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Nature is Subject to Vanity by the Curse that God Uttered–Make Sure You Get Control of Your Students the Very First Day!

June 23, 2020 1:24 am

Our senses do not always play fair, or so often it seems. Sometimes the strangest phenomena occur which cause us to doubt our sanity or the effectiveness of our sensory apparatus. When we consider how intricate our nervous system is and how complex our sensory equipment, it is small wonder that these is not a lot more confusion than there actual is. The educational system is probably the most influential of all institutions—outranking the family, the church, the police, and the government—in shaping the interpersonal politics of the growing person. Here is how the politics of the traditional school is experienced: The teacher is the possessor of knowledge, the student the recipient. There is a great difference in status between instructor and student. The lecture, as the means of pouring knowledge into the recipient, and the examination as the measure of the extent to which one has received it, are the central elements of this education. The teacher is the possessor of power, the student the one who obeys. The administrator is also the possessor of power, and both the teacher and the student are the ones who obey. Control is always exercised downward. Authoritarian rule is the accepted policy in the classroom. New teachers are often advised, “Make sure you get control of your students the very first day.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 23

Sometimes it is difficult for students to realize the joy and excitement that can found through learning. People will discover how many unnecessary limits they place on themselves by saying “I do not know.” Individuals must commit themselves to never again placing limits on the things they are willing to learn about their World or the people in it. Trust is at a minimum. Most notable is the teacher’s distrust of the student. The student cannot be expected to work satisfactorily without the teacher constantly supervising and checking on one. The student’s distrust of the teacher is more diffuse—a lack of trust in teacher’s motives, honesty, fairness, competence. There may be a real rapport between an entertaining lecturer and those who are being entertained. There may be admiration for the instructor, but mutual trust is not a noticeable ingredient. The subjects (the students) are best governed by being kept in an intermittent or constant state of fear. There is today not much physical punishment, but public criticism and ridicule, and a constant fear of failure, are even more potent. This state of fear appears it increase as we go up the hierarchy of the educational scheme, because the students have more to lose. In elementary school the individual may be an object of scorn, or scolded as stupid or bad. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

In high school there is added to this fear the fear of failure to graduate, with its vocational, economic and educational disadvantages. In college all these consequences are magnified and intensified. In graduate school, sponsorship by one professor offer even greater opportunities for extreme punishment due to some autocratic whim. Many graduate students have failed to receive their degrees because they have refused to obey every wish of their major professor. They are like slaves, subject to the life and death power of a despot from the Old World. Democracy and its values are ignored and scorned in practice. The student does not participate in choosing one’s goals, one’s curriculum, one’s manner of working. They are chosen for one. One has no part in the choice of teaching personnel or in educational policy. Likewise the teachers have no choice in choosing their principal or other administrative officers. Often they, too, have no participation in forming educational policy. The political practices of the school are in striking contrast to what is taught about the virtues of democracy and the importance of freedom and responsibility. There is no place for the whole person in the educational system, only for the intellect. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23

In elementary school the bursting curiosity of the normal child and one’s excess of physical energy are curbed and, if possible, stifled. In secondary school the one overriding interest of all students—gender and the relationships between the genders—is almost totally ignored and certainly not regarded as a major area for learning. In college the situation is the same—it is only the mind that is welcomed. We believe there is knowledge that exists separate and apar from how a person feels…and that accumulated knowledge of humankind is cognitive. It can be transmitted, it can be taught and learned, and the pursuit of that kind of knowledge is academic research. It appears to us that some would like to abandon cognitive learning, or at least reduce its importance to a level unacceptable to scholars. However, I also believe that the affective, the emotional component is terribly important. Cognitive skills should be combined with better knowledge of self and of interpersonal behaviour. A leader or a person who is perceived as an authority figure in the situation is sufficiently secure within oneself and in one’s relationship to others that one experiences an essential trust in the capacity of others to think for themselves, to learn for themselves. If this precondition exists, then the following aspects become possible. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

The facilitative person shares with the other—students and possibly also parents or community members—the responsibility for the learning process. Curricular planning, the mode of administration and operation, the funding, and the policy making are all the responsibility of the particular group involved. Thus a class may be responsible for its own curriculum, but the total group may be responsible for overall policy. The facilitator provides learning resources—from within oneself and one’s own experience, from books or materials or community experiences. One encourages the leaders to add resources of which they have knowledge, or in which they have experience. One opens doors to resources outside the experience of the group. The student develops one’s own program of learning, alone or in cooperation with others. Exploring one’s own interests, facing the wealth of resources, one makes choices as to one’s own learning direction and carries the responsibility for the consequences of those choices. A facilitative learning climate is provided. In meetings of the class or of the school as a whole, an atmosphere of realness, of caring, and of understanding listening is evident. This climate may spring initially from the person who is he perceived leader. As the learning process continues, it is more and more often provided by the learners for one another. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

Learning from one another becomes as important as learning from books or films or community experiences, of from the facilitator. It can be seen that the focus is primarily on fostering the continuing process of learning. The content of the learning, while significant, falls into a secondary place. Thus a course of learning is successfully ended not when the student has “learned all one needs to know,” but when the student has made significant process in learning how to learn what one wants to know. The discipline necessary to reach the student’s goals is a self-discipline and is recognized and accepted by the learner as being one’s own responsibility. The evaluation of the extent and significance of the student’s learning is made primarily by the learner oneself, though one’s self-evaluation may be influenced and enriched by caring feedback from other members of the group and from the facilitator. In this growth-promoting climate, the learning is deeper, proceeds at a more rapid rate, and is more pervasive in life and behaviour of the student than learning acquired in the traditional classroom. This comes about because the direction is self-chosen, the learning is self-initiated, and the whole person, with feelings and passions as well as intellect, is invested in the process. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23

Spiritual education is also another form or learning we are supposed to partake in while on Earth. The kind of spiritual guide that most people want is one who pats them encouragingly on the shoulder, flatters them constantly in speech or writing, and habituates them to refer all their personal problems to one for solution. The kind of guide they really need is one who will critically point out their faults and weaknesses and who will unhesitatingly throw them back on their own resources. It is better to encourage humans in conduct than to pamper their neurotic religiosity. The aspirant comes to the philosophic teacher with a mind filled by error and ignorance. One comes to the philosophic life with a character filled by egoism and prejudice. Thus one is the largest stumbling block in one’s own path. One oneself prevents the spiritual consciousness from approaching one. So the firs duty of a teacher is to show one all this error, ignorance, egoism, and prejudice for the unbeautiful things they are and make them aware and ashamed of them. One must cast aside much of one’s carefully heaped-up pile of knowledge and begin afresh. To make a person teachable, one must first convince one of one’s own ignorance. And the master will show one that one really knows little of one’s own self. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

It is an important part of one’s task to how humans what their personal lives look like from an impersonal standpoint. Hence one points out the fallacy of their egotistic actions and the foolishness of their egotistic purposes. Whatever one says or suggests to one’s disciples is said or suggested with a view to their ultimate good. Therefore one may sometimes recommend a course of action which brings immediate pain or self-denial or self-discipline. One may gently chide one person of errors of shortcomings, or firmly warn another person against sins and lapses. It is hard to bring a person from a wrong point of view to a right one, not only because one may not be intellectually or intuitively capable of making the transition, but also because one can make it only by losing some of one’s emotional egoistic self-esteem. This is true of general propaganda among the masses as it is of the preliminary correction of pupils by a master. “The voice of the Lord is powerful,” sings the poet of the 29^th Psalm. “The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars…the voice of the Lord cleaves with flames of fire, the voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness…and strips the forests bare.” In the book of Job, we find a description of the terrible power of nature in the mythological symbols of Behemoth and Leviathan. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

And a great recent poet, Rilke says: “For Beauty’s nothing but beginning of Terror we are still just able to bear, and why we adore it so is because it serenely disdains to destroy us. Each single Angel is terrible. The glory of nature is not shallow beauty.” And now let us listen once more to the words of the apostle about the tragedy of nature in their precise meaning.” Even the creation waits with eager longing for the sons of God to be revealed. For creation was not rendered futile by its own choice, but by the will of Him Who thus made it subject, the hope being that creation as well as humans would one day be freed from its thralldom to decay and gain the glorious freedom of God’s children. To this say, we know, the entire creation sighs and throbs with pain,” reports Romans 8.19-22. Nature is not only glorious; it is also tragic. It is subjected to the laws of finitude and destruction. It is suffering and sighing with us. No one who has ever listened to the sounds of nature with sympathy can forget their tragic melodies. The Greek word in Paul’s letter which we have translated as “creation” is especially used for the non-animate section of nature as Paul is alluding to the words of God to Adam after the Fall: “Cursed is the land for thy sake.” The sighing sound of the wind and the ever-restless, futile breaking of the waves may have inspired the poetic, melancholic verse about nature’s vanity. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

However, the words of Paul refer also, and in a more direct way, to the sphere of living things. The melancholy of the leaves falling in Autumn, the end of the jubilant life of Spring and Summer, the quiet death of innumerable beings in the cold air of the approaching Winter—all this has grasped and always will grasp the hearts, not only of poets, but of every feeling man and woman. The song of transitoriness sounds through all the nations. Isaiah’s words, “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, because the breath of the Lord bloweth upon it,” describe the shortness of the lives of individuals and nations. However, they could not have been written without a profound sympathy with the life of nature. And then Jesus speaks, praising the lilies of the field: “Even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” In these two sayings about the flowers of the field we perceive both the glory and the tragedy of nature. Sympathy with nature in its tragedy is not a sentimental emotion; it is a true feeling of the reality of nature. Schelling justly says: “A veil of sadness is spread over all nature, a deep, unappeasable melancholy over all of life.” According to him this is “manifest through the traces of suffering in the face of all nature, especially in the faces of animals.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 23

The doctrine of suffering as the character of all life, taught by Buddha, has conquered in the ground of one’s own being with the ground of nature is able to see into its tragedy; as Schelling says, “The darkest and deepest ground in human nature is ‘Longing’…is melancholy. This, mainly, creates the sympathy of humans with nature. For in nature too the deepest ground is melancholy. Nature, also, urns for a lost good.” Can we still understand the meaning of such half-poetic, half-philosophic words? Or have we too much secluded ourselves in human superiority, in intellectual arrogance, in a domineering attitude toward nature? We have become incapable of perceiving the harmonious sounds of nature. Have we also become insensitive to the tragic sounds? Why is nature tragic? Who is responsible for the suffering of animals, for the ugliness of death and decay, for the universal dread of death? Many years ago I stood on a jetty with a well-known psychologist looking at the ocean. We saw innumerable small fish hurrying toward the beach. They were pursued by bigger ones, who, in turn, were chased by still bigger ones. Aggression, flight, and anxiety—a perfect illustration of the old, often used story of the big fish devouring the small ones, in nature as in history. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

The scholar, who, in many discussions, had defended the harmonious structure of reality, burst into tears, saying, “Why are these beings created if they exist only to be swallowed by others?” In this moment the tragedy of nature forced itself upon his optimistic mind, and he asked, “Why?” Paul tries o penetrate the mystery of this question. And his surprising answer is: nature is subjected to vanity by the curse that God uttered because of the fall of Adam. The tragedy of nature is bound to the tragedy of humans, as the salvation of nature is dependent on the salvation of humans. What does this mean? Always humankind has dreamed of a time when harmony and joy filled all nature, and peace reigned between nature and human—Paradise, the Golden Age. However, humans, by violating the divine law, destroyed the harmony, and now here is enmity between humans and nature, between nature and nature. In Paul’s melancholic words this dream resounds. It is a dream, but it contains a profound truth: humans and nature belong together in their created glory, in their tragedy, and in their salvation. As nature, represented by the “Serpent,” leads humans into temptation, so humans, by their trespassing of the divine law, leads nature into tragedy. This did not happen once upon a time, as the story says; it happens within every time and space so long as there is time and space. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

So long as there are the Old Heaven and the Old Earth, humans and nature will be subjected together to the law of vanity. Many profound thinkers within and without Christianity agree that humans are determined to fulfill the longing of nature. In so far as one has failed and still fails to come to one’s own fulfillment, one is unable to fulfill nature—one’s own bodily being and nature around one. Therefore, Jesus I called the Son of Man, the man from above, the true man, in whom the forces of separation and tragedy are overcome, not only in humankind but also in the Universe. For there is no salvation of humans if there is no salvation of nature, for humans are in nature and nature are in humans. Let us listen once more to the words of the prophet about salvation of nature. “Then I saw the new Heaven and the new Earth. For the first Heaven and the first Earth had passed away; and the sea was no more. Then he showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal on both sides of the river grew the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, each month having its own fruit; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations,” reports Revelations 21.1, 22.2. In powerful images the last book of the Bible describes the salvation of humans and nature from the bondage of corruption: the city of God is built with the most precious materials of non-animated nature. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

The ocean, the symbol of formless chaos, is excluded. The river is not polluted by any rot. The trees bear fruit without change and decay; the animals, together with the saints, adore the throne of glory. The daemonic forces are thrown into nothingness. There is no suffering nor death. Needless to say, this is not the description of a future state of our World. Like the Golden Age of the past, the Golden Age of the future is a symbol, pointing to something mysterious within our present World—namely, the forces of salvation. And one thing is made very clear in the visions of the prophet, that salvation means salvation of the World, and not of human beings alone. Lions and sheep, little children and snakes, will lie together in peace, says Isaiah. Angels and stars, humans and animals, adore the Children of Christmas legend. The Earth shakes when the Christ dies, and it shakes again when He is resurrected. The Sun loses its light when He closes His eyes, and it rises when He raises from the tomb. The resurrection of the body—not an immortal soul—is the symbol of the victory over death. The bodiless spirit (and this is the meaning of all these images) is not the aim of creation; the purpose of salvation is not the abstract intellect or a natureless moral personality. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

Do we not see everywhere the estrangement of people from nature, from their own natural forces and from nature around them? And so they not become dry and uncreative in their mental life, hard and arrogant in their moral attitude, suppressed and poisoned in their vitality? They certainly are not the images of salvation. As one theologian has justly said, “Corporal being is the end of the ways of God.” This has always been known to creative painters and sculptors. A great picture or statue is an anticipation of the new Earth, a revelation of the mystery of nature. A picture of a statue is a plant or a stone transformed into a bearer of spiritual meaning It is nature elevated above itself, revealing its tragedy and, at the same tie, is victory over its tragedy. The picture of Jesus and the apostles and saints throughout the centuries of Christian art, in colour and stone—portraits of humans in whom humanity discovered its power and dignity—the incomparable expression of personality in the face of even the simplest individual, show that spirit becomes body, and that nature is not strange to personality. The system of cells functions, which we call “body,” is able to express the finest change of our spiritual being. Artists have often understood the eternal significance of nature, even when theologians have emphasized a bodiless spirituality, forgetting that the first thing by which Jesus revealed His Messianic vocation was His power to heal bodily and mental sickness. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

Let me ask you a question: are we still able to understands what a sacrament means? The more we are estranged from nature, the less we can answer affirmatively. That is why, in our time, the sacraments have lost so much of their significance for individuals and Churches. For in the sacraments nature participates in the process of salvation. Bread and wine, water and light, and all the great elements of nature become the bearers of spiritual meaning and saving power. Natural and spiritual powers are united—reunited—in the sacrament. The word appeals to our intellect and may move our will. The sacrament, if its meaning is alive, grasps our unconscious as well as our conscious being. In grasps the creative ground of our being. It is the symbol of nature, and spirit, united in salvation. Therefore, commune with nature! Become reconciled with nature after your estrangement from it. Listen to nature in quietness, and you will find its heart. It will sound forth the glory of its divine ground. It will sign with us in the bondage of tragedy. It will speak of the indestructible hope of salvation! This is also justified because a relationship with God is a matter of the heart, not the head. To have faith in a statement means to let yourself be convinced of and, therefore, accept the statement me as true. To have faith in God means to firmly rely on Him. Either way, faith is relying on what you have reason to believe is true and trustworthy. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

Faith involves the readiness to act as if something were so. Throughout church history, theologians have expressed three different aspects of biblical faith: notitia (knowledge), fiducia (trust), and assensus (assent). Notitia refers to the data or doctrinal content of the Christian faith. “Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints,” Jude 1.3. Assensus denotes the assent of the intellect to the truth of the content of Christian teaching. Note that each of these aspects of faith requires a careful exercise of reason, both in understanding what the teachings of Christianity are and in judging their truthfulness. In this way, reason is indispensable for the third aspect of faith—fiducia—which captures the personal application or trust involved in faith, an act that primarily involves the will but includes the affections and intellect too. What about being like a little child and the importance of the heart over the head in Christian life? In the context, Jesus’ teaching about becoming like a little child had nothing to do with the intellect. It was directed against being stiffnecked, self-sufficient and arrogant. To be a child in this sense is to be humble and willing to trust in or rely on others, especially God. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

