evangelicals. For some time now, our culture had told us that conservative Christians are intellectually inferior, that the Christian faith is irrational, and so forth. And we constantly watch our view caricatured as the news media, hostile university professors, and others regularly build straw humans out of Christians positions and proceed to destroy those straw humans. When a community is repeatedly told that it is ignorant, it will come to believe that message whether or not it is true. Asking them to leave: What should we do about this problem? I think we need to work harder at holding forth and celebrating our past and contemporary Christian thinkers. We need to know who they are. Do you know who the top Christian intellectuals are today in various fields? Are these people and their work placed before our children as examples to be emulated? We do this for Christian sports heroes, missionaries, and public speakers, so why not do it for our intellectuals? The effect of identifying and celebrating our Christian intellectuals before one another cannot be overestimated. Even though the early church was a minority movement that faced intellectual and cultural ridicule and marginalization, it maintained internal cohesion and a courageous witness thanks in no small measure to the powerful role in the broader Christian community of Christian intellectuals and apologist. #RandolphHarris 16 of 26
The early church knew who her intellectuals and apologists were, and this gave them confidence and a feeling of strength. In the same way, we must identify, celebrate, utilize, and make role models out of our Christian thinkers. And we need to celebrate the absolutely unequaled history of the intellectual life in the Christian church. If an alternative community of atheists, or anything else can rival the rich culture and intellectual leadership in church history, let someone come forth and demonstrate it. The intellectual life is our heritage as Christians, and it is time to remind ourselves of this. However, if one becomes so dependent that every problem as it arises is at once put before the teacher for solution, the consequence will eventually be an utter helplessness before all problems. The capacities for independent judgment, for taking the initiative, for showing creativeness and forming decisions, will decay and even disappear. Becoming a satellite and revolving around a guru may be beneficial to a human. However, when this revolution become a permanent one, the harm beings, and one will never again be able to move into a fresh orbit and fulfill the evolutionary intention secreted within one’s own being. It is absolutely indispensable for the disciples to learn how to live their own lives. #RandolphHarris 17 of 26
The guide must not only be competent to do what one proposes to do, but the disciple also must be qualified to take advantage of it. Rare is the true disciple. It is better to have a few earnest students who willingly work hard for their self-improvement than a mass of students who do nothing more than read books and talk amongst themselves. The kind of student one likes to see, but unfortunately rarely does see, blends a fine moral character with good intelligence and sound practicality, all topped by profound mystical intuition and a proper sense of reverence. Such a one is thoroughly dependable and reliable, one’s words are not mere froth of emotion to be quickly forgotten. When a seeker’s determination to follow the quest become tough enough not to be deviated by adversity or by luxury, one is ready for a teacher. “And it came to pass that when the sixty and second year of the reign of the judges had ended, all these things had happened and the Lamanites had become, the more part of them, a righteous people, insomuch that their righteousness did exceed that of the Nephites, because of their firmness and their steadiness in the faith. For behold, there were many of the Nephites who had become hardened and impenitent and grossly wicked, insomuch that they did reject the word of God and all the preaching and prophesying which did come among them. #RandolphHarris 18 of 26
“Nevertheless, the people of the church did have great joy because of the conversation of the Lamanites, yea, because of the church of God, which had been established among them. And they did fellowship one with another, and did rejoice one with another, and did have great joy. And it came to pass that many of the Lamanites did come down into the land of Zarahemla, and did declare unto the people f the Nephites the manner of their conversation, and did exhort them to faith and repentance. Yea, and many did preach with exceedingly great power and authority, unto the brining down many of them into the depths of humility, to be the humble followers of Go and the Lamb. And it came to pass that many of the Lamanites did go into the land northward; and also Nephi and Lehi went into the land northward, to preach unto the people. And thus ended the sixty and third year. And behold, there was peace in all the land, insomuch that the Nephites did go into whatsoever part of the land they would, whether among the Nephites or the Lamanites. And it came to pas that the Lamanites did also go whithersoever they would, whether it were among the Lamanites or among the Nephites; and thus they did have free intercourse one with another, to buy and sell, and to get gain according to their desire. #RandolphHarris 19 of 26
“And it came to pass that they became exceedingly rich, both the Lamanites and the Nephites; and they did have an exceedingly plenty of gold, and of silver, and of all manner of precious metals, both in the land south and in the land north. Now the land south was called Lehi, and the land north was called Mulek, which was after the son of Zedekiah; for the Lord did bring Mulek into the land north, and Lehi into the land south. And behold, there was all manner of gold in both these lands, and of silver, and of precious ore of every kind; and there were also curious workmen, who did work all kinds f ore and did refine it; and thus they did become rich. They did raise grain in abundance, both in the north and in the south; and they did flourish exceedingly, both in the north and in the south. And they did multiply and wax exceedingly strong in the land. And they did raise many flocks and herds, yea, many fatlings. Behold their women did toil and spin, and did make all manner of cloth, of fine-twined linen and cloth of every kind, to clothe their nakedness. And thus the sixty and fourth year did pass away in peace. And in the sixty and fifth year they did also have great joy and peace, yea, much preaching and many prophecies concerning that which was to come. And thus passed away the sixty and fifth year. #RandolphHarris 20 of 26
“And it came to pass that in the sixty and sixth year of the reign of the judges, behold, Cezoram was murdered by an unknown hand as he sat upon the judgment-sea. And it came to pass that in the same year, that his son, who had been appointed by the people in his stead, was also murdered. And thus ended the sixty and sixth year. And in the commencement of the sixty and seventh years the people began to grow exceedingly wicked again. For behold, the Lord had blessed them so long with the riches of the World that they had not been stirred up to anger, to wars, nor to bloodshed; therefore they began to set their hearts upon their riches; yea, they began to seek to get gain that they might be lifted up one above another; therefore they began to commit secret murders, and to rob and to plunder, that they might get gain. And now behold, those murderers and plunderers were a band who had been formed by Kishkumen and Gadianton. And now it had come to pass that there were many even among the Nephites, of Gadianton’s band. However, behold, they were more numerous among the more wicked part of the Lamanites. And they were called Gadianton’s robbers and murderers. And it was they who did murder the chief judge Cezoram, and his son, while in the judgment-seat; and behold, they were not found. #RandolphHarris 21 of 26
“And now it came to pass that when the Lamanites found that there were robbers among them they were exceedingly sorrowful; and they did use every means in their power to destroy them off the face of the Earth. However, behold, Satan did stir up the hearts of the more part of the Nephites, insomuch that they did unite with those bands of robbers, and did enter into their covenants and their oaths, that they would protect and preserve one another in whatsoever difficult circumstances they should be places, that they should not suffer for their murders, and their plunderings, and their stealings. And it came to pass that they did have their signs, yea, their secret signs, and their secret words; and this that they might distinguish a brother who had entered int the covenant, that whatsoever wickedness his brother should do he should not be injured by his brother, nor by those who did belong to his band, who had taken this covenant. And thus they might murder, and plunder, and steal, and commit whoredoms and all manner of wickedness, contrary to the laws of their country and also the laws of their God. And whosoever of those who belonged to their band should reveal unto the World of their wickedness and their abominations, should be tried, not according to the laws of their country, but according to the laws of their wickedness, which had been given by Gadiation and Kishkumen. #RandolphHarris 22 of 26
