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Many People Wanted the Pleasure of an Invitation to a Séance!
Perplexity is leavened by extravagant Victorian beauty, and no casual visitor can see it all. Palatial elegance unfolds with each turn along every path of exploitation of the catacomb. One gazes through oval lens windows now only magnifying the pandemonium of Winchester Boulevard; through them, over a century ago, imagine the warm summer evenings, as Sarah Winchester admired her quiet gardens steeped in the low western sunshine; the bird singing loud in the hawthorn and sycamore of her deer park, the cascading fountains spouting holy water, and the peaceful blossoming orchards vesper calm upon all things. The best tea-things were set out in her best parlour. There was usually a bunch of roses on the table, and Mrs. Winchester was dressed in her light blue muslin, with a rose in her hair. She would arise before her guests like a picture, with the sunshine flickering about her dark hair. She was very sweet, tender and gentle. Many people wanted the pleasure of an invitation to a séance in the Blue Séance Room. Mrs. Winchester would gather together many birds of alien feather. A humans’ own suffering mind must be, of all moral food, the most poisonous for one to feed on. Surround a scorpion with fire and it stings oneself to death. Throw a diseased soul entirely upon its own resources and moral suicide result. It was a principle with Mrs. Winchester to oppose bullying. She believed we were here on this Earth for a definite purpose–and God’s duty plain to any human who wills to read it. There may be disembodied spirits who seek to distress or annoy where they can no longer control. If there are, hers, which is not yet divorces from its means to material action, declines to be influenced by any irresponsible whimsy. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
Mrs. Winchester was very happy in her new home. She had been used to keeping her father’s house since her early girlhood days, and her shortly lived matronly duties came very easy to her. The expansive Victorian mansion, with its neat furniture and fresh dimity draperies, 160 rooms, 10,000 windows, nine kitchens, and 47 fireplaces was the pretties thing possible in the way of rustic interiors; the estates was like a temple dedicated to some Heavenly divinity, and Mrs. Winchester took a natural womanly pride in this bright home. She had come from a good house; but this was quite her own. For 38 years, 1884-1922, the sound of saw and hammer never ceased. Commonly, 16 carpenters were employed at one time, some having worked for 20 years without changed. They produced the largest, most complicated and exclusively private residents in the United States of America. There are five different heating systems and three elevators, one hydraulic and two electric. Some of the 13 bathrooms lacked privacy; they have clear glass doors! One rambling room has four fireplaces and five hot-air registers. A spiral stairway 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. A linen closet has the area of a three-room apartment; a nearby cupboard is less than one-inched deep. A skylight is placed in the middle of a room, in the floor! Another floor is a series of trap-doors. The visitor must stoop through one door to enter, the next gives clearance for an eight-foot giant. Many stairway turn posts are upside down. Entire walls are built entirely of half-inch, “half-round” strips. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
Everywhere prevail that uncanny deference to the number 13; 13 stairsteps, 13 hangers in a closet, 13 wall panels, 13 lights in the chandeliers, 13 windows to a room and if necessary to make that number, some placed in an inside wall. One of the guests at this séance was Ludwig Leichhardt. He thought of men and women who had died of a fever the previous year, and the spirits told him to depart for “people who had wished to live, for whom life was full of duties and household joys; whose loss left wide gaps among their kindred, not to be filled again upon this Earth.” Ludwig felt a dull blankness of his existence which he felt—an utter emptiness and hopelessness; nothing to live for in the present, nothing to look forward to in the future. He bragged about how much capital he had in the Bank of Italy and how he could provide Mrs. Winchester with a comfortable life. However, this was to be his last day as a guest at the Winchester mansion. His two great sea chests, containing his clothes, books, and other property had gone to San Francisco by that evening’s luggage train. His last memory of the Winchester would be Mrs. Winchester’s bright tender face looking at him compassionately, as she had looked the day she broke his heart. After the death of her husband and daughter, Mrs. Winchester remained celibate and never remarried. Precious moments went by, and Ludwig pushed his teacup away with a listless air. He got up presently and showed him she to the exit of the mansion, after a brief good evening to all. The sun was low by this time, and the western sky flooded with an orange light. The garden was abloom with roses and honeysuckle. Ludwig Leichhardt fancied her should never look upon such flowers or such a garden again. The mansion seemed to grow dark all at once when he was gone. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
Adam Worth had also been at the séance that evening and did not seem to care for the tea. Ludwig promised to write Mrs. Winchester to let her know he was safe. The sun had gone down, and there was a long line of crimson yonder in the west above the edge of the estate. All the guest prepared to leave and Mrs. Winchester retired to her chambers for the evening. While laying in bed, Mrs. Winchester heard a bang on a door with a sounding slap. She figured it was just a piece of stupid discourtesy and went back to sleep. The following morning, she swore that one of the rooms on the second floor was not empty—and was quite upset about it—said there was some infernal influence at work in her home. To satisfy her curiosity, she asked her butler Henry to open the door. The light was dim in the room and Mrs. Winchester paused in the corridor outside. His eyes glistened. His features relaxed, and he gave a short sigh, “the room is empty,” said Henry. With some stir of curiosity, Mrs. Winchester slipped out, but had a certain vague wonder in her mind. As she heard, the medium from the night before in the parlour was struggling on the floor, in what looked like an epileptic fit. Mrs. Winchester walked deliberately back to the closed door, as Henry went to hold the medium from doing any injury to herself. Huddled against the massive end wall, and half embedded in it, as it seemed, there lay a shadow. Looking closely, Mrs. Winchester saw that the trap door was not only firmly bolted, but screwed into its socket. She strode off in a fume. She was in an odd frame of mind, and for long moved her sitting-room to and fro, too restless to go to bed, or, as an alternative, to settle down to a book. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
She could not whistle her mind from the chase of a certain graveyard will-o’-wisp; and on it went stumbling and floundering through bog and mire, until she fell into a state of collapse, and was useful for nothing else. She went to bed and to sleep without difficulty, but was conscious of herself all the time, and of a shadowless horror that seemed to come stealthily out of the corners and to bend over and look at her, and nothing but a curtain or a hanging coat when she started and stared. Over and over again this happened, and Mrs. Winchester’s temperature rose by leaps, and suddenly she saw that is she failed to assert herself, and promptly, fever would leap her in a consuming fire. Then in a moment she broke into a profuse perspiration, and sank exhausted into delicious unconsciousness. Morning found her restored to vigour, but still the with flutter of curiosity in her brain. It worked there all day, and for many subsequent days, and at last it seemed as if her every faculty were honeycombed with its ramifications. Then “this will not do,” Mrs. Winchester thought, but still the tunnelling process went on. As the curious devil mastered her, she grew into such harmony with it that she could shut her eyes no longer to the true purpose of its insistence. It was the closed room about which her thoughts hovered like crows circling round carrion. In the dead waste and middle of a certain night, Mrs. Winchester awoke with a strange, quick recovery of consciousness. There was the passing of a single expiration, and she had been asleep and was awake. She had gone to bed with no sense of premonition or of resolve in a particular direction; she sat up a monomaniac. It was as if, swelling in the silent hours, the tumour of curiosity had come to a head, and in a moment, it was necessary to operate upon it. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
She made no excuse for her then condition. Mrs. Winchester was convinced she was the victim of some undistinguishable force, that she was an agent under the control of the supernatural. Some thought had been in her mind of late in her position it was her duty to unriddle the mystery of the closed room door. However, time went by. The new year came, and still there was no letter from Ludwig Leichhardt. However, early in January, Henry, the butler came home from the Bank of Italy one afternoon, and told Mrs. Winchester she need not worry herself about her old friend any longer. “Ludwig Leichhardt is safe enough, mistress,” he said. “I was talking to Gilbert, the cashier at the Bank of Italy, this morning, and he told me that Leichhardt wrote to them for $2,000.00 last October from San Francisco, and he has written $1,000.00 more since. He is buying land somewhere—I forget the name of the place—and he’s well and hearty, Gilbert tells me.” However, a sense of fear and constriction was upon Mrs. Winchester. “Well, I’m afraid I’m rather fanciful, Henry; but I could never explain to you what a strange feeling came over me the night Ludwig Leichhardt went away from this estate. It was after I had said goodbye to him, and he had gone back into the mansion, where all was dark and quiet. I sat in the parlour thinking of him, and it seemed as if a voice was saying in my ear that I, nor anyone that care for hum, would ever seen Ludwig Leichhardt again. There wasn’t any such voice of course, you know, Henry, but it seemed like that in my mind; and whenever I’ve thought of poor Ludwig Leichhardt since that time, it has seemed to me like thinking of the dead. Often and often I’ve said to myself, ‘Why, Sarah, you silly thing, you ought to know that he’s safe enough in San Francisco. Ill news travels fast; and if there’d be anything wrong, we should have heard of it somehow.’ But, reason with myself as I would, I have never been able to feel comfortable about him; and thank God for your good news, Henry, and thank you for bring it to me. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
It has been very unkind of Ludwig not to write. She could not forgive him for his neglect, glad as she was to know he was safe. Then Mrs. Winchester paused for a moment, and confessed, the quick pant of fear seemed to come from her lips. There were sounds about her—the deep breathing of an imprisoned man. She returned to the locked door, and hurriedly flung it open. An acrid whiff of dust assailed her nostrils as she stepped back a pace and stood expectant of anything—or nothing. What did she wish, or dread, or foresee? The room was rather a large one; an old-fashioned room, with a low ceiling crossed by heavy means; half parlour, half kitchen, with a wide-open fireplace at one end, on which the logs had burnt to a dullish red. There was the old chintz-covered armchair. Mrs. Winchester had been sitting with her face towards the open window, looking absently out at the garden, where daffodils and early primroses glimmered through the dusk. She stood to pick up her blueprints, which had fallen to the ground. She was standing folding this in a leisurely way, when she looked towards the fireplace, and gave a little start at seeing that the armchair was no longer empty. “Why, Henry,” she cried, “how quietly you must have come into the place! I never heard you.” There was no answer, and her voice sounded strange to her in the empty room. “Henry!” she repeated, a little louder; but the figure in the chair neither answered nor stirred. Then a sudden fright seized her, and she knew that it was not her butler. The room was almost dark; it was quite impossible that she could see the face of that dark figure seated in the armchair, with the shoulders bent a little over. Yet she knew, as well as ever she had known anything in her life, that it was not the butler Henry. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
She went slowly towards the fireplace, and stood within a few paces of that strange figure. A little flash of light shot up from the candle, and shone for an instant on the face. It was Ludwig Leichhardt! Mrs. Winchester tried to speak to him; but the words would not come. And yet it was hardly so appalling a thing to see him there that she need have felt what she did. San Francisco was not too far from San Jose that a man may not cross the Bay and drop in upon his friend unexpectedly. The candle’s flame got bigger, lighting up the entire room. The chair was empty. Mrs. Winchester uttered a loud cry, and Henry entered the room. “Why, Mrs. Winchester! What’s amiss?” he said. She ran to him, sobbing hysterically, and then calming herself with an effort, told him how she had seen Ludwig’s ghost. “Why Mrs. Winchester,” Henry replied. “Ludwig Leichhardt is safe in San Francisco. It was a shadow that took the shape of your old friend, to your fancy. It’s easy enough to fancy such a thing when your mind’s full of anyone.” Ill and shaken, yet fearing death as she had never dreaded it before, Mrs. Winchester said, “It was no fancy. Ludwig Leichhardt is dead, and I have seen his ghost. I’ve a feeling that he never got to San Francisco alive, Henry,” she said. “I can’t explain how it is, but I’ve a feeling that it was so.” Mrs. Winchester spent the rest of that horrible night huddled between her crumpled sheets, fearing to look forth, fearing to think. She knew the letters had been forgeries, and could not forget the madness and the terror in learning to walk the unvext paths of placid souls. She was left with nothing but an aimless scurrying terror and the black swarm of thoughts, so that she verily fancied her reason would give under the strain. Yet she had more to endure and to triumph over. Near morning she fell into a troubled sleep, throughout which the drawn twitch of muscle seemed an accent on every word of ill-omen she had ever spelt out of the alphabet of fear. If her body rested, her brain was an open chamber for any toad of ugliness that listed to “sit at squat” in. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
Mrs. Winchester tried to convince herself that the thing she had seen was only a trick of her imagination. Another month went by, and again in the twilight the same figure appeared to her. It was standing this time, with one arm leaning on the high mantlepiece; standing facing her as she came back to the room, after having quitted it for a few minutes for some slight household duty. There was a fire burning in the fireplace. The logs were burning with a steady blaze that lit up the well-known figure and unforgotten face. Ludwig Leichardt was looking at her with an expression that seemed half reproachful, half beseeching. He was very pale, much paler than she had ever seen him in life; and as he looked, she standing just within the threshold of the door, she saw him lift his hand slowly and point to his forehead. The firelight showed her a dark red stain upon the left temple, like the mark of a contused wound. She covered her face with her hands, shuddering and uttering a little cry of terror, and then dropped half fainting upon a chair. When she uncovered her face the room was empty, there was a pool of blood on the floor, and the firelight shining cheerily upon the walls, no trace of that ghostly visitant. This time Mrs. Winchester brooded over the thoughts of the thing she had seen, firmly believing that she had looked upon the shadow of the dead, and that there was some purpose to be fulfilled by that awful vision. In the day, she had the room boarded up. The thought of this was almost always in her mind; in the dead silence of the night, she would often lie awake for hours thinking of Ludwig Leichhardt. Mrs. Winchester knew he had been waylaid and murdered. He had a good deal of money about him. Suddenly Mrs. Winchester woke to the fact that there was a knocking at her door—that there had been for some little time. She cried, “Come in!” finding a weak restorative in the mere sound of her own human voice; then remember the keys was turned, bade the visitor wait until she could come to him. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
Scrambling, feeling dazed and white-livered, out of bed, Mrs. Winchester opened the door, and met one of the gentlemen on the threshold. The man looked scared, and his lips, she noticed, were set in a somewhat boding fashion. “Come you come at once, Mrs. Winchester?” he said, “There’s summat wrong with Ludwig Leichhardt. She had now a settled conviction that some untimely fate had befallen her old friend, and that the letters from San Francisco were forgeries. Gilbert from the Bank of Italy compared the signature cards and determined that the drafts and letters were forgeries. There was one thing noticeable in the San Francisco letters—they were all exactly alike, line for line, curve for curve. This rather discomposed Gilbert; for it is a notorious fact that a man rarely signs his name twice in exactly the same manner. There is almost always some difference. Before the month was out, Ludwig Leichhardt’s ghost appeared for the third time to Mrs. Winchester. In the Tender June twilight. She was thinking of her old friend as she walked along the shadowy winding path of the deer park on her estate. It was just such a still, peaceful evening as that upon which he had stood on the edge of the common looking back at her, and waving his hand, upon that last well remembered night. He was so much in her thoughts, and the conviction that he had come from among the dead to visit her was so rooted in her mind, that she was scarcely surprised when she looked up presently, and saw a tall familiar figure moving slowly among the trees a little way before her. There seemed to be an awful stillness in the wood all at once, but there was nothing awful in that well-known figure. She tried to overtake it; but it kept always in advance of her, and at a sudden turn in the path she lost it altogether. The trees grew thicker, and there was a solemn darkness at the spot where the path took this sharp turn, and on one side of the narrow footpath there was a steep declivity and a great hollow, made by a disused gravel pit. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
She went to her mansion quickly enough, with a subdued sadness upon her, and told Henry what had happened to her. Nor did she rest until there had been a search made on the extensive grounds for the body of Ludwig Leichhardt. They searched and found him lying at the bottom of the gravel pit, half buried in loose sand and gravel, and quite hidden by a mass of furze and bramble that grew over the spot. There was an inquest, of course. The tailor who had made the clothes found upon the body identified them, and swore to them as those he had made for Ludwig Leichhardt. The pocket were all empty and turned inside out. There could be little doubt the Ludwig Leichhardt had been waylaid and murdered for the sake of the money he carried upon him that night. His skull had been shattered by a blow from a jagged stick on the left temple. The stick was found laying at the bottom of the pit a little way from the body, with human hair and stains of blood upon it. Ludwig Leichhardt had never left San Jose. It was later determined that Adam Worth had killed Ludwig Leichhardt and took his money. The Bank of Italy refunded the withdraws. Adam Worth was ultimately apprehended, with some of Ludwig Leichhardt’s property still in his possession, and he was deeply in debt. The final examination resulted in a verdict of willful murder, tried, found guilty and hung. Ludwig Leichhardt had executed a few days before his intended departure, bequeathing all he possessed to Sarah Winchester—the interest for her sole use and benefit, the principal to revert to her estate after her death. Mrs. Winchester often sits beside that quiet resting place in the spring twilight; but she had never seen Ludwig Leichhardt’s ghost since that evening in the deer park, and she knew she never would see it again. She shook with an awful thankfulness at sight of the pitfalls she had skirted and escaped—of the demon she witlessly had baffled. The joy of life was in her heart again, but chastened and made pitiful by experience. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
You are aware that evil spirit beings operating through humans in positions of authority and influence are the real motivators in human society? Yes, this is exactly what the Christian Bible teaches! Perhaps this concept seems strange to you, almost like an outmoded superstition, but the Bible definitely states that Satan in the “god of this age,” reports 2 Corinthians 4.4, and that he is the leader of a well-organized army of beings invisible to humans but very active among them. Paul tells us in Ephesians, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this World, against spiritual wickedness in high places,” reports Ephesians 6.12. These words indicate that evil spirits are organized into a military-like structure. The “principalities” are the highest ranking officers under Satan, the “powers” are officials of somewhat lower standing, and the “rulers of the darkness of this World” seem to be a special band of evil spirits whose sphere of influence includes the leaders of human government. The phrase “spiritual wickedness is high places” is better translated “spiritual hosts of wickedness in the Heavenly places,” and makes reference to the myriads of demonic hordes. They are all under the direction of Satan, who is not only named the “god of this age,” but also is called “the prince of the power of the air,” reports Ephesians 2.2. The Scriptures often speak of a close relationship between these evil spiritual and the “World.” In the Ephesians passage quoted above, you will remember that these spirit beings are called “the rulers of the darkness of this World.” The apostle John also refers to the World, and it is significant that he considers it to be the Christian’s enemy. “Love not the World, neither the things that are in the World. If any human love the World, the love of the Father is not in one. For all that is in the World, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Farther, but is of the World. And the World passeth away, and the lust of it; but one that doeth the will of God abideth forever,” reports 1 John 2.15-17. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
In addition, the same apostle declared that one who is “born of God overcometh the World,” reports 1 John 5.4, and also that “the whole World lieth in wickedness,” reports 1 John 5.19. James, the brother of Jesus, declared in his epistle, “Whosoever therefore, will be a friend of the World, is the enemy of God,” reports James 4.4. Before we can gain a full understanding of what this means, we must answer the following questions: What is this World, which if loved causes us to lose God’s friendship? What does the Bible mean when it says that the whole World “lieth in wickedness”? Certainly the Bible is not saying that Christians should not love the World of nature, nor is it implying that every person who is not a Christian is an enemy to be overcome. In fact, the Scriptures often state that the glory of God is revealed in the natural World, and it specifically instructs believers not to antagonize other people, but to love them. No, the material Universe in which we live is not opposed to us, and we are not to consider the people who inhabit the Earth as our enemies. The “World” referred to by John and James is the moral and spiritual system we call human society. Humankind, which has rejected God’s revelation, has devised explanations of life, moral standards, and principles of conduct based upon human knowledge only. Humans, on the whole, operate on erroneous principles, selfish desires, improper motives, and unworthy standards of value. The sciences, the arts, politics, and entertainment are all dominated by a humanistic approach to life which draws humans away from God and makes humans the “measure of all things.” If the period of treated of in the essay from the commencement of the seventeenth century to the Restoration of Charles II, be barren of witchcraft proper, it must at least be admitted that it is prodigal in regard to the marvellous under various shapes and forms, from which the hysterical state of the public mind can be fairly accurately gauged. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
The rebellion of 1641, and the Cromwellian confiscations, that troubled periods when the county was torn by dissention, and ravaged by fire, sword, and pestilence, was aptly ushered in by a series of supernatural events which occurred in the country Limerick. A letter dated the 13th August 1640, states that “for news we have the strangest that ever was heard of, there inchantments in the Lord of Castleconnell’s Castle four miles from Lymerick, several sorts of noyse, sometymes of drums and trumpets, sometimes of other curious musique with Heavenly vouces, then fearful screeches, and such outcries that the neighbours near cannot sleepe. Priests have adventured to be there, but have been cruelly beaten for their paynes, and carryed away they knew not how, some two miles and some four miles. Moreover were seen in the like manner, after they appear to the view of the neighbours, infinite number of armed men on foote as well as on horseback. One thing more [id est something supernatural] by Mrs. Mary Burke with tweleve servants lyes in the hose, and never one hurt, onley they must dance with them every night; they say, Mrs. Mary come away, telling her she must be wife to the inchanted Earl of Desmond. Uppon a Mannour of my Lord Bishoppe of Lymerick, Loughill, hath been seen upon the hill by most of the inhabitants aboundance of armed men marching, and these seene many tymes—and when they come up to them they do not appear. These things are very strange, if the cleargie and gentrie say true.” During the rebellion an appalling massacre of Protestants took place at Portadown, when about a hundred persons, men, women, and children, were forced over the bridge into the river, and so drowned; the few that could swim, and so managed to reach the shore, were either knocked on the head by the insurgents when they landed, or else were shit. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
It is not a matter of surprise that this terrible incident gave rise to legends and stories in which anything strange or out of the common was magnified out of all proportion. Accord to one deponent there appeared one evening in the river “a vision or spirit assuming the shape of a woman, waist high, upright in the water, naked with [illegible] in her hand, her hair dishevelled, her eyes seeming to twinkle in her head, and her skin as white as snow; which spirit seeming to stand upright in the water often repeated the word Revenge! Revenge! Revenge! Also, Robert Maxwell, Archdeacon of Down, swore that the rebels declared to him, (and some deponents made similar statements) “that most of those that were thrown from the bridge were daily and nightly seen to walk upon the River, sometimes singing Psalms, sometimes brandishing of Swords, sometimes screeching in a most hideous and fearful manner.” Both these occurrences are capable of a rational explanation. The supposed spectre was probably a poor, bereaved woman, demented by grief and terror, who stile out of her hiding-place at night to bewail the murder of her friends, while the weird cries arose from the half-starved dogs of the country-side, together with the wolves which abounded in Ireland at that period, quarrelling and fighting over the corpses. Granting the above, and bearing in mind the credulity of all classes of Society, it is not difficult to see how the tales originated; but to say that, because such obviously impossible statements occur in certain despsitions, the latter are therefore worthless as a whole, is to willfully misunderstand the popular mind of the seventeenth century. We have the following on the testimony of the Rev. George Creighton, minister of Virginia, Co. Cavan. He tells us that “drivers women brought to his House a young woman, almost naked, to whom a Rogue came upon the way, these women being present, and required her to give him her mony, or else he would kill her, and so drew his sword; her answer was, You cannot kill me unless God gives you leave, and His will be done. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
“Thereupon the Rogue thrust three times at her naked body with his drawn sword, and never pierced her skin; whereat he being, as it seems, much confounded, went away and left her.” A like story comes from the other side: “At the taking of the Newry a revel being appointed to be shot upon the bridge, and stripped stark-naked, nothing withstanding the musketeer stood within two yards of him, and shot him in the middle of the back, yet the bullet entered not, nor did him any more hurt than leave a little black spot behind it. This many hundreds were eye-witnesses of. Divers of the like have I confidently been assured of, who have been provided of diabolical charms.” Similar tales of persons bearing charmed lives could not doubt be culled from the records of every way that has been fought on this planet of ours since History began. The ease with which the accidental or unusual was transformed into the miraculous at this period is shown by the following. A Dr. Tate and his wife and children were flying to Dublin from the insurgents. On their way they were wandering over commons covered with snow, without any food. The wife was carrying a sucking child, John, and having no milk to give it she was about to lay it down in despair, when suddenly “on the Brow of a Bank she found a Suck-bottle with sweet milk in it, no Footsteps appearing in the snow of any that should bring it thither, and far from any Habitation; which preserved the child’s life, who after became a Blessing to the Church.” The Dr. Tate mentioned above was evidently the Rev. Faithful Tate, D.D., father of Nahum Tate of “Tate and Brady” fame. Much of what has passed current in the New World as White (id est, permissible) Magic is only a disguised goeticism, and may of the resplendent angels invoke with the divine rites reveal their cloven hoofs. It is not too much to say that a large majority of past psychological experiments were conducted to establish communication with demons, and that for unlawful purposes. The popular conceptions concerning the diabolical spheres, which have been all accredited by magic, may have been gross exaggerations of fact concerning rudimentary and perverse intelligences, but the willful viciousness of the communicants is substantially untouched thereby. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
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At any point in time, millions of people throughout the World are afflicted with psychological problems. For many, these problems persist for years, and in some cases for a lifetime. Consider, for example, Paul Segrin, a 25-year-old single unemployed former copy editor for a large publishing house. He had been hospitalized after a suicide attempt in which he deeply gashed his wrist with a razor blade. He described [to the therapist] how he had sat on the bathroom floor and watched the blood drip into the Victorian clawfoot bathtub for some time before he telephoned his father at work for help. He and his father went to the hospital emergency rom to have the gash stitched, but he convinced himself and the hospital physician that he did not need hospitalization. The next day when his father suggested he needed help, he knocked his dinner to the floor and angrily stormed to his room. When he was calm again, he allowed his father to take him back to the hospital. The immediate precipitant for his suicide attempt was that he had run into one of his former girlfriends with her new boyfriend. The patient stated that they had a drink together, but all the while he was with them he could not help thinking that “they were dying to run off and jump in bed.” He experienced jealous rage, got up from the table, and walked out of the restaurant. He began to think about how he could “pay her back.” Mr. Segrin had felt frequently depressed for brief periods during the previous years. He was especially critical of himself for his limited social life and his inability to have managed to have pleasures of the flesh with a woman even once in his life. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
As he related to this to the therapist, he lifted his eyes from the floor and with a sarcastic smirk said, “I’, a 25-year-old virgin. Go ahead, you can laugh now.” However, this is what God wants. Chastity is sexual purity. Those who are chaste are morally clean in their thoughts, words, and actions. Chastity means not having any pleasures of the flesh before marriage. It also means complete fidelity to husband or wife during marriage. Physical intimacy between husband and wife is beautiful and sacred. It is ordained of God for the creation of children and for the expression of love within marriage. No matter how strong temptations seem, the Lord will help us withstand them. In the gospel, our Heavenly Father desires nothing for us but to be happy. He tells us only those things that will bring us joy. And one of the surest principles given by God to help us find that joy is the law of chastity. “For I, the Lord God, delight in the chastity of people. And whoredoms are an abomination before me; thus saith the Lord of Hosts,” reports Jacob 2.28. Paul Sergin was actually doing the right thing in the eyes of the Lord by remaining a virgin. Nonetheless, he has had several girlfriends to date, who he described as very attractive, but who he said had lost interest in him. On further questioning, however, it became apparent that Mr. Sergin soon became very critical of them and demanded that they always meet his every need, often to their own detriment. The women then found the relationship very unrewarding and would soon find someone else. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
During these past two years Mr. Sergin had seen three psychiatrists briefly, one whom had given him a drug, the name of which he could not remember, but that had precipitated some sort of unusual reaction for which he had to stay in a hospital overnight. Concerning his hospitalization, the patient said that “It was a dump,” that the staff refused to listen to what he had to say or to respond to his needs, and that they, in fact, treated all the patients “sadistically.” The referring doctor corroborated that Mr. Berman was a difficult patient who demanded that he be treated as special, and yet was hostile to most staff members throughout his stay. After one angry exchange with an aide, he left the hospital without leave, and subsequently signed out against medical advice. Mr. Sergin is one of two children of a middle-class family. His father is 50 years old and employed in a managerial position for an insurance company. He perceives his father as weak and ineffectual, completely dominated by the patient’s overbearing and cruel mother. He states that he hates his mother with “a passion I can barely control.” He claims that his mother used to call him names like “pervert” and “sissy” when he was growing up, and that in an argument she once “kicked me in the balls.” Together, he sees his parents as rich, powerful, and selfish, and, in turn, thinks that they see him as lazy, irresponsible, and a behaviour problem. When his parents called the therapist to discuss their son’s treatment, they stated that his problem began with the birth of his younger brother, Owen, when Paul was 10 years old. After Owen’s birth Paul apparently became an “ornery” child who cursed a lot and was difficult to discipline. Paul recalls this period only vaguely. He reports that his mother once was hospitalized for depression, but that now “she does not believe in psychiatry.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Mr. Sergin had graduated from college with average grades. Since graduating he had worked at three different publishing houses, but at none of them for more than one year. He always found some justification for quitting. He usually sat around his house doing very little for two or three months after quitting a job, until his parents prodded him into getting a new one. He described innumerable interactions in his life with teachers, friends, and employers in which he felt offended or unfairly treated, and frequent arguments that left him feeling bitter and spent most of his time alone, “bored.” He was unable to commit himself to any person, he held no strong convictions, and he felt no allegiance to any group. The patient appeared as a very thin, bearded, and bespectabled young man with pale skin who maintained little eye contact with the therapist and who had an air of angry bitterness about him. Although he complained of depression, he denied other symptoms of the depressive syndrome. He seemed preoccupied with his rage at his parents, and seemed particularly invested in conveying a despicable image of himself. Paul Sergin is clearly dealing with some issues, but how did he become to be the way that he is? How do we explain and correct his many problems In confronting these questions, we must first look at the wide range of complaints we are trying to understand: Paul’s depression and anger, his social failures, his lack of employment, his distrust of those around him, and the problems within his family. Then we must sort through all kinds of potential causes, internal and external, biological and interpersonal, past and present. Which is having the biggest impact on behaviour? #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Although we may not realize it, we all use theoretical frameworks as we read about Paul. Over the course of our lives, each of us has developed a perspective that helps us make sense of the things other people say and do. In science, the perspectives used to explain phenomena are known as models, or paradigms. Each model spells out the scientist’s basic assumptions, gives order to the field under study, and sets guidelines for its investigation. It influences what the investigators observe as well as the questions they ask, the information they seek, and how they interpret this information. To understand how a clinician explains or treats a specific set of symptoms, such as Paul’s, we must know which model shapes one’s view of abnormal functioning. Until recently, clinical scientists of a given place and time tended to agree on a single model of abnormality—a model greatly influenced by the beliefs of their culture. The demonological model that was used to explain abnormal functioning during the Middle Ages, for example, borrowed heavily from medieval society’s concerns with religion, superstition, and warfare. Medieval practitioners would have seen the devil’s guiding hand in Paul Sergin’s efforts to commit suicide and his feelings of depression, rage, jealousy, and hatred. Similarly, their treatments for him—from prayers to whippings—would have sought to drive foreign spirits from his body. Today several models are used to explain and treat abnormal functioning. This variety has resulted from shifts in values and beliefs over nearly the past century, as well as improvements in clinical research. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
At one end of the spectrum is the biological model, which sees physical processes as the key to human behavior. At the other end is the sociocultural model, which examines the effects of society and culture on individual behavior. In between the four models that focus on more psychological and personal aspects of human functioning: the psychodynamic model looks at people’s unconscious internal processes and conflicts; the behaviour model emphasizes behavior and the ways in which it is learned; the cognitive model concentrates on the thinking that underlies behaviour; and the humanistic existential model stresses the role of values and choices in human functioning. Given their different assumptions and concepts, the models are sometimes in conflict. Those who follow one perspective often scoff at the “naïve” interpretations, investigations, and treatment efforts of the others. Yet none of the models are complete in themselves. Each focuses mainly on one aspect of human functioning, and none can explain all aspects of abnormality. Paul Sergin is a biological being. His thoughts and feelings are the results of biochemical and bioelectrical processes throughout his brain and body. Proponents of the biological model believe that a full understanding of his thoughts, emotions, and behaviour must therefore include an understanding of their biological basis. Not surprisingly, they believe that the most effective treatments for Paul’s problems will then be biological ones. As noted earlier, not all research on the interpersonal relationships of people with eating disorders had focused on the family-of-origin context. The other personal relationships of these people also appears to be problematic. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Symptoms of eating disorders are associated with lower satisfaction and closeness in dating/romantic relationships. An intriguing study comparing the interpersonal problems of patients with anorexia nervosa to those of women who had an occupation or hobby that stressed physical condition and appearance (exempli gratia, dance, athletics, professional models), as well as to women from the general public. The group with anorexia nervosa scored significantly higher on a measure of loneliness than either of the comparison groups. In addition, the correlation between loneliness and eating problems was higher in the group with anorexia nervosa (r= .65) than in either the weight-concerned group (r = .47) or the group from the general public (r = .28). A study of women with bulimia nervosa indicates that such individuals perceive less social support from friends as well as family members. These women felt less socially competent than a group of controls in a variety of social situations, particularly those that involved seeking out social encounters and forming close relationships with others. Some of these interpersonal problems may stem from distorted views of personal relationships by people with eating disorders. For example, characteristics of eating disorders are positively associated with a possessive, dependent love style, and negatively associated with a relatively more healthy passionate and friendship-based love style. In a related study, women with high scores on the Dieting and Bulimia-Food Preoccupation subscales of the Eating Attitudes Test tended to endorse ludus (game-playing) and mania (dependent, possessive) love styles. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Women with symptoms of eating disorders also view pleasures of the flesh expression as exploitative, and see relationships with men, but not with women, as difficult and dissatisfying. Studied such as these suggest that people with eating disorders, or at least a propensity toward eating disorders, have characterological attitudes toward love and romantic relationships that are unlikely to lead them into stable and soothing relationships. It is tempting to speculate that the development of these dysfunctional attitudes toward close relationships may have been shaped by earlier family-of-origin interactions that produced distorted models of such relationships. As with depression, eating disorders may be associated with negative interpersonal responses from other people. This may partially explain some of the loneliness and lack of relational involvement among certain people with eating disorders. In a study, over 700 university students were asked an open-ended question about what they thought it would be like to date someone with either anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa. The responses revealed mostly negative expectations. Themes that were prevalent in the answers included difficulty, stress, frustration, and disliking. Students were asked for their views toward involvement with someone who has anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa, starting with just studying with the person, to dating the person, all the way up to getting engaged. There was a very clear and strong linear relationship between reported discomfort and level of involvement: The more deeply involved the relationship was, the more respondents reported discomfort with the idea of involvement. The study also added an important component to the understanding of eating disorders and personal relationships: People tend to harbour negative attitudes toward getting involved, especially in intimate relationships, with others who have eating disorders. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Like people with depression, those with eating disorders elicit interpersonal rejection. Also like their depressed counterparts, people with eating disorders actually appear to seek and elicit such negative interpersonal responses. Testing hypotheses derived from self-verification theory, which argues that people prefer information consistent with their self-concept, found were symptoms of bulimia nervosa and body dissatisfaction to be positively associated with interest in negative feedback from others in such domains as intellect, social skills, and even physical appearance. The drive for self-verification among women with bulimia nervosa causes them to seek the very interpersonal responses that serve to maintain or exacerbate their condition. “The LORD will vindicate His people, and will have compassion on His servants,” reports Deuteronomy 32.26. A few years ago, somebody dealt unethically with a Victorian estate in a business deal. This person did not keep his end of the bargain, and ended up cheating the estate out of a lot of money. The estate was tempted to want to pay him back and make his life miserable. After all, they made them suffer; why not make him suffer. It was difficult; however, they decided to be a good corporate citizen and do what was righteous, which was to forgive and forget and turn the matter over to God. They said, “God, You know we are being mistreated. You know that what this man is doing is wrong. However, God, we are not going to try to get even. We are not going to try to avenge ourselves. We are counting on You to take care of the situation.” This process continued for several years, and we did not see any change. We had to keep reminding ourselves that God is a God of justice. God is going to turn our pain into diamonds for doing the right thing. God is going to settle our case. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Let me put it to you, My dear Devout, the way the Schoolmen do. Jesus Christ’s is always Act; ours, only Potency. Jesus Christ is the Causation; we, only the Instrumentation. Now who can imagine, let alone grasp, concepts like these? The University thinks it can, but Jesus doubts the Schoolmen are any better for their silvery syllogism. And why is He not surprised? Their thinking leads to more than Philosophy and Theology, more than Reason and Revelation, more than Angelic Intuition can do. It is a merry chase, but can the Cherubim and the Seraphim pass the test? Why, they would founder and they would flounder and eventually they would have to be sent down. How, therefore, can we, wretched students with Earth and ash for a brain—that is how Jesus son of Sirach would have put it (17.32)—ever hope to apprehend, let alone comprehend, the High Holy Secret of the Sacrament? Do not be so quick to despair. Try to be simple of hear and firm of faith; this is something of an echo from First Chronicles (29.17). However, if it were not for Jesus Christ’s invitation, we could never Hope to approach God with reverence. And here God is in the Sacramento. God and Man, no less. One and the same time. What next? We have got God under our tongues; that is to say, we received the Host and God in the Host. However, God is suggesting that at this very same time He has got us under His tongue? That is to day, He has received us whole and entire? Well, we must say! To do it once is staggering. However, to do it again and again—we pray His clemency and we pray His grace. Not only to receive Him again, but also to sour all other consolations that may compete with it. One day, out of the clear blue, God supernaturally stepped in and turned that situation around. He not only moved that man out of our lives, but He paid us back in abundance for everything he had taken. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Sadly, the man who tried to cheat us eventually lost his family, his business, his reputation—everything. And I certain do not wish that on anybody, but that, too, is the justice of God. One cannot go around continually doing wrong, cheating people and sowing bad seeds, and not expect it to eventually catch up to one. We will reap what we have sown. The Scripture says, “Never avenge yourselves, but leave the way open for [God’s] wrath,” reports Romans 12.19. Notice, if one tries to pay people back, one is closing the door for God to do it. Either one can do it God’s way, or one can do it one’s ways. If one is going to let God handle it, one cannot have the attitude of: “I am going to show them what I am made of.” That will prevent God from avenging one His way. If you want to keep that door open so God can bring true justice into your life, one has to totally turn it over to Him. Maybe you have been working through a situation and one has been doing the right thing for a long time. Perhaps this had been going on month after month, maybe year after year, and now one is wondering, “Is God every going to change this situation? Id God ever going to bring about justice? Doe He even care about what I am going through?” Do not give up! Keep doing the right thing. God is building character in you, and you are passing the test with flying colours. The Scripture says, “Do not get tired of doing what is right, for in due season you shall reap if you do not faint,” reports Galatians 6.9. Do not grow weary; trust God to bring justice in His timing, not yours. It is easy to respect those in positions of authority as long as they are being kind to us or when we agree with them. However, the true test comes when you get someone in your life who is abusive, when someone treats you unfairly for no apparent reason. If you will keep the right attitude, God will promote you at the proper time. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The Most High Worthy Sacrament means many things to me. The salvation of my soul and body. The medicine for what ails my spirit. The pool in which my vices are healed. The reins by which my passions are whoaed. The brawn with which my temptations are brawled. The broom that sweeps my nightmares away. The Sacrament makes several things happen. More grace is infused. Virtue begun becomes Virtue increased. Faith is thewed. Hope is sinewed. Love is torched and spread like the summer sunshine. “If an person is overtaken in misconduct or sin of any sort, you who are spiritual [who are responsive to and controlled by the Spirit] should set one right and restore and reinstate one, without any sense of superiority and with all gentleness, keeping an attentive eye on oneself, lest one should be tempted also. Bear (endure, carry) one another’s burdens and troublesome moral faults, and in this way fulfill and observe perfectly the law of Christ (the Messiah) and complete what is lacking [in your obedience to it]. For if any person thinks oneself to be somebody [too important to condescend to shoulder another’s load] when one is nobody [of superiority except in one’s own estimation], one deceives and deludes and cheats oneself. However, let every person carefully scrutinize and examine and test one’s own conduct and one’s own work. One can then have the personal satisfaction and joy of doing something commendable [in itself alone] without [reasoning to] boastful comparisons with one’s neighbour. For every person will have to bear (be equal to understanding and calmly receive) one’s own [little] load [of oppressive faults]. Let one who receives instruction in the Word [of God] share all good things with one’s teacher [contributing to one’s support]. Do not be deceived and deluded and mislead; God will not allow Himself to be sneered at (scorned, disdained, or mocked by mere pretensions or professions, or by His precepts being set aside). [One inevitably deludes oneself who attempts to delude God]. For whatever a human sows and that only is what one will reap. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