The opposite of the child is a proud stiffnecked person, not an intelligent, reasonable one. Further, the distinction between the head and the heart is very misleading. In Scripture, the term heart has several meanings. Most of the time it simply refers to the seat or center of the entire person, the total self, including, emotional, and will. Sometimes it simply refers to the emotions or affections. “Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to impurity of pleasures of the flesh for the degrading of their bodies with one another,” reports Romans 1.24. “For God is y record, how greatly I long after you all in the bowels of Jesus Christ,” reports Philippians 1.8. However, the term heart often actually refers to the mind itself. “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to hum, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened,” reports Romans 1.24. “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ,” reports 2 Corinthians 4.6. “Each human should give what one has decided in one’s heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver,” reports 2 Corinthians 9.7. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

“I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy power, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength,” reports Ephesians 1.18-19. Therefore, it is safe to say that when the term heart is used in a verse, it most likely includes or explicitly refers to our mental faculty unless the context shows otherwise. Let us not allow false teaching to distort our understanding of the critical nature of the heart and move on in our development of a Christian mind. A grotesque distortion: Our response to God’s way should be ignorance. Finally, I sometimes hear two claims that express the idea that it is futile to use your reason or to emphasize its important when it comes to the Christian way: God’s ways and thoughts are higher than ours. “As the Heavens are higher than the Earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts,” reports Isaiah 55.9. And knowledge puffs people up and makes them arrogant. “Now about food sacrifices to idols: We know that ‘We all possess knowledge.’ However, knowledge puffs up while love builds,” reports 1 Corinthians 8.1. It should be clear what is wrong with these claims. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23

The fact that God’s thoughts are higher than ours means that we will never be able to fully grasp God’s motives, purposes, or providential guidance in the World. Regarding the arrogance that comes from knowledge, we need to keep two things in mind. First, Paul’s statement is not against knowledge per se, but against a certain attitude toward it. The proper response to his warning is humility, not ignorance! Second, for every knowledgeable person who is arrogant, there is an unknowledgeable person who is defensive and proud as a cover-up for one’s lack of knowledge. Arrogance is not possessed solely by people who have developed their reasoning abilities. We Christians have a desire deep within us to be like God and to bring honour to His name. However, what are we to look like if we are o fulfill these desires? A growing, vibrant disciple will be someone who values one’s intellectual life and works at developing one’s mind clearly. We must dedicate our lives to a deep commitment to reason and the intellectual life. It bothers God that so many evangelicals seem to be theologically illiterate. It bothers God terribly, as much as anything he can think of. Do not neglect your critical faculties. Remember that God is a rational God, who has made us in His own image. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

God invites and expects us to explore His double revelation, in nature and Scripture, with the minds He has given us, and to go on in the development of a Christian mind to apply His marvelous revealed truth to every aspect of the modern and post-modern World. We neglect these admonitions to our own peril. King Benjamin records the names of the people and appoints priests to teach them—Mosiah reigns as a righteous king. About 124-121 Before Christ. “And now, king Benjamin thought it was expedient, after having finished speaking to the people, that he would take the names of all those who had entered into a covenant with God to keep his commandments. And it came to pass that there was not one soul, except it were little children, but who had entered into the covenant and had taken upon them the name of Christ. And again, it came to pass that when king Benjamin had made an end of all these things, and had consecrated his son Mosiah to be a ruler and a king over his people, and have given him all the charges concerning the kingdom, and also had appointed priests to teach the people, that thereby they might hear and know the commandments of God, and to stir them up in remembrance of the oath which they had made, he dismissed the multitude, and they returned, every one, according to their families, to their own houses. And Mosiah began to reign in his father’s stead. And he began to reign in the thirtieth year of his age, making in the whole, about four hundred and seventy-six years from the time that Lehi left Jerusalem. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

“And king Benjamin lived three years and he died. And it came to pass that king Mosiah did walk in the ways of the Lord, and did observe his judgments and his statutes, and did keep his commandments in all things whatsoever he commanded him. And king Mosiah did cause his people that they should till the Earth. And he also, himself, did till the Earth, that thereby he might not become burdensome to his people, that he might do according to that which his father had done in all things. And there was no contention among all his people for the space of three years,” reports Mosiah 6.1-7. I beseech Thee, O Lord, that his Holy Communion may be my guide, and my food for the journey, unto the Heaven of eternal salvation. May it be to me a consolation while I am harassed in thoughts, a source of sweetest love in the time of good purposes, patience in tribulation and distress, medicine in sickness. By these most sacred Mysteries which I have received, grant me right faith, firm hope, and perfect love, strength to renounce the world, purification of desires, inward sweetness, ardent love for Thee, a recollection and tender sympathy for the Passion of Thy beloved Son, and grace to keep my life full of virtue in the praise of Thee and in sincere faith. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23

And please grant me in the hour of my departure to receive the gif of so great a Mystery with true faith, certain hope, and sincere love, that I may see Thee without end. My dear Lord, I depend wholly upon Thee, please wean me from all other dependences. Thou art my all, Thou dost overrule all and delight in me. Thou art the foundation of goodness, how can I distrust Thee? how be anxious about what happens to me? In the light of Thy preciousness the World and all its enjoyments are infinitely poor: I value the favour of humans no more than pebbles. Amid the blessings I receive from Thee may I never lose the heart of a stranger. May I love Thee, my benefactor, in all my benefits, not forgetting that my greatest danger arises from my advantages. Produce in me self-despair that will make Jesus precious to me, delightful in all his offices, pleasurable in all his ways., and may I love His commands as well as his promises. Please help me to discern between true and false love, the one consisting of supreme love to Thee, the other not, the former uniting Thy glory and human’s happiness that they may become one common interest, the latter disjointing and separating them both, seeking the latter with neglect of the former. Please teach me that genuine love is different in kind from that wrought by rational arguments or the motive of self-interest, that such love is pleasing passion affording joy to the mind where it is. Please grant me grace to distinguish between the genuine and the false, and to rest in Thee who are all love. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23

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You Do Not Love Me, You Do Not Care What Happens to Me! Give the Heaven’s Above More than Just a Passing Glance!

June 22, 2020 1:09 am

For some people it is difficult to find peace. They can forgive from their heart of hearts, but find no rest, for then the doubt awakens; they are the one who caused the problem; they are the occasion of the calamity; it was their pride that craved the unusual. Then they repent, but one will find no rest, for then the accusing thoughts acquits one of the charges: the aggressor was the one who with their cunning instilled this plan into their souls. Then the individual hates; one’s heart finds relief in curses, but one still finds no repose. Once again one reproaches oneself—reproaches oneself because one has hated, one who oneself is a sinner, reproaches oneself because regardless of how cunning the aggressor was one’s self always remains guilty. It is oppressive for the individual that someone has decided to deceive them, but still more oppressive, one is almost tempted to say, that one is no longer listens humbly to one’s voice but is able to hear the many voices at the same time. Then recollection awakens in one’s soul, and one forgets blame and guilt; able to recollect the beautiful moments, and is dazed in an unnatural exaltation. With an indescribable but cryptic, blissful, unnamable anxiety, one is able to listen to music the one’s self evoked and yet did not evoke; always there was harmony. Yet, it is terrible that one can scarcely control the anxiety that grips one. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25

One is carried along into that kingdom of mist, into that dreamland where one is frightened by one’s own shadow at every moment. Often, futilely trying to tear away from it; following along like an ominous shape, like an accuser who cannot speak. How strange! One has allowed someone else to spread the deepest secrecy over everything, and yet there is an even deeper secrecy, that one’s self is in on the secret and that one came to know I in an unlawful way. To forget the whole thing is not possible. Some Black women are comfortable with the many different ingredients of their identity, and they are women committed to freedom from oppression. They find themselves constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of themselves, and present that as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or deny the other parts of themselves. They do not want to isolate themselves from their White, Hispanic, or Asian counterparts, but would like the ability to be included in the discussion. The need for multiple consciousness in feminist movement—a social movement encompassing law, literature, and everything in between—has long been apparent. Since the beginning of the feminist movement in the United States of America, Black women have been discussing the fact that their experience calls into question the notion of a unitary “women’s experience.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 25

In the first wave of the feminist moment, Black women’s realization that White leaders of the suffrage may have not been aware of what women of colour have to suffer with, especially when they do not adhere to typical gender status. However, through conversations, publications of a diverse voice of authors, and television shows and movies, the second wave of Black women are again speaking loudly and persistently, and at many levels their voices have begun to be heard. Feminist have adopted the notion of multiple consciousness as appropriate to describe a World in which people are not oppressed only or primarily on the basis of gender, but also on the basis of race, class, sexual orientation, and other categories in inextricable webs. Moreover, multiple consciousness is implicit in the precepts of the feminism itself. Feminist method starts with the very radical act of taking women seriously, believing that what they say about themselves and their experience is important and valid, even when (or perhaps especially when) it had little or no relationship to what has been or is being said about them. In feminist legal theory, however, the move away from univocal toward multivocal theories of women’s experience and feminism has been slower than other areas. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25

In feminist legal theory, the pull of the second voice, the voice of abstract categorization, is still powerfully strong: “We the People” seems in danger of being replaced by “We the women.” And in feminist legal theory, as in the dominant culture, it is mostly White, heterosexual, and socioeconomically privileged people who speak for all women. Not surprisingly, because of the cries of the unheard are becoming so strong, the story they tell about “women,” despite its claim to universality, seems to actually be becoming more inclusive. Some of the best examples have been in the film in TV industry. Little Fires Everywhere, starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington examines the roles of women of different ethnic backgrounds, classes, and socioeconomic backgrounds. How to Get Away With Murder, starring Viola Davis was extremely powerful, especially final episode where she has to defend herself and her lifestyle. The Family That Prey’s Together, Good Deeds, Why Did I Get Married, Temptations: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor, by Tyler Perry are also good film the help others to understand the plight of women of colour, as well as Losing Isaiah starring Halle Berry. So even if feminist theories are still catching up to modern times, art is imitating life. And White middle-class women, as well as the rest of the World are becoming more aware of what their sisters have to endure. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25

The notion that there is a monolithic “women’s experience” that can be described independent of other facets of experience like race, class, and sexual orientation is called gender essentialism. Gender essentialism is no longer reducing the lives of people who experience multiple forms of oppression because racism, sexism, and homophobia are being discussed and are now better understood by different people all over the World. Those who produce the “story of woman” are making sure they appear in it. They are ensuring that they are storytellers and, in a position, to decide which of all the many facts about women’s lives are going into the story, and which ought to be left out. Women want to make sure that none of their voiced are at the bottom of a hierarchy of oppression. Middle-class American women, tradition suggest, feel emotion more than men do. The definitions of “emotional” and “cogitation” in the Random House Dictionary of the English Language reflect a deeply rooted cultural idea. Yet women are also thought to command “feminine wiles,” to have the capacity to premeditate a sigh, an outburst of tears, or a flight of joy. In general, they are thought to manage expression and feeling not only better but more often than men do. How much the conscious feelings of women and men differ is an issue I leave aside here. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25

However, women are, in fac, more likely to have access to their emotions. Early in childhood boys but no girls must relinquish their primary identification with the mother. To achieve this difficult task, the boy (but not the girl) must repress feelings associated with the other in the difficult effort to establish himself as “not like mother,” as a boy. The consequence is a repression of feeling generally. The girl, on the other hand, because she enters a social and sexual category the same as that as her mother, does not have to relinquish identification with her or sacrifice her access to feelings through repression. If this interpretation is valid (and I find it plausible), we might expect women to be more in touch with their feelings, which are, as a consequence, more available for conscious management. Men may manage feelings more by subconscious repressing, women more by conscious suppressing. Therefore, the evidence seems clear that most women do more emotion managing than men. And because the well-managed feeling has an outside resemblance to spontaneous feeling, it is possible to confuse the condition of being more “easily affected by emotion” with the action of willfully managing emotion when the occasion calls for it. #Randolphharris 6 of 25

Especially in the American middle class, women tend to manage feeling more because in general they depend on men for a level of support, and one of the various ways of repaying their debt is to do extra emotion work—especially emotion work that affairs, enhances, and celebrates the well-being and status of others. When the emotional skills that children learn and practice at home move into the marketplace, the emotional labour of women becomes more prominent because men in general have not been trained to make their emotions a resource and are therefore less likely to develop their capacity for managing feeling. There is also a difference in the kind of emotion work that men and women tend to do. Many studies have also told us that women adapt more to the needs of others and cooperate more than men do. These studied often imply the existence of gender-specific characteristics simply exist passively in women? Or are they signs of a social work that women do—the work of affirming, enhancing, and celebrating the well-being and status of others? I believe that much of time, the adaptive, cooperative women is actively working showing difference. This deference requires her to make an outward display called the “seriously” good girl in her and to support this effort by evoking feelings that make the “nice” display seem more natural. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25

Girls are generally trained to be “seriously” good and to be ashamed of being bad whereas boys are asked to be good in formalistic ways but covertly invited to be ashamed of being “too” good. Oversocialization into “sugar-and-spice” demeanor produces feminine skills in delivering deference. Women who want to put their own feelings less at the service of other must still confront the idea that if they do so, they will be considered less “feminine.” What it takes to be more “adaptive” is suggested in a study of college students. Students were asked “If a boy or girl had all the other qualities you desire, would you marry this person if you were not in live with him or her?” In response, 64 percent of men, but only 24 percent of the women said No. Most of the women answered that they “did not know.” As one put it: “I do not know, if he were that good, may I could bring myself around to loving him.” Other research indicates that men have a more romantic orientation to love, women a more realistic orientation. That is, males may find cultural support for a passive construction of love, for seeing themselves as falling head over heels, or walking on air. The female is not pushed hither and yon by her romantic compulsions. On the contrary, she seems to have a greater measure of rational control over her romantic inclinations than the male. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25

Women are more often than men describing themselves as “trying to make myself love,” “talking myself into not caring,” or “trying to convince myself.” A content analysis of 260 protocols showed that more women than men (33 percent versus 18 percent) spontaneously used the language of emotion work to describe their emotions. The image of women as “more emotional,” more subject to uncontrolled feelings, has also been challenged by a study of 250 students at UCLA, in which only 20 percent of the men but 45 percent of the women said that they deliberately show emotion to get their way. This pattern is also socially reinforced. When women sent direct messages (persuading by logic, reason, or an onslaught of information), they were later rated as more aggressive than men who did the same thing. As one woman put it: “I pout, frown, and say something to make the other person feel bad, such as ‘You do not love me, you do not care what happens to me.’ I am not the type to come right out with what I want; I will usually hint around. It is all hope and a lot of beating around the bush.” The emotional arts that women have cultivated are analogous to the art of feigning among those whose wishes outdistance their opportunities for class advancement. As for many others who are less affluent, it has been in the woman’s interest to be the better actor. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25

The use of feminine wiles (including flattery) is felt to be a psychopolitical style of the subordinate; it is therefore disapproved of by women who have gained a foothold in the man’s World and can afford to disparage what they do no need to use. As the psychologist would say, the techniques of deep acting have usually high “secondary gains.” Yet these skills have long been mislabeled “natural,” a part of woman’s “being” rather than something of her own making. The intensity of devotion rather than the value of offerings must always govern the master’s response. The self-actualized has an official position, which is accompanied by appropriate duties. They include: taking a personal interest in the disciples’ inner welfare and growth; instructing them in the truth, and in the way to its attainment; inspiring them telepathically with glimpses of the higher states; encouraging them to persevere in traveling along the way; warning them against the pitfalls and obstacles. The teacher’s duty is to give direction, provide knowledge, warn against pitfalls, correct errors. It is not one’s duty to save others necessary efforts of will and thinking. The master powerfully removes the sluggishness of the intellect of one’s disciple; clarifies one’s ideas about what is eternal and what is perishable, what is real and what is unreal, what is material and what is mental; and what open to one the realm of truth slowly but unmistakably by constant appeal to one’s reason. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25

The first service of the Master is to point out the way, both inwardly and outwardly, to the disciple. This shortens one’s journey by several lifetimes, which would otherwise have to be spent in wanderings, explorings, gropings, and searchings. It is to expound truth and correct errors, to place an example before the others, and to purify them by one’s company that such a teacher appears in the outer World. Another phase of one’s work is to stimulate the yearning for higher attainment where it exists, and to inculcate it where it does not. Nature, also, mourns for a lost good. “Day unto day utter speech, and night unto night show knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the Earth, and their words to the end of the World. In them has one set a tabernacle for the Sun, which is as a bridegroom coming out of one’s chamber, and rejoice as a strong human to run a race,” reports Psalm 19.2-5. It is one’s work to show others what they cannot see for themselves—their own higher possibilities. One’s function is to interpret humans—and more especially spiritual humans—to themselves. One’s task is to make known to other humans their God like possibilities within themselves. One’s mission is not to being humans pleasure, but to raise them to appreciate truth. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25