“Now behold, it is these secret oaths and covenants which Alma commanded his son should not go forth unto the World, least they should be a means of bringing down the people unto destruction. Now behold, those secret oaths and covenants did not come forth unto Gadiaton from the records which were delivered unto Helaman; but behold, they were put into the heart of Gadianton by that same being who did entice our first parents to partake of the forbidden fruit—yea, that same being who did plot with Cain, that if he would murder his brother Abel it should not be known unto the World. And he did plot with Cain and his followers from that time forth. And also it is that same being who put it into the hearts of the people to build a tower sufficiently high that they might get to Heaven. And it was that same being who led on the people who came from that tower into this land; who spread the works of darkness and abominations over all the face of the land, until he dragged the people down to an entire destruction, and to an everlasting hell. Yea, it is that same being who put it into the heart of Gadianton to still carry on the work of darkness, and of secret murder; and he has brought it forth from the beginning of humans even down to this time. #RandolphHarris 23 of 26
“And behold, it is he who is the author of all sin. And behold, he doth carry on his works of darkness and secret murder, and doth hand down their plots, and their oath, and their covenants, and their plans of awful wickedness, from generation to generation according as he can get hold upon the hearts of the children of humans. And now behold, he had got great hold upon the hearts of the Nephites; yea, insomuch that they had become exceedingly wicked; yea, the more part of them had turned out of the way of righteousness, and did trample under their feet the commandments of God, and did turn unto their own ways, and did build up unto themselves idols of their gold and their silver. And it came to pass that all these iniquities did come unto them in the space of not many years, insomuch that a more part of it had come unto them in the sixty and seventh year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And they did grow in their iniquities in the sixty and eight year also, to the great sorrow and lamentation of the righteous. And thus we see that the Nephites did begin to dwindle in unbelief, and grow in wickedness and abominations, while the Lamanites began to grow exceedingly in the knowledge of their God; yea, they did begin to keep his statutes and commandments, and to walk in truth and uprightness before him. #RandolphHarris 24 of 26
“And thus we see that the Spirit of the Lord began to withdraw from the Nephites, because of the wickedness and the hardness of their hearts. And thus we see that the Lord began to pour out his Spirit upon the Lamanites, because of their easiness and willingness to believe in his words. And it came to pass that the Lamanites did hunt the band of robbers of Gadianton; and they did preach the word of God among the more wicked part of them, insomuch that this band of robbers was utterly destroyed from among the Lamanites. And it came to pass on the other hand, that the Nephites did build them up and support them, beginning at the more wicked part of them, until they had overspread all the land of the Nephites, and had seduced the more part of the righteous until they had come down to believe in their works and partake of their spoils, and to join with them in their secret murders and combinations. And thus they did obtain the sole management of the government, insomuch that they did trample under their feet and smite and rend and turn their backs upon the poor and the meek, and the humble followers of God. And thus we see that they were in an awful state, and ripening for everlasting destruction. And it came to pass that thus ended the sixty and eighty year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi,” reports Helaman 6.1-41. #RandolphHarris 25 of 26
Almighty God and Jesus Christ, over the deeply sounding sea please carry me safely. Part the mists and guide me through. End the chaos, mighty Lord. Protect y people with sword upraised by at my side. All seeing God, may I be just. Lord, father, friend, please keep my feet clearly on the path of the right. King of Heaven, bless my home. Lord, endow me with wisdom. We thank Thee also for the miraculous and mighty deeds of liberation wrought by Thee, and for Thy victories in the battles our forefathers fought in days of old, at this season of the year. In the days f the High Priest Mattathias, son of Johanan, of the Hasmonean family, a tyrannical power rose up against Thy people of Israel to compel them to forsake Thy Torah, and to force them to transgress Thy commandments. In Thine abundant mercy Thou didst stand by them in time of distress. Thou didst rise to their defense and didst vindicate their cause. Thou didst bring retribution upon the evil doers, delivering the strong into the hands of the weak the many into the hands of the few, the wicked into the hands of the just, and the arrogant into the hands of those devoted to Thy Torah. Thou didst thus make Thy greatness and holiness known in Thy World, and didst bring great deliverance to Israel. Then Thy children came into Thy dwelling place, cleansed the Temple, purified the Sanctuary, kindled lights in Thy sacred courts, and they designated these eight days of Hanukkah for giving thanks and praise unto Thy great name. #RandolphHarris 26 of 26
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It is Not Unusual for the Inventive Genius to Claim the Voice of God as the Only Authority!
No one on Earth is more ingenious than an addict out to score. Protestant fundamentalists built a kindergarten-through-college network of Christian schools whose graduates would become warriors in the army of the religious right. Even as students were attacking the authority of secular universities, fundamentalist proselytizers were brining millions of other young people into their fold. Parents do not want their families and children and homes and businesses being destroyed by the demonic decade. The scripts goes something like this: Once upon a time, there was both order and freedom in American cultural life, especially in the universities that served as citadels of learning and beacons to the rest of society. Yes, a few professors were thought to be unpatriotic, but anyone who saw something wrong with American society was acting like a baby. The veterans who took advantage of the GI Bill were profoundly grateful for the chance to go to college because a diploma was their passport to a white-collar job, and their children regarded higher education as a birthright and assumed that jobs would be there when they were ready to take on adult responsibilities. For the most part, students and professors pursed truth with little interference from the Worlds of gross commercialism and gross politics. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
Think Periclean Athens, the University of Heidelberg in the nineteenth century, Oxford and Cambridge before the Great War, and that is the higher learning Americans enjoyed—except in much larger numbers than had ever been the case in human history. Then the barbarians stormed the gates—no, the barbarians were already inside the gates. Instead of studying for their exams and listening to their teachers, students began to fancy themselves liberators of Americans. Much of the great tradition was still ere, but then decay or collapse started to set in. In the guise of students, an alien cultural started to attack. They were on the warpath against all forms of authority, including the educational authority of the universities and the pieties of middlebrow culture. The American university that was a glorious center of higher learning, was now spewing out nonsense about how awful McMansions where, what an atrocious symbol Germans automobile were, and how middle managers were glorified baby sitters and how they rich deserve nothing. The sentimental falsehoods in public and private institutions poisoned the core curriculum and infected the minds of vulnerable youth for it told them that no matter how hard they work, they should feel guilty about success, and that they do not deserve what they earn. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
All the anti-intellectuals were doing was filling Americans with shame so they could strip away the American Dream. And then the flags were removed from the class rooms, students were no longer allowed to pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. The pinkos wanted to replace McMansions with high rise apartment buildings with paper thin walls so they could monitor you. They wanted to popularize Korean cars instead of Germany luxury automobiles, and instead of people reading books and studying to become doctors, lawyers, nurses, and engineers, they would watch countless hours of TV and become experts on celebrity popular culture. However, many Americans believed that university presidents and college chancellors were captains of erudition. Veterans were thankful that the GI Bill made is possible for millions of working-class people who served their country to become the first members of their families to attend college. Even women attended college and earned a bachelor’s degree to become educated, well-rounded mothers so they would be better equipped to educate their children. So, the Ivy Tower on the Hill—the place where committed scholars search for truth in a World that desperately needs help is one of the best institutions in the World, no matter what critics say. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
