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This is a World of Struggle—We Live in a State of Perpetual War!
Always do the right thing. We are drowning in information and starving for knowledge. Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much. As a ruling scheme of things is modified by inroads from outlying existence, it loses authority, is less able to banish dread; its adherents fall away. Eventually it fades, exists only in history, becomes quaint or primitive, becomes finally, a myth. Our myths were once blueprints of the architecture of reality. The Church, as defender of the regnant scheme of things, was right to stop Galileo; activities such as his import into the social order new orientations will destroy that order. For some, asceticism was a magnetic attraction because, carried to extremes and combined with proofs of divine favour, it could lead to sainthood. For the religious celibate who was exceedingly ambitious, this spiritual route had infinitely more appeal than that of complaint parenthood in a marriage. Some determined people indulged in marathon bouts of asceticism, fasting to starvation, mortifying their flesh, depriving their senses, even devising humiliations so repulsive that they could be assured few could replicate them. However, no individual would dream of drinking cancerous pus or the wash water of rotting, leprous limbs. Achieving sainthood was a serious business. Only 3,276 people who died from the beginning of Christianity to 1500 became saints, with only 87 successful candidates from 1350 to 1500. On the plus side for women, in that same period the male-to-female ratio of saints went from five to one to about two and a half to one. From 1350 to 1500—and this statistic is the most pertinent here—laywomen saints overtook males, though the greater number of clerical males gave male saints a clear lead over women in orders. For aspiring female saints, this was the most promising era ever. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
Sainthood was that era’s great challenge, akin to aspiring to the Olympics or a Noble Prize today. For women severely limited in vocations other than drudging labour or motherhood, the stretch to being the very best practitioner of religion was appealing, especially to highly intelligent perfections such as Catherine of Siena, whose brief, bursting life won her the eternity of sainthood. I think these days we must particularly insist on that of the eyes. “The eye is the lamp of the body,” Jesus Christ says. “Now if your eye is clear, your whole body will be filled with light. But if your eye is not, your whole body will be darkness,” reports Matthew 6.22-23. In a civilization dominated by images, as our is today, images have become the privileged vehicle of ideology of a World saturated with sensuality, which has made human pleasures of the flesh its favourite theme, detaching it completely from the original meaning given to it by God. Today, healthy fasting from images has become more important than fasting from food. Food and drink, in itself, is never impure, but certain pictures and images are. St. John places “disordered desires of the eyes,” reports 1 John 2.16, among the three fundamental appetites, and St. Paul in turn exhorts us to “keep our eyes on what is seen rather than on what can be seen, for what can be seen is transitory but what is unseen is eternal,” reports 2 Corinthians 4.18. Visible things exert their formidable power of seduction over us precisely by making us forget that they are transitory. Their beauty is such that they appear, to a spirit still enslaved by matter, to be everlasting, although we can see with our own eyes that they wither and decay from one day to the next. St. Augustine, who was all too familiar with this struggle against the lure of material things and of deceptive beauty, can help us with his testimony. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
“Behold, You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for You. In my unloveliness, I plunged into the lovely things which You created. You were with me, but I was not with You. Created things kept me from You; yet if they had not been in You, they would not have been at all. I resist the allurements of my eyes, lest they entangle my feet. What countless seductions have men added to the things which entice the eyes, through the various arts and the works of craftsmen, in the form of clothes, shoes, vessels, and other artefacts of this kind, even in paintings and all sorts of representations—these things far overreach the bounds of necessary utility, moderation and faithful representation. Now I, who am speaking and seeing things clearly, get my steps entangled in these beautiful things…yet You pluck me out in Your mercy.” The best way to overcome the seductive power of images is not to “fix our gaze” on them, not to become “enchanted” by them. If you look at them, they have already won a victory over you. That, in fact, was all they wanted from you: that you would look at them. “Avert my eyes from pointless images,” we are taught to pray by one of the psalms (Psalms 119.37). The benefit derived from such mortification of the eyes is wonderful indeed! Through it we can experience something of tht ideal, so dear to the Fathers of the Church, of a “return to paradise,” to a time when all was pure and fresh and crystal-clear, as on a summer’s morning, “and the youthful body was so chaste that its manly gaze had the depths like a lake.” The motivation “for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven” is precisely the reason why we—especially we priests—are required to have this commitment to keep our eye and our whole body “in the life,” as Jesus Christ says. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
When brothers or sisters come to us, struggling, weak, and tempted by the flesh, they expect to find a safe hand to help them out of the quicksands of sensuality. However, to do this we need to have our feet on solid ground, otherwise we will tend to be drawn in after them ourselves. We are now seeing the spread of a repulsive impurity that threatens the very sources of human life. The Church, today as in the past, needs people who are austere with themselves, humble but sure of the inherent strength of grace, to oppose this flood of “debauchery, desire, revelry, carousing, and disgusting idolatry,” as Scripture calls in in 1 Peter 4.4, which is rushing the World to ruin. Today this is one of the most urgent services we must render, not only to the Kingdom of Heaven but to society itself. The “quality of life” truly is at stake! However, if we ourselves are defiled, or worse still engulfed and inflamed, by those quicksands, what help can we give? I believe that no motives of prudence or closing of ranks should silence the cry that is rising from the heart of our Mother the Church. If we have no qualms about denouncing the sins of others and of society, we should be equally frank in denouncing our own. There are too many priestly lives compromised, too many failures, too much depletion of energies in the Church, caused by the weaknesses of priests in this area! My brother priests, we with fear and trembling act quickly to put things right, as far as is necessary, because great is God’s pain and anger over these things. It is written that our God is a “jealous God,” reports Exodus 20.5. Who are we to defy God’s jealousy? We are the “friends of the Bridegroom,” and this title should fill us with joy, but also with a holy trepidation and with infinite respect for souls. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
It is a kind of blessed mortification of the flesh, that gains for us, with the Holy Spirit’s help, the grace of being truly “fathers,” our hearts free to love everyone without wanting to possess anyone. No price should seem to high to us, for a vocation that someone has summarized in the following words: “To live in the midst of the World, with no desire for its pleasures; to be a member of every family, yet belong to none; to share all sufferings, to penetrate all secrets, to heal all wounds; to go daily from men to God, to offer Him their homage and petitions, to return from God to men, to being them His pardon and His hope; to have a heart of iron for chastity and a heart of flesh for charity; to teach and to pardon, console and bless and to be blessed forever. O God, what a life is this, and it is thine, O priest of Jesus Christ.” When the ruling scheme of things comes to seem untrue or unimportant, one’s efforts within it become meaningless. One’s whole life becomes meaningless. The Heavenly City falls into ruins. The avenue to immortality ends on an abyss. One is cast back on one’s individual life, stares ahead through a transparence of days to death, which stands at the end. One enters a state of dread. Life then is borne forward on waves of cynicism and despair. One seeks distraction, death-defying games perhaps which invoke the specter from which one flinches. By surviving the heightened risk, one may achieve briefly the illusion of mastery. However, not for long. Within the confines of a single life death is unmasterable. Sometimes the distraction is less desperate and may contain creative possibilities. What began as a distraction from the loss of meaning and the dread of death may come to itself to have meaning and to protect against dread. The distraction, that is, becomes a new scheme of things. A committed chess player may finally lose awareness that life contains anything other than chess. A new defense against Ruy Lopez may be monument enough. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
In such a recovery one may move to a scheme of things larger than the one that has crumbled; the crumbling itself may then be seen in a perspective that makes it meaningful, perhaps even inevitable. So the Marxists of the thirties become the Freudians of the forties, and the politics is subsumed under psychology. A. A. Brill was able to comprehend the rash of strikes during the Depression as rebellious sons acting out their defiance of fathers. For a thousand years Christianity was for the New World the scheme of things organizing man’s Worldview. It stood at the apex of a hierarchy within which were included all other schemes, fraternal, artistic, scholastic, political. That World order is now irretrievably lost. I come back to Eliot’s dictum that culture is the incarnation of religion. If that is true—and I believe it is true—a culture cannot forever survive the loss of its religion; for the lesser scheme of things which that culture will still be able to offer will, whatever their merits, lack that element of the sacred which previously had derived from religion, and without which no one of the lesser schemes will be able to achieve the unification of the whole. Science, like religion, is a scheme of things hierarchically ordered, including many subordinate schemes. The compelling paradigm of one age may, like phlogiston, be but a quaint superstition for the next, without disturbing the overriding rational-scientific scheme of things of which the varying paradigms are subordinate schemes. However, science has never, not even in its greatest ascendancy, claimed such cosmic scope as Christianity. Some of the joys and sorrows of man’s condition have not, within science, found a place or an accounting. Most particularly now do they find no place; for the rational-scientific scheme of things is itself on the decline. Fewer people now see it as coextensive with reality. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
More and more frequently people look away from science, or around its edges, in search of some new vision, some new scheme of things with which to order their lives. When there is not enough man’s work, it is hard to grow up. There is “nearly full employment” (with highly significant exceptions), but there get to be fewer jobs that are necessary or unquestionably useful; that require energy and draw on some of one’s best capacities; and that can be done keeping one’s honour and dignity. In explaining the widespread troubles of adolescents and young men, this simple objective factor is not much mentioned. Let us here insist on it. By “man’s work” I mean a very simple idea, so simple that it is clearer to ingenuous boys than to most adults. To produce necessary food and shelter is man’s work. During most of economic history most men have done this drudging work, secure that it was justified and worthy of a man to do it, though often feeling that the social conditions under which they did it were not worthy of a man, thinking, “It is better to die than to live so hard”—but they worked on. When the environment is forbidding, as in the Swiss Alps or the Aran Islands, we regard such work with poetic awe. In emergences it is heroic, as when the bakers of Paris maintained the supply of bread during the French Revolution, or the milkman did not miss a day’s delivery when the bombs recently tore up London. Many also for get about the labour of the enslaved Africans. For some reason, they are always depicted working in the hot sun, as if they only had to do forced labour during the summer, but they also had to work in the winter without shoes or shirts. Just something to consider. At present there is little such subsistence work. In Communitas my brother and I guess that one-tenth of our economy is devoted to it; it is more likely one-twentieth. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
Production of food is actively discouraged. Farmers are not wanted and the young men go elsewhere. (The farm population is now less than 15 percent the total population.) Building, on the contrary, is immensely needed. California needs 200,000 new units each year to keep up with expected population growth and prevent prices from further increasing, and needs increase that rate of production to 400,000 new units of housing production over the next seven years in order for prices to decline. However, because of rising house costs, the California population is seeing a decline. From 2020 to 2021, California lost 350,000 people. One would think that ambitious boys would flock to work. However, here we find that building, too, is discouraged. In a great city, for the last twenty years, hundreds of thousands in Sacramento have been ill housed, yet we do not see science, industry, and labour enthusiastically enlisting in finding the quick solution to a definite problem. The promoters are interested in long-term investments, the real estate men in speculation, the city planners in votes and grafting. The building craftsmen cannily see to it that their own numbers remain few, their methods antiquated, and their rewards high. None of these people is much interested in providing shelter, and nobody is at all interested in providing new manly jobs. Once we turn away from the absolutely necessary subsistence jobs, however, we find that an enormous proportion of our production is not even unquestionably useful. Everybody knows and also feels this, and there has recently been a flood of books about our surfeit of honey, our insolent chariots, the follies of exurban ranch houses, our hucksters and our synthetic demand. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Many acute things are said about this useless production and advertising, but not much about the workmen producing it and their frame of mind; and nothing at all, so far as I have noticed, about the plight of young fellow looking for a manly occupation. The eloquent critics of the American way of life have themselves been so seduced by it that they think only in terms of selling commodities and point out that the goods are valueless; but they fail to see that people are being wasted and their skills insulted. (TO give an analogy, in the many gleeful onslaughts on the Popular Culture that have appeared in recent years, there has been little thought of the plight of the honest artist cut off from his audience and sometimes, in public arts such as theater and architecture, from his medium.) What is strange about it? American society has tried so hard and so ably to defend the practice and theory of production for profit and not primarily for use that now it has succeeded in making its jobs and products profitable and useless. Faced by the failures of the Second Wave strategy, rocked by angry demands by the poor countries for a total overhaul of the global economy, and deeply worried about their own future—the rich nations hammered out a new strategy. Almost overnight many governments and “development agencies,” including the World Bank, the Agency for International Development, and the Overseas Development Council, switched to what can only be called a First Wave strategy. This formula is almost a carbon copy reverse of the Second Wave strategy: Instead of squeezing the peasants and forcing them into the overburdened cities, it calls for a new emphasis on rural development. Instead of concentrating on cash crops for export, it urges food self-sufficiency. Instead of striving blindly for higher GNP (Gross National Product) in the hopes that benefits will trickle down to the poor, it calls for resources to be channeled directly into “basic human needs.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
That makes sense because if the poor have no cash, they need an infusion of money, over a short-term duration, not just sporadically, and then a percentage increase to sustain them over the long term. It is the say way a trickle charger/battery maintainer works. Instead of pushing for labour-saving technologies, the new approach stresses labour-intensive production with low capital, energy, and skill requirements. Instead of building giant steel mills or large-scale urban factories, it favours decentralized, small-scale facilities designed for the village. Turning Second Wave arguments upside down, the advocates of the First Wave strategy were able to show that many industrial technologies were a disaster when transferred to poor communities. Machines broke down and went unrepaired. They needed high-cost, often raw materials. Trained labour was in short supply. Hence, the new argument ran, what was needed were “appropriate technologies.” Sometimes called “intermediate,” “Soft,” or “alternative,” these would lie, as it were, “between the sickle and the combine harvester.” Many less affluent communities actually preferred low technology equipment. Farmers and trucking companies still reeling from oil and fertilizer price hikes and from disappointments with supply chain shortages and the pandemic, actually banded further expansion into new industries and regions and urged increased production of products they knew how to produce and handle well. The intent was not merely to increase employment but to stifle urbanization by favouring rural cottage industry. There is much about this new formula that admittedly makes excellent sense. It confronts the need to slow down the massive migration to the cities. It aims to make the villages—where the bulk of the World’s less affluent live—more livable. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
This method is more sensitive to ecological factors. It stresses the use of inexpensive local resources rather than expensive imports. It challenges conventional, all-too-barrow definition of “efficiency.” It suggests a less technocratic approach to development, taking local customs and culture into account. It emphasizes improving the conditions of the poor rather than passing capital through the hands of the rich in the hopes some will trickle down. Yet after all due credit is given, the First Wave formula remains just that—a strategy for ameliorating the worst of the First Wave conditions without ever transforming them. It is a Band-Aid, not a sure, and it is perceived in exactly these terms by many governments around the World. The sudden love affair with labour-intensivity is also subject to the charge that it is self-serving for the rich. The longer the poor countries and communities remain under First Wave conditions, the fewer competitive goods they are likely to shove onto an overloaded World market. The longer they stay down on the farm, so to speak, the less oil, gas, and other scare resources they will siphon off, and the weaker and less troublesome they will remain politically. There is also, built deep into the First Wave strategy, a paternalistic assumption that while other factors of production need to be economized, the time and energy of the labourer need not be—that unrelieved backbreaking toil in the field or rice paddies is fine—so long as it is done by somebody else. Labour-intensive techniques have suddenly been rendered attractive, thanks to a medley of hippie ideology, return to the myth of the golden age and noble savage, and criticism of the reality of the capitalist World. Much of what we now call “advanced science” was developed by scientists in rich countries to solve the problems of the rich countries. Precious little research has been addressed to the everyday problems of the World’s poor. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Nonetheless, any “development policy” that begins by blinding itself to the potentials of advanced scientific and technology knowledge condemns hundreds of millions of desperate, hungry, toiling peasants to perpetual degradation. In some places, and at certain times, the First Wave strategy can improve life for large numbers of people. Yet there is painfully little evidence to show that any sizable country can ever produce enough, using premechanized First Wave methods, to invest in change. Indeed, a mass of evidence suggests the exact opposite. However, the World already has 8 billion people. If we are having problems feeding and housing all these people, perhaps more communities and countries need to promote abstinence and celibacy. We want to reduce everything from having a strain on the planet, from cows to automobiles, but maybe humans need to practice self-control and realize it is a good idea to stop reproducing because they are fruitful, but no longer prospering. In a World of exploding diversity we shall have to invent scores of innovative strategies and stop looking for models ether in the industrial present—or in the preindustrial past. It is time we began to look at the emergent future. Once the legislative power has been well established, it is a matter of establishing the executive power in the same way. For this latter, which functions only by means of particular acts, not being of the essence of the former, is naturally separate from it. Were it possible for the sovereign, considered as such, to have the executive power, right and fact would be so completely confounded that we would no longer know what is law and what is not. And the body of politic, thus denatured, would soon fall prey to the violence against which it was instituted. Since the citizens are all equal by the social contract, what everyone should do can be prescribed by everyone. On other hand, no one has the right to demand that someone else do what one does not do for oneself. Now it is precisely this right, indispensable for making the body politic live and move, that the sovereign gives the prince in instituting the government. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
Several people have clamed that this act of establishment was a contract between the populace and the leaders it gives itself, a contract by which are stipulated between the two parties the conditions under which the one obliges itself to command and the other to obey. It will be granted, I am sure, that this is a strange way of entering into a social contract! However, let us see if this opinion is tenable. First, the supreme authority cannot be modified any more than it can be alienated; to limit it is to destroy it. It is absurd and contradictory for the sovereign to acquire a superior. To obligate oneself to obey a master is to return to full liberty. Moreover, it is evident that his contract between the people and some or other persons would be a particular act. Whence it follows that this contract could be neither law nor an act of sovereignty, and that consequently it would be illegitimate. It is also clear that the contracting parties would, in relation to one another, be under only the law of nature and without any guarantee of their reciprocal commitments, which is contrary in every way to the civils state. Since the one who has force at one’s disposal is always in control of its employment, it would come to the same thing if we were to give the name contract to the act of a human who would say to another, “I am giving you all my goods, on the condition that you give me back whatever you wish.” There is only one contract in the state, that of the association, and that alone excludes any other. It is impossible to imagine any public contract that was not a violation of the first contract. The act that institutes the government is not a contract but a law. The trustees of the executive power are not the masters of the populace but its officers; the populace can establish and remove them when it pleases; for them there is no question of contracting, but of obeying; and in taking on the functions the state imposes on them, they merely fulfill their duty as citizens, without in any way having the right to dispute over the conditions. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
Thus, when it happens that the populace institutes a hereditary government, whether it is monarchial within a single family or aristocratic within a class of citizens, this is not a commitment it is entering. It is a provisional form that it gives the administration, until the populace is pleased to order it otherwise. It is true that these changes are always dangerous, and that the established government should never be touched except when it becomes incompatible with the public good. However, this circumspection is a maxim of politics and not a rule of law [droit], and the state is no more bound to leave civil authority to its leaders than it is to leave military authority to its generals. Again, it is true that in such cases it is impossible to be too careful about observing all the formalities required in order to distinguish a regular and legitimate act from a seditious tumult, and the will of an entire people from the clamour of a faction. And it is here above all tht one must not grant anything to odious cases except what cannot be refused according to the full rigour of the law [droit]. And it is also from this obligation that the price derives a great advantage in preserving his power in spite of the people, without anyone being able to say that he has usurped it. For in appearing to use only his rights, it is quite easy for him to extend them, and under the pretext of public peace, to prevent assemblies destined to reestablish good order. Thus he avails himself of a silence he keeps from being broken, or of irregularities he causes to be committed, to assumes that the opinion of those who are silenced by fear is supportive of him, and to punish those who dare to speak. This is how the decemvirs, having been first elected for one year and then continued for another year, tried to retain their power in perpetuity by on longer permitting the comitia to assemble. And it is by this simple means that all the governments of the World, once armed with the public force, sooner or later usurp the public authority. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
The periodic assemblies I have spoken of earlier are suited to the prevention or postponement of this misfortune, especially when they have no need for a formal convocation. For then the prince could not prevent them without openly declaring himself a violator of the laws and an enemy of the states. The opening of these assemblies, which have as their sole object the preservation of the social treaty, should always take place through two propositions which can never be suppressed, and which are voted on separately: The first: Does it please the sovereign to preserve the present form of government? The second: Does it please the people to leave its administration to those who are now in charge of it? I am presupposing here what I believe I have demonstrated, namely that in the state there is no fundamental law that cannot be revoked, not even the social compact. For if all the citizens were to assemble in order to break this compact by common agreement, no one could doubt that it was legitimately broken. Grotius even thinks that each person can renounce the state of which one is a member and recover one’s natural liberty and one’s goods by leaving the country. (On the understanding that one does not leave in order to evade one’s duty and to be exempt from serving the homeland the moment it needs us. In such circumstances, taking flight would be criminal and punishable; it would no longer be withdrawal, but desertion.) However, it would be absurd that all the citizens together could not do what each of the can do separately. Looking at Census facts, what I found interesting were the demographics. In California, 72 percent of the population is White alone, 6.5 percent is Black, alone. 1.6 percent is American Indian. 15.5 percent is Asian alone. Less than 1 percent is Native Hawaiian. 4 percent is two or more races. 40 percent is Hispanic. We have seen a huge decline in the Black population. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
Psychological problems are entangled with interpersonal problems beyond those in the family of origin or orientation. This is a point that is sadly overlooked by those who seek to explain psychopathology by looking back to early childhood experiences with parents. For example, young adults who are unmarried place a great deal of importance on dating/romantic relationships and platonic friendships. For such people, social support from family members can do little to minimize their loneliness; what they seek are rewarding relationships with dating/romantic partners and friends. When these relationships are unavailable or distressed, psychological problems are often evident. The ill effects of conflict on personal relationships are well established. The experience of excessive and hostile conflict can have equally severe intrapersonal consequences. Themes of destructive conflict are evident in the findings on eating disorders, personality disorders, alcoholism, schizophrenia, psychogenic sexual dysfunction, and somatoform disorders. Conflict is an interpersonal phenomenon that appears heightened in both family and other relationships. In a very fundamental way, most people appear to seek and desire some form of harmony with at least a few other people with whom they share their lives. When this harmony is corroded by conflict, mental health problems often emerge. At the same time, the experience of a mental healthy problem such as alcoholism or a personality disorder can also disrupt the harmony inherent in close personal relationships. This itself has the potential to propagate intense interpersonal conflict. Interpersonal rejection is a social phenomenon that purses most mental health problems. Although depression is one of the problems that has focused most attention on interpersonal rejection, thanks to Coyne’s interactional theory, this phenomenon is evident among people with schizophrenia, eating disorders, and personality disorders. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
Human beings can be remarkably intolerant of those who present a less than “normal,” competent, or personal image. The social-interactional goals of most people leave little room for significant communication with others who have obvious symptoms of psychopathology. Consequently, psychologically distressed individuals are often shunned and rejected by others—even those with whom they have share close relationships. The phenomenon of interpersonal rejection can be devastating to one’s sense of self-worth. The realization that others do not like, care for, or want to spend time with the self is profoundly distressing for all but the most pathologically avoidant individuals. The anguish that is perpetuated by interpersonal rejection can exacerbate minor psychological frailty into full-blown mental disorder. Of course, as the symptoms of poor mental health become more prominent, the likelihood of eliciting further rejection is increased. Again, the potential for a vicious cycle between psychological and interpersonal problems is clearly evident. Interpersonal rejection may play a role in more macroscopic interpersonal issues, such as availability of close relationships. One of the most fundamental and basic interpersonal problems associated with psychopathology is a lack of general personal relationships. The social networks of people with schizophrenia, depression, social anxiety, and eating disorders, for example, are notoriously impoverished. Once again, there is reason to suspect that this interpersonal problem is both a cause and a consequence of psychological problems. By their social nature, most humans have a very basic need to seek out and form relationships with others. Mental health appears to deteriorate in parallel with the disappearance of opportunities for experiencing the pleasures of personal relationships. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
Like interpersonal rejection, experiencing the unavailability of personal relationships can lead to feelings of worthlessness, despair, and grief. Over time, situational attributions for such a state of affairs may be difficult to sustain and eventually give way to feelings of personal blame and responsibility. A deficiency in personal relationships may be taken as evidence of personal deviance or defectiveness. This mental anguish—coupled with the absence of opportunities to share optimistic or negative affective states with other people, and to enjoy their company and social support—is a potent recipe for serious psychological problems. Certain interpersonal processes that have been implicated in mental health problems, such as rejection and conflict, are fairly ubiquitous in that they occur in both family and other relationship context. However, other processes, such as unavailability of personal relationships and loneliness, appear to be largely unrelated to family issues. In many cases, these processes are present in the lives of people with psychological problems, maintaining, prolonging, and exacerbating their condition. The fears which war engenders and the deprivations which it causes are painful. Yet for those who are too attached to outward things they are often necessary teacher. Out of the fears, great heroism has been learned; out of the deprivations, great unselfishness; but those who respond to such lessons are too few, the influence of the lessons themselves too ephemeral. When it is said that way is a purifying agent, it is not meant that our morals are purified; on the contrary, war notoriously makes them temporarily worse. By enthroning passion and displacing reason, by generating wild fears and brutal hatreds, the very smoke of war tends to smother those civilized self-disciplines which make for a decent living during the normal times of peace. This is a World of struggle. The word “peace” has only a relative meaning. The notion that a society, a civilization, or an individual can exist in a continuously inert state is an illusory one. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
As soon as one kind of war ends, another kind of war begins. A peace of endless stagnation is impossible. That last kind of peace is that wherein the forces which must inevitably contend against each other are properly balanced. A great war brings humanity to an emotional crisis. Such a crisis shakes it out of complacency and indifference toward religious values. War, with its frightful threat to life and possessions, its dreadful menace to personal relations, forces humankind to revise long-established attitudes for better or worse. If it opens one door to atheism, it also opens another door to religion and still another to mysticism. We live in a state of perpetual war. Like the Winchester Mansion, back and forth go the ghostly armies of construction and destruction. Sometimes one and sometimes the other holds the field in triumph. Death seekers clearly intend to end their lives at the time they attempt suicide. This singleness of purpose may last only a short time. It can change to confusion the very next hour or day, and then return again in a short order. Dave, a middle-aged executive, was a death seeker. He was devoted to his wife and two teenage sons who respected him. They lived in an upper-middle-class neighbourhood, had a spacious house, and enjoyed a life of comfort. He had many misgivings about suicide and was ambivalent about it for weeks, but on Tuesday night he was a death seeker—clear in his desire to die and acting in a manner that virtually guaranteed a fatal outcome. Death ignorers do not believe that their self-inflicted death will mean the end of their existence. They believe they are trading their present lives for a better or happier existence. Billy never truly recovered from his mother’s death. He was only 7 years old and unprepared for such a loss. His father sent him to live with his grandparents for a time, to a new school with new kind and a new way of life. In Billy’s mind, all these changes were for the worse. He missed the joy and laughter of the past. He missed his home, his father, and his friends. Most of all he missed his mother. He did not really understand her death. His father said that she was in Heaven now and at peace, happy; that she has not wanted to die or to leave Billy; that an accident had taken her life. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
Billy’s unhappiness and loneliness continued day after day and he began to put things together in his own way. If he could join his mother, Billy believed that he could be happy again. He felt she was waiting for him, waiting for him to come to her. These thoughts seemed so right to him; they brought him comfort and hope. One evening, shortly after saying good night to his grandparents, Billy climbed out of bed, went up the stairs to the roof of their apartment house, and jumped to his death. In his mind, he was joining his mother in Heaven. Billy was a death ignorer, like many other adult believers in a hereafter who experience death by suicide to reach another form of life. To further highlight this illustration, in 1997, the World was shocked to learn that 39 members of an unusual cult named Heaven’s Gate had experienced death by suicide at an expensive house outside San Diego, California. It turned out that these members had acted out of the belief that their deaths would free their spirits and enabled them to ascend to a “Higher Kingdom.” It is a simple yet profound truth: Happiness ins a choice. When you get up in the morning, you can choose to be happy and enjoy that day, or you can choose to be unhappy and go around with a sour attitude. It is up to you. If you make the mistake of allowing your circumstances to dictate your happiness, then you risk missing out on God’s abundant life. You might as well choose to be happy and enjoy your life! When you do that that, not only will you feel better, but your faith will cause God to show up and work wonders. God knows that we have difficulties, struggles, and challenges. However, it was never His intention for us to live one day “on cloud nine,” and the next day down in the dumps, defeated and depressed because we have problems. God want us to live consistently. He wants us to enjoy every single day of our lives. To do so, one must learn to live in today, one day at a time; better yet, make the most of this moment. It is good to have a big picture outlook, to set goals, to establish budgets and make plans, but if you are always living in the future, you are never really enjoying the present in the way God wants you to. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
When we focus too much on the future, we are often frustrated because we do not know what is coming. Naturally, the uncertainty increases our stress level and creates a sense of insecurity. We need to understand, though, that God has given us the grace to live today. He has not yet given us tomorrow’s grace. When we get to tomorrow, we will have the strength to make it through. God will give us what we need. However, if we are worried about tomorrow right now, we are bound to be frustrated and discouraged. By an act of your will, choose to start enjoying your life right now. Learn to enjoy your family, your friends, your health, your work, the blue sky, green grass, and trees; enjoy everything in your life. Happiness is a decision you make, not an emotion you feel. Certainly there are times in all our lives when bad things happened, or things do not turn out as we had hoped. However, that is when we must make a decision that we are going to be happy in spite of our circumstances. God would not let us go through something that is too difficult to handle. And if your desire is great enough, you can stay calm and cool no matter what comes against you in life. God gives us His peace on the inside, but it is up to us to make use of that peace. Especially in the pressure points of life, we have to learn how to tap into God’s supernatural peace. The way you do that is by making a conscious choice, a calculated decision if you will, choosing to stay happy. Life is flying by, so do not waste another moment of your precious time being angry, unhappy, or worried. “This is the day which the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it,” reports Psalm 118.24. When we are blessed with grace, we find ourselves loved and affirmed in such a way that we love God and others more than ever. The Christian may receive this grace through prayer, inspiration from the Scriptures, meditation, church services, or daily Spirit-led interactions with others. However, the essential ingredient, which then becomes an irreversible aspect of our own core, is that such love is by nature unmerited—we are loved by the grace of God, not because of our achievements or what we do. We are simply loved. And such love radiates outward in the same way. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
Others need not merit our love—we simply love them, too. One is most grace-full when one experiences others in their essential core, loving them as purely as God does. God has the power to do anything. He has the ability to destroy the devil, but He cannot do it now because of His Word. His Word is out and He will not go against it. We know what the end is going to be because the overall picture is in the Bible. Read the back of the book—we win! The devil will be put in the pit for a thousand years, then loosed for a little time, and finally cast into the lake of fire. However, until that time, God has done all He is going to do about the devil. It is your responsibility to take care of him. You have dominion. You are to cast him out. God’s Word gives us instructions on how to use our authority to defeat satan: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you,” reports James 4.7. “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: whom resist steadfast in the faith,” reports 1 Peter 5.8-9. God walks in His garden still, not necessarily with soupy intellectuals from the University, but with salt-of-the-Earth people from everyday life. He reveals Himself as a long-lost friend to the Humble. He teaches the Terrible Tots their Aleph-Beth’s, as He taught the Psalmist his (119.130). He filters human knowledge for the Pure of Mind, as Luke recorded (24.25). The Curious and the Proud—well, they require special attention. He gives them grace, yes, but He just makes it harder for them to find. In conclusion—and I do have a conclusion—Human Reason is frail and fallible; True Faith, however, never fails, never falls. Every ratiocination and investigation into the nature and work of the Sacrament ought to follow the guidelines established by Faith. That is to say, they should preempt Faith’s prerogatives; nor should they infringe on any Faith’s boundaries. Why? In the realm of this Most Holy Superexcellent Sacrament, Faith and Love rule. And it is quite clear to Me that not all of their machination are clear to you. “Peace I leave you; My peace I give to you; not as the World gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful,” reports John 14.27. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Dear Lord in Heaven, when things happen that would normally bother me, please help me to put my foot down and says, “No, I am not going to let that take my peace. I am not going to rule over my emotions. I am not going to allow myself to get upset and aggravated. I am going to choose to be happy.” The completeness of the mystic experience is proportionate to and measurably by, intensity. So long as it remans a passing and temporary state, so long ought it be regarded by the human who has had it as affording an incomplete enlightenment. The mystic experience is not necessarily complete in itself when it happens to a human for the first time—or for the fourth time. Nor are its effects necessarily permanent. They may disappear even after a whole year’s existence. Unless the personal human has matured in brain and heart and balance, the efforts to transcend ego will necessarily be premature and the glimpse, if it happens, will be of a mixed character. We return thanks to our mother, the Earth which sustains us. We return thanks to the rivers and streams, which supply us with water. We return thanks to all the herbs, which furnish medicines for the cure of our aliments. We return thanks to the corn, and to her sisters, the beans and squashes, which give us life. We return thanks to the wind, which moving the air has banished diseases. We return thanks to the moon and stars, which have given us their light when the sun was gone. We return thanks to the sun, that he has looked upon the Earth with a beneficent eye. Lastly, we return thanks to the Great Spirit, in whom is embodies all goodness, and who directs all things for the good of His children. O Lord our God, please be gracious unto Thy people America and please accept their prayer. Restore the worship to Thy sanctuary and receive in love and favour the supplication of America. May the worship of Thy people be ever acceptable unto Thee. Our God and God of our Fathers, may our remembrance and the remembrance of our forefathers comes before Thee. Please remember the Messiahs of the house of America, Thy servant, and Thy Holy City, and all Thy people, the house of America. Please grant us deliverance and well being, lovingkindness, life and pace on this day of the New Moon; the Feast of Unleavened Bread; the Feast of Tabernacles. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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Rancho Cordova, CA |
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You are Not Worthy and I Do Not Value My Relationship with You!