The teacher assists one’s students to attain a degree of concentration beyond that which they are able to achieve by themselves. One detonates the higher potentialities of each disciple, breaks the closed circle of one’s senses, and leads one toward a moral and mystical regeneration. “For the earnest expectation of the creature waits for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of one who has subjected the same in hope, because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and travels in pain together until now,” reports Romans 9.19-22. The duty of any spiritual teacher is to lead the seeker to God, to find one’s own source of inner light and strength and thus not to lean on outside human beings. A self-actualized individual who is quite competent does help the learner: one shows the way, illuminates problems, untangles knots, dispels confusions, explains meanings, and encourages effort. Tutelage has its place. One who directs anyone’s wakening spiritual faith that person’s teacher. If one guides us to notice hitherto unobserved truths, if one lead our thought and faith away from hitherto strongly held errors, then a teacher fulfills a useful function. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25

A teacher’s services include the unveiling and exposing of psychic or mystic experiences which are merely self-suggested or mainly hallucinatory. One cannot do more than help them find and fulfill their own ways to the goal, but it is enough. A teacher has to be firm at some times, gentle at others. “And I saw a new Heaven and a new Earth: for the first Heaven and the first Earth were passed away; and there was no more sea…And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of nations,” reports Revelations 21.1, 22.1-2. Each year when Good Friday and Easter Sunday approach us our thoughts turn toward the great drama of redemption, culminating in the pictures of the Cross and Resurrection. Who is redeemed? Some humans alone; or humankind, including all nations; or the World, everything that is created, including nature, the stars and the clouds, the winds and the oceans, the stones and the plants, the animals and our own bodies? The Bible speaks again and again of the salvation of the World, as it speaks of the creation of the World, and the subjection of the World to anti-Divine forces. And World means nature as well as humans. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25

So let us ask today: what does nature mean to us? What does it mean to itself? What does it mean to the great drama of creation and salvation? A threefold answer is contained in the words of the psalmist, the apostle and the prophet: the psalmist sings of the glory of nature; the apostle shows the tragedy of nature: and the prophet pronounces the salvation of nature. The hymn of the psalmist praises the glory of God in the glory of nature; the letter of the apostle links the tragedy of nature to the tragedy of humans; and the vision of the prophet sees the salvation of nature in the salvation of the World. So let us listen once more to the words of the psalmist, about the glory of nature, in their precise meaning. “The Heavens are telling the glory of God, and the firmament shows the work of his hands. Day unto day pour forth the story, night unto night announces the knowledge. There is no speech, no language! Their voice cannot be heard! However, their music goes out through all the Earth, and their words to the end of the World.” The 19^th Psalm points to an antique belief held by the ancient World and expressed by poets and philosophers: that the Heavenly bodies, the Sun and the Moon and the Stars, produce by their movement a harmony of tines, sounding day and night from one end of the World to the other. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25

These voices of the Universe are not heard by human ears; they do not speak in human language. However, they exist, and we can perceive them through the organs of our spirit. Shakespeare says: “There is not the smallest orb which thou beholds, but in his motion like an angel sings, such harmony is in immortal souls; but whilst this muddy vesture of decay does grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.” The psalmist has heard it; he knows that the stars are sounding: the glory of creation and its Divine Ground. Are we able to perceive the hidden voice of nature? Does nature speak to us? Does it speak to you? Or has nature become silent to us, silent to the humans of our period? Some of you may say, “Never before in any period has nature been so open to humans as it is today. The mysteries of the past have become the knowledge of children. Through every scientific book, through every laboratory, through every machine, nature speaks to us. The technical use of nature is the revelation of its mystery.” The voice of nature has been heard by the scientific mind, and the answer is the conquest of nature. However, is this all that nature says to us? If one only arouses the human to recognition of the necessity of taking a new road, a spiritual guide’s duty to an erring human will not be fully carried out. It will not be enough to show one the path. One must also keep them steadfast on the path. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25

I was sitting under a tree with a great biologist. Suddenly he exclaimed, “I would like to know something about this tree!” He, of course, knew everything that science had to say about it. I asked him what he meant. And he answered, “I want to know what this tree means for itself. I want to understand the life of this tree. It is so strange, so unapproachable.” He longed for a sympathetic understanding of the life of nature. However, such an understanding is possible only by communion between human and nature. Is such communion possible in our period of history? Is nature not completely subjected to the will and willfulness of humans? This technical civilization, the pride of humankind, has brought about a tremendous devastation of original nature, of the land, of animals, of plants. It has kept genuine nature in small reservations and has occupied everything for domination and ruthless exploitation. And worse: many of us have lost the ability to live with nature. We fill it with the noise of empty talk, instead of listening to its many voices, and, through them, to the voiceless music of the Universe. Separated from the soil by a machine, we speed through nature, catching glimpses of it, but never comprehending its greatness or feelings it power. Who is still able t penetrate, meditating and contemplating, the creative ground of nature? #RandolphHarris 16 of 25

A Chinese emperor asked a famous painter to paint a picture of a rooster for him. The painter assented, but said that it would take a long time. After a year the emperor reminded him of his promise. The painter replied that after a year of studying the rooster he had just begun to perceive the surface of its nature. After another year the artist asserted that he had just begun to penetrate the essence of this kind of life. And so on, year after year. Finally, after ten years of concentration on the nature of the rooster, he painted the picture—a work described as an inexhaustible revelation of the divine group of the Universe in one small part of it, a rooster. Compare the emperor’s wise patience and the painter’s saintly contemplation of an infinitely small expression of the divine life, with the exuberances of our contemporaries, who rush in their cars to some famous view and exclaim, “How lovely!”—referring, no doubt, not to the view, but to their own appreciation of beauty. What blasphemy of the glory of nature! and consequently of the divine ground, the glory of which sounds through the glory of nature. Praising the glory of nature does not mean speaking of the beauty of nature alone and forgetting its overwhelming greatness and terrible power. Nature never manifest shallow beauty or merely obvious harmony. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25

We must try to conform to the humanity, intuition, sensitivity, and the intelligence needed to understand the message from the Universe. One who teachers well, learns oneself. Many of the historical statues in American are representations for hopes of a greater time. The welcoming of the second coming of Christ. Some of these monuments are universally admired and accepted by all people of all nations as the symbol of FREEDOM, and many of these relics evokes a profound veneration and strike a responsive chord from all liberty-loving people everywhere. To make these statues of these great characters and to erect in them that part of the country which gave them their early development and growth into public life is an honour. Human spirit finds its expression through a particular individual, likewise a spirit in finding its self-expression in permanent materials of bronze or stone and deserves to be focalized and located so that they may have a place and standing in our World. When life sinks to a low, these monuments constantly fed the human spirit with hope and promise. The closer the arts bring us to our souls’ ideal the more worthy are they to their exalted mission. These statues bring us in contact with the harmonies of nature, awakening responsive echoes in our innermost souls. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25

This art, these wizard-like creations, revives he ashes of the past, makes us appreciate how far we have some, so we never forget our roots. If we destroy our history, we will forget our past and are doomed to recreate the same mistakes. We have a new wave of immigrants who know nothing about our culture, and these monuments serve as reminders that we must never repeat slavery, genocide, nor economic oppression. They stand for the freedom of this nation and are part of its founding. Without these markers, Americans will lose their way. For instance, no one can find reference to the Prison’s of the River in Sacramento. The only place I found it recorded was on a fading, plastic plague in Sacramento. It was a reference to the Witch Trials that took place in this city in the mid-1800s. The LaGrange served as Sacramento’s jail until November 1859 when it sank in a week-long storm, killing 449 people. There were more than 950 suspected witches and Jewish refugees on board. In February of 1986, archaeologist located what is believed to be wreckage of LaGrange, which was imprisoned by the rip-rap and must, just south of the “I” Street Bridge. Now, it would be nice to have a monument to remember these people and their sacrifice. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25

Certain teachers develop an unhealthy lust for power, imposing their personal will on hapless disciples. The teacher whose motives get mixed up, whose desire to help and serve others twins around one’s desire to gain money, prestige, influence, or power is one who begins to teach before one is ready to do so. Both one and one’s disciples will have to pay the price for one’s premature activities. It is better to have no teacher at all than to have one who has psychologized oneself into the delusion that one has reached the God-realized state, who mistakes self-deception for self-realization. The Saints become the sons and daughters of Christ through faith—they are then called by the name of Christ—King Benjamin exhorts them to be steadfast and immovable in good works. About 124 Before Christ. “And now, it came to pass that when king Benjamin has thus spoken to this people, he sent among them, desiring to know of his people if they believed the words which he had spoken unto them. And they all cried with one voice, saying: Yea, we believe all the words which thou has spoken unto us; and also, we know their surety and truth, because of the Spirit of the Lord Omnipotent, which has wrought a mighty change in us, or in our hearts, that we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25

“And we, ourselves, also, though the infinite goodness of God, and the manifestations of his Spirit, have great views of that which is to come; and were it expedient, we could prophesy of all things. And it is the faith which we have had on things which our kind has spoken unto us that has brought us to this great knowledge, whereby we do rejoice with such exceedingly great joy. And we are willing to enter into a covenant with our God to do his will, and to be obedient to his commandments in all things that he shall command us, all the remainder of our days, that we may not bring upon ourselves a never-ending torment, as has been spoken by the Angel, that we may not drink out of the cup of the wrath of God. And now, these are the words which king Benjamin desired of them; and therefore he said unto them: Ye have spoken the words that I desired; and the covenant which ye have made is a righteous covenant. And now, because of the covenant which ye shave made ye shall be called the children of Christ, his sons, and his daughters; for behold, this day he has spiritually begotten you; for ye say that your hearts are changed through faith on his name; therefore, ye are born of him and have become his sons and daughters. And under this head ye are made free, and there is no other head whereby ye can be made free. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25

“There is no other name given whereby salvation cometh; therefore, I would that ye should take upon you the name of Christ, all you that have entered into the covenant with God that ye should be obedient unto the end of your lives. And it shall come to pass that whosoever does this shall be found at the right hand of God, for one shall know he name by which one is called; for one shall be called by the name of Christ. And now it shall come to past, that whosoever shall not take upon one the name of Christ must be called by some other name; therefore, one finds oneself on the left hand of God. And I would that ye should remember also, that this is the name that I said I should give unto you that never should be blotted out, except it be through transgression; therefore, take heed that ye do not transgress, that the name be not be blotted out of your hearts. I say unto you, I would that ye should remember to retain the name written always in your hearts, that ye are not found on the left hand of God, but that ye hear and know the voice by which ye shall be called, and also, the name by which God shall call you. For how knows a human the master who one has not served, and who is a stranger unto one, and is far from the thoughts and intents of one’s heart? And again, does a human take a mule which belongs to one’s neighbour, and keep him or her? #RandolphHarris 22 of 25

“I say unto you, Nay; one will not even suffer that one shall feed among one’s flocks, but will drive one away, and cast one out. I say unto you, that even so shall it be among you if ye know not the name by which ye are called. Therefore, I would that ye should be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in good works, that Christ, the Lord God Omnipotent, may seal you his, hat you may be brought to Heaven, that ye may have everlasting salvation and eternal life, through the wisdom, and power, and justice, and mercy of one who created all things, in Heaven and in Earth, who is God above all. Amen,” reports Mosiah 5.1-15. Up to a certain point it is good for us to know that there are people in the World who will give us love and unquestioned loyalty to limit of their ability. I doubt, however, if it is good for us to feel assured of this without the accompanying obligation of having to justify this devotion by our behaviour. And the important thing was that you never let down doing the best that you were able to do—it might be poor because you might not have very much within you to give, or to help people with, or to live your life with. However, as long as you did the very best that you were able to do, then that was what you were put here to do and that was what you were accomplishing by being here. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25

O my Lord, please forgive me for serving Thee in sinful ways—by glorying in my own strength, by forcing myself to minister through necessity, by accepting the applause of others, by trusting in assumed grace and spiritual affection, by a faith that rests upon my hold on Christ, not on Him along, by having another foundation to stand upon besides Thee; for thus I make flesh my arm. Please help me to see that it is faith stirred by grace that does the deed, that faith brings a human nearer to Thee, raising Him above mere human, that Thou does act upon the soul when thus elevated and lifted out of itself, that faith centres in Thee as God all-sufficient, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, as Go efficient, mediately, as in Thy commands and promises, immediately, in all the hidden power that faith sees and knows to be in Thee, abundantly, with omnipotent effect, in the revelation of Thy will If I have not such faith I am nothing. It is m duty to set Thee above all others in the mind and eye; but it is my sin that I place myself above Thee. Lord, it is the special evil of sin that every breach of Thy laws arises from contempt of Thy Person, from despising Thee and Thy glory, from preferring things before Thee. Please help me to abhor myself in comparison of Thee, and please keep me in a faith that words by love, and serves by grace. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25

I give Thee thanks, O Lord, holy Father, Almighty, everlasting God, Who hast refreshed me with the most holy Body and Blood of Thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord; and I pray that this Sacrament of our salvation, which I, unworthy sinner have received, may not turn to my judgment nor condemnation, according to my deserts, but to the profit of my body and soul, unto life eternal. Lord Jesus Christ, Almighty and everlasting God, please be merciful to my sins through my reception of Thy Body and Blood. For Thou has said, “He that Eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood dwells in Me, and I in One.” Therefore I humbly beseech Thee to create in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me, and strength me with Thy free Spirit, and cleanse me from all vices and the crafts of the devil, that I may attain to the partaking of Heavenly joys; Who lives and reigns in God. The person who constantly tries to make other persons over into a copy of oneself, who tries to change their living habits or thinking-ways into the same as one’s own, who seeks zealously to proselytize their religious beliefs, is too often merely asserting one’s own ego and practising a subtler, more self-deceptive form of egotism. If one really felt love for them, as one often professes, one would leave their freedom to choose what suit them, not thrust oneself and one’s own beliefs aggressively upon them. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25

BRIGHTON STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH

Rancho Cordova, CA |

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Up to a Certain Point it is Good for Us to Know that there are People in the World Who Will Give Us Love!