“For one who sows to one’s own flesh (lower nature, sensuality) will from the flesh reap decay and ruin and destruction, but one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not lose hear and frow weary and faint in acting nobly and doing right, for in due time and at the appointed season we shall reap, if we do not loosen and relax our courage and faint. So then, as occasion and opportunity open up to us, let us do good [morally] to all people [not only being useful or profitable to them, but also doing what is for their spiritual good and advantage]. Be mindful to be a blessing, especially to those of the household of faith [those who belong to God’s family with you, the believers]. See with what large letters I am writing with my own hand. [Mark carefully these closing words of mine.]” reports Galatians 6.1-11. Father, I am trusting You to turn the negative situations in my life for good. I refuse to try to get even, and I will not allow myself to remain discouraged because of how someone else is treating me. With your help, I will return good for evil, and love in the face of oppression, hatred, or indifference. God is far more accepting of our real weaknesses than most of us realize. As the Psalmist said: “As a father has compassion on his children, so has the Lord compassion on all who fear Him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust,” reports Psalm 103.13-14. It is in owning our weaknesses that we have access to the presence of God. He welcomes those who confess their need. And the greatest need is for communion with God. In the New Testament both James and Peter reiterate the Old Testament theme: “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble,” reports James 4.6; I Peter 5.5. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
If we desire to encounter and surrender to God, we must become aware of our helplessness. We must experience the reality that on our own, if apart from God’s plan and resources, we will live a partial and fragmented life. This is why the Holy Bible, from Genesis through Revelation, emphasizes that God meets face to face with those of a humble heart, while resisting people who are rigid and controlling in their arrogance. However, here we must make a distinction between humbling ourselves, on the one hand, and becoming helpless, servile, and self-effacing, on the other. While the Scriptures advocate a certain childlike openness and honesty in relation to God and others, they do not teach us to remain fixated at a childish level of development. This is what the Helpless Christian does not understand. So one gets stuck at the infantile stage of psychological and spiritual development. However, in order to restore the rhythm of growth, the manipulative tactics of withdrawing and avoiding need to be transformed into the actualizing qualities of feeling vulnerable and empathizing. As pointed our earlier, in the account of Mrs. Winchester, getting in touch with one’s own helplessness, pain, and vulnerability is an excellent way to develop the quality of empathy toward others. This particular quality, expressed at its finest in Jesus, made Him so approachable by the common people and by little children. The actualizing Christian seeks to integrate the childlike qualities of openness to experience, freshness of perception, and excitement in living, with the more adult qualities of awareness of the consequences of one’s behavior and discipline in expressing oneself. Thus the actualizing Christian is free to keep growing and maturing, while at the same time preserving and giving the finest expression to the feelings of vulnerability and childlike spontaneity. This is the dynamic out of which the virtue of humility emerges. One remains humbly reliant upon God concerning every dimension of one’s life; yet one takes the responsibility to face life and live it to the fullest. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Every time one feels overwhelmed by life, one’s feeling of vulnerability is an occasion to draw near to God or to a trusted friend for comfort, guidance, and courage. The old Christian hymn by Charlotte Elliot seems to say it well: “Just as I am, without one plea, but that Thy blood was shed for me, and that thou bidst me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come, I come! Just as I am, though tossed about with many a conflict, many a doubt, fightings and fears within, without, O Lamb of God, I come, I come!” Jared said, “I my relationship with my wife, Genevieve, I have had to learn how to express my weaknesses and fears openly. This has not been easy, because I sometimes have the appearance of being like the Rock of Gibraltar. Recently I had a very difficult week involving many demands on my time and energy. One night it all caught up with me. I lay in bed feeling overwhelmed by all that was happening. As I began to get in touch with my feelings I started trembling. I was feeling frightened, helpless, and alone. Genevieve sensed that I was feeling upset and asked me to share my feelings with her. I crawled into her arms, might like on our first date, and told her my fears as she cuddled me. Her love and tenderness were so reassuring that my feelings of vulnerability began to be transformed into feelings of confidence and courage. I fell asleep in her arms, and experienced a profound peace the rest of the night.” The actualizing Christian must learn to experience directly the hurts of life. There are many little hurts that we may experience from day to day that are real and painful. A sharp word from one’s spouse, a disappointment over a chattered hope, or an unfortunate misunderstanding with a friend might generate inner feelings of hurt. If these feelings are not allowed into awareness, we might become irritable, restless, or depressed later in the day. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
As we become aware in a particular moment that we feel hurt, we seek to find a way to handle it. We may confront the person who has caused the hurt and honestly share our hurt feelings with the other person. Or we may decide that our skin is too thin and we need to be a little more realistic in letting people’s criticisms or insults bounce off. Or we might share the feelings of hurt with a trusted friend. The experience of hurt and vulnerability can also lead us to the Lord, who Himself experience persecution, misunderstanding, and betrayal. Paul was well acquainted with this process, for he wrote: “For the sake of Christ, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong,” reports II Corinthians 12.10. In Christ, we find a Friend who empathizes with out deepest hurt and, with His understanding, restores hope to our lives. Out of accepting hurt and experiencing pain, the actualizing Christian emerges from the situation with dignity and strength intact. The deep and lasting Source of one’s dignity is not man, but God. We know that to be dependent on the approval and praise of everyone is to make everyone our judge. If that were the source of our dignity, we would have precious little of it in this life because people tend to make heavy demands upon those who they praise. Feeling loved and affirmed by God, we experience new courage to continue the adventure of living. Jared wrote: “For a long time I blocked off feelings of hurt, but now I realize that hurting and loving are both aspects of experiencing life. If you want to experience love you must also be open to the possibility of experiencing pain. I am also learning how to separate the feelings of everyday ups and downs from the steady love and peace I get from God. A more profound expression of hurt and vulnerability is grief. Grief is experienced when a person experiences a loss that seems to strike the core of one’s being. This is captured well by the word “brokenhearted.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Perhaps an intimate relationship has abruptly ended. Perhaps there has been an accident that has destroyed one’s property or one’s health. Perhaps a dear friend has moved away. Or perhaps someone has gone to Heaven—a parent, spouse, child, or friend. In the solitude of grieving, one needs to find courage to trust one’s God-given emotional and physiological processes that allow for full and honest expression of inner pain—crying, moaning, trembling, or shaking. One of the unfortunate ways that this natural healing process is blocked is by responding to the cultural message that says crying is a sign of weakness. The message implies that one should bear hurt with grim resignation. We believe this to be destructive and false. Grief is the great leveler. Stoicism is only a halfway house. It is a shield, permissible for a short time only. In the end one has to discard shields and remain open and vulnerable. Otherwise, scar tissues will deal off the wound and no growth will follow. To grow, to be reborn, one must remain vulnerable—open to love but also hideously open to the possibility of more suffering. If the natural grieving process is blocked, then there can be no psychological “closure” about the situation. The psychological wound cannot heal. The feelings may eventually be repressed or “forgotten,” but the pressure remains because the body musculature is literally locked into place for weeks, months, or even years. Therefore, the face remains tense, the breathing continues to be shallow and guarded, and the body posture is frozen in a stiff, corpselike manner. How unlike Christ Himself, who, when he felt sorrow and pain, wept openly (John 11.35). If a person is to get back into touch with life, one must give in to the profound feelings of hurt and pain as the flood of emotional energy is discharged. When we can give vent to hurt feelings, we are able to see things in a new way. We can finally accept what has happened, take the losses realistically, and move on. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Having had the courage to give up a fanatical hold on how things “should have been,” we now are able to regain touch with events, relationships, and circumstances that are currently emerging in our lives. In this way we gain closure on the situation, and it recedes into the background of our awareness. We are now free to live again, in the present! Thus, we become excited about living because we rediscover the rick possibilities for actualizing here and now. Prayer is based on legal documents—because of what Jesus did, you have a legal right to come in prayer and petition God to intervene in the affairs of life and expect God to perform His part of the covenant. God’s Word is a legal document, more so than any legal document that has ever been set forth by any law of this land. Jesus Christ is the guarantee that it will work. The Christian Bible and Book of Mormon are legal contracts between you, Jesus, and the Father. It is God’s will to you and for you. Some people have not even read the will. They do not know what is theirs. A contract governs at least two people: the one who made it and the one who receives it. If you had a contract, it would tell certain things you would have to do. Then it would state certain things the other party would have to do to make it valid. It is legally binding on both parties. If you do not fulfill your part, it releases the other party from performing one’s part. It would become void. This is what Jesus is stating here. He would not do it because He is His friend. God does not answer prayer because of friendship. He answers prayer because of legal document and the result is governed by the rules of this document. That document is God’s Word. Now I am not trying to get you under Law. Do not misunderstand what I am saying. I want you to see the need of accurately stating your prayer according to the Word that Jesus Christ taught. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
He said that He would not do it because He was His friend. However, thank God, we have a contract with our Father and we are part of the family, joint-heirs with Jesus Christ. This is just a friend who came to a man for bread. There is no relationship, just friendship, but we are born of God. He is out Father and we are His children. Jesus Christ goes on to say, “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your Heavenly Father give. At times we have become bogged down in this passage of scripture and have failed to see that this is not portraying God at all. He is simply showing you that prayer is not based on friendship or on need. God answers prayer because He is your Father; you are His son and you have a covenant with Him. He says, “Ask and it shall be given you. For every one that asketh, recieveth.” This runs parallel with what Jesus brought out in John 15.7, “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you.” He did not say, “Ask what you will, then beg, plead, and keep on asking.” He said, “Ask what ye will and it SHALL BE done.” What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them and ye shall have them. You release faith when you pray. Too many times we have waited to release our faith when we see it is getting better. You know that would not require any faith at all. You would know it then. Sense knowledge would tell you then. That is not faith. Release your faith when you pray. The enemy does not care how much you pray as long as it does not work. However, when we learn that the Word of God was given to us to put us over in life and to cause us to be victorious over the evil one, we will walk in victory here on Earth. “They which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ,” reports Romans 5.17. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
The Amplified Bible says, “Those who receive God’s overflowing grace and the free gift of righteousness reign as kings in life.” The glimpse is a memorable experience, but it is not enough. It shows one a possible future, gives one a new World-view, but one must henceforth bring all that into one’s everyday life and into one’s whole being. This needs time, practice, patience, vigilance, self-training, and more sensitivity. Wisdom does not come overnight. It needs time to ripen. However, Revelation can come in that way. However, its recipient will still need time to adjust to it, and to integrate with it. What one has learned from the glimpse must be applied to life, to action, and to attitude. It is not enough merely to enjoy its memory, as if it made no difference. Blessed be you, harsh matter, barren soil, stubborn rock you who yield only to force, you who cause us to work if we would eat. Blessed by you, perilous matter, violent sea, untamable passion: you who, unless we fetter you, will devour us. Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever new-born; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth. Blessed be you, universal matter, immeasurable time, boundless ether, triple abyss of stars and atoms and generations: you who by overflowing and dissolving our narrow standards or measurements reveal to us the dimensions of God. Blessed be you, impenetrable matter: you who, interposed between our minds and the World of essences, cause us to languish with the desire to pierce through the seamless veil of phenomena. Blessed be you, mortal matter: you who one day will undergo the process of dissolution within us and will thereby takes us forcibly into the very heart of that which exists. You who batter us and then dress our wounds, you who resist and yield to us, you who wreck and build, you who shackle and liberate, the sap of our souls, the hand of God the flesh of Christ: it is you, matter, that I bless. Sounds 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 yore, and our counsellors 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 judgement. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, Thou King, who lovest righteousness and judgment. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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When Asked His Name He Said “Legion” Because Many Demons Were Entered into Him!
It is easy to imagine how the combined grief of losing both a child and a spouse could be very crippling. However, if you have $20,000,000 (2021 inflation adjusted $347,910,691.82), and all the time in the World to help you cope, what would you do? Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester’s response to the deaths of her child and husband left a bizarre and impressive architectural reflection of her soul. After a series of violent confrontations, the Winchester Repeating Arms Company hires a private investigator to follow her. Mrs. Winchester ascends into mystery and it is soon clear that she is hiding a much bigger secret—one that is both inexplicable and shocking. A “possessed” person may have symptoms much like those that are apparent in the mentally ill. One may be deeply melancholic or depressed, appear to be withdrawn from reality, or may manifest emotions that range from ecstatic joy to violent screaming or wild ferocity. These various states may present themselves from time to time during “attacks.” Demon possession may be distinguished from insanity, however, by observing the manner in which the afflicted person speaks. An insane individual may have a mistaken concept of one’s own identity, wear clothing by which one attempts to look like the person one thinks oneself to be, but speak in one’s own voice, and in such a manner that one can tell one is doing only a superficial impersonation of the individual one thinks oneself to be. A demon-possessed person, on the other hand, is obviously controlled by the indwelling evil spirit. The wicked being may use a language or dialect the individual never knew, and sometimes will name oneself. Therefore, one should carefully note the symptoms of a disturbed person, never making the diagnosis of demon possession on the basis of a superficial judgment. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
If a believer should meet a demon-possessed individual, one would be unwise to make a frontal attack upon the powers of darkness by immediately issuing a command in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Dr. Kurt Koch, an evangelical Christian who has made a lifetime study of Satan and occultic activities, declares that whenever Christians lightly engage in an effort to cast out demons, they run the risk of being attacked by evil spirits. Such people often suffer deep spiritual depression and find themselves in an attitude of complete hopelessness. Since this is true, a believer should band together with others in a time of prayer, and no efforts should be made to expel the evil spirits until the Holy Spirit prompts someone to issue the command. Unbelievers and adherents of the non-Christian religions apparently can command evil spirits without suffering bad consequences. Archeologists have found manuscripts containing incantations and magical formulas for the expulsion of demons; and today in the Philippines and other countries of the far East, as well as in some areas of South America and Africa, pagan religious leaders seriously perform rituals to ward off or cast out evil spirits. Sometimes they beat the person who is demon-possessed, prick one with needles, or even burn portions of one’s body, thinking that this pain will drive out the evil spirits. The Jewish people in Christ’s day also used spells, magical phrases, and religious rituals to expel demons. That they sometimes appeared to be successful is clear, for Jesus said, “if I, by Beelzebub, cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore, they shall be your judges,” reports Matthew 12.27. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
In this statement the Lord Jesus Christ acknowledged that evil spirits sometimes left the bodies of their victims when incantations, spells, or magical rites were used by Jewish religious leaders. However, Christ did not say these men accomplished their goal by the power of God, nor did He imply that they were actually doing damage to the cause of Satan. He was answering the charge that He was casting out demons in the power of Beelzebub, the prince of demons. He declared that is such were the case, the kingdom of Satan would be divided against itself. Actually, the exorcists, whether Jewish or pagan, did not really possess authority over the invisible World, but the evil spirits merely cooperated with them, leaving the bodies of some of their victims to give the appearance that they had been forced out. By working with these unbelieving sorcerers, the devil aided his own cause. The demons either temporarily left the person, only to return a short time later, or entered the body of some other victim. No one should attempt to deal with the forces of evil by using the name of Jesus unless one is a child of God. Luke, in Acts 19, graphically portrays the seriousness of hypocritically dealing with the powers of darkness. Seven sons of Sceva, a professional exorcist who had no personal faith in Christ, tried to combine the words “in the name of Jesus” with their magical formula. The evil spirits, recognizing that these impostors had no right to use Jesus’s name, reacted in a violent manner. The demon-possessed individual attacked these men with superhuman strengths, so that with torn clothing and bleeding bodies they fled from the Winchester mansion. The frequency of demon possession—the record of history establishes without a doubt that demon possession was known before the Lord Jesus Christ came to Earth, and the testimony of missionaries indicates that it has continued down through the centuries. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
The public ministry of Christ, however, was accompanied by an outburst of demon possession unparalleled in history. It seems that Satan threw all his power into his battle with Jesus Christ. True, the devil is not omniscient, but he knew that Christ had come to earth to atone for sin, conquer death, and bring about the defeat of evil. John tells us that “the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil,” reports 1 John 3.8. Satan used every device at his disposal to frustrate the purpose of God in Christ. Subtle temptations, the wrath and wickedness of men, and a rash of demonic activity were part of his vain effort to prevent Jesus from performing the work He had come to accomplish. Demon possession gradually subsided during the first century A.D., and usually is not conspicuous in areas where a fairly large percentage of people have placed their faith in Jesus Christ. It appears that demons are hesitant to enter the bodies of people when informed believers are likely to cast them out in the name of Christ. Luke is the same one that is translated “bottomless pit” seven times in the book of the Revelation. We read, “And Jesus asked him, saying, ‘What is thy name?’ And he said, ‘Legion’; because many demons were entered into him. And they besought him that he would not command them to go out into the deep. And there was there and herd of many swine, feeding on the mountain; and they besought him that he would allow them to enter into them. And he permitted them,” reports Luke 8.30-32. Revelation 9 tells us that at some future time the “bottomless pit” will be opened, and a great army of evil spirits will be set free to plague humankind. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
It is at least a possibility that whenever demons are cast out of a human being in the name of Jesus Christ, they are sent to the bottomless pit, and will not be released until shortly before Christ returns to establish His kingdom. The realization that they will lose their freedom as members of the army of the “prince of the power of the air,” and be confined in the pit for an indefinite period of time, makes them hesitant to take possession of human beings. The risk is too great in an area where Christians exercise their authority in the name of Christ. People who live in civilized countries where the Gospel has been known for centuries should not rule out the possibility of demon possession, however, just because it has not been a common occurrence in these areas. Satan and his cohorts may conclude that most people, even professing Christians, will not recognize this phenomenon when they meet it. Therefore, as this age draws to a close, Satan may once again become very active in entering human bodies and controlling personalities. He will hope that the majority of humankind will either be deceived into following him or find a naturalistic explanation for the activities of the demons. This supernatural manifestation of the power of Satan and evil spirits is clearly predicted by the apostle Paul. In his second letter to the Thessalonian believers, he declares that just before Christ returns in glory, the devil will have his righthand mand upon the earth performing miracles which make him appear to be a god. Referring to the Antichrists, the apostle says, “Even him whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish, because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved,” reports 2 Thessalonian 2.9, 10. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Inasmuch as we can expect an increase of open opposition to God on the part of the Satanic hordes, we know Christ should humbly maintain fellowship with Him through full submission and ready obedience so that we may receive from Him the strength we need to overcome. James writes, “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you,” reports James 4.6-7. Peter declares, “Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil, like a roaring lion walketh about, seeking whom he may devour; whom resist steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the World,” reports 1 Peter 5.8-9. No, Satan is not dead. He is like a wounded animal and still has great power to harm those who care careless or proud. Therefore, keep awake, be on alert, read the Christian Bible and the Book of Mormon, and pray! If you do not, he may destroy your effectiveness as a Christian. For the next instance of witchcraft and the supernatural in connection with Ireland, we are compelled to go beyond the confines of our own country. Though in this connection with the Green Isle is slight, yet it is of interest as affording an example of that blending of fairy lore with sorcery which is not an uncommon feature of Scottish witchcraft-trials. In the year 1613 a woman named Margaret Barclay, of Irvine in Scotland, was accused of having her brother-in-law’s ship to be cast away by magical spell. A certain strolling vagabond and juggler, John Stewart, was apprehended as her accomplice; he admitted (probably under torture) that Margaret had applied to him to teach her some magic arts in others that “she might get gear, kye’s milk, love of man, her heart’s desire on such persons as had done her wrong.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
Through John Stewart does not appear to have granted Margaret’s request, yet he gave detailed information as to the manner in which he had gained the supernatural power and knowledge with which he was credited. “It being demanded of him by what means he profession himself to have knowledge of things to come, the said John confessed that the space of twenty-six years ago, he being travelling on All-Hallow Even night between the towns of Monygoif and Clary, in Galway, he met with the King of the Fairies and his company, and that the King gave him a stroke with a white rod over the forehead, which took from him the power of speech and the use of one eye, which he wanted for the space of three years. He declared that the use of speech and eyesight was restored to him by the King of Fairies and his company on a Hallowe’en night at the town of Dublin.” At his subsequent meeting with the fairy band, he was taught all his knowledge. The spot on which he was struck remained impervious to pain although a pin was thrust into it. The unfortunate wretch was cast into prison, and there committed suicide by hanging himself from the “cruik” of the door with his garter or bonnet-string, and so “ended his life miserably with the help of the devil his master.” A tale slightly resembling portion of the above comes from the north of Ireland a few years later. “It is storied, and the story is true,” says Robert Law in his Memorialls, “of a godly man in Ireland, who lying one day in the fields sleeping, he was struck with dumbness and deafness. The same man, during this condition he was in, could tell things, and had the knowledge of things in a strange way, which he had not before; and did, indeed, by signs make things known to others which they knew not. Afterwards he at length, prayer being made from him by others, came to the use of his tongue and ears; but when that knowledge of things he had in his deaf and dumb condition ceased, and when he was asked how he had the knowledge of these things he made signs of, he answered he had that knowledge when dumb, but how and after what manner he knew not, only he had the impression thereof in his spirit. This story was related by a godly minister, Mr. Robert Blair, to Mr. John Baird, who knew the truth of it.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
The Rev. Robert Blair, M.A., was a celebrated man, if for no other reason than on account of his disputes with Dr. Echlin, Bishop of Down, or for his description of Oliver Cromwell as a greeting (id est, weeping) devil. On the invitation of Lord Claneboy he arrived in Ireland in 1623, and in the same year was settled as (Presbyterian) parish minister at Bangor in Co. Down, with the consent of patron and people’ he remained there until 1631, when he was suspended by Dr. Echlin, and was deposed and excommunicated in November, 1634. He has left a few writings behind him, and was grandfather of the poet Robert Blair, author of The Grave. During the years of his ministry at Bangor the following incident occurred to him, which he of course attributes to demonic possession, through homicidal mania resulting from intemperate habits would be nearer the truth. One day a rich man, the constable of the perish, called upon him in company with one of his tenants concerning the baptizing of the latter’s child. “When I had spoken what I thought necessary, and was ready to turn into my house, the constable dismissing the other told me he had something to say to me in private. I looking upon him saw his eyes like the eyes of a cat in the night, did presently conceive that he had a mischief in his heart, yet I resolved not to refuse what he desired, but I keeped a watchful eye upon him, and stayed at some distance; and being near to the door of the church I went in, and invited him to follow me. As soon as he entered within the doors he fell atrembling, and I awondering. His trembling continuing and growing without any speech, I approached to him, and invited him to a seat, wherein he could hardly sit. The great trembling was like to throw him out of the seat. I laid my arm about him, and asked him what ailed him? But for a time, he could speak none. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
“At last his shaking ceased, and he began to speak, telling me, that for a long time the Devil had appeared to him; first at Glasgow he bought a horse from him, receiving a sixpence in earnest, and that in the end he offered to him a great purse full of sylver to be his, making no mention of the horse; he said that he blessed himself, and so the buyer with the sylver and gold that was poured out upon the table vanished. But some days thereafter he appeared to him at his own house, naming him by his name, and said to him, Ye are mine, for I arled you with a sixpence, which yet ye have. Then said he, I asked his name, and he answered, they call me Nickel Downus (I suppose the he repeated evil, that he should have said Nihil Damus). Being thus molested with these and many other apparitions of the Devil, he left Scotland; but being come to Ireland he did often likewise appear to him, and now of late he still commands me to kill and slay; and oftentimes, says he, my whinger hath been drawn and kept under my cloak to obey his commands, but still something holds my hand that I cannot stroke. But then I asked him who he was bidden kill? He answered, any that comes in my way; but ‘The better they be the better service to me, or else I shall kill thee.’ When he uttered these words he fell again atrembling, and was stopped in his speaking, looking lamentably at me, designing me to be the person he aimed at; then he fell a crying and lamenting. I showed him the horribleness of his ignorance and drunkenness; he made many promises of reformation, which were not well keep’d; for within a fortnight he went to an alehouse to crave the price of his malt, and sitting there long at drink, as he was going homeward the Devil appeared to him, and challenged him for opening to me what had passed betwixt them secretly, and followed him to the house, pulling his cap off his head and his band from about his neck, saying to him, ‘On Hallow-night I shall have thee, soul and body, in despite of the minister and of all that he will do for thee.’” #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
In his choice of a date his Satanic Majesty showed his respect for popular superstitions. This attack of delirium tremens (though Mr. Blair would not have so explained it) had a most salutary effect; the constable was in such an abject state of terror lest the Devil should carry him off that he begged Mr. Blair to sit up with him all Hallow-night, which he did, spending the time very profitably in prayer and exhortation, which encouraged the man to defy Satan and all his works. The upshot of the matter was, that he became very charitable to the poor, and seems to have entirely renounced his intemperate habits. Rejecting the supernatural elements in the above as being merely the fruits of a diseased mind, there is no reason to doubt the truth of the story. Mr. Blair also met with some strange cases of religious hysteria, which became manifest in outbursts of weeping and bodily convulsions, but which he attributed to the Devil’s “playing the ape, and counterfeiting the works of the Lord.” He states that one Sunday, in the midst of public worship, “one of my charge, being a dull and ignorant person, made a noise and stretching of her body. Incontinent I was assisted to rebuke that lying spirit that disturbed the worship of God, charging the same not to disturb the congregation; and through God’s mercy we met with no more of that work.” Thus modestly our writer sets down what happened in his Autobiography; but the account of the incident spread far and wide, and at length came to the ears of Archbishop Usher, who, on his next meeting with Mr. Blair, warmly congratulated him on the successful exorcism he had practised.” Spirits of a diabolical and infernal nature, are not only ready upon all occasions to become subservient to exorcists and magicians, but are ever watching opportunities of exciting evil affections in the mind, and of stirring up the wickedly inclined to the commission of every species of iniquity and vice. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
Thus by the instigation of infernal spirits, and their own promptitude, they often terrify humans with nocturnal visions; provoke melancholy people to suicide; tempt drunkards and incendiaries to set houses on fire, to burn those who are in them, and allure careless servants and others to sound and incautious sleep; that such unlucky accidents might happen besides innumerable other ways they have of executing the devices of iniquitous spirits through malicious instigations, or secret stratagems, projected for the overthrow and destruction of mortal men; especially when the work to be effected by the devil is too hard for his subtle and spiritual nature to effect, because the same belongs to the outward source or principle to which these dubious spirits more immediately belong. A few nights into Christmas, there was a festival for which the Winchester mansion was making extensive preparations. The narrow streets which had been thronged with people were now almost deserted. In the comfortable coffee-room of the Winchester mansion, Mrs. Winchester had half a dozen guests, principally commercial travellers, sat talking by light of the fire. The talk had drifted from trade to politics, from politics to religion, and so by easy stages to the supernatural. In the flicker of the light of the fire, as it shone on the glasses and danced with shadows on the walls, the conversation proved so enthralling that Henry, the waiter, whose presence had been forgotten, created a very disagreeable sensation by suddenly starting up from a dark corner and gliding silently from the room. Mrs. Winchester then said, “Of course, it is an old idea that spirits like to get into the company of human beings. A man told me once that he travelled down the Great Western with a ghost and had not the slightest suspicion of it until the inspector came for tickets. My friend said they way that ghost tried to keep up appearances by feeling for it in all its pockets and looking on the floor was quite touching. Ultimately it gave it up and with a faint groan vanished through the ventilator.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
“That’ll do, Mrs. Winchester,” said Ludwig Leichhardt. “It is not a subject for jesting,” said Adam Worth,” who had been an attentive listener. “I’ve never seen an apparition myself, but I know people who have, and I consider that they form a very interesting link between us and the after-life. There’s a ghost story connected with this mansion, you know.” “Never heard of it,” said Edward Agar, “and I have visiting this estate for some years now.” “It dates back a long time,” said Ludwig. “You’ve heard about John V. Creely also know as Jesus Procopio?” “Well, I’ve just ‘eard odds and ends, sir” said the Edward, “but I never put much count to ‘em. There was one chap ‘ere what said ‘e saw it, and the gov’ner sacked ‘im prompt.” “My father was a native of this town,” said Ludwig, “and knew the story well. He was a truthful man and a steady churchgoer, but I’ve heard him declare that once in his life he saw the appearance of Jesus Procopio in this mansion.” “And who was this Jesus?” enquired a voice. “His real name was Tomaso Rodendo, one of the most fearless and daring desperadoes that has ever figures in the criminal annals of our state. Anything he could turn his dishonest hand to,” replied Ludwig; “and he was run to Earth in this mansion one Christmas week some five years ago. He took his last supper in this very room, and after he had gone up to bed a couple of thief takers, who had followed him from San Francisco but lost the scent a bit, went upstairs with Mrs. Winchester and tried the door. It was stout oak, and fast, so one went into the yard, and by means of a short ladder got on the window-sill, while the other stayed outside the door. Those below in the yard saw the man crouching on the sill, and then there was a sudden smash of glass, and with a cry he fell in a heap on the stones at their feet. Then in the moonlight they saw the white face of the pickpocket peeping over the sill, and while some stayed in the yard, others ran into the mansion and helped the other man to break the door in. It was difficult to obtain an entrance even then, for it was barred with heavy furniture, but they got in at last, and the first thing that met their eyes was the body of Jesus dangling from the top of the bed by his own handkerchief.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
“Which bedroom was it?” asked two or three voices together. Ludwig shook his head. “That I can’t tell you; but the story goes that Jesus still haunts this mansion, and my father used to declare that the last time he had slept here that the ghost of Jesus Procopio lowered itself from the top of his bed and tried to strangle him.” “That will do” said John Creely. “I wish you’d thought to ask your father which bedroom it was.” “I believe it was my Blue Séance room said,” Mrs. Winchester. “Well, I should take care not to sleep in it, that’s all, said John shortly. “There’s nothing to fear,” said Ludwig. “I don’t believe for a moment that ghosts could really hurt one. In fact my father used to confess that it was only the unpleasantness of the thing that upset him, and that for all practical purposes Jesus’s figures might have been made of cotton-wool for all the hard they could do.” “That’s all very fine,” said John; “a ghost story is a ghost story, sir; but when a gentleman tells a tale of a ghost in the house in which one is going to sleep, I call it most ungentlemanly!” “Pooh! Nonsense!” said Ludwig, rising, “ghosts can’t hurt you. For my own part; I should rather like to see one. Good night.” “Good night,” said Mrs. Winchester and the others. “And I hope that Jesus will pay you a visit,” added John as the door closed.” “Shall I light the gas, Adam?” said Henry. “No; the fires very comfortable,” he said. “Now gentlemen, any of you know any more?” “I think we’ve had enough,” said John; “we shall be thinking we see spirits next, and we’re not all like Ludwig who’s just gone.” Old humbug!” said John. “I should like to put him to the test. Suppose I dress up as Jesus Procopio and go to give him a chance of displaying his courage?” “Bravo!” said Adam huskily, drowning one or two faint “Noes.” “No, drop it, John” said Edward. “Only for the joke,” said John, somewhat eagerly. “I’ve got some things upstairs in which I am going to play in the ‘Rivals’—knee-breeches, buckles, and all that sort of thing. It’s a rare chance. If you’ll wait a bit I’ll give you a full-dress rehearsal, entitled, ‘Jesus Procopio; or, The Nocturnal Strangler.’” #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
“You won’t frighten us,” said Adam, with a husky laugh. “I don’t know that,” said John sharply; “it’s a question of acting that’s all. I’m pretty good, ain’t I, Edward?” “Oh, you’re all right—for an amateur,” said Edward, with a laugh. “I’ll bet you level sov. You don’t frighten me,” said Adam. “Done! said John. I’ll take the bet to frighten you first and Ludwig afterwards. These gentlemen shall be the judges.” “You won’t frighten us, sir,” said Edward “because we’re prepared for you; but you’d better leave Ludwig alone. It’s dangerous play.” “Well, I’ try you first,” said John, springing up. “No gas, mind.” He ran lightly upstairs to his room, leaving the others, most of whom had been drinking somewhat freely, to wrangle about his proceedings. It ended with them going to bed. “He’s crazy on acting,” said Adam, lighting his pipe. “Thinks he’s the equal of anybody almost. It doesn’t matter with us, but I won’t let him go to Ludwig. And he won’t mind so long as he gets an opportunity of acting to us.” “Well, I hope he’ll hurry up,” said Edward, yawning; it’s after twelve now.” Nearly half an hour passed. Edward drew his watch from his pocket and was busy winding it, when Henry, the waiter, who had been sent on an errand, burst suddenly into the room and rushed towards them. “E’s comin’, gentlemen,” he said breathlessly. “Why, you’re frightened, Edward,” said Adam with a chuckle. “It was the suddenness of it,” said Edward sheepishly; “and besides, I didn’t look for seenin’ ‘im in the bar. There’s only a glimmer of light there, and ‘e was sitting on the floor behind the bar. I nearly trod on ‘im.” “He’s taking too long, I’ll go and fetch him,” said Adam. “You don’t know what this mansion is like at night, sir,” said Henry, catching him by the sleeve. “It ain’t fit to look at by yourself, it ain’t, indeed. It’s got the—what’s that?” #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
They all started at the sound of a smothered cry from the staircase and the sound of somebody running hurriedly along the passage. Before anybody could speak, the door flew open and a figure bursting into the room flung itself gasping and shivering upon them. “What is it? What’s the matter?” demanded Edward. “Why, it’s Mr. Creely.” He shook him roughly and then held some spirit to his lips. John Creely drank it greedily with a sharp intake of his breath gripped him by the arm. “Light the gas, Adam,” said Edward. Adam obeyed hastily, John Creely, a ludicrous but pitiable figure in knee-breeches and coat, a large wig all awry, and his face a mess of grease paint, clung to him, trembling. “Now what’s the matter?” asked Edward. “I’ve seen it,” said John, with a hysterical sob. “O Lord, I’ll never play the fool again, never!” “Seen what?” said the others. “Him—it—the ghost—anything!” said John wildly. “Rot!” said Adam uneasily. All distinctly heard a step in the passage outside. It stopped at the door, and as they watched with bated breath, the door creaked and slowly opened. Adam fell back opened-mouthed, as a white, leering face, with sunken eyeballs ad close-cropped bullet head, appeared at the opening. For a few second the creature stood regarding them, blinking in a strange fashion at the candle. Then with a sidling movement, it came a little way into the room and stood there as if bewildered. Not a man spoke or moved, but all watched with a horrible fascination as the creature removed its dirty neckcloth and its head rolled on its shoulder. For a minute it paused, and then holding the rag before it, moved towards Edward. The candle went out suddenly with a flash and a bang. These was a smell of powder, and something writhing in the darkness on the floor. A faint, choking cough, and then silence. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
Edward was the first to speak. “Matches,” he said in a strange voice. Adam struck one. Then he leapt at the gas and a burner flamed from the match. Edward touched the thing on the floor with his foot and found it soft. He looked at his companions. They mouthed enquiries at him, but he shook his head. He lit the candle, and, kneeling down, examined the silent thing on the floor. Then he rose swiftly, and dipping his handkerchief in the water jug, bent down again and grimly wiped the white face. Then he sprang back with a cry of incredulous horror, pointing at it. Adam’s pistol fell to the floor and he shut out the sight with his hands, but the others, crowding forward, gazed spell-bound at the dead face of John V. Creely. Before a word was spoken the door opened and Ludwig hastily entered the room. His eyes fell on the floor. “Good God!” he cried. “You didn’t—” Nobody spoke. “I told him not to,” he said in a suffocating voice. “I told him not to. I told him—” He leaned against the wall, deathly sick, put his arms out feebly, and fell fainting into Ludwig’s arms. Many mysteries have taken place in the Winchester mansion over the years. It is an extravagant maze of Victorian craftmanship—marvelous, baffling, and eerily eccentric, to say the least. Tour guide must warn people not to stray from the group or they could be lost forever! Countless questions come to mind as you wander through the mansion—such as, what was Mrs. Winchester thinking when she had a staircase built that descends seven steps and then rises eleven? The Winchester Repeating Arms Company concluding their investigation by saying, “The mystery of the Winchester mansion is unquestionably great and infinite; perhaps spirits can take human shape, and disclose secrets and treasures guarded by this estate, but we must also be aware of skilled deceivers who will talk of Heaven and Hell and the Fall.” (WRA 1888.) After Mrs. Winchester’s death, crimes resulting in the theft of cash, jewels, historical European glass, furniture, and works of art worth over $10 million by Victorian standards (2021 inflation adjusted $291,146,315.79) went missing from the estate. Is the Winchester mansion haunted? Visits and find out for yourself. Their investigation sounds inconclusive. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Winchester Mystery House
“Though she be but little, she is fierce.” ~ William Shakespeare
Did you know Sarah Winchester only stood at 4’10”? Much of the house was built to her specific height measurement including a shower, some doors, and hallways. winchestermysteryhouse.com
I Wish I Could Help You. The Problem is that You are too Sick for Managed Care.