Success come from knowing that you did the best and are courageously living each moment as fully as possible. When one thinks about it, it is only the existence of marriage that makes virginity a choice, and only the existence of virginity that makes marriage a choice. Without either of them there would no longer be any “choice,” or, if there were (as between marriage and so-called free love, or getting married and staying single solely for the sake of freedom and an undisturbed life), it would be morally unacceptable. In saying this we are not saying anything new and revolutionary, but are only correcting a certain conditioning bound up with particular cultures and historical moments, and getting back to the ideas and attitudes of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit never ceases to guide the Church, in every area, to a knowledge of the complete truth. By the working of the Holy Spirit, revelation, like a precious spirit in a valuable temple, constantly renews its youth and also makes the temple grow younger. The Holy Spirit—as I said above—does not do new things, but makes new things. He makes them young again, restores them to their original splendour, and He does the same with the charism of consecrated virginity. When difficult things are asked of us, even things contrary to the longings of our heart, remember that the loyalty we pledge to the cause of Christ is to the supreme devotion of our lives. Of course, we all have some habits or flaws or personal history that could keep us from complete spiritual immersion in this work. However, God is our Father and is exceptionally good at forgiving and forgetting sins we have forsaken, perhaps because we give Him so much practice in doing so. In any case, there is divine help for every one of us at any hours we feel to make a change in our behaviour. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
On the subject of getting back to the spirit and thought of Jesus, I have been struck by the fact that in Matthew’s Gospel, immediately after those sayings of Jesus about those who do not marry for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven, comes His words about children—without any break, in fact linked to them by a temporal adverb: “Then (!) children were brought to Him so He could lay His hands on them and pray, but the disciples rebuked them. Jesus said, “Let the little children come to Me,” reports Matthew 19.13-14. In this way, Jesus’ words about voluntary chastity are enclosed between two major sayings of His about marriage: one regarding the indissolubility of marriage (“Have you not read that He Who created them from the beginning made them male and female?”), the other about children. Children are the fruit of marriage; they are the love of the two spouses made flesh. To welcome children, as Jesus does, is to welcome in the fullest way and in its most profound implications, the reality of marriage. To say, “Let the little children come to Me” is like saying, “Let the spouses, let the fathers and mothers come to Me.” Parents know very well that to welcome their children is to welcome them, in fact it is more. Naturally, all this is true when the marriage itself is lived in faith and in harmony with the will of God. Only in faith do the two charisms meet and shed light on one another. This is why the martyr St. Ignatius of Antioch, whom we heard warning virgins to be humble, admonishes married people in the same text to marry “in the Lord.” “It is proper,” he writes at the beginning of the second century, “that spouses should enter their union with the bishop’s consent so that the wedding takes place according to the Lord and not according to concupiscence, and that everything is done for the honour of God.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Everything is always brought back to the same source, the lordship of Christ. If it is embraced “for the Lord,” virginity has value. If it is celebrated and lived “according to the Lord, matrimony has value. However, let us advance still further in our teaching about charisms. A charism—says St. Paul—is a particular “manifestation of the Spirit given to each one for the common good,” reports 1 Corinthians 12.7. St. Peter says the same thing when he writes “to the extent that each of you has received a gift (charisma), use it to sever one another as good stewards of God’s varied grace,” 1 Peter 4.10. What does all this mean when we apply it to our case? It means that celibacy and virginity are also for the married, and that marriage is also for virgins, in other words for their benefit. Consecrated virginity, therefore, is not a private matter, a private choice of perfection. On the contrary, it is “for the common good” to be used “to serve” others. The gift is destined only for some, for those who are called, but all are its beneficiaries. Such is the essential, apparently contradictory nature of a charism. It is something specific and individual—“a manifestation of the Spirit given to each one,” but at the same time it is something which is to be placed at the service of all (“for the common good”). In the Church, virgins and married people mutually “edify” one another. The married are reminded by virgins of the primacy of God and of the things that do not pass away. They are introduced to love of God’s Word, which consecrated persons, having more time and being more available, are able to study in greater depth in order to “break” the bread of the Word for their brothers and sisters who are more taken up with the occupations of the World. However, even virgins and celibates also learn something from married people. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
What they learn is to be generous, to forget themselves, to serve life and often to have a certain humanity that comes from direct contact with the events of life. Some people find it difficult to pray or even dedicated an hour of their day to God. However, if one looks at married people, young mothers and fathers have to get up not once but five, six or more times a night to feed or nurse or rock a crying child, or watch at one’s bedside to see if he or she has a fever. And in the morning, at the same time each day, one of the two, or both of them, having taken the child to a grandparent or to the nursery, would rush to work in time to clock in, come rain or shine, good health or sickness. Then I said to myself: if we do not do something about it, we are in grave danger here! Our lifestyle, unless it is supported by a genuine observance of the Rule and by a certain rigour in its schedule and customs, is in danger of becoming a rose-water existence which will eventually make us uncaring. Do we have the right to feel offended when someone calls us “parasites”? We certainly do have that right, but only if we spend ourselves unreservedly for the Kingdom, if we are truly “united to the Lord without distractions.” Otherwise, we have no such right. What good parents are able to do for their children according to the flesh, the degree of self-forgetfulness they are capable of attaining in order to provide for their children’s health, studies and happiness, must be the measure of what we ought to do for our spiritual children who are our brothers and sisters in the Lord. Our example in this is the apostle Paul himself, who said he wanted to “spend what he had and to be spent” for the sake of his children in Corinth (2 Corinthians 12.15. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
This shows how useful it is tht there should be a healthy integration of charisms in the Christian community, whereby married people and celibates do not live in strict separation from one another, but in such a way that they can help and encourage one another to grow. It is not true that the proximity of other genders and of families is always necessarily a danger or a dark threat for the unmarried. It can be, if one has not yet accepted one’s vocation freely, joyfully and definitively, but this is true for a married person too. Today we are called to work pastorally in a society no longer organized along the lines of the separation of the genders, but one where both genders constantly interact and are present together in every area of life and work. We need to adapt the way we live our charism to this new situation. In no way does this mean that each person has to give up one’s own lifestyle and surroundings. In the earliest days of the Church, virgins and celibates—as we can deduce from Paul, Tertullian, Cyprian and others—were integrated into Christian homes as part of the fabric of the whole community. However, very soon, certainly by the fourth century, they felt the need for a place apart where they could organize their time, with its rhythm of silence and activity, in accordance with their own special vocation. And so monasteries were born, like those founded by St. Ambrose in and around Milan. Today new types of community are coming into being, in which families and consecrated persons live together in the same location and share the same rule of life. Together they profess and practice poverty and obedience. The one thing that distinguishes them is whether they are married or celibate. This manifests an important aspect of the Church: the fact that it is a body with “many members,” each different from the other yet moved by the same Spirit (1 Corinthians 12.12-27). #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
In this particular form of life there is a need on both sides for space and freedom. The married need it in order to attend to their children, join in their games, solve the inevitable family tensions and cultivate mutual love. Virgins need it in order to cultivate silence and to study, and to be “united to the Lord without distractions.” While respecting the lifestyles of each, there are many ways in which married people and celibates can be spiritually united within a community. I once attended a meeting of the clergy and pastoral councils of a local Church and I remember the spiritual boost, the joy an the unity caused by the reading of a letter from the cloistered nuns of a convent in the same diocese, by which they showed they were present at the meeting, contributing to it through their prayers. Clearly the possibility of change and living at a more elevated level has always been one of the gifts of God to those who seek it. What is the key to a breakthrough in contented, happy living? It is embedded in one sentence: “The love of God…dwells in the hearts of the people.” When the love of God sets the tone for our own lives, for our relationships to each other and ultimately our feeling for all humankind, then old distinctions, limiting labels, and artificial divisions begin to pass away, and peace increases. Of course, we are speaking here of the first great commandment given to the human family—to love God wholeheartedly, without reservation or compromise, tht is, with all our heart, might, mind, and strength. This love of God is the first great commandment in the Universe. However, the first great truth in the Universe is that God loves us exactly that way—wholeheartedly, without reservation or compromise, with all His heart, might, mind, and strength. #RandolpHarris 6 of 20
When those majestic forces from God’s heart and ours meet without restraint, there is a veritable explosion of spiritual, moral power. Fathers of the church and actualized Christians, who were seekers after spirituality and for whom celibacy was an ongoing test of their commitment devoted their entire lives to their own salvation. However, until the arrival of the Kingdom of Heaven, what about everyone else’s soul? Who would teach, guide, scold, punish, and condemn sinning humanity? For the vast majority of humankind, priests are needed. Lifetime celibacy was, as we seen, a primarily Christian reoccupation. However, some people took false vows of celibacy to protect their jobs, then contrived, in unpriestly stealth, to creep into another person’s bed at night and prayed—if they dared—that no children would arrive to give the lie to the supposedly chaste marital arrangement. However, what underlay the mammoth battle over clerical celibacy? Foremost was the conviction that celibacy was a fundamental component of “good” Christianity. The Church Fathers strongly influenced this perception, reaching a wide, receptive audience through their writings, their preaching, and their teaching. They set personal examples as well, for most were unmarried celibates. In or survey of their theology, we saw how they evoked the Scriptures as proof of their arguments, quoting the words of the apostles and of Christ, and the Old Testament tale of Adam and Eve, as irrefutable evidence. One major consequence of all these theological, spiritual, and political contortions was that, increasingly, lay Christians adopted celibacy, so tht a core of many communities lived as spiritually pure a life as the Fathers of St. Augustine could have. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Often, they put professional religious to shame, and during the periods of widespread “lapsing” and apostasy in monasteries and women’s cloisters, these chaste and committed Christians shone—metaphorically, at least—with the pristine glow of a guiding star. However, some Christians argued strongly against clerical celibacy on the grounds that it was too difficult for most men. Yet, the growing wealth of monasteries, other cloisters, and the Church in general was another important reason to implant clerical celibacy. Bachelors leave no heirs, so would not be tempted to divvy up the property they administered, which would pass intact to the next generation of church men. They also suspected that unmarried candidates would be favoured in the Church, and that celibacy would be a good career move. Over the years, the celibacy campaign pressed on. In 401, priests at carthage were required to swear an oath of celibacy, the first-ever instance of this. Churchwide, a priest’s private life was now—theoretically—heavily monitored. His wife had to be virginal at the time of marriage and remain so forever. She could not share his bedroom, much less his bed. Instead, she passed her nights elsewhere, with a chaperone, while he lay with other clerics. Should her husband die, the widowed virgin was not permitted to have another go at marriage. A later edict went further: married clergymen had to leave their wives at their ordination. However, consider not the highborn clerics with access to fortunes but the lowly priests who constituted the greatest part of the clerical corpus. Material life in the postclassical West was so brutishly difficult that, while it also drove some unreligious men into ostensibly celibate monasteries as havens from hunger, it drove some sincere priests to marry as a form of economic survival. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Alongside the children they produced, wives could cultivate the parish landholdings and in other ways arrange to feed and clothe their priest husbands. More ambitions priests contrived to marry women with dowries, property, or small business, even if the latter consumed so much of the couple’s time that the business of religion was secondary to the exigencies of commerce. Some tattling, of course, was justified, particularly when priests and bishops fathered children. The great fear, entirely vindicated by subsequent events, was that the clerics would then use Church property as a family business, a personal legacy to provide for their sons and daughters. Expecting them to live with their wives “as if they were not wives” assumed as well that they would manage their church’s possessions as if they were men who had no possession, which was literally the case. Informing on priests and bishops who flouted Church policy with even a single infant was not motivated by personal spite but by a grave concern for the material future of the Christian community. Defiantly uncelibate clergymen were harassed and some lost their jobs, while the covertly uncelibate must have exercised discretion. In 1171, the abbot-elect of St. Augustine at Canterbury fathered seventeen children in a single village, but this was a puny production compared to a twelfth-century bishop of Liege who was unseated because he had sired sixty-five. The most ludicrous, later-century case was Pope Innocent VIII, a proud father who publicly acknowledged his brood of “bastards” and was then forgiven because he had been honest. Martin Luther believed strongly that God bestowed the gift of celibacy on some people. “This was Christ’s way,” he wrote in explanation of celibacy. Martin Luther’s views on celibacy, like St. Augustine’s and the earliest Church Fathers’, have had a profound doctrinal effect on Christian life. However, the agreed that celibacy should never be imposed nor pledged rashly by people, lay or religious, unable to fulfill their commitment. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
A family-of-origin pattern every bit as dominant as abuse in the mental health literature is an absolute corrosive combination of parenting behaviours: parental overinvolvement or overprotectiveness coupled with lack of parental care. When parents are overly intrusive in the lives of their children, but at the same time emotionally distant, there is a high potential for serious psychosocial consequences that can include depression, eating disorders, schizophrenia, personality disorders, and social anxiety. The ubiquity of this parenting pattern in the mental health literature is as remarkable as the range of problems with which it appears to be associated. This pattern of parenting may stem from serious problems with boundary regulations and ambivalence about parenthood. Overinvolvement and overprotection reflect a form of boundary dysregulation that may adversely affect the child’s ego development and sense of self in relation to other people. A person exposed to parental overinvolvement may form either unrealistic expectations for care that simply cannot be met during later adulthood, or preoccupation with fear of interpersonal intrusion. In either case, relational problems are likely to follow, contributing to any of a variety of psychological symptoms. A lack of parental care reflects a parent’s ambivalence about or rejection of one’s role. Even young children have an extraordinary aptitude for detecting acceptance or rejection from a caregiver. A lack of parental care sends messages such as “You are not worthy,” and “I do not value my relationship with you” to a child. When this is coupled with overinvolvement, a child’s (or even an adult’s) ability to make sense of these interpersonal experiences may be taxed beyond its limits. The bewilderment, confusion, self-blame, and damaged self-esteem produced by such childhood experiences surely contributes to later psychosocial problems. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
One of the primary means by which children learn attitudes and behaviour is modeling. No agents are more readily available and credible than parents. Many of the behaviours and cognitions that constitute mental disorders may in fact be socially learned. Parental modeling of dysfunctional attitudes and behaviours has been implicated in such problems as social anxiety, eating disorders, alcoholism and other substance use problems, somatoform disorders, and psychogenic dysfunctions in pleasures of the flesh. In all cases, evidence indicates that children may learn maladaptive behaviours and cognitions that later come back to cause them substantial distress in their adult lives. Critics who are sympathetic to the biological paradigm might prefer to explain parent-child similarities in psychological symptoms with a genetic hypothesis. Indeed, it is difficult to disentangle the effects of genes and the social environment, as they come from the same source—the family of origin. However, it is now becoming clear that genes can only explain a portion of this concordance. Furthermore, such problems as somatoform disorders and psychogenic sexual dysfunctions are at least assumed, by definition, to have nonbiological bases (id est, if such a problem could be explained by biological factors, a person could not receive the diagnosis). In such cases, it appears that people learn the attitudes and behaviours underlying these problems through parental modeling, at least in part. The effects of family processes on offspring do not end with adulthood. In reality, many adult psychiatric patients still reside in their families of origin. Particularly among the more profoundly affected individuals, such as those with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, independent lives outside of their families of origin may simply be unattainable because of problems with employment, maintaining stable relationships, managing finances, and so on. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
For such people, caustic family processes can still devastate psychological well-being, and foreclose the possibility of a complete recovery and functional independent life. When adult patients reside in households with a great deal of expressed emotion (EE), negative affective style (AS), and communication deviance (CD), symptoms become aggravated and relapses becomes accelerated. EE and negative AS reflect a critical and overinvolved orientation between a parent and a child. These family processes have been implicated in schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and eating disorders. Even many adults are still sensitive and susceptible to the ill effects of parental criticism. Throughout the animal kingdom, parents either nurture their offspring or simply leave them alone. Aside from humans, it is difficult to locate species in which some patents actively meddle with or torment their young during critical periods of psychosocial development. However, many parents may (albeit subtly and with their best intentions) aggravate their children’s mental health through criticism and overinvolvement, even into stages of adulthood. Some parents also communicate with their family members in ways that are peculiar, splintered, and difficult to grasp. This may create a bizarre template for the construal of social interaction that makes rewarding socialization with other people a near-impossibility, in the same way that extreme isolation or neglect can permanently mar the capacity for interpersonal relations. For most people, interpersonal and psychological development launched and guided by the family. When normal family processes such a nurturance, education, and self-esteem support go awry, psychological distress often follows. Even well into adulthood, the family of origin has a powerful impact on its offspring’s psychological health or illness. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Unfortunately, for many people, their means of coping with disordered family processes (exempli gratia, substance misuse, binge eating, somatization, and dissociation) are themselves maladaptive and abrasive to mental health. I remember a spring night in a school auditorium, during the rehearsal of a play. I am thirteen. I am weary of the farce, weary of the silliness of the cast, of our endless horseplay, mindlessness. A scene in which I have no part is being rehearsed; I stand in an open door at the rare of the dark and empty hall. A storm is under way. The door is on the lee of the building, and I step out under the overhang. The rain swirls and beats. Lightning reveals a familiar schoolyard in a ghostly light. I feel a sudden poignancy. Images strike in my mind. The wind is the scream of a lost spirit, searching the Earth and finding no good, recalling old bereavements, lashing the land with tears. Consciousness leaves my body, moves out in time and space. I undergo an expanding awareness of self, of separateness, of time flowing through me, bearing me on, knowing I have a chance, the one chance all of us have, the chance of a life, knowing a time will come when nothing lies ahead and everything lies behind, and hoping I can then look back and feel it well spent. How, in the light of fixed stars, should one live? So begins the hunger for meaning. Is the scheme of things the creation of humans? A charismatic leader who achieves a new vision of lice secures a following? Did Christ invent Christianity? I think not. He created disorder, led a rabble, was an irritant to existing schemes of things. The scheme of things which is Christianity, of which His teachings are the nucleus, was the creation of many people over a span much longer than His life. Indeed, by the time it could have been called Christianity it has taken on a character He would have repudiated. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
A scheme of things is a social creation, something offered to the individual by society as a system of significance. One’s ambition may be secret, but the pattern of meanings that makes possible the ambition and within which it may be realized is social. Even if one’s entire hope of meaning in life hinges on acquiring a complete set of American stamps, that vision still is social, depends upon others being similarly engaged; for such an endeavour could mean nothing in a World without stamp collecting. When a society offers at its apex a scheme of things, inclusive and integrative of all subordinate orientations, and when that scheme by virtue of being generally accepted as true holds great authority, then that society is unified and cohesive, is an organism. Every leader seeks to embody such a scheme of things, and charismatically to make it even more powerfully appealing, binding on the loyalties of all. When society offers, at the top, contending schemes, none of compelling authority, that society is fragmented. Nevertheless, we see groups of boys and young men disaffected from the dominant society. The young men are Angry and Beat. The boys are Juvenile Delinquents. These groups are not small, and they will grow larger. Certainly they are suffering. Demonstrably they are not getting enough out of our wealth and civilization. They are not growing up to full capacity. They are failing to assimilate much of the culture. As was predictable, most of the authorities and all of the public spokesmen explain it by saying there has been a failure of socialization. They say that background conditions have interrupted socialization and must be improved. And, not enough effort has been made to guarantee belonging, there must be a better bait or punishment. However, perhaps there has not been a failure of communication. Perhaps the social message has been communicated clearly to the young men and is unacceptable. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
However, socialization to what? to what dominant society and available culture? Is the harmonious organization to which the young are inadequately socialized, perhaps against human nature, or not worthy of human nature, and therefore there is difficulty in growing up? If this is so, the disaffection of the young is profound and it will not be finally remediable by better techniques of socializing. Instead, there will have to be changes in our society and its culture, so as to meet the appetites and capacities of human nature, in order to grow up. Growth, like any ongoing function, requires adequate objects in the environment to meet the needs and capacities of the growing child boy, young, and young man, until he can better choose and make his own environment. It is not a “psychological” question of poor influences and bad attitudes, but an objective question of real opportunities for worthwhile experience. It makes no difference whether the growth is normal or distorted, only real objects will finish the experience. (Even in the psychotherapy of adults one finds that many a stubborn symptom vanishes if there is a real change in the vocational and sexual opportunities, so that the symptoms are no longer needed.) It is here that the theory of belonging and socializing breaks down miserably. For it can be shown—I intended to show—that with all the harmonious belonging and all the tidying up background conditions that you please, our abundant society is at present simply deficit in many of the most elementary objective opportunities and worthwhile goals that could make growing up possible. It is lacking in enough man’s work. It is lacking in honest public speech, and people are not taken seriously. It is lacking in the opportunity to be useful. It thwarts aptitude and creates stupidity. It corrupts ingenuous patriotism. It corrupts the fine arts. It shackles science. It dampens animal ardour. It discourages the religious convictions of Justification and vocation and it dims the sense that there is a Creation It has no honour. It has no community. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Just look at that list There is nothing in it that is surprising, in either the small letters or the capitals. I have nothing subtle or novel to say in this report; these are the things that everybody knows. And nevertheless the leaders of the church says, “We must give young men a sense of belonging.” Thwarted, or starved, in the important objects proper to young capacities, the boys and young men naturally find or invent deviant objects for themselves; this is the beautiful shaping power of our human nature. Their choices and inventions are rarely charming, usually stupid, and often disastrous; we cannot expect average kids to deviate with genius. However, on the other hand, the young men who conform to the dominate society become for the most part apathetic, disappointed, cynical, and wasted. (I say the “young men and boys” rather than the “young people” because the problems I want to discus in this report belong primarily, in our society, to the boys: how to be useful and make something of oneself. A girl does not have to, she is not expected to, “make something” of herself. Her career does not have to be self-justifying, for she will have children, which is absolutely self-justifying, like any other natural or creative act. With this background, it is less important, for instance, what job an average young woman works at till she is married. The quest for the glamour job is given at least a little substance by its relation to a “better” marriage. Correspondingly, our “youth troubles” are boys’ troubles—female delinquency is sexual: “incorrigibility” and unmarried pregnancy. Yet as every woman knows, for if the body do not grow to be men, where shall the women find men? If the husband is running the rat race of the organized system, there is not much father for the children.) “A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed,” reports Proverbs 11.25. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
There reason many people are not growing is because they are not sowing. They are living self-centered lives. Unless they change their focus and start reaching out to others, they will probably remain in a depressed condition, emotionally, financially, socially, and spiritually. The Scripture says, “Whatever a man sows, that he will also reap,” reports Galatians 6.7. All through the Christian Bible, we find the principle of sowing and reaping. Just as if one hopes to reap the harvest, a famer must plant some seeds, we, too, must plant some good seeds in the fields of our families, careers, businesses, and personal relationship. What if the farmer decided that he did not really feel like planting, that he was tired, so he “felt led” to sit around and hope the harvest would come in? He would be waiting around his whole life! No, he must get the seed in the ground. That is the principle God established. In the same way, if we want to reap good things, we, too, must show some good seeds. Notice, we reap what we sow. If you want to reap happiness, you have to sow some “happiness” seeds by making other people happy. If you want to reap financial blessings, you must sow financial seeds in the lives of others. If you want to reap friendships, you should sow a seed and be a friend. Some people say, “I have a lot of problems of my own. I do not are about sowing seeds. I want to know how I can get out of my mess.” This is how you can get out of your mess. “If you want God to solve your problems, help solve somebody else’s problem. In biblical times, great famine struck the land of Canaan. People did not have any food or water, and they were in desperate need. So Isaac did something that people without insight may have thought rather odd: “In the middle of that famine, Isaac sowed a seed in the land. And in that same year he received one hundred times what he planted and the Lord rewarded him greatly,” reports Genesis 26.12. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
In his time of need, Isaac did not wait around, expecting someone else to come to his rescue. No, he acted in faith. He rose up in the midst of that famine and sowed a seed. God supernaturally multiplied that seed, and it brough him out of his need. Maybe you are in some sort of famine today. It could be a financial famine, or maybe you are simply famished for friends. It is possible you need a physical healing. Perhaps you need peace in your home. Whatever the need, one of the best things you can do is to get your mind off yourself and help meet someone else’s need. Sow some seeds of happiness. That is the way to receive a huge harvest. The Bible says, “In times of difficulty, trust in the Lord and do good,” reports Psalm 37.1-3. It is not enough to say, “God I trust You. know You are going to meet all my needs.” That is like the farmer not planting any seeds and expecting a fabulous harvest. Scripture says there are two things we must do in times of trouble. First, we must trust in the Lord: and second, we must go out and do something good. Go out and sow some seed. If you need a financial miracle, go by someone a cup of coffee tomorrow morning, or give a little extra in the offering at church. If you do not have any money, do some physical work for somebody; mow somebody’s lawn, pull some weeds, wash their windows. Make someone a pie. Do something to get some seed in the ground. If you are lacking in friends, do not sit at home alone month after month, feeling sorry for yourself. When you make other people happy, God will make sure that your life is filled with joy. We need to be more seed-oriented than need-oriented. In your time of need, do not sit around thinking about what you lack. Think about what kind of seed you can sow to get yourself out of that need. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
My dear Devout, to avoid those dreary discussions, those shaggy syllogisms, about the inner workings of this most profound Sacrament. Why? Because they come up with such funny conclusions. And frankly, because they tend to induce doubt rather than increase faith. Which is another way of saying their conclusions may be curiouser, but are the necessarily seriouser? A good text for this might come from Proverbs: “The person who undertakes an intellectual investigation of Majesty may well find it only to be blinded by its glory,” reports Proverbs 3.21, 25.27. Another way of putting it is that the Godhead has more modes of operation than Humankind has of intellection. Nonetheless, always tolerable is the pious and humble inquiry to the Truth. It is prepared to learn something and strives to entertain the sane and sound opinions of the Fathers. Blessed is the simplicity that can free itself from the intellectual entanglements of University thinking and forge ahead down Faith’s plain and firm path, where every paver’s a command or a commandment. All of which is another way of saying that many Devouts in higher studies—that is to say, as Jesus son of Sirach has said, studies beyond one’s competence (3.22)—lose their devotion while striving too hard to succeed intellectually. What is needed in life, My dear friend, is faith as well as sincerity. Not depth or height, nor breadth or sweep of intellect. Ans certainly not mastery of the Mysteries of God. If you do not come to grips with the World within, how do you expect to comprehend the World without? Let God be your tutor and give your senses a good schooling in faith. Then the light of knowledge will come. Perhaps not the full flood, but certainly flickering enough for you to complete your studies without losing your sight. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Dear Lord in Have, today I choose to focus on the needs of others rather than my own I believe that as I plant seeds of goodness in other people’s lives, You will do something similar in my own life. Thank You, Father, for the blessings that are coming! Awakening in a moment of peace, I give thanks to the source of all peace as I set forth into the day. The beautiful birds sing with new voices and I listen with new ears and give thanks nearby. The flower called Angels’ Trumpet blows in the breeze and I give thanks. My feet touch the beautiful emerald green grass, still wet with the morning’s dew, and I give thanks, both to my mother Earth, for sustaining my steps, and to the seas, cycling once again to bring forth new life. The dewdrops become jewelled with the morning’s sun-fire and I give thanks. When the vision is clear, you can see forever. In this moment, each moment, I give thanks. Please send dew and rain for a blessing upon the Earth. Please satisfy us out of Thy bounty, O Lord. Do Thou bless this year, that it be for us a year of abundance. Praised by Thou, O Lord, who doest bless the years. Sound the great Shofar proclaiming our freedom. Raise the banner to assemble our exiles, and gather us together from the four corners of the Earth. Blessed art Thou, O God who wilt gather the dispersed of Thy people America. Restore our judges as of yore, and our consellors as aforetime, and thus remove from us grief and suffering. Reign Thou over us, O Lord, Thou alone in lovingkindness and mercy and vindicate us in judgment. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, Thou King, who lovest righteousness and judgement. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the King of judgment. You have been given a glimpse of the goal. Now you must strive to attain that goal. The glimpse itself has enable you to understand the consciousness and the characteristics to strive for. Both are so subtle that words merely hint at them and may be meaningless. In receiving an experience beyond words, you have therefore been so fortunate as to be favoured with the Overself’s Grace. The momentary feeling of peace one experienced may be an intimation of the still greater peace one may know if one takes the trouble to purse the opportunity of developing it through the Quest. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
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I am on My Way to the Next City and I Have Already Been Delayed!