June 20, 2020 1:20 am

No matter how urgent our social needs are, all of us have needs for solitude, for times alone with ourselves. Again, the optimum selfhood experience includes a balance of solitariness, sociality, and peripheral interactions (“spectatorship”). There is in each of us a need for privacy and time alone. It is not so much a need to reject or repudiate others as it is a need to go within, to get acquainted or re-acquainted with our selfhood. We like to roam about our own house with no one to disturb us. Modern psychology had very modest beginnings. It set out to study memory, acoustic and visual phenomena, the association of ideas, and the psychology of animals. Wilhelm Wundt was perhaps the most important and influential figure in those early days of modern psychology. Psychologists then did not write for the general public, and they were not particularly well known. They wrote for their colleagues, and only a few novices showed any interest in their work and publications. When it shifted its focus to the motives behind human behaviour, that situation changed radically, however, and psychology started gaining in popularity. That field of inquiry has dominated psychology for the last hundred years. It concerns us all, of course, for we all want to know what it is that motivates us and why we act on the motives we do rather than on quite different ones. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23

If psychology can promise us some clarity on those questions, then it can obviously be of great value to us. And so it was that motivational psychology became perhaps the most popular of all sciences, and in recent decades it has, if anything, gained popularity rather than lost. Every human action has a motive behind it, and in every case that motive is an independent and innate instinct. We are born with instincts in us just as animals are. If we are aggressive, the reason is our aggressive instinct. If we are servile, blame our servile instinct; if we are avaricious, our avaricious instinct; if we are jealous, chalk that up to our jealous instinct; if we enjoy cooperation, then that is our cooperative instinct at work. If we are quick to flee danger, that is our flight instinct, and so on and so forth. Indeed, if we tally up all the instincts the instinct theoreticians have come up with, the final count comes to about two hundred different instincts, each one of which will motivate a certain kind of human behaviour, just as a key on a piano will, when pressed, produce a certain note. However, the problem with this extremely interesting edifice is that it is not properly constructed. It is actually not a building at all but only a mental construction that has no basis in reality at all. Human aggression can be traced back to a more or less innate aggressive instinct. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

One weakness of instinct theory is its tendency to oversimplify. It is just too simple an answer to postulate an instinct for every single bit of human behaviour, and such postulation does not really explain anything. All it says is that actions have motives, that different actions have their own distinct motives, and that those motives are innate. However, none of that could be proved for most of the so-called instincts. There are a few—such as defensive aggression, flight, and also, to certain degree, behaviour involving pleasures of the flesh, though here we are even less sure of our ground—in which quasi-instinctive elements are present. However, here we must not overlook the fact that learning, the influence of culture and society, can significantly modify even those innate drives, so much so that in both humans and animals subjected to such modification the drives may almost disappear or, on the other hand, become greatly accentuated. The other weakness of the theory was that some instincts were strongly developed in some individuals and cultures yet almost nonexistent in others. There are, for example, primitive tribes that are extremely aggressive while others display practically no aggressiveness at all. The same has held true for individuals. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23

If someone comes to a psychiatrist today and says, “Doctor, I am so furious I would like to do something I cannot return from,” the psychiatrist does not say, “Aha, the aggressive instinct is very strong in this man.” Instead, he makes a diagnosis more along these lines: “This man must be ill. This aggressiveness he is expressing, this hatred that has built up inside him, is a sign of illness.” If the man’s aggressiveness were motivated by instinct, it would be normal, natural behaviour and not a symptom of illness. We find, too—and this is very important—that the most primitive of peoples, the hunter-gathers, the people at the very earliest beginnings of civilization, were the least aggressive of all human beings. If aggressiveness were innate, then it should have been most evident in the hunter-gatherers. In fact, just the opposite is true. It was the growth of civilization, starting about 4000 Before Christ; it was the creation of large cities, kingdoms, hierarchies, armies; it was the invention of war, the invention of slavery—and I use the word “invention” deliberately here, because neither of those things occur in nature—it was all these things that provided breeding grounds for sadism, aggression, and the desire to subjugate and destroy, ills that never existed to anywhere near that same degree among primitive, prehistoric peoples. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

It was the weakness in the instinct theory that prompted the behaviourists to propose a totally contrary view. They maintain that absolutely nothing is innate in us and that everything people do is the result of social conditions and of very clever manipulation on the part of society or of the family. Concepts like freedom and dignity are thought by B.F. Skinner to be “pure fictions. They do not exist at all but are simply products of influencing human beings in such a way that they will think they want to be free. Neither a desire for freedom nor a sense of human dignity is inherent in human nature.” Let me give you a simple example of the theory at work. Little Leo will not eat his spinach. If his mother punishes him, she will not—as many parents know—get very far. And Skinner agrees that punishment is not the correct method. There should be no great lectures about spinach. It should simply be served. And if little Leo nibbles at it, then his mother should give him a friendly smile and promise him an extra piece of cake. The next time the spinach appears on the table, little Leo will be more inclined to eat it. Once again he wins his mother’s smile, and this time she gives him a piece of chocolate. And so things continue until little Leo is conditioned, that is, until he had learned that he will get a reward if he eats his spinach. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

Who does not like rewards? And after that a while Leo will eat his spinach with pleasure, preferring it to any other vegetable. Now it is true that things can work out just that way. Skinner has invested a great deal of effort in finding the cleverest ways to do this sort of thing. The reward is not automatically repeated every time, for instance. It is omitted once, then reintroduced. Many ingenious studies and experiments have been made to see how people can best be seduced, how rewards can be used to make them do what the person giving out the rewards wants them to do. Skinner is not interested in why the manipulator wants people to do what one asks them to do, for Skinner does not think that values can have any objective meaning. If we reflect on the situation of a psychologist in one’s laboratory, then it is easy enough to understand Skinner’s position. Whether the animals eat or do not eat is not of much interests. The only think of interest is whether one can induce them, with one method or another, to eat or not to eat. And since behavioursts regard human beings too, themselves included, as guinea pigs, they are not interested in the question of why and to what end they condition others. They are interested in only two things: whether they can condition someone and how they can do it best. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23

The behaviourist separates human behaviour from human beings. One does not study people in the process of behaving; one studies only the product, and the product is behaviour. The human being who generates that behaviour is expressly put to one side. Human beings as such are unimportant; they are the subject of philosophy, of speculation. What interest the behaviourist is what people do. One chooses to ignore the question of why such astonishingly large numbers of people do not react the way they should react if the theory were correct. One is not disturbed by the fact that many people rebel, refuse o conform, do not fall for the subtle bribes that are ultimately the essence of this whole theory. The theory assumes that most people prefer to be bribed rather than to be themselves and to realize the potential of their own natures and talents. Instinct theory and behaviourism have one thing in common despite the great differences between them. Neither allows human beings the slightest control over their own lives. Instinct theory sees humans driven by impulses that lie far back in one’s human and animal pas. Behaviourism sees humans driven by whatever social constructs and conditions happen to be in effect. One is as dominated by the opportunistic and seductive tricks of one’s society as the human of instinct is by the history of one’s species. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

However, neither of the two, neither human model as proposed by the two theories, is based on what humans actually want, what one is, what is in accordance with one’s nature. The two major schools account for the greater part of what does by the name of “modern psychology” today. And I should ass that behavioristic psychology professors at American universities are behavioursts, and Soviet psychology follows very similar paths for obvious political reasons. Christianity claims the Essential Godmanhood has, in a concrete event and a concrete human, appeared within the conditions of existence, inside the weft of history, without falling from essence and without being distorted by the ebb and flow of existence. In Christ “Eternal Goodmanhood” had been seen. When it was seen Jesus was known as the Christ, the expectation of humankind finally fulfilled, the One who brings in the new eon, the New Being. Jesus is the Christ for us. And because the Christ means Essential Godmanhood, the Christ is God-for-us. Jesus would not have been the Christ, and, as the Christ, he would not have been the manifestation of Eternal Godmanhood, if humanity had not acknowledged him. For there is no revelatory situation without the ecstasy of recognition in which one discovers a manifestation of being-itself. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

The symbol of the Christ, therefore, which is borrowed from the Jewish conception of the Messiah, or King, or Anointed, can easily be distorted. Jesus as the Christ must not be seen as a God walking on Earth, as a divine-human automaton without serious temptation, real struggle, or tragic involvement in the ambiguities of life. This would be a misunderstood myth. It could not be the manifestation of a reality in which one partakes. It would not be the revelation of the ground of being. Caught in existential estrangement, humans could not grasp the meaning of a divine-human avatar. A human being names Jesus who would not be subject to the involvements of existence could not be revelatory since humans could not step into the non-existential theological circle where one would make sense. On the contrary, the Christ has been known, touched with our hands, seen with our eyes. And he has been known, not only as a man named Jesus, but as Jesus who is called the Christ. This means that in Jesus we have the picture of a personal life which is subjected to all the consequences of existential estrangement but wherein existential estrangement is conquered in oneself and a permanent unity is kept with God. The ground of being, which we only perceive in hope, to which we are unconditionally committed without the evidence that we are in contact with it, dominated the ambiguities of existence in Christ. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

Under its power, the power, the Christ did not undergo original sin; his existence did not imply a fall: it maintained in its integrality the dominion of Essential Goodmanhood over the tragedies of life. The universal quest of humankind has been for this return to unity, for this recovery of the ground of being which supports us and from which we are estranged. To perceive it in the Christ is to hear the good news that the Christ is the one who brings in the new eon, to expect the coming of a new state of things through him, the state of things in which we ourselves have recovered Essential Godmanhood and have risen from the state of estrangement to that of reunion with being-itself. The symbol of New Being is human’s quest to conquer the dichotomy between subject and object. New Being is essential being under the conditions of existence, conquering the gap between essence as existence. This symbol itself can misread. The Bing which is manifested in Christ is new indeed, but not in the sense that is has done away with the circumstances of estrangement that mark existential being. Tragedy is still here, but henceforth it has been conquered. It is there, but no longer as victorious. The New Being is new insofar as it is the undistorted manifestation of essential being insofar as it is the undistorted manifestation of essential being within and under the conditions of existence. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23

It is new in two respects: it is new in contrast to the merely potential character of essential being; and it is new over against the estranged character of existential being. In the Christ alone, human’s relation to the ground of being is fully actual and fully undistorted. In ourselves, subject as we are to existential estrangement, Godmanhood is only potential; it is a state of dreaming innocence in which we never were and from which, speaking symbolically, we feel when we came into being. Our actual being is divorced from it, and the constant dream of human has been for a return to the beginning, a restoration of that which has been lost because never had it, innocence, essence, Godmanhood. This is the New Being we long for. In Christ it has been manifested. Essential being has come o existence without distortion. Innocence has become experience without losing its pristine virginity. Estrangement has been conquered. The New Being has appeared in a personal life. We want to communicate to you an experience we have had that here and there in the World and now and then in ourselves is a New Creation, usually hidden, but sometimes manifest, and certainly manifest in Jesus who is called the Christ. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

Out of their participation in the revelatory situation in which Jesus is perceived to be the Christ, Christians witness to the vision they have had of the New Reality, which is reconciliation, reunion, resurrection. The New Creation, the New Being, the New state of things. As we pray in faith, we become a vital part in the Lord’s work as He prepares the World for His Second Coming. The transcendent events we honour were the beginning of the prophesied last dispensation, in which the Lord is preparing His Church and His people, those who bear His name, to receive Him. As part of our preparation for Hid coming, He will lift each of us so we may rise to spiritual challenges and opportunities. The work of the Lord in these last days, is one of vast magnitude and almost beyond the comprehension of mortals. Its glories are past description, and its grandeur unsurpassable. It is the theme which has animated the bosom of prophets and righteous humans from the creation of the World down through every succeeding generation to the present time; and it is truly the dispensation of the fullness of times, when all things which are in Christ Jesus, whether in Heaven or on Earth, shall be gathered together in Him, and when all things shall be restored, as spoken of by all the holy prophets since the World began; for in it will take place the glorious fulfilment of the promises made to he fathers, while the manifestations of the power of the most High will be great, glorious, and sublime. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

We feel disposed to go forward and unite our energies for the upbuilding of the Kingdom, and establishing the Priesthood in their fullness and glory. The work which has to be accomplished in the last days is one of vast importance, and will call into action the energy, skill, talent, and ability of the Saints, so that it may roll forth with glory and majesty. “Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the Summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smoke the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole Earth. And in the days of these kings shall the God of Heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure,” reports Daniel 2.34-35, 44-45. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

The effect of standing before God by welcoming him before us will, by contrast, be the transformation of our entire life. All else that enters our mind, and especially the thoughts that first come to mind as we encounter various kinds of event that make up our lives, will be healthy, Godly, and good. The conclusions we “jump” to prompted by events around us will be those in harmony with the realities of a good-God-governed Universe, not the illusions of a Godless or a me-governed Universe, or one where humans are supreme—or no one is. My patterns of thinking will conform to the truth of scriptural revelation, and I will extend and apply those truths, under the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit, to all of the details of my daily life. Am I undertaking some task? Then I in faith do it with God, assuming and finding his power to be involved with me. That is the nature of His kingdom. Is there an emergency? I will mee it with the knowledge that God is in the midst of it with me and will be calm in a center of intense prayer. Am I praised? My thoughts (and feelings) will move immediately to the goodness of God in my life. Am I condemned or reproached? I know that God is supporting and helping me because He loves me and has a future for me. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

Am I condemned or reproached? I know that God is over all and that He is working things out—that all things work together for good to those who love God and are called into the fulfillment of his purposes. And so forth. I constantly and thoughtfully engage myself with the ideas, images, and information that are provided by God through the Scriptures, His Son Jesus, and the lives and experiences of His people through the ages. In doing that, I am constantly nourished by the Holy Spirit in ways far beyond my own efforts of understanding. What I receive in response to my efforts is therefore also a gift, a grace. Spiritual (trans)formation of my thought life is achieved by the ministry of the Spirit in the midst of my necessary and well-directed efforts. This has special importance when I am faced with the presence of evil and suffering in human life, my own or at large. I realize that I will either allow my view of evil to determine my view of God and will cut Him down accordingly, or I will allow my view of God to determine my view of the evil and will elevate Him accordingly, accepting that nothing is beyond His power for God. King Benjamin continues his address—salvation comes because of the Atonement—Believe in God to be saved—retain a remission of your sins through faithfulness—impart of your substance to the poor—do all things in wisdom and order. About 124 Before Christ. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

“And now, it came to pass that when king Benjamin had made an end of speaking the words which had been delivered unto him by the Angel of the Lord, that he cast his eyes round about on the multitude, and behold they had fallen to the Earth, for the fear of the Lord had come upon them. And hey had viewed themselves in their own carnal state, even less than the dust of the Earth. And they all cried aloud with one voice, saying: O have mercy, and apply the atoning blood of Christ that we may receive forgiveness of our sins, and our hearts may be purified; for we believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who created Heaven and Earth, and all things; who shall come down among the children of humans. And it came to pass that after they had spoken these words the Spirit of the Lord came upon them, and they were filled with joy, having received a remission of their sins, and having peace of conscience, because of the exceeding faith which they had in Jesus Christ who should come, according to the words which king Benjamin had spoken unto them. And king Benjamin again opened his mouth and began to speak unto them, saying: My friends and my brethren, my kindred and my people, I would again call your attention, that ye may hear and understand the remainder of my words which I shall speak unto you. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

“For behold, if the knowledge of the goodness of God at this time has awakened you to a sense of your nothingness, and your worthless and fallen state—I say unto you, if ye have come to a knowledge of the goodness of God, and His matchless power, and His wisdom, and His patience, and His long-suffering towards the children of humans; and also, the atonement which has been prepared from the foundation of the World, that thereby salvation might come to one that should put one’s trust in the Lord, and should be diligent in keeping his commandments, and continue in the faith even unto the end f his life, I mean the life of the mortal body—I say, that this is the human wo receives salvation, through the atonement which was prepared from the foundation of the World for all humankind, which ever were since the fall of Adam, or who are, or whoever shall be, even unto the end of the World. And this is the means whereby salvation comes. And there is none other salvation save this which hath been spoken of; neither are there any conditions whereby humans can be saved expect the conditions which I have told you. Believe in God; believe that he is, an that he created all things, both in Heaven and in Earth; believe that He has all wisdom, and all power, both in Heaven and in earth; believe that humans do not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

“And again, believe that ye must repent of your sins and forsake them, and humble yourselves before God; and ask in sincerity of heart that he would forgive you; and now, if you believe all these things see that ye do them. And again I say unto you as I have said before, that as ye have come to knowledge of the glory of God, or if ye have known of His goodness and have tasted of his love, and have received a remission of your sins, which causes such exceedingly great joy in your souls, even so I would that ye should remember, and always retain in remembrance, the greatness of God, and your own nothingness, and His goodness and long-suffering towards you, unworthy creatures, and humble yourselves even in the depth of humility, calling on the name of the Lord daily, and standing steadfastly in the faith of that which is to come, which was spoken by the mouth of the Angel. And behold, I say unto you that if ye do this ye shall always rejoice, and be filled with the love of God, and always retain a remission of your sins; and ye shall grow in the knowledge of the glory of him that created you, or in the knowledge of that which is just and true. And ye will not have a mind to injure one another, but to live peaceably, and to render to every human according to that which is one’s due. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

“And ye will not suffer your children that they go hungry, or naked; neither will ye suffer that they transgress the laws of God, and fight and quarrel one with another, and serve the devil, who is the master of sin, or who is the evil spirit which hath been spoken of by our fathers, he being an enemy to all righteousness. However, ye will teach them to walk in the ways of truth and soberness; ye will teach them to love one another, and to serve one another. And also, ye yourselves will succor; ye will administer of your substance unto him that stands in need; and ye will not suffer that the beggar puts up his petition to you in vain, and turn him out to perish. Perhaps thou shalt say: The human has brought oneself one’s misery; therefore I will stay my hand, and will not give unto one of my substance that one may not suffer, for one’s punishment are just—however, I say unto you, O human, whosoever does this the same has great cause o repent; and except one repents of that which one has done one perishes forever, and has no interests in the kingdom of God. For behold, are we not all beggars? Do we not all depend upon the same Being, even God, for all the substance which we have, for both food and raiment, and for gold, and for silver, and for all the riches which we have of every kind? #RandolphHarris 19 of 23

“And behold, even at this time, ye have been calling on His name, and begging for a remission of your sins. And has he suffered that ye have begged in vain? Nay; he has poured out his Spirit upon you, and has caused that your hearts should be filled with joy, and has caused that your mouths should be stopped that ye could not find utterance, so exceedingly great was your joy. And now, if God, who has created you, on whom you are dependent for your lives and for all that ye have and are, doth grant unto you whatsoever ye ask that is right, in faith, believing that ye shall receive, O then, how ye ought to impart of the substance that ye have one to another. And if ye judge the human who puts up one’s petition to you for your substance that one perish not, and condemn one, how much more just will be your condemnation for withholding your substance, which does not belong to you but to God, to whom also your life belongs and yet ye put up no petition, not repent of the thing which thou hast done. I say unto you, wo be unto that human, for one’s substance shall perish with one; and now, I say these things unto those who are rich as pertaining to the things of this World. And again, I say unto the poor, ye who have not and yet have sufficient, that ye remain from day to day; I mean all you who deny the beggar, because ye have not; I would that ye say in your hearts that: I give not because I have not, but if I had I would give. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