You cannot have a constitutional right to do something that is illegal. Although the community mental healthy approach has often failed to address the needs of the people with severe disorders, it has given rise to an important principle of mental health care—prevention. Rather than wait for psychological disorders to occur, many of today’s community programs try to correct the social conditions that give rise to psychological problems (poverty or violence in the community, for example) and to identity and help individuals who are at risk for developing emotional problems (for example, teenage mothers or the children of people with severe psychological disorders). However, community prevention programs are not always successful and they often suffer from limited funding, but they have grown in number throughout the United States of America and Europe, offering great promise as the ultimate form of intervention. In fact, during the 1990s, the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services labeled prevention as the nation’s number one health and social priority. Prevention programs have been further energized in the past few years by the field of psychology’s growing interest in positive psychology. Positive psychology is the study and enhancement of positive feelings such as optimism and happiness; positive traits like perseverance and wisdom; positive abilities such as interpersonal skill and other talents; and group-directed virtues, including altruism and tolerance. In the clinical arena, positive psychology suggests that practitioners can helps people best by promoting positive development and psychological wellness. While researchers study and learn more about positive psychology in the laboratory, a growing number of clinicians are already beginning to apply its principles in their work. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
These specialists are teaching people coping skills that may help protect them from stress and adversity and encouraging them to become more involved in personally meaningful activities and relationships. In this way, the clinicians are trying to promote mental health and prevent mental disorders. Promotion and prevention programs are now being applied in many clinical areas. Such programs have been offered during pregnancy, unemployment, divorce, and other periods of significant stress and have targeted such problem areas as substance abuse, violence, disaster trauma, and depression. Although programs of this kind are promising and important, we must keep in mind that the clinical field “has yet to effectively prevent any major form of psychopathology.” The growing influence of insurance coverage—so many people now seek therapy that private insurance companies have changed their coverage for mental health patients. Today the dominant form of coverage is the managed care program—a program in which the insurance company determines such key issues as which therapist its clients may choose, the cost of sessions, and the number of sessions for which a client may be reimbursed. At least 75 percent of all privately insured persons in the United States of America are currently enrolled in managed care programs. The coverage for mental health treatment under such programs follows the same basic principles as coverage for medical treatment, including a limited pool of practitioners for patients to choose from, preapproval of treatment by the insurance company, strict standards for judging whether problems and treatments qualify for reimbursement, and ongoing reviews and assessments. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
In the mental health realm, both therapists and clients typically dislike the managed care programs. They fear that the programs inevitably shorten the programs inevitably will shorten therapy (often for the worse), unfairly favour treatments whose results are not always lasting (for example, drug therapy), pose a special kind of hardship for those with severe mental disorders, and results in treatment determined by insurance companies rather than by therapist. A special program with insurance coverage—both managed care and other kinds of insurance programs—is that reimbursements for mental disorders tend to be lower than those for mental disorders. This disparity places persons with psychological difficulties at a distinct disadvantage in their efforts to overcome their problems and inevitably affect that quality and quantity of the treatment they seek. Recently the federal government and 35 states have passed so-called parity laws that direct insurance companies to provide equal coverage for mental and medical problems. It is not yet clear, however, whether these laws will indeed lead to better coverage and whether they will improve the treatment picture for people dealing with psychological problems. However, many people are choosing Kaiser Permanente for a health care provider because they like the fact that most every service a patient could need is provided under one roof, from laboratory work, medical doctor office visits, emergency and urgent care services, optometry, pediatrics, mental health care, X-ray, and many more services. In fact, with Kaiser, you do not need a referral for mental health and addiction care services. However, your personal care doctor can connect you with a therapist. Kaiser also has mental health care and addiction services are available for emergency care, meaning you do not need an appointment. If you are having a crisis, you can go to the hospital and receive treatment right away. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Mental health and money problems are often intricately linked. Our research shows that over 1.5 million people are experiencing both problem debt and mental health care problems. However, during this pandemic, President Biden will not give any government relief to the people. And California Governor Newsome excluded veterans, retired, and certain disabled people from his relief programs. People with problem debt are significantly more likely to experience mental health problems. Half the people in problem debt also have a mental health problem. Also, 86 percent of people with experience of mental health problems said that their financial situation had made their mental health problems worse. Almost one in five people with mental health problems are in problem debt. People experiencing mental health problems are three and a half times more likely to be in problem debt than people without mental health problems, and 72 percent of people said that their mental health problems had made their financial situation worse. One caustic interpersonal phenomenon that has received considerable interest in the literature on eating disorders is childhood sexual abuse. A common form of abuse reported by people with eating disorders childhood sexual abuse, represents a gross violation of boundaries, particularly when perpetrated in the family context. This abuse often causes guilt, confusion, repulsion, and distrust of others. These potentially vicious psychosocial repercussions can make intimate relations later in life very difficult. Contrasting findings and possible explanations—there is at least some evidence to suggest that histories of sexual abuse are more common among those with eating disorders, especially bulimia nervosa, than what would be expected by change alone. However, after numerous studies on the topic, findings remain mixed. For example, some estimates indicate that rates of childhood sexual abuse run as high as 70 percent among patients with eating disorders. One study of such patients found that 65 percent had experienced physical abuse, 28 percent had been sexually abused, and 23 percent had been raped. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Interpersonal communication (social skills) deficits as a mediating factor? Many investigators now view childhood sexual abuse as a risk or vulnerability factor in the development of eating disorders. Childhood sexual abuse, particularly incest, is expected to contribute to (and result from) dysfunctional family environments and parent-child attachments. The combination of these poor family environment variables with the sexual abuse is thought to inhibit the development of social competencies in a child. Social competencies are defined as a sense of self-efficacy, an ability to communicate emotional needs, an ability to experience intimacy, and the capacity to use relationships with other people to regulate negative affect. The failure to develop these basic social competencies is thought to be the casual link between sexual abuse and eating disorders. An eating disorder becomes the means by which a child develops a sense of self-efficacy and affective regulation, albeit through dysfunctional, noninterpersonal means. The results of the investigation provide compelling evidence for the validity of this model of eating disorders. For example, it was observed that eating disorders were are a rate of 39 percent among incest survivors, but only 17 percent among those with no childhood abuse. As an aside, the rate of eating disorders was 47 percent in the clinical sample of incest survivors, and 24 percent in the student sample with a history of incest, again suggesting higher rates of abuse in the background of clinical samples. Those incest survivors in this study who reported little emotional warmth and expressiveness from their mothers were most likely to have developed an eating disorder. Furthermore, people with a history of incest scored lower on a number of social competency indicators than did those with no history of childhood sexual abuse. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Incestuous family environments do not provide an adequate context for the development of social competencies and skills. The two lines of reasoning for this hypothesis are as follows. First, incest interferes with developmental processes by destroying the emotional comfort and “felt security” that allows for healthy attachment bonds. Thus children with a history of incestuous abuse have a difficult time forming attachment relationships with others. Sexual abuse may also interfere with interoceptive awareness, which is the ability to perceive and label internal emotional states and hunger. Those who are unaware of their own emotional reactions may have difficulty appropriately regulating their own social behaviour, and thus may have problems with developing social skills. Similar hypotheses involving social skills deficits are prevalent in the psychopathology literature more generally. However, an origin of those social skills deficits—namely, a dysfunctional family environment that includes sexual abuse. Although the literature on problematic social skills is not as extensive for eating disorders as it is for other mental health problems, there is some suggestive evidence of social skills problems in this population. For example, one theme that has been identified on multiple occasions is difficulty with assertion. This research group noted a strong negative correlation between eating disorder symptomatology and assertiveness. Similar findings show that women with anorexia nervosa tend to inhibit the expression of their thoughts and feelings when they are in conflict with those of other people. Clinical observations indicate that “eating-disordered clients typically have poor communication skills.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
The typical client has porous ego boundaries. She admits too much from others (in the form of opinions and requests), resulting in harsh introjects and a tendency to care take because she cannot tell where others’ needs leave off and hers begin. In a dissertation study, observed were deficits in social competence among women with eating disorders across such domains as relationships, family concerns, and academic concerns. This study is especially unusual in that the social competence assessments were based on behavioural observation. Another study had found evidence for social skills deficits of a different sort: Adolescent girls with eating disturbances and/or dietary restrictions are three to four times more likely to be involved in aggressive behaviours such as robbery with a weapon or aggravated robbery. Thus type of aggression against others is to be expected among those with a history of abuse. Though there would be great value in additional research on the social skills of people with eating disorders, there is at least tentative evidence at this time that they experience deficits in some social skills, and that these problems may be the developmental consequences of childhood sexual abuse. Precisely how childhood sexual abuse factors into the development of eating disorders may never be fully understood. This is because such abuse is hopelessly confounded with dysfunctional family environments. There is almost tautological relationship between the two phenomena. A family that either perpetrates or tolerates the sexual abuse of its children surely has other drastic problems. These other problems may be sufficient on their own to contribute to the development of eating disorders in such a family’s affected children. A vital study on this issue showed that even after family psychosocial factors (exempli gratia, family communication, parental monitoring, parental caring) were controlled for, youths who reported sexual abuse were still at increased risk for disordered eating. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Abuse is the mistreatment or neglect of others (such as a child or spouse, the elderly, or the disabled) in a way that causes physical, emotional, or sexual harm. At this time, childhood sexual abuse appears to be a risk factor for the later development of eating disorders. This relationship may be mediated by the poor social skills that result from a history of such abuse. Scientific research findings on family environments, mother-daughter relationships, and childhood sexual abuse point very clearly to the family of origin in the etiology of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. The architecture of these families’ relationships and interactions patterns suggest considerable dysfunction. Extreme abnormal levels of adaptability, cohesion, and EE (emotional expression) are common in families of children with eating disorders. Excessive and inappropriate pressures for achievement are also evident in many of these families. There is reason to believe that the parents of children with eating disorders may actively and aggressively project their ambitions onto their children. A history of psychiatric problems is evident in as many as 48 percent of the families of patients diagnosed with either anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa. Findings on mother-daughter relations show that girls with eating disorders often have mothers with elevated body image concerns, excessive dieting, and eating disorders of their own. Finally, childhood sexual abuse is evident in the backgrounds of some people with eating disorders. Although not necessary or sufficient for the development of eating disorders, this abuse is believed to impair the development of social competencies, leading to inappropriate eating as a mechanism for regaining control and regulating affect. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
The Church’s position is that abuse cannot be tolerated in any form and that those who abuse will be accountable before God. The Lord expects us to do everything we can to prevent abuse and to protect and help victims. No one is expected to endure abusive behaviour. Reports of abuse should never be dismissed. Everyone should respond with compassion and sensitivity toward victims and their families. Those affected by abuse need to be heard and supported. Abuse may also violate the laws of society. The Church encourages the reporting of abuse to civil authorities, and Church leaders and members must fulfill all legal obligations to report abuse. In some places, leaders and teachers who serve with children are legally required to report abuse of children to civil authorities. In other places, any person who learns of the abuse of children, the elderly, or the disabled is legally required to tell civil authorities about the abuse. Leaders, family members, and friends should make every effort to stop abuse, find safety for the victim, and help the victim seek healing. Some victims may need help reporting abuse to law enforcement or to protective services. Victims may also need help through the healing process from professionals, including doctors and counselors. Most victims are abused by people they know. Such people can be spouses, family members, dating partners, friends, or other acquaintances. Victims should be assured that they are never to blame for the harmful behaviour of others—no matter who abuses them. A victim is not guilty. While some types of abuse may cause physical harm, all forms of abuse affect the mind and spirit. Victims of abuse often struggle with feelings of confusion, doubt, guilt, shame, mistrust, and fears. They may feel helpless, powerless, lonely, and isolated. They may even question the love of the Heavenly Fathers and their own divine worth. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
However, victims and those who support them can be assured that, through His infinite Atonement, the Saviour extends succor, healing, and power. “And one shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith one will take upon one the pains and the sickness of His people. And one will take upon Him death, that one may loose the bands of death which bind His people; and one will take upon Him their infirmities, that His bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that one may know according to the flesh how to succor His people,” reports Alma 7.11-12. When you forgive someone who has hurt or offended you, it is not simply about the other person; you are doing it for your own good, as well. “If you forgive others for their transgression, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. However, if you do not forgive other, than your Father will not forgive your transgressions,” reports Matthew 6.14-15. When you hold on to unforgiveness and live with grudges in your heart, you are building walls of separation. You are simply shutting other people out of your life. You become isolated, alone, warped, and imprisoned by your own bitterness. Those walls are not merely keeping people out; those walks are keeping you penned in. So you realise that those walls will also prevent God’s blessings from pouring into your life? Those walls can stop up the flow of God’s favour. The walks of unforgiveness will keep your prayers from being answered. They will keep your dreams from coming to pass. You must tear down the walls. You must forgive the people who hurt you so you can get out of prisons. You will never be free until you do that. Get that bitterness out of your life. That is the only way you are going to truly be free. You will be amazed at what can happen in your life when you release all that poison. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Unforgiveness keeps God’s power from operating in our lives and prevents our prayers from being answered. Ask God to help you get rid of anger and resentment in your heart toward those people who have hurt you over the years. As you forgive them, the most amazing things will begin to happen. My Lord God, please do take an interest in Your servant, and do bless me with Your sweetness, as the Psalmist would say (20.4). With that I may feel worthy and devout enough to approach Your magnificent Sacrament. Arouse my loitering heart, excite my listless mind. “Visit me with Your medicines,” reports Psalm 106.4. I need a tonic, a purgative, something, anything, to cleanse my palate before I savour Your spirit in the Sacrament; that is to say, encounter the sudden sweetness that flares up as if from a secret fountain. Pop my eyes—the Psalmist yet again (13.3)—that I may see the Great Mystery, and prop me up to believe it with undoubted faith. One may experience genuine physical and emotional healing as one searches one’s heart and are willing to forgive. One may see God’s favour in a fresh, new way. One may see one’s prayers answered more quickly as one lets go of the past and gets rid of all that poison one is now barbouring. Today, you are meeting with a crossroad’s demon in your life and about to seal that curse and sell your soul to the Devil with a kiss. One may have issues to deal with or people one needs to forgive. One can go one of two ways. One can ignore what one knows to be true and keep burying that bitterness in one’s life, pushing it deeper and allowing it to poison and contaminate one’s soul and those around one. Or, one can make a much better choice by getting it out in the open and asking God to help you to totally forgive and let it all go. Father, I do not want to habour any unforgiveness in my heart. Please shine the searchlight of Your Holy Spirit on every nook and cranny of my being, and let me see the areas where anything evil may be trying to gain a foothold through my own hesitancy to forgive. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Prayer is not based on friendship—there is another aspect of this that we need to notice. Jesus said, “Though he will not rise and give one, because he is his friend.” He had a reason for saying that. He is not just throwing unnecessary details. He is portraying a spiritual truth. Once Jesus said to His disciples, “I call you no more servants but friends.” A friend could go to the palace of the kind or some high authority, knock at the gate, and be let in immediately. If one was not a friend, they would send a servant to tell one whether or not one would come in. Jesus is no longer calling us servants, but friends. However, the Word of God does not say anything about God answering prayer on the basis of friendship. Prayer is not answered on the basis of friendship. It is answered on the basis of the legal contract made with God the Father. Because you have been born again, you are the seed of Abraham. Jesus Christ is the Lord of your life; you are a child of God; the Spirit of God bears witness with your spirit; you can come boldly to the throne of grace. You can say, “Father, I stand before You without fear, without condemnation, without a sense of guilt.” This right or boldness is not because of friendship, but because of the new covenant. So far, we have considered the prince as a moral and collective person, united by the force of laws, and as the trustee of the executive power in the state. We have now to consider this power when it is joined together in the hands of a natural person, of a real man, who alone has the right to dispose of it in accordance with the laws. Such a person is called a monarch or a king. In utter contrast with the other forms of administration where a collective entity represents an individual, in this form of administration and individual represents a collective entity; so that the moral unity constituting the prince is at the same time a physical unity, in which all the faculties which are combined by the law in the other forms of administration with such difficulty are found naturally combined. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Thus the will of the people, the will of the prince, the public force of the state, and the particular force of the state, and the particular force of the government, all respond to the same moving agent; all the springs of the machine are in the same hand; everything moves toward the same end; there are no opposing movements which are at cross purposes with one another; and no constitution is imaginable in which a lesser effort produces a more considerable action. Archimedes sitting serenely on the shore and effortlessly launching a huge vessel is what comes to mind when I think of a capable monarch governing his vast states from his private study, and making everything move while appearing himself to be immovable. However, if there is no government that has more vigour, there is none where the private will has greater sway and more easily dominates the others. Everything moves toward the same end, it is true; but this end is not that of public felicity, and they very force of the administration unceasingly operates to the detriment of the state. Kings want to be absolute, and from a distance one cries out to them that the best way to be so is to make themselves loved by their peoples. This maxim is very noble and even very true in certain respects. Unfortunately it will always be an object of derision in courts. The power that comes from the peoples’ love is undoubtedly the greatest, but it is precarious and conditional. Princes will never be satisfied with it. The best kings want to be able to be wicked if it pleases them, without ceasing to be the masters. A political sermonizer might well say to them that since the people’s force is their force, their greatest interest is that the people should be flourishing, numerous and formidable. They know perfectly well that this is not true. Their personal interest is first of all that the people should be weak and miserable and incapable of ever resisting them. I admit that, assuming the subjects were always in perfect submission, the interest of the prince would then be for the people to be powerful, so that this power, being his own, would render him formidable in the eyes of one’s neighbour’s. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
However, since this interest is merely secondary and subordinate, and since the two suppositions are incompatible, it is natural that the princes should always give preference to the maxim that is the most immediately useful to them. This is to the point that Samuel made so forcefully to the Hebrews, and that Machiavelli has made apparent. Under the pretext of teaching kinds, he has taught important lessons to the peoples. Machiavelli’s The Prince is the book of republicans. Machiavelli was a decent man and a good citizen. However, since he was attached to the house of Medici, he was forced during the oppression of his homeland to disguise his love of liberty. The very choice of his execrable hero makes clear enough his hidden intention. And the contrast between the maxims of his book The Prince and those of his Discourses on Titus Livy and of his History of Florence shows that this profound political theorist has until now had only superficial or corrupt readers. The court of Rome has sternly prohibited his book. I can well believe it; it is the court he most clearly depicts.] We have found, through general relationships, that the monarchy is suited only to large states, and we find this again in examining the monarchy itself. The more numerous the public administration, the more the ratio of the prince to subject diminishes and approaches equality, so that this ratio increases in proportion as the government is restricted, and is at its maximum when the government is in the hands of a single man. Then there is too great a distance between the prince and the people, and the state lacks cohesiveness. In order to bring about this cohesiveness, there must therefore be intermediate orders; there must be princes, grandees, and a nobility to full them. Now none of this is suited to a small state, which is ruined by all these social levels. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
However, if it is difficult for a large state to be well governed, it is much harder still for it to be well governed by just one human, and everyone knows what happens when the king appoints substitutes. An essential and inevitable defect, which will always place the monarchical form of government below the republican form, is that in the latter form the public voice hardly ever raises to the highest positions men who are not enlightened and capable and who would not fill their positions with honour. On the other hand, those who attain these positions in monarchies are most often petty bungler, petty swindlers, petty intriguers, whose petty talents, which cause them to attain high positions at court, serve only to display their incompetence to the public as soon as they reach these positions. The populace is much less often in error in its choice than the prince, and a man of real merit in the ministry is almost as rare as a fool at the head of a republican government. Thus, when by some happy chance one of these men who are born to govern takes the helm of public business in a monarchy that has nearly been sunk by this crowd of fine managers, there is utter amazement at the resources one finds, and one’s arrival marks an era in the history of the country. Abundant living is supposed to belong to the twenty-first century. However, years must pass before the World can restore the shattered economies. For a number of years there will be immense and tragic shortages of food, clothing, and other necessities. The era of abundance is, therefore, not an immediate possibility. The post-pandemic years are necessarily filled with privation for many billions of people. Now this may be done and these problems may be solved by peaceful discussion and mutual agreement, which is the philosophic way, or by bitter strife and physical violence, which has been the common way. The first seeks the general welfare whereas the second seeks a partisan victory. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
The advantages of the philosophic way of speeded up evolutionary change are manifold in the economic sphere. The afflicted World’s need is not more hatred but less, not more warfare but more co-operation. Philosophy is opposed to all doctrines of class hatred. It believes that the situation today requires an integral multi-class outlook. Its opposition to the old-fashioned materialistic propaganda for abrupt social change is not to its egalitarian aims but to the preaching of hatred as a personal ethic and the advocacy of violence as an instrument of attainment. For both hatred and violence are the voices of the beast in humans. AN age sickened by the horrors of scientific warfare ought not need to witness the further horrors of scientific revolution. However, it is hard to persuade them that reconstruction is saner and safer path to take than revolution, the ballot-box wise than bloodshed, and that our duty is not to imitate the terrorists but to build peacefully a better order suited to sensible kindly and decent human beings. It cannot accept hatred as an inspiration to social betterment. For it knows that we cannot gather grapes off thistles nor human happiness off the tree of hatred. The history of humankind has shown what psychology always knew, that the hater will start looking for new human objects of one’s hatred, new enemies, as soon as the existing one have been, in one’s horrible modern terminology, “liquidated.” The ugly passion of hatred, having been developed and nurtured, will still exist and still seek an outlet as soon as it can persuade the mind to interpret conditions in its favour. Each emerging civilization brings with it not merely changes in how people handle time in daily life but also changes into their mental maps of time. The Third Wave is redrawing these temporal maps. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Second Wave civilization, for Dr. Newton on, assumed that time ran along a single line from the mists of the past into the most distant future. It pictured time as absolute, uniform throughout all parts of the Universe, and independent of matter and space. It assumed that each moment, or chuck of time, was the same as the next. Sober scientists with impeccable academic credentials and years of research experience calmly inform us that time is not something that flows inexorably forward at the steady pace indicated by our clocks and calendars, but that it can be warped and distorted in nature, with the end product being different depending on just where you are measuring it from. At the ultimate extreme, supercollapsed objects—black holes—can negate time altogether, making it stand still in their vicinity. By the turn of the century Dr. Einstein had already proved that time could be compressed and stretched, and had dynamited the notion that time is absolute. He put forth the now classic case of the two observers and the railroad track, which went more or less like this: A man standing alongside a railroad track sees two bolts of lightning strike at the same time—one at the far north end of the track, the other at the south. The observer is mid-way between the two. A second fellow is sitting in a high-speed train rocketing northward along the track. As he passes the observer outside he, too, sees the bolts of lightning. However, to him the two flashes do not appear as simultaneous. Because the train is speeding him away from one and toward the other, the light from one reaches him sooner than the light from the other. To the man on the moving train, it appears that the northern flash occurs first. While in daily life the distances are so small and the speed of light so fast that difference would be unnoticeable, the example dramatized by Dr. Einstein’s point: that the chronological order of events—what comes first, second, or later in time—depends upon the velocity of the observer. Time is not absolute, but relative. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
This is a long way from the kind of time on which classical physics and indust-reality were based. Both took for granted that “before” or “after” had a fixed meaning independent of any observer. Today physics is both exploding and imploding. Every day its practitioners hypothesize—or find—new elementary particles or astrophysical phenomena, from quarks to quasars, with amazing implications, some of which are forcing additional changes in our conceptions of time. At one end of the scale, for example, black holes appear to punctuate the skies, sucking into themselves everything, including light itself, straining—if not smashing—the laws of physics. These dark maelstorms, we are told, terminate in “singularities” into which energy and matter simply vanish. In existence are “wormholes” and “white holes” through which the lost energy and matter are spewed into another Universe—whatever that might mean. A single moment in the vicinity of a black hole, it is believed, might be the equivalent of eons on Earth. Thus if some Interstellar Mission Control were to send a spaceship to explore a black hole, we might have to wait a million years for the ship to arrive. Yet, because of gravitational distortion in the vicinity of the black hole, not to mention the effects of velocity, the ship’s clock would show the passage of only a few minutes or a seconds. When we leave the vast Heavens and enter the World of microscopic particles or waves, we find similarly puzzling phenomena. At Columbia University Dr. Gerald Feinberg has even hypothesized particles called tachyons that move faster than light and for which—according to some of his colleagues—times moves backward. The British physicist J.G. Taylor tells us: “The microscopic notion of time is very different from the macroscopic.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Another physicist, Fritjof Capra, puts it more simply. Time, he says, is “flowing at different rates in different parts of the Universe.” Increasingly, therefore, we cannot even speak of “time” in the singular; there appears to be alternative and plural “times” operating under different rules in different parts of the Universe or Universes we inhabit. All of which knocks the props under the Second Wave idea of Universal linear time—without substituting ancient notions of cyclical time. At precisely the same moment, therefore, that we are radially restructuring our social uses of time—by introducing flextime on the job, by decoupling workers from the mechanical conveyor, and in the other ways previously described—we are also fundamentally reformulating our theoretical images of time. And while these theoretical discoveries seem at the moment to have no practical application to daily life, the same was true of those seemingly speculative chalk marls on the blackboard—the formulas that led ultimately to the smashing of the atom. It is of particular importance to every human to whom a glimpse has been vouchsafed, that after it one summoned to begin one’s life afresh, to try a new start. If one heeds the summons no matter how unpromising one’s circumstances are for such a start—and this requires both faith and courage—eventually help will come, a change for the better. During the glimpse one left oneself and found a being within which transcended it. After the glimpse one has the chance to create a conscious relationship between them. One’s outer life ought to carry the mark of this extraordinary event. What was seen in the glimpse must now be taken into the heart and mind, the thought and memory, the whole being of the human. Henceforth one is to live and at among other humans as one who is marked for a higher destiny than semi-animal, incompletely human, blind existence. The more glimpses one gets, the more will one want to become like the ideal in all its beauty, and the longer each glimpse lasts, the longer will one seek to use its light and strength to make oneself a better human or to build a better World. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Blessing of galaxies, blessing of stars: Great stars small stars, red stars, blue ones. Blessing of nebula, blessing of supernova, planets, satellites, asteroids, comets. Blessings of our sun and moon, blessing of our Earth; oceans, river, continents, mountain ranges, blessing of wind, and cloud, blessing of rain; fog bank, snowdrift, lightning and thunder. Bless the wisdom of the holy one above us. Bless the truth of the holy one beneath us. Bless the love of the holy one within us. Blessing of green plants, blessings of forests: Cedar, douglas fir, swordfern, salal bush, blessing of fish and birds, blessing of mammals: Salmon, eagle, cougar and mountain goat. May all humankind likewise offer blessing: Old woman, young woman, wise men and foolish blessing of youthfulness, blessing of children, big boys, little body, big girls and little ones. Bless the wisdom of the holy one above us; bless the truth of the holy one beneath us; bless the love of the holy one within us. Bring us back, O Father to Thy Torah; 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. Forgive us, O our Father, for we have sinned; pardon us, O our King, for we have transgressed. Verily Thou art merciful and forgiving. Blessed art Thou, O gracious Lord, who art abundant in forgiveness. Behold our affliction and plead our cause. Hasten to redeem us for the sake of Thy name, for Thou art a mighty Redeemer. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, Redeemer of America and Africa. Heal us, O Lord, and we shall be healed; 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 of American and Africa. Bless 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. Please send dew and rain for a blessing upon the Earth. Satisfy us out of Thy bounty, O Lord. Do Thou bless this year that it be for us a year of abundance. Praised be Thou, O Lord, who dost bless the years. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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If you want something from an audience, you give blood to their fantasies. It is the ultimate hustle. As 1800 approached, the treatment of people with mental disorders began to improve once again. Historians usually point to La Bicetre, and asylum in Paris for male patients, as the first site of asylum reform. In 1793, during the French Revolution, Philippe Pinel (1745-1826) was named the chief physician there. He argued that the patients were sick people whose illness should be treated with sympathy and kindness rather than chains and beatings. He unchained them and allowed them to move freely about the hospital grounds, replaced the dark dungeons with sunny, well-ventilated rooms, and offered support and advice. Dr. Pinel’s approach proved remarkably successful. Patients who had been shut away for decades were now enjoying fresh air and sunlight and being treated with dignity. Many improved greatly over a short period of time and were released. Dr. Pinel later brought similar reforms to a mental hospital in Paris, France for female patients, La Salpetriere. Jean Esquirol (1772-1840), Dr. Pinel’s student and successor, went on to help establish 10 new mental hospitals that operated on the same principles. Meanwhile an English Quaker named William Tuke (1732-1819) was bringing similar reforms to northern England. In 1796 he founded the York Retreat, a rural estate where about 30 mental patients lived as guests in quiet country houses and were treated with a combination of rest, talk, prayer, and manual work. “For God has done what the Law could not do, [its power] being weakened by the flesh [the entire nature of man without the Holy Spirit]. Sending His own Son in the guise of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, [God] condemned sin in the flesh [subdued, overcame, deprived it of its power over all who accept that sacrifice],” reports Romans 8.3. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