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Be bold in what you stand for and careful in what you fall for. Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries. Patience is a virtue that carries a lot of wait. These ascetics are living answers to the question that nobles and intellectuals in the New World eagerly posed to their physicians: Can one achieve permanent celibacy, and if so, how? Accounts of the lives of celibates became popular. Scholars did fieldwork, living with and observing celibates in Egypt. They collected and published sayings of the fathers, which readers fell upon and cherished for their great truths. By the end of the fifth century, the New World had transplanted and modified this Old World, desert-based asceticism so that in the sixth century, monasteries also appeared there. Like their Eastern counterparts, these, too, had rules. St. Benedict’s Rule, seventy-three chapters long, made Benedict Western monasticism’s patriarch. Benedict’s ideal monastery was a single edifice with the elected abbot, whose brothers renounced all private property and swore perpetual poverty, chastity, and obedience to the rules of their community. However, unlike the Eastern retreats, Benedict’s was the training ground for Christian soldiers. “We must create a scola [unit of the militia] for the Lord’s service,” he wrote. Benedict’s goal was to form a school of divine servitude in which nothing too heavy or rigorous would be established, and effectively eliminate what Westerns considered excessive Eastern asceticism. How can a actualized Christian in today’s World of secure Christendom be expected to tolerate the privations of the era of pagan persecutions? #RandolphHarris 1 of 27
Homosexuality became rampant in some permissive cloisters where celibacy was a flickering light at best, an extinguished wick at worst. Benedict’s Rule had attempted to forestall it by forbidding obvious temptations. Two actualized Christians were never to sleep in one bed. Lights were to be kept burning the night long, and the actualized Christians had to sleep fully clothed. Bathing, involving as it does the allure of the unclothed body, was discouraged and was permitted only as a complicated procedure in which concealing garments were never removed all at the same time, so that various body parts were never exposed, even to their owner, in one enticing expanse of moistly glistening flesh. A large part of the problem with celibacy is that many people in the church forgot the primacy of their religion focus. Wealth, sometime great wealth, stole into their collectivities, preoccupying and seducing them. They became major landowners with vast agricultural capacity and committed, unpaid workforce. Some celibates and their relatives from wealthier families, along with other devout Christians, willed the monasteries fortunes and more property. The holdings remained intact, protected from division between two or more legatees, as secular possession were. Abbots of these empires had to be saints—and a few were—to resist the pull of power and the lure of luxury their position offered. And once a monastery’s Old Man sacrificed spirituality and wisdom for savior faire and cynicism, his celibates’ souls went unprotected from the Devil’s best efforts. Many monasteries eventually became huge, wealthy corporations without temporal protection, so feudal nobles and kings preyed on, attacked, terrorized, dismantled, and robbed them. #RandolphHarris 2 of 27
If the monasteries were to survive, the truth was, alliances with temporal powers became essential. Perhaps they ought not to have, for in surviving by compromise rather than unenviable asceticism, they were transmogrified into travesties of what monasteries had once been. They even began to own churches, evidence of how they now accommodated to the Church, whose scrambling conformities and squabblings they had originally escaped by running away to the desert. The tortuous historical development of monasteries and the Church piloted actualized Christians away from the celibate ideal and lifestyle. Reform of the sorry and chaotic mess that was medieval monasticism led back to it. In 1073, the Benedictine monk Hildebrand became Pope Gregory VII and unleashed his own burning agenda on his extended flock: perfect celibacy for all Christians. Many laypeople celebrated and also adopted celibacy. If it was strictly for procreation, other Church’s taught that pleasures of the flesh within marriage was acceptable. Centuries after monasticism was corrupted by the riches and the slack values of the World, monasteries were again returning to the asceticism that originally assisted monks who strove to achieve both carnal and spiritual celibacy. If therefore virginity is essentially a charism (compelling attractiveness or charm that can inspire devotion in others), then it is a particular “manifestation of the Spirit,” because that is how a charism is defined in the New Testament (1 Corinthians 12.7). If it is a charism, then it is more a gift received from God than a gift given to God. Jesus’ words: “You have not chosen Me; on the contrary, I have chosen you,” reports John 15.16. That Scripture applies to virgins in an altogether special way. One does not choose celibacy and virginity in order to enter into the Kingdom, but because the Kingdom has entered into one. #RandolphHarris 3 of 27
In other words, one does not remain a virgin to save one’s soul more easily, but because the Kingdom, or rather the Lord, has taken possession of one, chosen one, and one feels the need to remain free to respond fully to that choice. We can already begin to see the need for a conversion in connection with virginity and celibacy. This conversion consists in moving from the attitude of someone who thinks they have given a gift or made a sacrifice, a big sacrifice, to the quite different attitude of someone who is aware of having received a gift, and a great gift, and needs most of all to give thanks. We must admit that sometimes that feeling is present in consecrated persons, at a more or less conscious level Sometimes our married brothers and sisters encouraged such a view without realizing it, by comments like: “What a sacrifice, what courage it takes to give up the chance to have your own family and live alone, to give up such a brilliant future and lock yourself up in a seminary or a convent!” And possibly we end up believing it ourselves. Whereas if our vocation is genuine we know that precisely the opposite is true and that they ought to exclaim: “How fortunate!” I believe that there is no one called to this way of following Christ who at some time—especially at the beginning, when the vocation begins to blossom—has not clearly seen, or at least glimpsed, that what they were receiving was for them the greatest grace of God, after Baptism. If virginity or celibacy is a charism, then it must be lived charismatically, and to live it charismatically means, quite simply, living it as one usually lives a gift. First of all, with humility. The great martyr Ignatius of Antioch, living very close to the apostolic era, wrote: “If a person manages to live in chastity in honour of the Lord’s flesh, let one live it with humility, because if he boasts of it, he is lost, and if he considers himself greater than a bishop he is ruined.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 27
Some Fathers, such as St. Hermon, St. Augustine and St. Bernard, even said “better an unchaste, humble person than a proud virgin.” There is a great affinity between humility and chastity, just as there is between pride and lust. Lust is carnal pride and pride is spiritual lust. Celibates and virgins are particularly exposed to the temptation of pride. They are people who have never knelt to a creature, or recognized their incompleteness and their need for another person by saying: “Give me your being, because my own is not sufficient for me!” “Man—it has been said with profound truth—is a proud being. There was no way to make him understand his neighbour, except by making that neighbour enter in to his flesh. There was no way to make him understand dependency, necessity and need, except through the law of submission to another, for no other reason than that the other exists.” The first and most radical form of submission is that of man to woman and woman to man. In a different, non-conjugal way, celibates and virgins also live this form of submission, which is so valuable for overcoming self-sufficiency, pride and independence. However, they are certainly less “conditioned” by the other gender and therefore more exposed to the spirit of pride. A visitator sent by the ecclesiastical authorities to a certain community of very austere and cultured virgins (I think it was the famous Port Royal community) had occasion to write in his report: “These women are as pure as angels, but as proud as demons.” So, the first way to live the gift of chastity is humility. The second is joy and peace, because it is written that “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy and peace,” Galatians 5.22, and if perfect chastity for the sake of the Kingdom is a “charism,” it must manifest the fruits of the Spirit. #RandolphHarris 5 of 27
Furthermore, if virginity is a charism it must be lived with freedom, because again it is written that “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom,” reports 2 Corinthians 3.17. Interior freedom, obviously, not exterior: it means the absence of complexes, taboos, embarrassment and fear. Certainly, great harm was done to Christian virginity in the past by surrounding it with a great mass of fears, suspicions and warnings: “Be careful of this watch out for that!”, thereby turning the vocation into a kind of highway where all road signs read: Danger! Danger! This is a repetition of the mistake made by the lazy servant in the Gospel who, having received a precious talent, is afraid to lose it, so he goes off and buries it rather than making it bear fruit. We have allowed the World to think that the principle at work in it is stronger than the principle at work in us, whereas St. John tells Christians clearly: “He Who is within you is greater than the one who is in the World,” reports 1 John 4.4. At times we really have put the lamp “under the bushel” when it should be put on the lampstand to give light to all who are in the house, in other words, in the Church. We have seen that virginity for the sake of the Kingdom is both a paschal detachment from the World and a prophecy about the future life. In the past, religious men and women chose to give witness, through the colour and cut of their habits and by other signs, especially in their renunciation of the World and their separation from it. If some new religious communities—and traditional ones, too, in some way—also showed the World the other, more important, aspect of their charism: the fact that they are an anticipation, in faith and hope, of the shining joy of the Heavenly American, when the bride will wear a robe of “fine linen, pure and bright” (Revelation 19.8), would it not be a fine and timely thing? #RandolphHarris 6 of 27
Even if it is good to remember that the best witness to this joy is the light in one’s eyes and the unction of one’s speech, rather than the colour of one’s clothes, such witnesses, so absolute in its eloquence of a different beauty and a different hoy which do not decay, is perhaps more necessary for the World than the negative testimony which speaks of flight from the World. However, perhaps the most important result of speaking about virginity and celibacy in terms of charism is that the latent opposition between virginity and marriage, which has so beset both Christian vocations, is finally laid to rest. Virginity is a charism, and marriage is a charism too. Both are therefore particular “manifestations of the Spirit.” If both come “from the same Spirit,” how can they be incompatible or opposed to each other? In the notion of a charism, and that of vocation, which is closely related to it, the two forms of life can finally be fully reconciled and can even strengthen one another. The one conforms the other, it does not destroy it. Precisely because in the Christian view marriage is considered to be something good, and a spiritual gift, so, for that very reason, virginity and celibacy are beautiful and noble. If marriage were something bad or simply dangerous and inadvisable, indeed, what merit would there be? To abstain from it would be a duty and nothing more, like abstaining from any occasion of sin. However, precisely because marriage is good and beautiful, the renunciation of it for a higher motive is even more beautiful. A person who goes to listen to a fine concert is doing something good and wholesome, but if, even though they really wanted to go, they forgo the concert out of love—for example, so they can be close to someone they love and help them feel less lonely—it is an even better thing. In this sense Paul says that “the one who marries does well; and the one who does not marry does better still,” reports 1 Corinthians 7.38. #RandolphHarris 7 of 27
Another dimension of maintaining balance in relationships is giving up our need to be “right” all the time. We must become more willing to express ourselves, listen to others, and learn from one another, rather than always judging who is “right” and who is “wrong.” However, the World system is mostly based on right and wrong. If one admits fault, they are penalized. Therefore, people are taught to deny the truth to protect themselves and their assets. If we can learn to “agree to disagree” with one another, then love will flow freely even when there are great differences among people. One measure of the strength of love is the extent to which it, like glue, brings the most diverse elements together in a common bond. The actualizing Christian learns to relate respectfully to other people without judging them harshly or rejecting them. Love enables us to seek to understand others, and every person is worth understanding. The actualizing Christian recognized the privilege of Americans, the Old World, and other Christians to be different. Openness to others who are different replaces defensiveness; yet in one’s own core, the Christian can still radiate the presence of Christ in the World. However, the opposite of love is fear of loving. As we stressed in the past, fear can constrict one into nonliving. To be committed to the well-being of ourselves and others means cutting through fear to make a commitment, without guarantee that our love will be returned. This requires the courage to risk possibly facing some pain and disappointment, because there will be many who will not return the love or will even return disdain instead. We must have the courage to accept that we will occasionally be hurt in our attempts to truly love others. Yet, ewe can realize that the joy and fulfillment of love in our life makes it worth coping with the hurt and vulnerability that sometimes happens. #RandolphHarris 8 of 27
Here is what the Spirit of God has been saying to me for some time: There is coming a day when the people of God will even take authority over the pestilence that we know in this hour. The World will say, “Who are these that the pestilence never touch?” Some of this has already happened. I know of a family who, when they built a patio on the back of the house, said, “The mosquitoes and files are not going to keep us from using it.” They took the Word of God and marched around the backyard, quoting what the Word said about being redeemed from the pestilence. People who have been there say you can be in the backyard or on that patio and you will never be bitten by a mosquito, nor will a fly bother you. However, you better not try the front porch! That may sound silly to some, but you cannot argue with success! Learn to use your words accurately, whether in prayer or in speech. Now you do not learn to operate in this overnight, just as you do not learn to drive an Ultimate Driving Machine or fly an airplane overnight. It is a process of learning, then putting into practice what you have learned. Learn from the Word of God; then put it into practice. Practice your faith. The Word says that whatever you do will prosper (Psalm 1.3) and that no weapon formed against you shall prosper (Isaiah 54.17). Learn to use these scriptures to destroy defeat. The Word says that humans have dominion over the fish of the sea and the fowl of the air. When I began to see this, I started using my confession of the Word to catch more dish. When I first learned about confession, I did not want to get in over my head, so I said, “I will just start using it in the little things.” I would advise one to do the same. Start believing God for your next parking place when you go downtown. #RandolphHarris 9 of 27
Just so, Jesus Christ’s blessed precursor, most excellent of Saints, John the Baptist—if Luke is to be believed (1.44)—somersaulted in the joy of the Holy Spirit while still enjoying the comfort of his mother’s womb. Years later as a grown man, he was able to pick Jesus out of a crowd and, according to John (3.29), speak about Him with admiration and affection. “Do not look at me! I am only the Bridegroom’s friend. He is the Bridegroom! Stop! Listen to Him! His are the words of the Joy of the joys.” So to should I stop and listen. And with great and holy desire should I be spitted and broiled and presented to You en brochette. Whence, I offer up to You all of my fellow Devouts, with their Dulce Jubilo’s, their inflamed hearts, their ecstasies, their vision. I offer also all Virtues and Lauds, from every creature in Heaven and on Earth that has been celebrated and will be celebrated. I offer them for myself and for everyone who has been commended to me for prayer. That prayer is, may You be worthily praised by everyone and glorified in every age. Accept my vows, Lord my God. You are Laudation and Benediction; You are Infinity and Immensity; You are Multitude and Magnitude—these are the sorts of things the Psalmist would say (150.2). You are all of these divine attribute and virtues, and more, and I offer them back to You, every single day, every single moment. And with prayers and affections, I invite and beseech all the Celestial Spirits and all Your faithful to thank You and to praise You, as You have come to expect. Some exclamations! May all the peoples, tribes, languages praise You! May they magnify Your Holy and Mellifluous Name with jubilation and devotion! May all of you celebrate the highest Sacrament with full reverence and receive it with full faith! #RandolphHarris 10 of 27
May they deserve to find grace and mercy in Your presence! May they pray successfully for my sinfulness! May they have the devotion they have desired, the union they have enjoyed, the consolation they have longed for, the refections they have tasted! Then may they leave the Holy and Heavenly Table. Then and only then may they remember me for my poverty. Joseph Smith and several elders left Kirtland Missouri on June 19, 1831. They traveled by wagon, canal boat, and stagecoach to Cincinnati, Ohio. Here they boarded a steam boat for St. Louis. Boat transportation between St. Louis and the western borders of Missouri was hazardous, infrequent, and very slow. Rather than wait for river transportation, for they were anxious to get to western Missouri, they walked the two hundred and fifty miles from St. Louis to Independence, arriving the middle of July. It was a joyful meeting between these men and the Saints who had been in Missouri since the beginning of the year. Shortly after his arrival, Joseph received a revelation from the Lord: This is the land of promise, and the place of the city of Zion. Behold, the place which is now called Independence, is the center place, and the spot for the temple is lying westward upon a lot which is not far from the courthouse. Wherefore it is wisdom that the land should be purchased by the Saints; and also every tract lying westward. An also every tract bordering by the prairies, inasmuch as my disciples are enabled to buy lands. Behold, this is wisdom, that they may obtain it for an everlasting inheritance. In this revelation the Lord indicated that the land of Missouri would be Zion, and that the city of Independence would be the Center place. This revelation made several assignments of responsibility to the various elders. Sidney Gilbert was to be the agent in purchasing the land, which was to be bought according to the laws of the land. #RandolphHarris 11 of 27
Sidney Gilbert was also to establish a store and sell goods honestly so he might obtain money to buy more land for the Saints. Edward Partridge was to assign the land to the Saints as they came to Zion. William Phelps was to become the church printer, and also to do printing for those of the community who wished him to do work for them. Oliver Cowdery was to assist William Phelps and help select the things to be printed for the use of the church. The bishop and his agent (Edward Partridge and Sidney Gilbert) were to make preparations for the families who were soon coming to the land of Zion. Toward the end of July about sixty people from Colesville, New York arrived. With them were Sidney Rigdon, his wife, and other elders. The settlement of Zion was now begun in earnest! The Colesville Branch settled about twelve miles west of Independence (near where the Central Church of Kansas City now stands). At that time there was no Kansas City, only a few crooked paths and several log houses scattered throughout a dense forest. Quite a ceremony was held as Colesville Branch built the first house. Twelve men carried the first log. Each man represented one of the twelve tribes of America. Sidney Rigdon, prayed, dedicating the land of Zion for the gathering of the Saints. On August 2, 1831, Sidney Rigdon stood before a meeting of the Saints and asked, “Do you receive this land for the land of your inheritance with thankful hearts from the Lord?” They all answered, “We do.” He then asked, “Do you pledge yourselves to keep the laws of God on this land?” All answered, “We do.” To his third question, “Do you pledge yourselves to keep the laws of God on this land?” All answered, “We do.” All knelt in prayer to the Lord. Then Sidney Rigdon stood up and said, “I now pronounce this land dedicated to the Lord for inheritance of the Saints in the name of Jesus Christ, and for all the faithful servants of the Lord forever. Amen.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 27
The following day eight elders met together for a special dedication service. These men were Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, Sidney Rigdon, Peter Whitmer, Edward Partridge, William Phelps, Martin Harris, and Joseph Coe. Sidney Rigdon dedicated the ground for the city of Zion. Joseph Smith laid a stone in the name of Jesus Christ at a corner of the place where the temple they planned to build would stand. Joseph Smith, Jr., was not too happy with living conditions as he found them in Missouri. Life in Missouri was in sharp contrast to the settled, ore genteel conditions of life he had experienced in the East. This was rough pioneer country where schooling, religion, and refined manners were not considered essential; and the pioneers did not welcome the “Mormons,” as they called them, and were as uncongenial to them as the people from the east were to the Missourians. However, when the land itself, Joseph Smith was well pleased. He thought that is the Saints would bring a better grade of cattle, good grain, and farming tools, along with the will to establish and maintain schools, conditions would improve, and Missouri would indeed become the promised land of their highest hopes. The failure to sustain this glimpse is not due to one’s personal demerit but to one’s system’s limitation. For only by passing from an actualized Christian philosophy, or rather by widening it, can permanence of result be had. If it soon fades away, it is a glimpse. If one can stay in it every minute of one’s waking life, it is illumination. An intermittent enlightenment which comes like this in moments is only a step on the way. One should not be satisfied with it. Nothing short of total enlightenment which is permanent, constant, and ever-present ought to be one’s goal. The continued existence of this experience, the lengthening of this glimpse into perpetual vision, is something that cannot be brought about without patience, care, effort, guidance, and grace. #RandolphHarris 13 of 27
It is one thing to secure an enthralling glimpse, but it is another thing for this, native to Heaven and alien to Earth, to endure through the prosaic routine and belittling affairs of everyday living. The ability to maintain oneself in the high state reached during these glimpses is ordinarily lacking in a human, for it requires the whole power of one’s being. In these glimpses one only looks at the Infinite Beauty, but in the final realization one becomes unified with it. Once one has experienced the glimpse one will understand why one’s next goal is to experience it again, and why one’s final goal is to attain it in permanence. That initial realization has henceforth to be established and made one’s own under all kinds of diverse conditions and in all kinds of places. Hence one’s life may be broken up for years by a wide range of vicissitudes, pains, pleasures, test, temptations, and tribulations. If it be asked why these momentary revelations come and go all too quickly, the answer may be given by saying it is because the nature remains untransformed. Only when fully transformed can it be illuminated. Until the whole nature is transformed, it cannot hold the Light but must let it go eventually. Few can continue in the glimpse, for the lesser nature soon rises to the surface again and overwhelms them. Since there are no negative emotions in the Overself, how can it stay in the same breast as an ego filled with them? This is why the glimpse can be only a brief one, and why it can be stretched into permanency only by first cleansing the nature of al negatives. Let us value these encounters with the divine and be glad and truly grateful when they happen. They are significant and important. However, they are special events. The quest does not run through them alone. It runs just as much through ordinary daily life in which our experiences are shared in common with so many people. #RandolphHarris 14 of 27
Social and behavioural scientist have for a long time appreciated the fact that early childhood experience in the family of origin will set the stage for later adult functioning. Within certain schools of thought, the influence of early childhood experiences has, frankly, been taken too far. One can use the metaphour of the woolly mammoth to characterize the function of early childhood experiences postulated by psychoanalytic theory. Some clinicians are critical of the assumption that our interpersonal and psychological constitutions are frozen in ice, forever preserved, once our childhoods are over. It is essential to bear in mind that scientist have yet to isolate any deterministic relationships between childhood interpersonal experiences and later adult psychosocial functioning. The implications of experiences within the family of origin for later mental health must be interpreted with this caveat in mind. In it widely understood and accepted that parental neglect and abuse are precursors to numerous mental health problems, including alcoholism, depression, loneliness, personality disorders, eating disorders, somatoform disorders, and psychogenic dysfunctions involving pleasures of the flesh, to name just some. Abuse or some form of neglect (exempli gratia, low parental care) has been conclusively identified as either a contributory factor, or a phenomenon that occurs with remarkable prevalence, in the vast majority of psychological problems examined. The data that link childhood physical and sexual abuse to later adult psychosocial problems are virtually overwhelming. What are particularly impressive are both the range and severity of problems occurring in the wake of such noxious interpersonal maltreatment. One might speculate that children, even those at a very young age, understand and desire the caregiving role and behaviour of their parents. When a provider of care and support turns on a child through either neglect or more overt abuse, a corrupted interpersonal architecture is produced that in many cases will never support the construction of functional and satisfying personal relationships in the future. #RandolphHarris 15 of 27
The avoidance or alleviation of unpleasant internal states becomes a dominant goal for people who have experience childhood abuse from the perspective of emotional avoidance. Many of the psychosocial problems that follow, such as substance use disorders, bulimia nervosa, dissociation, social phobia, dysfunctions in pleasures of the flesh, and somatoform disorders, could be interpreted as a mechanism for escape or distraction from memories of such painful experiences, and perhaps a means of reducing the likelihood of further abuse. The binge eating offers an escape from self-awareness by narrowing attention to the immediate stimulus (id est, food). It is plausible to assume that many of other destructive behaviours implicated in the eating disorders, such as drug and alcohol consumption, could similarly serve as mechanisms for escape from self-awareness. Unfortunately, for many people, a sad feature of the maladjustment that follows childhood maltreatment is a propensity to be situated in interpersonal contexts in which further maltreatment is likely (exempli gratia, socializing with drug-using peers). It is a lesser-known fact that excessive parental attention and caregiving may have equally devastating consequences for later personal relationships and mental health When parents fail to maintain the delicate balance between a secure, nurturant environment and a healthy dose of reality and responsibility, the child may develop a self-image that simply cannot be sustained by future relational partners. A gross failure to develop a sense of altruism is a potential consequence. Once again, the blueprints for disaster, ultimately manifested in problems such as loneliness and personality disorders, may well be drawn before a child even leaves the home. #RandolphHarris 16 of 27
As we have seen, depression can result from marital discord, and recovery from depression is often slower for people who do not receive support from their spouse. In fact, as many as half of all depressed clients may be in a dysfunctional relationship. Thus it is not surprising that many cases of depression have been treated by couple therapy, the approach in which a therapist works with two people who share a long-term relationship. Shared responsibility—when the client’s disorders occur within the context of a troubled marriage or relations, couple therapy has proved to be an effective treatment for depression. Therapists who offer behavioural martial therapy help spouses change harmful marital behaviour by teaching them specific communication and problem-solving skills. When the depressed person’s marriage is laden with conflict, this approach and similar ones may be as effective as individual cognitive therapy, interpersonal psychotherapy, or drug therapy in helping to reduce depression. In addition, depressed clients who receive couple therapy are more likely than those in individual therapy to be more satisfied with their marriages after treatment. “Live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble,” reports 1 Peter 3.8. Everywhere you look these days, you can see people who are hurting. Some people are extremely discouraged; many have broken dreams. Others have made mistakes, and now their lives are in a mess. Because more people needed medication to help them through their problems, in 1962 came about the Kefauver-Harris Drug Amendments: In the spirit of consumer protection, Congress passed a law requiring that all pharmaceutical drugs be proved safe and effective. The law also transferred still more authority for prescription drug ads from the Federal Trade Commission (which regulates most other kinds of advertising to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). #RandolphHarris 17 of 27
In addition to medication and therapy, often times, people need to also feel God’s compassion and His unconditional love. They do not need somebody to judge and criticize them, or to tell them what they are doing wrong. (In most cases, they already know that!) Many people need someone to bring hope, healing, and to show God’s mercy. Really, they are looking for a friend, someone who will be there to encourage them, who will take the time to listen to their story and genuinely care. We are all so busy. We have our own priorities and important plans and agendas. Often, our attitude is: I do not want to be inconvenienced. Do not bother me with your problems. I have got enough problems of my own. However, the Scripture says, “If anyone sees one’s brother (or sister) in need yet closes one’s heart of compassion, how can the love of God be in one?” reports 1 John 3.17. Interesting, is it not? God’s Word implies that we each have a heart of compassion, but the question is whether it is open or closed. Furthermore, the Holy Bible says, “We are to continually walk in love, being guided by the love and following love,” reports 2 John 6. When God puts love and compassion in your heart toward someone, He is offering you an opportunity to make a difference in that person’s life. One must learn to follow that love. Do not ignore it. Act on it. Someone needs what you have to give. God has placed in you the potential to have a kind, caring, gentle, loving spirit. One has the ability to empathize, to feel what other people are feeling. Because one was created in the image of God, one has the moral capacity to experience God’s compassion in one’s heart right now. However, too often, because of one’s own selfishness, many people choose to close their hearts to others. #RandolphHarris 18 of 27
If your heart is opened or closed, how can you tell? Easy. Are you frequently concerned about other people, or are you concerned about yourself? Do you take the time to make a difference, to encourage others, to lift their spirits, to make people feel better about themselves? Do you follow the flow of love that God puts in your heart toward someone in need? Or are you too busy with your own plans? If you want to live a successful life now, you must make sure that you keep your heart of compassion open Be on the lookout for people you can bless. If it means you can help to meet someone else’s need, please be willing to be interrupted and inconvenienced every once in a while. If you study the life of Jesus Christ, you will discover that He always took time for people. He was never too busy with His own agenda, with His own plans. He was not so caught up in Himself that He was unwilling to stop and help a person in need. He could have easily said, “Listen, I am busty. I have a schedule to keep. I am on my way to the next city, and I have already been delayed.” However, no, Jesus had compassion for people. He was concerned what they were going though, and He willingly took the time to help. He freely gave of His life. I believe He demands nothing less from those who claim to be His followers today. Many people are unhappy and are not experiencing life to its fullest because they have closed their hearts to compassion. They are motivated by only what they want and what they think they need. They rarely do anything for anybody else unless they are an ulterior motive or goal in mind. They are self-involved and self-centered. However, if you want to experience God’s abundant life, you must get your focus off yourself and start taking the time to help other people. #RandolphHarris 19 of 27
Sometimes if we would just take the time to listen to people, we could help initiate a healing process in their lives. So man people today have hurt and pain bottled up deeply in their bowels. They have nobody they can talk to about mental hygiene; they do not really trust anyone anymore. If you dare to care and open your heart of compassion and be that person’s friend or sponsor—without judging or condemning—and simply have an ear to listen, you may help lift that heavy burden. You do not have to know all the right answers. You just need to care, but never let anyone drag you down. We need to learn to be better listeners. Do not always be so quick to give your opinion. Be sensitive to what the real need is in the person you hope to help. Too frequently, what we really want to do is just give them a quick word of encouragement, a semi-appropriate Scripture verse, and a fifteen-second prayer; then we can go one and do what we want to do. Instead, take the time today to hear someone with your heart, to show that person you are concerned, and that you really care. As humans evolved, there must have been a period of transition during which the carriers of the process could not have known what was happening to them or even that a change was taking place. Now in retrospect we can see it as an expansion of awareness which brought into being freedom and choice. The knowing mind begins to know itself and to perceive, along with the freedom to do this or that, a horror about which it has no freedom at all. As soon as we become able, floating down the river of life, really to see the remarkable scenery and to enjoy the newly acquired freedom to move this way or that in the current, at just that moment we hear the roar of the cataract ahead. This is the human condition. Amid the luscious fruits we see the coiled asp. We become, at one stroke, gods and food for worms. #RandolphHarris 20 of 27
Changes that come about glacially in the transformation of species are reenacted in a flash in the lives of individuals. Thus we may catch a glimpse, each in one’s own past, of that moment which recapitulates the birth of human, the beginning of that exaltation and anguish which has become for us the condition of life, the air we breathe. Human nature is invoked to prove the necessity of change, for “human nature” has been thwarted or insulted by the dominant system. “Man” can no longer be defined as what suits the dominant system, which the dominant system apparently does not always suit men or women or children. I think many social scientists have been making an error in logic. Certainly only society is the carrier of culture (it is not inborn). However, it does not follow that socialized and cultured are synonymous. What follows, rather, is that, since culture is so overwhelmingly evident in observing humankind, social properties must be of the essence of original “human nature, and indeed that the “isolated individual” is a product of culture. Many people tend to exaggerate the social nature of humanity by reading into it preformed traits of their own society. From the earliest infancy, imitation and emulation, love, striving to communicate, rivalry, exclusiveness, and jealousy, punishment, introjected authority, identification, growing up on a model, finding safety in conforming—these were among the conflicting elementary functions of “human nature” that must grow into culture. Every step of education is the resolution of a difficult social conflict. The techniques for harmoniously belongs to the organized system of society! If you use the right techniques, you can adapt people to anything. #RandolphHarris 21 of 27
Our social scientists have become so accustomed to the highly organized and by-and-large smoothly running society that they have begin to think that “social animal” means “harmoniously belonging.” They do not like to think that fighting and dissenting are proper social functions, not that rebelling or initiating fundamental change is a social function. Rather, if something does not run smoothly, they say it has been improperly socialized; there has been a failure in communication. The animal part is rarely mentioned at all; if it proves annoying, it too has been inadequately socialized. “Convulsive shudders” … “Unexpected uprising” … “wild swings” … The headline writers search frantically for terms to describe what they perceive as mounting World disorder. The democratic uprising in America stuns them. The sudden reversal of Maoist policies in China, the collapse of the dollar, the new militancy of the less affluent countries, outbreaks of rebellion in America or Afghanistan are all seen as startling, random, unconnected events. The World, we are told, is careening toward chaos. Yet mush that appears anarchic is not. The eruption of a new civilization on Earth could not but shatter old relationships, overthrow regimes, and send the financial system spiraling. What seems like chaos is actually a massive realignment of power to accommodate the new civilization. We will look back on today as the twilight of Third Wave civilization, and be saddened by what we see. For as it is coming to a close, the age of information is leaving behind a World in which one quarter of the species lives in relative affluence, three quarters in relative poverty—and 900,000,000 in what the World Bank terms “absolute poverty.” Fully 800,000,000 people are underfed and 1,100,000,000 illiterate. An estimated 550,000,000 human beings remain without access to public health facilities or even safe, drinkable water, as the age of information is ending. #RandolphHarris 22 of 27
While many Americans are still waiting for President Biden’s promised $2,000.00 a month and forgiveness of student loan debt to help get them through the pandemic, 522,808 Americans filed bankruptcy, and another variation of the COVID-19 Virus is sweeping the World, which could flatten humanity. On 22 December 2021, nearly a quarter of a million Americans were infected with COVID-19, approximately 1,900 died. America, with some of the harshest COVID-19 restrictions is leading the World in infections and deaths. As of 22 December 2021, 52,510,978 Americans have been infected with COVID-19, 833,029 have died. That means 16 percent of Americas have been infected with COVID so far. The age of information is leaving behind a World population 8 BILLION human beings, when it was reported that the World was considered overpopulated at 5 billion. In addition, the World is being left with some 20 to 30 developing nations depending on the hidden subsidies of cheap energy and cheap raw materials for their economic success. A global infrastructure—the International Monetary Fund, GATT, the World Bank, and COMECON—which regulate trade and finance for the benefit of the Third Wave powers are in control. Many poor countries are being left with one-crop economies twisted to serve the needs of the rich. The rapid emergence of the Fourth Wave is not only foreshadowing the end of the Third Wave imperium, it also is exploding all over our conventional ideas about ending poverty on the planet. Once the populace is legitimately assembled as a sovereign body, all jurisdiction of the government ceases; the executive power is suspended, and the person of the humblest citizen is as scared and inviolable as that of the first magistrate, for where those who are represented are found, there is no longer any representative. #RandolphHarris 23 of 27
Americans need financial help and they need it now! Mr. Biden is not keeping his promises! He cheated to get in office and lied to quail the people. Under the leadership of Mr. Biden, due to ignorance or neglect of the United States Constitution, all jurisdiction has been suspended and the World is back to being the Wild, Wild West. This interval of suspension, during which the president recognizes or ought to recognize an actual superior (the people), is disturbing to him. And these assemblies of the people, which are the aegis of the body politic and the curb on the government, have at all times been the horror of leaders. Thus they never spare efforts, objections, difficulties, or promises to keep the citizens from having them. When the citizens were greedy, cowardly, and pusillanimous, more enamoured of repose than with liberty, they did not hold out very long against the redoubled efforts of the government. Thus it is that, as the resisting force constantly grows, the sovereign authority finally vanishes, and the majority of the cities fall and perish prematurely. However, between the sovereign authority and arbitrary government, there sometimes is introduced an intermediate power about which we must speak. Although war itself is full of horrors it must not be forgotten that it has an obverse side. In some ways it acts like the old-fashioned surgical operation of blood-letting. All the moral scum in humanity’s character rises to the surface, concentrated mostly amongst the totalitarian gangsters, but it rises only that it may be seen for what it is and cleared off. The sufferings of humankind have an educative vale and tend to adjust the sins and excesses of humankind. It is the ultimate tendency of evil forces to destroy themselves from within as well as to suffer destruction from without through the mysterious operation of Universal law. Materialism reaches its final culmination in the social and personal crises generated by war. #RandolphHarris 24 of 27
By displaying its own horrible results before humanity’s very eyes, it is, by reaction, awakening many sleeping mentalities to the need of a spiritual outlook. In a World which has the conflict of opposites as part of its inherent nature, peace is an illusory goal. Nor in reality is there even such a thing as neutrality and nonalignment. If brute force really ruled this World then the Romans would still be ruling the Britons, and the Huns who sacked Rome would still be ruling that beautiful city. The Persian troops would still be masters of Egypt and Alexander’s troops would still be the masters of Persians. The Crusades would be proselytizing Muslims in the Middle East by force and guarding the Southern American Boarder. However, brute force is a success only in the beginning and a failure always in the end. It is true that some wars seem to have achieved a creative result, but how much more painlessly, bloodlessly, could not the same result have been achieved by nonviolent methods. It might have required a longer time, more patience, but the cruelty and horror and loss of war would have been avoided. We may watch the democratic nations trying to prevent open conflict with the totalitarian ones, but all they are succeeding in doing is merely to put off the inevitable clash from one year to another, as violence erupts on their own streets in protest to democratic nations becoming totalitarian and totalitarian nations complaining about their conflict disorder spreading to other lands like a pandemic. This conflict cannot be hidden by the American fake news and puppet leaders because it is a bathe of good and evil and there must be conflict. The evil ever seeks to destroy the good, and the good must defend itself ever. It could not happen otherwise. #Randolphharris 25 of 27
Dear Lord in Heaven, please forgive your children for the times they have missed opportunities to show compassion to someone You brought into their lives. Please help your human family to be sensitive to Your voice speaking within them, directing them how they can best help someone else. Thou hast endowed us with a knowledge of Thy Torah and hast taught us to perform the statues of Thy will. Thou hast mase distinction, O Lord our God, between the sacred and the secular, between the Godly and the morbid, between American and the heathens, between the seventh day of rest and the six days of work. O our Father, our King, please grant that the days which are approaching may begin for us in peace. May we be withheld from all sin, cleansed for all iniquity, and may we cleave in reverence to Thee. O Lord, how lovely it is to be your guest. Breeze full of scents; mountains reaching to the skies; waters like a boundless mirror, reflecting the sun’s golden rays and the scudding clouds all nature murmurs mysteriously, breathing depths of tenderness. Birds and beasts of the forest bear the imprint of your love. Blessed are you, mother Earth, in your floating loveliness, which wakens our yearning for happiness that will last forever in the land where, amid beauty that grows not old, rings out the cry: Alleluia! What sort of praises can I give you? I have never heard the song of the cherubim, a joy reserved for the spirits above but I know the praises that nature sings to you. In winter, I have beheld how silently in the moonlight the whole Earth offers you prayer, clad in its white mantle of snow, sparkling like diamonds. I have seen how the rising sun rejoices in you, how the song of the birds is a chorus of praise to you. I have heard the mysterious mutterings of the forests about you, and the winds singing your praise as they stir the waters. I have understood how the choirs of the stars proclaim your glory as they move for ever in the depths of infinite space. #RandolphHarris 26 of 27
As if an enchanted paradise, dear Lord in Heaven, you have brought me into life. We have seen the sky like a chalice of deepest blue, where in the height the birds are singing. We have listened to the soothing murmur of the forests and the melodious music of the streams. We have tasted fruit of fine flavour and sweet-scented honey. We can live very well on your Earth. It is a pleasure to be your guest. Glory to you for the feast-day of life. Glory to you for the perfume of lilies and roses. Glory to you for each different taste of berry and fruit. Glory to you for the sparkling silver of early morning dew. Glory to you for the joy of dawn’s awakening. Glory to you for the new life each day brings. Glory to you O God, for age to age. O grant us knowledge, understanding and secernment. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who bestowest knowledge upon humans. Please bring us back, O our Father, to Thy Torah; please draw us near, O our King, to Thy service, and restore us unto Thy presence in wholehearted repentance. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who desirest repentance. Please forgive us, O our Father, for we have sinned; please pardon us O our King, for we have transgressed. Verily Thou art merciful and forgiving. Blessed art Thou, O gracious Lord, who are abundant in forgiveness. Please behold our affliction and plead our cause. Please hasten to redeem us for the sake of Thy name, for Thou art a mighty Redeemer. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, Redeemer of America. Please heal us, O Lord, and we shall be healed; please save us and we shall be saved, for to Thee we offer praise. Grant complete healing for all our ailments for Thou, O God, art our King, our faithful and merciful Healer. Praised art Thou, O Lord, who healest the sick among Thy people America. Blessed this year unto us, O Lord our God, and bless its yield that it may be for our welfare. Please send Thy blessing upon the Earth. Send dew and rain for a blessing upon the earth. #RandolphHarris 27 of 27
Cresleigh Homes
Ready for the holidays? We are so excited to welcome guests into our home this year…the Brighton Station Residence 2 has a spacious, open floorplan that’s perfect for entertaining!
So glad we’re settled in our #CresleighRanch home this year!
A little bit of glamour, a charm that’s cute and quaint; this could be paradise. Welcome to Cresleigh Homes!