A college education is the best aspect of the civil rights movement in the World. It allows our youth to learn and use their minds, to obtain job so they do not have to sit around being poor and bitter. It is still possible to get a first-rate education in any number of American colleges. Some institutions have more rigorous requirements than others, and, in any event, it is always possible for self-selected lovers of learning to learn. High culture can never be obliterated as long as the species continues to produce extraordinary individuals with the inclination and fortitude to pursue their interests and talents against the grain and the mass culture surrounding them. However, because of the erosion of core studies, it is now possible at many institutions of so-called higher learning for students to receive a degree in psychology without having taken mid-level biology courses; for a cultural studies major to graduate without reading the basic texts of American history, Economic, or studying the Enlightenment; and for business majors to graduate without having studied any literature after one’s freshman year. And all of these college graduates, should they choose to become teachers at any level of the educational system, will pass on their narrowness and ignorance to the next generation. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
During the past ten years, many institutions have moved to restore a stronger core curriculum (as they also did in the late seventies), but this grudging, formulaic trend is higher education’s equivalent of the frantic emphasis on standardized testing in elementary and secondary schools: it as everything to do with politics—both academic politic and, in the case of public universities, the politics of getting financial support from state legislatures. When university officials start talking about a return to “the basics,” it is a sure bet that some prominent state legislator or governor or President Trump has zeroed in on the academic shortcoming of State U. and that no one is referring to the unquantifiable and more genuine learning whose importance within a society cannot be measured by test scores and can only be mourned in its absence. The Whole World is Watching, and that is true. Parents want their kids to think of college as a safe and accepting place, where people who have been sheltered from crime and chaos can go and see the trees, drink mochas and lattes, espresso and cappuccinos with the other kids, eat cobb salads and avocado toast, filet mignon and foie gras, read Shakespeare, invest in a McMansion with roommates as a form of student housing, and once in the spring the boys can go to a dance with the girls. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
This image of peaceful, privileged youth is what the intellectuals who are presumably running the colleges want—and they want to run the goodly, so parents can be happy about writing tuition checks. They want to being back clubs like the Campus Crusade, which is a powerful Christian right-wing youth movement that is really popular in the Bible Belt. Evangelists are trying to save the nation by appealing to young men and women, many who are disillusioned with drugs and the revolution involving pleasures of the flesh, by providing students with a way to remake their lives. These groups even enhance their appeal by their deliberate adoption and adaption of popular fashion trends and language, minus obscenities and showing too much skin, for the purpose of preaching old-time religion. They even have fashionable hairstyles and look just like other college students. Some organizations have names like the Christian World Liberation Front and the Jesus Christ Light and Power Company and open shelters for young people who are burnt out from Worldly ways, which may not even be their fault because they do not know better or just got caught up. Whatever the case, accepting God has been proven to help depression and can put youth in contact with important members of the community who may offer them careers or internships upon graduation. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
Conservatives want people to celebrate the old American Dream of love and education and Jesus Christ as our Saviour. One might even say that it is a revival and reformation of the Christian American Dream, which is embedded in everyday life society and still manages to dominate attitudes and even behavior within certain limited spheres. Christianity is a ritual of purification and cleansing, a celebration of the capacity of feeling to triumph over Worldly patterns. And it is important that human feelings should occasionally win—as important as occasional epiphanies and miracles are for religion. In our society this issue is a matter of life and death (of society, if not the individual). I also have come to a better understand of what people are saying about injustice in society. They want more funding for adequate programs like education, legal assistance, public defenders, child care, and government investigators who actually will help them because that will prevent people from being arrested. As it stands, these government agencies do not have the ability or skill, time or desire to help people. Then problems fester until it becomes a police matter and people are arrested. At that point, prosecutors will spend countless hours and millions of dollars to prosecute individuals even for minor crimes that would have been avoided if the resources were provided to help these people with ongoing problems. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
As it stands, the media likes to play it off like there is some major mental health crisis in America, but the fact is that no one helps people when they are facing problems. Now, there may be a mental health issue with some of these people in the news media, politicians, and some people running businesses. However, when people are doing wrong to individuals, even if it is a problem that there is clear cut discrimination, harassment or some kind of other crime a person is a victim of, it is ignored and that is why people end up in police custody. The government is not willing to put ethical people in place to help them and maybe spend $10,000.00 on an investigation, but they are willing to spend millions of dollars prosecuting a person. So these people are not saying defend the police, they are saying there are ways to use resources that will save money and keep these matters from becoming police problems. As it stands, society is abusing the police because all of these problems, and many of them are really petty, get kicked over to law enforcement and then law enforcement is expected to be a lawyer, psychologist doctor or guardian when that is not even their job because other government agencies are not handling their mandated responsibilities. RandolphHarris 8 of 24
The youth assume that their elders are attempting to deceive them with this talk of proper channels—that is deliberate obstruction, since the elders know that “proper channels” are designed to negate rather than to facilitate change. Their reactions are then a horror of social uproar that many people cannot comprehend because they have never experienced what these people are going through. The elders’ notion that radical leaders are “just trying to get their names in the papers” has been replaced by calling the people liars and saying they are crazy. Parents believe that is it their responsibility to make their child into the most all-around perfect adult possible, which means paying a great deal of attention to their inner states and latent characteristics. The child no longer has a private sphere, but one’s entire being is involved with parental aspirations, and it really hurts when you invest so much love, time, money, and energy into a being for society to rip that individual apart, while people sit back watching and laughing. Our children do not even take their own personalities for granted, and it really hurts them to have their dreams crushed by racism and injustice. Parents believe they are required not just to put in the time but to make their children motivated. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
However, some parents are willing to throw their children to the dogs for something so trivial as etiquette and it makes a deep impression. So, yeah, some of these problems are not just with government institutions, but within the house. Some children are too young to know their parents do not wish them well and want to see them fail. Since these children cannot see anything so important as to justify this betrayal, all social situations seem to have a dishonest quality. However, parents who are good Christians, absorbed with the goal of molding their child’s total character, are much less inclined to sacrifice the child to the etiquette concerns of strangers. The artist working on one’s masterpiece does not let guests use it to wipe their feet on. As a result, their children have grown up to feel that human needs have some validity of their own, ad their careful socialization to upper-middle-class values has well prepared them to accept the responsibility of becoming a gainfully employed, good citizen. Because of the parents know that there is a deep need for economic and status security, they want their children to face reality (by which they mean social reality). “My money is not your money. I am paying all the major bills and providing you with a place to stay, nice clothes, hot meals, and even an Ultimate Driving Machine. Because of this, life seems easy, but it is not.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