The spread of moral treatment—the methods of Dr. Pinel and Mr. Tuke, called spectful techniques, caught on throughout Europe and the United States of America. Patients with psychological problems were increasingly perceived as potentially productive human beings whose mental functioning had broken down under stress. They were considered deserving of individual care, including discussions of their problems, useful activities, work, companionship, and quiet. The person most responsible for the early spread of moral treatment in the United States of America was Benjamin Rush (1745-1813), an eminent physician at Pennsylvania Hospital. Limiting his practice to mental illness, Dr. Rush developed innovative, humane approaches to treatment. For example, he required that the hospital hire intelligent and sensitive attendant to work closely with patients, reading and talking to them and taking them on regular walks. He also suggested that it would be therapeutic for doctors to give small gifts to their patients now and then. Dr. Rush, widely considered the father of American psychiatry, also wrote the first American treatise on mental illness and organized the first American course in psychiatry. Dr. Rush’s work was influential, but it was a Boston Schoolteacher named Dorothea Dix (1802-1887) who made humane care a public and political concern in the United States of America. In 1841 Mrs. Dix had gone to teach Sunday school at a local prison and been shocked by the conditions she saw there. Before long, her interest in prison conditions broadened to include the plight of poor and mentally ill people throughout the country. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
A powerful campaigner, Mrs. Dix went from state legislature to state legislature speaking of the horrors she had observed and calling for reform. Similarly, she told the Congress of the United States of America that mentally ill people across the country were still being “bound with galling chains, bowed beneath fetters and heavy iron balls attached to drag chains, lacerated with ropes, scourged with rods and terrified beneath storms of execration and cruel blows.” From 1841 until 1881, Mrs. Dix fought for new laws and greater government funding to improve the treatment of people with mental disorders. Each state was made responsible for developing effective public mental hospitals. Mrs. Dix personally helped established 32 of these state hospitals (state-run public mental institutions in the United States of America), all intended to offer moral treatment. Similar hospitals were established throughout Europe. The Decline of moral treatment—as we have observed, the treatment of abnormality has followed a crooked path. Over and over again, relative progress has been followed by serious decline. Viewed in this context, it is not surprising that the moral treatment movement began to decline toward the end of the nineteenth century. Several factors were responsible. One was the speed with which the moral movement had spread. As mental hospitals multiplied, severe money and staffing shortages developed, recovery rates declined, and overcrowding in the hospitals became a major problem. Under such conditions it was often impossible to provide individual care and genuine concern. Another factor was the assumption behind moral treatment that if treated with humanity and dignity, all patients could be cured. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
For some, being treated with compassion and respect was indeed sufficient. Others, however, needed more effective treatments than any that had yet been developed. Many of these people remained hospitalized until they died. An additional factor contributing to the decline of moral treatment was the emergence of a new wave of prejudice against people with mental disorders. As more and more patients disappeared into large distant mental hospitals, the public came to view them as strange and dangerous. In turn, people were less open-handed when it came to making donations or allocating government funds. Moreover, many of the patients entering public mental hospitals in the United States of America in the late nineteenth century were impoverished foreign immigrants, whom the public had little interest in helping. By the early years of the twentieth century, the moral treatment movement had ground to a halt in both the United States of America and Europe. Public mental hospitals were providing only custodial care and ineffective medical treatments and were becoming more overcrowded every year. Long-term hospitalization became the rule once again. Beware of the evil eye—a number of demonological explanations for abnormal behaviour continue in today’s World. In rural Pakistan, for example, many parents apply special makeup around the eyes of their young children, as their ancestors have done for centuries. A paste of hazelnut powder and several oils, known as surma, is applied partly to protect the eyes from the smoke given off by home heating fires and partly to cool and clean the eyes. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
However, another less acknowledged reason is to ward off nazar, the “evil eye,” thought to be responsible for the many deaths among the infants and for poor health and behavioural problems in those who survive. The American Psychiatric Association recognizes two distinct subtypes of eating disorders: anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. Obesity is currently considered more of a medical condition than a mental health problem. The defining features of anorexia nervosa include a refusal to maintain a normal body weight, an intense fear of gaining weight, and a disturbance in body image and perception. Bulimia nervosa is defined by recurrent episodes of uncontrolled binge eating, inappropriate compensatory behaviours to control weight gain (exempli gratia, self-induced vomiting, misuse of laxatives or diuretics), and an undue influence of body shape and weight on self-evaluations. A chief difference between the two disorders is that individuals with bulimia nervosa are able to maintain their body weight at or above normally prescribed levels, whereas those with anorexia nervosa have a body weight below 85 percent of what is expected. Similar to depression and alcoholism, eating disorders, especially anorexia nervosa, have a lethal component. The long-term mortality for those afflicted with anorexia nervosa is estimated to be over 10 percent. The standardizes mortality ratio (observed mortality divided by expected mortality) for people with eating disorders is 3.6 for people under 20 years of age, 9.9 for those aged 20-29, and 5.7 for those over age 30. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
Among females, the lifetime prevalence of anorexia nervosa has been estimated at 0.5 percent, and 1.3 percent for bulimia nervosa. The descriptions of these disorders in the DSM-VI-TR (American Psychiatric Association, 2023). The description of these disorders in the DSM-VI-TR (American Psychiatric Association, 2023) contain references to interpersonal problems. Associated features of anorexia nervosa include social withdrawal and lessened interest in pleasures of the flesh; episodes of binge eating associated with bulimia nervosa are often triggered by interpersonal stressors. Research on interpersonal relationships and eating disorders has been typical of the work on interpersonal relationships and mental healthy more generally. The recognition of some type of relational difficulty associated with the disorder predates current investigations by at least a century and a quarter. One of Lasegue’s more notable contributions was the suggestion of “prentectomy”—hospitalization of the patients to remove them from exacerbating parental forces. Family-of-origin relationships in particular have been a focal point in this line of work. Finally, the proliferation of studies on this associated feature of eating disorders has been particularly evident over the past 50 years. In one longitudinal investigation, patients diagnosed with anorexia nervosa were followed for a period of 5 years. Among the most notable features of those who did not recover over the course of the investigation (53 percent) were unsatisfactory family-of-origin relationships and problems with making personal contacts outside the family. Findings such as these are suggestive of the important role played by social relationships in the course of the disorder. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
As noted above, research emanating from the interpersonal paradigm has sought to understand eating disorders largely through a focus on family-of-origin experiences. Extreme levels of family adaptability and cohesion, family expressed emotion (EE), inappropriate parental pressure, low parental care, parental overinvolvement, sexual abuse, and battles for control are dominant themes in the family histories of people with eating disorders. Some models and theories suggest that these family-of-origin processes play a critical role in the development of these disorders. Some problems with interpersonal communication may be secondary to these pathological family processes. In particular, there is some evidence linked childhood sexual abuse to a failure to develop adequate social skills, which in turn contributes to the development of eating disorders. Recent studies on the general personal relationships of people with eating disorders are also suggestive of interpersonal difficulties. Interpersonal rejection and distressed personal relationships are common problems in this population. Findings on family-of-origin experiences show that among those who are married, there is a strong association between eating disorders and marital distress. Like so many other psychological problems, eating disorders are situated in a network of other psychological problems with which they coexist, such as depression, borderline personality disorder (BPD), substance use disorders, and anxiety disorders. In the family-of-orientation experiences in eating disorders, there are family process variables. There is a dysfunctional interaction pattern among families of patients with anorexia nervosa. The interaction in these families often minimized conflict, with a rigid, nonadaptable style. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
These interactions were argued to be entwined with the symptoms of the disorder. Other family systems researchers and clinicians also saw eating disorders as built into and around family relations. Significant others usually interact with the bulimic in ways that exaggerate relationship characteristics that were present, but in a more subtle form, before the bulimia was revealed. The bulimia becomes a symptom around which the whole family revolves. While it may appear to be the individual’s problem, bulimia is a signal that the environment is not meeting one’s needs. In a family system perspective, disordered eating is understood to be caused and maintained by a family’s interpersonal behaviour, which itself is assumed to be influenced by the disordered eating of one of its members. Family process variables continue to receive a great deal of attention from those who seek to explain the origins and course of eating disorders. Examples of this can be found in the investigations on family cohesion and family adaptability. System-oriented researchers have emphasized these variables as two dimensions of family relationships that are crucial to healthy family functioning, provided that neither one is too extreme. Multiple studies indicate that eating disorders are associated with perceptions of low family cohesion. Although this finding has been relatively stable across child and parent reports, children with eating disorders give lower ratings of their families’ cohesiveness than their parents do. Generally, daughters’ ratings of family interaction have more diagnostic utility for predicting their eating disorders than mothers’ and especially fathers’ ratings do. Regardless of which family member’s perception is actually “correct,” the fact that a parent and a child with an eating disorder differ in their view of the family’s cohesiveness is perhaps itself diagnostically significant. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
Investigations of family adaptability have yielded less consistent results than those of cohesion. Some evidence indicates a negative association between family adaptability and symptoms of eating disorders. However, a study found more chaos, less organization, and more poorly defined boundaries in the family, all suggestive of pathologically high level of adaptability, among patients with eating disorders. In most studies, the families appeared to be extreme in their adaptability (either too much or too little) indicating potentially detrimental family relations. As in schizophrenia, family EE is emerging as an important family process variable in eating disorders. Investigation indicated that aspects of maternal EE during the interactions of patients with eating disorders and their families explained 28-34 percent of the variance in the patients’ eventual outcome and response to therapy. The extent to which mothers made openly critical comments during family interaction assessment was a stronger predictor of patients’ outcomes than a host of other impressive predictors, such as premorbid body weight, duration of illness, body mass index, and age at onset. Inappropriate parental pressure is a phenomenon that may be particularly prominent in families of people with eating disorders. When compared to both psychiatric controls and nonpsychiatric controls, one sample of patients with eating disorders experienced excessive pressure from parents. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
This phenomenon is described as “gender-inappropriate pressure, age-inappropriate pressure, and inappropriate to the child’s abilities…the adolescents felt that they had been forced into an exaggerated feminine style of behaviour, that their parents had discussed topis (such as parental pleasures of the flesh) before the adolescents were prepared to deal with such subjects, and that the adolescents had been made to engage in activities which reflected their parents’ ambitions rather than their own. This leaves an adolescent in a state of conflict between premature exposure to the World of adults and anxiety over what is involved in that World, such as sexuality and high levels of achievement. Perhaps by exerting control over their own eating, adolescents may gain some feeling of mastery or control over this conflict. The families of patients with eating disorders identified four mechanisms by which family members contributed to the eating disorders, two of which are indicative of inappropriate parental pressure: high emphasis on achievement/perfection and overconcern with beauty/appearance/thinness. In American society, it is easy to locate very young children involved in competitive activities such as gymnastics, figure skating, ballet, and beauty contests. When 3- and 4- year-olds are seriously involved in such endeavours, it is difficult to avoid wondering about whose ambition is being pursued. In cases where the motivation come largely from the parents, and where the activity places an emphasis on physical appearance, the risk for later development of eating disorders is serious. Excessive parental pressure may also engender a sense of perfectionism among children. Perfectionism involves both self-oriented aspects (expecting the self to be perfect) and socially prescribed aspects (perceiving that other expect perfection). #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
Perfectionism has proven to be a risk factor for bulimia nervosa, particularly for women who are otherwise low in self-esteem. By pressuring their children to achieve, parents may inadvertently convey the attitude that anything less than “perfect” is a failure. Children who harbour such an attitude, and then perceive that they are not meeting some perfect standard of weight or body image, may engage in binge eating as an escape response to their painful self-awareness, which is then corrected with purging. Other family process variable that have been implicated in eating disorders include disturbed affective expression, low levels of family communication, lack of parental care, excessive parental overprotectiveness and intrusiveness, and excessive parental control. This last variable has particular significance, in that that symptoms of eating disorders may be overt manifestations of a struggle for control. Particularly among women with eating disorders and a history of sexual abuse, an external locus of control (id est, feeling little personal control over one’s fate) is common. Although the struggle for control may originally be with the parents, there is no reason to believe that it may extend to others with whom such women are in relationships. The rather paradoxical nature of some of these family processes in eating disorders is nicely illustrated. It was found that parents of patients with anorexia nervosa were simultaneously more nurturing and comforting, but also more ignoring and neglecting of their daughters, than were parents of either healthy controls or patients with bulimia nervosa. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
In contrast, the patients with bulimia nervosa and their parents showed signs of hostile enmeshment. These mixed messages create ambivalence about separation for daughters with anorexia nervosa. “Yet amid all these things we are more than conquerors and gain a surpassing victory through Him Who loved us. For I am persuaded beyond doubt (am sure) that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things impending and threatening nor things to come, nor powers, nor height not depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord,” reports Romans 8.37-39. We all make mistakes, but God does not disqualify us simply because we have failed. He is the God of forgiveness. Even if you have missed your journey, God will always find a way to get you to a position of success. Some people have made some serious mistakes; they have done some things that were not the best for their life, and now they are living in guilt, condemnation, or with a sense of disqualification and disappointment and disillusionment. Several individuals feel they are in a trap house. The way to escape the trap house and trap spouse is to seek and receive God’s mercy and forgiveness, and move on with one’s life. Let go of the condemnation of the past mistakes. Seek God’s forgiveness, pick up the pieces and move on. God still have a great future for you. Keep on striving for success, continue, expect, endure in the face of opposition. Be persistent. Do not leave until you receive. Be just that stubborn about things that are significance to you, as long as it is safe and a rational desire. Have a persistent faith. True faith asks and receives. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
Persistent faith is faith that receives or takes from God. Faith takes This is what Jesus Christ is telling us. “Ask once and you receive.” That is consistent with Jesus’ teaching on prayer. Receive and keep on receiving every time you ask. If you child asks you for food, you would it to him or her. You would not make one ask a hundred more times, then change your mind The enemy would like for you to believe that is what God is like. That kind of thinking will lead one into error and hold one in bondage. The adversary wants to twist the Word and distort your image of God. Jesus Christ said, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh recieiveth.” Jesus Christ said it, ad you can be sure Jesus meant what He said. Father, today I receive Your mercy and forgiveness. Despite my past, I believe You still have great things in store for me. Teach me how to shake off disappointment, guilt, or condemnation and live today in an attitude of faith. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness,” reports 1 John 1.9. The intellect, uncontrolled by intuition and unguided by revelation, has spawned the two great masters of our time—Science holding the atom bomb and Communism holding the revolution. Science, which is the last century promised so much, gave us the terrible problem of atomic war instead. Its ardent advocates pointed at it only yesterday as the road to our salvation. Today it has become the road to our destruction. This is not to say that it was a false light, but that we mistook its proper place and claimed too much for its human possibilities. We let it run away with us and our religion. We lost ourselves and our bearings. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
The atom bomb made us regard Nature as self-operative in a solely mechanical way. It left life on Earth without spiritual meaning, without moral purpose. Communism is another Heaven-promising panacea which has helped to make this Earth a little hell. If it accepts the leadership of humans, such as Communists, who regard conscience as a disease, there can be no worthwhile future for humanity. The Communist insensibility in practice to human suffering accords ill with its vaunted idealism in theory. Communism’s twisted ethic of wild hatred, its hard cruel face, its blind slavish obedience to a brutal organization which cares more for itself than for the workers it was supposed to save, its insane preachments against religion and denial of life beyond matter, have brought enough suffering to makes claims sound absurdly exaggerated. However, the intellectual movement which produced Science and the social movement which produced Communism will not continue unchecked. They are approaching the utmost limit possible. The violent materialism for which they are responsible will culminate in the next Armageddon, which will not only end them, but also end the epoch itself. In order to lay out the general cause of the difference, a distinction has to be made here between the prince and the government. The body of the magistrates can be made up of a larger or smaller number of members. We have said that the ratio of the sovereign to the subjects was greater in proportion as the populace was more numerous, and by a manifest analogy we can say the same thing about the government in relation to the magistrates. Since the total force of the government is always that of the state, it does not vary. Whence it follows that the more of this force it uses on its own members, the less that is left to it for acting on the whole populace. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
Therefore, the more numerous the magistrates, the weaker the government. Since this maxim is fundamental, let us attempt to explain it more clearly. We can distinguish in the person of the magistrate three essentially different wills. First, the individual’s own will, which tends only to its own advantage. Second, the common will of the magistrates which is uniquely related to the advantage of the price. This latter can be called the corporate will, and is general in relation to the government, and particular in relation to the state, of which the government form a part. Third, the will of the people or the sovereign will, which is general both in relation to the state considered as the whole and in relation to the government considered as part of the whole. In a perfect act of legislation, the private or individual will should be nonexistent; the corporate power will proper to the government should be very subordinate; and consequently the general or sovereign will should always be dominant and the unique rule of all the others. According to the natural order, on the contrary, these various wills become more active in proportion as they are the more concentrated. Thus the general will is always the weakest, the corporate will has second place, and the private will is first of all, so that in the government each member is first oneself, then a magistrate, and then a citizen—a gradation directly opposite to the one required by the social order. Granting this, let us suppose the entire government is in the hands of one single human. In that case the private will and the corporate will are perfectly united, and consequently the latter is at the highest degree of intensity it can reach. However, since the use of force is dependent upon the degree of will, and since the absolute force of the government does not vary one bit, it follows that the most active of governments is that of one single human. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
On the other hand, let us suppose we are uniting the government to the legislative authority. Let us make the sovereign the prince and all the citizens that many magistrates. Then the corporate will, confused with the general will, will have no more activity than the latter, and will leave the private will all its force. Thus the government, always with the same absolute force, will have it minimum relative force or activity. These relationships are incontestable, and there are still other considerations that serve to confirm them. We see, for example, that each magistrate is more active in one’s body than each citizen is in one’s, and consequently that the private will has much more influence on the acts of the government than on those of the sovereign. For each magistrate is nearly always charged with the responsibility for some function of government, whereas each citizen, taken by oneself, exercises no function of sovereignty. Moreover, the more the state is extended, the more its real force increases, although it does not increase in proportion to its size. However, if the state remains the same, the magistrates may well be multiplied without the government acquiring any greater real force, since this force is that of the state, whose size is always equal. Thus the relative force or activity of the government diminishes without its absolute or real force being able to increase. It is also certain that the execution of public business becomes slower in proportion as more people are charged with the responsibility for it; that in attaching too much importance to prudence, too little importance is attached to fortune, opportunities are missed, and the fruits of deliberation are often lost by dint of deliberation. I have just proved that the government becomes slack in proportion as the magistrates are multiplied; and I have previously proved that the more numerous the people, the greater should be the increase of repressive force. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
Whence it follows that the ratio of the magistrate to the government should be the inverse of the ratio of the subjects to the sovereign; that is to say, the more the state increases in size, the more the government should shrink, so that the number of leaders decreases in proportion to the number of people. I should add that I am speaking here only about the relative force of the government and not about its rectitude. For, on the contrary, the more numerous the magistrates, the more closely the corporate will approaches the general will, whereas under a single magistrate, the same corporate will is, as I have said, merely a particular will thus what can be gained on the one hand is lost on the other, and the art of the legislator is to know how to determine the point at which the government’s will and force, always in a reciprocal proportion, are combined in the relationship that is most advantageous to the state. What has gone almost unnoticed is not merely a change in the patterns of participation in the market but, even more fundamentally, the completion of the entire historical process of market-building. This turning point is so revolutionary in its implications, yet so subtle, that capitalist and Marxist thinkers alike, lost in their Second Wave polemics, have scarcely noticed its signs. It fits into neither of their theories and thus has remained undetectably by them. The human race has been busy constructing a Worldwide exchange network—a market—for at least 10,000 years. In the past 360 years, ever since the Second Wave began, this process has roared forward at very high speed. Second Wave civilization “marketized” the World. Today—at the very moment when prosuming begins to rise again—this process is coming to and end. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
The immense historical meaning of this cannot be appreciated unless we are clear about what a market exchange network is. It helps to imagine it as a pipeline. When the industrial revolution burst forth on the Earth, launching the Second Wave, very few people on the planet were tired into the money system. Trade existed but only the peripheries of society were touched by it. The various networks of jobbers, distributors, wholesalers, retailers, bankers, and other elements of the trade system were small and rudimentary—providing only a few narrow pipelines through which goods and money might flow. For 360 years we poured Earth-cracking energies into building this pipeline. In was accomplished in three ways. First the merchants and mercenaries of the Second Wave civilization spread around the globe, inviting or coercing new populations to enter the market—to produce more and prosume less. Self-sufficient African tribesmen were induced or compelled to grow cash crops and dig copper. Asian who once grew their own food were put to work on plantation instead, trapping rubber trees to put tires on automobiles. Latin Americas began growing coffee for ale in Europe and the Untied States of America. With each such development the pipeline was built or further elaborated and more and more populations drawn into dependence on it. The second way in which the market expanded was through the increasing “commoditization” of life. Not only were larger populations enmeshed in the market but more and more goods and services were designed for the market, requiring a continual enlargement of the “channel capacity” of the system—a widening, as it were, of the diameter of the pipes. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
Finally, the market expanded in another way. As society and the economy grew more complex, the number of transactions required for, say, a single bar of soap to pass from producer to consumer multiplied. The more intermediaries, the more ramified the maze of channels or pipes became. This growing elaborateness of the system was itself a form of further development, like the addition of still more special tubes and values to a pipeline. Today all these forms of market expansion are reaching their outer limits. Few populations still remain to be brought into the market. Only a handful of the remotest people remain untouched by the market. Even the hundreds of millions of subsistence farmers in poor countries are at least partially integrated into the market and the accompanying money system. What remains, therefore, is a mopping-up operation at best. The market can no longer expand by engulfing vast new populations. The second form of expansion is still at least theoretically possible. With imagination, we can still, no doubt, think up additional services or goods to sell or barter. However, it is precisely here that the rise of the prosumer becomes significant. The relationships between Sector A and Sector B are complex, and many of the activities of prosumers depend on the purchase of materials or tools from the market. However, the rise of self-help, in particular, and the de-marketization of many goods and services suggests that here, too, the end of the process of marketization may be insight. Lastly, the increasing elaborateness of the “pipeline”—the growing complexity of distribution, the interpolation of more and more middlemen—also appears to be reaching a point of no return. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
The costs of exchange itself, even as conventionally measured, are now outrunning the costs of material production in many fields. At some point this process reaches a limit. Computers, meanwhile, and the emergence of a prosumer-activated technology both point to smaller inventories and simplified, rather than more complex chains of distribution. Once again, therefore, the evidence points to the end of the process of marketization, if not in our time, then soon after. If our “pipeline project” is nearing completion, what might this mean for our work, our values, and our psyches? A market, after all, does not consist of the steal or shoes or cotton or canned food that flows through it. The market is the structure through which such goods and services are routed. Moreover, it is not simply an economic structure. It is a way of organizing people, a way of thinking, an ethos, and a shared set of expectations (exempli gratia, the expectation that goods purchased will indeed be delivered). The market is thus as much a psychosocial structure as an economic reality. And its effects far transcend economics. By systematically interrelating billions of people to one another, the market produced a World in which no one had independent control over one’s destiny—no person, no nation, no culture. It brought with it the belief that economics and economic motivation were the primary forces in human life. It fostered a view of life as a succession of contractual transactions, and of society as bound together by the “marriage contract” or the “social contract.” Marketization thus shaped the thoughts and values, as well as the actions, of billions and set the tone of Second Wave civilization. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
It took an enormous investment of time, energy, capital, culture, and raw materials to create a situation in which a purchasing agent in South Carolina could do business with an unseen and unknown clerk in South Korea—each with one’s own abacus or computer, each with an internalized image of the market, each with a set of expectations about the other, each performing certain predictable acts because both have been life-trained to play certain prespecified roles, each part of a giant global system involving millions, indeed billions, of others. One might plausibly argue that the construction of this elaborate structure of human relationships, and its explosive diffusion around the planet, was the single most impressive achievement of Second Wave civilization, dwarfing even its spectacular technological achievements. The step-by-step creation of this essentially sociocultural and psychological structure for exchange (quite apart from the torrent of goods and services that flowed through it) can be likened to the building of the Egyptian pyramids, the Roman aqueducts, the Great Wall of China, and the medieval cathedrals, combined and multiplied a thousandfold. This grandest construction project of all history, the laying into place of the tubes and channels through which much of the economic life of civilization pulsed and flowed, gave Second Wave civilization everywhere its inner dynamism and propulsive thrust. Indeed, if this now dying civilization can be said to have had a mission at all, it was to marketize the World. Today that mission is almost fulfilled. The heroic age of market-building is over—to be replaced by a new phase in which we merely maintain, renovate, and update pipeline. We will undoubtedly have to redesign important pieced of it to accommodate radically increased flows of information #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
The system will increasingly depend on electronics, biology and new social technologies. This, too, will no doubt require resources, imagination, and capital. However, compared with the exhausting effort of Second Wave marketization, this renewal program will absorb a far smaller fraction of our time, energy, capital, and imagination. It will use less, not more, hardware and fewer, not more people than the original process of construction. However complex conversion process to be, marketization will fail to be the central project of the civilization. More and more people are seeking intimacy, personality, and humanity. The Third Wave is therefore producing history’s first “transmarket” civilization. By trans-market I do not mean a civilization without exchange networks—a World thrown back into small, isolated, completely self-sufficient communities unable or unwilling to trade with one another. I do not mean a move backward. By “trans-market” I mean a civilization that is dependent on the market but is no longer consumed by the need to build, extend, elaborate, and integrate this structure. A civilization able to move on to a new agenda—precisely because the market has already been laid in place. And just as no one living in the sixteenth century could have imagined how the growth of the market would change the World’s agenda in terms of technology, politics, religion, art, social life, law, marriage, or personality development—so too it is extremely difficult for us today to envision the long-range effects of the end of marketization Yet these are likely to radiate into every cranny of our children’s lives, if not our own. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
The marketization project exacted a price. Even in purely economic terms this price was enormous. As the productivity of the human race rose during the past three hundred years, a significant part of that productivity—in both sectors—was set aside and allocated to the market-building project. With the basic construction task now virtually complete, the enormous energies previously poured into building the World market system become available for other human purposes. From this fact alone will flow a limitless array of civilization changes. New religions will be born. Works of art on a hitherto unimagined scale. Fantastic scientific advances. And, above all, wholly new kinds of social and political institutions. What is at stake today is more than capitalism or socialism, more than energy, food, population, capital, raw material, or jobs; what is at stake is the role of the market in our lives and the future of civilization itself. This, at its core is what the rise of the prosumer is about. Change in the deep-structure of the economy is part of the same wave of interrelated changes now striking our energy base, our technology, or information system, and our family and business institutions. These are intertwined, in turn with the way we view the World. And in this sphere, too, we are undergoing an historic upheaval. For the entire World view of industrial civilization—indust-reality—is not being revolutionized. Excerpt from an article in a Czech magazine on contemporary Czech literature: “Those ideals which were formerly given to the World by prophets of religion, headed by Jesus the Nazarene, are now practically applied by scientific socialists beginning with Karl Marx.” Such is the plausible self-deception into which so many intellectuals have fallen. This quotation shows a grave lack of understanding of religion, of the prophets, and especially of Jesus. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
This distance between the Nazarene and the author of the First Communist Manifesto is not merely horizontal, it is vertical. The two men stand on different levels, belong to different Worlds. The presence of hatred as one of its animating ingredients is a moral disadvantage to any social movement. This is one reason why modern Communism is built on an unsure foundation. From the Center Galactic Source which is everywhere at once, may everything be known as the light of mutual love. O Hidden Life vibrant in every atom; O Hidden Light! shining in every creature; O Hidden Love! embracing all in Oneness; may each who feels oneself as one with Thee, know one is also one with every other. Magnified and sanctified be the name of God throughout the World which He hath created according to His will. May He establish His kingdom during the days of your life and during the life of all the house of America, speedily, yea, soon; and say ye, Amen. May His great name be blessed for ever and ever. Exalted and honoured be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, whose glory transcends, yea, is beyond all praises, hymns, and blessings that humans can render unto Him; and say ye, Amen. When I call upon the Lord, ascribe greatness unto our God. 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 mighty in deliverance. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
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See What a Big Heart I Have? God, See How Good I am? See How Much You Need Me?