“And now, if you say this in your hearts ye remain guiltless, otherwise ye are condemned; and your condemnation is just for ye covet that which ye have not received. And now, for the sake of these things which I have spoken unto you—that is, for the sake of retaining a remission of your sins from day to day, that ye may walk guiltless before God—I would that ye should impart of your substance to the poor, every human according to that which one has, such as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and administering to their relief, both spiritually and temporally, according to their wants. And see that all these things are done in wisdom and order; for it is not requisite that a human should run faster than one has strength. And again, it is expedient that one should be diligent, that thereby one might win the prize; therefore, all things must be done in order. And I would that ye should remember, that whosoever among your borrow of one’s neighbour should return the thing that one borrowed, according as one does agree, or else thou shalt commit sin; and perhaps thou shalt cause they neighbour to commit sin also. And finally, I cannot tell you all the things whereby ye may commit sin; for there are divers ways and means, even so many that I cannot number them. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

“However, this much I can tell you, that if ye do not watch yourselves, and your thoughts, and your words, and your deeds, and observe them commandments of God, and continue in faith of what ye have heard concerning the coming of our Lord, even unto the end of your lives, ye must perish. And now, O human, remember, and perish not,” reports Mosiah 4.1-30. O Lord, I bless Thee that the issue of the battle between Thyself and Satan has never been uncertain, and will end in victory. Calvary broke the dragon’s head, and I contend with a vanquished foe, who with all one’s subtlety and strength has already been overcome. When I feel the serpent at my heel may I remember one whose heel was bruised, but who, when bruised, broke the devil’s head. My soul with inward joy extols the mighty conqueror. Heal me of any wounds received in the great conflict; if I have gathered defilement, if my faith has suffered damage, if my hope is less than bright, if my love is not fervent, if some creature-comfort occupies my heart, if my soul sinks under pressure of the fight. O Thou whose every promise is balm, every touch life, draw near to Thy weary warrior, refresh me, that I may rise again to wage the strife, and never tire until my enemy is trodden down. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23

Please give me such fellowship with Thee that I may defy Satan, unbelief, the flesh, the World, with delight that comes not from a creature, and which a creature cannot mar. Give me a draught of the eternal fountain that lies in Thy immutable, everlasting love and decree. Then shall my hand never weaken, my feet never stumble, my sword never rest, my shield never rust, my helmet never shatter, my breastplate never fall, as my strength rests in the power of Thy might. Tasting, O Lord, the fullness of Thy perfect sweetness, we beseech Thee that it may be to us for remission of sins and health of soul, through Thy mercy and grace. Receiving the Cup of the Lord’s Pasion, and tasting the sweetness of His most holy Body, let us give thanks and praise to Him, walking in His house with joy and gladness. We have received the Body of Christ, and drunk His Blood. We will fear no evil, for the Lord is with us. May Thy Blood be always life to us, and salvation of our souls, O our God. LORD our God, mercifully grant that we who have received the Body and Blood of Thine Only-begotten Son, may be far removed from the blindness of the unfaithful disciple, seeing that we confess and worship Christ our Lord, Very God and Humans. Better by far you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23

Cresleigh Homes

Learn smart ways to tackle that frustrating kitchen clutter in today’s Cresleigh Blog! 🧹 Link in bio. https://www.instagram.com/p/CBoRl1Xp7dZ/

Preserve in us, O Lord, the gift of Thy grace; that by the power and virtue of the Eucharist which we have received, we may be fortified against all evils of this life and of the life to come. #CresleighHomes

So We Have Asked the Wrong Question: Satan Said to Eve, “You Will be Like God, Knowing Good and Evil!”

June 19, 2020 1:35 am

A warmer climate, immigrations, and agricultural improvements have led to explosive population growth. We so many new mouths to feed the new growth in populations spelled disaster. Fertility rates combined with reduced harvest means the land can no longer support its population. While the abundance of labour has kept wages low, most Americans in the twenty first century have experienced a steady decline in living standards, marked by famine, poverty and poor health, leaving them vulnerable to infection. Medical examinations of many Americans find them overweight and suffering from prior illness from eating unhealthy foods because they are affordable. The destruction caused by COVID-19 will change humanity in two important ways. On an economic level, the rapid loss of population will lead to some important changes in America’s economic conditions. There will be more food to go around as well as more land and better pay for the surviving farmers and workers. People will begin to eat better and live longer. Living standards will also bring an increase in social mobility. Weakening the tyrannical oppression of the government, which will bring about political reforms. However, COVID-19 will also have an important biological impact. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24

Because COVID-19 will wipe out some of the most frail and vulnerable people, it will leave behind a population with significantly different gene pool. Including genes that may help survivors resist the virus. Genetic mutations often confer immunity to different pathogens that work in similar ways. Riches are not from an abundance of Worldly goods, but from a contented mind. Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible. Their lives were not cracked or broken, as others’ were, but were bent into themselves; lost to others, they futilely sought to find themselves. In the same sense as it could be said that one’s journey through life was undetectable, in the same sense no victim fell before one. One lived much too intellectually to be a seducer in the ordinary sense. For some people, individuals are merely for stimulation; they discard them as trees shake off their leaves—one is rejuvenated, the foliage withers. I can think of nothing more tormenting than a scheming mind that loses the thread and then directs all its keenness against itself as the conscience awakens and it becomes a matter of rescuing oneself from this perplexity. The many exists from one’s foxhole are futile; the instant one has troubled soul already thinks it sees daylight filtering in, it turns out to be a new entrance, and thus, like panic-stricken wild game, pursued by despair, one is continually seeking an exit and continually finding an entrance through which one goes back into oneself. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24

Such a person is not always what could be called a criminal; one very often is oneself frustrated by one’s own schemes, and yet one is stricken with a more terrible punishment than is the criminal, for what is even the pain of repentance compared with this conscious madness? One’s punishment has a purely esthetic character, for even the expression “the conscience awakens” is too ethical to use about one; consciousness that manifests itself as a restlessness that does not indict one even in the profounder sense but keeps one awake, allow one no rest in one’s sterile restlessness. Nor is one insane, for one’s multitude of finite thoughts are not fossilized in the eternity of insanity. Who is and who is not a psychologist? And what is psychology? The answer to the first question would appear to be quite simple. Anyone who has not studied psychology and has not earn an academic degree in the field is not a psychologist. That would mean practically everyone is a nonpsychologist. However that is not really the case, and I would go so far as to claim that there is no such thing as a nonpsychologist, because we all practice and have to practice our own brands of psychology as we live our lives. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24

We have to know what is going on inside other people. We have to try to understand them. We even have to try to predict how others will behave. To do so we do not have to go to a university laboratory. The laboratory of everyday life (to which it is not even necessary to go) gives us ample opportunity to think through and ponder any number of experiments and cases. So we have asked the wrong question. We should ask not whether we are psychologist. Whatever the answer to that question may be, I feel that the study of psychology can help us become better psychologist. That brings us to our second question: What is psychology? This question is much harder to answer than the first one. We will have to take a little time with it. The literal meaning of psychology is “science of the soul.” However, knowing that does not make any clearer to us precisely what this science of the soul is. What does it study? What are its methods? What are its goals? Most people think psychology is a relatively modern science. They have that impression because it is essentially only in the last 100 to 150 years that the word “psychology” ha come into use. However, they forget that there was a premodern psychology that began—let us say—about 500 years Before Christ and continued into the seventeenth century. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24

Premodern psychology did not call itself “psychology,” however. It was known as “ethics” or often as “philosophy,” but that does not make it any the less psychology. What was the purpose of that premodern psychology? Our answer can be quite brief: Premodern psychology sought to understand the human soul in the interest of making people better. The motivation behind psychology was therefore moral. Indeed, we could even say religious. Aristotle wrote a psychological textbook, but he titled it Ethics. The Stoics produced a very interesting psychology, and some of you may be familiar with the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. In Thomas Aquinas you will find a system of psychology from which you can probably learn more than you can from most modern textbooks. His discussion of such concepts as narcissism, pride, humility, modesty, inferiority complex, and many more are as interesting and profound as you will find anywhere. Spinoza, too, wrote a psychology and, like Aristotle, entitled it Ethics. Spinoza was probably the first great psychologist to recognize clearly the power of the unconscious when he said that we are all aware of our desires but we are not aware of the motives behind those desires. The modern period has seen the rise of a totally different psychology, which is no the whole not much more than a hundred years old. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24

This modern psychology has a different purpose. Its goals is not to understand the soul so that we can become better human beings; its goal is—to state the case crudely—to understand the soul so that we can become more successful human beings. We want to understand ourselves and others so that we can take the upper hand in life, so that we can manipulate others, so that we can shape ourselves in ways that will favour our own advancement. One if we understand how much culture and the goals of society have changed, can we fully grasp the difference between the tasks of premodern and modern psychology. Now, I am sure that by and large people in classical Greece or in the Middle Ages were not all that much better than we are today. Their everyday behaviour was probably even worse than ours. However, despite that their lives were governed by an idea, and that idea was just the business of earning one’s daily pay check (bread) was not enough to make life worth living. Life had to have a meaning, and much of that meaning lay in human growth, in the development of our human powers. And therein lay the relevance of psychology. Modern humans see things differently. They are not as interested in being and becoming more as they are in having more. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24

Modern humans want better careers, more money, more power, more respect. However, we know that more and more people are beginning to doubt whether goals like those will really make them happy. Word is getting around, and such doubt is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the United States of America, the richest and most economically advanced country in the World. God never removed Paul’s thorn, despite is anguished pleas. When Paul wrote these words, it had been fourteen years since he had received the surpassingly great revelations. During that time he had suffered many varied adversities. How could he have still needed the thorn to curb any temptation to become conceited? God had an even greater purpose for the thorn. He wanted Paul to experience the sufficiency of His grace. God wanted Paul to learn that the divine assistance of the Holy Spirit was all he needed. God wanted Paul to lean continually on the Spirit for strength. All things are naked to God’s eyes. God necessarily knows things other than Himself. For it is manifest that He perfectly understands Himself; otherwise His existence would not be perfect, since His existence is His act of understanding. Now if anything is perfectly known, it follows of necessity that its power is perfectly known. However, the power of anything can be perfectly known only by knowing to what is power extends. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24

Since therefore the divine power extends to other things by the very fact that it is the first effective cause of all things, as is clear. God must necessarily know things other than Himself. And if we add that the very existence of the first effective cause is God, this appears still more plainly, God is His own act of understanding. Hence whatever effects pre-exist in God, as in the first cause, must be in His act of understanding, and all things must be in Him according to an intelligible mode: for everything which is in another, is in accord to the mode of that in which it is. God’s grace assumes our sinfulness, guilt, and ill-deservedness. Here we see it also assumes our weakness and inability. Just as grace is opposed to the pride of self-righteousness, so it is also opposed to the pride of self-sufficiency. The sin of self-sufficiency goes all the way back to the Fall in the Garden of Eden. Satan’s temptation of Eve was undoubtedly complex and many faceted. That is, it included what we would now consider a number of different temptations. However, one of those facets was the temptation of self-sufficiency. Satan said to Eve, “You will be like God, knowing good and evil,” reports Genesis 3.5. Humankind was created to be dependent upon God: physically, “in him we live and move and have our being,” reports Acts 17.28. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24

Some people, their religious services are a holy thing to them, unpriced and unpriceable. For it is done at the dictate of one’s higher self. We must recognize a sharp, clear-cut distinction between spiritual teaching as a duty and spiritual teaching as a business. The one expresses one’s true relationship to the disciple, the other seeks financial return from one. Spirituality is no commodity to be bought and sold in the marketplace. It must be worked for step by step and won by personal effort. This still remains true even though in the end it is conferred by Grace, for without such preparation the conferment is unlikely, nay almost impossible. This is not less true if the efforts may mostly be buried in the history of past lives. If any religious organization or cult-leader even mentions a price, a fee, or even a contribution as a prerequisite to Grace, initiation, or higher consciousness, then the devotee is being deceived by imposture. It is an ancient tradition that such instruction should be given free and that a teacher is degraded by receiving payment. God is costless. It is, as Jesus pointed out, as free as the wind which comes and goes. Whoever has realized it will gladly teach the way to anyone who is ripe and ready for one’s teachings. If any human puts a price on it and offers to sell it to you, be sure one is offering a false or shoddy imitation. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24

Note how Moses recalled the Israelites’ utter extremity and total dependence on God: God humbled them, caused them to hunger, fed them with food they had never seen before, taught them that humans live by the word that comes from God. Maybe this is due to Eve, but although many feminists’ legal theories are powerful and brilliant in many ways, they sometimes rely on gender essentialism—the notion that a unitary, “essential” women’s experience can be isolated and described independently of race, class, sexual orientation, and other realities of experience. The result of this tendency toward gender essentialism, is not only that some voices are silenced in order to privilege others (for this is an inevitable result of categorization, which is necessary both for human communication and political movement), but that the voices that are silenced turn out to be the same voices silenced by the mainstream legal voice of “We the People”—among them, the voices of Black women. This result troubles me for two reasons. First, the obvious one: As a humanitarian, the experience of Black women is too often ignored both in feminist theory and in legal theory, and gender essentialism in feminist legal theory does nothing to address the problem. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24

A second and less obvious reason for my criticism of gender essential is that contemporary legal theory needs less abstraction and not simply a different sort of abstraction. To be fully subversive, the methodology of feminist legal theory should challenge not only law’s content but its tendency to privilege the abstract and unitary voice, and this gender essentialism also fails to do. In accordance with my belief that legal theory, including feminist legal theory, is in need of less abstraction, and should introduce the voices of more Black women. However, just because people do not represent everyone equally does not mean that they are racist. Some of the people who are not diverse are antiracist. Yet, just as law itself, in trying to speak for all persons, ends up silencing those without power, feminist legal theory is in danger of silencing those who have traditionally been kept from speaking, or who have been ignored when they spoke, including Black women, poor White women, and sometimes even rich young White men. The first step toward avoiding this danger is to give up the dream of gender essentialism. Second, in using a racial critique to attack gender essentialism in feminist legal theory, my aim is not to establish a new essentialism in its place based on the essential experience of Black women. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24

Nor should my focus on Black women be take to mean that other women and even men are not silenced either by the mainstream culture or by feminist legal theory. Third, every experience is unique and no categories or generalizations exists at all. Even a jurisprudence based on multiple consciousness must categorize; without categorization each individual is as isolated as most alienated people believe themselves to be, and there can be no moral responsibility of social change. We need to make our categories explicitly tentative, relational, and unstable, and to do so is all the more important in a discipline like law, where abstraction and “frozen” categories are the norm. Avoiding gender essentialism need not mean that the Holocaust and a corncob are the same. Although the tactful acceptance of clumsy efforts by others to help may be a burden to the stigmatized individual, more is asked of one. It is said that if one is really at ease with one’s differentness, this acceptance will have an immediate effect upon normals, making it easier for them to be at ease with one in social situations. The stigmatized individual is advised to accept oneself as a normal person because of what others can gain in this way, and hence likely one oneself, during face-to-face interaction. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24

The line inspired by normals, then, obliges the stigmatized individual to protect normals in various ways. An important aspect of this protection has only been suggested; it will be reconsidered here. Given the fact that normals in many situations extend a stigmatized person the courtesy of treating one’s defect as if it were of no concern, and that the stigmatized is likely to feel that underneath it all one is a normal human being like anyone else, the stigmatized can be expected to allow oneself sometimes to be taken in and to believe that one is more accepted then one is. One will then attempt to participate socially in areas of contact which others feel are not one’s proper place. Thus Black writer describes the consternation she causes in a hotel beauty shop: “The shop was hushed and solemn as I was ushered in and I was hushed and solemn as I was ushered in and I was virtually lifted by the uniformed attendant into the chair. I tried a joke, the usual thing about getting a haircut once every three months even if I did not need it. It was a mistake. The silence told me that I was not a woman who should make jokes, not even good ones.” People do not only expect you to play your part; they also expect you to know your place. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24