Between Christ and Satan in the Demon World of Today
It is difficult to say exactly at what point fear begins, when the causes of that fear are not plainly before the eyes. Impression gather on the surface of the mind, film by film, as ice gathers upon the surface of still water, but so often so lightly that they claim no definite recognition from the conscious Then a point is reached where the accumulated impressions become a definite emotion, and the mind realized that something has happened. When a medium is called upon to relay a message which supposedly comes the realm of the dead, one usually goes into a trance. This is a “condition in which a spiritualist medium allegedly loses consciousness and passes under the control of some external force, as for the supposed transmission of communications from the dead.” In a state of unconsciousness, the necromancer may obtain communication in the for of automatic writing, but it usually comes through verbal speech. Sometimes the phenomenon called “materialization” occurs. This is defined as the ability on the part of some mediums “to create from unknown materials outside of their own body, some visible, tangible, more or less highly organized new formations supplied with their own illumination (such as efflorescent substance) for which formations in many cases, the human body in part or in whole forms a pattern, and these materializations appear and disappear suddenly. Many reputable writers report that the materializations actually have been photographed and carefully studied. They are sometimes called phantasms, and seem to speak while the medium appears to be unconscious. When a materialization does not occur, the unconscious sounds exactly like that of the deceased person one has been attempting to reach. Many people have gone to a séance believing the whole idea to be fraudulent, but have become firmly convinced that they truly heard a loved one who had died. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
Automatic writing is another baffling spiritisitic marvel. The mediums may, while in a trance, inscribe a paper with the exact handwriting of the deceased. At other times a pencil may write without being touched by the human hand or any apparent mechanical device. Then again, in some instances a phantasm does the transcribing. Of course, before we accept reports of this nature, we must recognize the possibilities of deliberate deceit, overwrought imagination, or inaccurate observation. If, on the other hand, one simply dismisses the testimony of intelligent, honest, God-fearing humans as having no value, one is not being fair. A further word of caution is in order. Christians may be tempted to conclude that these strange and unexplainable phenomena are proof of God’s existence. This is not correct because many of them may have a naturalistic explanation. Writings produced mysteriously in seances have been carefully examined by graphologist, and have even become the objects over which court battles have been fought. Spiritists usually attempt their alleged contact with the spirit World through a medium who enters what appears to be a trance, and receives some kind of communication in either verbal or written form. Undoubtedly some people who claim to have this ability are impostors, but hundreds of educated humans who have been closely involved in this activity or have conducted intensive investigation are convinced that extraordinary, perhaps supernatural, spiritual power is involved. However, those who believe the Holy Bible are certain that all necromancy is sinful and dangerous. As we look at the most considerable Evidence touching Florence Newton’s witchcraft upon Mary Longdon, for which she was committed to Youghall Prision, 24th March 1661, it is interesting to find that the following she bewitched one David Jones to death by kissing his hand through the Grate of the Prison, for which she was indicted at Cork Assizes. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
Elenor Jones, Relict of the said David Jones, being sworn and examined in open Court what she knew concerning any practice of Witchcraft by the said Florence Newton upon the said David Jones her Husband, gave in Evidence, that April last the said David, having been out all night, came home early in the morning, and said to her, Where dost thou think I have been all Night? To which she answered she knew not; whereupon he replied, I and Frank Beseley have been standing Centinel over the Witch all night. To which the said Elenor said, Why, what hurt is that? Hurt? Quoth he. Marry I doubt it is never a jot the better for me; for she hath kiss’d my Hand, and I have a great pain in that arm, and I verily believe she hath bewitch’d me, if ever she bewitch’d any Man. To which she answered, The Lord forbid! That all that Night, and continually from that time, he was restless and ill, complaining exceedingly of a great pain in his rm for seven days together, and at the seven days’ end he complained that the pain was come from his Arm to his Heart, and then kept his bed Night and Day, grievously afflicted, and crying out against Florence Newton, and about fourteen days after he died. Francis Beseley being sworn and examined, saith, That about the time aforementioned meeting with the said David Jones, and discoursing with him of the several reports then stirring concerning the said Florence Newton, that she had several Familiars resorting to her in sundry shapes, the said David Jones told him he had a great mind to watch her one Night to see whether he could observe any Cats or other Creatures resort to her through the Grate, as ‘twas suspected they did, and desired that said Francis to go with him, which he did. And that when they came thither David Jones came to Florence, and told her that he heard she could not say the Lord’s Prayer; to which she answered, She could. He then desir’d her to day it, but she excused herself by the decay of Memory through old Age. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
Then David Jones began to teach her, but she could not or would not say it, though often taught it. Upon which the said Jones and Beseley being withdrawn a little from her, and discoursing of her not being able to learn this Prayer, she called out to David Jones, and said, David, David, come hither, I can say the Lord’s Prayer now. Upon which David went towards her, and the said Deponent would have pluckt him back and persuaded him not to have gone to her, but he would not be persuaded, but went to the Greate to her, and she began to say the Lord’s Prayer, but could not say Forgive us our trespasses, so that David again taught her, which she seem’d to take very thankfully, and told him she had a great mind to have kiss’d him, but that the Grate hindered her, but desired she might kiss his Hand; whereupon he gave her his Hand through the Grate, and she kiss’s it; and towards break of Day they went away and parted, and soon after the Deponent heard that David Jones was il. Whereupon he went to visit him, [and was told by hum that the Hag] had him by the Hand, and was pulling off his Arm. And he said, Do you not see the old hang How she pulls me? Well, I lay my Death on her, she has bewitched me. Fourteen days languish he died. This concludes the account of Florence Newton’s trial, as given by Glanvill. It seems that the witch was indicted upon two separate charges, with bewitching the servant-girl, Mary Longdon, and with causing the death of David Jones. The case must have created considerable commotion in Youghal, and was considered so important that the Attorney-General went down to prosecute, but unfortunately there is no record of the verdict. If found guilty (and we can have little doubt but that she was), she would have been sentenced to death in pursuance of the Elizabethan Statute, section I. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
Many of the actors in the affair were persons of local prominence, and can be identified. The “Mr. Greatrix” was Valentine Greatrakes, the famous healer or “stroker.” He was born in 1629, and died in 1683. He joined the Parliamentary Army, and when it was disbanded in 1656, became a country magistrate. At the Restoration he was deprived of his offices, and then gave himself up to a life of contemplation. In 1662 the idea seized him that he had the power of healing the king’s-evil. He kept the matter quiet for some time, but at last communicated it to his wife, who jokingly bade him try his power on a body in the neighbourhood. Accordingly he laid his hands on the affected parts with prayer, and within a month the body was healed. Gradually his fame spread, until patients came to him from various parts of England as well as Ireland. In 1665 he received an invitation from Lord Conway to come to Ragely to cure his wife of perpetual headaches. He stayed at Ragley about three weeks, and while there he entertained his hosts with the story of Florence Newton and her doings; although he did not succeed in curing Lady Conway, yet many persons in the neighbourhood benefited by his treatment. The form of words he always used was: “God Almighty heal thee for His mercy’s sake”; and if the patient professed to receive any benefit he bade them give God the praise. He took no fees, and rejected causes which were manifestly incurable. In modern times the cured have been reasonably attributed to animal magnetism. He was buried beside his father at Affane, Co. Waterford. Some of his contemporaries had a very poor opinion of him; Increase Mather, writing in 1684, alludes contemptuously to “the late miracle-monger or Mirabilian stroaker in Ireland, Valentine Greatrix,” who he accused of attempting to cure an ague by the use of that “hobgoblin word, Abrodacara.”John Pyne the employer of the bewitched servant-girl, served as Bailiff of Youghal along with Edward Perry in 1664, the latter becoming Mayor in 1674; both struck tradesmen’ tokens of the usual type. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Richard Myres was Bailiff of Youghal in 1642, and Mayor in 1647 and 1660. The Rev. James Wood was appointed “minister of the gospel” at Youghal, by Commonwealth Government, at a salary of L120 per annum;in 1654 his stipend was raised to L140, and in the following year he got a further increase of L40. He was sworn in a freeman at large in 1656, and appears to have been presented by the Grand Jury in 1683 as a religious vagrant. Furthermore, it seems possible to recover the name of the Judge who tried the case at the Cork Assizes. Glanvill says that he took the Relation from “a copy of an Authentick Record, as I conceive, every half-sheet having W. Aston writ in the Margin, and then again W. Aston at the end of all, who in all likelihood must be some publick Notary or Record-Keeper.” This man, who is also mentioned in the narrative, is to be identified with Judge Sir William Aston, who after the establishment of the Commonwealth came to Ireland, and was there practising as a barrister at the time of the Restoration, having previously served in the royalist army. On 3rd November 1660 he was appointed senior puisne Judge of the Chief Place, and died in 1671. The story accordingly is based on the note taken by the Judge before whom the case was brought, and is therefore of considerable value, in that it affords us a picture, drawn by an eye-witness in full possession of all the facts, of a witch-trial in Ireland in the middle of the seventeenth century. In discussing the religious beliefs of people who seek to converse with the dead, we can distinguish between those who claim to be “Christian” and those who make no pretense of accepting historic Christianity. The distinction between these groups is sometimes made by using the term “spiritualist” to denote the ones who profess to believe the Bible, and designating the others as “spiritists.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
Believe it or not, after Mrs. Sarah Winchester lost her six-week-old daughter and husband, the distracted widow turned to spiritualism because she felt that she was haunted by spirits of the damned. Her husband, William Wirt Winchester was a man, a man of God. Celibacy had become Mrs. Winchester’s personal goal. It liberated her and fueled the spiritualist that sustained her in hopes of the eternal life she craved. Mrs. Winchester was always resplendent in luxurious clothes and bejeweled with bracelets, anklets, rings, and ropes of gold necklaces inlaid with pearls and precious stones. The fragrance of her perfume and cosmetics was pleasant. Mrs. Winchester’s beauty mesmerized everyone she came into contact with. God had inspired her to attend Center Church Praise House in New Haven, Connecticut. Mrs. Winchester felt at home in this church. She enjoyed the gospel. The sermon was so eloquent and moving that the floor was wet with the congregation’s tears. The Tiffany stained glass windows, which told the story of the Puritan settlers and how as they gathered under an oak tree, and Jesus led them to build the new Kingdom of God. Also, the Waterford crystal chandelier was a favourite her hers, the warm glow it provided made her feel the presence of God. There was also sumptuous music from the massive pipe organ that filled the air, while members sat in the beautiful ornate wooden pews praising the Lord. The exterior of the church was exquisite. It looked like a Roman palace. It was a traditional gorgeous red brick and white wood, adored with Corinthian pillars, and an amazing tower that reached to the Heavens as its focal point. However, this is when strange things started to happen. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
Mrs. Winchester noticed that the main floor of the church was raised up a few feet higher than the rest of the green. She was curious as to why. She went to the floor below, not without trepidation, and lite a candle, and discovered that underneath was a crypt. The church was built on top of an ancient cemetery with grave stones from the late 17th century to the early 19th century. The gravestones were left in their original position to be protected by the church’s foundation where a crypt, an enclosed chamber, around the burial ground was created. There were 137 grave stone that belonged to New Haven’s founders and earliest citizens. During her tour, Mrs. Winchester felt an intense spiritual energy, the colonial burial ground had been untouched. Mrs. Winchester always e practical views about spooks, but she had a vision of huntsmen—one of whom was untidily cutting the throat of a fallow deer upon the very grave of Reverend James Pierpont’s grave. She felt an awful and soul-freezing situation of horror and went back upstairs. Nothing much happened at the church dinner that night. However other worshippers, moved by Mrs. Winchester’s evident emotion, marveled in whispers about her. They said she must have been haunted by spirits and that is why she stumbled upon the secret crypt and the someone heard her conversing with the devil. A furious gust rattled the windows of the church, and she thought what a pity the congregation’s Christmas would be spent in such a climate. Days later, the Evil One appeared to Mrs. Winchester, pounding at her front door and shouting recriminations at Mrs. Winchester for stealing away his prize. She said a prayer, and the Evil One disappeared. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
Over the next week, Satan often reappeared, offering her jewels and riches to return to his service and moaning that she had jilted him. In response, she inventoried all her belongings and donated them to the church, her mentor, and a spiritual guide. Worldly possession would not longer matter. Mrs. Winchester intended to wed her newly widowed person to Jesus Christ as His bride, and nothing could deter her. However, the Devil would not stop using his infinitely subtle tactics and trickeries in manipulating her. After seeing that man’s dreadful face in the crypt of the church, it positively haunted her. That white skin, with the black hair brushed low over the forehead, was a thing he could never forget, and the dismembered body that lay near the deer. Foretelling her future, one seer warned Mrs. Winchester of all the countless thousands of departed souls slain by her husband’s rifles; she must protect herself and atone for such mass murder. She was told to plan a castle and continue its building indefinitely because as long was it was under construction she would live; cessation would prove immediately fatal. Mrs. Winchester moved to California, to the Santa Clara Valley, bought an unfished farmhouse. She hired an army of carpenters and work began; architect and foreman quit the first day. Jesse Evans had willfully speared the rumour among villagers that the Winchester mansion was haunted. No one would venture near the house except in broad daylight. The haunted Winchester mansion was part of the gospel of the countryside. One of the foremen who stayed on was William Cantelo. He occupied a separate Victorian house on the estate of the Winchester mansion with a few other men employed by Mrs. Winchester. The house was put in thorough repair and expansion, though not a stick of the old furniture and tapestry were removed. Floors and ceilings were relaid: the roof was made watertight again, and the dust of half a century was scoured out. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
The ground floor and first floors set a heavy timber door, strongly barred with iron, in the passages between the earlier farmhouse and the expansion of the mansion, so there had been a great deal of work done. However, workmen refused to remain after sundown. Even after the electric light had been put into the four story mansion, which was now adored with a nine-story tower, nothing would induce them to remain, though, electric light was death on ghosts. The legend of the Winchester’s ghosts had gone far and wide, and the men would take no risks. They went home in batches of five and six, and if anyone happened to be out of sight of one’s companion, even during the daylight hours, there was an inordinate amount of talking between one another. On the whole, though nothing of any sort or kind had been conjured up by their heated imaginations during their years of work upon the Winchester, the belief in ghosts was rather strengthened because men’s confessed nervousness, and local tradition declared itself in favour of the ghost of a man. The mansion was very large, some estimated that it must have been 50,000 square feet prior to the 1906 earthquake. Every inch of the walls, including the doors, were covered with tapestry, and remarkably fine Italian furniture. They key to the massive front door was made of solid gold and the other 2,000 doors of this Eighth Wonder of the World filled two buckets. It once contained 500 rooms. There are five different heating systems, three elevators, thirteen bathrooms. One rambling room has four fireplaces and five hot-air registers. There is a spiral stairway that has 42 steps, each two inches high. Other stairways melt into blank walls. A second story door opens into the great outdoors and a 20-foot step. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
There is a linen closet that has the area of a three-room apartment; a nearby cupboard is less than one-inch deep. A skylight is placed in the middle of a room, in the floor! Another floor is apparently a series of trap-doors. Exterior faucets project unexpectedly from under the second-story windows. The visitors must stoop through one door to enter, the next gives clearance for an eight-foot giant. Many stairway posts are upside down. And legions of ghost are said to lurk around every square foot of the mansion. All the furniture was well made, and of dark expensive rare wood. Even the looking-glass on the dressing-table in Mrs. Winchester’s bedroom is an old pyramidal Venetian glass set in heavy repousse frame of tarnished silver. Yet nothing could well have been less creepy than the glitter of silver and glass, and the subdued lights and cackle of conversation around the empty dinner table in the Venetian dinner room. Mrs. Winchester hoped by introducing such beauty into her estate would introduce a new and cheerful spirit, not only to her mansion, but would also break the curse and send the ignorant superstitions of the past into oblivion. Henry, the butler, after dinner one night, retired to pantry were the $30,000.00 gold dinner service and fine china and crystal were kept to make sure nothing went missing (that is where the name “Butler’s pantry” comes from. The butler would sleep in a large pantry to guard the contents.) He would read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and other fine authors until he felt ready to go off. Henry fumbled for the peart at the end of the cord that hung down inside the bed, and switched on the flight on the bedside lamp. Then sudden dazzled him for the moment. He felt under his pillow for his book with half-shut eyes. Then, growing used to the light, he happened to look down to the foot of his bed. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
His heart stopped dead, and throat shut automatically. In one instinctive movement, he crouched back up against the head-boards of the bed, staring at the horror. The movement set his heart going again, and the sweat dripped from every pore. He was not a particularly religious man, but he had always believed that God would never allow any supernatural appearance to present itself to man in such a guise and in such circumstances that harm, either bodily or mental, could result to him. However, in a moment, his life and reasoned rocked unsteadily on their seats. Leaning over the foot of his bed, looking at him, was a figure swathed in a rotten and tattered veiling. This shroud passed over the head, but left both eyes and the right side of the face bare. It then followed the line of the arm down to where the hand grasped the bed-end. The face was not entirely that of a skull, though the eyes and the flesh of the face were totally gone. There was a thin, dry skin drawn tightly over the features, and there was some skin left on the hand. One wisp of hair crossed the forehead. It was perfectly still. He looked at it, and it looked at him, and his brains turned dry and hot in his head. He had still got the pear of the electric lamp in his hand, and he played idly with it; only he dared not turn the light out again. Henry shut his eyes, only to open them in a hideous terror the same second. The thing had not moved. His heart was thumping like it was about to jump out of his chest, and the sweat cooled him as it evaporated. Another cinder tinkled in the grate, and a panel creaked in the wall. He reason failed him. For twenty minutes, or twenty second, he was able to think of nothing else but this awful figure, till there came, hurtling though the empty channels of his sense, the remembrance of the foremen and architect quitting on their first day. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
At last, Henry moved. How he managed to do it, he had no idea, but with one spring toward the foot of the bed he got within arm’s-length and struck out one fearful blow with his fist at the thing. It crumbled under it, and his hand was cut to the bone. With a sickening revulsion after his terror, Henry dropped half-fainting across the end of the bed. After he came to, there was utter quiet, but Henry seemed to hear something. He could not be sure, but at last there was no doubt. There was a quiet sound as one moving along the passage. Little regular steps came towards him over the hard teak flooring. He was speechless. He turned the light out, and fell forward with his own head pressed into the pillow of the bed. He then sank to his knees and put his face in the bed. Only he heard footsteps. Footsteps came to the door, and there they stopped. There was a rustling of moving stuff, and evil spirit was in the room. Mrs. Winchester had been awakened by the noise and he could hear her through the annunciator praying. Henry was cursing his own cowardice. Then steps moved out again on the oak boards of the passage, and he heard the sounds dying away. In a flash of remorse Henry went to the door and looked out At the moment later the passage was empty He stood with his forehead against the jamb of the door almost physically sick. “You can turn on the light,” he said, and there was no answer. By morning light that filtered past the curtains, he could see his way. There was nothing wrong in the room from end to end, except smears of his own blood on the end of the bed, the china hutch, and on the carpet. When he got upstairs to check on Mrs. Winchester, Henry heard sleet volleying against the window panes. And he thought to himself, “I must pack.” Mrs. Winchester was fine, she was brushing he lovely long locks and pretending nothing happened. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
And he did hear someone coming softly up their stairs. Henry stood still a moment on the landing to listen. It could not be Mrs. Winchester’s step, he thought; I am looking right at her. However, then the steps ceased suddenly and he heard no more. They were at least two flights down, and Henry came to the conclusion they were too heavy to be those of Angus the maid. No doubt they belonged to a foreman who had mistaken the floor. He went into his bedroom and packaged his bags as best as he could. Once or twice, however, he caught himself wondering who it could have been wandering down below, the floor was empty and unfurnished. From time to time, moreover, Henry was almost certain he heard a soft tread of someone padding about over the bare boards—cautiously, stealthily, as silently as possible—and, further, that the sounds bad been lately coming distinctly near. For the first time in his life he began to feel a little creepy. In the sitting-room, he was not pleased to hear again that stealthy tread upon the stairs, and to realize that it was much closer than before, as well as unmistakably real. And this time he got up and went out to see who it could be creeping about on the upper staircase at so late an hour. However, the sound ceased; there was no one visible on their stairs. And by this time, everyone was in bed and asleep—everyone except himself and the owner of this soft and stealthy tread. “My absurd imagination, I suppose,” Henry thought. “It must have been the wind after all, although—it seemed so very real and close, he thought.” Henry went back to his packing. It was by this time getting on toward midnight. With something of a start, Henry suddenly recognized the he felt nervous—oddly nervous; also, that for some time past the causes of this feeling had been gathering slowly in his mind, but that he had only just reached the point where he was forced to acknowledge them. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
It was a singular and curious malaise that had come over him, and he hardly knew what to make of it. Henry felt as though he were doing something that was strongly objected to by another person, another person, moreover, who had some right to object. It was a most disturbing and disagrreable feeling, not unlike the persistent promptings of conscience: almost, in fact, as if he were doing something he knew to be wrong. Yet, though he searched vigorously and honestly in his mind, he could nowhere lay his finger upon the secret of this growing uneasiness, and it perplexed him. More, it distressed and frightened him. “Pure nerves, I suppose,” he said aloud with a forced laugh. He was standing by the door of the bedroom during this brief soliloquy, and as he passed quickly towards the sitting-room to fetch them from the cupboard he saw out of the corner of his eye the indistinct outline of a figure standing on the stairs, a few feet from the top. It was someone in a stooping position, and with one hand on the banisters, and the face peering upwards toward the landing. And at that same moment he heard a shuffling footsteps. The person who had been creeping about below all this time had at last come up to his own floor. Who in the World could it be? And what in the name of Heaven did he want? Henry caught his breath sharply and stood stock still. Then, after a few seconds’ hesitation, he found his courage, and turned to investigate. The stairs, he saw to his utter amazement, were empty; there was no one. He felt a series of cold shivers run over him, and something about the muscles of his legs gave a little and grew weak. And so now, Henry saw nothing but the dreadful face of John Bender Jr. of the “The Bloody Benders.” Lowering at him from ever corner of his mental field vision; the white skin, the evil eyes, and the fringe of black hair low over the forehead. Henry utter a scream and, and drew back his hands as if they had been burn. No one ever heard from him again. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
When the Bender family fled town, their inn was investigated, and a secret room was found covered in blood. Upon further investigation, nine bodies were found on their property. Among one of them was Henry Clitz, Mrs. Winchester’s butler. It is believed the entire family performed the killings. Although John Jr. died during the escape, none of the other Benders were ever found. It was an awkward and disagreeable predicament, Henry found himself in. In his effort to find the brass button on the wall in the butler’s pantry, he nearly scraped the nails from his fingers, but even then, in those frenzied moments of alarm—so swift and alert were the impressions of a mind, keyed-up by a vivid emotion—he had time to realize the he dreaded the return of the light, and that it might have been better for him to stay hidden in the merciful screen of darkness. It was but the impulse of a moment, however, and before he had time to act upon it he had yielded automatically to the original desire, and the room was flooded with light. So many people praised the light, but often overlook the security and shelter that the darkness provides. Through the 38 years of residence, Mrs. Winchester’s employees remained fiercely and faithfully loyal, defending every eccentricity. Perhaps Henry’s betrayal attracted a force in the Winchester mansion that desired to consume his soul, and make him an eternal resident. Mrs. Winchester was deeply concerned with the welfare of her employees and their families. They were well paid and often additionally rewarded with gifts, even homes, real estate, transportation machines, and even lifetime pension. In truth, volumes could be written extolling her many virtues and justifying construction of the most beautiful and bizarre of all abodes. Still, the Question remains—Why? Why? The enigma of the Mystery House that tragedy and a rifle built is perhaps unanswerable. The present generation must weigh and draw its own conclusions about the Valley’s most interesting, most controversial, most unappreciated and surely our most mysterious First Lady! #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Winchester Mystery House
On today’s episode of 13 Days of Christmas we look back at other events that took place during the same year that Sarah spent her first Christmas on her San Jose Estate.
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
🗝 winchestermysteryhouse.com
One Would Think Happiness is Rare?
The trouble with some people is that when they get into trouble, they start acting like cannibals. With mood disorders so prevalent in all societies, it is no wonder that they have been the focus of so much research. Great quantities of data about these disorders have been gathered. Still, clinicians have yet to understand fully all that they know. Several factors have been closely tied to unipolar depression, including biological abnormalities, a reduction in positive reinforcements, negative ways of thinking, a perception of helplessness, and life stress and other sociocultural influences. Indeed, more contributing factors have been associated with unipolar depression than with most other psychological disorders. Precisely how all of these factors relate to unipolar depression, however, is unclear. Different factors may be capable of initiating unipolar depression in different persons. Some people may, for example, begin with low serotonin activity, which predisposes them to react helplessly and negatively, and enjoy fewer pleasures in life. Others may first suffer a severe loss, which triggers helplessness reactions, low serotonin activity, and reductions in positive rewards. Regardless of the initial cause, these factors may merge into a “final common pathway” of unipolar depression. However, culture influences many people’s health and belief system and has an effect on the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. Some cultures have specific expectations of each age group that differ greatly from those in mainstream American society. Because of this difference, all age groups are exposed to conflict or clashes that may increase the risk for development of mental illness. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Judging from the evening news and the spread of self-help books, one would think that happiness was rare. Ever psychologists seem far more interested in stuffing heartache. However, there is good news. A growing body of research indicates that most people’s lives are more upbeat than we think. In fact, 55 percent of adults in the United States of America say they laugh once an hour. In addition, most people around the World say they are happy—including those who are poor, unemployed, elderly, and disabled. Some say money buys happiness, well maybe not that much more. Wealthy people appear only slightly happier than those of modest means. Overall, only 1 person in 10 reports being “not too happy.” Although people are not happy every day, most seem to bounce back well from disappointments. Happy people also seem to remain happy from decade to decade, regardless of job changes, moves, and family changes. When treating people with unipolar depression, one method that seems helpful is to reintroduce clients to pleasurable events and activities. While reintroducing pleasurable events into a client’s life, the therapist also makes sure that the person’s various behaviours are reinforced correctly. Behaviourists have argued that when people become depressed, their negative behaviours—crying, complaining, or self-depreciation—keep others at a distance, reducing changes for positive reinforcement. To change this pattern, the therapist may use a contingency management approach, systematically ignoring a client’s depressive behaviours while praising or otherwise rewarding constructive statements and behaviour, such as going to work. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
Although formal treatment is typically needed for severe depression, personal efforts such as going on vacation or spending time with friends can often make a significant difference for people who are struggling with mild depression. Research shows, for example, that regular exercise help prevent or reduce feelings of depression as well as other psychological symptoms. Life does not always turn out the way people want it to, you may end up living around people you do not care for and feel isolated and have no friends. You may want to get back to a lifestyle that is more conducive to your well-being. However, one thing that I find that helps, besides exercise and music is to some times just shut down and stop talking to people. Take some time to be quiet and work through the negative emotions and pray about them. Also, happy movies help. I had the TV on, while I was using my station bike, and had sworn off Christmas movies this year because you know, sometimes situations are ongoing and every year some expect them to be resolved, and they are not yet. However, I got stuck watching 12 Pups for Christmas (2019) Starring Charlotte Sullivan and Donny Boaz. It was such a great movie and I highly recommend it. It is all about being in the prime of one’s life and then facing one unexpected situation after another, but one can see how God used Erin’s (Charlotte Sullivan’s) pain to put her in a better situation that she could not even imagine. The movie is so charming that I found myself smiling and laughing while watching it. I really enjoyed how the people all liked each other, and worked together and were open and optimistic and honest. The film reminded me of a passage in the Christian Bible, “Now therefore, do not be afraid. I will provide for and support you and your little ones. And he comforted them [imparting cheer, hope, strength] and spoke to their hearts [kindly],” reports Genesis 50.21. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
The film 12 Pups for Christmas shows one how devastating life events can be and how nothing is promised, and things are not perfect, but if you keep the right attitude and keep persevering and being kind, the Lord will make things work in your favour. Although most of the variance in adult dysfunctions involving pleasures of the flesh is explainable by concurrent relational problems, some childhood interpersonal experiences may be viewed as distal contributory causes. Two such issues that are clearly rooted in family socialization are negative attitudes toward sexuality and extreme religious orthodoxy. Both of these are more psychological than interpersonal constructs. However, each can be viewed as a result of socialization in the family of origin, and each is related to the other. Children who are reared with extremely orthodox beliefs and values may view pleasures of the flesh as generally inappropriate and improper behaviour, unless it is explicitly enacted with the goal of procreation. Armed with such attitudes, some individuals might experience adjustment problems when paired with partners of differing beliefs and values. Related to this are negative attitudes toward pleasures of the flesh. Certain child-rearing practices and family environments may leave a child with a tendency to associate pleasures of the flesh with feelings of guilt and shame. Other family experiences may lead the child to link pleasures of the flesh with disgrace, emotional pain, or betrayal. To the extent that these negative attitudes, often learned in childhood, are durable through the adult years, impairment in functioning during pleasures of the flesh is a likely consequence. Another early interpersonal experience that can impair adult pleasures of the flesh functioning is childhood sexual abuse, especially when this abuse is intrafamilial. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
Multiple studies show that people who experienced such abuse as children are more likely than those who have not to experience dysfunctions in pleasures of the flesh as adults. Two important caveats must be noted, however. First, these same studies show that childhood sexual abuse is situation in a matrix of aversive childhood and family-of-origin experiences (such as excessive conflict, low cohesion, poor boundary regulation, physical abuse, and parental neglect), and that it is associated with a similarly diverse matrix of adult psychosocial problems (such as separation, divorce, relational dissatisfaction, substance abuse, depression, somatization, and anxiety, to name just some). Each of these on its own may be sufficient to interfere with functioning in pleasures of the flesh. Disentangling and understanding the effects of sexual abuse in particular continues to be a challenge for mental health research. Second, there is no deterministic relationship between childhood sexual abuse and adult functioning. Some children who experienced sexual abuse go on to develop happy and healthy interpersonal relationships, and are indistinguishable from their nonabused peers. Undoubtedly, this resilience is an amalgamation of personal and socioenvironmental factors that allows them to minimize and overcome the ill effects of this trauma. These caveats notwithstanding, childhood sexual abuse is thought to disrupt attachment to caregivers, trust in others, the development of self-esteem, and a sense of mastery. When a survivour of such abuse is confronted with new developmental tasks, such as management and negotiation of adult pleasures of the flesh, these liabilities may be manifested in a variety of psychosocial problems—including pleasures of the flesh dysfunctions. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
Psychogenic sexual dysfunctions tend to coexist with other mental health problems that also have an obvious interpersonal basis. However, unlike problems such as depression or schizophrenia, for example, the comorbidity of sexual dysfunctions has not been as thoroughly researched. This is perhaps due in part to the difficulty of accurately assessing and diagnosing these problems and the fact that such assessment requires ruling out physiological origins. Studies of people identified as having a psychogenic sexual dysfunction reveal a 30 to 35 percent incidence of others psychological problems. One common problem that is concomitant to sexual dysfunction is depression. As an example, the odds ratio for erectile dysfunction has been estimated at 1.82 in the presence versus absence of depressive symptoms. A study of couples seeking therapy for sexual dysfunction indicated that rates of depression, anxiety disorders, and eating disorders were all elevated in contrast to those in the generational population. Lifetimes rates of affective disorders (major depression, dysthymia, and bipolar disorder) among the participants in this study were 21.5 percent and 38.3 percent for men and women, respectively. Associated rates of anxiety disorders were 19.9 percent and 37.3 respectively. Thus, problems like depression and anxiety are evident in the background of about 33 percent of those seeking treatment for sexual dysfunction. Like personality disorders, sexual dysfunctions tend t be comorbid with other sexual dysfunctions. In a large-sample, multisite pharmaceutical study, 40 percent of those with hypoactive sexual desire disorder were also diagnosed with a second sexual dysfunction. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
In view of the ill effect of anxiety on performance and depression on sexual desire, the comorbidity of these problems with sexual dysfunction is easily understood. However, it is equally evident that these problems are interconnected in at least some cases by interpersonal problems and stressors. When close relationships become distressed and/or when people have a history of interpersonal maltreatment, both depression and sexual dysfunction are likely consequences. Similarly, people who experience a great deal of anxiety in interpersonal contexts, perhaps because of poor social skills, may experience sexual dysfunctions that are secondary to that excessive anxiety. Psychogenic sexual dysfunctions appear to be every bit as much problems with couple relationships and a psychological sense of intimacy, as problems with the psychophysiology of human sexuality. People with psychogenic sexual dysfunctions often have intimacy problems that extend far beyond just sexual intimacy and include poor social and recreational intimacy with their partners as well. Psychogenic sexual dysfunctions may serve as regulative devices for addressing unresolved conflict and a lack of intimacy. Like those of other mental health problems, the symptoms of psychogenic sexual dysfunction may draw attention away from more substantial underlying interpersonal problems that a couple is unable or unwilling to address openly. They may also serve as a means of communicating distress indirectly. In either case, sexual dysfunctions may be indices of more pervasive interpersonal/relational problems. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
A number of relations themes are evident in studies of sexually dysfunctional couples. These include open conflict, as well as passivity, discouragement, a lack of agreement and understanding, and hostility that is often not expressed directly and openly. Some of these phenomena are even evident through observations of brief laboratory interactions between partners. Notwithstanding the associations between sexual dysfunctions and current relational problems, some interpersonal childhood experiences may be distal contributory causes of adult sexual dysfunctions. When children are socialized with strict orthodox religious beliefs and values, and/or when they learn negative attitudes toward sexuality, they are predisposed to experience psychogenic sexual dysfunctions as adults. A history of childhood sexual abuse is also more common among those with psychogenic sexual dysfunction, compared to their well-functioning counterparts. Such abuse may set the stage for views of sexuality as coercive, hostile, and motivated by malfeasance. Both somatoform disorders and psychogenic sexual dysfunctions involved the experience and expression of physical symptoms in the absence of any obvious medical or physiological cause. Each of these disorders is a sign of intrapersonal and interpersonal distress, and serves a communicative value. The interpersonal pathogenesis of somatoform disorders can be primarily located in family-of-origin experiences; although such experiences do play a role in psychogenic sexual dysfunctions, these dysfunctions more strongly signal troubles with family-of-orientation relationships. I remember the time when some brothers of the Lord were praying over me for a new release of the Holy Spirit. At a certain point they invited me to choose Jesus as the Lord of my life, freely and consciously. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
At that moment I happened to look up, and my eyes fell on the crucifix which was on the wall opposite above the altar. He seemed to have been there for some time, waiting for me. In an instant, this truth branded itself within me: “Make no mistake, this is the Jesus Christ you are choosing as your Lord, not a different rose-water version!” How often, since then, have I tried to admit the truth of those words! Being espoused to Christ means, here below, being “crucified with Christ,” but also in the hope of being glorified with Him. Joy is never absent, but it is a hope-filled joy (spe gaudentes). In other words, it is hoping to be happy, and happy to be hoping. “All who belong to Christ Jesus,” writes the Apostle—“have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires,” repots Galatians 5.24. It is a beautiful thing to die to the World for the Lord, so as to raise in Him. Earthly longings (eros) have been crucified; in the me there is left no spark of desire for mundane things. It is no joke to crucify one’s flesh with its passions and desires, especially pleasures of the flesh desires, which are among the most imperious of all. The desires of the flesh—self-indulgence—are always in opposition to the Spirit. Some have been brought to the edge of despair by temptations of the flesh. We are now living in a social context where it is no longer possible to rely on external safeguards for the defense of one’s chastity, as it was in the past—things like the separation of the genders, a rigorous filtering of contacts with the World, and all the countless other detailed precautions with which “Rules” usually surround the observance of this vow. Unconstrained communications and travel have created a new situation. The defence of one’s chastity is now for the most part in the hands of the individual, and it cannot rest on anything other than strong personal convictions, acquired precisely through contact with God in prayer and in His Word. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
It is this spirit and with this intention that we continue our reflections. Celibacy, then, is for the sake of the Kingdom. However, why does the Kingdom call for celibacy? Can it not be achieved and manifested completely through marriage? Some Fathers of the Church, such as John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor, thought that is Adam had not sinned, there would have been no marriage, with the sexual procreation that is now its distinguishing feature, because in the way in which it is now exercised, human sexuality is the fruit of original sin. However, from a mere biblical and less Platonic perspective it must be said that rather the reverse is true: that, had there been no sin there would have been no virginity, because the would have been no need to question marriage and sexuality and subject them to judgment. Poverty, chastity and obedience are not a renunciation—or worse, a condemnation—of a created good, but a rejection of the evil that has come to overlay that good. Therefore they are, by definition, a proclamation of the original goodness of created things. They are a way of imitating the Word of God Who, by taking flesh, took on all that belongs to human nature, but did not take on sin. “For we do not have a great High Priest Who is unable to understand and sympathize and have a shared feeling with our weaknesses and infirmities and liability to the assaults of temptation, but One Who has been tempted in every respect as we are, yet without sinning,” reports Hebrews 4.15. The Gospel counsels, and the vows based upon them, proclaim the goodness and beauty of God’s creation precisely by the denouncing the ambiguity of human creation. The inability to understand the value of virginity, and likewise of obedience and voluntary poverty, is always a sign that the sense of sin has disappeared from the horizon of faith. It is typical of periods of acute secularization and naïve optimism concerning humanity and the World. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