Believe it or not, the focus on mental health has been around as long as human beings. It is not a new science, but an evolving science. In fact, in the Stone Age, doctors had methods for treating mental disorders. And before the American Revolution, only 10 percent of the 3,5000 doctors in the country had any formal training. Fewer than 5 percent had medical degrees. As of the year 2021, there are nearly 1 million physicians in the United States of American, and approximately 650,000 are active. If you think about it, that is a relatively small number. By the 1970s exorcism had all but disappeared from Western culture. Then in 1973, the enormously popular book and movie The Exorcist spurred an onslaught of books and movies on demonic possession, and public interest in this kind of intervention increased dramatically. Since then, numerous evangelical ministers and charismatics have declared themselves exorcists and performed exorcisms on people with behavioural disturbances. In most such instances, the person’s problems have failed to respond to a conventional intervention such as psychotherapy or drug therapy. Typically, the exorcist blesses the person who is thought to be possessed, recites passages from the Bible, and commands the evil spirits to leave the body. Often a support group is present to pray for the person while one cries out and perhaps even thrashes on the floor, regurgitates, or flails out. During the 1900s, the techniques used by some contemporary exorcists seemed to grow more extreme, at times dangerous. The media reported cases of death by exorcism; a New York mother accidentally smothered her teenage daughter during one such procedure and a Rhode Island man jammed steel crosses down his mother-in-law’s throat. In addition, a growing number of priests began to perform spiritual cleansing ceremonies not sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church. By 2020, hundred of exorcists, from evangelical ministers and charismatics to unsanctioned priests, were performing a wide variety of exorcisms in the United State of America. Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto proesidium. Imperet Illi Deus, supplices deprecamur: tuque, princepes militioe coelestis, Satanam aliosque spiritus malignos, qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo, divina virtue. In infernum detrude. Amen. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
In order to regulate this growing field, both within and outside the church, and to ensure more acceptable procedures, the Roman Catholic church in the United States of America has become more actively involved in exorcisms during the past decade. The number of full-time exorcists formally appointed by the church increased from 1 in 1990 to 250 in 2020. Over the past several years, these officials have investigated and evaluated hundreds of cases in which individuals or their relatives or priests have sought exorcisms, determining in each case whether exorcism is appropriate. In 1999 the church issued a revised Catholic rite of exorcism for the first time since 1614, establishing rules to be followed in making such decisions and in the exorcisms themselves. For example, a church exorcism can take place only after the church-approved exorcist consults with physicians to rule out mental or physical disorders. Also church exorcism must be approved by a bishop. As a result of such rules and procedures, only a small number of potential cases actually result in church-approved exorcisms. Even a small number of exorcisms, however, is excessive in the eyes of many mental health professionals. They argue that one can never totally rule out and physical causes in cases of abnormal functioning and that exorcism—even those that are carefully selected and conducted—divert attention from more accurate explanations of abnormal behaviour and more appropriate interventions. Given its long history and deep roots, this debate is not likely to be settled in the near future. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
Now, reflecting on the Middle Ages (from the 5th century to the late 15th century), when they drew to a close, demonology and its methods began to lose favour. Towns throughout Europe grew into cities, and municipal authorities gained more power and took over nonreligious activities. Among their other responsibilities, they began to run hospitals and direct the care of people suffering from mental disorders. Medical views of abnormality gained favour once again. When lunacy trials were heled in the late thirteenth-century England to determine the sanity of certain persons, it was not unusual for natural causes, such as a “blow to the head” or “fear of one’s father,” to be held responsibility for an individual’s unusual behaviour. During these same years, many people with psychological disturbances received treatment in medical hospitals. The Trinity Hospital in England, for example, was established to treat “madness,” among other kinds of illnesses, and keep the mad “safe until they are restored to reason.” During the early part of the Renaissance, a period of flourishing cultural and scientific activity (about 1400-1700), demonological views of abnormality continued to decline. The German physician Johann Weyer (151501588), the first physician to specialize in mental illness, believed that the mind was as susceptible to sickness as the body. He is now considered the founder of the modern study of psychopathology. The care of people with mental disorders continued to improve in this atmosphere. In England such individuals might be kept at home while their families were aided financially by the local parish. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
Across Europe religious shrines were devoted to the humane and loving treatment of people with mental disorders. The best known of these shrines was actually established centuries earlier at Gheel in Belgium, but beginning in the fifteenth century, people came to it from all over the World for psychic healing. Local residents welcomed these pilgrims into their homes, and many stayed on to form the World’s first “colony” of mental patients. Gheel was the forerunner of today’s community mental healthy programs, and it continues to demonstrate the people with psychological disorders can respond to loving care and respectful treatment. Today patients are still welcome to live in foster homes in this town, interacting with other residents, until they recover. Unfortunately, these improvements in care began to fade by the mid-sixteenth century. By then municipal authorities had discovered that percentage of those with severe mental disorders and that medial hospitals were too few and too small. Increasingly, they converted hospitals and monasteries into asylums, institutions whose primary purpose was to care for people with mental illness. These institutions were founded with every intention of providing good care. Once the asylums started to overflow, however, they became virtual prisons where patients were held in filthy conditions and treated with unspeakable cruelty. The first asylum had been founded in Muslim Spain in the early fifteenth century, but the idea did not gain full momentum until the 1500s. In 1547, Bethlehem Hospital was given to the city of London by Henry VIII for the sole purpose of confining the mentally ill. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
In the Bethlehem Hospital asylum patients bound in chains cried out for all to hear. During certain phases of the moon in particular, they might be chained and whipped in order to prevent violence. The hospital even became a popular tourist attraction; people were eager to pay to loo at the howling and gibbering inmates. The hospital’s name, pronounced “Bedlam” by the local people, has come to mean a chaotic uproar. Similarly, in the Lunatics’ Tower in Vienna, patients were herded into narrow hallways by the outer walls so that tourist outside could look up and see them. In La Bicetre in Paris, patients were shackled to the walls of cold, dark, dirty cells with iron collars and given spoiled food that could be sold nowhere else. Outrageous devices and techniques, such as the “crib,” which was basically like a combination of a baby’s crib and a coffin, which was about six feet long, 12 inches off the ground, 12 inches deep, with bars on the side and a coffin top, were used in asylums, and some continued to be used during the reforms of the nineteenth century. However, for the most part, such asylums remained a popular form of “care” until the late 1700s. For most people with a personality disorder, the extent of their psychosocial problems often does not stop there. One could also say that many people with other psychosocial problems also have personality disorders. It is of interest that personality disorders are comorbid with other personality disorders. For example, one study estimated the comorbidity of HPD (histrionic personality disorder, a pervasive pattern of excessive emotionality and attention seeking) and NPD (narcissistic personality disorder, an exaggerated sense of self-worth and entitlement, coupled with a nearly insatiable thirst for attention and acclaim) at 30.4. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
The rates of personality disorders among people with major depression are astonishingly high. As many as 20-50 percent of inpatients and 50-85 percent of outpatients with major depressive disorder have a personality disorder. Chief among these are BPD (borderline personality disorder, which involves instability of interpersonal relationships, affect, and self-image; exhibiting intense and variable mood, ranging from irritability to euphoria to impulsive anger and even self-destructive behaviour) and HPD. This high rate of comorbidities (the simultaneous presence of two or more diseases or medical conditions in a patient) by appealing to common interpersonal issues. By definition, people with personality disorders have a rigid and otherwise problematic interpersonal style. This personality pathology can generate interpersonal stressors, leading to depression. In fact, researchers have identified interpersonal styles that play a role in stress generation in romantic contexts. These include a dependent style, which is submissive, fearful of abandonment, and reliant on others for self-esteem; and an obsessive-compulsive style, reflecting perfectionism, rigidity and distrust in others. These personality profiles are remarkably similar to those of DPD (a strong sense of interpersonal submission) and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. Personality disorders are also evident among those with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. As many as 38 percent of patients with bipolar disorder meet the criteria for at least one personality disorder. At the time of hospital admission in one study, 30-45 percent of patients with schizophrenia were also found to have personality disorder. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Problems as serious as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder have a profound impact on interpersonal behaviour and relationships. In schizophrenia, depending upon the particular type, delusional thinking can prompt severely withdraw and avoidant behaviour, as well as conduct that reflect ambivalence about relationships with other people. Similarly, the fluctuating affect states of patients with bipolar disorder can produce interpersonal behaviour that ranges from withdrawn to grandiose, dramatic, and voraciously self-entitled. One thread that connects all of these disorders is maladaptive interpersonal behaviour. This behavior which is intrinsic to personality disorders, may then perpetuate and maintain symptoms of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder because of the often negative and harmful interpersonal consequences it produces. Alcoholism and other substance use problems are evident in as many as 66.3 percent of makes and 33.3 percent of females with ASPD (anti-social personality disorder a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of other persons’ rights). This particular personality disorder generally precedes substance use disorders, since it is defined in part by a pattern of behaviour that is evident before the age of 15 (id est, conduct disorder), whereas evidence of full-blown substance dependence is generally not evident until later in the teens or early 20s. Problems with socialization, generally at the hands of parents, appear to be key interpersonal antecedents to both problems. Ineffective parenting, modeling of antisocial behaviour, and modeling of substance use may dually predispose young children to develop both ASPD and drug or alcohol dependence. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
In addition to being comorbid with depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other personality disorders, the incidence of personality disorders is also elevated among those with eating disorders, substance use disorders, and somatoform disorders. Problems, like depression and schizophrenia, share common interpersonal motifs with various personality disorders. In the case of eating disorders, there is no reason to suspect that the rigid and maladaptive interpersonal behaviour inherent in the personality disorders predisposes such individuals to developing these related psychosocial problems. Personality disorders are defined, in part, by inflexible and generally maladaptive modes of relation to other people. Although the personality disorders are not as well researched and understood as many other psychological problems, interpersonal relations appear to play a prominent role in both the origins and consequences of these sometimes enigmatic disorders. A number of hypotheses, some with attendant empirical support, suggest that early experiences in the family of origin may be crucial mechanisms in the pathogenesis of some personality disorders. Family interactions involving excessive admiration and attention, physical and sexual abuse, inconsistent reinforcement, and rejection are replete in descriptions of the early childhood experiences of people with personality disorders. Perhaps as a result of these pathological interpersonal experiences, people with personality disorders develop ways of relating to other people that are extremely maladaptive and unsuitable to the needs of those in their social environment. Consequently, the persistence of interpersonal problems and distress is almost guaranteed, making personality disorders particularly interactable. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Our time here on Earth is so short. What a shame it would be to allow something that happened in the past—whether it was twenty years ago or twenty minutes ago—to ruin the rest one’s life or Earth. No matter how extravagantly Jesus Christ squandered His charity, it never seemed to lessen. No matter how recklessly He paid out the fruits of His propitiation, they never seemed to be exhausted. Every time we approach the Sacrament, we ought to spend some time recollecting our souls, and praying on the great Mystery of Salvation. Whether we celebrate the Sacrament or just heat the Mass, come afresh. That is to say, think of it as the very day that Christ descended into the womb of the Virgin and was made Man. Or very day that Christ hung on the cross, suffering and dying for the salvation of Humanity. That is how to turn an experience grown dull into a truly enormous, novel, joyful event. One must make up one’s mind to do one’s best to enjoy every single day. We all make mistakes; things may not always go the way one wants them to go. We may be disappointed at times, but think about that joy and freedom that comes from making a decision to live one’s life happy anyway. It is a great goal to not allow what does or does not happen to one steal one’s joy and keep one from God’s abundant life. Sometimes an individual may allow something that happens in the morning to disrupt one’s entire day. Getting stuck in traffic can be a real let down. Being an hour late to work can produce a lot of anxiety, which will cause fear and frustration. However, do not let that ruin your day because no matter how upset one gets, there is nothing one can do to change that event when it is already set in motion. Just enjoy the day and know God is in control. Next time just wake up an hour earlier. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Sure, words can hurt us all. However, just because someone offends you in the morning, understand they may be going through something and brush it off. Often times, people’s bad attitudes have nothing to do with the personal they are projecting on. They just want to release some frustration and hurt someone else to make themselves feel better. “Lead me, O Lord, in Your righteousness because of my enemies; make Your way level (straight and right) before my face. For there is nothing trustworthy or steadfast or truthful in their talk; their heart is destructive [or a destructive chasm, a yawning gulf]; their throat is an open sepulcher; they flatter and make smooth with their tongue. Hold them guilty, O God; et them fall by their own designs and counsels; cast them out because of the multitude of their transgressions, for they have rebelled against You. However, let all those who take refuge and put their trust in You rejoice; let them ever sing and shot for joy, because You make a covering over them and defend them; let those also who love Your name be joyful in You and be in high spirits. For You, Lord, will bless the [uncompromisingly] righteous [one who is upright and in right standing with You]; as with a shield You will surround one with goodwill (pleasure and favour),” reports Psalms 5.8-12. When you wake up in the morning, do not recall mistakes from the past. Instead wake up and pray, “Father, I thank You that this is going to be a great day. I thank You that I have discipline, self-control; that I make good decisions. I may not have what I could have yesterday, but that day is gone. I am going to get up and do well today.” Wake up every morning and receive God’s love and mercy. When one makes mistakes, be so critical. Ask God for forgiveness and then move on, confident that the moment you ask, God forgives you. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
God does not want His children to mope around defeated. He wants one to get up and prepare for success and to be kind and loving. Not only is God a loving and forgiving God, but He also chooses not to remember your mistakes. If someone keeps brining up negative incidents from your past, you know that is not God. One may have done some things one is not proud of, but when one asks God to forgive one, He washed those things away. Furthermore, God does not even keep a record of it. He is not going to flip back through His DVD player and say, “Oh, wait a minute. I found something on your record back there in 2001. I cannot bless you.” No, as far as God is concerned, you do not even have a past. It is forgiven and gone. You are ready for a great present and a bight future. God let go of the past. The question is: Will you let it go? Will you quit remembering what God has chosen to forget? Behold, we come to You, O Lord, that Your Gift will do us well. Also, we want to rejoice at the party “You have so thoughtfully prepared for the poor, O God”; that felicitous phrasing is the Psalmist’s (68.10). Behold, in You everything that we can and ought to desire. You are our Salvation and Redemption, our Hope and Fortitude, our Grace and Glory. Therefore today, “Make joyful the soul of Your servant, for we are turned to You, Lord Jesus Christ,” if we may paraphrase the Psalmist; “for today is the day I lift up my soul,” (86.4). Yes, Father, I accept Your forgiveness. Thank You for loving me even when I make mistakes, poor choices, or wrong decisions. Please Help me to live today free of the past. “I will give to the Lord the thanks due to His rightness and justice, and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord Most High,” reports Psalm 7.17. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
In the government one finds the intermediate forces whose relationships make up that of the whole to the whole or of the sovereign to the state. This last relationship can be represented as one between the extremes of a continuous proportion, whose proportional mean is the government. The government receives from the sovereign the orders it gives the people, and, for the state to be in good equilibrium, there must, all things considered, be an equality between the output or the power of the government, taken by itself, and the output or power of the citizens, who are sovereigns on the one hand and subjects on the other. Moreover, none of these three terms could be altered without the simultaneous destruction of the proportion. If the sovereign wishes to govern, or if the magistrate wishes to give laws, of if the subjects refuse to obey, disorder replaces rule, force and will no longer act in concert, and thus the state dissolves and falls into despotism or anarchy. Finally, since there is only one proportional mean between each relationship, there is only one good government possible for the state. However, since a thousand events can change the relationships of a people, not only can different governments be good for different peoples, but also for the same people at different times. In trying to provide an idea of the various relationships that can obtain between these two extremes, I will take as an example the number of people, since it is a more easily expressed relationship. Suppose the state is composed of ten thousand citizens. The sovereign can only be considered collectively and as a body. However, each private individual in one’s position as a subject is regarded as an individual. Thus the sovereign is to the subject as ten thousand is to one. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
In other words, each member of the state has as one’s share only one ten-thousandth of sovereign authority, even though one is totally in subjection to it. If the populace is made up of a hundred thousand humans, the condition of the subjects does not change, and each bears equally the entire dominion of the laws, while one’s vote, reduced to one hundred-thousandth, has ten times less influence in the drafting of them. In that case, since the subject always remains one, the ratio of the sovereign to the subject increases in proportion to the number of citizens. Whence it follows that the larger the state becomes, the less liberty there is. When I say that the ratio increases, I mean that it places a distance between itself and equality. Thus the greater the ratio is in the sense employed by geometricians, the less relationship there is in the everyday sense of the word. In the former sense, the ratio, seen in terms of quantity, is measured by the quotient; in the latter sense, ratio, seen in the terms of identity, is reckoned by similarity. Now the less relationship there is between private wills and the general will, that is, between mores and the laws, the more repressive force ought to increase. Therefore, in order to be good, the government must be relatively stronger in proportion as the populace is more numerous. One the other hand, as the growth of the state gives the trustees of the public authority more temptations and the means of abusing their power, the more the force the government must have in order to contain the people, the more the force the sovereign must have in order to contain the government. I am speaking here not of an absolute force but of the relative force of the various parts of the state. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
It follows from this twofold relationship that the continuous proportion between the sovereign, the prince and the people, is in no way an arbitrary idea, but a necessary consequence of the nature of the body of politic. It also follows that since one of the extremes, namely the people as subject, is fixed and represented by unity, whenever the doubled ratio increases or decreases, the simple ratio increases or decreases in like fashion, and that as a consequence the middle term is changed. This makes it clear that there is no unique and absolute constitution of government, but that there can be as many governments of differing natures as there are states of differing sizes. If, in ridiculing this system, someone were to say that in order to find this proportional mean and to form the body of the government, it is necessary merely, in my opinion, to derive the square root of the number of people, I would replay that here I am taking this number only as an example; that the relationships I am speaking of are not measure solely by the number of humans, but in general by the quantity of action, which is the combination of a multitude of causes; and that, in addition, if to express myself in fewer words I borrow for the moment the terminology of geometry, I nevertheless, am not unaware of the fact that geometrical precision has no place in moral quantities. The government is on a small scale what the body politic which contains it is on a large scale. It is a moral person endowed with certain faculties, active like the sovereign and passive like the state, and capable of being broken down into other similar relationships whence there arises according to the other of tribunals, until an indivisible middle term is reached; that is, a single leader or supreme magistrate, who can be represented in the midst of this progression as the unity between the series of fractions and that of the whole numbers. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
Without involving ourselves in the multiplication of terms, let us content ourselves with considering the government as a new body in the state, distinct from the people and sovereign, and intermediate between them. The essential difference between these two bodies is that the state exists by itself, while the government exists only through the sovereign. Thus the dominant will of the prince is not and should not be anything other than the general will of the law. One’s force is merely the public force concentrated in one. As soon as one wants to derive from oneself some absolute and independent act, the bond that links everything together begins to come loose. If it should finally happen that the prince had a private will more active that that of the sovereign, and that he had made use of some of the public force that is available to him in order to obey this private will, so that there would be, so to speak, two sovereigns—one de jure and the other de facto, at that moment the social union would vanish and the body politic would be dissolved. However, for the body of the government to have an existence, a real life that distinguishes it from the body of the state, and for all its members to be able to act in concert and to fulfill the purpose for which it is instituted, there must be a particular self, a sensibility common to all its members, a force or will of its own that tends toward its preservation. This particular existence presupposes assemblies, councils, a power to deliberate and decide, rights, titles and privileges that belong exclusively to the prince and that render the condition of the magistrate more honourable in proportion as it is more onerous. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
The difficulties lie in the manner in which this subordinate whole is so organized within the whole, that in no way alters the general constitution by strengthening its own, that is always distinguishes its particular force, which is intended for its own preservation of the state, and that, in a word, it is always ready to sacrifice the government to the people and not the people to the government. In addition, although the artificial body of the government is the work of another artificial body and has, in a sense, only a borrowed and subordinate life, this does not prevent it from being capable of acting with more or less vigour or speed, or from enjoying, so to speak, more or less robust health. Finally, without departing directly from the purpose of its institution, it can deviate more or less from it, according to the manner in which it is constituted. From all these differences arise the diverse relationships that the government should have with the body of the state, according to the accidental and particular relationships by which the state itself is modified. For often the government that is best in itself will become the most vicious, if its relationships are not altered according to the defects of the body politic to which it belongs. It is possible that the much-bewailed decline of the Protestant work ethic is linked to this shift from production for others to production for self? Everywhere we see the decay of the industrial ethos that promoted hard work Western executive mutter darkly about this “English disease” which is supposed to reduce us all to penury if we do not cure it. “Only the Japanese will work hard,” they say. Matsuri Takahashi, a promising graduate of Japan’s top University, leapt to her death in December of 2015, leaving behind a trail of grievances over relentless days. She clocked more than 105 hours of overtime in October of 2015, before becoming depressed. Her death, deemed by the government to Karushi, or death by overwork. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
In many other cases, the very people who are supposedly unwilling to work hard on the job are often the same people who are, in fact, working hard off the job—laying bathroom tile, weaving carpets, building tables, creating computer programs, doing household chores, lending their time and talents to a political campaign, attending self-help meetings, sewing, growing vegetables in the garden, writing short stories, or remodeling the attic bedroom. Can it be that the driving motivation that powered the expansion of Sector B is now being channeled into Sector A—into prosuming? The Second Wave brought with it more than steam engines and mechanical looms. It brought with it an immense characterological change. Today we can still see this shift occurring among populations moving from First Wave to Second Wave societies—like the Koreans, for example, who are still busy expanding Sector B at the expense of Sector A. (In Sector A, people produce for their own use. In Sector B, they produce for trade or exchange.) By contrast, in the mature Second Wave societies reeling under the impact of the Third Wave—as production moves back to Sector A and the consumer is drawn back into the production process—another characterological shift begins. Later on we will explore this fascinating change. For now we need only bear in mind that the structure of personality itself is likely to be heavily influenced by the rise of presumption. Nowehere, however, are the changes wrought by the rise of the prosumer likely to be more explosive than in economics. Economists, instead of training all their guns on Sector B, will have to develop a new, more wholistic conception of an economy—will have to analyze what happens in Sector A as well and learn how the two parts relate to one another. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
As the Third Wave has begun to restructure the World economy, the economics profession has been savagely attacked for its inability to explain what is happening. It is most sophisticated tools, including computerized models and matrices, seem to tell us less and less about how the economy really works. Indeed, many economists themselves are concluding that conventional economic thought, both Western and Marxist, is out of touch with a fast-changing reality. One key reason may be that, more and more, changes of great significance lie outside Sector B—id est, outside the entire exchange process. To bring economics back in touch with reality Third Wave economists will need to develop new models, measures, and indices for describing processes in Sector A and will have to rethink many root assumptions in the light of the rise of the prosumer. Once we recognize that powerful relationships link the measured production (and productivity) in Sector B and the unmeasured production (and productivity) in Sector A, the invisible economy, we are compelled to redefine these terms. As early as the mid-1960’s, economist Victor Fuchs of the National Bureau of Economic Research sensed the problem, pointing out that the rise of services made traditional measures of productivity obsolete. Declared Fuchs: “The knowledge, experience, honesty, and motivation of the consumer affects service productivity.” However, even in these words the “productivity” of the consumer is still seen only in terms of Sector B—only as a contribution to production for exchange. There is no recognition as yet that actual production also takes place in Sector A—that goods and services produced for oneself are quite real, and that they may displace or substitute for good and services turned out in Sector B. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
Conventional production figures, especially GNP (Gross National Product, which measures the scale of the economy by totting up the value of goods and services produced it in) figures, will make less and less sense until we explicitly expand them to include what happens in Sector A. An understanding of the rise of the prosumer also helps bring the concept of cost into sharper focus. Thus we gain powerful insights once we recognize that the effectiveness of the prosumer in Sector A can lead to higher or lower costs to companies or government agencies operating in Sector B. For example, high rates of alcoholism, absenteeism, psychosis and neurosis, dysfunctional behaviour, and psychological problems in the work force all add to the “cost of doing business” as measures conveniently in Sector B. (Alcoholism alone has been estimated to cost American industry $249 billion, or about $2.05 per drink, in production time a year.) To the degree that self-help groups alleviate such problems in the work force, they reduce these operating costs. The efficiency of presumption thus affects the efficiency of production. Subtler factors also influence the cost of production in business. How literate or articulate are the workers? Do they all speak the same language? Can they tell time? Are they culturally prepared for the job? Do the social skills learned in family life add to or detract from their competence? All these character traits, attitudes, values, skills, and motivations necessary for high productivity in Sector B, the exchange sector, are produced or, more accurately, prosumed in Sector A. The rise of the prosumer—the reintegration of the consumer into production—will force us to look far more closely at such interrelationships. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
The same powerful change will compel us to redefine efficiency. Today, in determining efficiency, economists compare alternative ways of producing the same product or service. They seldom compare the efficiency of producing it in Sector B as against that of prosuming it in Sector A. Yet this is precisely what millions of people—supposedly innocent of economic theory—are doing. They are finding that, once a certain level of money income is assured, it may be more profitable, economically as well as psychologically, to prosume than to earn more cash. Nor do economists or businessmen systematically track the negative effects of Sector B efficiency on Sector A—as for example when a company demands extremely high mobility of its executives and cause a wave of stress-related illness, family breakdown, or increased alcohol intake as a result. We may very well find that what appears to be inefficient in conventional Sector B terms is, in fact, tremendously efficient when we look at the whole economy and not just part of it. TO make sense, “efficiency” must refer to secondary, not merely first order, effects, and to both sectors of the economy, not just one. What about concepts like “income,” “welfare,” “poverty,” or “unemployment”? If a person lives half-in and half-out of the market system, which products, tangible or intangible, are to be regarded as part of one’s income? How meaningful are income figures at all in a society in which prosuming may account for much of what the average person has? How do we define welfare in such a system? Should welfare recipients work? If so, should all this work necessarily be in Sector B? Or should welfare recipients be encouraged to prosume? #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
What is the real meaning of unemployment? Is a laid-off auto science engineer who puts a new roof on his or her house, or overhauls his or her care, unemployed in the same sense as one who sits idly at home watching football on television? The rise of the prosumer forces us to question our entire way of looking at the twin problems of unemployment, on the one hand, and bureaucratic waste and featherbedding, on the other. Second Wave societies have attempted to cope with unemployment, for example, by resisting technology, closing off immigration, creating labour exchanges, increasing exports, decreasing imports, setting up public works programs, cutting back on work hours, attempting to increase labour mobility, deporting whole populations, and even waging war to stimulate the economy. Yet the problem becomes more complex and difficult every day. Can it be that the problems of labour supply—both gluts and shortages—can never be satisfactorily solved within the framework of a Second Wave society, whether capitalists of socialist? By looking at the economy as a whole, rather than focusing exclusively on one part of it, can we frame the problem in a new way that helps us solve it? If production occurs in both sectors, if people are busy producing goods and services for themselves in one sector and for others in a different sector, how does this affect the argument over a guaranteed minimum income for all? Typically, in Second Wave societies, income has been inextricably linked to work for the exchange economy. However, are not prosumers also “working,” even if they are not part of the market or are only partially in it? Should not a man or woman who stays at home and rears a child, thereby contributing to the productivity of Sector B through one’s efforts in Sector A, receive some income, even if one does not hold down a paid job in Sector B? #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
An income tax credit for housewives or househusbans would reduce single parent household, and welfare and would contribute to the stimulation of the economy. The rise of the prosumer will decisively alter all our economic thinking. It will also shift the basis of economic conflict. The competition between worker-producers and manager-producers will no doubt continue. However, it will shrink in importance as prosuming increases and we move father into Third Wave society. In its place, new social conflicts will arise. Battles will flare over which needs will be met by which sector of the economy. Struggles will sharpen, for example, over licensing, building codes, and the like, as Second Wave forces attempt to hold on to jobs and profits by preventing prosumers from moving in. Teachers’ unions typically fight to keep parents out of the classroom with all the zeal of building tradesmen fighting to preserve obsolete building codes. Yet just as a number of health problems (like those deriving from overeating, lack of exercise, or smoking, for example) cannot be solved by doctors alone but require instead the active participation of the patient, so a number of educational problems cannot be resolved without the parent. The rise of the prosumer changes the entire economic landscape. Thus all these effects will be intensified and the entire World economy changed by a massive historical facts now staring us in the face—which seems to have gone unnoticed by Second Wave economists and thinkers. This last towering fact sets into perspective all we have discussed in the past few weeks on the rise of the prosumer. Oh Great Spirit of the North, we come to you and ask for the strength and the power to bear what is cold and harsh in life. We come like the buffalo ready to receive the winds that truly can be overwhelming at times. Whatever is cold and uncertain in our life, we ask you to give us the strength to bear it. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Do not let the winter blow us away. Oh Spirit of Life and Spirit of the North, we ask you for strength and for love. Oh Great Spirit of the East, we turn to you where the sun comes up, from where the power of light and refreshment come. Everything that is born comes up in this direction—the birth of babies, the birth of the puppies, the birth of ideas, and the birth of friendship. Let there be light. Oh Spirit of the East, let the colour of fresh rising in our life be glory to you. Oh Great Spirit of the South, spirit of all that is warm and gentle and refreshing, we ask you to give us this spirit of growth, of fertility, of gentleness. Caress us with a cool breeze when the days are hot. Please gives us seeds that the flowers, trees and fruits of the Earth may grow. Please give us the warmth of good friendships. Oh Spirit of the South, please send the love and growth of your blessings. Oh Great Spirit of the West, where the sun goes down each day to come up the next, we turn to you in praise of sunsets and in thanksgiving for changes. You are the great coloured sunset of the red west which illuminates us. You are the powerful cycle which pulls us to transformation. We ask for the blessing of the sunset. Please keep us open to life’s changes. Oh Spirit of the Est, when it is time for us to go into the Earth, do not desert us, but receive us in the arms of our loved one. Art Father Who art in Heaven, Thy Kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Thy dominion endureth throughout all generations. The Lord upholdeth al who fall, and raiseth up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all look hopefully to Thee. And Thou givest them their food in due season. Thou openest Thy hand ad satisfiest every living thing with favour. The Lord is righteous in all His ways, and gracious in all His works. The Lord is near unto all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth. He will fulfill the desire of them that revere Him; He will also hear their cry, and will save them. The Lord preserveth all them that love Him; but all the wicked will He bring low. My mouth shall speak the praise of the Lord; let all human bless His holy name for ever and ever. We will bless the Lord from this time forth, and forevermore. Hallelujah. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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Sold His Soul to the Devil and Purchased the Estate with the Money His Body and Soul Realized!