This unique power that parents have—to give their children attributes they do not themselves possess—is perhaps the unconscious determinant of an otherwise incomprehensible theme that appears so often in fairy tales: that of the impoverished old parent or helper who gives the hero magic gifts that could have made the giver oneself wealthy and powerful but apparently did not. However, upper-middle-class Americans parents relate to their children in a somewhat vampiresque way. They feed on the child’s accomplishments, sucking sustenance for their pale lives from vicarious enjoyment of one’s development. In a sense this sucking is appropriate since the parents give so much—lavish so much care, love, thoughtfulness, and self-sacrifice on their blook bank. However, this is little comfort for the child, who at some point must rise above one’s guilt and live one’s own life—the culture demands it of one. And after all, a vampire is a vampire. Basically, parents want their children to become mannikins which their fathers can display his influence to his friends. The crosses many youth wear around their necks are actually necessary to ward off the elders, whose vampiresque involvement who has been insufficiently exorcized. It is not that they are offended by the elders, but their hope is to magically neutralize their symbiotic relationship. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
Many youths are asked to take note of their hostile reaction towards older adults in the society, because it is bad to consider any one as being “unnecessary” and their rude reactions are in “bad taste.” One day, we will all be elders and will want our due respect. No one likes to admit that they have spent their lives in a foolish, evil, or crazy manner. That is why God tells us to humble ourselves and respect our elders. Furthermore, youth do not realize that elders are taught to lie about their feelings. They are not likely to say: “You frighten and depress us. We are afraid we have spent our lives on nurturing an ungrateful family, who brutalizes their neighbours, purses useless electronic devices and creates a joyless environment. It always seemed that right thing to do, to try to raise up a family in the way of the Lord, with Christian values, but now we are a little unsure, and if we had known how you would behave so wretchedly, we would have bought a smaller home and took more vacations instead of having children.” Instead, they suppress their doubts and fears about themselves by refusing to perceive the meaning of the stimulus. When their children cry for peace of social justice they says, “Do not talk dirty,” or “Go read the ‘Good Book.’” This is a way of saying, “There is nothing important or disturbing going on here—this is just my child who is mischievous or careless at times—it is just a family affair.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
It is a desperate attempt for them to enjoy their lives and want you to enjoy the fact that you are privileged enough to not have to endure injustice and hearing about it makes them feel like failures. They view the World as unchanging—to convert the deep social unrest of the day into the blank torpor of lace curtain suburban life. This philosophy also speaks to a much larger social phenomenon. How, for example, can matters so intrinsically important, such as politics, government positions, new broadcasting be trusted to be handled by people who present themselves as not the most sane, unstable, and ineffective members of our society? The answer is two incompatible processes are taking place at once: politicians are supposed to be philanthropists, they are not supposed to be getting paid to help society, while pretending that the people do not exist. It has become a self-serving job, where many people become wealthy, while citizens and corporation feel it is taxation without representation, and not providing for the general welfare of the people. Assuming the framework of institutions required by equal liberty and fair equality of opportunity, the higher expectations of those better situated are just if and only if they work as part of a scheme which improves the expectations of the least advantaged members of society. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
The intuitive idea is that the social order is not to establish and secure the more attractive prospects of those better off unless doing so is to the advantage of those less fortunate. A strongly egalitarian conception in the sense of distribution is that unless it makes both persons better off (limiting ourselves to the two-person case for simplicity), an equal distribution is to be preferred. Also, nothing is lost if an accurate interpersonal comparison of benefits is impossible. It suffices that the least favoured person can be identified and one’s rational preference determined. Also, if each person gains relative to the other, further benefits to one become less valuable from a social point of view. If art helps us to define the absolute, so madness brings us to a closer understanding of the relative. For whereas we sometimes can accept the aesthetic, the immediacy of the work of art, we fight acceptance of the products of the deluded and call it madness. We say no to the possessions, the compulsions, the hallucinations. We deny their uniqueness, their absoluteness and immediacy, and place them in relation to something that can be accepted. We say these are the products of diseased minds, of sick brains and glands, of distorting heat waves, of propaganda and suggestion, or drugs and poisons, of the experience of frustration, conflict, and trauma. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
For these other categories are acceptable. The unacceptable is thus related to the sick organism, to the false culture, to the disproportionate environment: we feel safe once again. And we may be at that, sometimes. For in the relational dimension there is mobility, change, and the chance to choose. One is not captivated entirely; one can compare, discriminate, and select. It is possible to move from or toward, increase or decrease one over the other. Then there is the chance to get out of trouble or into still more. There is freedom to the n—1 absolutes available within the perspective allowed. One has gone from the principle of pleasure to the principle of reality; but when no choice continuum is offered, when there are no degrees of freedom, then one is frustrated in that dimension. We may try to fight as long as there is some dimly sensed hope, but when that too disappears that dimension is dead for us and we are left just a little less alive. Of course for one who is “adjusted” to one’s madness, who accepts one’s mission, who no longer questions one’s lost, the same epiphanous structure of experience is evident as in the case of the experience called aesthetic. There is no need to distinguish between abnormality in the absolute dimension of experience. The mad person like the priest accepts one’s calling. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
In fact it is not unusual for the inventive genius to claim the voice of God as the only authority. For the new absolute is not derivative, has no ultimate sanction beyond its being, its epiphany. Each individual, including the reader, must refer to one’s own insight for an ostensive definition. To some extent experience in madness and aesthetic experience differ only as a matter of taste. There is no difference that cannot be questioned. Each may be accepted for itself and that is the point. It is only in so far as we see that each leads to consequences of different value to us that any distinction between the two may be noticed. Madness too frequently is self-limiting, and as such defeats its protective function by ultimately removing or devaluating that which it would protect. The question which madness does not answer or answers but poorly is: “Madness, then what?” In fact any inability to answer the questions: “Then what?” is revealing of madness; to the degree that the answer evades this question, to that degree there is madness. That is the only test of the abnormal. The normal epiphany of experience is, like most science and art, open ended. Growth may still occur, selection take place, change be accepted with grace and interest. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
Life can expand in depth and scope, in richness of action and experience. The completion of one leads to the opening of the next, not to boredom, self-destruction, or fear. Theoretically, if the paths chosen were completely normal, there should be no termination to life. Even at present there is usually continuity of life on into the future somewhere of some species. And that life can be called normal, the healthy life. No, it is not in the absolute dimension that the difference between normal and abnormal lies. It is only in the relative dimension that such a consideration gains significance. Then why do we continue to make the mistake of judging the absolute as good and bad, healthy and diseased, normal and abnormal? I do not know entirely the probable answer to this but the fact is that we do confuse these and I would like to point to a few crucial areas where this confusion causes no end of needless suffering to those so misinformed. This includes all of us. Job and Joseph are examples of those who saw the hand of God in their circumstances. In one day the Sabeans stole Job’s oxen, and the Chaldeans carried off his camels and ended the lives of his servants. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