“Once at an open air restaurant, a waiter rushed to meet me, on the terrace where the tables were, no to help me, but to tell me that they could not serve a woman like me at that restaurant, as people visited to enjoy themselves and have a good time, not to be depressed by the sight minorities.” That the stigmatized individual can be caught taking the tactful acceptance of oneself too seriously indicates that this acceptance is conditional. It depends upon normals not being pressed past the point at which they can easily extend acceptance is conditional. It depends upon normals not being pressed past the point at which they can easily extend acceptance—or, at worst, uneasily extended it. The stigmatized are tactfully expected to be polite and not to press their luck (or they will be arrested); they should not test the limits of the acceptance shown them (because the police are not on their side and looking for a reason to incarcerate them), nor make it the basis for still further demands. Tolerance, of course, is usually part of the bargain. The nature of a “good adjustment” is not apparent. It requires that the stigmatized individual cheerfully and unselfconsciously accept oneself as essentially the same as normals, while at the same time one voluntarily withholds oneself from those situations in which normals would find it difficult to give lip service to their similar acceptance one. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24

More emotion management goes on in the families and jobs of the upper classes than in those of the lower classes, generally speaking. That is, in the class system, social conditions conspire to make it more prevalent at the top. In the gender system, on the other hand, the reverse is true: social conditions make it more prevalent, and prevalent in different ways, for those at the bottom—women. In what sense is this so? And why? Both men and women do emotion work, in private life and at work. In all kinds of ways, men as well as women get into the spirit of the party, try to escape the grip of hopeless love, try to pull themselves out of depression, try to allow grief. However in the realm emotional experience, is emotion work as important for men as it is for women? And is it important in the same ways? I believer that the answers to both questions is No. The reason, at the bottom, is the fact that women in general have far less independent access to money, power, authority, or status in society. They are a subordinate social stratum, and this has four consequences. First, lacking other resources, women make a resource out of feeling and offer it to men as a gift in return for the more material resources they lack. (For example, in 2017, overall, 57 percent of men earn $50,000.00 or more annually, while only 42 percent of women earn the same a year.) #RandolphHarris 15 of 24

The pay gap is still 20 percent for woman and Black women with graduate degrees earn 2 percent less than their White female counterparts. Thus, a woman’s capacity to manage feeling and to do “relational” work is for them a more important resource. Second, emotion work is important indifferent ways for men and women. This is because each gender tends to be called on to do different kinds of this work. On the whole, women tend to specialize in the polite and accommodating side of emotional labour and men tend to be more stern and less emotional. This specialization of emotional labour in the marketplace rests on the different childhood training of the heart that is given to girls and to boys. (“What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice. What are little body made of? Snips and snails and puppy dog tails.”) Moreover, each specialization presents men and women with different emotional tasks of mastering anger and aggression in the service of “being nice.” To men, the socially assigned task of aggressing against those that break rules of various sorts creates the private task of mastering fear and vulnerability. Third, and less noticed, the general subordination of women leaves every individual women with a weaker “status shield” against the displaced feelings of others. For example, female real estate agents found themselves easier targets for verbal abuse from buyers so that male sales representatives often found themselves called upon to handle unwarranted aggression against them. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24

The fourth consequence of the power difference between the genders is that for each gender a different portion of the managed heart is enlisted for commercial use. Women more often react to subordination by making defensive use of physical beauty, charm, and relational skills. For them, it is these capacities that become most vulnerable to commercial exploitation, and so it is these capacities that they are most likely to become estranged from. For male workers in “male” jobs, it is more often the capacity to wield anger and make threats that is delivered over to the company, and so it is this sort of capacity that they are more likely to feel estranged from. After the great transmutation, then, men and women come to experience emotion work in different ways. Yet, wise teachers try to harmonize the contradictions. They use practical scientific ways along with mystical interior ones. The person who is fluent and articulate makes a better teacher so far as communication is concerned; but the person who has had divine experience, who knows what one is talking about, is still the best teacher of all. If one knows in experience as in theory, and if one possesses the ability to communicate this theory, then the impressions left will not be vague but quite distinct. A teacher who gives a well-argued discourse about Truth helps us, but so does the teacher who announces the Truth in non-discursive terms both are needful in their place. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24

The self-actualized is one who not only knows the truth but can teach well what one knows—and not necessarily in words, for silence can also be used as an effective medium. King Benjamin continues his address—the Lord Omnipotent will minister among humans in a tabernacle of clay—blood will come from every pore as He atones for the sins of the World—His is the only name whereby salvation comes—humans can putt off the natural humans and become Saints through the Atonement—the torment of the wicked will be as a lake of fire and brimstone. About 124 Before Christ. “And again my brethren, I would call your attention, for I have somewhat more o speak unto you; for behold, I have things to tell you concerning that which is to come. And he things which I shall tell you are made known unto me by an Angel from God. And he said unto me: Awake; and I awoke, and behold he stood before me. And he said unto me: Awake, and hear the words which I shall tell thee; for behold, I am come to declare unto you the glad tidings of great joy. For the Lord hath heard thy prayers, and hath judges of thy righteousness, and hath sent me to declare unto thee that thou mayest rejoice; and that thou mayest declare unto thy people, that hey may also be filled with joy. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24

“For behold, the time cometh, and is not far distant, that with power, the Lord Omnipotent who reigneth, who was, and is from all eternity to all eternity, shall come down from Heaven among the children of men, and shall dwell in a tabernacle of clay, and shall go forth amongst humans, working mighty miracles, such as healing the sick, raising the dead, causing the lame to walk, the blind to receive their sight, and the deaf to hear, and curing all manner of diseases. And he shall cast out devils, or the evil spirits which dwell in the hearts of the children of humans. And lo, he shall suffer temptations, and pain of body, hunger, thirst, and fatigue, even more than humans can suffer, except it be unto death; for behold, blood cometh from every pore, so great shall be his anguish for the wickedness and the abominations of his people. And he shall be called Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of Heaven and Earth, the Creator of all things from the beginning; and his mother shall be called Mary. And lo, he cometh unto his own, that salvation might come unto the children of humans even through faith one one’s name; and even after all this they shall consider him a man, and say that he hath a devil, and hall scourge hi and shall crucify him. And he shall rise the third day from the dead; and behold, he standeth to judge the World; and behold, all these things are done that a righteous judgment might come upon the children of humans. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24

“For behold, and also his blood atoneth for the sins of those who have fallen by the transgression of Adam, who have died not knowing the will of God concerning them, or who have ignorantly sinned. However, wo, wo unto one who knoweth that one rebelleth against God! For salvation cometh to none such except it be through repentance and faith on the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Lord God hath sent his holy prophets among all the children of humans, o declare these things to every kindred, nation, and tongue, that thereby whosoever should believe that Christ should come, the same might receive remission of their sins, and rejoice with exceedingly great joy, even as though one had already come among them. Yet the Lord God saw that his people were a stiffnecked people, and he appointed unto them a law even the law of Moses. And many signs, and wonders, and types, and shadows showed he unto them, concerning his coming; and also holy prophets spake unto them concerning his coming; and yet they hardened their hearts, and understood not that the law of Moses availeth nothing except it were through the atonement of his blood. And even if it were possible that little children could sin they could not be saved; but I say unto you they are blessed; for behold, as in Adam, or by nature, they shall, even so the blood of Christ atoneth for their sins. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24

“And moreover, I say unto you, that there shall be no other name given nor any other way nor means whereby salvation can come unto the children of humans, only in and through the name of Christ, the Lord Omnipotent. For behold he judgeth, and his judgment is just; and the infant perisheth not that dieth in his infancy; but humans drink damnation to their own souls except they humble themselves and become as little children, and believe that salvation was, and is, and is to come, in and through the atoning blood of Christ, the Lord Omnipotent. For the natural human is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless one yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural human and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon one, even as a child doth submit to one’s father. And moreover, I say unto you, that the time shall come when the knowledge of a Saviour shall spread throughout every nation, kindred, tongue, and people. And behold, when that time cometh, none shall be found blameless before God, except it be little children, only through repentance and faith on the name of the Lord God Omnipotent. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24

“And even at this time, when thou shalt have taught thy people the things which the Lord thy God hath commanded thee, even then are they found no more blameless in the sight of God, only according to the words which I have spoken unto thee. And now I have spoken he words which the Lord God hath commanded me. And thus saith the Lord: They shall stand as a bright testimony against this people, at the judgment day; whereof they shall be judged, every human according to one’s work, whether they be good, or whether they be evil. And if they be evil they are consigned to an awful view of their own guilt and abominations, which doth cause them to shrink from the presence of the Lord into a state of misery and endless torment, from whence they can no more return; therefore they have drunk damnation to their own souls. Therefore, they have drunk out of the cup of the wrath of God, which justice could no more deny unto them than it could deny that Adam should fall because of one’s partaking of the forbidden fruit; therefore, mercy could have claim on them no more forever. And their torment is as a lake of fire and brimstone, whose flames are unquenchable, and whose smoke ascendeth up forever and ever. Thus hath the Lord commanded me. Amen,” reports Mosiah 3.1-27. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24

Mighty God, I humble myself for faculties misused, opportunities neglected, words ill-advised, I repent of my folly and inconsiderate ways, my broken resolutions, untrue service, my backsliding steps, my vain thoughts. O bury my sins in the ocean of Jesus’ blood and please let no evil result from my fretful temper, unseemly behaviour, provoking pettiness. If by unkindness I have wounded or hurt another, do thou pour in the balm of Heavenly consolation; if I have turned coldly from need, misery, grief, please do not in just anger forsake me: If I have withheld relief from penury and pain, do not withhold They gracious bounty from me. If I have shunned those who have offended me, please keep open the door of Thy heart to my need. Please fill me with an over-flowing ocean of compassion, the reign of love my motive, the law of love my rule. O Thou God of all grace, please make me more thankful, more humble; please inspire me with a deep sense of my unworthiness arising from the depravity of my nature, my omitted duties, my unimproved advantages, Thy commands violated by me. With all my calls to gratitude and joy may I remember that I have reason for sorrow and humiliation; O give me repentance unto life; cement my oneness with my blessed Lord, that faith may adhere to one more immovably, that love may entwine itself round one more tightly, that one’s Spirit may pervade every fibre of my being. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24

Then please send me out to make one know to my fellow-humans. The spiritual guide must be someone to be trusted more than any human to be looked to for guidance, knowledge, hope, inspiration, and warning. One respects every confidence that is reposed in one and keeps all confession in the hidden archives of memory. Whatever confidence one receives during the interview, the other person may feel sure that it will not be betrayed. The person who professes to guide others spiritually and to inspire them with high ideals cannot escape being watched. If one resents the ordeal, one’s service o them will be impaired; but if one accept it, one shows thereby that one is not looking for self-glory. Contempt and slander will be the unequal reward some will pay one; miscomprehension and minification will be received from others. One will accept them unconcernedly. No true master will take money for one’s services. O God, the Bread of our life, look upon us; be Thou the Guardian of our bodies; be Thou the Saviour of our souls. Believing that we have received from the holy Alter the Body and Blood of Christ our Lord and God, let us pray to the Unity of the Blessed Trinity, that it may be granted to us evermore, in fullness of faith, to hunger and thirst after righteousness; and that we, being strengthened with the grace of the saving Food, may so do His work, that we may possess the Sacrament which we have received, not for judgment, but for healing, through our Lord Jesus Christ. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24

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O LORD my God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, make me ever to seek and love Thee, and by this Holy Communion which I have received never to depart from Thee; for Thou art God, and beside Thee there is none else, for ever and ever. #CresleighHomes

One Might Call Me a Stepchild of Our Culture—I Might Have Been a Gold-Fish in a Glass Bowl!

June 17, 2020 1:33 am

The value of life is possessed, not in the length of the days, but in the use we make of them; a human may live long, yet live very little. Satisfaction in life depends not on the number of years, but on your will. The greatest thing in the World is to know how to be self-sufficient. There are certain typical difficulties inherent in our culture, which mirror themselves as conflicts in every individual’s life and which, accumulated, may lead to the formation of the neuroses. Since I am not a sociologist, I shall merely point out briefly the main trends which has a bearing on the problem of neurosis and culture. Modern culture is economically based on the principle of individual competition. The isolated individual has to fight with other individuals of the same group, has to surpass them and, frequently, thrust them aside. The advantage of the one is frequently the disadvantaged of the other. The psychic result of this situation is a diffuse hostile tension between individuals. Everyone is the real or potential competitor of everyone else. This situation is clearly apparent among members of the same occupational group, regardless of strivings to be fair or of attempts to camouflage by polite considerations. It must be emphasized, however, that competitiveness, and the potential hostility that accompanies it, pervades all human relationships. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

Competitiveness is one of the predominant factors in social relationships. It pervades the relationships between men and men, between women and women, and whether the point of competition be popularity, competence, attractiveness or any other social value it greatly impairs the possibilities of reliable friendship. It also, as already indicated, disturbs the relations between men and women, not only in the choice of the partner but in the entire struggle with one for superiority. It pervades school life. And perhaps most important of all, it pervades the family situation, so that as a rule the child is inoculated with this germ from the very beginning. The rivalry between father and son, mother and daughter, one child and another, is not a general human phenomenon but is the response to culturally conditioned stimuli. It remains one of Dr. Freud’s great achievements to have seen the role of rivalry in the family, as expressed in his concept of the Oedipus complex and in other hypotheses. It must be added, however, that this rivalry itself is not biologically conditioned but is a result of given cultural condition and, furthermore, that the family situation is not the only one to stir up rivalry, but that the competitive stimuli are active from the cradle to the grave. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

The potential hostile tension between individuals results in a constant generation of fear—fear of the potential hostility of others, reinforced by a fear of retaliation for hostilities of one’s own. Another important source of fear in the normal individual is the prospect of failure. The fear of failure is a realistic one because, in general, the chances of failing are much greater than those of succeeding, and because failures in a competitive society entail a realistic frustration of needs. They mean not only economic insecurity, but also loss of prestige and all kinds of emotional frustrations. Another reason why success is such a fascinating phantom is its effect on out self-esteem. It is not only by others that we are valued accord to the degree of our success; willy-nilly our own self-evaluation follows the same pattern. According to existing ideologies success is due to our own intrinsic merits, or in religious terms, is a visible sign of the grace of God; in reality it is dependent on a number of factors independent of our control—fortuitous circumstances, unscrupulousness, and the like. Nevertheless, under the pressure of the existing ideology, even the most normal person is constrained to feel that one amounts to something when successful, and is worthless if one is defeated. Needless to say, this presents a shaky basis for self-esteem. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

All these factors together—competitiveness and its potential hostilities between fellow-beings, fears, diminished self-esteem—result psychologically in the individual feeling that one is isolated. Even when one has many contacts with others, even when one is happily married, one is emotionally isolated. Emotional isolation is hard for anyone to endure; it becomes a calamity, however, if it coincides with apprehensions and uncertainties about one’s self. It is this situation which provokes, in the normal individual of our time, an intensified need for affection as a remedy. Obtaining affection makes one feel less isolated, less threatened by hostility and less uncertain of oneself. Because it corresponds to a vital need, love is overvalued in our culture. It becomes a phantom—like success—carrying with it the illusion that it is a solution for all problems. Love itself is not an illusion—although in our culture it is most often a screen for satisfying wishes that have nothing to do with it—but it is made an illusion by our expecting much more of it than it can possibly fulfill. And the ideological emphasis that we place on love serves to cover up the factors which create our exaggerated need for it. Hence the individual—and I still mean the normal individual—is in the dilemma of needing a great deal of affection but finding difficulty in obtaining it. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

The situation thus far represents a fertile ground for the development of neuroses. The same cultural factors that affect the normal person—leading one toward a shaky self-esteem, potential hostile tension, apprehensiveness, competitiveness entailing fear and hostility, enhanced need for satisfactory personal relations—affect the neurotic to a higher degree and in one the same results are merely intensified—a crushed self-esteem, destructiveness, anxiety, enhanced competitiveness entailing anxiety and destructive impulses, and excessive need for affection. When we remember that in every neurosis there are contradictory tendencies which the neurotic is unable to reconcile, the question arises as to whether there are not likewise certain definite contradictions in our culture, which underlie the typical neurotic conflicts. It would be the task of the sociologist to study and describe these cultural contradictions. It must suffice for me to indicate briefly and schematically some of the main contradictory tendencies. The first contradiction to be mentioned is that between competition and success on the one hand, and humanly love and humility on the other. On the one hand everything is done to spur us toward success, which means that we must be not only assertive but aggressive, able to push others out of the way. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

On the other hand we are deeply imbued with Christian ideals which declare that it is selfish to want anything for ourselves, that we should be humble, turn the other cheek, by yielding. For this contradiction there are only two solutions within the normal range: to take one of these strivings seriously and discard the other; or to take both seriously with the result that the individual is seriously inhibited in both directions. The second contradiction is that between the stimulation of our needs and our factual frustrations in satisfying them. For economic reasons needs are constantly being stimulated in our cultural by such means as advertisements, “conspicuous consumption,” the ideal of “keeping up with Hiltons.” For the great majority, however, the actual fulfillment of these needs is closely restricted. They psychic consequences for the individual is a constant discrepancy between one’s desires and their fulfillment. Another contradiction exists between the alleged freedom of the individual and all one’s factual limitations. The individual is told by society that one is free, independent, can decide one’s life according to one’s own free will; “the great game of life” is open to one, and one can get what one wants if one is efficient and energetic. In actual fact, for the majority of people all these possibilities are limited. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