Sarah Winchester was truly overcome by the loss of her month-old baby girl, and a grief magnified 15 years later by her husband’s sudden death. Doctors and friends urged her to leave the east, seek a milder climate and search for some all-consuming hobby. One physician did suggest that she “build a house and do not employ an architect.” On arrival in San Jose, she immediately started remodeling the newly purchased, unfinished farmhouse. She found the planning kept her grief-disturbed mind occupied and she became thoroughly enthused, but certainly, something was still bothering her. “Why can you not just be nice and quiet? What have you done all morning but shake my awnings, tug at my window street-mirror and the cord on it, play with the bellpull wire from the fourth floor, push against the windowpanes—in short, proclaim your existence in every way as if you wanted to beckon me out to you? Yes, the weather is fine enough, but I have no inclination; let me stay home. You playful exuberant zephyrs, you happy lads, go by yourselves; have your fund as always. Go your way! Leave me out of it. But then you think you have no enjoyment in it; you are not doing it for your own sake.” Many have said that the Winchester mansion is haunted by legions of spirits and perhaps even demons. The New Testament includes a number of references to people afflicted with what we term “demon possession.” Skeptics have looked upon these accounts as reflections of the ignorance and superstition prevalent during the times of our Lord’s ministry. Others contend that Jesus Christ, knowing that the public attributed disease and insanity to evil spirits, was only accommodating Himself to their way of thinking. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
A careful reading of the gospels and the book of Acts, however, indicated that Christ and His apostles accepted the reality of evil spirits, and taught their followers to fear them. It is therefore imperative that we turn to the Scriptures to find out exactly what demon possession is, the measure of human responsibility involved, and the believer’s course of action when one encounters a demon-possessed individual. The nature of demon possession: A demon-possessed person is one who has been invaded by evil spirits. They may control one’s body, one’s mind, or both. Sometimes they produce only physical illness, but at other times their wretched victims are grossly immoral, speak blasphemously, and exhibit supernatural strength. They obviously have been mastered, mind and body, by a superior force. In understanding the nature of demon possession, we must first take note that the Bible cites a number of demon-produced illnesses with all the characteristics of known diseases. The gospel writers were careful to distinguish between natural and demon-caused afflictions, as is evident in the first chapter of Mark. “And in the evening, when the sun did set, they brought unto him all that were diseased, and those who were possessed with demons. And he healed many that were sick of diverse diseases, and cast out many demons; and permitted not the demons to speak, because they knew him,” reports Mark 1.32, 34. When sickness did not involve evil spirits, the Lord restored health to the individual with no mention of demons. If the illness was the result of demonic invasion, however, Jesus healed by commanding the evil spirits to leave the victim’s body. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
For example, the boy who had a deaf and dumb spirit (Mark 9.14-29) manifested the symptoms that mark epilepsy, but in healing him, the Lord rebuked a “foul spirit.” When it left, the spirit threw the lad into violent convulsions. Matthew gives the account of a man afflicted with dumbness whom Jesus healed by casting out an indwelling demon (Matthew 9.32-25). Christ also cured a man who was blind and dumb by ordering the demon to leave his body (Matthew 12.22). Luke, telling of a woman who had been seriously crippled for eighteen years, said she had “a spirit of infirmity,” reports Luke 13.11. After healing her, the Lord Jesus Christ spoke of her as “a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years,” reports Luke 13.16. In none of these instances did the demons lead the individual into blasphemous speech or immoral conduct. The afflictions were only physical in nature. In addition to causing many varieties of physical suffering, evil spirits often took control of a person’s mental faculties and organs of speech. The two wild men in Gadara, appearing to be insane, possessed strength far beyond that of ordinary men, lived in tombs with the gruesome remains of dead bodies, and were so feared that people avoided the territory they inhabited (Matthew 8.28-34; Luke 8.26-36). When they saw Jesus, they cried out, “What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? Art thou come here to torment us before the time?” reports Matthew 8.29. These words, though coming from the mouths of the men, were obviously spoken by the evil spirits. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
Luke, focusing his attention upon the more prominent of the two, tells us that after the Lord had cast the demons out of the man, he was found by the people of the area “sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind,” reports Luke 8.35. This kind of demon possession, in which the victim could not control one’s own mind and speech, was more spectacular, but also more tragic, than that which manifested itself in physical illness alone. The person who experienced only bodily affliction could still make intelligent choices, but others had no control over what they said and did. Human responsibility and demon possession: Christian Bible students are not agreed concerning the extent of human responsibility in demon possession. It appears that sometimes the individual was in no way accountable for this invasion of one’s personality. The body who suffered seizures similar to those of epilepsy had been afflicted from early childhood (Mark 9.21). These convulsions sometimes came upon the lad as he was standing by water or fire, and almost cost him his life when he fell. Since this physical affliction came upon him at such a young age, it would seem that he did nothing to cause demonic invasion of his body. On the other hand, many believe that God would not permit evil spirits to take over a human personality unless that individual first weakened one’s will by voluntarily yielding to temptation. If one accepts this premise, one will consider those who are violent, unclean, and blasphemous because of demon possession to be partly responsible for their present state. They likely male themselves susceptible to demonic invasion of their personalities by persisting in sinful practices. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
The believer’s authority over demons: The Lord Jesus Christ cast out demons on numerous occasions. Eight of the recorded miracles involve demon expulsions, but the gospels indicate that He exercised this power many other times. Luke declares, “And demons also came out of many, crying out, saying, ‘Thou art Christ, the Son of God.’ And he, rebuking them, did not allow them to speak; for they knew that he was Christ,” Luke 4.41. The gospel writers seem to indicate that whenever Christ encounter a demon-possessed individual, He expelled the evil spirit without difficulty. As the Lord of the invisible World, Jesus spoke with absolute authority, and the demon had no alternative but to do what He commanded. Mark records, “And he healed many that were sick of diverse diseases, and cast out many demons; and permitted not the demons to speak, because they knew him,” reports Mark 1.34. The Lord also commissioned the Twelve to exercise authority over evil spirits. In Chapter 3 of Mark’s gospel we read: “And he appointed twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach, and to have authority to heal sickness, and to cast out demons,” reports Mark 3.14-15. On other occasions, He gave this power to a larger group, for He sent out seventy disciples on a special mission, and they returned in joyous excitement, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject unto us through thy name,” reports Luke 10.17. Today the power to resist and overcome evil spirits in the name of Jesus belongs to every believer. The Holy Spirit indwells even the weakest Christian (1 Corinthians 6.19). and the least gifted among those who trust in Christ have received all the benefits of salvation. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
James makes it clear that a believer who humbly trusts God can cause Satan, the supreme ruler of the demon World, to flee. “But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you, reports James 4. 6, 7. If one who knows Christ can successfully resist the commander-in-chief of the demonic hordes, one certainly can overcome the soldiers who make up the army of Satan when they seek to lead one into sin. Casting demons out of an afflicted person is another matter, however, and believers must exercise extreme care when they are confronted with demon possession. These evil spirits may be very powerful, and sometimes can be expelled only after a time of heart searching and earnest prayer on the part of the Christians who are seeking to deliver the possessed person. Mark tells us of an occasion when a father was disappointed in the apostles, who themselves had become discouraged when they were unable to help a demon-possessed boy. Jesus rebuked them for their spiritual lack, saying, “This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer,” reports Mark 9.29. (The words “and fasting,” which occur in our King James Version are not found in the best Greek manuscripts. Furthermore, there would have been no opportunity for the disciples to fast in connection with their attempt to heal this boy.) This Scripture passage certainly indicates that no believer should attempt to cast out demons unless one exercises strong faith, renounces sin, and lives in continuous fellowship with the Lord. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
Missionaries who have encountered demon possession say that sometimes the victory is won by a simply command uttered in the name of the Lord Jesus. (The phrase “in the name Lord Jesus” really means, “by the authority of Jesus.”) In other instances, however, God’s servants have found it necessary to engage in a period of prayers and confession of sin. Nevius, in his book entitled Demon Possession and Allied Themes, recounts numerous instances of demon possession which he and his co-workers in China found during the last half of the nineteenth century. This man’s character and theological position make one a trust worthy source of information. He said that demons often spoke to the missionaries as they were about to cast them out of a hapless victim, sometimes pleaded for mercy, often resisted, but always were forced to leave after Christians prayed together and gave the command in the name of the Lord Jesus. Representatives of Christ in many other lands dominated by heathen religions discover a great deal of demon possession. They also are unanimous in declaring that through prayer and a command “in the name of the Lord Jesus” they have been able to expel the evil spirits. Christians must exercise caution whenever they encounter someone who seems to be demon-possessed. In the first place, one ought to be sure the person is suffering from demon passion rather than a condition resulting from some physical, psychological, or spiritual disorder. Some people are greatly harmed when they are wrongly told that they are demon-possessed. They actually need help from a medical doctor, psychiatrist, or spiritual counselor, but instead keep on seeking to expel evil spirits. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
An interesting trial of a clergyman or the practice of unhallowed arts took place early in 1606—interesting and valuable, if for no other reason than that it is the first instance of such a case being discovered in the Rolls at the Record Office (not counting those of the Parliament of 1447), though we hope that it will not prove to be a unique entry, but rather the earnest of others. Shorn of legal redundancies it runs as follows: “Inquiry taken before our lord King at the King’s Court the Saturday next after the three weeks of Easter in the 6th year of James I by the oath of upright and lawful men of the County of Louth. Who say, that John Aston, late of Mellifont, Co. Louth, clerk, not having a fear of God before his eyes, but being wholly seduced by the devil, on December 1st at Mellifont aforesaid, and on divers other days and places, wickedly and feloniously used, practised, and exercised drivers invocations and conjurings of wicked and lying spirits with the intent and purpose that he might find and rcover a certain silver cup formerly taken away at Mellifont aforesaid, and also that he might understand where an in what region the most wicked traitor Hugh, Earl of Tyrone, then was, and what he was contriving against the said lord the King and the State of this kingdom of Ireland, and also that he might find out and obtain drivers treasures of gold and silver concealed in the Earth at Mellifont aforesaid and at Cashel in the country of the Cross of Tipperary, feloniously and against the peace of the said lord the King. It is to be known that the aforesaid John was taken, and being a prisoner in the Castle of the City of Dublin by warrant of the lord King was sent into England, therefore further proceedings shall cease.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
His ultimate fate is not known; nor is it easy to see why punishment was not meted out to him in Ireland, as he had directly contravened section 4 of the Elizabethan Act. Possibly the case was unique, and so King James may have been anxious to examine in person such an interesting specimen. If so, Heaven help the poor parson in the grip of such a witch hunter. In the year 1609 there comes from the County of Tipperary a strange story of magical spells being counteracted by the application of a holy relic; this is preserved for us in that valuable monastic record, the Triumphalia S. Crucis. At Holy Cross Abbey, near Thurles, there was preserved for many years with the greatest veneration a supposed fragment of the True Cross, which attracted vast numbers of people, and by which it was said many wonderful miracles were worked. Amongst those that came thither in that year was “Anastasia Sobechan, an inhabitant of the district of Callan (Co. Kilkenny), tortured by magical spells (veneficis incantationibus collisa), who at the Abbey, in presence of the Rev. Lord Abbot Bernard [Foulow], p;aced a girdle round her body that had touched the holy relic. Suddenly she vomited small pieces of cloth and wood, and for a whole month she spat out from her body such things. The said woman told this miracle to the Rev. Lord Abbot while she was healed by the virtue of the holy Cross. This he took care to set down in writing.” That most diligent gleaner of things strange and uncommon, Mr. Robert Law, to whom we are deeply indebted for much of the matter in this volume, informs us in his Memorialls that in the first half of the seventeenth century there was to be found in Ireland a celebrated Doctor of Divinity, in Holy Orders of the Episcopal Church, who possessed extreme adroitness in raising the Devil—a process that some would have us to believe to be commonly practised in Ireland at the present day by persons who have no pretensions to a knowledge of the Black Art! #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Mr. Law also gives the modus operandi at full length. A servant-girl in the employment of Major-General Montgomerie at Irvine in Scotland was accused of having stolen some silverwork. “The lass being innocent takes it ill, and tells them, If she should raise the Devil she should know who took these things.” Thereupon, in order to summon that Personage she went into a cellar, “takes the Bible with her, and draws a circle about her, and turns a riddle on end from south to north, or from the right to the left hand [id est, contrary to the path of the sun in the Heavens], having in her right hand nine feathers which she pulled out of the tail of a black cock, and having read the 51st [Psalm?] forwards, “O COME, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the Rock our salvation! Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to Him with songs of praise! For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods. In His hand are the deep places of the Earth; the heights and strength of this hills are His also. The sea is His, for He made it; and His hands formed the dry land. O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker [in reverent praise and supplication. For He is our God and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Today, if you will hear His, harden not your hearts as at Meribah and as at Massah in the day of temptation in the wilderness. When your fathers tried My patience and tested Me, proved me, and saw my work [of judgment]. Forty years long was I grived and disgusted with that generation, and I said, It is a people that do err in their hearts, and they do not approve, acknowledge, or regard My ways. Wherefore I swore in My wrath that they would not enter My rest [the land of promise,” she reads backwards chapter ix., verse 19, of the Book of Revelations.” “Dniknam fo driht a yortsed ot detarebil erew raey dna, htnom, yad detnioppa eht ni ruoh taht rof ssenidaer neeb dah ohw slegna ruof eht os.” Upon this the Devil appeared to her, and told her who was the guilty person. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
She then cast three of the feathers in the Devil, and bade him to return to the place from whence he came. This process she repeated three ties, until she had gained all the information she desired; she then went upstairs and told her mistress, with the result that the goods were ultimately recovered. However, escaping Scylla she fell into Charybdis; her uncanny practices came to the ears of the authorities, and she was apprehended. When in prison, she confessed that she had learnt this particular branch of the Black Art in the house of Dr. Colville in Ireland, who habitually practised it. That instructor of youth in such un-Christian practices, the Rev. Alexander Colville, D.D. was ordained in 1622 and subsequently held the vicarage of Carnmoney, the prebend of Carncastle, and the Precentorship of Connor. He was possessed of considerable wealth, with which he purchased the Galgorm estate, on which he resided; this subsequently passed into the Mountcashel family through the marriage of his great granddaughter with Stephen Moore, first Baron Kilworth and Viscount Mountcashel. Where Dr. Colville got the money to purchase so large an estate no one could imagine, and Classon Porter in his useful pamphlet related for us the manner in which popular rumor solved the problem. It was said that he had sold himself to the Devil, and that he had purchased the estate with the money his body and soul head realized. Scandal even went further still, and gave exact terms which Dr. Colville had made with the Evil One. These were, that the Devil was at once to give the Doctor his hat full of gold, and that the latter was in return, at a distant but specified day, to deliver himself body and soul to the Devil. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
The appointed place of meeting was a lime-kiln; the Devil may have thought that this was a delicate compliment to him on account of the peculiarly homelike atmosphere of the spot, but the Doctor had different ideas. The Devil produced the gold, whereupon Dr. Colville produced a hat with a wide slit in the crown, which he boldly held over the empty kiln-pit, with the result that by the time the terms of the bargain were literally complied with, a very considerable amount of gold lay at the Doctor’s disposal, which he prudently used to his Worldly welfare. So far, so good. However, there are two sides to every question. Years rolled by, brining ever nearer and nearer the time at which the account had to be settled, and at length the fatal day dawned. The Devil arrived to claim his victim, and found him sitting in his house reading his Christian Bible by the light of a candle, whereupon he directed him to come along with him. The Doctor begged that he might not be taken away until the candle, by which he was reading, was burned out. To this the Devil assented, whereupon Dr. Colville promptly extinguished the candle, and putting it between the leaves of the Bible locked it up in the chest where he kept his gold. The candle was thus deposited in a place of safety where there was no danger of any person coming across it, and thus of being the innocent cause of the Doctor’s destruction. It is even said that he gave order that the candle should be put into his coffin and buried with him. So, we may presume, Dr. Colville evaded the payment of his debt. Our readers may perchance wonder why such stories as the above should have become connected with the reverend gentleman, and an explanation is not hard to be found. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
Dr. Colville was a well-known divine, possessed of great wealth (inherited lawfully, we may presume), and enjoyed considerable influence in the country-side. At this time Ulster was overrun by triumphant Presbyterianism, which the Doctor, as a firm upholder of Episcopacy, opposed with all his might, and thereupon was spoken of with great acerbity by his opponents. It is not too uncharitable, therefore, to assume that these stories originated with some member of that body, who may well have believed that such had actually happened. Over a century ago, one of those great supernatural stories happened at the estate of Sarah Winchester. It was nearly five o’clock; the short day was drawing in, and the Winchester mansion began to fil with shadows, while curious noises—the muffled footfalls and distant talking voices that had been perceptible all day—seemed, no doubt because of the fading light and the consequently quickened sense of hearing, to become more frequent and insistent. President Theodore Roosevelt, who was an avid fan of the Winchester rifle said, “The riles have come. They are beautiful weapons and I am confident will do well.” He had attended a great national convention; and after an exciting week, was returning home, having a long and difficult journey before him. A pair of magnificent horses, attached to a light buggy, flew merrily enough over a rough country road for a while; but towards evening stormy weather reduced the roads to a dangerous condition, and compelled the President to relinquish his purpose of reaching home that night, and to stop at the Winchester mansion, whose interior illuminated by blazing wood-fires, spread a glowing halo among the dripping trees as he approached it, and gave promise of warmth and luxury. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
Drawing upon the grand estate, President Roosevelt saw through its laced curtain windows that there was no lack of company within. Every angel told him that beasts as well as humans were cared for. At the open door appeared the form of a man who, at the sound of wheels, but not seeing in the outside darkness whom he addressed, called out, “’Tain’t no Earlthy use a-stoppin’ here.” Caring more for his chattels than for himself, the President paid no further regard to this address than to call loudly for the landlord. At the tone of authority, the man outline more civilly announced himself to be the butler; yet so far from inviting the traveller to alight, insisted that the house was “as full as it could pack;” but that there was a place a little farther down the road where the gentleman would be certain to find excellent accommodations. “What stables have you here?” demanded President Roosevelt, giving no more heed to this than the former announcement; but bidding his servant to alight, and preparing to do so himself. “Stables!” replied the baffled butler, shading his eyes so as to scrutinize the newcomer, ‘stables, Cap’n?” “Yes, stables. I want you to take care of my horses; I can take care of myself. Some shelter for cattle you must have by the look of these traps,” pointing to the wagons. “I do not want my horses to be kept standing out in this storm, you know.” The President leaped to the ground, directing his servant to cover the horses and then get out his valise; while the butler, thus defeated, assumed the best grace he could to say that he would see what could be done “for the horses.” “I am the President, may man,” added President Roosevelt in a milder tone, as he stamped his cold feet on the porch and shook off the rain from his travelling gear; “I am used to rough fare and a hard couch: all we want is shelter. A corner of the floor will suffice for me and my rug; a private room I can dispense with at such times as these.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
However, in another minute they were in the sitting-room of the house, a small, high chamber with a stone floor, full of moving shadows cast by a wood-fire that flickered on a great hearth Something of the character of an oratory was imparted to it by a tall crucifix, which reached almost to the ceiling on one side; the figure was painted of the natural colours, the cross was black. Under this stood a chest of some age and a solidity, and when the lamp had been brought, and chairs set. Mrs. Winchester brought out of a chest a large book, wrapped in a white cloth, on white cloth a cross was rudely embroidered in red thread. Even before the wrapping had been removed, the President began to be interested by the size and shape of the volume. “Too large for a missal,” he thought, “and not the shape of an antiphoner; perhaps it may be something good, after all.” The next moment the book was opened, and the President felt that he had at last lit upon something better than good. Before him lay a large folio, bound, perhaps, late in the seventeenth century, with the arms of Cannon Alberic de Mauleon stamped in gold on the sides. There may have been a hundred and fifty leaves of paper in the book, and on almost every one of them was fastened a leaf from an illuminated manuscript. Such a collection the President had hardly dreamed of in his wildest moments. Here were ten leaves from a copy of Genesis, illustrated with pictures, which would not be later than 700 AD. Further on was a complete set of pictures from a Psalter, of English execution, of the very finest kind that the thirteenth century could produce; and, perhaps best of all, there were twenty leaves of uncial writing in Latin, which, as a few words seen here and there told him at once, must belong to some very early unknow patristic treatise. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
Could it possibly be a fragment of the copy of Papias “On the Words of Our Lord,” which was know to have exited as late as the twelfth century at Nimes? In any case, his mind was made up; that book must return to Cambridge with him, even if he had to draw the whole of his balance from the bank and stay at the Winchester mansion till the money came. He glanced up at Mrs. Winchester to see if her face yielded any hint that the book was for sale. Mr. Winchester was pale, and her lips were working. “If monsieur will turn to the end,” she said. In the meantime a separate table was brought, on which the butler had sat a clean coarse cloth, and a savoury supper of broiled ham, hot corncakes, and coffee.” The monsieur turned on, meeting new treasures at every rise of a leaf; and at the end of the book he came upon two sheets of paper, of which more recent date than anything he had yet seen, which puzzled him considerably. They must be a contemporary, he decided, with the unprincipled Canon Alberic, who had doubtless plundered the Chapter library of St Bertrand to form this priceless scrap-book. On the first of the paper sheets was a plan, carefully drawn and instantly recognizable by a person who knew the ground, of the south aisle and cloisters of St Bertrand’s. There were curious signs looking like planetary symbols, and a few Hebrew words in the corners; and in the north-west angle of the cloister was a cross drawn in gold paint. Blow the plan were some lines of writing in Latin, which ran thus: “Responsa 12 Dec. 1694. Interrogatum est: Invenaimne? Responsum est: Invenies. Fiamne dives? Fies. Vivamne invidendus? Vives. Moriarne in lecto meo? Ita.’ (Answers of the 12th of December, 1694. It was asked: Shall I find it? Answer: Thou shalt. Shall I become rich? Thou wilt. Shall I live an object of envy? Thou wilt. Shall I die in my bed? Thou wilt.) #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
The President kept looking through the book, what he then saw impressed him. The drawing he saw was no longer in existence, there is a photograph of it (which Mrs. Winchester possessed) which fully bears out that statement. The pictures in question was a sepia drawing at the end of the seventeenth century, representing, one would say at first sight, a biblical scene; for the architecture (the picture presented an interior) and the figures had that semi-classical flavour about them which the artists of two hundred year ago thought appropriate to illustrations of the Bible. On the right was King on his throne, the throne elevated on twelve steps, a canopy overheard, soldiers on either side—evidently King Solomon. He was bending forward with outstretched scepter, in attitude of command; his face expressed horror and disgust, yet there was in it also the mark of imperious command and confident power. The left half of the picture was the strangest, however. The interest plainly centered there. On the pavement before the throne were grouped four soldiers, surrounding a crouching figure which must be described in a moment. A fifth soldier lay dead on the pavement, his neck distorted, and his eyeballs starting from his head. The four surrounding guards were looking at the King. In their faces the sentiment of horror was intensified; they seemed, in fact, only restrained from flight by their implicit trust in their master. All this terror was plainly excited by the being that crouched in their midst. There are not any words that can convey the impression of which this figure makes upon anyone who looks at it. Once, the photograph was showed to a lecturer on morphology—a person who was abnormally sane and unimaginative in the habits of the mind. He absolutely refused to be alone for the rest of that evening, and told Mrs. Winchester that afterwards for many night he had not dared to put out his light before going to sleep. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
However, the main traits of the figure, at first you saw only a mass of coarse, matted black hair; presently it was seen that this covered a body of fearful thinness, almost a skeleton, but with the muscles standing out like wires. The hands were of a dusky pallor, covered, like the body, with long, coarse hairs, and hideously taloned. The eyes, touched in with a burning yellow, had intensely black pupils, and were fixed upon the throned King with a look of a beast-like hate. Imagine one of the awful bird-catching spiders of South America translated into human form, and endowed with intelligence just less than human, and you will have some faint conception of the terror inspired by the appalling effigy. Many hours had passed and President Roosevelt said, “Don’t say another word about it. But my friend; you have not a spare sleeping-room that I can use for the night? If not, find me a corner—a clean corner.” After a great deal of hesitation, Mrs. Winchester said, “The fact is that there is as comfortable a room as the best folks can wish; but—the most mysterious whispers, imparted the startling fact that this most desirable sleeping-room is haunted.” Mrs. Winchester had come to be very suspicious of admitting guests. The President ensure her that it would be better than sitting up all night or sleeping in the barn with the horses. President Roseville became interested in Mrs. Winchester’s confidences, but could only gather in further explanation that for some time past all the travellers who has occupied that room had “made off in the middle of the night, never showing their faces at the mansion again.” On endeavouring to arrest one or more in their nocturnal flight, they—all more or less terrified—had insisted on escaping without a moment’s delay, assigning no other reason than that they had seen a ghost. The President replied, “Let the Chamber be got ready directly, and please have a good fire built in the fireplace at once.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
In a reasonable time, President Roosevelt was beckoned out of the parlour, and conducted to the second floor by the butler, who, after receiving a cheerful “goodnight,” paused on the landing to hear his guest bolt and bar the door within, then push a piece of furniture against it. “Ah,” murmured the butler, as a sort of misgiving came over him, “if a apparishum has a mind to come to thar, ‘tain’t all the bolts and bars in California as ‘ll kpi’en away.” However, the President’s precaution of securing his door, as also that of placing his revolvers in readiness, had not the slightest reference to the reputed ghost. Spiritual disturbances of such kind he feared not. Spirit tangible were already producing ominous demonstrations in the room below, nor was it possible to conjecture what troubles these might evolve. The only light was that of the roaring, crackling, blazing wood-fire, and no other was needed. At this time a growing feeling of discomfort had been creeping over him—nervous reaction, perhaps. But what storm-benighted traveller, when fierce winds and rains are lashing around, can withstand the cheering influences of a glorious log-fire? It charms away uneasiness, and causes all that is dull and dead around to laugh and dance in its bright light. By the illumination of just fire, President Roosevelt observed that the apartment offered nothing worthier of remark than that the furniture was superior to anything that might be expected in a Victorian mansion. In truth, Mrs. Winchester had expended a considerable sum in fitting up this, the first chamber. By the swaggering tread of unsteady feet about the house, or when the boisterous shouts below raged above the outside storm, he glanced up from his papers to congratulate himself upon this aggregable seclusion. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
Thus the President sat for an hour, then he heaped fresh logs upon the hearth, looked again to his revolvers, and retired to rest. The bell in the belfry was striking one thirteen in the am, the President awoke. He awoke suddenly from a sound sleep, flashing, as it were, into full consciousness, his mind and memory clear, all his faculties invigorated, his ideas undisturbed, but with a perfect conviction that he was not alone. He lifted his head. A man was standing a few feet from the bed, and between it and the fire, which was still burning, and burning brightly enough to display every object in the room, and to define the outline of the intruder clearly. His dress also and his features were plainly distinguishable: the dress was a travelling-costume, in fashion somewhat out of date; the features wore a mournful and distressed expression—the eyes were fixed upon the President. The right arm hung down, and the hand partially concealed. His attention with then caught by an object lying on the red cloth just by his left elbow. Two or three ideas of what it might be flitted through his brains with their own incalculable quickness. “A penwiper? No, no such thing in the house. A rat? No, too black. A large spider? I trust to goodness not—no. Good God! a hand like the hand in that picture!” In another infinitesimal flash he had taken it in. Pale, dusky skin, covering nothing but bones and tendons of appalling strength; coarse black hairs, longer than ever grew on a human hand; nails rising from the ends of the fingers and curving sharply down and forward, gray, horny and wrinkled. He jumped out of his bed with deadly, inconceivable terror clutching his heart. The shape, whose left hand rested on the table, was rising to a standing posture, its right hand crooked above his scalp. There was black and tattered drapery about it; the coarse hair covered it as in the drawing. The lower jaw was thin—what can I call it?—shallow, like abeast’s; teeth showed behind the black lips; there was no nose; the eyes, of a fiery yellow, against which the pupils showed black and intense, and the exulting hate and thirst to destroy life which shone there, were the most horrifying feature in the whole vision. There was intelligence of a kind in them—intelligence beyond that of a beast, below that of a man. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
The feelings which this horror stirred in President Roosevelt were the intensest physical fear and the most profound mental loathing. What did he do? What could he do? The man seemed about to advance still closer to the bed, and returned the occupant’s gaze with a fixed stare. “Stand, or I’ll fire!” cried the President, taking in all this at a glance, revolver in hand. The man remained still. “What is your business here?” demanded Roosevelt, thinking he was addressing one of the roughs from below. The man was silent. “If you value your life, leave the room,” shouted the president, pointing his revolver. The man was motionless. “RETIRE! Or by Heaven I’ll send a bullet through you!” But the man moved not an inch. The President fired. The bullet lodged in the breast of the stranger, but he started not. The President fired again and the shot entered the heart, pierced the body, and lodged in the wall beyond; and the President beheld the hole where the bullet had entered, and the firelight glimmering though it. And yet the intruder stirred not. Astounded, the President dropped his revolver, and stood face to face before the unmoved man. “President Roosevelt,” spake the deep solemn voice of the perforated stranger, “in a vain you shoot me—I am already dead.” The President, with all his bravery, grasped, spellbound. The firelight gleamed through the hole in the body, and the eyes of the shooter were riveted there. “Fear nothing,” spake the mournful presence; “I seek but to divulge my wrongs. Until my death shall be avenge my unquiet spirit lingers here. Listen.” Speechless, motionless was the President; and the mournful apparition thus slowly and distinctly continued. “Four years ago, I was hired to be a foreman. One I trusted plunged a dagger into my heart while I slept. He covered my wound with a plaster. He reigned to mourn my death. He told the people here I died of a heart-complaint; that I had long been ailing. I had gold treasures. With my treasure secreted beneath his garments he paraded mock grief at my grave. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
“Then he depated. In distant parts he sought to forget his crime; but his stolen gold brought him only the curse of an evil conscience. Rest and peace are not for him. He now prepares to leave his native land for ever. Under an assumed name that man is this night in San Francisco. In a few hours he will sail for Europe. President Roosevelt, you must prevent it. Justice and humanity demand that a murderer roam not at large, nor squander more of the wealth that is by right my children’s. Not until the spirit of my murderer shall be separated from the mortal clay can my spirit rest in peace.” And vanished. Most of the civilians you meet either do not want to know to know about the supernatural or blame you for brining it into their lives once you tell them about it. President Roosevelt tried to revisit the Winchester, but the Butler would not allow him inside because of the damage he did to the chamber. Mrs. Winchester had a remarkable memory and knew the location of every piece of material in the mansion, even in the vast store-rooms. The full scope of her generosity, charity, and many kindly acts will forever remain unknown and such was her sincere desire. Her donations were never made public. She contributed to charities of all faiths. In 1911 in New Haven, she established the William Wirt Winchester Memorial Sanitorium for Tuberculosis, endowing it with $1,200,000 (2021 adjusted for inflation $32,539,882.35). There were the little but visible acts that we nearby dwellers particularly noticed; those daily carriage trips with soup and hot food for a newly arrived settler on Stevens Creek Road, a man dying from Tuberculosis; those annual, unheralded trips to old Cupertino Church where my mother and other woman of The Ladies Aid Society collated used clothing for the local poors’ children. I remember a small boy’s thrill as he watched her liveried coachman alight from the polished Victoria and stagger up the church steps with a huge hamper of clothes, not used clothes, but dozens of newly purchased garments! That was Mrs. Winchester, the writer and many another contemporary remember. We never knew her intimately, but how we now wish we had! #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
Winchester Mystery House
The Winchester Mystery House features some very strange oddities like the door-to-nowhere. What purpose do you think it served Sarah during her time?