Lightning burned up his sheep, and a mighty wind struck the house of his oldest son, ending the lives of all his children. Later Job himself was afflicted with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. Job’s response at the loss of his children and his possessions was, “The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away,” reports Job 1.21. And with respect to his own afflictions he said, “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble,” reports Job 2.10. Quite apart from Job’s humble reaction toward God, we should note first that he ascribed his sufferings to the hand of God. We must learn to see beyond the actions of evil people and the disasters of nature to the sovereign God who controlled these events. And the inspired writer who recorded the trials of Job, at the close of his account, said, “They [his relatives and friends] comforted and consoled him [Job] over all the trouble the LORD had brought upon him,” reports Job 42.11. Even though the writer had himself reported the malicious activity of Satan in Job’s life at the beginning of the narrative, he still ultimately ascribed Job’s troubles to the Lord. Joseph, when he finally revealed his identity to his wicked brothers who had sold him into slavery, saw beyond their evil acts and said, “So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God,” reports Genesis 45.8. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
Joseph recognized that God in His sovereignty used even the heinous sins of his brothers to accomplish His purpose. So, you and I, if we are to appropriate God’s grace in our times of need, must see His sovereignty ultimately ruling in all the circumstances of our lives. And when those circumstances are difficult, or disappointing, or humiliating, we must humble ourselves under His mighty hand. Not only must we see God’s mighty hand behind our circumstances, we must also see it as the hand of the loving Father discipling His children. We lose a lot of comfort in times of trials because we tend to view them as evidences of God’s desertion of us rather than evidences of His Fatherly discipline and care. Endure all hardships—all of it—as God’s discipline. You may be sure that whatever hardship comes into your life from whatever immediate source, God is in sovereign control of it and is using it as an instrument of discipline in your life. Discipline is a proof of God’s love, “because the Lord disciplines those He loves,” Hebrews 12.6. This is not a word of warning, but a word of encouragement. The purpose of God’s discipline is that so we may share in His holiness, that we may be conformed in our character to His character. Discipline may be either corrective or remedial. It may be sent for the purpose of correcting some sinful attitude or action, or to remedy some lack of our character. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
In either case, discipline is administered by our Heavenly Father in love, not wrath. Jesus has already borne the wrath of God in our place, so all adversities that come to us, come because God loves us and designs to conform us to the likeness of His Son. God has thoughts of love in all He does to His people. The ground of His dealings is love, and the purpose of His dealings is love. He has regard, in all, to our good here, to make us partakers of His holiness, and to our glory hereafter, to make us partakers of His glory. From the Light of God that I am. From the Love of God that I am. From the Power of God that I am. From the Heart of God that I am. I decree—I dwell in the midst of Infinite Abundance. The Abundance of God is my Infinite Source. The River of Life never stops flowing and it flows through me with lavish expression. Good comes to me through unexpected avenues and God works in a myriad of ways to bless me. I now open my mind to receive my good. Nothing is too good to be true. Nothing is too wonderful to happen With God as my Source nothing amazes me. I am not burdened by thoughts of past or future. One is gone. The other is yet to come. By the power of my belief, couped with my purposeful fearless actions and my deep rapport with God, my future is created and my abundance made manifest. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
I ask and accept that I am lifted in this and every moment into Higher Truth. My mind is quiet. From this day forward I give freely and fearlessly into Life and Life gives back to me with a fabulous increase. Blessings come in expected and unexpected ways. God provides for me in wondrous ways for the work that I do. I AM indeed grateful. And so it is. Join me in a POWERFUL ABUNDANCE MASTERCLASS. Set your intentions for the goodness and abundance of all and you will indeed be blessed. “Behold, now it came to pass that soon after Moroni had sent his epistle unto the chief governor, he received an epistle from Pahoran the chief governor. And these are the words which he received: I, Pahoran, who am the chief governor of this land, do send these words unto Moroni, the chief captain over the army. Behold, I say unto you, Moroni, that I do not joy in your great afflictions, yea, insomuch that they have risen up in rebellion against me, and also those of my people who are free humans, yea, and those who have risen up are exceedingly numerous. And it is those who have sought to take away the judgment-seat from me that have been the cause of this great iniquity; for they have used great flattery, and they have led away the hearts of many people, which will be the cause of sore affliction among us; they have withheld our provisions, and have daunted our free people that they have not come unto you. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
“And behold, they have driven me out before them, and I have fled to the land of Gideon, with as many humans as it were possible that I could get. And behold, I have sent a proclamation throughout this part of the land; and behold, they are flocking to us daily, to their arms, in the defence of their country and their freedom, and to avenge our wrongs. And they have come unto us, insomuch that those who have risen up in rebellion against us are set at defiance, yea, insomuch that they do fear us and durst not come out against us to battle. They have got possession of the land, or the city, of Zarahemla; they have appointed a king over them, and he hath written unto the king of the Lamanites, in the which he hath joined them an alliance with him; in the which alliance he hath agreed to maintain the city of Zarahemla, which maintenance he supposeth will enable the Lamanites to conquer the remainder of the land, and he shall be placed king over this people when they shall be conquered under the Lamanites. And now, in your epistle you have censured me, but it mattereth not; I am not angry, but do rejoice in the greatness of your heart. I, Pahoran, do not seek for power, save only to retain my judgment-seat that I may preserve the rights and the liberty of my people. My soul standeth fast in that liberty in the which God hath made us free. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
“And now, behold, we will resist wickedness even unto bloodshed. If they would stay in their own land, we would not shed the blood of the Lamanites. If they would not rise up in rebellion and take the sword against us, we would not shed the blood of our brethren. If it were requisite with the justice of God, or if He should command us so to do, we would subject ourselves to the yoke of bondage. However, behold he doth not command us that we shall subject ourselves to our enemies, but that we should put our trust in Him, and He will deliver us. Therefore, my beloved brother, Moroni, let us resist evil, and whatsoever evil we cannot resist with our words, yea, such as rebellions and dissensions, let us resist them with our swords, that we may retain our freedom, that we may rejoice in the great privilege of our church, and in the cause of our Redeemer and our God. Therefore, come unto me speedily with a few of your men, and leave the remainder in the charge of Lehi and Teancum; give unto them power to conduct the war in that part of the land, according to the Spirit of God, which is also the spirit of freedom which is in them. Behold I have sent a few provisions unto them, that they may not perish until ye can come unto me. Gather together whatsoever force ye can upon your march hither, and we will go speedily against those dissenters, in the strength of our God according to the faith which is in us. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
“And we will take possession of the city of Zarahemla, that we may obtain more food to send forth unto Lehi and Teancum; yea, we will go forth against them in the strength of the Lord, and we will put an end to this great iniquity. And now, Moroni, I do joy in receiving your epistle, for I was somewhat worried concerning what we should do, whether it should be just in us to go against our brethren. However, ye have aid, except they repent the Lord hath commanded you that ye should go against them. See that ye strengthen Lehi and Teancum in the Lord; tell them to fear not, for God will deliver them, yea, and also all those who stand fast in that liberty wherewith God hath made them free. And now I close mine epistle to my beloved brother, Moroni,” reports Alma 61.1-21. Wheat for you, Father of Grain. Barley for you, Father of Grain. Corn for you, Father of Grain. I scatter them for you, Father of Grain: a tribute to your well-famed generosity. God, you are worthy of worship: please hear me. I remember you every moment of the day. I pray to the one whose arrows bring health, to God the beautiful one. From your lyre come tunes of harmonious enchantment, and I listen entrapped, sweet-singing God. We will look to all commandments of the Lord, and do them; Lord bless us that we not follow our own heart and own eyes, but fortify us in your will. We will be holy to the Lord our God. #Randolphharris 24 of 24
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I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Waiting for the Angel to Stir the Water, I Realized I am Almost a God the Creator—The World I See is My World!