What has been said facetiously of the impossibility of choosing one’s parents can well be extended to life in general—choosing and succeeding in an occupation, choosing ways of recreation, choosing a mate. The result for the individual is a wavering between a feeling of boundless power in determining one’s own fate and a feeling of entire helplessness. These contradictions embedded in our culture are precisely the conflict which the neurotic struggles to reconcile: one’s tendencies toward aggressiveness and one’s tendencies toward yielding; one’s excessive demands and one’s fear of never getting anything; one’s striving toward self-aggrandizement and one’s feeling of personal helplessness. The difference from the normal is merely quantitative. While the normal person is able to cope with the difficulties without damage to one’s personality, in the neurotic all the conflicts are intensified to a degree that makes any satisfactory solution impossible. It seems that the person who is likely to become neurotic is one who has experienced the culturally determined difficulties in an accentuated form, mostly through the medium of childhood experiences, and who has consequently been unable to solve them, or has solved them only at great cost to one’s personality. We might call one a stepchild of our culture. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

The individual’s “own” group, then, may inform the code of conduct professionals advocate for one. The stigmatized individual is also asked to see oneself from the point of view of a second grouping: the normals and the wider society that they constitute. I want to consider at some length the shadow cast by this second standpoint. The language of this stance inspired by normals is not so much political, as in the previous case, as it is psychiatric—the imagery of mental hygiene being employed as a source of rhetoric. One who adheres to the advocated line is said to be mature and to have achieved a good personal adjustment; one who does not follow the line is said to be an impaired person, rigid, defensive, with inadequate inner resources. What does this advocacy involved? The individual is advised to see oneself as fully human being like anyone else, one who at worst happens to be excluded from what is, in the last analysis, merely one area of social life. One is not a type or a category, but a human being: Who said that the physically disabled are unfortunate? Do they, or do you? Just because they cannot dance? All music has to stop sometime anyway. Just because they cannot play tennis? Lots of times the Sun is too hot! Just because you have to help them down the stairs? Is there something else you would rather do? #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

Polio is not sad—it is just darned inconvenient—it means you cannot have those fits of temper and run into your room and kick the door shut any more. Disabled is an awful word. It specifies! It sets apart! It is too intimate! It is condescending! It makes me want to vomit like a wiggling creature coming out of the cocoon. Since one’s affliction is nothing in itself, one should not be ashamed of it or of others who have it; nor should one compromise oneself by trying to conceal it. On the other hand, by hard work and persistent self-training one should fulfill ordinary standards as fully as one can, stopping short only when the issue of normifcation arises; that is, where one’s efforts might give the impression that one is trying to deny one’s differentness. (This very fine line is drawn differently, of course, by different professionals, but because of this ambiguity it needs professional presentation all the more.) And because normals have their troubles, too, the stigmatized individual should not feel bitter, resentful, or self-pitying. A cheerful, outgoing manner should be cultivated. A formula for handling normals follows logically. The skills that the stigmatized individual acquires in dealing with a mixed social situation should be used to help the others in it. Normals really mean no harm; when they do, it is because they do not know better. They should therefore be tactfully helped to act nicely. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

Slights, snubs, and untactful remarks should not be answered in kind. Either no notice should be taken or the stigmatized individual should make an effort at sympathetic re-education of the normal, showing one, point for point, quietly, and with delicacy, that in spite of appearances the stigmatized individual is, underneath it all, a fully-human being. (So complete is the individual’s derivation from society, that society can rely on those who are the least accepted as normal members, the least rewarded by the pleasures of easy social intercourse with others, to provide a statement, clarification, and tribute to the inward being of every human. The more the stigmatized individual deviates from the norm, the more wonderfully one may have to express possession of the standard subjective self if one is to convince others that on possesses, it and the more they may demand that one provide them with a model of what an ordinary person is supposed to feel about oneself.) When the stigmatizes person finds that normals have difficulty in ignoring one’s failings, one should try to help them and the social situation by conscious efforts to reduce tension. In these circumstances the stigmatized individual may, for example, attempt to “break the ice,” explicitly referring to one’s failing in a way that shows one is detached, able to take one’s condition in stride. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

In addition to matter-of-factness, levity is also recommended: “Then there was the cigarette gag. That was invariably god for a laugh. Whenever I would walk into a restaurant, bar, or party, I would whip out a pack of butts, open it ostentatiously, take one, light it, and sit back puffing on it contentedly. That almost always attracted attention. People would stare and I could almost hear them saying, My! Is it not wonderful what he can do with a pair of hooks? Whenever anyone commented on this accomplishment I would smile and say ‘There is one thing I never have to worry about. That is burning my fingers.’ Corny, I know, but a sure icebreaker.” It should be noted that one who attempts to break the ice may, of course, be seen as exploiting the situation for what can be wrung from it, as novelists have pointed out. However, being able to break the ice, one may be demonstrating to oneself that one has superior control in the situation. A somewhat sophisticated female patient whose face had been scarred by a beauty treatment felt it effective upon entering a room of people to say facetiously, “Please excuse the case of leprosy.” It is also suggested that the stigmatized individual in mixed company may find it useful to refer to one’s disability and one’s group in the language one employs when with one’s own, and the language employed about one when normals are among their own—thus proffering the normals present a temporary status as wise one. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

At other times one may find it appropriate to conform to “disclosure etiquette” and introduce one’s failing as a topic of serious conversation, in this way hoping to reduce its significance as a topic of suppressed concern: The injured man’s feeling that, as a person, one is not understood, combined with the non-injured person’s embarrassment in one’s presence, produced a strained, uncomfortable relationship which further serves to separate them. To relieve this social strain and gain greater acceptance, the injured person may not only be willing to satisfy the expressed curiosity of non-injured persons…but may also oneself initiate discussions of the injury. Other means of helping the others to be tactful toward one are also recommended, such as, in the case of facial disfigurements, pausing on the threshold of an encounter so the participants-to-be will have a chance to compose their response. A 37-year-old male whose face is grossly disfigured but who carries on a real estate business, “When I have an appointment with a new contact, I try to manage to be standing at a distance and facing the door, so the person entering will have more time to see me and get adjusted to my appearance before we start talking.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

The stigmatized individual is also advised to act as if the efforts of normals to ease matters for one were effective and appreciated. Unsolicited offers of interest, sympathy, and help, although often perceived by the stigmatized as an encroachment on privacy and a presumption, are to be tactfully accepted: “Yet, help is not only a problem to those who render it. If the disabled individual wants the ice to be broken, one must admit the value of help and allow people to give it to one. Innumerable times I have seen the fear and bewilderment in people’s eyes vanish as I have stretched out my hand for help, and I have felt life and warmth stream from the helping hands I have taken. We are not always aware of the help we may give b accepting assistance, that in this way we may establish a foothold for contact.” A polio patient author states a similar theme: “When my neighbours ring my bell on a snowy day to inquire if I need something from the store, even though I am prepared for bad weather I try to think up some item rather than reject a generous offer. It is kinder to accept help than refuse it in an effort to prove independence.” And similarly, an amputee: “A lot of amputees sort of humour the others to make them feel good because they are doing something for you. It does not make other people uncomfortable like it could if you were still standing up.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

The call, properly done, is a call from God who is inviting us corporately into His presence. We listen to God’s works with reverent, prayerful anticipation. As the call ends, we are led in an invocation which invites God to meet us and calls us to submit ourselves in worship, for His glory. When God stands before us, we stand before Him. Refusing to worship Him is a way of trying to avoid his face and his eyes. Even the One-and-a half-year-old Annie was enjoying water in the back yard with her brother Leo, and grandmother “Boomba.” Boomba gently counseled her to water the peonies, but she had just discovered mud by pouring water on a small patch of dirt. Boomba told her not to put water on the dirt because it makes mud and mud will “get everything dirty.” Well, mud it was anyway, and little Annie even put the mud into a small tub of water nearby, calling it then “warm chocolate,” and she ate some. Boomba, who had been reading facing away from the action, soon discovered and cleaned up what to her was a mess, and then returned to her reading, but now seated so as to be facing Annie. However, the little girl soon resumed her “warm chocolate” routine, saying sweetly, “Do not look at me, Boomba. Okay?” Boomba of course agreed, and looked down at her reading. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

Then Annie would make black mud and put some of it in the tub. And then some more. Three times she said, as she continued with her work, “Do not look at me, Boomba. Okay?” The tender soul of a little child shows us how necessary it is to us that we unobserved in our wrong. The adult soul carries the same burden—but now so great as to be crushed by it. And when the face of God will no longer be avoidable, that soul will cry out in agony “to the mountains and to the rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face Him who sits on the throne,’” reports Revelation 6.15-16. The so-called “right to privacy” of which so much is made in contemporary life is in very large measure merely a way of avoiding scrutiny in our wrongdoing. King Benjamin addresses his people—he recounts the equity, fairness, and spirituality of his reign—he counsels them to serve their Heavenly King—those who rebel against God will suffer anguish like unquenchable fire. About 124 Before Christ. “And it came to pass that after Mosiah had done as his father had commanded him, and had made a proclamation throughout all the and, that the people gathered themselves together throughout all the land, that they might go up to the temple to hear the words which king Benjamin should speak unto them. And there were a great number, even so many that they did not number them; for they had multiplied exceedingly and waxed great in the land. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

“And they also took the firstlings of their flocks, that they might offer sacrifice and burnt offerings according to the law of Moses; and also that they might give thanks to the Lord their God, who had brought them out of the land of Jerusalem, and who had delivered them out of the hands of their enemies, and had appointed just humans to be their teachers, and also a just man to be their kind, who had established peace in the land of Zarahemla, and who had taught them to keep the commandments of God, that they might rejoice and be filled with love towards God and all humans. And it came to pass that when they came up to the temple, they pitched their tents round about, every human according to one’s family, consisting of one’s wife, and one’s sons, and one’s daughters, and their sons, and their daughters, from the eldest down to the youngest, every family being separate one from another. And they pitched their tents round about the temple, every human having one’s tent with the door there of towards the temple, that thereby they might remain in their tents and hear the words which king Benjamin should speak unto them; for the multitude being so great that king Benjamin could not teach them all within the walls of the temple, therefore he caused a tower to be erected, that thereby his people might hear the words which he should speak unto them. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

“And it came to pass that he began to speak to his people from the tower; and they could not all hear his words because of the greatness of the multitude; therefore he caused that the words which he spake should be written and sent forth among those that were not under the sound of his voice, that they might also receive his words. And these are the words which he spake and caused to be written, saying: My brethren, all ye that have assembled yourselves together, you that can hear my words which I shall speak unto you this day; for I have not commanded you to come up hither to trifle with the words which I shall speak, but that you should hearken unto me, and open your ears that ye may hear, and your hears that ye may understand, and your minds that the mysteries of God maybe unfolded to your view. I have not commanded you to come up hither that ye should fear me, or that ye should think that I of myself am more than a mortal man. However, I am like as yourselves, subject to all manner of infirmities in body and mind; yet I have been chosen by this people, and consecrated by my father, and was suffered by the hand of the Lord that I should be a ruler and a king over this people; and have been kept and preserved by his matchless power to serve you with all the might, mind and strength which the Lord hath grated unto me. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

“I say unto you that as I have been suffered to spend my days in your service, even up to this time, and have not sought gold nor sliver nor any manner of riches of you; neither have I suffered that ye should be confined in dungeons, nor that ye should make slaves of one another, nor that ye should murder, or plunder, or steal, or commit adultery; nor even have I suffered that ye should commit any manner of wickedness, and have taught you that ye should keep the commandments of the Lord, in all things which he hath commanded you—and even I, myself, have labored with mine own hands that I might serve you, and that ye should not be laden with taxes, and that there should nothing come upon you which was grievous to be borne—and of all these things which I have spoken, ye yourselves are witnesses this day. Yet, my brethren, I have not done these things that I might boast, neither do I tell these things that thereby I might accuse you; but I tell you these things that ye may know that I can answer a clear conscience before God this day. Behold, I say unto you that because I said unto you that I had spent my days in your service, I do not desire to boast, for I have only been in the service of God. And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

“Behold, ye have called me your king; and if I, whom ye call your king, do labor to serve you, then ought not ye to labor to serve one another? And behold also, if I, whom ye call your king, who has spent his days in your service, and yet has been in the service of God, do merit any thanks from you, O how you ought to thank your Heavenly King! I say unto you, my brethren, that is you should render all the thanks and praise which your whole soul has power to possess, to that God who has created you, and has kept and preserved you, and has caused that ye should rejoice, and has granted that ye should live in peace one with another—I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting your from one moment to another—I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants. And behold, all that he requires of you is to keep his commandments; and he has promised you that if ye would keep his commandments ye should prosper in the land; and he never doth vary from that which he hath said; therefore if ye do keep his commandments he doth bless you and prosper you. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

“And now, in the first place, he hath created you, and granted unto you your lives, for which ye are indebted unto him. And secondly, he doth require that ye should do as he hath commanded you; for which if ye do, he doth immediately bless you; and therefore he had paid you. And ye are still indebted unto him, and are, and will be, forever and ever; therefore, of what have ye to boast? Thou God of my end, Thou hast given me a fixed disposition to go forth and spend my life for Thee; if it by Thy will let me proceed in it; if not, then revoke my intentions. All I want in life is such circumstances as may best enable me to serve Thee in the World; to this end I leave all my concerns in Thy hand, but let me not be discouraged, for this hinders my spiritual fervency; enable me to undertake some task for Thee, for this refreshes and animates my soul, so that I could endure all hardships and labours, and willingly suffer for Thy name. However, O what a death it is to strive and labour, to be always in a hurry and yet do nothing! Alas, time flies and I am of little use. O that I could be a flame of fire in Thy service, always burning out in one continual blaze. Please fit me for singular usefulness in the World. Please fit me to exult in distresses of every kind if they but promote the advancement of Thy kingdom. Fit me to quit all hopes of the World’s friendship, and give me a deeper sense of my sinfulness. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

Please fit me to accept as just desert from Thee any trial that may befall me. Please fit me to be totally resigned to the denial of pleasures I desire, and to be content to spend m time with Thee. Please fit me to pray with a sense of the joy of divine communion, to find all times happy seasons to my soul, to see my own nothingness, and wonder that I am allowed to serve Thee. Please fit me to enter the blessed World where no unclean thing is, and to know Thee with me always. May the holy Food and Drink be salutary to us, O Lord; may it fortify our temporal life, and give us life eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, Who touchest us in the participation of Thy Sacrament, work out in our hearts the effects of its power, that through Thy Gift itself we may be fitted for the reception of the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. May the Heavenly Mystery, O Lord, be to us a renewal of soul and body; and as we have gone through the performance of it, may we feel its effect, through Jesus Christ our Lord. We thank Thee, O Lord, Who refreshest us both with the partaking of the Heavenly Sacrament and with the solemn remembrance of Thy righteous servants, through Jesus Christ our Lord. May the vices of our hearts be overcome by this Medicine, which came to heal the diseases of our mortal nature. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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Almighty and everlasting God, preserve the works of Thy mercy, and pour into our hearts the sweetness of the Body and Blood of Thine Only-begotten Son Jesus Christ our Lord. #CresleighHomes

In Our World of Divide and Conquer, the Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master House!