Seen in this light, poverty, chastity and obedience are the most eloquent proclamation there is of Christ’s redemption and of the Paschal Mystery, which does not cancel out the original creation, as the heretic Marcion thought, but it “recapitulates” it, as St. Irenaeus said, in other words, brings it out into the light from under the covering of sin. In this light it is also possible to understand the positive element, still valid today, in the Fathers’ insight that virginity was a return to the Heavenly state, but on condition that this return is not understood as bypassing marriage and human sexuality itself (male and female He created them), but only the sin with which they have been overlaid by human freedom. A virginal and chaste life if therefore in a very profound sense a paschal life. “I beg you, then, by God’s mercy, my brothers, to offer your bodies as a holy and living sacrifice which will be pleasing to God—this is your spiritual worship. Do not pattern yourselves after the ways of this World but transform yourselves by the renewal of your minds, so you will be able to discern what God’s will is—what is good, pleasing and perfect,” reports Romans 12.1-2. Their celibacy was the most delicious of all: transformative and liberating, and the instrument of its own success. However, the demons’ traps are evil thought. Become saved again, and commit your soul to God. We need to seek how to please God in our bodily members [as well as spiritually]. Everything we observe, and even more important, our way of observing it, is already culture and pattern of culture. If we cannot observe it, what is the sense of mentioning “human nature”? The wild Babes give up their individualistic mores and ideology, exempli gratia, selfishness or magic thinking or omnipotence, and join the tribe of Society; they are soicalised. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
You can teach people anything; if you use the right techniques of socializing or communicating, you can adapt them to anything. The essence of human nature is to be pretty indefinitely malleable. Humans are what suits a particular type of society in a particular historical age. This fateful idea, invented from time to time by philosophers, seems finally to be empirically evident in the most recent decades. For instance, in our highly organized system of machine production and its corresponding social relations, the practice is, by “vocational guidance,” to fit people wherever the products of the system need to be used up, the practice is, by advertising, to get people to consume them. This works. There is a human for every job and not many are left over, and the shelves are almost always cleared. Again, in the highly organized political industrial systems of Germany, Russia, and now China, it has been possible in a short time to condition great masses to perform as desired. Social scientists observer that these are the facts, and they also devise theories and techniques to produce more facts like them, for the social scientists too are part of the highly organized systems. Astonishingly different, however, is the opinion of experts who deal with human facts in a more raw, less highly processed, state. Those who have to cope with people in small groups rather than statistically, attending to them rather than to some systematic goal—parents and teachers, physicians and psychotherapists, police officers and wardens of jails, shop foremen and grievance committees—these experts are likely to hold stubbornly that there is a “human nature.” You cannot teach people some things or change them in some ways, if you persist, you are in for trouble. Contrariwise, if you do not provide them with certain things, they will fill the gaps with eccentric substitute. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
This is immediately evident when something goes wrong; for instance, when a child cannot learn to read because one has not yet developed the muscular accommodation of one’s eyes; if you persist, one withdraws or becomes tricky. Such a clear-cut cause (it is “physical”). However, the more important causes have the following form: the child does take on the culture habit, exempli gratia, early toilet training, and indeed the whole corresponding pattern of culture, but there is a minishing of force, grace, discrimination, intellect, feeling, in specific behaviours or even in one’s total behaviour. One may become too obedient and lacking in initiative, or impractically careful and squeamish; one may develop “psychosomatic” ailments like constipation. Let me give an instance even earlier in life: an infant nurtured in an institution without a particular nurse attending one during the first six months, does not seem to develop abnormally; but if during the end of the first year and for some time thereafter one is not given personal care, one will later be in some ways emotionally cold and unreachable—either some function has failed to develop, or one has already blocked it out as too frustrated and painful. In such examples, the loss of force, grace, and feeling seems to be evidence that somehow the acquired cultural habits do not draw on unimpeded outgoing energy, they are against the grain, they do not fit the child’s needs or appetites; therefore they have been ill adapted and not assimilated. That is, on this view we do not need to be able to say what “human nature” is in order to be able to day tht some training is “against human nature” and you persist in it at peril. Teachers and psychologists who deal practically with growing up and the blocks to growing up may never mention the word “human nature” (indeed, they are better off without too many priori ideas), but they cling stubbornly to the presumption that at every stage there is a developing potentiality not yet cultured, and not blank, and that makes possible the taking on of culture. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
We must draw “it” out, offer “it” opportunities, not violate “it” except for unavoidable reasons. What “it” is, is not definite. It is what, when appealed to in the right circumstances, gives behaviour that has force, grace, discrimination, feeling. This vagueness is of course quite sufficient for education, for education is an art. A good teacher feels one’s way, looking for response. The immediate horror humans perceive is one’s own death, but beyond that one begins to see the entire life process as carnage, as eating and being eaten. A terrible screaming pervades the Universe. Humans are the first to hear it. This is the vision we cannot accept. It drives towards madness or despair. What does Christianity do with this vision. It does not deny it; it makes it acceptable. What Christianity does for the true believer is give one strength to bear it. Redeems it. That is the word! The scheme of things redeems the way things are. However, what is redemption? It must be an interpretation. The scheme of things, therefore, is both a diagram of the something grand and an interpretation of the way things are as an essential step on the way to the something grand. The life process thereupon becomes less horrible and more bearable because it serves, however obscurely, a glorious end. When it is in the service of something grand, one’s individual life is redeemed. The beginning of the redemption of life is the beginning of culture. All culture is redemption. The history of culture is the history of changing forms by which a short and brutish life has been redeemed. The culture of people is the incarnation of its religion. Any religion, while it last, provides the framework for a culture, and protects the mass of humanity from boredom and despair. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
Humans search for a scheme of things larger than their own life, with greater authority, to which one may belong. The hunger from which this search issues is profound and inalienable. If one can find such a scheme and makes one’s life “mean” something in it, that is, contribute to it, make a difference, one will have ferried something of one’s mortal self across the gulf of death to become a part of something that will live on. The doomed life must leave a residue of value. The carrier and guarantor of this value is human-made scheme of things perceived as reality and presumed to be eternal. What can one say of the way things are? The constructions of the mind are not coextensive with existence, that there is something “out there,” a universe independent of humans, there before we arrived and to be there after we have disappeared. It affects us and we it. IT and we are in continual contact and interaction, and we know it not. We cannot bear to know. An angel, detached and immortal, could know; we, mired in mortality, are at risk. Interest deflects our knowing. Our lives depend on its being other than it is. In the midst of the way things are we know only the scheme of things in which we live. If someone is not treating you right today, go out of your way to be kinder than usual to that person. If your husband is not serving God, do not go around beating him over the head with your Bible, proselytizing him, nagging him, coercing him to attend church with you. No, just start being extra kind to him. Start living him in a fresh way. The Holy Bibles teaches, “It is the goodness of God that leads people to repentance,” reports Romans 2.4. God’s goodness expressed through you will overcome evil. Friend, love never fails. Now turn not a df ear to that which I have spoken, for My Word shall rise withing you with great revelation. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
For I am doing in this hour things that humans have not understood, just as was prophesied in the days of old. I said it by My prophets that you would not believe the reports of the things that I would do. Some will not believe, but the hour is coming that humans shall proclaim My Word boldly over their own bodies and it will cause sickness and disease to depart. Their words will cause the enemy to flee in terror. If anyone had a right to return evil instead of love, it was Joseph, the young man with the distinctive coat of many colours. His brothers hated him so much, they threw him into a deep pit and were going to kill him, but “out of the kindness of their hearts,” they decided instead to sell him into slavery. Years went by, and Joseph experienced all sorts of troubles and heartaches. However, Joseph kept a good attitude, and God continued to bless him. After thirteen years of being in prison for a crime he did not commit, God supernaturally promoted him to the second-highest position in Egypt. Joseph was in charge of the food supply when a famine struck the land, and his brothers traveled to Egypt, hoping to buy provisions for their families. At first they did not recognize their long-lost brother. Joseph finally said, “Do not you who I am? I am Joseph, your brother. I am the one you threw into the pit. I am the one you tried to kill, the brother you sold into slavery.” Can you imagine what was going through his brothers’ minds? Imagine the fear that must have griped their hearts! This was Joseph’s opportunity to pay back his brothers for the years of pain and suffering they had caused him. Now their lives were in his hands. Joseph could have ordered them killed or imprisoned for life. However, Joseph said, “Do not be afraid. I am not going to harm you. I am going to do good to you. I am going to give you all the food you need.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
The Christian Bible says, “Love does not hold a grudge. Love does not harbour unforgiveness,” report 1 Corinthians 13.5. You may have people in your life who have done you great wrong, and you have a right to be angry and bitter, or foolish and ghoulish, full of doom and gloom. You may feel as though your whole life had been stolen away by someone who has mistreated you or deceived you. However, if you will choose to let go of your grudge and forgive them, you can overcome that evil with good. You can get to the point where you can look at the people who have hurt your and return good for evil. If you do that, God will pour out His favour in your life in a fresh way. He will honour you; He will reward you, and He will make those wrongs right. When you can bless your worst enemies and do good to those who have used and abused you, that is when God will take that evil and turn it around for good. No matter what you have gone through, no matter who hurt you or whose fault it was for causing all the trauma and drama, let it go. Do not try to get even. Do not hold a grudge. Do not try to pay them back. God says show mercy. Aim for kindness. Seek to do good. You may be thinking, but that is just not fair! No, it is not. However, life is not fair. We have to remember that God is the One keeping the score. He is in control. And when you bless your enemies, you will never lose. God will always make it up to you. The power of the Lord shall rise withing humans until there will be a race of people on this Earth when I come that will stand against Satan and see him flee from them. They will stand without sickness or disease in their bodies. They will stand even before whole cities and proclaim, “In the name of Jesus, I break the power of sin over this city.” Then the walls of Satan will crumble and the power of God shall be loosed in that city. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
The wisdom of God shall flow unhindered and my power shall rule in the midst. Even as the darkness grows more morbid, the light shall grow more optimistic. My wisdom shall be released in greater measure and greater revelation as human take My Word at face value, even as I have spoken it. The tongue cannot be controlled by natural ability. It is an unruly evil in the unregenerate state. However, the wisdom of God that has come by the rebirth of the human spirit, imparted by the Holy Spirit to the hearts of humans, will cause the tongue to come into subjection to the spirit of humans, which is ordained of God to rule. It shall cause the body to conform to the Word of the living God. Dear Lord in Heaven, I dare to believer that You can take even the bad things that happen to your children and transform them into something good and useful, not merely in our own lies, but in the lives of other around us. You know, I am against taxes, I think they should be as long as possible and once politicians start taxing things to make improvements in areas that the budget cannot support, it leads to excessive taxes, which then leads to communism. One absurd tax is the bag tax. Sure, the thicker bags are good for people who can afford to buy them and have to walk with the groceries. However, it is a common courtesy to provide people with complimentary bags for purchasing items at your story. The supposed goal was to reduce plastic waste, but most people buy these thicker plastic bags anyway. Most stores do not allow reusable bags to come into their store because they may be contaminated with bacteria or viruses or infested with cock roaches and their eggs and can infest the stores, spread to other customers and make people fatally ill. Also, what about the people who can barely afford what they are buying? For some people, an extra $2.00 for twenty bags, for example, is a lot of money when they can barely afford what they are buying. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
However, I truly wish there was a way we could find some money in the budget to pay our service members and veterans $100,000.00 a year and lifelong medical benefits for their priceless service. And also, if we want law enforcement reform, why not pay officers the same wages and require that they obtain at least an Associates in Arts in psychology, law, or something so we know they have some understanding of what life is like outside of their family-of-origin and family-of-orientation. Some police are education, some have PhDs, and an educated officer may not be better at one’s job than a high school graduate, but I wonder what the studies say? It is possible that requiring an education would reduce conflict in the community and screen out officers who have a vendetta against other races, religions, creeds or genders. Also, regulating leaf blower nose and usage would be great. The government bans the use of fireplaces on certain days, which is sad because some people cannot afford to burn their heaters and knowing how much heat they are using helps them from keeping their electricity from getting shut off. People have trees they can cut down and burn for fuel. The system in America is set up, well, it was once set up to accommodate the rich, but the poor and rich are getting jilted, while the middle class is disappearing before your eyes like a dope fiend. And I have looked at some of these million dollar homes in California, and I am so disappointed. I expect something more and grand for $1 million. Sure, inflation is real, but wage inflation is not happening. Everything is just getting more and more expensive and cutting into people’s wages. In Sacramento, if you did not become established 10-20 years ago, and are not a professional and do not have two or more employed people in the house, the cost of living is almost unaffordable. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
The shrinkage of the nation-state reflects the appearance of a new-style global economy that has emerged since the Third Wave began its surge. Nation-states were the necessary political containers for nation-sized economies. Today the containers have not only sprung leaks, they have been made obsolete by their own success. First, there is the growth within them of regional economies that have attained a scale once associated with national economies. Second, the World economy to which they gave rise had exploded in size and is taking on strange new forms. Thus the global economy is dominated by the great transnational corporations. It is serviced by a ramified banking and financial industry that operates at electronic speeds. It breeds money and credit no nation can regulate. It moves toward transnational currencies—not a single “World money” but a variety of currencies or “meta-currencies,” each based on a “market basket” of national currencies or commodities. The global economy is torn by a World-scale conflict between resource supplies and users. It is riddled with shaky debt on a hitherto unimaginable scale. It is a mixed economy, with private capitalist and state-socialist enterprises forming joint ventures and working side by side. And its ideology is not laissez faire or Marxism, but globalism—the idea that nationalism is obsolete. Just as Second Wave created a slice of the population that had larger than local interests and became the base of nationalist ideologies, so the Third Wave gives rise to groups with larger than national interests. These for the base of the emerging globalist ideology sometimes called “planetary consciousness.” This consciousness is shared by multinational executives, long haired environmental campaigners, financiers, revolutionaries, intellectuals, poets, painters, not to mention members of the Trilateral Commission. I have even had a famous U.S. four-star general assure me that “the nation-state is dead.” #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
Globalism presents itself as more than an ideology serving the interests of a limited group. Precisely as nationalism claimed to speak for the whole nation, globalism claims to speak for the whole World. And its appearance is seen as an evolutionary necessity—a step closer to a “cosmic consciousness” that would embrace the Heavens as well. Therefore, at every level, from economics and politics to organization and ideology, we are witnessing a devastating attack, from within and without, on that pillar of Second Wave civilization: the nation-state. At the exact historical moment when many poor countries are desperately fighting to establish a national identity because nationhood in the past was necessary for successful industrialization, the rich countries, racing beyond industrialism, are diminished, displacing, or derogating the role of the nation. We can expect the next decades to be torn by struggle over the creation of new global institutions capable of faily representing the prenational as well and the postnational peoples of the World. Be praised my Lord with all Your creatures but especially with Brother Sun because You show us light and day through him and he is lovely glowing with a great shine from You my Lord: his definition. Be praised my Lord for Brother Wind and for the air and cloudy days and bright and all days else because through these You give Your creatures sustenance. Be praised my Lord for Sister Water because she shows great use and humbleness in hers and preciousness and depth. Be praised my Lord for Brother Fire through whom You light all nights upon the Earth because he is too lovely full of joy and manly strength. Be praised my Lord because our sister Mother Earth sustains and rules us and because she raises food to feed us; coloured flowers and grass. Be praised my Lord for those who pardon by Your love and suffer illness and grief. Bless those who undergo in silence the poor for whom you hold a crown. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
Be praised my Lord for Sister Death-of-Body whom no human living (as of yet) will escapes and piety those who die in mortal sin and everyone she finds who minds you bless: no second death to bring them hurt. Oh praise my Lord and bless my Lord and thank and serve my Lord with humbleness Triumphant. Just think, immortality is not too far away. Eventually scientists will find a cure of aging and death. For some it will give them more time to get right in the eyes of the Lord and do things they love, for others, it will allow them to evade eternal punishment…for a while. O Lord, open Thou my lips and my mouth shall declare Thy praise. Praised art Thou, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, mighty, revered and exalted God. Thou bestowest lovingkindness and possessest all things. Mindful of the patriarchs’ love for Thee, Thou wilt in Thy love bring a redeemer to their children’s children for the sake of Thy name. Remember us unto life, O King who delightest in life, and inscribe us in the Book of Life so that we may live worthily for Thy sake, O Lord of life. O King, Thou Helper, Redeemer and Shield, be Thou praised, O Lord, Shield of Abraham. Thou, O Lord, art mighty forever. Thou callest the dead to immortal life for Thou art might in deliverance. One may be lifted up by the light of a great experience or the presence of a great soul, but in the end one falls back to the consciousness one ordinarily has, to the self one ordinarily is. This is not to say tht what has happened is without value—on the contrary, such a glimpse is very important—but that under the thrill of its emotional accompaniments one may easily miscomprehend a part of it to the point of self-deception. The error is to believe that one has now been put in possession of all truth, or the highest truth, for all time. However, it is only a transient glimpse! If one were pure enough and prepared enough to receive the light in all its fullness and in all the parts of one’s being, the glimpse would not leave one. However, one is not. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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The Demon’s Traps are Evil Thoughts!
Spiritualism is real. The story of Saul and the witch Endor often has been cited as a biblical example of actual communication with the dead through a medium. Spiritists have contended that since Israel’s first king actually talked with the spirit of the departed Samuel, one cannot deny the possibility of communicating with those who have died. However, careful study of the account shows that God, not the medium, really brought Samuel from the real of the dead. The Biblical record: Then said Saul unto his servants, Seek me a woman who is a medium, that I may go to her, and inquire of her. And his servants said to him, Behold, there is a woman who is a medium at Endor. And Saul disguised himself, and put on other raiment, and he went, and two men with him, and they came to the woman by night; and he said, I pray thee, divine unto me as a medium, and bring me him up, who I shall name unto thee. And the woman said unto him, Behold, thou knowest what Soul hath done, how he hath cut off those who are mediums, and the wizards, out of the land Why, then layest thou a snare for my life, to cause me to die? And Saul swore to her by the LORD, saying, As the LORD liveth, there shall no punishment happen to thee for this thing. Then said the woman, Whom shall I bring up unto thee? And he said, Bring me up Samuel. And when the woman saw Samuel, she cried with a loud voice. And the woman spoke to Saul, saying, Why hast thou deceived me? For thou are Saul. And the king said unto her, Be not afraid; for what sawest Thou? And the woman said unto Saul, I saw gods ascending out of Earth. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
And he said unto her, What form is he of? And she said, An old man cometh up, and he is covered with a mantle. And Saul perceived that it was Samuel, and he stooped with his face to the ground, and bowed himself. And Samuel said to Saul, Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up? And Saul answered, I am very much distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and God is departed from me and answereth me no more, neither by prophets, nor by dreams; therefore, I have called thee, that thou mayest make known unto me what I shall do. Then said Samuel, Why, then, dost thou ask of me, seeing the LORD is departed from thee, and is become thine enemy? And the LORD hath done to thee, as he spoke by me; for the LORD hath torn the kingdom out of thine hand, and given it to thy neighbour, even to David. Because thou obeyedst not the voice of the LORD, nor executedest his fierce wrath upon Amalek. Therefore hath the LORD done this thing unto thee this day. Moreover, the LORD will also deliver Israel with thee into the hand of the Philistines, and tomorrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me. The LORD also shall deliver the host of Israel into the hand of the Philistines. Then Saul fell immediately full length on the Earth, and was very much afraid, because of the words of Samuel; and there was no strength in him; for he had eaten no bread all the day, not all the night. And the woman came unto Saul, and saw that he was very much troubled, and said unto him, Behold, thine handmaid hath obeyed thy voice, and I have put my life in my hand, and have hearkened unto thy words which thou didst speak unto me. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
Now, therefore, I pray thee, hearken thou also unto the voice of thine handmaid, and let me set a morsel of bread before thee; and eat, that thou mayest have strength, when thou goest on thy way. However, he refused, and said, I will not eat. However, his servants, together with the woman, compelled him; and he hearkeneth unto their voice. So he arose from the Earth, and sat upon the bed. And the woman had a fat calf in the house; and she hastened and killed it, and took flour, and kneaded it, and baked unleavened bread of it; and she brought it before Saul, and before his servants, and they did eat. Then they rose up, and went away that night (1 Samuel 28.7-25). We see God’s power at work in spite of the action of the medium, not because of her incantations, for the following reasons: First, the spirit spoke to Saul. The king never doubted that the form which appeared and the voice he heard belonged to Samuel, God’s faithful servant. Second, the message spoken by the spirit was true. It contained a rebuke to Saul for his disobedience in failing to destroy the Amalekites as God had commanded. (See 1 Samuel 15.1-31.) It was a declaration of judgment, empathically stating that the Lord had departed from Saul and become his enemy. It was also a true prophecy, for it said that Saul and his sons would die the next day, and the prediction was literally fulfilled. Yes, there is no doubt the message came from Samuel. Third, we do not believe that the witch was responsible for brining his spirit from the realm of the dead, because she screamed in terror when she saw the spirit of Samuel. She was either a fraud, able to deceive people into thinking she received messages from the other side, or a genuine medium with the ability to make contact with demons. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
In the latter case, she would have expected a demon to impersonate Samuel. That is why she was surprised and frightened when the actual spirit of Samuel miraculously made it appearance. God was displeased that King Saul sought help from the witch of Endor. Notice the writer of 1 Chronicles says: “So Saul died for his transgression which he committed against the LORD, even against the word of the Lord, which he kept not, and also for asking counsel of a medium, to inquire of her, and inquired not of the LORD; therefore he slew him, and turned the kingdom unto David, the son of Jesse (1 Chronicles 10.13-14). This text states that these two sins of Saul brought about his death at the hand of the Philistines. First, the king had transgressed against the Lord through an act of disobedience. (See 1 Samuel 13.8-14 and 15.12-23.) Second, he sinned grievously by going to a medium instead of returning to the Lord in humble and penitent prayer. In fact, King Saul’s visit to the necromancer was the crowing sin of his troubled life. Though the New Testament does not specifically repeat the warnings against consulting mediums, it clearly teaches the existence of demons and the reality of a World of evil spirits under the direction of Satan. We have no reason for thinking that necromancy today is less dangerous or offensive to God than it the past, and we therefore must heed the Old Testament prohibitions. The Lord Jesus confirmed the Old Testament teaching that the dead cannot really send messages to the living and also showed that no need for communication with those who have died exists. In His story of the rich man and Lazarus, He portrayed Abraham as declaring first that the gulf between the saved and unsaved in the spirit World is impassable, and then as denying the rich man’s request that someone from the real of the dead warn his living brothers. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
The patriarch said that people on Earth have the Scriptures, and added, “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead” (Luke 16.31). The Scriptures never once indicate the possibility of actually receiving messages from the dead through a medium. Jesus also declared that such communication with the spirits of those who have died would have no eternal value, for such conversations between citizens of two Worlds would not lead the living to faith in Christ. Then, too, the Old Testament Scriptures which unequivocally condemn all such effort are still in force today. We therefore conclude, as was mention weeks ago about Bishop Pike conversing with his dead son, must not be true. He was either the victim of a carefully and skillfully contrived plot on the part of an international group of mediums, or he spoke with a demon who impersonated the voice and mannerisms of his son. Believers should consider all forms of necromancy to be both unnecessary and sinful. The mediums who purportedly make contact with the spirit World are either entertainers, deliberately deceiving their victims, or emissaries of Satan, somehow placed in touch with members of the devil’s invisible army. When an individual seeks a message from the spirit of someone who has died, one almost always goes to a medium. Such a person possesses an unusual amount of psychic ability, supposedly enabling one to make contact with the spirit World. These people are sometimes called necromancers, and often are able to put on bizarre and frightening displays as proof of their psychic power. They may cause objects or people to float in the air, produce music from a piano that no one is touching, or cause a horn to blow which appears to be miraculously suspended and moving about the room. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
Some of these phenomena undoubtedly are accomplished by clever mechanical means as the work of impostors, but in some instances scientific humans have discerned no evidence of human manipulated. This has caused a number of atheists and agnostics, after conducting extensive investigations, to speak vaguely of a non-material and indefinable spiritual power in the Universe with which certain psychic individuals can relate. Christians, on the other hand, know that the phenomena we have been speaking about may at least in part be attributed to the activity of the invisible spirit World, which the Bible depicts as being under Satan’s control. As you may recall, Florence Newton was committed to Youghal prison by the Mayor of the town, 24th March 1661, for bewitching Mary Longdon, who gave evidence against her at the Cork Assizes (11th September). Edward Perry was sworn in during the trial, and deposed that he, Mr. Greatrix and Mr. Blackwall went to the Maid, and Mr. Greatrix and he had read of a way to discover a Witch, which he would practise. Ans so they sent for the Witch, and set her on a Stool, and a Shoemaker with a strong Awl endeavoured to stick it in the Stool, but could not till the third time. And then they bade her come of the Stool, but she said she was very weary and could not stir. Then two of them pulled her off, and the Man went to pull out his Awl, and it dropped into his hand with half an Inch broke off the blade of it, and they all looked to have found where it had been stuck, but could find no place where any entry had been made by it. Then they took another Awl, and put it into the Maid’s hand. .and one of them took the Maid’s hand, and ran violently at the Witch’s hand with it, but could not enter it, though the Awl was so bent that none of them could put it straight again. Then Mr. Blackwall took a Launce, and launc’d one of her hands an Inch and a half long, and a quarter of an Inch deep, but it bled not at all. Then he launc’d the other hand, and then they bled. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
He further saith, that after she was in Prison he went with Roger Hawkins and others to discourse with the Witch about the Maid, and they asked what it was she spoke to the day before, and after some denial she said it was a Greyhound which was her Familiar, and went out at the Window; and then she said, If I have done the Maid hurt, I am sorry for it. And being asked whether she had done her any hurt she said she never did bewitch her, but condess’d she had overlooked her, at that time she kiss’d her, but that she could not now help her, for none could help her that did the mishap, but others. Further the Deponent saith, That meeting after the Assizes at Cashel with one William Lap [who suggested the test of the tile]. Mr. Wood, a minister, being likewise sworn and examined, deposeth, That having heard of the stones dropped and thrown at the Maid, and of her Fits, and meeting with the Maid’s Brother, he went along with him to the Maid, and found her in her Fit, crying out against Gammer Newton, that she prick’d and hurt her. And when she came to herself he asked her what had troubled her; and she said Gammer Newton. And the Deponent saith, Why, she was not there. Yes, said she, I saw her by my bedside. The Deponent then asked her the original of all, which she related from the time of her begging the Beef, and after kissing, and so to that time. That then they caused the Maid to be got up, and sent to Florence Newton, but she refused to come, pretending she was sick, though it indeed appeared she was well. Then the Mayor of Youghal came in, and spoke with the Maid, and then sent again and caused Florence Newton to be brought in, and immediately the Maid fell into her Fit far more violent, and three times as long as at any other time, and all the Witch was in the Chamber the Maid cried out continually of her being hurt here and there, but never named the Witch: but as soon as she was removed, then she cried out against her by the name of Gammer Newton, and this for several times. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
And still when the Witch was out of the Chamber the Maid would desire to go to Prayers, and he found good affections of her in time of Prayer, but when the Witch was brought in again, though never so privately, although she could not possibly, as the Deponent conceives, see her, she would be immediately senseless, and like to be strangled, and so would continue till the Witch was taken out, and then though never so privately carried away she would come again to her senses. That afterwards Mr. Greatrix, Mr. Blackwall, and some others, who would need satisfy themselves in the influence of the Witch’s presence, tried it and found it several times. Richard Mayre, Mayor of Youghall, sworn, saith, That about the 24th of March last he sent for Florence Newton and examined her about the Maid, and she at first denied it, and accused Goodwife Halfpenny and Goodwife Dod, but at length when he had caused a Boat to be provided, and thought to have tried the Water-Experiment on all three, Florence Newton confessed to overlooking. Then he likewise examined the other two Women, but they utterly denied it, and were content to abide any trial; whereupon he caused Dod, Halfpenny, and Newton to be carried to the Maid; and he told her that these two Women, or one of them, were said by Gammer Newton to have done her hurt, but she said No, no, they are honest Women, but it is Gammer Newton that hurts me, and I believe she is not far off. [She was then brough in privately, with the usual result.] He further deposeth that there were three Aldermen in Youghall, whose children she had kiss’d, as he had heard them affirm, and all the children died presently after. Joseph Thompson being likewise sworn, saith [the same as Nicholas Pyne relatie to the Greyhound-Familiar.] #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
Hitherto we have heard the most considerable Evidence touching Florence Newton’s witchcraft upon Mary Longdon, for which she was committed to Youghall Prison, 24th March 1661. However, April following she bewitched David Jones to death by kissing his hand through the Grate of the prison, for which she was indicted at Cork Assizes. Sarah Winchester was also afflicted by spirits after her new born daughter died six weeks after birth, and a few years later her husband perished. Although the summer sun had tanned his fair face to a rich reddish, brown, copperish hue, there was the brow more broad than high; the straight fine nose; the brave and blue eyes, and the mouth with its pretty curling smile, passersby could tell he was tormented by an internal struggle that brought on his death. With no kith or kin of hers alive, Mrs. Winchester could not bear that. She went and spoke with a medium who told her she was haunted by spirits of the Winchester rifle and needed to move West and build a castle. As long as that castle was under construction, she would be protected from the evil spirits. Mrs. Winchester eventually built a 4-story, 160 mansion, which is approximately 25,000 square feet. And boy, was a beauty (still is). However, she would not leave the house. She had a fancy that it would be cruel to her husband. She used to pray twice a day for him. She would go round by the garden and in at a lower gate, and come back the same way, or by the upper garden. This went on for many years. Before she made the bedroom on the fourth floor her main bedroom, Mrs. Winchester would sleep in different rooms sometimes, but she swore one of them was haunted, and dared never to sleep in that room again. One night, one hot night, it was a quarter before nine, and Mrs. Winchester was brushing her long shiny black hair before bed. The room was very much as it had been—rather dark because of the trees at the end of the walk outside. There was a four-poster there with the damask curtains; the table and chairs, the cupboard where her clothes were kept, and so on. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
Having prayed even more heartily and tearfully than her want for her daughter and husband, Mrs. Winchester had lain down to sleep. The windows were left open, and the blinds up, that all possible air might reach her from the still and scented garden blow. Thinking of William, she had fallen asleep, and he was still mistily in her head, when she seemed to wake. The room was fully of clear light, but it was not morning: it was only the moon looking right in and flooding every object. Mrs. Winchester could see her own ghostly figure sitting up in bed reflecting in the looking-glass opposite. She listened: surely she heard some noises: yes—certainly, there could be no doubt of it—someone was knocking loudly and perseveringly at the hall-door. At first she fell into a deadly fear; then her reason came to her aid. If it were a robber, or a person with any evil intent, would he knock so openly and clamorously as to arouse inmates? Would not he rather go stealthily to work, to force a silent entrance for himself? At worst it is some drunken sailor from San Francisco; at best it is a messenger with news of her dear ones. At this thought, Mrs. Winchester sprang out of bed, and hurried on her stockings and shoes and whatever garments came most quickly to hand—with her hair spread all over her back, and utterly forgetful of her big comb, she opened her door, and flew down the passages, into which the moon was looking with her ghostly smile, down the broad and shallow stairs. As she neared the hall-door she met her old butler rather dishevelled, and evidently on the same errand as herself. “Who can it be, Henry?” She asked, trembling with excitement and fear. “Indeed, ma’am, I cannot tell you,” replied the butler, shaking his head, “it is a very odd time of the night to choose for making such noise. We will ask them their business, whoever they are, before we unchain the door. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
It seemed to Mrs. Winchester as if the endless bolts would never be drawn—the key never be turned in the stiff lock; but at last the door opened slowly and cautiously, only to the width of a few inches, as it is still confined by the strong chained. However, there was no one at the door, but Mrs. Winchester could see down to the front gate, which was about a hundred yards away. She saw someone come up the walk; but it seemed to her at first that he was drunk. He staggered several times as she watched; she supposed he would be fifty yards away—and once she saw him catch hold of one of the trees and cling against it as if he were afraid of falling. Then he left it, and came on again slowly, going from side to side, with his hands out. He seemed desperately keen to get to the mansion. She could see his dress; and it astonished her that a man dressed so should be drunk; for her was quietly plainly a gentleman. He wore a white top hat, and a grey cut-away coat, and gray trousers, and Mrs. Winchester could make out his white spats. Then it struck her he might be ill; and she looked harder than ever, wondering whether she ought to go down. When he was about twenty yards away he lifted his face, and it struck Mrs. Winchester as very odd, she it seemed to her he was extraordinarily the her husband, who they had buried five months ago; but it was darkish where he was, and the next moment he dropped his face, threw up his hands and fell flat on his back. Well, of course she was startled at that, and she ran to the window and learned out and called something. He was moving his hands she could see, as if he were in convulsions; and she could hear the dry leaves rustling. She ran back to the door, the chains rattled down, the door opened wide and there he stands before her. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
At once, before anyone could say anything, before anything had happened, a feeling of cold disappointment stole unaccountably over her—a nameless sensation whose nearest kin was a chilly awe. He made no movement towards her. He stood there still and silent, and though the night was dry, equally free from rain and dew, she saw that he was dripping wet; the water was running down from his clothes, from his drenched hair, and even from his eyelashes, on to the dry ground at his feet. “What has happened,” Mrs. Winchester cried, “Good Heavens! How are you here? How are you wet?” and as she spoke, she stretched out her hand and lay it on his coat sleeve. However, even as she does it a sensation of intense cold runs up her finger and her arm, even to the elbow. She wondered, “How is it that you are so chilled to the marrow of your bones on this sultry, breathless August night?” To her extreme surprise, he did not answer; he still stood there, numb and dripping. “Where have you come from?” Mrs. Winchester asked, with that sense of awe deepening. “It was cold,” Mr. Winchester replied, shivering, and speaking in a low and strangle altered voice, “bitter cold. I could not stay there.” “Stay where,” Mrs. Winchester say, looking in amazement at his face, which whether owning to the ghastly effect of the moonlight or not, seemed to her now ash white. “Where have you been? What is it you are talking about?” However, he did not reply. “He is really ill, I am afraid, Henry,” Mrs. Winchester said, turning with a forlorn feeling towards the butler. “He does not seem to hear what I am saying to him. I am afraid he has a thorough chill. What water can he have fallen into? You had better help him up to bed, and get him warm between the blankets. His room is quite ready for him, you know—come in,” she said, stretching out her hand to him, “you will be better after a night’s rest.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
Mr. Winchester did not take her offered hand, but he followed her across the threshold and across the hall. She heard the water drops falling drip, drip, on the echoing of the mahogany wood floors as he passed then upstairs, and along the gallery to the door of his room, where she left him with Henry. Then everything became blank and nil to Mrs. Winchester. She awakes as usual in the morning by the entrance of her maid Agnus with hot water. She rushed to check on Mr. Winchester, but he was gone and the bed had not been slept in. Time then convinces Mrs. Winchester that she was mistaken, and that during all the time that she thought she was standing at the open-hall door, talking to her beloved, in reality she was lying on her own bed in the depths of sleep, with no other company than the scent of the flowers and the light of the moon. At that discovery, a great and terrible depression fell on her. And she had those room torn down for she would not allow a devil-sent apparition to shake her confidence. Three more weeks passed away; the harvest is garnered, and prunes are growing soft and mellow. Towards the evening, buried in her own thoughts, it was a rather heavy and depressing evening, without a breath of wind; and it was darker than it had been for some days. Even today, as beautiful as it is, a vast solitude of villagers, who fear cackling hyenas and demons say it is haunted. In his final days, Mr. Winchester fought the demons pitchfork for pitchfork, toughening his body by robbing it of sleep, any little comfort, even sustenance. He ate only bread and salt, once a day or every two or four days, and drank water. This ascetic regime, however, did not banish the demon, he died March 7, 1881. He was in his early 40s. Mrs. Winchester went on to live a long life, and although William never lived in their mansion in San Jose, he was there in spirit. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree 🎄
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My Name is Legion, for there are Many of Us!