The faces of the past are like leaves that settle to the ground, they may the Earth rich and thick, so that new fruit will come forth every Summer. Radio and television have contributed greatly to the demise of the art of conversation. Scientist have attempted to pin down the difference between the effects of radio and television and have not as yet been able to turn up any solid results. It seems to me that neither radio nor television is an agent of dialogue. They work indirectly. In both of them there is someone on the giving end and someone on the receiving end. There can be no contradictions, no back talk. When the radio or TV is turned on, conversation stops. Radio and TV can create the impression of conversation, but they cannot really make it come about. That, I think, is a privilege reserved for living human beings. The crucial issue is whether radio and television invite us, stimulate us, challenge us to converse or whether they are inimical to the conditions that make conversation possible. However, in that regard radio seems less harmful to me than television. Television encourages passivity, a comfortable consumer mentality, more than any other medium. It is the most successful means we have ever developed to help us “pass time.” However, real conversation demands time. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
If we pass our time and kill our time, conversation cannot flourish. Radio, if I am seeing things rig, does not exert so strong an attraction. It promotes and demands more alertness, more imagination. It could be, if it wanted to be, an inexhaustible source of material for conversation. It cannot offer conversation itself, but it can offer the stuff of conversation. It can point us toward other, more basic and direct means of communication, calling our attention, say, to the uniqueness and delight of face-to-face conversation. In many cases, when people turn on the radio, they are still free. However, when an individual turns on the TV and there is a program that interests them, they become addicted to them and do not want to move from in front of the screen. With the assistance of radio technology, one can listen to a conversation somewhat in the same way that they listen to someone else speaking on the telephone, and to be honest, it can be much better than the gibberish and chatter coming out of most people’s mouths because there is a topic that is meant to keep people interested. What we hear on the radio is not, of course, as personal as a telephone conversation, but we take both the telephone and radio in stride. We are not fascinated by them, and so I can truly say that we are free either to listen to the radio or not listen to it. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
My reaction to television is quite different. With television I lose a bit of my freedom. The minute the set is turned on and I see the picture on it, I experience what I would hesitate to call a compulsion but what is certainly a strong impulse or inclination to watch, even if I know intellectually that the program is utter drivel. I do not means to say that everything on television is drivel, some of it is very fascinating and highlights lifestyles we may be interested in, or inform of about myths we what to know about, some people even use television shows like a book club and discuss them so they forego sin by gossiping about real life people. People feel drawn to watch TV because it transports them to other realities they want to explore. Television holds a fascination far greater than that of radio. It exerts a kind of psychological spell that cannot be explained in terms of the content of any particular program. I have often asked myself what this fascination is, and I think it is rooted in some very profound level of our nature: By merely pressing a button, we can summon another World into our living rooms. That appeals to profound magical instincts. With television I become a kind of god. I can get rid of the reality I actually live with, and in its place I can create a new reality that appears when I press the button. #RandolpHarris 3 of 23
I am almost God the Creator. The World I see is my World. That reminds me of a story that not only illustrates this point vividly but also has the advantage of being true. A father and his six-year-old son were riding in the family car on a rainy, stormy day. They had a flat tire and had to stop to change it. Given the weather, that was a thoroughly unpleasant task, and the boy said to his father, “Daddy, can we not change to a different channel?” that is the way the child saw the World. If this one does not suit me, I will switch to another one. My wife recently read a novel by a Polish author and then told me a story, which I found utterly intriguing. The novel tells about the son of a very wealthy and eccentric man. The body grows up in his parental house but in total isolation. All he has available to him is a television set. He leaves it on all day, and he thinks that what he sees on it is reality (acute television intoxication). The young man never says a word, cannot say a word, because he knows nothing. All he can do is watch, because for him the World is nothing but a television show. However, precisely because he says nothing and because he eventually winds up in the house of one of the most powerful men in America, people think he must be terribly important. Pretty soon everyone knows his name, and in the end he is nominated for president because he never says anything and has not any opinions at all. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
This story illustrates just what I have been talking about. Reality and what we see in television have become one, and I think that this experience of being able to press a button and makes another World become a reality is—as you have said—a profound, atavistic experience and one that we find incredibly seductive. That is why television has no need, as it were, to offer anything “good.” Its appeal lies in the very nature of the medium. People are drawn to it the way they are to shooting star or to any other exciting spectacle—where they can remain spectators and are in no way prepared to take any action themselves. The flip side of this illusion of power (that can be had by pressing a button) is, then, total passivity. With radio, the possibility still remains that listening can be a kind of response, a predisposition to activity that should not be confused with merely waiting for enlightenment. Television has brought about drastic changes in our listening habits. Now that television has gotten people of the habit of attending to anything fully and closely, we can no longer assume that we have our listeners’ attention. Television has reduced radio to a more modest role. Indeed, radio hardly qualifies as a mass medium any more—a situation for which we should perhaps be grateful. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
Should not radio therefore be defining new tasks for itself that will take into account these differences we have been discussing here? I know that South German Radio has offered an extensive series of programs covering subjects ordinarily treated in university courses. The language has been somewhat simpler perhaps, but that is all to the good. (If instructors used simpler language to convey more content, it would be an improvement in our university courses.) This, it seems to me, is an admirable task for radio and one in which it can fill a significant educational role. It is remarkable with how little concentration people think, live, and work these days. Work is so fragmented and shattered that concentration is usually only mechanical and partial. We rarely encounter that full concentration that involves the whole person. A worker on an assembly line who has to tighten the same screw over and over again needs a certain kind of concentration is usually only mechanical and partial. We rarely encounter that full concentration that involves the whole person. A worker on an assembly line who has to tighten the same screw over and over again needs a certain kind of concentration to keep up one’s pace, but this type of concentration is capable of listening without one’s thoughts wandering off; one will not try to do five things at once because one cannot find any one thing that really satisfies one. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
And, of course, without concentration we cannot accomplish anything. Everything we do without concentration will have little value. If concentration is lacking, our activities will not provide us or anyone else with satisfaction. That holds true for all of us, not just for great artist or scientist. I now turn to the notion of reflective equilibrium. The need for this idea arises as follows. According to the provisional aim of mortal philosophy, one might says that justice as fairness is the hypothesis that the principles which would be chosen in the original position are identical with those that match our considered judgments and so these principles describe our sense of justice. However, this interpretation is clearly oversimplified. In describing our sense of justice an allowance must be made for the likelihood that considered judgments are no doubt subject to certain irregularities and distortions despite the fact that they are rendered under favourable circumstances. When a person is presented with an intuitively appealing account of one’s sense of justice (one, say, which embodies various reasonable and natural presumptions), one may well revise one’s judgments to conform to its principles even though the theory does not fit one’s existing judgments exactly. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