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
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Mental health includes our emotional psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and makes choices. Mental health is important at every stage of life, from childhood and adolescence through adulthood. In the years from roughly 500 B.C. to A.D. 500, in the flourishing Greek and Roman civilizations, philosophers and physicians identified a number of mental disorders. Heading the list were melancholia, a condition marked by unshakable sadness; mania, a state of euphoria and frenzied activity; dementia, a general intellectual decline; hysteria, the presence of a physical ailment with no apparent physical cause; delusions, blatantly false beliefs; and hallucinations, the experience of imagined sights or sounds as if they were real. Although demonological interpretations of mental and physical illness were still widespread, philosophers and physicians began to offer alternative explanations during this period. Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.), often called the father of modern medicine, taught that illness had natural causes. He saw abnormal behaviour as a disease arising from internal physical problems. Specifically, he believed that some form of brain pathology was the culprit and that it resulted—like all other forms of disease, in his view—from an imbalance of four fluids, or humours, that flowed through the body: yellow bile, black bile, blood, and phlegm. An excess of yellow bile, for example caused mania; and excess of black bile was the source of melancholia. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
To treat psychological dysfunctioning, Hippocrates sought to correct the underlying physical pathology. He believed, for instance, that the excess of black bile underlying melancholia could be reduced by a quiet life, a vegetable diet, temperance, exercise, celibacy, and even bleeding. Hippocrates’ focus on internal causes for abnormal behaviour was shared by the great Greek philosophers Plato (427-347 B.C.) and Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) and by influential Greek and Roman physicians. During the Middle Ages, there was, on average, one church for every 200 people. The enlightened views of Greek and Roman physicians and scholars did not prevent ordinary people from continuing to believe in demons. And with the decline of Roman, demonology enjoyed a strong resurgence, as a growing distrust of science spread throughout Europe. From A.D. 500 to 1350, the period known as the Middle Age, the power of the clergy increased greatly throughout Europe. In those days the church rejected scientific forms of investigation, and it controlled all education. Most of the patients in asylums, from all classes and circumstances, were women. Religious beliefs, which were highly superstitious and demonological at this time, came to dominate all aspects of life. Once again behaviour was usually interpreted as a conflict between good and evil, God and the devil. Deviant behaviour, particularly psychological dysfunctioning, was seen as evidence of Satan’s influence. Although some scientists and physicians still insisted on medical explanations and treatments, their views carried little weight in this atmosphere. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
The Middle Ages were a time of great stress and anxiety, of war, urban uprisings, and plagues. People blamed the devil for these troubles and feared being possessed by him. The incidence of abnormal behaviour apparently increased dramatically during this period. In addition, there were outbreaks of mass madness, in which large numbers of people apparently shared delusions and hallucinations. In one such disorder, tarantism (also known as St. Vitus’s dance), groups of people would suddenly start to jump, dance, and go int convulsions. Some dressed oddly; others tore off their clothing. All were convinced that they had been bitten and possessed by a wolf spider, now called a tarantella. In anther form of madness, lycanthropy, people thought they were possessed by wolves or other animals They acted wolflike and imagined that fur was growing all over their bodies. Stories of lycanthropes, more popularly known as werewolves, have been passed down to us and continue to fire the imagination of writers, moviemakers, and their audiences. Not surprisingly, some of the earlier demonological treatments for psychological abnormality reemerged during the Middle Ages. Once again they key to cure was to rid the person’s body of the devil that possessed it. Exorcisms were revived, and clergymen, who generally were in charge of treatment during this period, would plead, chant, or pray to the devil or evil spirit. If these techniques did not work, they had others to try, some indistinguishable from of torture. They would administer holy water or bitter solutions, or even starve or stretch the bodies of the individuals in question. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
It was not until the Middle Ages drew to a close that the demonology and its methods began to lose favour. Towns throughout Europe grew into cities, and municipal authorities gained more power and took over nonreligious activities. Among their other responsibilities, they began to run hospitals and direct the care of people suffering from mental disorders. Doctors who treated people with mental disorders were called “mad-doctors.” Medical abnormality gained favour once again When lunacy trials were held in the late thirteenth-century England to determine the sanity of certain persons, it was not unusual for natural causes, such as a “blow to the head” or “fear of one’s father,” to be held responsible for an individual’s unusual behaviour. During these same years, many people with psychological disturbances received treatment in medical hospitals. The Trinity Hospital in England, for example, was established to treat “madness,” among other kinds of illness, and to keep the mad “safe until they are restored to reason.” If ASPD (anti-social personality disorder) can be located on the hostile-dominant quadrant of the interpersonal circumplex, dependent personality disorder (hereafter abbreviated as DPD) is almost the polar opposite, located in the nurturant-submissive quadrant. Perhaps the chief feature of DPD is a strong sense of interpersonal submission. Individuals with this disorder have a strong need to be taken care of, couple with a strong fear of rejection. Additional symptoms include difficulty making decisions without support and reassurance from others, a need for others to assume responsibility for decisions about the self, difficulty expression disagreement due to fear of rejection, difficulty initiating independent activities and projects, going to excessive lengths to secure nurturance from others, feeling uncomfortable when alone, urgent seeking of another relationship for support when a close relationship ends, and preoccupation with fear of being left to take care of the self. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
People with DPD appear ill equipped to handle mature and independent roles in life, while displaying a naïve and gullible cognitive style. Because of their weak and fragile self-image, they entrust others with the responsibility for addressing major tasks and fulfilling their needs. Their delicate self-image suggest that they will not be competent or able to take on life’s tasks, and therefore need others to do these for them. If any, this excessive reliance on others appears to pay few dividends when it comes to establishing satisfactory personal relationships. People with DPD report low frequencies of positive social behaviours, reduced directness of communication with others, less positive interactions with close friends, and less helpfulness from friend than those with less dependent personalities. The interpersonal style of people with DPD (exempli gratia, acting weak, and submissive) is designed to pull for the complementary interpersonal response from others, particularly protection, nurturance, and control. Also the desperate search for acceptance and approval from others is especially pronounced during times of stress. Should there even be a hint of failure to secure nurturance and care from others, persons with DPD will catastrophize, seeing themselves as totally alone and dismissed by the World. Despite their suggestible and complaint tendencies, people with DPD report high degrees of loneliness. This calls into question the authenticity of the interpersonal connections that they establish. When their dependency need are not met, those with DPD may become demanding, and tis attention seeking may elicit interpersonal rejection from others, only further aggravating dependency needs. Consistent with this hypothesis, symptoms of DPD were negatively correlated with receiving social support, and positively correlated with conflict. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
It has been argued that parental overprotectiveness combined with authoritarians may serve to reinforce dependent behaviours in children, while simultaneously preventing the children from developing a sense of independence and autonomy. By catering to children’s every need, parents may inadvertently, or perhaps unconsciously, encourage dependency and inhibit the children’s natural tendencies to explore the environment and develop a sense of mastery and autonomy. Although the excessive control that is pursuant to overprotectiveness may be deployed with the best intentions, it interferes with children’s development of basic social competencies and a sense of security when separated from their caregivers. In fact, relative to healthy controls, those with DPD experience greater parental control in their families of origin. However, other examinations of physical and sexual abuse, maternal and paternal care, and maternal and paternal overprotection have found nothing unique in the family-of-origin background of those with DPD. It must be noted that the size of the group with DPD in each of these studies was small; thus these null findings must be interpreted with caution until they can be replicated. DPD (dependent personality disorder) involves a powerful need to be take care of, resulting in clinging and submissive behaviours, as well as fear of separation. Despite their strong desires for connection with and care taking from others, people with DPD experience less rewarding social interactions, less social support, and more loneliness than people without this disorder. A prominent interpersonal theory of DPD locates its origin in excessively overprotective parenting that fails to stimulate a sense of exploration and independence. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Thanks to You, Good Jesus, Eternal Pastor, for thinking us poor paupers and poopers worthy of refreshment by Your precious Body and Blood. Thanks also for Your personal invitation to come to a better understanding of the mysteries surrounding Communion; that is to say, when You said, “Come to me, all you who are lumbered and encumbered; I will find places for you to slumber.” We have all had negative thigs happen to us. Maybe recently, perhaps in the past, someone hurt us. And too often, instead of letting it go and giving it to God, we have held on to it. We have not forgiven, and that will sour the crystal-clear water of our souls and contaminate our lives. Furthermore, this contamination will produce a root of bitterness than will take hold of our hearts, minds, soul and body. And to make matter worse, after a while, we accept it. We make room in our hearts for that bitterness; we learn to live with it, and some even enjoy it. However, with all due respect, that is not how God intended us to be. God wants of to purge our lives of the bitter poison that is polluting our soul. Our souls were made to be crystal clear streams that connect us to God. God created us in His image. And the Lord wants us to be happy, healthy and have an abundance of pleasant things. God put us on this Earth to enjoy life, not to live with bitterness, sinister intentions, sarcasm, and resentment. If that becomes our nature, we have become polluted and we are contaminating everyone else with whom we have influence. However, even though our souls may be polluted right now, they do not have to stay that way. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
The more we read the Word of God and adopt Christian principles, and act out of love and kindness and use great discernment, the more we are able to filter the poison out of our lives and our environment, until our souls become crystal clear again. Then, we will begin to experience the joy, peace, and freedom God intended us to have. “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way,” reports Psalm 139.23-24. We need to search our hearts and make sure we have not let any roots of bitterness take hold. It may not be a big thing that is polluting one’s soul. Maybe one’s spouse is not spending as much time with one as one would like, and one can feel oneself starting to get resentful. However, do not become sarcastic, cryptic, or unfriendly. That will intentionally make one harder to get along with, and that root of bitterness will contaminate one’s life. Keep your soul pure. Do not let your heart get polluted. The Christian Bible talks about being quick to forgive, and the longer we wait, the harder it is going to be. The longer we hold on to resentment, the deeper that root of bitterness grows. Sometimes, instead of forgiving quickly, letting go of the hurts and pains of the past, we quietly bury them deep down inside our hearts and minds. We do not want to talk about the issues. We do not want to think about it. We want to ignore it and hope that it will go away. It will not. That contamination will show up in one’s life, and it will be a mess. It will cause one even more pain and sorrow, and it could even kill you. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Deal with the poison in your soul today by forgiving anyone who has hurt you, and then choose to live today in freedom and freshness. As one does that, the joy of the Lord will burst forth within one like a freshness mountain spring. Lord, your great goodness and mercy have made me well again; nonetheless, I am sick as a dog. That is why I come to You, my Saviour, with empty mouth and dry tongue, to the Font of Life, a destitute in the Court of Heaven, a slave to the Lord, a creature to the Creator, a desolate to the Consolate. The remedy? The Sacrament. I have trouble with that; and so did Your Everlasting Luke (1.43). I should be going to You; instead, You are coming to me. Well, I am miffed again! You cannot come to my house. I am a sinner, and You should know what that means. I may not have been discovered in the same room as You. Yes, I confess my vilety. I acknowledge Your goodness. I praise You piety. I thank You for Your charity—it seems to know no bounds. Father, I want the streams of my life to flow pure, clean, and fresh. Please search my heart, O God, and help me to detect anything profane or unwelcome in Heaven. Please give me the courage to make the changes You are calling me to make. Of course, I realize that You are just doing this for Yourself. My meager merits have nothing to do with it. That is to say, it is just Your way of bringing my attention Your goodness, Your charity, Your humility. It pleases You to do so. However, at the same time, it teased me, my Divine Friend, this comely Comedown of Yours. “Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to Him with the songs of praise! For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods,” reports Psalm 95.2-3. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Would that the floor were not littered with my iniquities! O Sweetest, Gentle Jesus Christ, how much reverence and gratitude with praise unending I owe You when I receive Your Holy Body! No human alive can be found who can fully unfold the dignity of this act! However, what shall I think of this Communion? It gives me access to the Lord, whom I am unable to reverence devoutly enough and yet whom I devoutly wish to receive? What better, more salutary course of action can I take in Your presence, except perhaps humbling my poor self and exalting Your infinite goodness? I praise You, my God, and I exalt You forever. I despise myself and subject myself to You. Why? My vileness has yet to bottom out. Look at You, the Holy of Holies! And what am I? A Shittite among Shittites. Yes, I can see You across the crowded floor. I am looking right at You, in fact. However, are You gesturing me to come forward? There must be some mistake. I am not worthy to return to Your glance, let alone to meet Your gaze! Yes, it is awkward, but it gets worse! You are coming toward me. You actually want to be with me. you invite me to join you for a meal. You want to show me just how good the Divine Diet can be. Especially, Bread of Angels. That is how the Psalmist described it. (78.25). Which, of course, is none other than You Yourself, the Living Loaf, who descended from Heaven to give nourishment to the World; my reference here is John (6.33, 51). Some questions for You, my Eclectic if Encyclopedic Friend. Where does Love come from? What gives Largesse its glow? How many grateful acts of praise are due You for these two virtues? #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
However, before you answer, here are some exclamations. How helpful and practical Your counsel is! How pleasant and comfortable that dinner was when You Yourself were the food! How admirable Your operation, O Lord! How powerful Your Virtue! How ineffable Your Truth! Now, some conclusions. You just gave the command, and the World was created. You gave the command again, and the Sacrament was created. Apparently, everything went according to plan. Worthy of wonder, worthy of faith, worthy of warping the human intellect! You, my Lord God, True God and True Man, You are contained whole and entire in some modest species. The Bread is eaten and the Premium Cranberry Justice is drunk, but Your Body and Blood remain forever. O Lord and Tailor of the Universe, so far as I know, You do not keep a lost of wants and needs. Yet You have long wanted to dwell in us through Your Sacrament. Please help keep my body and soul sinless. Why? So that with a spotless yet sportive conscience I can celebrate the Mysteries—that is to say, receive the Sacrament—more frequently. For my perpetual salvation, then, please help me receive the Sacrament that You sanctioned and instituted as a special honour and perennial memorial to remind us of Yourself. Rejoice, my soul, and give thanks to God for the Sacrament, that noble gift and singular solace left behind for me in this valley of tears! Every time I receive the Body of Christ, it rekindles this Mystery. Every time I become a co-conspirator in all Your redemptive work, O Christ, as well as a co-participant in all Your merits. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
What we re ordinarily conscious of are the thoughts and feelings of the ego, but there is much more in us than that. There is the true self, of which the ego is only a miserable caricature. If we could penetrate to this, the fundamental element of our selfhood, we would never again be satisfied with a wholly egoistic life—the call of the Quest would come again and again in our ears. And indeed it is through such rare glimpses, such exalted moments, when they become conscious of a presence, higher and more blessed than their ordinary state, that humans are drawn to the Quest in the effort to recapture those moments and those moods. The recapturing is done, not by taking possession of something but by allowing oneself to be possessed, not by a positive and affirmative movement of the will, but by a yielding to, and acceptance of, the gentlest and most delicate thing in humans’ psyche—the intuition. Another purpose of these glimpses is to show one how ignorant of truth one really is, and, having so shown, to stimulate one’s effort to get rid of this ignorance. For they will light up the fanciful or opinionative nature of so much that one hitherto took to be true. The bestowal of a glimpse is not merely for one’s pleasure and satisfaction: there are certain self-cleansing duties and self-improving obligations which follow in its train. The light it throws into one is thrown on one’s sins and weaknesses too. One sees them more plainly for what they are, as well as the amendment one must make. However, one sees also the forgiveness which grace grants. The glimpse affords its own proof, supplies its own evidence, certifies by itself the truths it yields. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
However, if its experiencer falls back into one’s ego and lets its prejudice, opinion, and expectation intrude into those truths, that is one’s own fault, not the Glimpse’s. A single glimpse will offer all the evidence one’s reason needs, all the proof one’s judgement demands that there is a kingdom of Heaven, and that it is the best of all things to search for. One of the first consequences of the glimpse ought to be—if it is properly received and sufficiently understood—a resolve to improve oneself, to be more truthful and less excitable, for instance. The effect of a Glimpse upon character may show itself as a passing feeling but it is the business of a quester to show it as a habit of life. Intellectually, the actualizing Christian is committed to the principle that to experience, or to be, the feeling of strength is commendable and is not an expression of conceit. The person therefore enjoys and even savours feelings of security, adequacy, and worth. The peaceful sense of strength and self-confidence that emerges from being aware of one’s own worth and uniqueness is vital for effective living. Jensen is a Christian who is struggling to understand the real meaning of personal strength. He strove desperately, especially with peers where he works, to prove to everyone how adequate he was. He tried to do more work in less time than anyone else. His real motives tended to surface during the lunch hour, when everyone paused for a quick volleyball game. Jensen’s mood for the rest of the day depended upon whether or not his team won the game. If they won, his ego was bolstered and he felt exuberant. If they lost, he became irritable and depressed. On days that he lost, his wife and child noticed he was less involved in family time. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
What Jensen has learned through participating in a church growth group is that there is a deeper, more reliable source of personal worth and adequacy available to him. It is the love of God, the love and respect that others have for him, and his own ability to value himself beneficially. As this sinks in more and more, Jensen is becoming increasingly consistent in feeling adequate and worthy throughout the day—regardless of how much work is done or whether his volleyball tram wins or loses. He is becoming freer to approach both his work and his relationships in a creative rather than a competitive way. This is the actualizing expression of the strength polarity. Jensen is learning to transform striving and achieving into contributing and cooperating. Emotionally, the actualizing person is committed to the expression of inner strength, not as an attempt to experience power over others, but rather as an expression of the potency of one’s own being. The person who knows how to experience and express strength in an actualizing way is a real asset to any relationship of which one is a part. For instance, in friendship, marriage, work or community life, this person can be relied upon to be fresh and original. Because the person is not bound by false modesty, there will be a continual flow of creative contributions that come from deep within. These qualities make the person inwardly attractive and interesting. This reflects both how the person experiences life and how other people tend to experience the person who is realistically in good contact with the strength polarity of personality. A key to the healthy expression of strength for the actualizing person is that the personal power that is experienced is used not only in behalf of one’s own well-being, but also as a service to facilitate the well-being and happiness of others. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Thus the power of the actualizing Christian is used to edify or build up others, rather than to dominate, intimidate, or exploit them. It is a power made gentle by Christ’s love and insulated by the virtue of humility. Bodily, the strength dimension is experienced by a sense of being able to stand on one’s own two feet and by the ability to reach out and ask for what one wants. We have found that people who are out of touch with the strength polarity can to some extent begin to discover it by stamping their feet firmly into the ground until one feels the muscle strain in calves and thighs, one’s feet will seem to become firmly planted in the ground, like the root of a tree. This helps one feel a sense of strength and self-support. A second exercise, helpful for developing strong resistance to manipulation from one’s environment is to lie on a bed with both knees up and to pound the bed with both fists and say, “I will not give up! I can do it!” Both movements and voice should express conviction. Some practical ways that one’s strengths might be expressed in everyday living are as follows” participating equally in conversations, taking initiative in greeting or meeting others, giving and receiving genuine compliments, giving and receiving constructive criticism, speaking up and negotiating for your reasonable rights, speaking out for the reasonable rights of others, using expressive talk to show feelings, being able to say yes or no when necessary, being willing to confront and handle stressful situations. This may seem like a formidable list for people who are not used to experiencing or expressing their strength. However, it is important to have these behaviours as part of one’s total repertoire of possibilities for interacting with others. #RandolphHaris 15 of 21
These self-actualizing Christian skills can be learned with patience and practice. A great part of courage is having done the thing before. One further characteristic of strength is that it enables us to become active participants in life. When we are in touch with our strength, we do not sit around and gripe, complain, or whine. We do something. We take responsibility for shaping our own lives and the World around us. We may pray with St. Francis of Assisi: “Lord, please help me to accept the things I cannot change, and change the things that I can. And please give me wisdom to know the difference.” “O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker [in reverent praise and supplication]. For He is our God and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Today, if you will hear His voice, harden not your hearts as at Meribah and as at Massah in the day of temptation in the wilderness. When your fathers tried My patience and tested Me, proved Me, and saw My work [of judgment]. Forty years long was I grieved and disgusted with that generation, and I said, It is a people that do err in their hearts, and they do not approve, acknowledge, or regard My ways. Wherefore I swore in My wrath that they would not enter My rest [the land of promise],” reports Psalm 95.6-11. Let us look at another passage of Scripture where Jesus is teaching His disciples to pray: And it came to pass, that, as He was praying in a certain place, when He ceased, one of his disciples said unto Him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples,” reports Luke 11.1. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Notice that the disciple did not say, “Teach us how to heal the sick or how to cast out demons.” Neither did he ask to be taught how long to pray or when to pray, but he recognized that the power behind Jesus’ ministry was the fact that He knew how to pray accurately. Knowing how to pray accurately is one of the keys to victorious living. The story is told of a missionary walking down a jungle trail in African when suddenly a huge lion appeared in the trail. Being the man of prayer that he was, the missionary fell to his knees and prayed, “Father, I pray that this will be a good Christian lion.” The lion immediately fell to the ground, put his paws together, and said, “Father, I thank You for this food. Now bless it to my body.” The missionary’s payer was answered, but he was still in trouble because it did not bring deliverance. Learn to be specific and accurate in prayer. The disciple asked, Lord, teach us to pray. Jesus Answered: When ye pray, say Our Father which art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name. They kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in Heaven, so in Earth. Give us day by day or daily bread. And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive everyone that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil. And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves; For a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him. And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Notice that Jesus is asking a question here.To help you understand clearly what Jesus is saying, I want to ask you the same question: Would you have a friend like that? If you went to him at midnight and said, “Company came in unexpectedly and I need a loaf of bread. Would you lend me one?” would he say, “No, you ugly thing, you ought to have come by before I went to bed. I cannot give you any bread now”? Would you have a friend like that? Would you want a friend like that? No, of course not. With friends like that, you would not need any enemies. Now you can see what Jesus is saying. Notice He is talking about a friend. There is no relationship, no kinship here at all. He is just a friend. He wants to know if you would have a friend like that. I am sure you have already answered it in your own mind None of us would want a friend like that. “For a friend of mine in his journey has come unto me and I have not what I shall set before him.” Now you can recognize this as a faith statement. He does not have it or see it yet, but he says, “I will set it before him.” Now the Word of God says, “Come boldly unto the throng of grace that we may obtain,” reports Hebrews 4.16. We are to come boldly before the throne of grace—not to beg, plead or hope that something will happen but we should come to obtain! This fellow came to obtain. He did not say, “I hope you will loan me some bread.” He said, “I do not have what I shall set before him.” He did not have it yet, but he was taking faith. It was already in his mouth. “I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give hi, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Now let us find out what the word importunity means. Much has been said about this word, and most of it has been commentary. We need to watch many of the paraphrased editions, for so much of the is the translators’ and editors’ own interpretation. We need to check the Greek and other references to make sure the meaning we have has not been added by man. Some say the work importunity means “persistence.” To just keep on and on. I had a fellow tell e one time: “Now that man just kept beating on the door. He just kept knocking on that door until the man came to give him bread. That is what Jesus is teaching us to do. We are to just keep asking.” That idea is not present in this passage of scripture. In fact, it is exactly opposite of what Jesus is teaching here. This is where we have missed it. This religious thinking has heled people in bondage. This line of thinking has taught us that we receive from God by beating and knocking on the same door until finally we wake up God and eventually talk Him into it. Importunity comes from two Greek words: aneu which means “without” and aidos which means “bashfulness.” Therefore, a literal meaning would be “without bashfulness.” It means bare faceness or boldness (without shame). Because of his boldness he came even at midnight. He had faith that, even if he came at that late hour, he would receive bread. He said, “I have not what I shall set before him.” Jesus said that man will get up and give him all that he needs. Notice that Jesus did not say that his actually happened. He asked us the question: “Would you have a friend like that?” We get the idea that this actually happened, but it did not. Jesus is only using this as an illustration. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Jesus said, “Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth.” Now hold onto the word friend because it is another key to understanding this scripture. Jesus then says, “And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh recieveth; and one that seeketh findeth; and to one that knocketh it shall be opened. The Amplified Bible reads: “Ask and keep on asking’ with a footnote that says, “This is the present imperative and often repeated.” It might be often repeated; but, in this instance, it is not because that would be contrary to other scriptures concerning prayer. (See Mark 11.24; John 15.7,8; 1 John 5.14, 15.) If you take that commentary to be the true meaning of this scripture, it is already distorted in your mind Most people never read the footnote anyway, so they are left with a false impression that will defeat them in their prayer life. When you run into a situation like this, study it carefully and see if it compares to the other teachings of Jesus. Here the translator said that it could have meant that, but it did not because it would refute other things Jesus taught concerning prayer. Those who wished to invigorate themselves quickly should practice prayer. Goals of prayer include: to reduce the number of wandering thoughts; to stop wandering thoughts completely; potential production of a glimpse; lengthening of a glimpse, if obtained; and brining about a glimpse if lost. Draw the Force of God into every pore of your skin until it pervades your whole body. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
At this moment and very fateful hour, I place all Heaven with its power, and the sun with its brightness, and the snow with its whiteness, and fire with all the strength it has, and lightning with its rapid wrath, and the winds with their swiftness along the path, and the sea with its deepness, and the rocks with their steepness, and the Earth with its starkness; all these I place by God’s almighty help and grace, between myself and the powers of Darkness. I arise today though a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, through belief in the threeness, through confession of the oneness of the Creator of Creation. I arise today through the strength of Heaven; light of sun, radiance of moon, splendour of fire, speed of lightning, swiftness of wind, depth of sea, stability of Earth, firmness of rock. I arise today, through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, through belief in the threeness, through confession of the oneness of the Creator of Creation. Happy are they that dwell in Thy house; they will ever praise Thee. Happy is the people who thus fare; yea, happy is the people whose God is the Lord. I will extol Thee, my God, O King, and I will bless Thy name for ever and ever. Every day will I bless Three, and I will praise Thy name for ever and ever. Great is the Lord, and highly to be praised; His greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall laud Thy works to another, and shall declare Thy mighty acts. On the majestic glory of Thy splendour, and on Thy wonderous deeds will I meditate. And humans shall proclaim the might of Thy tremendous acts, and I will recount Thy greatness. They shall make known the fame of Thy greatness. They shall make known the fame of Thy great goodness, and shall exult in they righteousness. The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, long forbearing, and abundant in kindness. The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works. All Thy works shall praise Thee, O Old, and Thy faithful ones shall bless Thee. They shall declare the glory of Thy kingdom, and talk of Thy might; to make known to the sons of humans His mighty acts, and the glorious majesty of His kingdom. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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Located off of Virginiatown Road and McCourtney Road, residents of the 83 homesites of Cresleigh Havenwood will benefit from a brand new neighborhood in the charming City of Lincoln. Palo Verde Park, is just down the street and there’s plenty of recreation to take part in all around town. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/
Tell Me What to Do. I’m Sorry. Protect Me. I Can’t. Pray for Me. Help. It’s No Use Anyway.
So much for what you know, My dear Devout. Now let me tell you some things you may not know. When you receive this Sacramento, Spiritual Grace is conferred, and Virtue dimmed is restored to its original beauty. Once covered with soot and sin, the pallid soul will soon blush into a full palette of colours. Sometimes this grace is so great and devotion so great and devotion so pent that they burst, coursing through not just the mind, but the body, replacing weakness with strength. Yet, our own tepidity and negligence cause a great deal of pain, even misery. We should be drawn to receive You, O Christ, with greater affection, but we are not. How is this possible since You are the Total Hope, Total Merit, of those who will be saved? You are our Sanctification and Redemption, are you not? Consolation of us poor wayfarers, and the Eternal Fruition of the Saints? And so it is that Jesus Christ Grieves—and grieves again—that so many turn so little to this Salutary Mystery, which praises Heaven and supports the World! Alas, how blind, how hard, the human heart is! We should develop more devotion to the Ineffable Gift we receive every Sunday. If our devotion takes a dip, as for the rest of these days of the week, then we should do something about it. In any given year as many as 30 percent of the adults and 20 percent of the children and adolescents in the United States of America display serious psychological disturbances and are in need of clinical treatment. It is estimated that up to 25 percent of adults have a significant anxiety disorder (in flexible and maladaptive personality traits), 1 percent has schizophrenia (loses touch with reality for an extended period of time), 1 experiences the brain deterioration of Alzheimer’s disease, and 11 percent abuse alcohol or other drugs. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Add to these figures as many as 600,000 suicide attempts, 500,000 sexual assaults by physical force, and 3 million cases of child abuse each year, and it becomes apparent that abnormal psychological functioning is a pervasive problem in this country. The numbers and rates in other countries are similarly high. Furthermore, most people go through periods of extreme tension, demoralization, or other forms of psychological discomfort in their lives and at such times experience at least some of the distress associated with psychological disorders. It is tempting to conclude that unique characteristics of the modern World are responsible for these numerous emotional problems—perhaps rapid technological change, the growing threats of terrorism, or a decline in religious, family, or other support systems. Although the special pressures of modern life probably do contribute to psychological dysfunctioing, they are hardly its primary cause. Historical records demonstrate every society, past and present has witnessed psychological abnormality. Perhaps, then, the proper place to begin our examination of abnormal behavior and treatment is in the past. As we look back, we can see how each society has struggled to understand and treat psychological problems, and we can observe that many present-day ideas and treatments have roots in the past. A look backward makes it clear that progress in the understanding and treatment of mental disorders has already been a steady movement forward. In fact, many of the inadequacies and controversies that mark the clinical field today parallel those of the past. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
At the same time, looking back can help us to appreciate the significance of recent breakthroughs and the importance of the journey that lies ahead. Most of our knowledge of prehistoric societies has been acquired indirectly and is based on inferences made from archaeological discoveries. Historians scrutinize the unearthed bones, artwork, and other remnants of ancient societies to find clues to people’s customs and beliefs. Any conclusions are at the best tentative and are always subject to revision in the face of new discoveries. Thus our knowledge of how ancient societies viewed and treated people with mental disturbances is limited. Most historians believe that prehistoric societies regarded abnormal behaviour as the work of evil spirits. These early societies apparently explained all phenomena as resulting from the actions of magical, sometimes sinister beings who controlled the World. In particular, they viewed the human body and mind as a battle ground between external forces of good and evil. Abnormal behaviour was typically interpreted as a victory by evil spirits, and the cure for such behaviour was to force the demons from a victim’s body. This supernatural view of abnormality may have begun as far back as the Stone Age, a half-million years ago. Some skulls from that period recovered in Europe and South America show evidence of an operation called trephination, in which a stone instrument, or trephine, was used to cut away a circular section of the skull. Historians surmise that this operation was performed as a treatment for severe abnormal behaviour—either hallucinations, which people saw or heard things not actually present, or melancholia, characterized by extreme sadness and immobility. The purpose of opening the skull was to release the evil spirits that were supposedly causing the problem. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
In recent decades, some historians have questioned whether Stone Age people actually believe that evil spirits caused abnormal behaviour. Trephination may instead have been used to remove bone splinters or blood clots caused by stone weapons during tribal warfare. Either way, later societies clearly did attribute abnormal behaviour to possession by demons. Egyptian, Chinese, and Hebrew writings all account for psychological deviance this way. The Christian Bible, for example, describes how an evil spirit from the Lord affected King Saul and how David feigned madness in order to convince his enemies that he was visited by divine forces. However, did anyone else find it odd that when King David’s newborn baby was dreadfully sick near death, David prayed night and day, believing that God could heal his child. He would not eat or drink; he did not shave or shower. He did not attend to any business. He would not do anything but pray, crying out to God. Despite David’s passionate prayers, on the seventh day the child died. David’s servants worried how they were going to tell the king that his baby was dead. They thought he would be so devastated, so distraught that he could not handle it. However, when David finally figured out what had happened, he surprised them all. He got up off the floor, washed his face, and put on some fresh clothes. Then he asked his servants to bring him some food, and he sat down and ate a meal. His servants were confused. They said, “David, when your child was alive, you fasted and prayed. But now that he is gone, you act as though nothing is wrong.” David answered, “Yes, I fasted and prayed when my son was sick, thinking that God might heal him. But now that he is gone, I cannot bring him back. He will not return to me, but I will go to be with him.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
“But now that he is gone, I cannot bring him back. He will not return to me, but I will go to be with him.” Notice David’s attitude. He did not get bitter. He did not question God. He could have snarled, “God, I thought You loved me. Why didn’t You answer my prayers?” David did not do that. He dared to trust God in the midst of his disappointment. He washed his face and moved on with his life. The treatment for abnormality in these early societies was often exorcism. The idea was to coax the evil spirits to leave or to make the person’s body an uncomfortable place in which to live. A shaman, or priest, might recite prayers, plead with the evil spirits, insult them, perform magic, make loud noises, or have the person drink bitter potions. If these techniques failed, the shaman performed a more extreme form of exorcism, such as whipping or starving the person. The key feature of antisocial personality disorder (hereafter abbreviated as ASPD) is a pervasive pattern od disregard for and violation of other persons’ rights. This pattern is manifested in failure to conform to social norms, deceitfulness, lying, impulsivity, aggressiveness, disregard for the safety of others, irresponsibility, and lack of remorse for wrongdoing to others. The pattern is evidenced by age 18 and is foreshadowed by conduct disorder before the age of 15. People with ASPD behave as if the rules and norms of society do not apply to them. Of all the personality disorders, ASPD is characterized by the greatest hostility. Also, not that the terms psychopathy and sociopathy have often been used to descried ASPD. They argue that the distinction between the two lies in the origins of the disorder: Psychopathy arises from a constitutional disposition, whereas sociopathy results from poor socialization, typically defective parenting. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Like all other personality disorders, ASPD is associated with numerous and serious interpersonal implications. In a unique comparative study, it was found that adolescents who went on to develop ASPD as young adults were typified by trouble with the law, a poor work record, and early cohabitation. In contrast, those who developed other personality disorders were characterized more by social isolation and other types of problematic interpersonal relations. People with symptoms of ASPD tend to endorse a ludus (game-playing) love style, and score low on the eros (pleasures of the flesh) love style. The ludus love styles appears to fit well with ASPD in that it is not an intimate means of relating to another person, and may well be seen as irritating by a large percentage of the population. This irritation and displeasure in others are obviously of little concern to a person with ASPD. On the contrary, the manipulations and “mind games” played upon others may be sources of satisfaction and amusement for such a person. The family-of-origin backgrounds of people with ASPD are expectedly troublesome. Poor relations with parents and a history of physical abuse have been tired to symptoms of ASPD. Gross neglect, to the point of abuse, is also fairly common in the family backgrounds of those with ASPD. Parental absence is equally prevalent in these families, especially through separation, divorce, death, or incarceration. A provocative hypothesis that may link these dysfunctional family-of-origin experiences with adult ASPD centers around a breakdown in the normal development of empathy. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
During childhood, those who will later develop ASPD learn to recode vicarious fear as excitement and their victims’ suffering as something akin to righteous punishment. One must entertain the possibility that this inverted emotional reaction was learned from the parents of future adults with ASPD may model an emotional indifference to their children’s suffering—an indifference that the children eventually internalize, and with which they then treat others. It would be a gross oversimplification to asset that parental neglect and abuse lead to ASPD. Parental abuse may be an adequate explanation for the aggressiveness and hostility of those with ASPD, but it does not explain their resistance to control and conformity with social norms. The combination of parental neglect and abuse with sporadic and harsh discipline is what leads more specifically to ASPD. The parents of future adults with ASPD, who perhaps have psychosocial problems of their own, may oscillate between excessive permissiveness due to their absence, and stern discipline driven by unchecked impulse. This accordingly makes these children resent any intrusion, while placing a high premium on independence and a lack of interference from others. Like empathy breakdown hypothesis, this formulation has considerable intuitive appeal, but has yet to be fully tested and supported empirically. People with ASPD (antisocial personality disorder) appear to lack a social conscience. They shamelessly exploit, manipulate, and aggress against others, with no apparent remorse. They often run afoul of the law and have difficulties in their work and personal relationships. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
People with ASPD have an orientation toward romantic relationship that has more to do with playing games than establishing a mutually meaningful connection. One often finds considerable dysfunction in the family backgrounds of those with ASPD, replete with the attendant physical abuse and neglect. Sporadic and harsh parental discipline may also figure into the etiology of this personality disorder. These disordered family processes may contribute to ASPD through modeling the replacement of vicarious fear with excitement, and by creating hostility and fierce independence as a result of stern but sporadic discipline. To live in the present moment, making the most of this day, we must forgive those people who have hurt us in the past. “Now we recognize and know that the Law is good if anyone uses it lawfully [for the purpose for which it was designed], knowing and understanding this: that the Law is not enacted for the righteous (the upright and just, who are in right standing with God), but for the lawless and unruly, for the ungodly and sinful, for the irreverent and profane, for those who strike and beat and [even] murder fathers and strike and [beat and [even] murder mothers, for manslayers, [for] impure and immoral persons, those who abuse themselves with humans, kidnapers, liars, perjurers—and whatever else is opposed to wholesome teaching and sound doctrine,” reports I Timothy 2.8-10. Too often, we try to collect our debts from other people. When somebody hurts us, we feel like they owe us. Somebody should pay for that pain we have suffered! That is what happen when one is trapped in the past. One is always trying to collect those debts. One will take it out on other people even thought they were not even involved. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Moreover, one should not drag something that happened in the past into one’s relationships today. Do not punish one’s spouse, children, pets, friends, neighbours, nor coworker for something that happened to one when one was growing up. Instead, turn it over to God. Keep your heart free from bitterness and resentment, and do not try to collect a debt that only God can pay. Start each day afresh and anew, especially in your family relationship. Do not let little things build up. Do not harbour unforgiveness and resentment. Do not allow the attitude of entitlement to overcome you. If one is not careful, even though vengeful snubs may seem insignificant to one, but over time that bitter attitude will build up, and it will end up causing one major problems. “Holding fast to faith (that leaning of the entire human personality on God in absolute trust and confidence) and having a good (clear) conscience. By rejecting and thrusting from them [their conscience], some individuals have made shipwreck of their faith,” reports I Timothy 1.19. If one is poisoned with unforgiveness, bitterness, or resentment on the inside, one has got to do one’s best to keep one’s own heart free and clean, because it will eventually show up on the outside. One cannot keep it buried. It will come out and begin to affect one’s personality. One will be hard to get alone with, easily offended, uptight, and negative. “You are to deliver this human over to Satan for physical discipline [to destroy carnal lusts which prompted one to incest], that [one’s] spirit may [yet] one saved in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ,” reports I Corinthians 5.5. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
That is why the Scripture instructs us to put on a fresh new attitude every morning. Each morning, forgive the people who hurt you. Every morning, let go of your disappointments and setbacks. Each new morning, receive God’s mercy and forgiveness for the mistakes one has made, and forgive others for the hurts they have inflicted on one. Today focus on one’s possibilities; focus on what one can change rather than what one cannot change. What is done is done. If somebody offended, disappointed, or mistreated one yesterday, either one can get bitter or one can forgive them and move on. Remember, if one refuses to forgive others, God will not forgive one. If one lost one’s temper (went off) yesterday, quit dwelling on it. One cannot undo that. One needs to ask for forgiveness and then do better today. Was your boss, Dr. Blake, rude to you and jumped down your throat? Let it go. Maybe she sees great potential in you and expects you to put in 110 percent so you can excel. Do not go to work tomorrow with a chip on your shoulder. It is a new day. If things did not workout in a situation the way you thought they would, that is okay, God has something better for you. Press on and know that all things work out for the best for those who love God. However, do not take the easy way out and evade responsibility for your words or actions. If you have done wrong, offended someone or hurt somebody, you should seek that person’s forgiveness. However, if you are trying to fix something that you know there is no way to fix, and you have done everything you can do, you must simply leave that up to God. Receive His mercy and go out to live a successful life now. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
In obedience to the revelation commanding the New York Saints to move to Ohio, all those living in New York who belonged to the church prepared to leave as soon as spring arrived. Early in the spring of 1831 many gathered at a house on the Erie Canal, which had been rented by Joseph’s father, Joseph Smith, Sr. The Erie Canal crossed the state of New York and was actually only a large ditch. It was scarcely wider than a present-day city street, and the water in it was about four feet deep. The boats were pulled along the canal by horses which walked along a pathway at the edge of the canal. It was quite expensive to travel by canal, but the Saints considered this the best way to travel with their women and children. They rented a boat to save expenses. This boat would take them by canal to Buffalo, and there they would take a lake boat on Lake Erie to a point near Kirtland. The prospects of traveling so far caused much excitement among the people, for most of the had not been farther than a few miles from their homes. About eighty of them gathered together. Each brought one’s personal belongings and as much food as was considered necessary for the trip. A friend gave Joseph’s mother, Lucy Smith, seventeen dollars (2021 adjusted for inflation $540.46), which she later used to buy food for those who had not brought enough. One day while they were traveling on the canal, there was a breakdown and they had to wait until the canal was repaired. That evening some of the men preached to a large number of people who gathered. These people asked them to return and preach again the next night, but they breakdown had been repaired and by morning the Saints were on their way again. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
They were met at Buffalo by another group of Saints who were going to Ohio. They all were anxious to be on their way to Kirtland, but there was four feet of ice on the lake and boats could leave. Food and money were so limited that the Saints were faced with the problem of where to stay. Mother Smith remembered that her brother’s former partner was now a lack-boat captain, and she had no trouble finding him. When she explained their trouble, he suggested that she and all her friends come on board his ship to wait until the ice broke so they could sail. After boarding the boat the little band of pilgrims knelt in prayer on the deck to thank God this this pressing problem had been solved. Almost immediately the ice broke, opened up a channel, and they were able to sail. The ice closed behind them and it was three weeks before another boat left the port. The trip was long and stormy. The boat was reported lost and their Kirtland friends feared they might never see them again. At last, weary with the storms, the boatload of Saints landed about eleven miles from Kirtland. Two young men walked to Kirtland, and soon the Kirtland Saints were taking them home. The reunion was a happy one and everyone enjoyed the breakfast at the Edward Partridge Home. For many of them it was the first real meal they had eaten in weeks. In the Early months of 1831 Orson Pratt walked from New York to Kirtland (about three hundred miles) preaching as he traveled. His missionary efforts were very successful and he baptized many people. Lyman Wight traveled about six hundred miles through Ohio and Pennsylvania, preaching as he went. He baptized 393 people. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Many of these newly baptized Saints obeyed God’s instructions to father to Kirtland. As summer neared practically all those who belonged to the church, with the exception of the little band in Missouri, were living in Kirtland. It was a strain on the small community to care for so many people. Some were very poor. Others were families of missionaries who were away preaching, and were thus unable to earn a livelihood for their families. All who came to Kirtland needed homes, and many were without sufficient food and clothing. God wished His people to be equal and to have their need supplied. To help the Saints know how to care for so many people, a revelation was given through Joseph Smith in May 1831, in which Edward Partridge was given the responsibility of organizing the people. Instructions given at the time have formed the basis for the law of the church which teaches people to be unselfish and to have consideration one for another. God instructed His Saints to build a storehouse. All things, both money and food which were more than was needful for the want of the people, were to be brought to the storehouse to be kept in the hands of the bishop. Those who were in need could then go to the storehouse and receive their needs. According to this law they were to be given help in accordance with the size of their families and the amount of help they required. In this revelation a promise was given to those who would be obedient to this law and contribute to the storehouse: “Behold, this shall be an example unto my servant Edward Partridge, in other places, in all churches. And whoso is found a faithful, a just, and a wise steward, shall enter into the joy of one’s Lord, and shall inherit eternal life.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
A General Conference was held at Kirtland on June 6, 1831. All the elders who could attend were there, for Joseph had written them telling them God had instructed all who possibly could to attend this Conference. By revelation God commanded Joseph and Oliver Cowdery to ordain each other to the office of the high priest. They then ordained sixteen other men to this same office. The office of high priest is the highest office in the Melchisedec priesthood. It is the office held by Jesus Christ, the Son of God. During this conference a revelation was given through Joseph Smith, Jr., which indicated the future location of Zion: “I, the Lord, will make known unto you what I will that ye shall do from this time until the next Conference, which shall be held in Missouri, upon the land which I will consecrate unto my people.” This caused much excitement because Missouri was far away on the edge of the Indian country. Father, I dare to forgive others, because I know You have forgiven me. Help me each day to be tenderhearted, to forgive those people who have hurt me, used me, or otherwise brought pain into my life. Prayer tries to imitate the death of cry of dying creatures, the vocal expression of their fear of death. Such an imitation of the physical side of dying should being with it, momentarily, the associated death fear whose gravity and importance naturally swallow up all lesser fears. If this exercise is done twice daily, these lesser fears gradually become weaker, while the fear of death is itself overcome. If the Kingdom of Heaven is atmospheric, then why should we trouble to become unselfish, disciplined, and intelligent? Why bother to improve our character at all? No! the wise student does not think like this. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
The power of good behaviour and payer augment the body’s energy. A heavy weight which one could hardly lift ordinarily can be lifted much more easily if a deep, long prayer is first taken. A long forward leap or a high jump can be more successfully achieved by following the same method. Health and strength are restored to an extend as long as one believes. When a faithful prayer is united to keen thought, and when the fused result is driven upwards physically to the brain and mentally in lofty aspirations to the Soul, the visitant will know by a beautiful change of consciousness that it is welcome. The importance of prayer is not only a physical one, because prayer enables us to get the full manifestation of the lifeforce in the body, but also because it allows for a fuller and freer manifestation of the mind. The danger of developing the skills of prayer for the sake of developing personal powers is that if the powers are finally gained, the spiritual path may be lost. You know we have sung that song, “When we all get to Heaven, we will sing and shout the victory.” We have to put victory off until then; but if we would learn to act on the Word, we could shout the victory here on Earth. Jesus said we are to pray, Thy will be done in Earth, as it is in Heaven. It is God’s will that we have victory here and that we shout it here on Earth. However, this does not come overnight. I drive a car, but I did not learn to drive a car in one day. It took me months (or years because I am still learning) of study and practice. The first few lessons I thought I would never learn, but each time it became easier. The first I saw one of those big BMW’s, I wanted to drive it, but was nervous. I thought it is so beautiful. I will have to learn how to drive. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
If you say, “Well, I believe in prayer, then prayer ought to work for me,” in the same way you could say, “I believe in driving, therefore I ought to be able to drive.” Just because you believe in driving does not mean you can get in that BMW M760Li XDrive sedan and drive it. You might not know how to operate it. You might push the wrong button! Well, what makes us think the Word of God is any different? If we are going to operate in the Word accurately, we will have to spend time learning. It is the same with the law of electricity. If you do not understand the laws that govern electricity, you are liable to get into trouble. If you violate the laws that govern it, the same power that will wash your clothes and cook your food and heat your house will kill you. The Word of God is no less powerful. It operates on laws that will work when applied by whosoever will. If I got in an airplane and said, “Well, I know that the book says if you are going to climb over a 50-foot obstacle in 1200 feet, you must use 20-degree flaps, but I just do not feel like it. It looks to me like it ought to clear the hanger without flaps.” It does not matter how I feel or how it looks, I better go by what the book says or I am going to be in trouble. So are our prayers in trouble when we do not use God’s rulebook. When you do thing accurately according to the Word of God, you have all Heaven behind you and the Word will work for you. God’s Word is the Answer. We could sum it up by saying that prayer is not telling God the problem. Whatever you desire is what you should pray, not the problems. Turn loose of the problem. Take hold of the answer and make it your prayer and your confession of faith. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
As an example, let us say you have a financial need. You would pray: Father, in the name of Jesus, Your Word says that You will supply all my need according to Your riches in glory by Christ Jesus. Your Word says that whatsoever things I desire when I pray to believe that I received them. Therefore I believe that my needs are supplied according to Your riches in glory by Christ Jesus. I have given; therefore, it is given to me—good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over. I have abundance and there is no lack. I sow bountifully; therefore, I reap bountifully. Father, You make all grace abound toward me and I, having all sufficiency in all things, do abound to every good work. For the Lord is my Shepherd and I do not want. The Word of God is the answer. Pray the Word—it works! Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. You have been given a glimpse of the goal. Now you must strive to attain that goal. The glimpse itself has enabled 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. Merely to enjoy such a glimpse is not enough. It must be turned to use, made into a standard for thought and living, applied to every situation in which one finds oneself. One must let its beneficent memory shed peace, goodwill, and kindliness on all around. The illuminatory experience may come to one who is without previous preparation, seeking, effort, or self-discipline. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
However, if it comes so unexpectedly it leaves just as unexpectedly. The visitant is transient. The effects are permanent. If it be asked why it should come to such a person, who neither desired nor strove for it, when others are unable to secure it despite years of seeking it, the answer must be that one worked for it in earlier lives. One has forgotten oneself for an interval but the illumination recalls one to the quest even though it passes away: hence the permanency of its moral and mystical results. What one see in that sudden flash is to be slowly worked out in one’s character and conduct during the hours and months of subsequent years. Indeed, every minute offers the chance to transform oneself by the smallest of degrees. What one feels during those moments one has to become during the years that follow. All one’s life has to converge upon this divine focus, all one’s experience has to draw its supreme significance from it. Jonah the Old Testament prophet had the same problem of many modern-day Christians: he ran away from his own great calling. The nonactualizing Christian may not be swallowed by a whale, but probably God will arrange some modern kind of encounter that will awaken us to our greatness and unique mission in life. Jesus showed the ability to jar people into an awareness of their potential for fulfillment. According to the Gospel narratives, Jesus moved fancy women and men, tax collectors, religious workers, fishermen, shepherds, soldiers—anyone. Ironically, in surrendering to personal encounter with Jesus, they discovered how valuable and great they themselves were! #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Yet in the church today, there are often messages given to people that say: “Do not think too highly of yourself”; “There is nothing great about you; only God is great”; “Pride goes before the fall.” This can lead to a false sense of humility or even a self-hatred. The individual who has difficulty accepting one’s genuine and God-given strengths often discounts compliments instead of graciously receiving and appreciating them. One probably has difficulty complimenting or praising others too. The Scriptures present a different picture of the believer. Just as God gives his glory to Christ, Jesus gives His glory to the Christian (John 17.22). The actualizing Christian discovers this and feels gratitude, strength, and joy. One can vernalize one’s feelings by such phrases as “I am adequate,” “I am capable,” “I am strong,” and “I am powerful.”” The awareness of one’s strengths, gifts, and talents is an important part of healthy self-love and self-esteem. The actualizing alternative to an overbearing strength is personal power. When one does not need to use absolute control over others or oneself, but rather feels that one is a vessel through which the power of the Holy Spirit is expressed, then one can say with Paul: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me,” reports Galatians 2.20. When this happens, relationships cease to be authoritarian, controlling, or manipulative, but rather emphasize cooperation and give maximum space to be. Sensing one’s strengths is reflected in an unpretentious kind of self-confidence. Because the actualizing Christian’s strength is rooted in the grace of God, one shares in God’s serenity. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Psalmist expressed it this way: “He is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers,” reports Psalm 1.3. This is not the manipulative form of strength that we saw in the past; the striving Christian was rigid, tense, and compulsive. Rather, this genuine type of strength is a quiet, relaxed flow of power from the presence of the Holy Spirit in one’s life. The actualizing Christian can do great things in the World, but the way that these things are done does not come across to others as arrogant, self-conscious, or forced. The actualizing Christian experiences firsthand the biblical principle, “Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord,” reports Zechariah 4.6. O our Father, thy Sky, hear us and please make us strong. O our Mother the Earth, please hear us and give us support. O spirit of the East, send us your Wisdom. O Spirit of the South, may we tread your path of life. O Spirit of the West, may we always be ready for the long journey. O Spirit of the North, please purify us with your cleansing winds. Magnified and sanctified be the name of God throughout the World which He hath created according to His will. May He establish His kingdom during the days of your life and during the life of all the house of America, speedily yea, soon; and ye, Amen. May His great name be blessed for ever and ever. Exalted be honoured be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, whose glory transcends, yes, us beyond all praises, hymns, and blessings that humans can render unto Him; and say ye, Amen. May there be abundant peace from Heaven, and life for us and for all America; and say ye, Amen. May He who establisheth peace in the Heavens, grant peace unto us and unto all America; and say ye, Amen. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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I Will Pray for You. I Will Suffer for you. Do Not Hurt Me. See What a Big Heart I Have?