Progress always involves risk; you cannot steal second base and keep your foot on first. Some people react to major stressor in their lives with extended and excessive feelings of anxiety, depressed mood, or antisocial behaviours. The symptoms do not quite add up to acute stress disorder or posttraumatic stress disorder, nor do they reflect an anxiety or mood disorder, but they do cause considerable distress or interfere with the person’s job, schoolwork, or social life. Should we consider such reactions normal? No. Somewhere between effective coping strategies and posttraumatic stress disorder or other such syndromes lie the adjustment disorders. There are several types of adjustment disorders, including adjustment disorder with anxiety, and adjustment disorder with depressed mood. If they develop their symptoms within three months of the onset of a stressor, people receive such diagnoses. Crowded living conditions are one form of social stress that may arouse anxiety. The most crowded cities in the World are Manila (120,987 people per square mile), Shanghai, Cairo, Paris, and Bombay. The most crowded states in the United States of America are New Jersey (1,256 people per square mile), Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Maryland. The symptoms of adjustment disorder may continue for as long as six months after the stressor subsides. If the stressor is long-term, such as a medical condition, the adjustment disorder may last indefinitely. Almost any kind of stressor may trigger an adjustment disorder. Common ones are the breakup of a relationship, marital problems, business difficulties, and living in a crime ridden neighbourhood. The disorder may also be triggered by developmental events such as going away to school, getting married, becoming a parent, or retiring from a job. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Up to 30 percent of all people in outpatient therapy receive this diagnosis; it accounts for far more claims for treatment submitted to insurance companies than any other. However, some experts doubt that adjustment disorders are as common as this figure suggests. Rather, the diagnosis seems to be a favourite things among clinicians—it can easily be applied to a range of problems yet is less stigmatizing than many other categories. Veterans, who risk their lives to defend us and yet are paid far less than sports entertainers, may benefit from rap groups, where they meet with others like themselves to share experiences and feelings, develop insights, and give mutual support. Many veterans find it easier to recall events in a rap group and to confront feelings they have been trying to avoid for years. One of the major issues rap groups deal with is guilt—guilt about things the members may have done to survive or about the very fact that they did survive while close friends and their brothers and sisters and sometimes parents died. Once the veterans are finally able to talk openly about their combat experiences and guilt feelings, they may finally start to recover from them and weigh their responsibility for past actions more accurately. Rap groups may also focus on the rage many combat veterans feel. Sharing painful memories and feelings—rap groups have helped many Vietnam veterans overcome the anxiety, depression, sleep problems, and flashbacks that still linger years after the war. As we have seen, stress can greatly affect our psychological functioning. Similarly, it can have an enormous impact on our physical functioning, contributing in some cases to the development of significant medical problems and disorders. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
The idea that stress and related psychosocial factors may contribute to somatic illnesses has ancient roots, yet it had few supporters before the twentieth century. The seventeenth-century French philosopher Rene Descartes went so far as to claim that the mind, or soul, is separate from the body—a position called mind-body dualism. Psychogenic sexual dysfunctions are a subgroup of sexual disorders whose origins appear to be psychological in nature, and are not adequately accounted for by medical or organic causes. These dysfunctions involve a disturbance in sexual desire or in the psychophysiological changes associated with the human sexual response. This disturbance causes both personal and interpersonal distress. Included in this class of problems are hyperactive sexual desire disorder, male erectile disorder, and the sexual pain disorders, for example. (Another subgroup of sexual disorders consists the paraphilias. These involve recurrent and intense sexual urges, fantasies, or behaviours that include unusual objects, situations, and activities; these symptoms cause personal and interpersonal stress, occupational impairment, and sometimes legal troubles. Psychogenic sexual dysfunctions are clearly caused by, and cause, profound problems in interpersonal relationships. The incidence and prevalence of psychogenic sexual dysfunctions are not well known. These disorders are often overlooked in major epidemiological studies of mental health problems. Given the preponderance of individuals seeking treatment for them, it is likely that sexual dysfunctions are among the more common classes of psychosocial problems. A recent U.S. national survey of adult women supports a lifetime prevalence estimate of approximately 11 percent. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Many sexual problems are produced by interpersonal processes gone awry. Specifically, early deprivation, guilt over seeking gratification of pleasures of the flesh, relationships involving pleasures of the flesh transformed into power struggles, unexpressed anger, and unrealistic expectations of the self and others can each lead to the experience of difficulties involving pleasures of the flesh. Interpersonal problems such as these continue to occupy a dominant presence in the literature on psychogenic sexual dysfunction. Such themes are clearly evident that both clinicians and researchers have considered relationship factors to be of major importance in the development and maintenance of distress involving pleasures of the flesh. Most theoretical models of human sexuality emphasize the importance of interpersonal communication in maintaining the adjustment of making whoopy. Dysfunction involving pleasures of the flesh is therefore not viewed as an isolated complain but as evidence of emotional disturbance in the relationship as a whole. A dominant theme in the research findings on psychogenic sexual dysfunctions is that of problematic family-of-orientation experiences (id est, the relationship with the spouse). (Although dysfunctions involving pleasures of the flesh can of course arise in the context of some general personal relationships—that is, in dating/romantic relationships—the vast majority of research on such dysfunctions has been done with marital or quasi-marital couples; therefore, general personal relationships are not discussed in detail here.) Within marital relationships, dysfunctions in pleasures of the flesh are linked with breakdowns in interpersonal communications. As such, they may serve two functions that resemble functions of somatoform disorders: They may provide a temporary solution to a system-wide problem, and they may serve as a method of communicating unhappiness indirectly. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Sexual dysfunctions are also linked with many forms of marital conflict. The conflict may be both a cause and a result of the dysfunction; in any case, it is patently obvious that psychogenic sexual dysfunctions and marital distress go hand in hand. Research on family-of-origin experiences has identified a number of early interpersonal experiences that may be etiological in this class of disorders. For example, many people with psychogenic sexual dysfunctions have a history of childhood sexual abuse, and/or exposure to parental modeling of dysfunctional attitudes and behaviours surrounding pleasures of the flesh. Significant problems with basic communication processes are abundantly evident in sexually distressed couples. In most cases, a psychogenic sexual dysfunction is part of a larger relational problem with establishing and maintaining intimacy. To illustrate, researchers compared sexually distressed and nondistressed couples on a number of specific communication skills that are important in close relationships. Partners in sexually distressed couples exhibited a greater proportion of disapproval and approval, less empathic reaction to each other, and more indirect as well as hostile expression of anger, in comparisons to control couples. Analysis of a 10-minute marital interaction indicated that couples with pleasures of the flesh dysfunctions were less behaviourally engaged and assertive than control couples. A study with similar subject groups found that couples with dysfunctions in pleasures of the flesh were more likely to have experienced instability and a general lack of communication in their relationships than those in more functional relationships. These findings are consistent with those that more generally indicate a powerful relationship between interspousal communication in pleasures of the flesh and marital adjustment. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Researchers developed a unique typology of marital interactions among couples with dysfunctions involving pleasures of the flesh; their work is reminiscent of the pioneering work of Harris International Research and Development on different marital and family types. Their analyses yielded four coupe groups: the conflict-centered relationships, which harbours a hostile and dominant spouse (this group is actually split into two subgroups, one in which the husband is dominant and one in which the wife is dominant); the passive-constrained relationship, composed of introverted spouses who are withdrawn and emotionally inhibited; and the congenial-affectionate relationship, characterized by some anxiety and discouragement, but with similar attitudes toward spontaneity, compassion, and emotional self-absorption. The conflict-centered and passive-constrained relationships, which collectively accounted for approximately 50 percent of the couples who had dysfunctions in pleasures of the flesh in the sample, had obvious marital communication problems. The congenial-affectionate group is perhaps the most functional, and the couple type for which the prognosis is best. A sense of mutuality is an important component of any healthy personal relationship. Accordingly, agreement and a sense of understanding between partners play an important role in pleasures of the flesh adjustment. A survey study of cohabiting couples indicated that agreement between partners pleasures of the flesh preferences was a key predictor of the pleasures of the flesh adjustment, as was men’s (but not women’s) understandings of their partners’ preferences. The role that communication plays in creating this understanding cannot be overstated or overlooked. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
There is an idea expressed in our text by St. Paul which we have not yet paid attention to, and that is the idea of an undivided heart. Married people, necessarily concerned with the World’s affairs and how to please their spouses, “are divided,” whereas virginity enables one to live “devoted to the Lord, without distractions.” The state of virginity, as St. Paul presents it, is not subjective and psychological in nature, but objective; that it has the Lord as its center and aim, and not personal benefit. Now, we have to say that, in a subordinate way, it also fulfills this second function of personal enhancement and growth. In other words, it does have a strong subjective, existential significance. In fact it helps a person to achieve the finest, most difficult enterprise of all, which is to become inwardly unified. There is a “diaspora,” a dispersion, even withing ourselves. If Jesus were to ask me, as He did that poor demoniac in the Gospel: “Why is your name?” I too would have to reply: “My name is legion, for there are many of us,” Mark 5.9. There are as many of us as there are desires, plans and regrets which we harbour, each one different from and contrary to others which pull us in opposite directions. They literally dis-tract us, drag us apart. Virginity is a power aid to progress toward interior unity, in virtue of the fact that it enables us to live united to the Lord, and able to devote ourselves to Him “without distractions.” United in oneself and united to the Lord—the unity we are talking about consists in precisely these elements. St. Augustine has written: “Through continence, in fact, we are gathered in and returned to the One, from which we have flowed out into the many. For he loves You less who loves something else along with You, which he does not love for Your sake.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
This unity is what Jesus calls “purity of heart,” and it is realized most of all at the level of the will. It consists in wanting fewer and fewer things, until eventually one wants “one thing only.” When a person can truthfully say with the psalmist: “One thing alone have I asked for the Lord, one thing only do I seek,” reports Psalms 27.4, and “Whom else have I in Heaven but You? With You, I lack nothing on Earth,” reports Psalms 73.25, then such a person is coming close to real virginity of heart, of which physical virginity is the sign and safeguard. This is because virginity of the heart consists in wanting one thing only, that one thing being God. This illuminating and unifying aspect of virginity was the one that some strongly ascetical and mystical Fathers such as Gregory of Nyssa most liked to emphasize. For him, true virginity is interior, and consists in progressively freeing oneself from passions and desires (pathe) in order to unite oneself to God. The other, physical virginity, is strictly related to ad in view of the first, a kind of protective wrapping for it. He writes: “In order to contemplate the bliss of the divine pleasure in the best way possible, the liberated soul, once released, must not turn to any Earthly thing, or taste any of what are commonly claimed to be pleasures. On the contrary, one transfers the impulse of one’s love from material things in order to contemplate with one’s mind what is beautiful in a non-material way. Bodily virginity has been devised precisely so that this disposition of the heart could come about. Its principal function is to make the soul forget the natural movements of the passions, and to prevent the base needs of the flesh from reaching the point where they must be satisfied. The soul, once freed from these, will no longer run the risk of gradually growing used to things apparently permitted by the law of nature, and thus of abandoning or ignoring that divine and genuine pleasure which can only be pursed by the purity of the rational element that guides us.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
There is no doubt that there are some married people who are further advanced along this way than many celibates and virgins. Gregory of Nyssa himself, who outlined this marvellous program for interior purity, was married. However, this does not take away from the fact that the virgin, as such, is more favoured when it comes to this task, and consequently more responsible if one is careless about implementing it. Married people must inevitably be concerned with the affairs of the World, of their family. They cannot help being divided. The same Gregory of Nyssa says of the married woman that: “A fragment of heart goes away with every child she has, and if she has had many children, her soul is divided into as many parts as she has had children, so that she feels in her very depths whatever happens to each of them.” Obviously this can become a way for her to grow in holiness (“A woman,” says Scriptures in 1 Timothy 2.15, “will be saved by childbearing”), but this does not take away the fact that she is, in some sense, also divided by childbearing. Once again, however, on the subject of the undivided heart, we have occasion to reflect and be afraid. The undivided heart is a good thing, as long as you love somebody. In fact, a divided heart that loves someone is better than an undivided heart that loves nobody—the latter would actually be undivided egoism. It would mean having one’s heart full, but with most corrupting thing there is: oneself. Of this type of virgin and celibate, unfortunately none too rare, because they do not belong to someone else, they think they belong to God. Because they lone no one else, they think they love God. Looked at from any angle, it is clear that the essence of celibacy and virginity for the Kingdom is a spousal love for the Lord. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
The very “fruitfulness” of this state of life depends on spousal love for the Lord. Just as marriage without love would not be a true marriage, even if it was “valid,” so would virginity without love hardly be true virginity, only a semblance, a hard and empty shell, without a soul. The main motive for Christian virginity is therefore positive, not negative. The phenomenology of religion is familiar with many forms of virginity, at least temporary ones, even outside Christianity. However, in these cases it either has a negative motive of separation and abstention from the World and material things, as in Gnosticism (whose watchword was “fasting from the World”), or else one of ritual purification—also tending towards the negative—by which children (pueri innupti) and vestal virgins, by reason of their uncorrupt state, were considered more worthy to approach God. In this last case we see an example reminiscent of the principle in Jewish Levitical law, of also abstaining from marriage when acts of worship and sacrifices were to be performed. For many people, Christianity has been a powerful, all-consuming religion that demands much and delivers in equal proportion. They embrace it with gusto and model their lives on its principles, emphasizing what suits their natures. For some, extreme asceticism—self-flagellation and fasting to the point of starvation—has been the path to salvation. For others, it has been self-appointed, solitary service to God, freed from the constraints of marriage and household supervision, of pregnancy and child-rearing. Not surprisingly, the Church Fathers worried about unconventional virgins. Some believed that virgins should be locked in isolated, not allowed to travel nor socialize. Stories about outstanding virgins astounded, impressed, influenced, and outraged the Christian World. Whether true, wildly embellished, or entirely fictional, these stories survived for centuries and inspired countless others with their examples of courageous and confident devotion to celibate, Godly ways of life. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
There used to be communities of virgins and many of them were adults. Constantina, daughter of a Christian emperor, was diametrically opposite to the flesh and blood. She lived in a community of 120 virgins. And they recruited other virgins. One of the perks of this unusual state was the right to flout social norms in favour of Christian values, while demanding the highest status because of their sexual virtue. This inspired other Christian women who hoped they, too, could liberate themselves through devout virginity. As we have seen in the New Testament, virginity has an essentially beneficial motivation: the Kingdom, the Lord. St. John Chrysostom states: “The slavery of marriage is harsh and inevitable. Even when it is free from all pain, marriage has no greatness in itself: of what advantage could the most perfect of marriages be at the moment of death? None at all!” Even Gregory of Nyssa, although married, as I said, feels the need to speak of “the unpleasant aspects of marriage” before proceeding with his discourse on virginity, and begins his indictment by saying: “Where shall we start, in order to depict this difficult life in the dismal hues that befit it?” And further: “All life’s absurdities originate in marriage.” The Latin Fathers also—Ambrose and Augustine—follow along the same lines. Chrysostom write that “anyone who denigrates marriage also harms virginity.” Neo-Platonic believers saw the asceticism of the soul as essentially linked to detachment from matter and the flesh. “Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive,” reports Acts 20.35. Give your heart to God. God will not fill a closed fist with good things. God is a giver, and you are never more like God than when you give. God promised the Old Testament patriarch Abraham, “I will bless you [with abundant increase of favours] and make your name famous and distinguished, and you will be a blessing,” reports Genesis 12.2. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
We often read such promises, and say, “All right, God! Come on; pour out Your blessings on me!” However, notice there is a catch. We must do something; better yet, we must be something. God is implying that we will not be blessed simply so we can live lavishly or self-indulgently. We will be blessed to be a blessing. Indeed, unless we are willing to be a blessing, God will not pour out His favour and goodness in our lives. We will receive from God in the same measure that we give to others. You may not feel you have anything extra to give. However, it depends on your attitude. You must be faithful in the little you have right now before God will bless you with more. A lot of people say, “God, when are You going to bless me?” However, if we would listen more carefully, maybe we would hear God saying, “When are you going to start being a blessing?” Giving is a spiritual principle. Whatever you give will be given back to you. If you give a smile, you will receive smiles from others. If you are generous to people in their time of need, God will make sure that other people are generous to you in your time of need. Interesting, is it not? What you make happen for others, God will make happen for you. The Bible says, “When you help the poor, you are lending to the Lord,” reports Proverbs 19.17. You may be thinking, “Well, if I had more money, I would give more.” No, that is where you miss it. You have to start right where you are. You must be faithful with what you have, then God will trust you with more. You may not have a lot of extra money to give, but you can buy somebody’s dinner every once in a while. You can give somebody a kind word. You can go out of your way to pray for someone in need. Now is the time to develop an attitude of giving. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Friend, the closet thing to the heart of our God is helping hurting people. God loves when we sing and when we pray. He loves when we come together to celebrate His goodness. However, nothing pleases God any more than when we take care of one of His children. Jesus said, “If you even give as much as a cup of water to someone in need, I see it and I am going to reward you,” reports Matthew 10.42. He said, “Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My breathren, you did it to Me,” Matthew 25.40. Someone needs what you have to give. It may not be your money; it may be your time. It may be your listening ear. It may be your loving arms to encourage. It may be your smile to uplift. It may be your holding on to your chastity to inspire. Who knows? Maybe just saying “Hello,” may let someone know that you care and can help begin to heal that person’s heart May you can give a rescuing flower. The Pilgrims believed, “You have not lived until you have done something for someone who cannot pay you back.” Make a decision that today, you will be on the lookout for someone you can bless. The actualizing Christian learns how to live in the here and now, while trusting the past and future to God. What has happened in the past, one accepts, not hanging on to the good or bad experiences. One takes what one has learned from all experiences, uses that wisdom from then on, and leaves the experiences themselves in the past. One is free, then, of the burden of guilt, resentment, embarrassment, despair, or bitterness that being stuck in past memories would cause. In regard to the future, one takes the responsibility to make tentative plans, yet trusts the final outcome of each day and each year to God. One takes to heart the saying of Christ to “seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you,” reports Matthew 6.33. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
One has faith in the future without having to make rigid and unrealistic goals. One gives up demanding a guarantee from God or anyone else just exactly how things will work out in one’s life. Instead, one chooses to do what one can and trusts God for the rest. This style of life bears the fruit of peace, joy, and contentment. Even though there are sudden reversals or traumas or things one did not count on, one looks to God to reveal in time a deeper meaning for why things turn out the way they do. So, again, one discovers a sense of peace in even the most turbulent times. This is not to say that the Christian does not experience anxiety, confusion, or frustration. Rather, it is simply to say that underneath these feelings will remain a depth of calm and peace, just as the ocean remains calm underneath the turbulent waves of a hurricane. The source of calmness is the person’s deep-rootedness in the Spirit of God. This past year, several things happened to me suddenly that I did not know which way to turn. I felt jarred. I know that I developed migraines as I tried to understand how to handle certain relationships and circumstances. Jared, Jensen, and I spent time in prayer, and I deeply yielded my life to God, so that I could learn what He was expecting of me and which direction I should go. Out of this surrender came a real peace. I had an inner assurance that things would work out in the best way. Even though I feel worried occasionally, I have already begun to realize that God is answering my prayers, and that His hands are in all that is happening to me. So I am trusting God in each moment and not trying to predict or manipulate the future. I am experiencing faith to let things go so that God can decide what the future holds. The actualizing Christian seeks a balance in which one live fully and responsively in the present, yet ties the past and the future to the present in a meaningful continuity. This lifestyle is in accord with the biblical invitations to trust God in all things and to praise Him however things might be turning out. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
The testimony of Scriptures is that even the most seemingly tragic events are changed into the most studding victories for those who put their trust in God. Dear Lord in Heaven, I know that You are a giver, and I want to be like You. Please help me to hold loosely those things You have placed in my hands, and help me to always be ready to give to others in the same way You have given to me. In animals, fear is episodic; in humans, because of their enlarged consciousness, fear is constant. Even in our pleasures, our triumphs, fear is lurking presence. We are never safe. We live in vivid awareness of dangers not present but remembered or anticipated—drought and famine and predators, pain, and pestilence, and war. And something new: the awareness that we will die. Constant fear gives birth to exploitation. Because we are afraid we seek refuge in strength. We create gods to protect us, to explain our condition, to guarantee our safety, to promise us eternal life. And these gods, it turns out, speak to us through humans of power—through wizards, priests, princes, prelates, and kings and queens. They formulate the taboos: impulse must be controlled, violence and random sexuality prohibited. Sin comes into being. And morality. And guilt, the danger from within. Heaven is created for those who observe the taboos, hell for those who violate them. Fear and weakness impel us to honour the taboos, to obey our leaders. It is now possible for the few to control the many. Work comes into being: steady, heavy labour day after day for an end which is not of our choosing, which serves no purpose in our life but which (we have been convinced) is required by the gods who (we have come to believe) will protect us. Servitude is evented. The proliferation of tools and of the things that are built with tools, and the proliferation of myths and of the fears that are formulated and expressed by myths, comprise culture. Henceforth humans’ lives, not in nature, but in culture. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
In our nostalgia for the major freedoms of the days of Adam and Eve or Adam and Lilith, we recreate the Golden Age in our suburban communities, a time before sin. However, this takes money. The buy-in is close to $1 million in a rural community to try to isolated one’s family from sin and major crimes, and each time its tentacles reach our haven, it cost even more money to relocate and build a new one. The sacred does not beckon to us from up ahead, urging us forward toward higher spiritual realms. The sacred lies behind us. It blocks the way back to the freedom of our prehuman past. The sacred and the forbidden are one. Because Eden lies behind them, and the way back is blocked. These humans live in their knowledge of good and evil. They have given up random violence and indiscriminate pleasures of the flesh. And from that abnegation arises all of the human virtues: faithfulness, honesty, charity, obedience, love, trust, and care. It is these virtues that make it possible that orderly organized life can now take place in groups—not of thirty or thirty-five—but of thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Millions of people observe the taboos and live orderly law-abiding lives within one organized group. The orderliness, indeed, is breathtaking. The violence that individuals have given up in the course of becoming orderly and moral has not been eliminated. It is passed on; it is handed upward. It collects at the top, in the White House, the California State Capitol is so sinful it should be black; Number Ten Downing Street, the Kremlin. The morality of individuals has led to community, to group solidarity, to orderliness, thereby making possible larger and larger sovereign collectives. And these collectives seize for themselves all of that power, all of that ruthlessness, that savagery, that the constituent individuals have, in their move to morality, to decency, themselves forsworn. These sovereign entities, however, have forsworn nothing, have not themselves become moral. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Such was never their intention, though they are loud in lip service to that notion. And the savagery that these collectives, these super-beasts in their super-jungle, are able to inflict on each other and on their moral constituents is so much more destructive than anything that could be done by individuals—regard the German dead at the Falaise Gap, thousands and thousands of bodies, heads, limbs, viscera. We may permit ourselves some nostalgia for the untrammeled violence of our pre-human past. It is my belief that we are going to have a change. And once the Americans can recover from their mesmerized condition and its astounding political apathy, out country will be in a most fortunate situation. For the kinds of radical changes, we need are those that are appropriate to a fairly general prosperity. We have allowed social balance to become lopsided and runaway in the present abuse of the country’s wealth. For instance, we have a vast surplus productivity, we can turn to finding jobs that will bring out the youth’s capacity, and so really conserve human resources. We can find ways to restore to the worker a say in their production, and so really do something for humanly independence. Since we have a problem of what to do with leisure, we can begin to think of necessary community enterprises that want doing, and that people can enthusiastically and spontabeously throw themselves into, and be proud of the results (exempli gratia, beautifying our hideous small towns). And perhaps thereby create us a culture again. Since we have the technology, the capital, and labour, why should we not have livable cities? Should it be hard to bring back into society the 55 percent who are still ill fed and ill houses, and more outcast than ever? #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
What is necessary is directly addressing definite objective needs and using available resources to satisfy them; doing things that are worth while just because they are worth while since we can. Politically, what we need is government in which a human offers oneself as candidate because one has a new program that one wants to effectuate, and we choose one because we want that good, and judge that one is the best human to effectuate it. Is that outlandish? The sovereign, having no other force than legislative power, acts only through the laws. And since the laws are only authentic acts of the general will, the sovereign can act only when the populace is assembled. With the populace assembled, it will be said: what a chimera! It is a chimera today, but two thousands years ago it was not. Have humans changed their nature? The boundaries of what is possible in moral matters are less narrow than we think. It is our weakness, our vices and our prejudices that shrink them. Base souls do not believe in great humans; vile slaves smile with an air of mockery at the word liberty. Let us consider what can be done in the light of what has been done. I will not speak of the ancient republics of Greece; however, the Roman Republic was, to my mind, a great state, and the town of Rome was a great town. The last census in Rome gave four hundred thousand citizens bearing arms, and the last census count gave four million citizens, not counting subjects, foreigners, women, children, and slaves. What difficulty might not be imagined in frequently calling assemblies of the immense populace of that capital and its environs. Nevertheless, few weeks passed by without the Roman people being assembled, and even several times on one week. It exercised not only the rights of sovereignty but also a part of those of the government. It took care of certain matters of public business; it tried certain cases; and this entire populace was in the public meeting place hardly less often as magistrate than as citizens. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
In looking back to the earliest history of nations, one would find that most of the ancient governments, even the monarchical ones such as those of the Macedonians and the Franks, had similar councils. Be that as it may, this lone contestable fact answers every difficulty: arguing from the actual to the possible seems like good logic to me. Now some of these things may be a little off the subject of prayer, but these are some areas that God is wanting us to look into. Once as I was teaching on this subject, the following prophecy came forth: For I have desires to reveal My wisdom, saith the Lord. Even in these days, I have spoken to humans from time to time that there was coming in this hour humans that will speak forth the Word accurately and learn to use My Word as I have set it forth. It will come forth with great power, as the wisdom of God unfolds within humans, as one understands the system that I have set in motion in this Universe. All humans come under that system; they walk and live under it. However, when they learn to control that system by the spoken Word, then My power will come forth in them. They will be able not only to control their bodies, but they will control their minds by casting down imaginations. They will be able to rise to a new level of life. The World will stand in awe as they see these people come forth. They will say, “Who are these people that have come in this hour that are able to speak even as though they had the power to do what they speak and it seems to come to pass even before our eyes? We do not understand these things.” However, it is My wisdom, saith the Lord and it is hidden in My Word. I did not hide it from you. I hid it there for you, so you could find it and act upon it. Bless the Lord, O my soul Lord my God you are great. You are clothed with the energy of atoms as with a mantle from a cloud of whirling cosmic dust as on the potter’s wheel. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Lord, you have began to tease out the whorls of the galaxies and the gas escapes from your fingers condensing and burning and you were fashioning the stars you made a spatterdash of planets like spores or seeds and scattered comets like flowers. O Lord, be upon us, for we have placed our hope in Thee. Save us, O God of our Salvation; gather us together and save us from the nation that oppress us that we may give thanks unto Thy holy name, and they shall glorify Thy name, for Thou art great; Thou doest wondrous things and Thou art great; Thou doest wondrous things and Thou alone art God. We are Thy people and the sheep of Thy pasture; we will give thanks unto Thee forever. To all generations will we recount Thy praise. Blessed be the Lord by day; blessed be the Lord by night; blessed be the Lord when we lie down; blessed be the Lord when we rise up. For in Thy hand are the souls of the living and the dead, as it is said: In His hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all humankind. Into Thy hand I commit my spirit. Thou dost redeems me, O Lord, Thou God of truth. Our God who are in Heaven, make manifest the unity of Thy name, establish Thy Kingdom for all time, and reign over us for ever and ever. May our eyes behold, our hearts rejoice, and our souls be glad in Thy true salvation, when it shall be said unto America: Thy God reigneth. The Lord reigneth; the Lord hath reigned; the Lord shall reign for ever and ever; for the Kingdom is Thine, and to everlasting Thou wilt reign in glory; for we have no King but Thee. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the King, who continually in Thy glory wilt reign over us and over Thy creation for ever and ever. The grand realization of one’s identity with the One should support one in al hours. One who gains this consciousness in times when the Universal Law smiles must keep it also in times of tribulation. One must liberate oneself from the hazards of circumstances and from the bondage to emotional reactions, and at all times realize one’s best self. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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An open concept floorplan means plenty of room for that sprawling sectional! 🛋️
Meadows Residence 1 may be single story living, but the amount of space will be a pleasant surprise. https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/residence-1/
Residence One at Cresleigh Meadows holds 2,054 square feet of single story living. The open concept design includes three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a two car garage plus workshop.
Through the charming front porch enter into the foyer, where two secondary bedrooms lead off to a Jack and Jill bathroom.
With a Cresleigh Home, you will always experience a Sunday kind of love. Come on along.
If Sparta and Rome Perished, What State Can Hope to Last Forever?
It is never too late to be what you might have been. This is the first motive for virginity and celibacy, deriving from the fact that the Kingdom has already come. Let us now go back to the foundational words of Jesus Christ to discover the second motive: it, too, is inherent in the nature of the Kingdom. We were saying that, in another sense, the Kingdom of God has “not yet” come, it is on the way. It has to come in intensity within the Church (how many areas inside ourselves are still pagan and need to be evangelized!). It must come in extension, until it reached the ends of the Earth. How many nations and entire continents are still waiting for the light of the Gospel! Now here is the motive that flows from this: since God’s Kingdom has not yet come but is on the way, we need men and women who will devote themselves full-time and wholeheartedly to the coming of that Kingdom. And this brings us to the missionary or apostolic dimension of virginity and celibacy, which flows quite obviously and without any forcing from Jesus’ words “for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven.” Today there is a great deal of talk about the “quality of life.” It is said that the most important thing is not to increase the quantity of life on our planet, but to raise its quality. By “quality” people generally means the quality of hygiene, health care or culture. However, there is also a spiritual quality of life, which is the most important, because it concerns the human soul—what remains of a person in eternity. Those who are virgins for the sake of the Kingdom are called to spend all their energies in raising this spiritual quality of life—quite apart from the fact that they are often the ones who do most, in the best and most disinterested way, to raise the other quality of life, in hygiene, health care, and culture. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
In every act of procreation there is an element of selfish desire. When a man and woman produce a child, they give a gifts, certainly, but they also “gift each other.” They fulfill themselves, but they also “fulfill each other.” They need the encounter with the other for their own fulfillment and enrichment. On the other hand, when the Trinity creates, it confers fulfillment. Since it is already perfectly happy and complete in itself, it has no need of further fulfillment. “You have created all things” says Eucharistic Prayer IV, “to fill your creatures with every blessing and lead all men to the joyful vision of your light.” Here, virginity shows its most beautiful characteristic, which is gratuity. Christian virgin men and women imitate this gratuity to some degree when they love and care for children who are not their own according to the flesh, nurse the sick people of others, care for other people’s old folk, and when they carry the weight of other people’s sins, bring them before God in intercession for the World. Celibate childlessness is tragedy but rather a sign of holiness. A number of themes emerged over the years: the virtue of virginity, or the reborn virginity of celibacy; the primacy of God’s community of believers rather than human families in society; and increasingly, the carnal, lustful, seductive nature of humans. There is no greater calamity connect with [marital] captivity than to be the victim of another’s lust. It is laws which seem to make the difference between marriage and fornication; through diversity of illicitness, not through the nature of the things itself. The body is not meant for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. While you remain chaste and virgins you are equal to the angels of God. For chastity has made even angels. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
As Christianity matured, its devotees strove for lifelong celibacy in the face of intense social pressures to marry and procreate. Celibates lived the lives of angels and built around themselves another, unsecular society of believers no longer bound by the familiar blood ties of family and kinship. Moreover, because each individual had free choice about reserving one’s body for Christian celibacy or giving it to mainstream society, alternative communities eventually sprang up for those choosing the former; convents, nunneries, and a celibate upper clergy. Christianity also developed striking and satisfying rituals of participation, transformation, and promotion. Baptism, for example, delivered believers into angelhood; the Holy Eucharist transported them into an intimacy with God. Early Christianity’s ongoing theological debate about virginity sought to clarify how humans related to each other, and whether their bodies belonged to society or to themselves, to manage as they chose. Against the backdrop of their highly stratified World, even the poorest Christians were offered the virginity of their bodies as vehicles to carry them to an angelic life, with access to the holiest of holies, the one God. Faithful Christians, poor as well as rich, woman as well as men, could wrest control of their bodies from society and dedicate them to Godly celibacy, an empowering act that raised them up to the company of angels. Christianity’s obsession with chastity has blazed at meltdown intensity ever since Christ’s birth to his virgin mother. This obsession targets all Christians, and though it focuses especially on women and religious, it embraces even married believers. However, somatoform disorders are often a means of expressing psychological and/or interpersonal distress to others. The audience for these displays my well be the same individuals who were instrumental in creating the distress. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Evidence for this cause of somatoform disorders can be found in research showing that people with these disorders have obvious interpersonal distress, and the expression of these symptoms has implicit communicative value. People with hypochondriasis often exhibit symptoms of social phobia and fear of criticism from others, as well as elevated loneliness. Patients with somatic symptoms not attributable to organic causes report greater interpersonal and social problems than those with organically caused pain. In a study of over 5,000 patients there was an association between psychological distress and symptoms without a medical explanation was generally consistent across different cultural groups. Studies of specific types of somatic symptoms present an equally compelling case for distressed interpersonal relationships at their core. When people with myofascial disorders were compared to those with medically documented arthritis, the patients with arthritis indicated that they had more available family and network support than those with myofascial disorders, who also appeared to experience significantly more conflict with members of their social networks. The extent to which patients’ personal relationships were supportive rather than conflictual was significantly, and negatively, correlated with their reports of pain. A similar pattern of findings is evident in a study of elderly people, whose rated satisfaction with social interaction protected against the experience of somatic symptoms that are commonly associated with depression (exempli gratia, trouble falling asleep, diminished appetite). One can find vigorous somatization in distressed marital and other family-of-orientation relationships. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Early family studies of patients diagnosed with hysteria (somatization disorder) showed a high prevalence of separation, divorce, and sexual dysfunction. The elevated incidence of sexual problems and impairment in social roles among married patents with pain disorder lead researcher to conclude that the chronic illness or pain becomes a scapegoat towards which the couple can direct their energies rather than to the underlying material dysfunction, so affording the marriage a degree of stability. In the family context, individuals with somatization are also more likely to be married to spouses with alcoholism, to abuse or neglect their children, and to have serious marital problems. Patients who perceive high levels of criticism in their families have been known to report poorer physical health and to make more office visits to physicians than those reporting less family criticism. A unique experimental study with married couples shows that the experience of physical pain can be exacerbated by interpersonal stress. Researchers were randomly assigned patients with chronic back pain and their spouses to discuss an issue that was stressful or to simply describe some line drawings to each other. After this manipulation, subject were instructed to ride an exercise bicycle at a steady pace, assisted by feedback from their spouses, for 20 minutes or until they felt too much pain to continue. Over twice as many subjects in the stressful-interaction condition as in the nonstressful-interaction condition terminated the bicycle ride prior to the 20-minute time limit. This rare experimental investigation shows that interpersonal stress can precipitate the experience of pain and the avoidance of physically demanding activities. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
The expression of somatic symptoms and complaints tends to be synchronous with feelings of negative affect. In this longitudinal study, depression and anxiety improved and worsened in conjunction with physical symptoms. Since these symptoms often had no physiological basis, these findings suggest that the symptom expression may have been a proxy for more direct expression of psychological distress. A key assumption is that such symptoms are not mere artifacts of inner distress, but that they are interpersonally functional indicators of that distress. Somatic symptoms may be an alternative to direct communication of distress. Among children with low levels of social competence at time 1, there was a positive relationship between the experience of negative life events and somatic complaints at time 2. However, there was no such relationship for children with higher levels of social competence. Socially competent children have good communication skills and satisfactory relationships at their disposal. Presumably such individuals can cope with the experience of stress through expressing their reactions and concerns to others and through soliciting social support. However, these mechanisms are unavailable to the child lacking in social competence; hence the expression of somatic symptoms. People with somatization disorder often suffer from alexithymia. Alexithymia is a difficulty in describing emotions and feelings verbally. People with this problem tend to focus on external events rather than on inner emotions and wishes. In this context, physical symptoms may be a means of communicating some emotional distress when the person is unable to express it verbally. For example, anxiety and fear are often accompanied by a number of bodily sensations that may include stomach pain and muscle tensions. Rather than convey feelings of fear to other people, an individual with alexithymia will focus on one’s physical symptoms, complaining of muscle aches and stomach pain, instead of talking about the feeling of anxiety and what is causing that feeling. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