One is especially likely to do this if one can find an explanation for the deviations which undermines one’s confidence in one’s original judgments and if the conception presented yields a judgment which one finds one can now accept. From the standpoint of moral philosophy, the best account of a person’s sense of justice is not the one which fits one’s judgments prior to one’s examining any conception of justice, but rather the one which matches one’s judgments in reflective equilibrium. As we have seen, this state is one reached after a person has weighed various proposed conceptions and one has either revised one’s judgments to accord with one of them or held fast to one’s initial convictions (and the corresponding conception). The notion of reflective equilibrium introduces some complications that call for comment. For one thing, it is a notion characteristic of the study of principles which govern actions shaped by self-examination. Moral philosophy is Socratic: we may wan to change our present considered judgments once their regulative principles are brought to light. And we may want to do this even though these principles are a perfect fit. A knowledge of these principles may suggest further reflections that lead us to revise our judgments. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
This feature is not peculiar though to moral philosophy, or to the study of other philosophical principles such as those of induction and scientific method. For example, while we may not expect a substantial revision of our sense of correct grammar in view of a linguistic theory the principles of which seem especially natural to us, such as change is not inconceivable, and no doubt our sense of grammaticalness may be affected to some degree anyway by this knowledge. However, these is a contrast, say, with physics. To take an extreme case, if we have an accurate account of motions of the Heavenly bodies that we do not find appealing, we cannot alter these motions to conform to a more attractive theory. It is simply good fortune that the principles of celestial mechanics have their intellectual beauty. There are, however, several interpretations of reflective equilibrium. For the nation varies depending upon whether one is to be presented with only those descriptions which more or less match one’s existing judgments except for minor discrepancies, or whether one is to be presented with all possible descriptions to which one might plausibly conform one’s judgements together with all relevant philosophical arguments for them. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
In the first case we would be describing a person’s sense of justice more or less as it is although allowing for the smoothing out of certain irregularities; in the second case a person’s sense of justice may or may not undergo a radical shift. Clearly it is the second kind of reflective equilibrium that one is concerned with in moral philosophy. To be sure, it is doubtful where one can ever reach this state. For even if the idea of all possible descriptions and of all philosophically relevant arguments is well-defined (which is a questionable one), we cannot examine each of them. The most we can do is to study the conceptions of justice known to us through the tradition of moral philosophy and any further ones that occur to us, and then to consider these. This is pretty much what I shall do, since in presenting justice as fairness I shall compare its principles and arguments with a few other familiar views. In light of these remarks, justice as fairness can be understood as saying that the two principles previously mentioned would be chosen in the original position in preference to other traditional conceptions of justice, for example, those of utility and perfection; and that these principles give a better match with our considered judgments on reflection than these recognized alternatives. Thus justice as fairness moves us closer to the philosophical ideal; it does not, of course, achieve it. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
This explanation of reflective equilibrium suggests straightway a number of further questions. For example, does a reflective equilibrium (in the sense of the philosophical ideal) exist? If s, is it unique? Even if it is unique, can it be reached? Perhaps the judgments from which we begin, or the course of reflection itself (or both), affect the resting point, if any, that we eventually achieve. It would be useless, however, to speculate about these matters here. They are far beyond our reach. I shall not even ask whether the principles that characterize one person’s considered judgments are the same as those that characterize another’s. I shall take for granted that these principles are either approximately the same for persons whose judgments are in reflective equilibrium, or if not, that their judgments divide along a few lines represented by the family of traditional doctrines that I shall discuss. (Indeed, one person may find oneself torn between opposing conceptions at the same time.) If human’s conceptions of justice finally turn out to differ, the ways in which they do is a matter of first importance. Of course we cannot know how these conceptions vary, or even whether they do, until we have a better account of their structure. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
And this we now lack, even in the case of one human, or homogeneous group of humans. Here too there is likely to be a similarity with linguistics: if we can describe one person’s sense of grammar we shall surely know many things about the general structure of language. Similarly, if we should be able to characterize one (educated) person’s sense of justice, we would have a good beginning toward a theory of justice. We may suppose that everyone has in oneself the whole form of a moral conception. So for the purposes of this essay, the views of the reader and the author are the only ones that count. The opinions of others are useful only to clear our own heads. I wish to stress that a theory of justice is precisely that, namely, theory. It is a theory of the moral sentiments (to recall an eighteenth-century title) setting out the principles governing our moral powers, or, more specifically, our sense of justice. These is a definite if limited class of facts against which conjectured principles can be checked, namely, our considered judgments in reflective equilibrium. A theory of justice is subject to the same rules of method as other theories. Definitions and analyses of meaning do not have a special place: definition is but one device used in setting up the general structure of theory. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
Once the whole framework is worked out, definitions have no distinct status and stand or fall with the theory itself. In any case, it is obviously impossible to develop a substantive theory of justice founded solely on truths of logic and definition. The analysis of moral concepts and the a priori, however traditionally understood, is too slender a basis. Moral philosophy must be free to use contingent assumptions and general facts as it pleases. There is no other way to give an account of our considered judgments in reflective equilibrium. This is the conception of the subject adopted by most classical British writers through Sidgwick. I see no reason to depart from it. I believe that his view goes back in its essentials to Aristotle’s procedure in the Nicomachean Ethics. And Sidgwick thought of the history of moral philosophy as a series of attempts to state in full breadth and clearness those primary intuitions of Reason, by the scientific application of which the common moral thought of humankind may be at once systematized and corrected. He takes for granted that philosophical reflection will lead to revisions in our considered judgments, and although there are elements of epistemological intuitionism in his doctrine, these are not given much weight when unsupported by systematic considerations. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
Moreover, if we can find an accurate account of our moral conceptions, then questions of meaning and justification may prove much easier to answer. Indeed some of them may no longer be real questions at all. Note, for example, the extraordinary deepening of our understanding of the meaning and justification of statements in logical and mathematics made possible by developments since Frege and Cantor. A knowledge of the fundamental structures of logic ad set theory and their relation to mathematics has transformed the philosophy of these subjects in a way that conceptual analysis and linguistic investigations never could. One has only to observe the effect of the division of theories into those which are decidable and complete, undecidable yet complete, and neither complete no decidable. The problem of meaning and truth in logic and mathematics is profoundly altered by the discovery of logical systems illustrating these concepts. Once the substantive content of moral conceptions is better understood, a similar transformation may occur. It is possible that convincing answers to questions of the meaning of justification or moral judgments can be found in no other way. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
I wish, then, to stress the central place of the study of out substantive moral conceptions. However, the corollary to recognizing their complexity is accepting the fact that our present theories are primitive and have great defect. We need to be tolerant of simplifications if they reveal and approximate the general outlines of our judgments. Objections by way of counterexamples are to be made with care, since these may tell us only what we know already, namely that our theory is wrong somewhere. The important thing is to find out how often and how far it is wrong. All theories are presumably mistaken in places. The real question at any given time is which of the views already proposed is the best approximation overall. To ascertain this some grasp of the structure of rival theories is surely necessary. It is for this reason that I have tried to classify and to discuss conceptions of justice by reference to their basic intuitive ideas, since these disclose the main difference between them. In presenting justice as fairness I shall contrast it with utilitarianism. I do this for various reasons, partly as an expository device, partly because the several variants of the utilitarian view have long dominated our philosophical tradition and continue to do so. And this dominance has been maintained despite the persistent misgivings that utilitarianism so easily arouses. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