Humans in twenty-first century have been cut adrift in a rudderless yacht on an uncharted sea. Abnormal psychological functioning is deviant, but deviant from what? Sometimes people’s behaviours, thoughts, and emotions are different from those that are considered normal in our place and time. We do not expect people to cry themselves to sleep each night, wish themselves dead, or obey voices that no one else hears. In short, behaviour, thoughts, and emotions are deemed abnormal when they violated a society’s ideas about proper functioning. Each society established norms—explicit and implicit rules for proper conduct. Behaviour that violates legal norms is called criminal. Behaviour, thoughts, and emotions that violate norms of psychological functioning are called abnormal. Judgments of abnormality vary from society to society. A society’s norms grow from its particular culture—its history, values, institutions, habits, skills, technology, and arts. A society that values competition and assertiveness may accept aggressive behaviour, whereas one that emphasizes cooperation and gentleness may consider aggressive behaviour unacceptable and even abnormal. A society’s values may also change over time, causing its views of what is psychologically abnormal to change as well. In Western society, for example, a woman’s participation in the business World was widely considered inappropriate and strange one hundred and twenty years ago. Today the same behaviour is valued. Judgements of abnormality depend on specific circumstances as well as on cultural norms. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Many painful human experiences produce intense reactions—largescale catastrophes and disasters, assaults, child abuse, war, terminal illness, chronic pain. Is there an “appropriate” way to react to such things? Should we ever call reactions to them abnormal? Even functioning that is considered unusual does not necessarily qualify as abnormal. According to many clinical theorists, behaviour, ideas, or emotions usually have to cause distress before they can be labeled abnormal. Should we consider that feelings of distress must always be present before a person’s functioning can be considered abnormal? Not necessarily. Some people who function abnormally maintain a beneficial frame of mind. Abnormal behaviour tends to be dysfunctional; that is, it interferes with daily functioning. It so upsets, distracts, or confuses people that they cannot care for themselves properly, participate in ordinary social interactions, or work productively. Some people have to quit their jobs, leave their families, and are prepared to withdraw from the productive lives they once lead. Here again one’s culture plays a role in the definition of abnormality. Our society hold that it is important to carry out daily activities in an effective, self-enhanced manner. The behaviour of some people is considered abnormal and undesirable, whereas others, who continue to perform well in their jobs and enjoy fulfilling relationships, would probably be considered simply unusual. Then again, dysfunction alone does not necessarily indicate psychological abnormality. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
Some people fast or in other ways deprive themselves of things they need as a means of protesting social injustice. Far from receiving a clinical label of some kind, they are widely viewed as admirable people—caring, sacrificing, even heroic. Perhaps the ultimate in psychological dysfunctioning is behaviour that becomes dangerous to oneself or others. Individuals whose behaviour is consistently careless, hostile, or confused may be placing themselves or those around them at risk. Although danger is often cited as a feature of abnormal psychological functioning, research suggests that it is actually the exception rather than the rule. Despite popular misconceptions, most people struggling with anxiety, depression, and even bizarre thinking pose no immediate danger to themselves or to anyone else. If the concept of abnormality depends so heavily on social norms and values, it is no wonder that efforts to define psychological abnormality typically raise as many questions as they answer. Ultimately, each society selects general criteria for defining abnormality and then uses those criteria to judge particular cases. Noting society’s role in the process, the whole concept of mental illness may be considered invalid, a myth of sorts. The deviations that society calls abnormal are simply “problems in living,” not signs of something wrong within the person. Societies invent the concept of mental illness so that they can better control or change people whose unusual patterns of functioning upset or threaten the social order. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
Even if we assume that psychological abnormality is a valid concept and that it can indeed be defined, we may be unable to apply our definition consistently. If a behaviour—excessive use of alcohol among college students, says—is familiar enough, the society may fail to recognize that it is deviant, distressful, dysfunctional, and dangerous. Thousands of college students throughout the United States of America are so dependent on alcohol that it interferes with their personal and academic lives, causes them great discomfort, jeopardizes their health, and often endangers them and the people around them. Yet their problem often goes unnoticed, certainly undiagnosed, by college administrators, others students, and health professionals. Alcohol is so much a part of the college subculture that it is easy to overlook drinking behaviour that has become abnormal. Conversely, a society may have trouble distinguishing between an abnormality that requires intervention and an eccentricity, or marked individuality, with which others have no right to interfere. From time to time we see or hear about people who behave in ways we consider strange, such as a man who lives alone with two dozen cats and rarely talks to other people. The behaviour of such people is deviant, and it may well be distressful and dysfunctional, yet many professionals think of it as eccentric rather than abnormal. In short, while we may agree to define psychological abnormalities as patterns of functioning that are deviant, distressful, dysfunctional, and sometimes dangerous, we should be clear that these criteria are often vague and subjective. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
When is a pattern of behaviour deviant, distressful, dysfunctional, and dangerous enough to be considered abnormal? The question may be impossible to answer. Few of the current categories of abnormality that we will deal with are as clear-cut as they may seem, and most continue to be debated by clinicians. Furthermore, the term “mental illness” has been out of fashion since the late nineteenth century, the more politically correct term is “dysfunctional.” The term mental illness for a lot of people is scary. Some people fear that if they admit they have some dysfunctional aspect of their behaviour that they will be locked up in a lunatic asylum and that medical history will follow them all their lives and stigmatize them, making it impossible to have gainful employment. However, “It is not just people who cannot find a job, or cannot fit in society that struggle with depression sometimes,” says Jared Padalecki. It is significant that Communist leaders like Lenin despised all schools of spiritual thought, denounced religion, and scored metaphysical reflection. This is now the nominal inheritance of half the World, most particularly the so-called workers’ class. If social justice means that every human, however deprived one’s background, should have a chance to develop oneself and to better one’s standards of living, then it is certainly a good thing. However, if it means the forced regimentation of everyone, the compulsory equalization of everything, the denial of individuality and the destruction of freedom, then it is surely a bad thing. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
If we only pause to consider that half the entire human race has fallen under the enforced leadership and tyrannical domination of those who would limit humans to their ego and reality to matter, we may see how urgently necessary is an arrest to this downward trend. The World is in a state of a spiritual crisis. Where the physical body is cherished as the sole reality and made the sole basis for social and political reform, where hate-driven humans advocate physical violence as the sole means of effecting progress, be sure of the presence of evil forces, dangers to society, ignorant opponents of truth, and enemies of the Light. It is very meaningful that the filthy abuse which some tyrants put into their writings against idealists is no longer living psychologist and philosophers in the utter blindness which was left to them. More and more they begin to question the nature of consciousness as well as its relationship to the external World, more and more they investigate borderland experiences like telepathy and hypnotism. On the question of consciousness’ relationship to the brain they are now arguing quite widely, but, for obvious reasons, they remain unable to come to definitive conclusions on which all could agree. They are not satisfied with the completely materialistic answer and yet dare not venture into the purely mentalistic one. Meanwhile they go on debating, and so long as this continues, it is spiritually much healthier than their state of sixty years ago. Problems are being stated and solutions are being discussed. If people with an unenlightened inheritance overshadows it all, that cannot be helped in a totalitarian Communist country. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
At the present stage of history the truth must be left out in such a land, but it cannot be left out forever. Out of all their mental and verbal activity, the people will have to draw a little nearer to it intellectually. What is happening on a deeper plane is outside their knowledge. No materialistic organization of society can prevent the appearance and development of spirituality in the individual, but it can create the conditions which will obstruct the appearance or hinder the development of spirituality. Narcissistic personality disorder (hereafter abbreviated as NPD) has to be one of the most interpersonally obnoxious of the personality disorder. People with NPD have an exaggerate sense of self-worth and entitlement, coupled with a nearly insatiable thirst for attention and acclaim. Symptoms include a grandiose sense of self-importance, preoccupations with fantasies of success and power, a belief that the self is special and should only be associated with other high-status and powerful people, a need for excessive admiration, a voracious sense of entitlement, exploiting others for personal benefit, lack of empathy, envy of others, or a belief that others envy the self, and arrogance. The negative effects of this behaviour on others, as well as the wrongfulness of exploiting others for personal gain, are obscured by the arrogance of the individual. On a psychosocial level, the person with NPD wishes for active love and protection, while simultaneously fearing blame, being ignored, or being controlled by others. The constitution of NPD dramatically interferes with the development and maintenance of intimate interpersonal relationships. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
Based on clinical observations, several destructive interpersonal motifs have been noted to be expressed by people with NPD. One of these is a pursuit of metamorphosis—that is, a fantasy that association and intimacy with powerful others will bring transformation and evolution from inferiority and insecurity. In the core of every narcissistic personality there exists, more or less pronounced, experience of insecurity and inferiority. A second motif is selective interpersonal repulsion, or a loathing and systematic persecution of those on whom persons with NPD project their own conflicts. When such a person recognizes some unacceptable aspect of one’s own self in another individual, this individual must be cast off and put down. Finally, the pathological intolerance of criticism is a result of the doubly noxious nature of criticism for a person with NPD. Criticism serves to threaten the person’s sense of grandiosity, and intensify the person’s internal experience of inferiority and insecurity. Consequently, the person will respond to criticism with aggression and rage. It scarcely bears mentioning that those with NPD rarely develop satisfying and close personal relationships. Part of this problem stems from these individuals’ hostility and devaluation of others. This constitutes the so-called “narcissist’s dilemma”: holding other in contempt while simultaneously relying on them for positive regard and affirmation. Symptoms of NPD are negatively associated with receiving social support from others, and positively associated with loneliness and conflict with others. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
Nevertheless, individuals with NPD may feel that there are a lot of people available who think very highly of them. Among married people, NPD is associated with domestic violence, and interest in extramarital relations. Among the important components of the interpersonal troubles experienced by those with NPD are the negative reactions of others to their conduct. When subjects in two studies viewed a person with NPD presented on DVD, they reacted with rejection and a negative mood. These findings are reminiscent of those in the literature on depression indicating that depressed people irritate others and elicits rejection from them. Although people with NPD are probably rejected for different reasons, the end results are similar to those experienced by depressed persons: loneliness, a lack of social support, and conflictual interactions with others. Rejection from others may cause great aggravation for some persons with NPD, while being of virtually no concern to others. NPD exists on a continuum ranging from an oblivious subtype to a hypervigilant subtype. Whereas a person with the oblivious subtype has no awareness at all of one’s impact on other people, the individual with the hypervigilant subtype is on the lookout for any sign of criticism or put-down from others. The interpersonal rejection that often follows in the wake of interpersonal interactions must surely contribute to substantial aggravation for the person with the hypervigilant NPD. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Perhaps the most scientifically plausible account of the etiology of NPD is based on social learning theory; it places origins of the disorder in excessive and unconditional parental valuation and attention to the point of worship. In such an interpersonal context, the parents are viewed as devoting themselves so fully to caring for their child and making one feel special that they sublimate their own needs to those of the child. Consequently, the child fails to develop an awareness or appreciation for the needs of other people. Years of living in such an environment also result in an unjustified sense of self-worth that must constantly be reinforced and polished in the face of any potential failure. This social learning phenomenon is identified by a combination of selfless, noncontingent love and adoration from the family; parental deference to the child; and an ever-present threat of al fall from grace in the pathogenesis of NPD. This account has considerable face validity for explaining the sense of grandiosity and lack of empathy that characterize this disorder. Although a social learning account of NPD enjoys some popularity and acceptance, psychodynamic accounts of the disorder are especially prevalent, and also point to early interpersonal experiences in its etiology. Within this literature there exists something of a controversy. Accordingly, self-psychological perspective, NPD is a manifestation of arrested development. An egocentric sense of grandiosity is seen as a normal part of early development. At this point in time, the child expects total nurturance and caring from parents, and develops selfobjects, which are images of other people as they relate to the self. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
Eventually, the infant begins to feel vulnerable upon becoming aware of the parents’ shortcomings. The child then defensively idealizes the parents and returns to a sense of self-grandiosity. These are sources of strength for the child when dealing with an uncertain World. Normally, this narcissism gives way to empathy and more realistic appraisals of the self and others. However, when maternal empathy and confirmation are defective, the grandiose self perseveres as a defense against the vulnerabilities inherent in life. NPD may also be a compensation for early emotional deprivation and unempathic mothering. This causes the child to feel unloved, resulting in rage being projected onto one’s parents. As a defense, the child develops a grandiose self by combining aspects of the self that are admired by the parents, a fantasized version of the self, and an idealized version of the parents. There is also a focus on simultaneous feelings of inferiority and grandiosity in NPD. There may additionally be some oral rage, a powerful aggression originally directed at caregivers who did not provide unconditional love and approval, as a casual agent in NPD. One may need to focus more on pathological psychosocial development in the etiology of NPD, and conclude arrested development to fully understand the condition. NPD (narcissistic personality disorder) involves a grandiose sense of self, interpersonal arrogance and exploitation, a desire for excessive admiration, and a lack of empathy. The interactions of a person with NPD are marked by the quest for metamorphosis (rising above inferiority via association with powerful others), selective interpersonal repulsion, and pathological reactions to even the slightest criticism. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
Obviously these traits and qualities render intimate interpersonal relationships nearly impossible. People with NPD are trapped between a need for other people to give them attention and admiration, and contempt for others. Their interpersonal lives are marked by conflict, loneliness, and rejection from others. A social learning hypothesis holds that this personality disorder is the result of excessive parental adoration and attention. Psychodynamic accounts of NPD also stress early parent-child relations, focusing on arrested or pathological development of the self image in relation to others. If one is serious about being well, if one really wants to be made physically and emotionally whole one must get up and get moving with one’s life. Do not lay around feeling sorry for one’s self. Do not make excuses; do not blame other people or circumstances that disappointed one. Instead, start forgiving the people who hurt one. Trust God, get up, and step into the great future He has for you. Today can be a turning point in your life, a season of new beginnings. Refuse to in a state of victimhood. Thing happen to us and we may never know why. However, do not use that as an excuse to sulk and be full of doom and gloom. Just because we do not know the answers does not mean that they do not exist. One has simply not discovered them yet. Trust God to workout the things one does not understand. God has your best interests at heart. That is faith, and that is the attitude that God honours. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
If you want to live your best life and become a success, you have to work hard and have faith in God. In God’s salutary presence no indecent thought, no unhealthy distraction, shall ever rear its ugly head. Why? Because one is about to welcome into one’s heart and hearth, however humble it may be, not an Angel, but the Lord of Angels. What a difference a distance makes! There is a World of distance between the Ark of the Covenant and its holy contents; between God’s unstainable Body and its unspeakable Virtue; between a sacrifice required by the Old Law and the Sacrifice of sacrifices required by the New Law; that is to say, the one prefigures the other, and the new bread that is host to God’s body completes the sacrifice. Every free action has two causes that come together to produce it. The one is moral, namely the will that determines the act; the other is physical, namely the power that executes it. When I walk toward an object, I must first want to go there. Second, my feet must take me there. A paralyzed mand who want to walk or an agile man who does not want to walk will both remain where they are. The body politic has the same moving causes. The same distinction can be made between the force and the will; the one under the name legislative power and the other under the name executive power. Nothing is done and ought to be done without their concurrence. We have seen that legislative power belongs to the people and can belong to it alone. On the contrary, it is easy to see, by the principles established above, that executive power cannot belong to the people at large in its role as legislator or sovereign, since this power consists solely of particular acts that are not within the province of the law, nor consequently of the sovereign, none of whose acts can avoid being laws. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
Therefore the public force must have an agent of its own that unifies it and gets it working in accordance with the directions of the general will, that serves as a means of communication between the state and the sovereign, and that accomplishes in humans. This is the reason for having a government in the state, something often badly confused with the sovereign, of which it is merely the minister. What then is the government? An intermediate body established between the subjects and the sovereign for their mutual communication, and charged with the execution of the laws and the preservation of liberty, both civil and political. The members of this body are called magistrates or kings, that is to say, governors, and the entire body bears the name prince. Therefore those who claim that the act by which a people submit itself to leaders is not a contract are quite correct. It is absolutely nothing but a commission, an employment in which the leaders, as simple officials of the sovereign exercise in its own name the power with which it has entrusted them. The sovereign can limit, modify, or appropriate this power as it pleases, since the alienation of such a right is incompatible with the nature of the social body and contrary to the purpose of the association. Therefore, I call government or supreme administration the legitimate exercise of executive power; I call prince or magistrate the human or the body charged with that administration. The willing seduction of the consumer into production has staggering implications. To understand why, it helps to remember that the market is premised on precisely the split between producer and consumer that is now being blurred. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
An elaborate market was not necessary when most people consumed what they themselves produced. It only became necessary when the task of consumption was separated from that of production. Conventional writers define the market narrowly as a capitalist, money-based phenomenon. Yet the market is merely another word for an exchange network, and there have been (and still are) many different kinds of exchange networks. In the West the most familiar to us is the profit-based, capitalist market. However, there are also socialist markets—exchange networks through which the goods or services produced by Ivan Ivanovich in Smolensk are traded for goods or services turned out by Johann Schmidt in East Berlin. There are markets based on money—but also markets based on barter. The market is neither capitalist nor socialist. It is a direct, inescapable consequence of the divorce of producer from consumer. Whenever this divorce occurs the market arises. And wherever the gap between consumer and producer narrows, the entire function, role, and power of the market is brought into question. The rise of presuming today, therefore, begins to change the role of the market in our lives. It is too early to know where this subtle but significant thrust is taking us. Certainly the market is not going to go away. We are not going to go back to premarket economies. What I have called Sector B—the exchange sector—is not going to shrivel up and vanish. We will, for a long time to come, continue to be heavily dependent upon the market. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
Nevertheless, the rise of presuming points strongly toward a fundamental change in the relationships between Sector A and Sector B—a set of relationships that Second Wave economist have until now virtually ignored. For presuming involves the “de-marketization” of at least certain activities and therefore a sharply altered role for the market in society. It suggests an economy of the future unlike any we have known—an economy that is no longer lopsidedly weighted in favour of either Sector A or Sector B. It points to the emergence of an economy that will resemble the First Wave nor Second Wave economics, but will, instead, fuse the characteristics of both into a new historic synthesis. The rise of the prosumer, powered by the soaring cost of many paid services, by the break down of Second Wave service bureaucracies, by the availability of Third Wave technologies, by the problems of structural unemployment, and by the many other converging factors, lead to a work-styles and life arrangements. If we permit ourselves to speculate, bearing in mind some of the shifts described earlier—such as the move toward de-synchronization and part-time paid work, the possible emergence of the electronic cottage, or the changed structure of family life—we can begin to discern some of these lifestyle changes. Thus we are moving toward a future economy in which very large numbers never hold full-time paid jobs, or in which “full-time” is redefined, as it has been in recent years, to mean a shorter and shorter workweek or work year. (In Sweden, where a law guaranteed all workers five weeks of paid vacation regardless of age or length of service, a normal work year was considered to be 1840 hours. In fact, absenteeism has run so high that a more realistic average per worker is 1600 hours per year.) #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
Large numbers of workers already do paid work for what averages out to only three of four says a week, or they take six months or a year off to pursue educational or recreational goals. This pattern may well grow stronger as two-paycheck households multiply. More people in the paid labour market-higher “labour participation rates,” as the economist put it—may very well go with reduced hours per worker. This casts the whole question of leisure into a new light. Once we recognize that much of our so-called leisure time is, in fact, spent producing goods and services for our own use—prosuming—then the old distinction between work and leisure falls apart. The question is not work versus leisure, but paid work for Sector B versus unpaid, self-directed, and self-monitored work for Sector A. In the Third Wave context new lifestyles based half on production exchange, half on production for use, become practical. Such lifestyles were, in fact, common in the early days of the industrial revolution among farm populations who were slowly being absorbed into the urban proletariat. For a long transitional period millions of people worked part-time in factories and part-time on the land, growing their own food, buying some of their necessities, making the rest. This pattern—but with twenty-first century technology for goods and food production, as well as immensely enhanced self-help methods for the production of many services. Instead of a dress pattern, for example, tomorrow’s prosumer might well buy a computer program the powers a “smart” electronic sewing machine. Even the clumsiest househusband, with such a computer program, could make his own custom-fitted shirts. Mechanically inclined tinkers could do more than tune up their autos. They could actually half-build them. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
It is always possible for the customer to program one’s own specifications into the auto manufacturing process via computer and telephone and have the car delivered to one’s house without even going to the dealership. One can also easily picture a generation brought up on part-time paid work as the norm, eager to use their own hands, equipped with many inexpensive mini-technologies in the home, forming a sizeable segment of the population. This is already happening in China. They are replicating and creating electronics and selling them to Americans for a much more affordable price. Some of these machines are made for China so they instructions are in Chinses are well as the settings on the machine, but when you are getting them at a discounted price, it is worth your time to do the research and figure out what the machine is saying. Half in the marker, half out, working intermittently rather than all year round, taking a year off now and then, they might well earn less—but compensate by supplying their own labour for many tasks that now cost money, thus mitigating the effects of inflation. American’s Mormons offer another clue to possible future lifestyles. Many Mormon stakes—a stake corresponds to, say, a Catholic diocese—own and operate their own farms. Members of the sake, including urban members, spend some of their free time as volunteer farmers growing food. Most of the produce is not sold but stored for emergency use or distributed to Mormons in need. There are central canning plants, bottling facilities, and grain elevators. Some Mormons grow their own food and take it to the cannery. Others actually buy fresh vegetables at the supermarket, then take them to the local cannery. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
Says a Salt Lake City Mormon, “My mother will buy tomatoes and can them. Her relief ‘society,’ the women’s auxiliary society, will have a day and they all go and can tomatoes for their own use.” Similarly, many Mormons not only contribute money to their church but actually perform volunteer labour—construction work, for example. None of this is to suggest that we are all going to become members of the Mormon church, or that it will be possible in the future to re-crate on a wide scale the social and community bonds one finds in this highly participatory yet theologically autocratic group. However, the principle of production for self-use, either by individuals or by organized groups, is likely to spread farther. Given home computers, given seeds genetically designed for urban or even apartment agriculture, even cheap home tools for working plastic, given new materials, adhesives, and membranes, and given free technical advice available over the Internet, mobile phones, telephone lines, with instructions flickering on the TV or computer screen, it has become possible to create lifestyles that are more rounded and varied, less monotonous, more creatively satisfying, and less market-intensive than those that typified Second Wave civilization. It is still too early to know how far this shift of activity from exchange in Sector B to presumption in Sector A will go, how the balance between these sectors will vary from country to country, and which particular lifestyles will actually emerge from it. What is certain, however, is that any significant change in the balance between production for use and production for exchange will set off depth charges under our economic system and our values as well. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
Whoever was the first to make the analogy between caterpillars and butterflies and death and resurrection—old life and new life—must have had a “butterfly experience.” Knots being untied; tight jar libs being loosened—it is freedom. It is freeing. It is the slow motion experience of leaping through a meadow with arms and legs in tune with rhythm of life. However, somehow the butterfly says it best, become of the cocoon experience. People seem to have more than one go-round with the cocoon. How did it start for me this time? Why did it start? I was happy as a caterpillar. Just a bit confined, that is all. I viewed myself, and others did, as fuzzy-wuzzy, problem free, happily married, financially secure, basking in the love of God…but I was content. I did not know myself. Actually, I did not even know that I did not know myself. And certainly did not own my feelings. I had to move away from all those who unknowingly kept me as a pet caterpillar to learn the true situation. And what is why I ended up here in the New World. Things have happened fast, which I like. However, becoming a new nation has been a difficult, thrilling, labourious, joyous, arduous, and climatic year. There have been so many significant encounters. Every century and generation I have learned so much. However, several things were of major importance. Almost a passing comment by Dr. James McCune Smith tuned a trickle into a flood last fall when he said, “American, I sensed a lot of tension in you the first time we met.” I could hardly believe it. Everybody knew I was the land of opportunity, where one could achieve anything, they put their mind to, no matter who they are. I was not tense…how could he say that? #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
I was building colonies, hosting thanksgiving, emancipating human being with religious freedom and human rights, establishing child labour laws, building free centers of public education, creating factories that raised the standard of living, producing crops, fostering livestock, and giving constant attention to the beings of my land by providing them with some of the best weather in the World. Tense…tense! How true! I had to face it. And so began a whole chain of discoveries. I thought I was relaxed and learned myself I was tense. I thought I was well-adjusted and learned that I did not even know myself. I thought I was loving and learned that I was often indifferent. I thought I was social and learned that I was withdraw. On an optimistic note, I thought I was dumb and learned I was intelligent. At an earlier point in my Christian life, it would have seemed unspiritual to consider these things. However, somewhere bear the beginning of this century, I experience a glorious assurance that God was in fact the One who led me to this point—and He was the one leading me through! For some reason, it seems that it is almost over. Or maybe it is the beginning of a new era building on what I have learned. I do know that I am more excited about life. I love my land and its inhabitants more than ever before. And I am more open to forming friendships with new pilgrims. Most of all, I feel more comfortable being myself. In these centuries of growth I have come in touch with my own worth and potential. Simply becoming aware was a great part of the answer. Perhaps that is because I wanted the change. I really do want to be a transparent nation. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
For now all I can say is that something deep is happening within me—and I love what is happening. Rather than focusing on why certain things happen to me or to those I love, I choose to focus on You, Father, who You are, and what You have promised to do in my life as I trust You. I want to be better; I want to be healed from anything that would keep me locked in the past. Today, I will step into that great future You have for me. I pelage my allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all. To all that is brief and fragile, superficial, unstable, to all that lacks foundation argument or principles; to all that is light, fleeting, changing, finite to smoke spirals, wand roses, to sea foam, and mists of oblivion…to all that is light in weight for itinerants on this transient Earth, somber, raving, with transitory words, and premium cranberry juice, I toast. May God be mindful of the souls of all our brothers, departed members of the house of America who sacrificed their lives for the sanctification of the Holy Name and the honour of America. Please grant that their heroism and self-sacrificing devotion find response in our hearts and the purity of their souls be reflected in our lives. Many their souls be bound up in the bonds of eternal life, an everlasting blessing among us. Amen. O merciful God who dwellest on high and art full of compassion, please grant perfect rest beneath the shelter of Thy divine presence among the holy and pure who shine as the brightness of the firmament, to our dear departed who have gone to their eternal home. May their souls be bound up in the bonds of eternal life. Grant that their memories ever inspire us to noble and consecrated living. Amen. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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A statement chandelier pulls the whole room together! ✨ We’re also loving the textured wall; details like these set your home apart, and let you love every minute in it. 💃https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/
Randolph Harris II International Institute 