The alexithymia hypothesis has received some empirical support. Researcher obtained 5-minute speech samples from patients at a family practice center. Those with somatization disorder used many words in the “not” category (exempli gratia, “not,” “cannot,” “never”), suggesting a preoccupation with negativism, and very few words from emotion categories (exempli gratia, “angry,” “happy”), compared to patient controls. A further analysis of this data set revealed that the patients with somatization were 4.5 times more likely to make statements that involved “I am,” such as “I am going off deep,” “I am tired,” and “I am going to fall,” than groups of patients with paranoia. These examples illustrate that equation of self with negativity in the discourse of patients with somatization disorder. The role of culture in the somatoform disorders cannot be overlooked. Somatic symptoms have been described as cultural idioms of distress. Cultures vary in their acceptance of individuals who express and experience largely “emotional” problems. In some cultures, it is more appropriate to have physical symptoms than psychological problems. Accordingly, the somatic symptoms of people in these cultures and subcultures are considered to be idioms of distress—their own unique and culturally accepted, if not prescribed, mechanisms for expressing their emotional distress. Asian cultures are often held up as examples of contexts in which depression and other psychological disorders are not tolerated to the same extent as physical problems. Consequently, a high prevalence of somatization is expected in such cultures, although this notion has been challenged. Researchers has also question the role of culture in promoting somatization, given the ubiquity of the relationship between psychological distress and somatic symptoms across the range of cultures that they have studied. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Although this is obviously a hypothesis that is indeed of more attention and evaluation, somatization may be a socially and culturally constructed mechanism for communicating psychological distress to others. “What is in it for me?” everyone wants to know nowadays. Many people are blatantly unashamedly living for themselves. They are not interested in other people. They will not take time to help others in need. They focus only on what they want, what they need, what they feel will most benefit themselves. Ironically, this selfish attitude condemns them to a living shallow, unrewarding lives. No matter how much they acquire for themselves, they are never satisfied. God, however, is a giver, if you want Him to pour out His blessings and favour in your life, then you must learn to be a giver and not a taker. Quit trying to figure out what everybody can do for you, and start trying to figure out what you can do for somebody else. We were not made to function as self-involved people, thinking only of ourselves. No, God created us to be givers. And you will never be truly fulfilled as a human being until you learn the simple secret of how to give your life away. You may not realize it, but it is extremely selfish to be dwelling on your problems, always thinking about what you want or need, and hardly noticing the many needs of others all around you. If you are having a problem, one of the best things you can do is to help solve somebody else’s problem. If you want your dreams to come to pass, help someone else fulfill one’s dreams. Start sowing some seeds so God can bring you a harvest. When we meet other people’s needs, God always meets our needs. We were created to give, not simply to please ourselves. If you miss that truth, you will miss the abundant, overflowing, joy-filled life that God has in store for you. #RnadolphHarris 8 of 20
However, when you reach out to other people in need, God will make sure that your own needs are supplied. If you are lonely or down and discouraged today, do not sit around feeling sorry for yourself. Get your mind off yourself and go help meet someone else’s need. Go visit the nursing home or children’s hospital. Call a friend and encourage that person. If you are struggling financially, go out and help somebody who has less than you have. You need to sow some seeds so God can bring you a harvest. Even giving a smile or a hug can be a meaningful task. Or mowing someone’s law, going to the grocery store for them, or writing someone an encouraging letter. Someone needs what you have to share. Somebody needs your smile. Someone needs your love. Someone needs your friendship. Someone needs your encouragement. God did not make us to function as “Lone Rangers.” He created us to be free, but He did not intend for us to be independent of each other. We really do need on another. If you want God to bless your life, start being a blessing to others. “God so loved the World, that he gave his only begotten Son,” reports John 3.16. Your body is like a child; you can train it to obey your words. You have trained that old dog at your house to do certain things, or maybe your cat or bird. James says that you can train every beast, bird, serpent, and thing in the sea. Humankind by their natural ability can train a dog, a bird, or any beast. Once we had a parakeet that we trained to talk. We taught it by saying the same words over and over. My grandmother had one whose name was Mr. Peepers. The bird could say it as clear as anyone. It would say, “Mr. Peepers is a pretty bird,” and it would sound just like my grandmother. Parakeets do not really understand words, but they can be trained to talk. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Your dog does not understand either. It is repeating over and over of the same name until the dog comes when you say that name. You train animals with words. Now what makes you think that your body is less intelligent than a dog? What makes you think that you cannot train the human body to obey the voice of your spirit by the words of your mouth? It can be done, for the body was designed to be obedient to words. You had to train your body to pray. It had to be obedient to the spirit human. The words we speak in prayer do have a definite effect on our bodies. When we pray or continue to say the problem, the body reacts in line with our speaking prayer. Learn to use the Word of God to control your body. Paul said, “Mortify the deeds of the body.” How do you do that? You cannot take a knife to mortify the deeds of the body; you will hurt yourself. However, you can use words to put to death its deeds by training the body to react to God’s Word. You can cause your body to come into subjection to your spirit. Paul said, “I keep my body and bring it under lest while I preach the gospel I become a castaway.” In the literal Greek, Paul actually said, “I buffet my body.” Buffet means “to slap with an open hand or clenched fist.” Train your spirit man to believe what you say will come to pass by practicing tongue control. In the area of sickness, I believe we give place to the devil when we say, “Wonder what is wrong with me?” The devil can then get out his little flip chart and say, “Well, would you believe you are taking the flu?” We say, “Well, I have not been feeling too good.” Then we begin to reason, “It could be the flu. My neighbour had it last week and I went over and prayed for him. That must be where I caught it.” Satan suggested it and you reasoned yourself into it! #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Then your first desire is to tell someone that you believe you have the flu. If you will just quit thinking and talking about how you feel and say what God said (Matthew 8.17), you an stop 50 percent of it right there. Now do not misunderstand what I said. I did not say that it was all in your mind. I do not deny that the disease exists—I deny its right to exist in my body. Do not give place to the devil. Just refuse to give him any place. If you do not embrace them, many times the symptoms will go away. Your body obeys your words—positive or negative, good or bad. Some would say, “What if I make a faith confession and still get sick?” Just keep saying what God said. Do not base your faith on experience, but on God’s Word. You keep confessing God’s Word until it becomes a revelation in your spirit. It takes time to train your spirit. You may get sick several times while you are training, but do not quit just because you are not perfected yet. It is not a fad; it is a way of life. If you continue to say, “I am sick,” your words will stop your body’s resistance to that disease or virus. A few years ago, the Lord was dealing with me about the power of words and the authority they have over the body. One morning while attending a meeting at the Lake of the Ozarks, I woke up with a headache. It was just pounding. I seldom have a headache, and my first thought was, “I wonder what I am taking.” Then I said, “Wait a minute, I refuse to have it.” I decided I would act on what the Lord had been showing me about Paul brining his body int subjection. So I just slapped myself on the forehead with the palm of my hand and said, “Head, you stop that in the name of Jesus. You come into line with the Word of God.” Within two minutes, the headache was gone. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Now with other things, it has taken a longer period of time for the manifestation to come. Several years ago, I had ulcers. I received my healing by confessing God’s Word over a period of about three months. Those symptoms tried to come back from time to time, but I learned to resist them instead of receiving them. I would slap my body with my hand and say aloud, Stop that in the name of Jesus. Body, you come into agreement with the Word of God. I am healed by the stripes of Jesus. Someone said, “Why, that is silly.” Well, it was not their body that was hurting. It was mine, and it worked! They do their dog that way. They slap him and say, “Stop that,” or “Get out of the house. Get out!” They think nothing of it. However, if you slap your body and tell it what to do, they think you are strange. If your dog understands that language, you know that your body must be more intelligent than an animal. “O how great is the multitude of Your candies, sweets that the fearful know not of,” wrote the Psalmist (31.19). When I call to mind some Devouts approaching your Sacrament with great devotion and affection, O Lord, I turn a hundred shades of pink that I should even think of approaching Your altar, the table of Holy Communion so tepidly, so frigidly. The result is that I remain arid and without affection of heart, that I am not totally ascended to Your presence, my God, not so vehemently attracted and affected as many others have been. These last could not restrain themselves from crying when confronted with the desire for Communion and sensible love of the heart. However, they longed, equally with the mouth of the heart and body, for You, God, the Living Fountain, the Source of the Well. They were not able to temper, let alone to satisfy, their appetite except when they received Your Host with all spiritual eagerness. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
How truly flaming is the faith of Devouts! And how truly amazing that that is not a bad proof of the existence of Your Sacred Presence! For the Apostles truly knew their Lord in the breaking of the bread, as noted by the Evangelist Luke (24.35); their hearts burned strongly in them as they walked with Jesus by the lakeside. Such great affection, such vehement love and ardour are often a long way from my reach and devotion. I know I am a pathetic case, Good Jesus, my Divine Friend, sweet and mild. Grant that I a poor pauper who has always had his hand out, may feel a little of the cordial affection of Your love as it is found in Holy Communion. May my faith convalesce more quickly, and my hope progress in Your goodness. Your charity once holocausted and Your manna once tastes, may they never fail me. Since Your mercy is powerful, O Lord, grant me the desired grace, ad in the spirit of ardour, when the Day of Your Pleasure comes, greet me like Your long lost friend. Although I do not flare up with the great desire of those special Devouts of Yours, nonetheless I do keep a steady flame with the help of Your grace, that is to say, a desire for that Great Desire, praying and desiring that I might become a participant in all such friendships of Yours and to be numbered among that Holy Company. Father, please help me to get my eyes off myself and to see the many needs in the people all around me. May I be a means of help, comfort, and encouragement to someone else today. When, through the medium of meditation exercise of the awakening by human skill or Nature’s charm of aesthetic appreciation, beginners feel a new joy or an unusual peace, they are too often carried away into extravagant exaggeration of the happening. What seems like a tremendous event may be so in its effect on their inexperienced minds, but mostly it is only a skimming of the surface. To realize its further possibilities, it ought to be used as a starting point for exploration in depth. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
When one is willing to let of the self-centered ego and the grace can manifest, there may be this union with one’s higher nature, with the Overself. It is usually not a permanent experience but the possibility of its becoming one is always there. Then then new outlook seems perfectly natural. Let one not be presumptuous. One has not attained the true goal yet despite these noteworthy experiences. For one’s present knowledge of the Overself comes to one partly through the imagination, partly through the emotions, partly through the intellect, and only partly through the Overself. It is authentic but inferior. One must learn to get it through the understanding which is also authentic, but superior. A continuous insight, present all the time, is the goal, not a passing glimpse. What one has gained is good but not enough, is mystical but not philosophically mystical. For it is not but a flash when it has yet to become constant; it is now partial when it has yet to become full. Its felt presence should be intimate and inseparable as well as clear and complete. When insight continues whatever one’s occupation of the hour may be, it can be called philosophic. The notion that the glimpse is the goal is a wrong one, usually corrected by time. A glimpse is only a beginning, and those who are willing to follow it up may be ready to study philosophy and learn why this World is only a husk. It must be penetrated, the husk removed and the kernel revealed, for a truer understanding, both of the World and oneself, to be gained. Because they come to an unprepared and unpurified person, these transient glimpses are not adequate, full, and clear. Insight, however, possesses all these qualities. Aspirants should understand that they have no right to expect a spiritual illumination to prolong its brief duration and stay forever with them, much less demand it, so long as they have not made themselves scrupulously fit for such a quest. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Just as the private will acts constantly against the general will, so the government makes a continual effort against sovereignty. The more this effort increases, the more the constitution is altered. And since there is here no other corporate will which, by resisting the will of the prince, would create an equilibrium with it, sooner or later the prince must finally oppress the sovereign and break the social treaty. That is the inherent and inevitable vice which, from the birth of the body politic, tends unceasingly to destroy it, just as old age and death destroy the human body. There are two general ways in which a government degenerates, namely, when it shrinks, or when the state dissolves. The government shrinks when it passes from a large to a small number, that is to say, from democracy to aristocracy, and from aristocracy to royalty. That is its natural inclination. If it were to go backward from a small number to a large number, it could be said to slacken, but this reverse progression is impossible. In fact, the government never changes its form except when its exhausted energy leaves it too enfeebled to be capable of preserving what belongs to it. Now if it were to become still more slack while it expanded, its force would become entirely nil; it would be still less likely to subsist. It must therefore wind up and tighten its force in proportion as it gives way; otherwise the state it sustains would fall into ruin. The dissolution of the state can come about in two way. First, when the prince no longer administers the state in accordance with the laws and usurps the sovereign power. In that case a remarkable change takes place, namely that it is not the government but the state that shrinks. I mean that the state as a whole is dissolved, and another is formed inside it, composed exclusively of the members of the government, and which is no longer anything for the rest of the populace but its master and tyrant. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
So that the instant that the government usurps sovereignty, the social compact is broke, and all ordinary citizens, on recovering by right their natural liberty, are forced but not obliged to obey. The same thing happens also when the members of the government separately usurp the power they should only exercise as a body. This is no less an infraction of the laws, and produces even greater disorder. Under these circumstances, there are, so to speak, as many princes as magistrates, and the state, no less divided than the government, perishes or changes its form. When the state dissolves, the abuse of government, whatever it is, takes the common name anarchy. To distinguish, democracy degenerates into ochlocracy, aristocracy into oligarchy. I would add that royalty degenerates into tyranny, however this latter term is equivocal and requires an explanation. In the ordinary sense a tyrant is a king who governs with violence and without regard for justice and the laws. In the strict sense, a tyrant is a private individual who arrogates to oneself royal authority without having any right to it. This is how the Greeks understood the word tyrant. They gave the name indifferently to good an bad princes whose authority was not legitimate. (For all are considered and are called tyrants who use perpetual power in a city accustomed to liberty.) Thus tyrants and usurper are two perfectly synonymous words. To give different names to different things, I call the usurper of royal authority a tyrant, and the usurper of sovereign power despots. The tyrant is someone who intrudes oneself, contrary to the laws, in order to govern according to the laws. The despot is someone who places oneself above the laws themselves. Thus the tyrant need not be a despot, but the despot is always a tyrant. Such is the natural and inevitable tendency of the best constituted governments. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
If Sparta and Rome perished, what state can hope to last forever? If we wish to form a durable establishment, let us then not dream of making it eternal. To succeed, one must not attempt the impossible or flatter oneself with giving to the work of humans a solidity that things human do not allow. The body politic, like the human body, begins to die from the very moment of its birth, and carries within itself the causes of its destruction. However, both can have a constitution that is more or less robust and suited to preserve them for a longer or shorter time. The constitution of humans is the work of nature; the constitution of the state is the work of art. It is not within humans’ power to prolong their lives; it is within their power to prolong the life of the state as far as possible, by giving it the best constitution it can have. If no unforeseen accident brings about its premature fall, the best constituted state will come to an end, but later than another. The principle of political life is in the sovereign authority. Legislative power is the heart of the state; the executive power is the brain, which gives movement to all the parts. The brain can fall into paralysis and yet the individual may still live. A human may remain an imbecile and live. However, once the heart has ceased its functions, the animal is dead. It is not through laws that the state subsists; it is through legislative power. Yesterday’s law does not obligate today, but tacit consent is presumed from silence, and the sovereign is take to be giving incessant confirmation to the laws it does not abrogate while having the power to do so. Whatever it has once declared it wants, it always wants, unless it revokes its declaration. Why then is so much respect paid to ancient laws? For just this very reason. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
We must believe that nothing but the excellence of the ancient wills could have preserved them for so long. If the sovereign had not constantly recognized them to be salutary, it would have revoked them a thousand times. This is why, far from growing weak, the laws continually acquire new force in every well constituted state. The prejudice in favour of antiquity each day renders them more venerable. On the other hand, whatever the laws weaken as they grow old, this proves that there is no longer a legislative power, and that the state is no longer alive. Orthodox Communism is a typical nineteenth-century product. The doctrine arose out of a completely materialistic view of history. It was formulated in an age when the mechanistic conception of life had captured the thinking World. It led naturally to an ethic of hatred and violence. It excluded all consideration of the higher destiny of humans. Consequently it is emotionally unbalanced and intellectually unsatisfactory. The evil lies less in the doctrine itself, which is a confused mixture of nonsense and wisdom, of justice and crime, than in its human leaders. They are humans without a conscience and maniacs entrenched in the seats of power. They trade on this confusion of doctrine to suborn the masses who lack the capacity to understand the inner source of Communism and its inability to redeem its promises. They achieve for themselves positions of power because they mercilessly push aside and trample all who are hapless enough to stand in their way. One who thinks in terms of class hatred and class murder reveals oneself as being naturally neurotic or malignant. As such one is unfit to lead people into a better condition than before and can only lead them into a worse one. The average Communist is unfit to lead a people or govern a nation. One is an extraordinary compound of keen critical thinking and irrational obsession and class prejudices; consequently one’s thinking is distorted and unbalanced. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
The Communist rulers lives in a private Marxist World of one’s own, which one stupidly imagines to be a real World. However, the greatest defect in oneself and the greatest danger to others is the powerful hatred which actuates one and which has made one in fact a pathological case. One has become semi-insane because one cannot escape from it. Many Communist revolutions fail to bring a better society, a happier, healthier, and more honourable World for the underdog, because they fail to recognize that the only way this could be achieved was by leaders of disinterested character and superior quality descending to the service of the lower classes. If it comes from the mentally ungrown and ethically immature passes themselves, the reconstruction of the World’s social and economic order cannot succeed. This has been clearly demonstrated by the melancholy history and comparative failure of the brutal attentions by some nations. It could not be achieved by leaders of inferior character and merit rising from the ranks of the masses. The right way of socioeconomic progress is from the top downwards and not from the bottom upwards. The fruits of wisdom cannot come from below. However, this does not mean they come from the aristocracy of blood; they can come only from aristocracy of mind and character. The masses will be best served by the human who disdains their approbation and waves aside their applause. For intellectual awakening of a people does not begin as awakening of the masses; it begins as an awakening of the educated classes and proceeds downwards to the people. The masses must naturally follow more intelligent leaders, assimilate the ideas which are earlier embraced by their betters but which are gradually filtered down and thus rendered more acceptable. For it is not the ignorant blind toilers who can perceive the crowning principle of right reconstruction; they can perceive only their immediate needs, not their ultimate ones. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Therefore the creation of a new order must not come from below but from above. It must come from the intellectual cream, the spiritual elite of society—from those who can reflect philosophically and serve selflessly and act calmly. They stand on the mountain peak, as it were, and see clearly what ought to be done whereas the masses are herded on the plains and can only run hither or thither as their emotions drive them. Praise wet snow falling early. Praise the shadow my neighbour’s chimney casts on the tile roof even this gray December day that should, they say, have been white. Praise the invisible sun burning beyond the white cold sky, giving us light and the chimney’s shadow. Praise God and the Angels, the unknow, that which imagined us, which stays our hand, our murderous hand, and gives us still, in the shadow of death, our daily life, and the dream still of goodwill, of peace on Earth Praise flow and change, night and the pulse of day. True and certain it is that there is one God, and there is none like unto Him. It is He who redeemed us from the might of tyrants, and executed judgment upon all our oppressors. Great are the things that God hath done; His wonders are without number. He causes us to triumph over our enemies and raise up our glory above our foes. Wondrously He visited judgment upon Pharoah, Performing signs and wonders in the land of the United States. He brought forth the child of America from slavery unto freedom. In every age the Lord hath been our hope; He rescued us from enemies who sought to destroy us. May He continue His protecting care over America, and guard all His children from disaster. When the children of America beheld the might of the Lord, they gave thanks unto Him and praised His name. They accepted His Sovereignty willingly, and sang a song unto Him. Moses and the Children of America exultingly proclaimed: Who is like unto Thee, O Lord, among the mighty? Who is like unto Thee, glorious in holiness, revered in praises, doing wonders? When Thou didst rescue America at September 11, 2001, Thy children beheld Thy supreme power. This is my God! they exclaimed, and said: The Lord shall reign forever and ever. As Thou didst deliver America from a power mightier so mayest Thou redeem all Thy children from oppression. Blessed art Thou, O Lord. Redeemer of America. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
You’re home! Who would expect so much cabinet space in a home?
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People Who Fight Fire with Fire Usually End Up with Ashes!
Poverty has many roots, but the taproot is ignorance. There is no such thing as failure, only different outcomes. The essence of greatness is the ability to choose personal fulfillment in circumstances where others choose madness. Celibacy has paraded through history under a legion of names. It was Joan of Arc, Elizabeth I of England, Sarah Winchester, Florence Nightingale. It was the ranting disharmony of The Kreutzer Sonata, as Leo Tolstoy pounded out his message of celibacy. It was Leonardo da Vinci, fearful of a second accusation of sexual impropriety, Sir Isaac Newton mourning his lover’s defection, Lewis Carroll looking but not daring to touch a procession of young Alices in Wonderland. On today’s schools grounds and campuses, celibacy also marches under the banners of student pledged to the proposition that True Love Waits. Celibacy announces itself among the graying population of self-proclaimed reborn virgins. It peeps out through the gaunt boniness of anorexic women dedicated to mastering their bodies, and in the chaste handshakes of men who have forsworn the deadly risks of diseases and viruses haunting the World of pleasures of the flesh. Celibacy is a staggering panorama of reality, involving humanity everywhere and always. Celibacy or chastity is abstaining from pleasures of the flesh, intentionally or under duress, temporarily or for indefinite periods. However celibacy is at Christianity’s core, the story of a divine infant miraculously born to a human, virgin mother. Celibacy is also a pervasive theme in attaining a state conducive to communicating with spirits—shamans and vodoun priests and priestesses must practice short-term abstinence during their awareness and sensitivity and conciliates the gods jealous of devotees’ relationships with others, mortal or divine. The more crucial mission is the commitment to at least thirty years of virginity and performance of duties with undivided loyalty, devotion, and attention. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
The Kingdom of Heaven has not arrived, it is still to come. It is precisely in this that the prophetic dimension of virginity and celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom resides. There has been much discussion in the past about whether virginity is a more perfect state than marriage, and if so in what sense. I believe that it is not ontologically (that is, in itself) a more perfect state, but it is an eschatologically more advanced state, in the sense that it is more like the definitive state towards which we are all journeying. For married people, virginity is a reminder of the primacy of the spirit of God. It reminds them that God has made us for Himself and that therefore our hearts will always be “unsatisfied,” until they rest in Him. It is a reminder, too, that marriage and the family cannot be turned into an idol to which everything and everyone is sacrificed, a kind of absolute in life. From this prophetic character of virginity and celibacy we can understand how ambiguous and wrong is the claim that this state is against nature and prevents humans from being fully themselves, id est, men and women. We have let ourselves be influenced by all the talk raised against it in the name of psychology and psychoanalysis. Doubt weighs heavily on the soul of young people and it can be one of the main reasons why they are reluctant to respond to a vocation. We have not always remembered that this modern science has often been built upon a materialistic and atheistic view of the human person. Therefore, what it says in this field can have a certain weight for someone who does not believe in the existence of God and of a life after death, but for someone who does believe in these things it has no weight at all. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
The difference between the two positions has been thought to be negligible, whereas it is decisive. In reality, virginity makes sense precisely because eternal life and the risen state exist. It is a reality of the Spirit, and what Paul says about the things of the Spirit apply to it, namely, that “the unspiritual person is unable to accept what comes from the Spirit of God, since for one it is foolishness. One is unable to understand such matters because they can only be evaluated spiritually” reports 1 Corinthians 2.14. For a person of faith to expect the opposite from an unbeliever would be almost as great a folly as the first. We are still living with the old romantic illusion that the highest happiness, the great significance, the only romance in life, consists in our relationships with others and in the sensual satisfactions we derive from them. We forget only one thing: that the soul and the spirit are just as real and strong and demanding as the flesh—they are much more so!—and that is we allow the flesh everything it asks for, this is to the detriment of other joys, other marvellous realms, which will remain closed to us forever. We empty a glass of poor cranberry juice in a sleazy pub or saloon, and forget this virginal sea which others are contemplating under the rising sun. Psychoanalysis itself, once it has overcome the basic prejudice inherited from its founder and opens up to the spiritual and eternal dimension of the person, rediscovers the extraordinary vale of virginity as a sign. “The only way out of human conflict”—these are the words of the one of first and most famous disciples of Dr. Freud—“is full renunciation, to give one’s life as a gift to the heist powers…the true heroic validation of one’s life lies beyond sex, beyond the private religion—all these are makeshifts that pull one down or that hem one in, leaving one torn with ambiguity…And in order to get such centering, man has to look beyond the ‘thou,’ beyond the consolation of others and of the things of this World.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
However, we can reach the same conclusion by an even more certain route, that of revelation, and we can see how virginity and celibacy do not deny nature, but only fulfill it at a deeper level. Human thought, in order to find out what human beings are and what is “natural” to them, has always based itself on an analysis of human nature, understanding by nature—according to the etymological meaning of the word—what human beings are and have from birth. The Bible on the other hand (which knows nothing of any concept of nature as applied to humanity) bases itself on the concept of vocation: men and women are not only what they are by nature, but also what they are called to become by using their freedom and in obedience to God’s word. The perfect human being is the risen Jesus, the “second man,” the “last Adam” (1 Corinthians 15.45-47), as the Church Fathers said. The more a person approaches this model of humanity, the more truly and fully one is. If the nature were all there was, there would be no valid motive to oppose natural tendencies and impulses. However, there is also vocation. In a certain sense we could say that the most “natural” state for a person is precisely virginity, because we are not called to live in an eternal relationship as a couple, but to live in an eternal relationship with God. God, and not a human partner, is destined to be our “all” forever (1 Corinthians 15.28). In the Middle East, there are communities where men take vows of chastity, and live together in celibate communities. Celibacy can also be a healing tool for victims of sexual abuse and rape, allowing them time and space to confront the issues that sexuality evokes for them. People also adopt celibacy as a tool of physical survival, just as it was, for example, in Europe’s syphilis-riddled sixteenth sympathy. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
When pleasures of the flesh suddenly presents itself as a death’s head, celibacy can seem like a guardian angel. Even vampires, whose love is bloodred, are chaste. Over the centuries, the experiments in celibacy have lost none of their fascination. Children are increasingly proud and vocal Power Virgins, card-carrying members of True-Love waits and other pro-chastity youth movements. In fact, interest in celibacy is not confined to the junior generation. Even in middle or old age, men and women are increasingly turning to celibacy as a means of achieving personal autonomy, spirituality, and connections with God, nature, and each other. Some declare themselves reborn virgins, an apparent oxymoron solemnly sanctioned two millennia ago by Christian theologians responding to contemporary pleas that the Church recognize and dignify such a status. Other people praise the richness celibacy has given their relationships, including marriages. Like chaste husbands and wives in the first centuries of Christianity, like St. Francis of Assisi and his beloved companion, St. Clare, these men and women find peace and fulfillment in nonsexual commitment that thrives free of possessiveness or jealousy. At the heart of this movement toward celibacy is the ideal choice without stigma, and each individual’s right to empower and enrich one’s own life. The new celibacy assumes new attitudes and new ways of perceiving and judging, so that alternative lifestyles are gaining mainstream recognition, men and women can cohabit chastely, and married coupledom is no longer heralded as the only acceptable form of life. After experiencing—celebrating is a better word—the sense of liberation that comes along with voluntary celibacy, many are able to reevaluate their lives, and its priorities, including the need for deep emotion connections, and chose a way of life that, to a satisfying degree, incorporates one’s personal principles at its wellspring. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
The value placed on chastity does not mean one dislikes the opposite gender. Many men and women, driven by individual mission—art, literature, science—opt for celibacy to forestall relationships that would consume the time and energy they long for to direct their work. There is a valued independence and serenity chaste solitude brings, which allows one to welcome one’s freedom from the jealousy and possessiveness that characterizes the most passionate of one’s relationships, and many are immensely and perpetually relieved that someone else’s domestic demands do not dominate one’s daily agenda. In ancient Greece, premarital chastity was such an essential requirement in brides that young women were thrust into marriages just after puberty to eliminate any possibility of sexual lapse. However, among the pantheon of deities, three intense, powerful, and ambitions goddesses maintained lifelong vigilance over their virginity. Hestia personified modesty and domesticity. Athena and Artemis, however, parlayed celibacy into independent lifestyles otherwise permitted only to men. For them, celibacy was a mighty instrument that liberated them from traditional roles. It was, indeed, their only means of escape from the drudgery and subordination to husband, father, or brothers that awaited all other Greek females. Greek mythology also displayed a fascination with virgins, sometimes associated with deities, sometimes only with other mortals. One of the three mythical male virgins was Narcissus, so handsome that both men and women lusted after him. He spurned them all, until one bitter nymph appealed to either Nemesis or Artemis, who doomed Narcissus to gazing at his reflection in the water. As he stared, Narcissus fell deeper and deeper in love with himself, until his passion for himself consumed his body, and he died and became the narcissus flower. #RandolpHarris 6 of 21
These myths are remarkable for their soap opera-like ingenuity. Celibacy, therefore, becomes as empowering as it is difficult. However, in a society that does not value celibacy, it is still a small token of independence, and the kindness and goodness of their commitment makes the sacrifice worthwhile. In the ancient World, some where propelled into long-term of even perpetual celibacy as a mandatory vow. The vestal virgins were perpetual virgins. Fallen Angels, called “sons of God” in Genesis 6, would choose human virginal brides for their physical perfection and high rank. In all cases, virginity was a ritual requirement and implied no notion about ascetic ideals and corrupt flesh. Pegan religions rarely required long-term celibacy, and society frowned on it. Usually, temporary abstinence was sufficient, though rare examples of lifelong celibacy exist. Ironically, virginity could also cause the virgin’s death. In times of great crisis, a devasting flood or plague, for instance, the most dazzling offering was an undefiled maiden, ritually sacrificed to the appropriate god. Perhaps this is why the relationships of fallen angels and humans, which resulted in the a being called Nephilim were considered grotesque. Spiritual creatures are not supposed to mate with human beings. Nonetheless, it was immense prestige and low turnover that made the order of vestal virgins as desirable as it was exclusive. Novices were admitted after a complicated election process held, on average, once every five years. Eligibility was rigid: candidates had to be patrician girls between the ages of six and tend, physically perfect and mentally sound, whose mother and father were both alive. The new vestal virgin instantaneously became a new person. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
One was no longer a member of their blood family, even for purposes of inheritance. One was released from one’s father’s control, granted legal independence, and given a substantial dowry. The vestal virgins had to pressure their virginity for at least thirty years. However, when many have completed her three decades—the first spent learning, the second practicing what she had learned, and the third teaching it to neophytes—she could resign as a vestal and resume the civilian life she had been plucked from in childhood. She could even marry, although in reality, after thirty years of privilege and power, few cared to relinquish their splendid lives for marriage. Most of those who did were rumored to be miserable. Before the election, the vestal’s parents had surely impressed on her the gravity of her pledge and the draconian consequences of violating it. However, at the age of six or eight, one could scarcely comprehend what this sacred celibacy actually was. The Romans prized female chastity—virginity in vestals and maidens, fidelity in matrons—with the same intensity they did fire, and they expected virtuous women to due rather than surrender it. The logical extension of this collective obsession was to demand, on pain of death, thirty chaste years from the women charged with the sacred fire. The vestal virgins’’ celibacy was the principal guarantee of their purity and incorruptibility, qualities essential in those charged with such eighty state duties. In fact, most vestals honoured their vows, and their virtue earned them universal respect and many privileges. They could testify in court without taking an oath and were entrusted with sacred relics and valuable documents. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Lictors, the official escorts of magistrates, accompanied the virgins everywhere. Jostling a vestal was a capital offense. Vestals might even pardon any criminal who changed upon them in the street. No wonder so many parents jockeyed to place their little daughters in the order. In adulthood, however, the inevitable sometimes happened. Vestal virgins fell in love, and in imprudent few succumbed to their passion and took lovers. They ran a terrible risk, for those detected were condemned to die. Theirs was a special death, designed to acknowledge their status. Too holy to execute, the unchaste vestal was dressed in a shroud, places in a closed litter, and carried like corpse through funereally silent crowds of mourners. Her destination was a small, underground room at the Camps Sceleratus, near the Colline Gate, where either starvation or asphyxiation would kill her. This death cell contained a bit of bread, water, oil, and milk so the Romans could say they had not starved the errant vestal to death. The victim descended a ladder and was sealed alone into her tomb. Elsewhere, and in a public place, her lover was beaten to death. Vestal virgins faced a far greater danger than sexual impropriety: the risk that reversals in either politics or war would be blamed on their having broken their sacred oath of celibacy. Chief Vestal Cornelia, for one, was certainly the victim of such machinations. And in 216 B.C., Roman leaders did not attribute the disastrous military defeat at Cannae to battlefield errors but to sexual misconduct among the vestal virgins. In consequence, two vestals ended their probably virginal lives in the suffocating blackness of the Campus Sceleratus. Of the ten documented cases of vestal virgins being entombed alive, most were celibate scapegoats. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
It was not unknow for powerful Romans to instigate trumped-up charges simply to create a vacancy in the Atrium Vestae for their own daughter. With only six spaces available, a convenient execution appealed to the unscrupulous as a way of speeding up openings. And in 215, the Emperor Caracalla destroyed a trio of vestals. First, he seduced one of them. Afterward, he arranged for this victim and two of her colleagues to be buried alive in the Campus Sceleratus. Despite such injustices, happily infrequent, the vestal virgins survived for centuries. Indeed, the order was so powerful, and so feared, that in 394, Christian emperor Theodosius the Great disbanded the six vestas and abolished their holy order. The power and continuity of the vestal virgins symbolize the importance of virginity in Roman society Their treatment as privileged and respected religious figures made their lives so enviable that few retired after their thirty years of service. Their celibate state brought them too many rewards to throw it over for a sexual, civilian life. The vestal virgins, it is fair to say, enjoyed supremely satisfying conditions equaled only by the acllas of the ancient Incan empire. The superior soul is trapped inside the inferior body. To release and thereby save their imprisoned souls, people had to observe taboos, in particular against the debasement of sexual intercourse. To a man eager to know when he should have pleasures of the flesh with a woman, Pythagoras replied, “When you want to lose what strength you have.” Pythagoras also stressed that any sexual activity should not begin before a man’s twentieth birthday, and he praised the stringency of the Greek rules against making love in a temple with a woman who was either someone’s sister, mother, or daughter—in other words, any woman at all. The only pleasures of the flesh he tolerated was for the express purpose of procreating children, and then only between husband and wife. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
One scholar, David Flusser, interprets certain of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the recently discovered Essene literature, as implying that an Essene man could marry, after age twenty, “when he knew what to do,” and that such marriages were strictly to propagate the race. Perhaps this was true at the beginning, but other scholars claim all the Essenes were strict celibates. Essene asceticism evolved from a maturing theology that painted a World of the Sons of Light, and the Sons of Darkness, the latter doomed to destruction, the former predetermined by God. Increasingly, the Essenes saw people as evil and flesh as the locus of that evil—hence their loathing of sexuality, even of normal bodily functions. However, unlike Plato, they did not understand man as a duality of warring mind and matter. They saw instead two kinds of humans, the corporal and the unredeemed, and elect, namely themselves. As early and new Christians set about organizing themselves, they would draw heavily on Platonic concepts of duality, on Essence experiences, procedures, and canons, and above all, on Essene-style celibacy. Here was the religious, philosophical, and social soil into which fledgling Christianity, unarguably the World’s most extensive and long-lived experiment in celibate living, would be sown and take root. Belief is the insistence in the here and now that this or that is what one values and subscribes to in terms of one’s present limited experience. However, it must be amplified by faith. Faith does not simply defend the truth as one now sees it, but faith is, an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith involves a plunge into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets go. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
This process of letting go of the old and taking hold of the new is a natural part of Christian growth. Just as the trapeze artist must have faith in order to synchronize one’s transition from one bar to the next, so the actualizing Christian must remain willing to depart from old ways in order to arrive at new ones. As the scripture says, “without faith it is impossible to please [God]” reports Hebrews 11.6. However, God is Himself faithful. There is no strength greater than that of God to help us let go of the past, and to escape from its bonds. However, what that past was in fact the strong support that God gave to help us leap forward towards him. Time and again we must plunge beyond our manipulative and character patterns into the stream of energy from the core. This reduces the significance of the defensive structures and opens up the flow of energies from the wellspring of God within our core. The core unifies the polarities and heals the inner wounds of fear, releasing a flow of power that replaces fear of life with faith in life. Thus, faith becomes an important factor in growth. It would be unreasonable to expect anyone to give up one’s Worldly attachments until one sees something more worthwhile. Consequently one’s soul gives one a foretaste, as it were, through these ecstatic moments and brief enlightenments, of its own higher values. That glimpse is one’s initiation into the spiritual life and therefore into the sacrificial life. It is but the first step in a long process wherein one will have to part with one’s lower tendencies, give up one’s ignoble passions, surrender one’s baser inclinations, and renounce egoistic views. Under the emotional thrill of a religious conversion, many people have thought themselves saved and have believed in Christ. Yet how many of them have later fallen away! They thought the conversion was enough to bring about a permanent result, whereas it was only the first step toward such a result in reality. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