The explanation for this peculiar state of affairs lies, I believe, in the fact that no constructive alternative theory has been advanced which has the comparable virtues of clarity and system and which at the same time allays these doubts. Intuitionism is not constructive, perfectionism is unacceptable. My conjecture is that the contract doctrine properly worked out can fill this gap. I think justice as fairness an endeavor in this direction. Of course the contract theory as I shall present it is subject to the strictures that we have just noted. It is no exception to the primitiveness that marks existing moral theories. It is disheartening, for example, how little can now be said about priority rules; and while a lexical ordering may serve fairly well for some important cases, I assume that it will not be completely satisfactory. Nevertheless, we are free to use simplifying devices, and this I have often done. We should view a theory of justice as a guiding framework designed to focus our moral sensibilities and to put before our intuitive capacities more limited and manageable questions for judgment. The principles of justice identify certain considerations as morally relevant and the priority rules indicate the appropriate precedence when these conflict, while the conception of the original position defines the underlying idea which is to inform our deliberations. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
If the scheme as a whole seems on reflection to clarify and to order our thoughts, and if it tends t reduce disagreements and to bring divergent convictions more in line, then it has done all that one may reasonably ask. Understood as parts of a framework that does indeed seem to help, the numerous simplifications may be regarded as provisionally justified. However, achieving this new vision of oneself—of who one would be—must not be presumed to be a mere snap of the fingers. It will require genuine openness to radical change in oneself, careful and creative instruction, and abundant supplies of divine grace. For most people all of this only comes to them after they reach the lowest level of their lives or the worst point of a decline, and discover the total hopelessness of being who they are. Most people cannot envision who they would be without the fears, angers, lusts, power ploys, and woundedness with which they have lived so long. They identify with their habit-worn feelings. When Jesus said to the man by the pool of Bethesda, waiting for the angel to stir the waters, “Wilt thou be made whole?” he was not just passing the time of day (John 5.6). #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
We are not told how old he was, but this man had been in his impotent condition for thirty-eight years! If made whole, he would have to deal with a career change of immense proportions. To all his relatives and acquaintances he would no longer be “the one whom we take to the pool every day to wait for the angel.” He would now be…What? Who? How would he identify himself? How would be now relate to others and they to him? He might even have to get a job. Doing what? However, really, this man’s problems was nothing compared to an individual undergoing the transformation of his feelings (emotions, sensations, desires) from those he learned in the home, school, and playground as he grew up to those that characterize the inner beings of Jesus Christ. He is not no to be one who will spend hours watching TV, listening to the radio, fantasizing sensual indulgence or revenge, or who will try to dominate or injure others in attitude, word, or deed. He will no repay evil for evil—push for push, blow for blow, taunt for taunt, hatred for hatred, contempt for contempt. He will not be always on the hunt to satisfy his lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride of life (1 John 2.16). #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
No wonder he has no real ideal who he will be; and he must content himself with the mere identity: “apprentice of Jesus.” That is the starting point from which his new identity will emerge, and it is in fact powerful enough to bear the load. “Behold, now it came to pass that the people of Nephi were exceedingly rejoiced, because the Lord had again delivered them out of the hands of their enemies; therefore they gave thanks unto the Lord their God; yea, and they did fast much and pray much, and they did worship God; yea, and they did fast much and pray much, and they did worship God with exceedingly great joy. And it came to pass in the nineteenth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi, that Alma came unto his son Helaman and said unto him: Believest thou the words which I spake unto thee concerning those records which have been kept? And Helaman said unto him: Yea, I believe. And Alma said again: Believest thou in Jesus Christ, who shall come? And he said: Yea, I believe all the words which thou has spoken. And Alma said unto him again: Will ye keep my commandments? And he said: Yea, I will keep thy commandments with all my heart. Then Alma said unto him: Blessed art thou; and the Lord shall prosper thee in this land. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
“However, behold, I have somewhat to prophesy unto thee; but what I prophesy unto thee ye shall not make known; yea, what I prophesy unto thee shall not be made known, even until the prophecy is fulfilled; therefore write the words which I shall say. And these are the words: Behold, I perceive that this very people, the Nephites, according to the spirit of revelation which is in me four hundred years from the time that Jesus Christ shall manifest himself unto them, shall dwindle in unbelief. Yea, and then shall they see wars and pestilences, yea, famines and bloodshed, even until the people of Nephi shall become extinct—yea, and this because they shall dwindle in unbelief and fall into the works of darkness, and lasciviousness, and all manner of iniquities; yea, I say unto you, that because they shall sin against so great light and knowledge, yea, I say unto you, that from that day, even the fourth generation shall not pass away before this great iniquity shall come. And when that great day cometh, behold, the time very soon cometh that those who are now, or the seed of those who are no numbered among the people of Nephi, shall no more be numbered among the people of Nephi. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
“However, whosoever remaineth, and is not destroyed in that great and dreadful say, shall be numbered among the Lamanites, and shall become like unto them, all, save it be a few who shall be called the disciples of the Lord; and them shall the Lamanites pursue even until they shall become extinct. And now, because of iniquity, this prophecy shall be fulfilled. And now it came to pass that after Alma had said these things to Helaman, he blessed him, and also his other sons; and he also blessed the Earth for the righteous sake. And he said: Thus saith the Lord God—Cursed shall be the land, yea, this land, unto every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, unto destruction, which do wickedly, when they are fully ripe; and as I have said so shall it be; for this is the cursing and the blessing of God upon the land, for the Lord cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance. And now, when Alma has said these words he blessed the church, yea, all those who should stand fast in the faith from that time henceforth. And when Alma had done this he departed out of the land of Zarahemla, as if to go into the land of Melek. And it came to pass that he was never heard of more; as to his death or burial we know not of. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
“Behold, this we know, that he was a righteous man; and the saying when abroad in the church that he was taken up by the Spirit, or buried by the hand of the Lord, even as Moses. However, behold, the scripture saith the Lord took Moses unto himself; and we suppose that he has also received Alma in the spirit, unto himself; therefore, for this cause we know nothing concerning his death and burial. And now it came to pass in the commencement of the nineteenth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi, that Helaman went forth among the people to declare the word unto them. For behold, because of their wars with the Lamanites and the many little dissensions and disturbances which had been among the people, it became expedient that the word of God should be declared among them, yea, and that a regulation should be made throughout the church. Therefore, Helaman and his brethren went forth to establish the church again in all the land, yea, in every city throughout all the land which was possessed by the people of Nephi. And it came to pass that they did appoint priests and teachers throughout all the land, over all the churches. And now it came to pass that after Helaman and his brethren had appointed priests and teachers over the churches that there arose a dissension among them, and they would not give heed to the words of Helaman and his brethren. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
“However, they grew proud, being lifted up in their hearts, because of their exceedingly great riches; therefore they grew rich in their own eyes, and would not give heed to their words, to walk uprightly before God,” reports Alma 45.1-24. Most High, from all directions about me, the spirits are praying. The spirits of east and south are praying. The spirits of west and north are praying. The spirits below and above are praying. The spirits are praying with me. We all together are praying to you, Ancient one. Please open Heaven’s door. Looking out at my yard, I see a leaf falling from a tree, and I raise a prayer of awe for God who caused such a marvel to me. This is a sign of the necessity of Grace, the Fatherly tenderness of God, the might of the all-prevailing Name; which are never weak, never diluted, never drawling, never ill-arranged, never provocation to listlessness; which exhibit an exquisite skill of antithesis and a rhythmical harmony which he ear is loth to lose. With a marvellous flexibility, my Lord, thank you for accepting all of your children with all of the different conditions of the human spirit. This is an example of a rich variety of construction, subject to a general law of threefold division. We give glory to God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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