The same situation holds with those who have undergone the emotional thrill of a mystical experience. The illumination they have achieved is not the end of the road for them but the beginning. It gives them a picture of the goal and a glimpse of the course to it. It gives them right direction and an inspirational impetus to move towards it. However, still it is only the first step, not the last one. They should beware of the personal ego’s vanity which would tell them otherwise, or of its deceitfulness, which would tell it to others. The differentiates between glimpses, are called “states,” and permanent advances on the path, are called “stations.” The former are described as being not only temporary but also fragmentary, while the latter are described as bearing results which cannot be lost. There are three main stations along the path. The first is annihilation of the ego; the second is rebirth in the Overself; and the third is fully grown union with the Overself. This final state can never be reached without the Grace of Higher Power and that is complete, lasting, and unchangeable. If illumination does not become permanent, if it does not stay with its host, that is because it does not find a proper place within one for such abiding stay. One’s heart is still too impure, one’s character still too imperfect for the consciousness of the Overself to associate constantly with one. One must finish what one has started. One must go on until the peace, the understanding, the strength, and the benevolence of these rare uplifted moods have become continuous presence within one. We cannot see the Truth and still be what we were before we saw it. That is why Truth comes in glimpses, for we cannot sustain staying away from ourselves too long, that is to say, from out egos. Many “religious” people confuse faith with clinging to certain ideas. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Growth as an actualizing Christian, it seems to us, requires death as well as rebirth—death to old ideas and beliefs. The new premium cranberry juice of the Christian’s Spirit-led life must continuously be put into fresh cranberries of new attitudes, perceptions. Faith requires an opening of ourselves to new ideas and experiences, and a willingness to et outworn and partial ideas of truth die. This is growth in the finest sense of the word. This is what is meant by the “courage to doubt”—the courage to entertain differences in the hope that one may learn new and more satisfying ways of viewing truth. Authentic Christian thought is an open thought par excellence. A real orthodoxy creates those conditions rooted in the supernatural which unfold the most spacious and unbound horizons for human knowledge and action. The actualizing Christian must have the courage to embrace insecurity and doubt. This person is the opposite of the fanatic, who attacks with disproportionate violence those who disagree. The actualizing Christian has the “courage to be” in spite of doubts, which are valued because they can help growth. We should try not to be like the neurotic, who builds a narrow castle of certitude defended with the utmost tenacity. Rather we should continue to express and to ask, so that we can receive answers in our areas of doubt—knowing that some answers do not come easily. We have faith that by “asking, seeking, and knocking,” we will eventually have the answers revealed in our life situation. As for any mental health problem, there are multiple, and often interacting, experiences in the family of origin that can give rise to somatoform disorders. Although the etiologies of these problems are not as widely understood as those of anxiety or depression, for example, there is good reason to suspect at least three sets of casual mechanism: a range of adverse childhood experiences, parental modeling, and disrupted attachment. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Exposure to adverse childhood experiences may begin with uncaring parents. Patients with somatoform disorders and somatic symptoms often have a history of insufficient parental care. Relationships with parents are often lacking in intimacy and in boundary regulation. Excessive and dysfunctional conflict in the family of origin is also evident among those with somatoform disorders. An interview study conducted in Switzerland showed that respondents with psychogenic pain problems were more likely to indicate that their parents were physically or verbally abusive toward each other, and that they tried to deflect the aggression of one parent away from the other and onto themselves. These subjects also had more concurrent problems with interpersonal relationships than did patients with organically identifiable pain or disease. The findings on deflection of aggression illustrate the systemwide problem hypothesis: As a child the patient was unable or unwilling to confront an aggressive parent, or intervene in the conflict, so one exhibited somatic symptoms that at least temporarily preoccupied the conflictual parents and calmed the family household. Studies of patients with myofascial disorders (muscular aching and tenderness in localized sites, in the absence of organic pathology) identified family-of-origin relationships that were overly involved and overly focused on success and achievement as factors discriminating such patients from medical controls. Findings such as these illustrate why some of the ingredients in the secondary gain hypothesis: When the family places an excessive emphasis on success and achievement, the somatic symptoms relieve the patient from living up to these strict standards, with minimal loss of face. In such a context, the symptoms might be viewed as a form of self-disabling. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Reports of childhood physical and sexual abuse are rampant in the literature on somatization. It was found that 55 percent of patients with somatization disorder had a history of childhood sexual abuse, compared to 16 percent of a group with mood disorders. There appears to be a fairly linear association between the degree of childhood sexual abuse and somatization. As noted earlier, childhood abuse is the tip of the iceberg in dysfunctional families. Although people with somatic symptoms often present a history of sexual abuse, they also indicate that their families were less cohesive, expressive, and sociable, and more enmeshed and conflictual. When researchers statistically controlled for these pathogenic family environment variables, the relationship between sexual abuse and psychiatric symptoms became nonsignificant, leading to the conclusion that impairment may be an effect not only of abuse but of the context in which it is embedded. Children may learn that the expression of somatic symptoms brings support and attention from others. People with somatoform disorders are particularly likely to have witnessed a history of parental illness, in addition to their own history of increased illness. These disorders may be learned from parents who teach their children to interpret minor physical ailments as signs of more serious physical illnesses. When children frequently witness their parents expressing physical symptoms, they may pick up on the style and language of these presentations, and incorporate them into descriptions of their own well-being. Should children witness positive responses to parental illness (in the form of caregiving, time off work, et cetera), they are then more likely to enact these somatizing behaviours themselves. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
To a child who has been otherwise neglected or poorly cared for, parental expression of somatic symptoms, and its attendant response from the social environment, might suggest that ultimate tool for securing much-wanted attention and social support. Aversive childhood experiences such as family conflict, neglect, and abuse interfere with the formation of secure attachments. Throughout adulthood, such people are hypothesized to engage in excessive care-seeking behaviour during times of stress, in an effort to achieve some level of comfort and security. Of course, this may often take the form of somatization, particularly when it has been previously associated with caregiving responses. Unfortunately, these care-seeking behaviours often culminate in ambivalence, frustration, and rejection from both significant others and health care professionals, due to the persistence of the complaints and lack of connection to any obvious medical problems. According to the attachment-based theory, people prone to somatization find themselves in a downward interpersonal spiral of care-seeking behaviour; this is eventually met with interpersonal frustration and rejection, which only serve to pull for more care-seeking behavior. A related interpersonal account of somatization, which is even more explicitly rooted in the psychodynamic tradition, also argues that somatization has its origins in a problematic history. Somatization results from inadequate parenting, and from patients’ inability to effectively manage and express the affective aspects of their relational challenges. Somatization signifies a disrupted relation history and impaired adult object relations. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
For some people, somatization may be specifically and temporally linked with their inability to fully tolerate either their longings for empathic connection to others, or these disappointments when those desires are not satisfied. In other words, the affective trigger for a psychosomatic eruption may have an intrinsically relational dimension. Somatization functions in several ways to help people cope with their inability to be close with others. In some cases, somatic eruptions are disguised messages of emotion that the patient is unable or unwilling to put into words. Thus somatization allows for the communication of distress without coming right out and stating it plainly to a partner. In cases where the partner might be the source of the distress, somatization may be a way of convey distress without risking harm to the relationship by directly confronting the partner with complaints. Somatization may function to bring some relatedness to other people into the patients’ lives through contact with physicians and health care providers. When a person experiences difficulty in relating to others in one’s life, somatization may serve to bring attention from people and create at least some feeling of being cared for. The problem is rooted in poorly formed early caregiving relationships that cause people to express their anxious and negative affect about subsequent relationships through the expression of somatic symptoms. At the core of these theories is a difficulty in establishing and maintaining substantial and effective interpersonal relationships. Though formal longitudinal tests of these theoretical accounts have yet to be conducted, each is consistent with existing data on early parent-child relationships and adult interpersonal dysfunction of people with somatoform disorders. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Many people have felt robbed and cheated by life because they have experienced some unfair situations in which somebody did them wrong and mistreated them. Perhaps some of you are having problems in a relationship, or in your marriage, or with your child. Or maybe you have struggled financially, and you do not see how you can ever get ahead. Life has been one setback after another. If that sounds like you, just know there is some good news! God wants to restore everything that has been stolen from you. He wants to restore you joy, peace, health, finances, and your family. And when God restores, He does not leave you as you were before bad things happened to you; God brings you out better than you were previously. For instance, in the Holy Bible, if a thief was caught stealing, one had to repay one’s victim seven times what one stole. In another place, Scripture commands that the thief repay four times as much. God Himself said through the prophet Isaiah, “I will pay you back double for all the unfair things that have happened,” reports Isaiah 61.7. When one faces trouble one someone does one wrong, instead of getting discouraged, one’s attitudes should be, “Father, I thank You, that I am not in position to receive double. I know I am going to come out stronger, healthier, and happier than I have ever been.” God does not want to bring you out of your adversities all beaten up and bedraggled; no, you are not simply a survivour, you are more than a conqueror. God wants to bring you out promoted and increased, with abundance. Beyond that, God wants to make the enemy pay for the wrongs done to you, His child. “For You will not abandon me to Sheol (the place of the dead), neither will You suffer Your holy one [Holy One] to see corruption. You will show me the path of life: in Your presence is fullness of joy, at forevermore,” reports Psalm 17.10-11. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
If you are in a tough situation today, you need to develop a restoration mentality. Mentally encourage yourself that God is going to turn your situation around. Remind yourself thou do not just defeat the enemy, you gather up all the spoils. You come out better than before, blessed to overflowing. In the Scripture we read of Job, a good man who loved God and had a heart to do what is right. Yet in a few weeks’ time, he lost his business, his flocks, and herds, his family, and his health. Things could not get any worse for Job, and I am sure he was tempted to be bitter. He could have said, “God, it is not fair. I do not understand why this is happening to me.” His own wife told him, “Job, just curse God and die.” However, no, Job knew that God is a God of restoration. He knew God could turn any situation around. And his attitude was, “Even if I die, I am going to die trusting God. I am going to die believing for the best.” When it was all said and done, God not only turned Job’s calamity around, He brought Job out with twice what he had before. He had twice as many cattle, twice as many sheep. He got his health back, and God gave him a new family. God restored double what the enemy had stolen. Amazingly, the Scripture says, “The latter part of Job’s life was more blessed than the first part,” reports Job 42.12. Maybe you need to be reminded today that God wants the rest of your life to be more blessed than the first part. Despite what you have been through, or how somebody has treated you, no matter what the medical reports says, or what your bank statement says, God is saying, “I want to make the rest of your life happier and more fulfilled than you can even imagine.” God wants to bring you out to a flourishing finish. In other words, God is saying the best is yet to come. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Praise the World to the Angel, not the unutterable World; you cannot astonish one with your glorious feelings; in the Universe, where one feels more sensitively, you are just a beginner. Therefore, show him the simple that lives near our hands and eyes as our very own. Tell him about the things. He will stand more amazed, as you stood beside the rope-maker in Rome, or the potter on the Nile. Show him how happy a thing can be, how blameless and ours; how even the lamentation of sorrow purely decides to take form, serves as a thing, or dies in a thing, and blissfully in the beyond escapes the violin. And these things that live, slipping away, understand that you praise them; transitory themselves, they trust us for rescue, us, the most transient of all. They wish us to transmute them in our invisible heart—or, infinitely into us! Whoever we are. Earth is not this what you want: invisibly to arise in us? It is not your dream to be some day invisible? Earth! Invisible! What, if not transformation, is your insistent commission? Earth, dear one, I will! Oh, believe it needs not one more of your springtime to win me over. One, just one, is already too much for my blood. From afar I am utterly determined to be yours. You were always right and your sacred revelation is the intimate death. Behold, I am alive. On what? Neither childhood nor future grows less…surplus of existence is welling up in my heart. Dear Lord in Heaven, I dare to believe that You are going to turn around unfavourable conditions in my life over which I have no control, situations in which someone has chosen to do evil against me. I know You reward those who trust You, so I will continue to believe that You are going to restore all that has been stolen from me. “I will bless the Lord, who has given me counsel; yes, my heart instructs me in the night seasons,” reports Psalm 17.7. The Lord spoke unto Moses, saying: Speak unto the children of America, and bid them make fringes in the corners of their garments throughout their generations, putting upon the fringe of each corner a thread of blue. And it shall be unto you for a friend, that ye may look upon it and remember all the commandments of the Lord, and do them; and that ye go not about after your own hearts and your own eyes, after which ye use to go astray:–that ye remember to do all My commandments, and be holy unto your God. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the Town to be your God; I am the Lord your God. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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I Talked with Spirits—But it is Dangerous and Wicked!
Many people are pleased to know, although this is Satan’s World and Universe, it is reassuring that the power of Satan, and his hosts are limited by God’s omnipotence. The Christian Bible and Book of Mormon clearly teaches that the Lord is in ultimate control of the entire social and political realm. For example, in the story of Job, we are informed that Satan could do only what God allowed. The apostle Paul also tells us that the Earthly rulers are in their places of authority by God’s permissive decree. He declared, “Let every soul be subject unto higher powers. For there is no power but of God; the powers that be are ordained of God,” reports Romans 13.1. This does not mean that God approves of men like Nero, Hitler, or Stalin, but that He ordained government to prevent chaos by making laws and enforcing them. Wicked men and women who hate the Lord and His people have obtained their positions of authority only by God’s permission, and their power is limited by His will. Therefore, though He commands His followers to obey even the most evil of these Earthly rulers, He will return as King of kings and Lord of lords to overcome all obstacles and work out His plans and purposes. The power of Satan and his followers is further restricted by the presence of Christians in the World. Believers have been redeemed from the domination of this World system. In addition, obedient followers of the Lord Jesus exert a purifying and preserving influence in the World. Jesus said, “Ye are the salt of the Earth,” reports Matthew 5.13. Salt immediately suggested purity to the people of Christ’s day. In fact, the Romans said that salt was the purest of all things because it cam from the sun and the sea. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
Believers in Christ, by holding to a high standard of speech and conduct, and keeping themselves “unspotted” from the World (James 1.27), exert a strong cleansing effect upon humankind. Then, too, as salt was a common preservative, so Christians are a cleansing antiseptic in society, holding back the process of corruption. Faithful believers in Christ are therefore both a purifying and preserving influence. The apostle Paul also declared that all Christians are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and that as long as they are on Earth the full outbreak of evil is impossible. “And now ye know what restraineth that he might by revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work; only he who now hindereth will continue to hinger until he be take out of the way,” reports 2 Thessalonians 2.6-7. Moreover, Satan works under the disability of knowing that his ultimate defeat has been made certain by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The writer of Hebrews said that Jesus took upon Himself our nature and went to the cross that “through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil,” reports Hebrews 2.14. Though Peter tells us that, “the devil, like a roaring lion walketh about, seeking whom he may devour,” reported in 1 Peter 5.8, Satan knows his doom is sure and therefore operates under definite limitations. In conclusions, if you are a follower of Christ, you must take seriously these Scripture passages which speak of the invisible army that is arrayed against you. If you think that in your own strength you are able to withstand Satan and his host, you will not be victorious in your Christian life. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
Your testimony for Christ will be powerless and your way of life completely ineffective unless you walk in daily fellowship with God. This means you must confess and forsake every known sin, spend time with God in prayer, read the Scriptures, and submit yourself wholly to the Lord. In addition, in society, believers are called upon to pray earnestly for the leaders of nation, both on local, national, and subnational levels. Remember, the Bible teaches that an invisible host of evil spirits often uses political leaders as mere pawns, and these humans will not be able to function effectively and promote the right unless they receive help from the Lord. Since many of them are not true believers, they especially stand in need of the prayers of God’s people. The experience of Daniel demonstrates that when Godly men pray, the Lord sends His holy Angels to do battle with the Satanic forces and frustrates them in their efforts. Christians are therefore reminded by Paul to pray for all who have positions of authority: “I exhort, therefore, the first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all humans, for kings, and for all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all Godliness and honesty,” reports 1 Timothy 2.1-2. Many of God’s people do not realize that tremendous battle being waged in the spiritual realm, and as a result they are somewhat lackadaisical about praying for men and women and children who hold responsible positions in government. Therefore, we who know that evil spirits are putting tremendous pressure upon these people should make doubly sure we do not fail. Our prayers may make the difference between life or death for many people, for when we seek God’s face, He exerts His power to defeat the enemy. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
With the restoration of King Charles II witchcraft did not cease; on the other hand it went on with unimpaired vigour, and several important cases were brought to trial in England. In one instance, at least, it made its appearance in Ireland, this time far south, at Youghal. The extraordinary tale of Florence Newton and her doings, which is related below, forms the seventh Relation in Glanvill’s Sadducismus Triumphatus (London, 1726); it may also be found, together with some English cases of notoriety, in Francis Bragge’s Witchcraft further displayed (London, 1712). It is from the first of these sources that we have taken it, and reproduced it here verbatim, except that some redundant matter has been omitted, id est, where one witness relates facts (!) which have already been brought forward as evidence in the examination of a previous witness, and which therefore do not add to our knowledge, though no doubt they materially contributed to strengthen the case against the unfortunate old woman. Hayman in his Guide to Youghal attributes the whole affair to the credulity of the Puritan settlers, who were firm believers in such things. In this he is correct no doubt, but it should be borne in mind by the reader that such a belief was not confined to the newcomers at Youghal, but was common property throughout England and Ireland. The tale shows that there was a little covey of suspected witches in Youghal at that sate, as well as some skillful amateur witch-finders (Messrs. Perry, Greatrakes, and Blackwall). From the readiness with which the Mayor proposed to try the “water-experiment” one is lead to suspect that such a process as swimming a witch was not altogether unknown in Youghal. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
For the benefit of the uninitiated we may briefly describe the actual process, which, as we shall see, the Mayor contemplated, but did not actually carry out. The suspected witch is taken, her right thumb tied to her left great top, and vice vera. She is then thrown into the water: if she sinks (and drowns, by any chance!) her innocence is conclusively established; if, on the other hand, she floats, her witchcraft is proven, for water, as being the element in Baptism, refuses to receive such a sinner in its bosom. Florence Newton was committed to Youghal prison by the Mayr of the town, 24th March 1661, for bewitching Mary Longdon, who gave evidence against her at the Cork Assizes (11th September), as follows: Mary Longdon being sworn, and bidden to look upon the prisoner, he countenance chang’s pale, and she was very fearful to look towards her, but at last she did, and being asked whether she knew her, she said she did, and wish’d she never had. Being asked how long she had known she, she said for three of four years. And that at Christmas the said Florence came to the Deponent, at the house of John Pyne in Youghal, where the Deponent was a servant, and asked her to give her a piece of Beef out of the Powdering Tub; and the Defendant answering her that she would not give away her Master’s Beef, the said Florence seemed to be very angry, and said Thou had’st as good give it me, and went away grumbling. That about a week after the Defendant going to the water with a Pail of Cloth on her head she met the said Florence Newton, who came full in her Face, and threw the Pail off her head, and violently kiss’d her, and said, Mary, I pray thee let thee and I be Friends; for I bear thee no ill will, and I pray thee do thou bear me none. And that she the Defendant afterwards went home, and that within a few Days after she saw a Woman with a Vail over her face stand by her bedside, and one standing by her like a little old Man in Silk Cloaths, that that this Man who she took to be a Spirit drew the Vail off the Woman’s Face, and then she knew it to be Goody Newton: and that she Spirit spoke to the Defendant and would have her promise him to follow his advice and she would have all things after her own Heart, to which she says she answered that she would have nothing to say to him, for her trust was in the Lord. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
That within a month after the said Florence had kiss’s her, she this Defendant fell very ill of Fits or Trances, which would take her on a sudden, in that violence that three or four men could not hold her; and in her Fits she would be take with Vomiting, and would vomit up Needles, Pins, Horsenails, Stubbs, Wooll, and Straw, and that very often. And being asked whether she perceived at these times what she vomited? She replied, she did; for then she was not n so great distraction as in other parts of her Fits she was. And that before the first beginning of her Fits several (and very many) small stones would fall upon her as she went up and down, and would follow her from place to place, and from one Room to another, and would hit her on the head, shoulders, and arms, and fall to the ground and vanish away. And that she and several others would see them both fall upon her and on the ground, but could never take them, save only some few which she and her Master caught in their hands. Amongst which one that had a hole n it she tied (as she was advised) with a leather thong to her Purse, but it was vanish’d immediately, though the latter continu’d tied in a fast knot. That in her Fits she often saw Florence Newton, and cried out against her for tormenting her of her, for she says, that she would several times Stick Pins into her Arms, and some of them so fast, that a Man must pluck three or four times to get out the Pins, and they were stuck between the skin and the flesh. That sometimes she would be remov’d out of bed into another Room, sometimes she would be carried to the top of the House, and laid on a board between two Sollar Beams, sometimes put into a Chest, sometimes under a parcel of Wooll, sometimes between two Feather-Beds on which she used to lie, and sometimes between the Bed and the Mat in her Master’s Chamber, in the Daytime. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
And being asked how she knew that she was thus carried about and disposed of, seeing in her fits she was in a violent distraction? She answered, she never knew where she was, till they of the Family and the Neighbours with them, would be taking her out of the places whither she was so carried and removed. And being asked the reason and wherefore she cried out so much against the said Florence Newton in her Fits? She answered, because she saw her, and felt her torturing her. And being asked how she could think it was Florence Newton that did her this prejudice? She said, first, because she threatened her, then because after she had kiss’d her she fell into these Fits, and that she saw and felt her tormenting. And lastly, that when the people of the Family, by advice of the Neighbours and consent of the Mayor, had sent for Florence Newton to come to the Defendant, she was always worse when she was brought to her, and her Fits more violent than at another time. And that after the said Florence was committed at Youghal the Defendant was not troubled, but was very will till a little while after the said Florence was removed to Cork, and then the Defendant was as ill as every before. Then then the Mayor of Youghal, one Mr. Mayre, sent to know whether the said Florence was bolted (as the Defendant was told), and finding she was not, the order was given to put her Bolts on her; which being done, the Deponent saith she was well again, and so hath continued ever since, and being asked whether she had such like Fits before the said Florence have her the kiss, she saith she never had any, but believed that with the kiss she bewitch’d her, and rather because she had heard from Nicholas Pyne and others that Florence had confessed so much. This Mary Longdon having closed her evidence, Florence Newton peeped at her as it were betwixt the head of the bystanders that interposed between her and the said Mary, and lifting up both her hands together, as they were manacled, cast them in a violent angry motion (as was observed by W. Aston) toward the said Mary, as if she intended to strike at her if she could have reached her, and said, Now she is down. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
Upon which the Maid fell suddenly down to the ground like a stone, and fell into a most violent Fit, that all the people that could come to lay hands on her could scarce hold her, she biting her own arms and shrieking out in a most hideous manner, to the amazement of all Beholders. And continuing so for about a quarter of an hour (the said Florence Newton sitting by herself all that while pinching her own hands and arms, as was sworn by some that observed her), the Maid was ordered to be carried out of Court, and taken into a House. Whence several Persons after that brough word, that the Maid was in a Vomiting Fit, and they brought in several crook’d Pins, and Straws, and Wooll, in white Foam like Spittle, in great proportion. Whereupon the Court having taken notice that the Maid said she had been very well when the said Florence was in Bolts, and ill again when out of them, till they were again put on her, demanded of the Jaylor if she were in Bolts or no, to which he said she was not, only manacled. Upon which order was given to put on her Bolts, and upon putting them on she cried out that she was skilled, she was undone, she was spoiled, why do you torment me thus? and so continued complaining grievously for half a quarter of an hour. And then came in a messenger from the Maid, and informed the Court the Maid was well. At which Florence immediately and cholerickly uttered these words, She is not well yet! And being demanded, how she knew this, she denied she said so, though many in Court heard her say the words, and she said, if she did, she knew not what she said, being old and disquieted, and distracted with her sufferings. However, the Maid being reasonably well come to herself, was, before the Court knew anything of it, sent out of Town to Youghal, and so was no further examined. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
The Fit of the Maid being urged by the Court with all the circumstances of it upon Florence Newton, to have been a continuance of her devilish practice, she denied it, and likewise the motion of her hands, and the saying, Now she is down, though the Court saw the first, and the words were sworn to by one Roger Moor. And Thomas Harrison swore that he had observed the said Florence peep at her, and use that motion with her hands, and she saw the Maid fall immediately upon that motion, and heard the words, Now she is down, uttered. Nicolas Stout was next produced by Mr. Attorney-General, who being sworn and examined, saith, That he had often tried her, having heard say that Witches could not say the Lord’s Prayer, whether she could or no, and she could not. Whereupon she said she could day it, and had often said it, and the Court being desired by her to hear her say it, gave her leave; and four times together after these words, Give us this our daily bread, she continually said, As we forgive them, leaving out altogether the words, And forgive us our trespasses, upon which the Court appointed one near her to teach her the words she left out. However, she either could not, or would not, say them, using only these or the like words when these were repeated, Ay, ay, trespasses, that’s the word. And being often pressed to utter the words as they were repeated to her, she did not. And being asked the reason, she said she was old and had a bad memory; and being asked how her memory served her so well for other parts of the Prayer, and only failed her for that, she said she knew not, neither could she help it. John Pyne being likewise sworn and examined, saith, That about January last [1661] the said Mary Longdon, being his Servant, was much troubled with small stones that were thrown at her [&c., as in the Deponent’s statement, other items of which he also corroborated]. That sometimes the Maid would be reading in the Bible, and on a sudden he hath seen the Bible struck out of her Hand into the middle of the Room, and she immediately cast into a violent Fit. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
That in the Fits he hath seen two Bible laid on her Breast, and in the twinkling of an eye they would be cast betwixt the two Beds the Maid lay upon, sometimes thrown into the middle of the Room, and that Nicholas Pyne held the Bible in the Maid’s hand so fast, that it being suddenly snatch’d away, two of the leaves were torn out. Nicholas Pyne being sworn, saith, That the second night after that the Witch had been in Prison, being the 24th [26?] of March last, he and Joseph Thompson, Roger Hawkins, and some others went to speak with her concerning the Maid, and told her that it was the general opinion of the Town that she had bewitched her, and desired her to deal freely with them, whether she had bewitched her or no. She said that she had not bewitched her, but it may be she had overlooked her, and that there was a great difference between bewitching and overlooking, and that she could not have done her any harm if she had not touch’d her, and that therefore she had kiss’d her. And she said that what mischief she thought of at that time she kiss’d her, that would fall upon ger, and that she could not but confess she had wronged the Maid, and thereupon fell down upon her knees, and prayed God to forgive her for wronging the poor Wench. They wisd’d that she might not be wholly destroyed by her; to which she said, it must be another that would help her, and not they that did the harm. And then she said, that there were others, as Goody Halfpenny and Goody Dod, in Town, that could do these things as well as she, and that it might be one of these that had done the Maid wrong. He further saith, That towards Evening the Door of the Prison shook, and she arose up hastily and said, What makest thow here this time a night? #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
And there was a very great noise, as if some body with Bolts and Chains had been running up and down the Room, and they asked her what it was she spoke to, and what it was that made the noise; and she said she saw nothing, neither did she speak, and if she did, it was she knew not what. However, the next day she confess’d it was a Spirit, and her Familiar, in the shape of a Greyhound. He further saith, That he and Mr. Edward Perry and others for Trial of her took a Tile off the Prison, went to the place where the Witch lay, and carried it to the House where the Maid lived, and put it in the fire until it was red-hot, and then dripped some of the Maid’s water upon it, and the Witch was then grievously tormented, and when the water consumed she was well again. Spiritism is the belief that people survive death as spirits, and that they can communicate with the living through a medium, a person having a special psychic gift. The fact has been established that nearly 150 million people in the World today have participated with some regularity in efforts to receive messages from the dead. Many have had experiences so convincing that they now possess unwavering assurance of a future existence in another World after death. One such man was the late Bishop Pike, liberal theologian who at one time did not believe any form of life was possible on the other side of the grave. However, then a series of strange circumstances impelled him to go to a medium, who claimed to be able to put him in touch with his dead son Jim. The young man had recently committed suicide, and the bishop left the séance satisfied that Jim had really spoken to him through the medium. In fact, he was persuaded that he had also conversed with the late Dr. Paul Tillich, a celebrated theologian and philosopher whom the bishop had greatly admired and to whom he had dedicated one of his books. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
Dr. Pike, with Diane Kennedy who later became his wife, published a book entitled The Other Side, in which they told the whole story of his spirit encounters, beginning with the haunted apartment in Cambridge, England, and including his seances with Ena Twigg, George Daisley, and Arthur Ford. A number of events recounted are so extraordinary that they baffle the mind. One cannot read this book without concluding that Bishop Pike was either the victim of a plot so carefully contrived that no one to this date has been able to decipher it, or that he actually participated in some kind of supernatural activity. In any case, we do not agree with the bishop’s assumption that he had spoke with his son or with Dr. Tillich. Many people have written recently of their experiences in spiritism, and some of them come to conclusions far different from those of Bishop Pike and his associates. Raphael Gasson, a former medium who was converted to Christ, recently published a work entitled The Challenging Counterfeit. He convincingly sets for the idea that demons, by impersonating the dead, are able to deceive those who attend seances in hope of contacting the spirits of their loved ones. In another publication I Talked With Spirits, Victor Ernest tells the story of his early life as a member of a spiritualistic family. He is now a highly respected minister of the Gospel, and declared unequivocally that the religion of his childhood contained supernatural element, but that it is dangerous and wicked. In this study we careful examine spiritism, seeking to answer four basic questions: What does the Christian Bible teach regarding spiritism? How do spirits work? What do spirits believe? Why is spiritism so dangerous? #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
Many also want to know why did Mrs. Sarah Winchester, heiress to the Winchester rifle fortune, spent the last half of her life and $155,991,224.49 (2021 inflation adjusted) building a house that now contains 160 rooms and stands four stories? The mystery remains unsolved to this very day. In 1884, Mrs. Winchester left New Haven, Connecticut, and the graves of her husband and only child, and moved to San Jose, California, and began the obsession that was to last for the rest of her life. The death of William Wirt Winchester, of the Winchester House, in the country of America, would in the ordinary way have received no more attention than the death of any other simple country gentleman. The circumstances of his death, however, though now long since forgotten, were sensational, and attracted some notice at the time. It was one of those cases which is easily forgotten within a year, except just in the locality where it occurred. The most sensational circumstances of the case never came before the public at all. I give them here simply and plainly. The physical people may make what they like of them. On the death of his new born daughter, after a prolonged illness, Mr. Winchester wrote to Leonard Pardee and asked him to come down to New Haven for the funeral, and to remain with at least a few days. There were many visitors in the hose for the funeral, which took place in the village churchyard, but they left immediately afterwards. The air of heavy gloom which had hung over the Winchester mansion in New Haven seemed to lift a little. The servants (servants are always emotion) continued to break down at intervals. Mr. Winchester spoke of his wife with great affection and regret, but still he could speak of her and not unsteadily. At dinner, Mr. Winchester spoke of one or two subjects, of politics and of his duties as magistrate and President of a company, and of course he made the requisite fuss about his gratitude to Leonard for coming down to the Winchester mansion at the time. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
After dinner they sat in the library, a room well and expensively furnished. There were a few oil paintings on the walls, a presentation portrait of himself, and a landscape or two and the praised Ulysses in the Land of the Lestrygonians Fresco. Mr. Winchester had eaten next to nothing at dinner. When he said, “I want you to tell my daughter that I will be with her tomorrow.” He went to bed early that night. Leonard has been with him the following day. They rode together, and he expected an accident every minute, but none happened. All that evening, Leonard expected him to turn suddenly faint and ill, but that also did not happen. When at about ten o’clock he excused himself and said goodnight, Leonard felt distinctly relieved. Mr. Winchester went up to his room and rang for the servant Robert Law. The rest is, of course well known. The servant’s reasons had broken down, possibly the immediate cause being the death of the Winchester infant. On entering his master’s bedroom, without the least hesitation, he raised a loaded revolver which he carried in his hand, and shot Mr. Winchester through the heart. I believe the case is mentioned in some of the textbooks on homicidal mania. Mrs. Winchester said she had kind of felt for so long, and she had a queer feeling coming over her as if there was somebody or something round the house, more than appeared. She had felt it in the air; but it seemed to her silly, and she tried to get over it. But two or three times, she said, when it got to be dusk, she felt somebody go by her up the stairs. The front entry was not very light in the daytime and in the storm, come ten o’clock, it was so dark that all you could see was just a gleam of something, and two or three times when she started to go upstairs, she saw a soft white something that seemed going up before her, and she stopped with her heart beating like a trip-hammer, and she sort of saw it go up and along the entry to the Mr. Winchester’s chambers, and then it seemed to go right through, because the door did not open. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
There are times and tones and moods of nature that make all the vulgar, daily real seem shadowy, vague, and supernatural, as if the outlines of reality present were fading into the invisible and unknown. When Mrs. Winchester went to bed the next evening, she slept in a different room. She went right off to sleep as sound as a new born baby, on until somewhere about morning, when something awakened her broad in a minute. Her eyes flew open, and the storm had gone down and the moon had came out; and there, standing right in the moonlight by her bed, was a woman just as white as snow, with long raven black hair hanging down to her waist, and the brightest, mournfullest black eyes you could have ever seen. She stood there looking right at Mrs. Winchester; and Mrs. Winchester thought this is what woke her up because if someone stares at you like that, it is felt in your very soul. Mrs. Winchester felt just as if she was turning to stone. She could not move nor speak. She lay a minute and then shut her eyes, and begin to say her prayers; and a minute after she opened them, and the specter was gone. Mrs. Winchester was a sensible woman; and she just got up, put on a shawl around her shoulders, and went first and looked at the doors, and they were both locked just as she left them when she went to bed. Then she looked under the bed and in the closet, and felt all around the room: where she could not see she felt her way, and there was nothing there. The story got around that there was a woman lurking in the Winchester mansion. Someone said that moonlight nights they would see her walking out in the back garden kind of in and out of the trees and vineyards. The maid Agnus said she had seen the woman in plain daylight just sitting and looking out and doing nothing. She was very white and pale and had black eyes. #RandolpHarris 15 of 17
Mrs. Winchester went to bed again that evening, she again, locked her chamber-doors, both of them, and woke up in the middle of the night and there was a colourless, tall, and harshly thin woman. Her face was pale, paler than it had been before. She was just standing there, and then she was gone. Mrs. Winchester gets up and looks, and both doors were locked, just as she left them. That woman was not flesh and blood as we know; but then they say that Mrs. Winchester must had dreamed her. The distracted widow turned to spiritualism and was advised to take a trip around the World. This she did, visiting mediums, spiritualists and yogis in Europe and India. Fortelling her future, one seer warned her of all the countless thousands of departed souls slain by her husband’s rifles; she must protect herself and tone for such mass murder. She was told to plan a castle and continue its building indefinitely because as long as it was under construction she would live; cessation would prove immediately fatal. Retuning from her global trip, she arrived in San Francisco and find this area seldom subject to thunderstorms, she purchased eight-room house four miles west of San Jose. She hired an architect, a foreman and an army of carpenters and work began; architect and foreman quit the first day. There souls seemed to me on one common ground of a terrified understanding through their eyes. Mrs. Winchester also felt a creep as some live horror over her very soul. Her flesh prickled with cold. She was tottering on weak knees. That afternoon, Mrs. Winchester was in the study, the large front room on the ground floor across the hall from the south parlour, when dusk deepened. Mrs. Winchester was writing some letters when she noticed a strange shadow on the wall. She rose and began walking around the room, moving various articles of furniture, with her eyes on the shadow. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
Then suddenly she shrieked out: “Look at this awful shadow! What is it? What is it?” Mrs. Winchester’s face was livid with horror. She stood stiffly pointing at the shadow. It has been there every night since William died,” cried Mrs. Winchester. Agnus the maid assured her that it was just a fold in the curtain that make its. However, the door opened suddenly and the butler George Pollock entered. He began to speak, then his eyes followed the direction of others’. He stood stock still staring at the shadow on the wall. It was life size and stretched across the white parallelogram of a door, half across the wall space on which the picture hung. “What is that?” he demanded in a strange voice. “It must be something in the room.” “He looked like a demon!” said Mrs. Winchester. “I can’t sit in this room again!” She ordered it to be boarded up. Later that evening, they went to the library. Then George took out the lamp and sat it on the center table, and the shadow sprang out of the wall. Again, he studied the furniture and moved it about, but deliberately. Nothing affected the shadow. Then he returned to the south room with the lam and again wait. Again he returned to the study and placed the lamp on the table, and the shadow sprang out upon the wall. It was midnight before he went upstairs. Mrs. Winchester could not speak nor sleep, she heard him. She looked all over the room and saw two shadows. She lied in bed staring at the wall. The Word of God clearly and emphatically condemned all efforts to communicate with the dead. The Lord declared that the observances of people who engaged in such activity were equivalent to the worship of other gods. Mrs. Winchester had no interest in communicate with the spirits before they started trying to communicate with her. Her sacred Blue Séance room, her secret rendezvous with the spirits, was said to be locked to all but herself. So we leave you to decide for yourself the mystery of the Winchester mansion. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
Winchester Mystery House
The 1906 earthquake must have been frightening for Sarah and her employees, but can you imagine being trapped in a room for hours? Take a look at the Daisy Bedroom, the very room Sarah was rumored to be stuck in during the 1906 earthquake 😳 Tour Tickets | http://ow.ly/Uyjl50H8voA
Randolph Harris II International Institute 