June 15, 2020 2:40 am

Miracles are not believed, even by those to whom they happen. A guru who thinks of oneself as having disciples has attachments. The ego is present in one. They are mentally held as possessions. An individual who is privileged to carry a message from the mountaintop down to one’s fellows should feel no envy of other messengers, no emotional disturbance at their success or one’s own failure. If one does, it means that the ego has inserted itself into one’s work and poisoned it. On the contrary, one which they could not hear for themselves. One ought to rejoice at their blessing, otherwise one is still worshipping oneself and not God. A true messenger will not look for followers but for those whom one can help. Exposed to flattery and obsequiousness though one will be, one will nevertheless keep quite free from pomposity and vanity. The teacher has to bear patiently with the defects and weakness of one’s students. If one’s insight were too limited, one’s compassion too small, and one’s calmness too superficial, one could not do this. Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creative can spark like a dialectic. Only then different strengths, acknowledged and equal, can the power seek new ways of being in the World generate, as well as the courage and sustenance to act where there are no charters. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23

Within the interdependence of mutual (nondominated) differences lies that security which enables us to descend into the chaos of knowledge and return with true visions of our future, along with the concomitant power to effect those changes which can bring that future into being. Difference is that raw and powerful connection from which our personal being is forged. Many people have been taught either to ignore their differences, or to view them as causes for separation and suspicion rather than as forces for change. Without community there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and one’s oppression. However, community must no mean a shedding of our difference, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist. Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable people; those of us who have been forged in the crucible of difference—those of us who are less affluent, who are atypical, who are mature—know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified at outside the structures in order to define and seek a World in which we can al flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make the strengths. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

We must learn to allow our unique qualities to make us strong for the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow for us to temporarily beat one at one’s own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those whom still define the master’s house as their only source of support. I believe most educators would agree that a high priority in education is to help individuals to acquire the learning, the information, and the personal growth that will enable them to deal more constructively with the “real World.” This is often the theme of commencement addresses, in which one expresses hopes or fears concerning how the new graduates will face and cope with the “real World.” It is often a topic in the final hours of intensive encounter groups, when individuals who have learned a great deal about themselves and about their interpersonal relationships are concerned about how they will behave when they return to their “real” lives outside. What is this “real World?” It is this question that I want to explore, and I believe that the direction in which my thinking has inexorably led me will be best portrayed by giving a number of personal commonplace examples. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23

A few weeks ago, I was sitting alone, late at night, on the deck of a beach cottage in norther California. As I sat there for several hours, a bright star on the horizon moved upward into clear view. A brilliant planet moved with the same slow, majestic speed from directly above me to a point well on my right. The star and the planet were accompanied in their movement by the Milk Way and all the other constellations. Obviously, I was the center of the Universe, and the Heavens were slowly revolving about me. It was a humbling experience (How small I am!) and an uplifting one (How marvelous to be such a focal point!). I was looking at the real World. Yet, in another corner of my mind, I knew that I, and the Earth beneath me, and the atmosphere surrounding me were moving at a breathless speed—faster than modern jet plane—in the direction I called east, and the stars and planets were, relative to the Earth, comparatively motionless. Although I could not see what I have just described, I knew that this—not the more obvious perception—was really the real World. On some level, we are aware that we are an infinitesimal speck on an insignificant planet in one of the minor galaxies (of which there are millions) in the Universe. We know that each of these galaxies are moving at an incredible speed, often exploding away from the others. Is this reality, too? #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

I am confused. However, at least there is one reality of which I can be sure: the hard wooden chair on which I sit, the solid Earth on which the deck rests, the stainless steel pen I hold in my hand. This is a reality that can not only be seen, but also felt and touched. These objects can sustain weight and pressure. They are solid. However, no, I know enough of science to challenge all this. The chair is made up of formerly living cells, intricate in their composition, composed more of space than of matter. The Earth is a slowly moving fluid mess, which shudders very frequently as it shrinks and cracks and crinkles. The road over which I drove yesterday had been a part of those shudders. One day in 1906, the Earth shrugged a little and the road cracked, and the western side of the crack was carried twenty feet north of its continuation on the other side. Solid Earth! And what about the reassuring hardness of my metal pen? They tell me it is composed of invisible atoms, moving at great speed. Each atom has a nucleus, and recent years have brought discoveries of more and more particles in those nuclei. Each particle is endowed with fantastically unbelievable characteristics; it moves in possibly random, possibly orderly trajectories in the great inner space of each atom. My pen is hardly the firm solid object that I so clearly feel and hold. The “real World” seems to be dissolving. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

I am reassured, but also perplexed, by the statement of the great physical scientist, Sir James Jeans. He says: “The steam of human knowledge is impartially heading toward a nonmechanical reality: The Universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine.” Try that on your practical friend, or your plumber, or your stockbroker. Tell them, “The real World is just a great thought.” At any rate, the conception of a real World, obvious to anyone, is rapidly slipping completely out of my grasp. However, at least in the interpersonal World, I know my family and my friends; this knowledge is surely a solid basis on which I can act. However, then my memories trip me up. One needs only the simple occasion of a softly facilitated encounter group, where permission is given to express oneself, to discover how shaky our interpersonal knowledge is. Individuals have discovered in their closet friends and family members great realms of hidden feelings. There are previously unknown fears, feelings of inadequacy, suppressed rages and resentments, bizarre desires for pleasures of the flesh and fantasies, hidden pools of hopes and dreams, of joys and dread, of creative urges and unbidden loves. This reality, too, seems as unsure, as full unknowns, as any yet considered yet in this paper. So that individual is drive back to self: “At least I know who I am. I decide what I want t do, and I do it. That is for real.” However, is it? #RandolphHarris 6 of 23

If I talk to the behaviourist, one tells me, “You are nothing but the sum of your stimulus inputs and the conditioned responses you emit. All of the rest is illusion.” Well, finally we have reality. I am nothing but a mechanical robot. Or is that all? Where do my dreams come from? Perhaps that can be explained too. The I think of Jean, the woman who told me that her identical twin sister was driving back to her own home at night by a familiar route when Jean awoke in a panic of certainty. She phoned the highway police and told them, “There have been an accident on such-and-such a highway. It is a white car with his license and a lone woman driver.” There was a pause, and then the officer said, in a puzzled and slightly suspicious voice, “But how did you know about that lady? We only got the report of the accident two minutes ago.” What do we make of that kind of reality? That little episode opens up a whole train of thought about the inner Worlds and “separate realities.” In a World of possibility for us all, our personal visions help lay the groundwork for political action. The failure of academic feminists to recognize differences as crucial strength is a failure to reach beyond the first patriarchal lesson. In our World, divide and conquer must become define and empower. We need to foster interracial cooperation between races, cultures, occupations, lifestyles, and genders who do not love each other. Unity is powerful and important. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

Feminists and other egalitarian movements have the same agenda, and that is to achieve equality for all of the group that they recognize. Many people are still caught up by discriminatory visions of the past, and those are being relived today. However, majority of society has educated themselves about humanity and the difference between people, and know that they key to survival is acceptance and understanding. To follow the Golden Rule, do on to others as you would have then do on to you. We all want to go to Heaven because Earth is not our final home. However, “the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord,” reports Romans 6.23. Humans of today are still being called upon to stretch across the gap of society’s ignorance and to educate humanity as to our existence and our needs. This is an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with the master’s concerns. Now we hear that it is the task of the young and mature to educate society—in the face of tremendous resistance—as to our existence, our differences, our relative roles in our joint survival. This is a diversion of energies and a tragic repetition of discriminatory thought. It is the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for acting. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

Helping others to understand the art of proper living is itself an art. A person may be good and yet not a good teacher. Racism, sexism, Zeusophobia, homophobia, perennial disregard for law and order are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside oneself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives there. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices. The people have so much power and are coming out in masses and demanding changes, but violence is not the answer. Your mayors and governors are the ones who have control over how your state and local resources are distributed and they also have a strong influence in law enforcement, business and the media. You have the power to use all of people who are upset and want change to recall these people and put officials in office who will listen to you and build more affordable housing before expanding a theatre or erecting a sports colosseum, add more public transportation and supermarkets in communities that need them, and allocate more resources to educate, and make sure they make it to the classroom and are not eaten up on administrative costs and fees. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

There is scarcely any neurosis in which the tendency to get rid of the self does not appear in a direct form. It may appear in fantasies of leaving home and becoming a derelict or of losing one’s identity; in an identification with a person one is reading about; in a feeling, as one individual put it, of being forlorn amid the darkness and the waves, of being at one with the darkness and the waves. The tendency is present in wishes to be hypnotized, in an inclination toward mysticism, in feelings of unreality, in an inordinate need for sleep, in the lure of sickness, insanity, death. And as I have mentioned before, in masochistic fantasies the common denominator is a feeling of being putty in the master’s hand, of being devoid of all will, of all power, of being absolutely subjected to another’s domination. Each different manifestation is of course determined in its special way and has its own implications. A feeling of being enslaved, for example, may be par of a general tendency to feel victimized, and as such be a defense against impulses to enslave others and also an accusation against others for not letting themselves be dominated. However, while it has also the secret positive value of self-surrender. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23

Whether the neurotic subjects oneself to a person or to fate, and whatever the kind of suffering which one allows to overpower one, the satisfaction one seeks seems to be the weakening or extinction of one’s individual self. One ceases then to be the active carrier of actions and becomes an object, without a will of one’s own. When masochistic strivings are thus integrated into the general phenomenon of a striving to relinquish the individual self, the satisfaction that is sought or attained by weakness and suffering loses its strangeness; it is put in a frame of reference that is familiar. The tenaciousness of masochistic strivings in neurotics is then accounted for by the fact that at the same time they serve as a protection against anxiety and provide a potential or real satisfaction. As we have seen, this satisfaction is seldom real except in fantasies about pleasures of the flesh or perversions, even though the striving for it is an important element in the general tendencies toward weakness and passivity. Thus a final question arises as to why the neurotic so rarely attains the oblivion and abandon, and thus the satisfaction, which one seeks. An important circumstance which prevents a definite satisfaction is that the masochistic drives are counteracted by the neurotic’s extreme emphasis on the uniqueness of one’s individuality. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

Most masochistic phenomena share with neurotic symptoms the character of being a compromise solution of incompatible strivings. The neurotic tends to feel a prey to everyone’s will, but at the same time insists that the World should adapt itself to one. One tends to feel enslaved, but at the same time insists that one’s power over others should be unquestioned. One wants to be helpless and taken care of, but at the same time insists on being not only entirely self-sufficient but, in effect, omnipotent. One tends to feel that one is nothing, but is irritated when one is not taken for a genius. There is absolutely no satisfactory solution which could reconcile such extremes, particularly since both strivings are so strong. The drive toward oblivion is much more imperative in the neurotic than in the normal person because the former wants to get rid not only of the fears, limitations and isolations that are universal in human existence, but also of a feeling that one is trapped in insoluble conflicts and their resultant sufferings. And one’s contradictory drive toward power and self-aggrandizement is equally imperative and more than normally intense. Of course one does attempt to achieve the impossible, to be at once everything and nothing; one may, for example, live in a helpless dependence and at the same time exert a tyranny over others by means of one’s weakness. Such compromises one oneself mistake as a capacity for surrender. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

In fact, sometimes even psychologist seem inclined to confound the two, and to assume that surrender is in itself a masochistic attitude. In reality the masochistic persons is, on the contrary, entirely incapable of giving oneself to anything or anyone; one is incapable, for example, of putting all one’s energies into the service of a cause, or of wholly giving oneself in love to another person. One can surrender oneself to suffering but in this surrender one is wholly passive, and the feeling or the interest or the person which is the cause of one’s suffering one uses only as a means to lose oneself for the sake of losing oneself. There is no active interplay between oneself and the other, but only one’s self-centered absorption in one’s own ends. Genuine surrender to a person or a cause is a manifestation of inner strength to a person or a cause is a manifestation of inner strength; masochistic surrender is ultimately a manifestation of weakness. Another reason why the satisfaction that is sought is seldom attained lines in the destructive elements inherent in the neurotic structure I have described. These are missing in the cultural “Dionysian” drives. In the latter there is nothing comparable to the neurotic destructiveness of all that constitutes the personality, of all its potentialities for achievement and happiness. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

Let us compare the Greek Dionysian cult, for example, the neurotic fantasies of becoming insane. In the former the desire was for a transitory ecstatic experience serving to enhance the joy of life; in the latter the same drive toward oblivion and abandon serves neither as a temporary submergence leading to reemergence, nor as a means of making life richer and fuller. Its goal is to get rid of the whole tormenting self, regardless of its values, and therefore the intact part of the personality reacts to it with fear. In fact, fear of disastrous possibilities toward which part of the personality impels the whole is usually the only factor in the process that impinges upon awareness. All the neurotic knows about it is that one has a fear of becoming insane. Only when the process is separated into its component parts—a drive toward self-relinquishment and a reactive fear—can it be understood that one is striving for a definite satisfaction but is prevented by one’s fears from attaining it. One factor peculiar to our culture serves to reinforce the anxiety connected with the drives toward oblivion. In Western civilization there are but few, if any, cultural patterns in which these drives, even regardless of their neurotic character, can be satisfied. Religion, which offered such a possibility, has lost its power and appeal for the majority. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

Not only are there no effective cultural means for such satisfaction, but their development is actively discouraged, for in an individualistic culture the individual is expected to stand on one’s own feet, assert oneself, and if necessary fight one’s way. In our culture to yield realistically to tendencies toward self-relinquishment involves the danger of ostracism. In view of the fears that usually debar the neurotic from the specific satisfactions for which one is striving, it is possible to understand the value for one of masochistic fantasies and perversions. If one drives for self-relinquishment are lived out in fantasies or in pleasures of the flesh practices one can perhaps escape one’s danger of complete self-obliteration. Like the Dionysian cults, these masochistic practices provide a temporary oblivion and abandon, with comparatively little risk of harm to the self. Usually they pervade the whole structure of the personality; sometimes they are concentrated on pleasures of the flesh activities, aggressive and successful in their own work, but are impelled from time to time to indulge in masochistic perversions such as dressing like the opposite gender or playing the naughty boy or girl and having themselves beaten. On the other hand, the fears that prevent the neurotic from finding a satisfactory solution of one’s difficulties may also pervade one’s masochistic drives. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

If these drives are of a pleasure of the flesh nature one will then, in spite of intense masochistic fantasies concerning relations of pleasures of the flesh, keep away from pleasures of the flesh altogether, showing a repugnance toward the other gender, or at least grave inhibitions with pleasures of the flesh. Dr. Freud regards masochistic drives as an essentially phenomenon involving pleasures of the flesh. Originally he regarded masochism as an aspect of a definite, biologically determined stage of sexual development, the so-called anal-sadistic stage. Later he added the hypothesis that masochistic drives have an inherent kinship with feminine nature and imply something like living out a wish to be the opposite gender. His last assumption, as mentioned before, is that masochistic drives are a combination of self-destructive and drives dealing with pleasures of the flesh, and that their function is to render the self-destructive drives harmless to the individual. My point of view, on the other hand, may be summed up as follows. Masochistic drives are neither an essential phenomenon dealing with pleasures of the flesh nor the result of biologically determined processes, but originate in personality conflicts. Their aim is not suffering; the neurotic wishes to suffer as little as anyone else wishes it. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

Neurotic suffering, inasmuch as it serves certain functions, is not what the person wants but what one pays, and the satisfaction one aims at is not suffering itself but a relinquishment of the self. Most of us are familiar with the often used but very true expression, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” Perhaps we have even uttered it on occasion. However, do we sincerely believe it? I think not. If we truly believed it, we would be far less judgmental, much more compassionate toward, and quick to pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ. God has been a beneficial purpose in giving the thorn, whatever it was, to Paul. And it was God who gave it, even though it was given through the instrumentality of Satan. Satan certainly had no interest in curbing Paul’s temptation to pride; he would have wanted just the opposite. As in the case of Job, Satan undoubtedly wanted to drive a wedge between Paul and the Lord; he wanted Paul to turn against God. However, just as God and Satan had different purposes for Paul’s thorn in the flesh. God never allows pain without a purpose in the lives of His children. He never allows Satan, nor circumstances, nor any ill-intending person to afflict us unless He uses that affliction for our good. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

God never wastes pain. He always causes it to work together for our ultimate good, the good of conforming us more to the likeness of His Son. “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers,” reports Romans 8.28-29. God’s purpose for Paul’s thorn is clearly stated in the text: “to keep me from becoming conceited,” reports 2 Corinthians 12.7. Sometimes God’s purpose for allowing pain in our lives is clear; more often, it seems, it is not. In fact, frequently a great part of the pain is the sheer irrationality of it. God never explained to Job the Purpose of his unbelievable pain. He left Job to suffer in the dark, so to speak. That is usually our experienced. Paul said the thorn was given to torment him. Other various translate the verb as “harass,” “buffet,” or “afflict.” The same verb is used in 1 Corinthians 4.11 where it is translated as “brutally treated.” Paul was brutally treated by Satan. The apostle Peter said, “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour,” reports 1 Peter 5.8. The devil is cruel and vicious. He would devour us, if he could. He torments us to the full extent God allows. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

However, as was the case when Joseph’s brother sold him into slavery, through the devil intends to harm us, God intends it for good. “You intended to harm me, but God intended if for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives,” reports Genesis 50.20. Paul’s reaction to this thorn was one of deep anguish. He said, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me,” reports 2 Corinthians 12.8. Although the turn was always present, there were probably times when its pain, whether physical or emotional or both, was unusually severe. It is likely that on three of those occasions Paul was driven to cry out to God for its removal. Mormon abridges the large plates of Nephi—he puts the small plates with the other plates—King Benjamin established peace in the land. About After Death 385. “And now I, Mormon, being about to deliver up the record which I have been making into the hands of my son Moroni, behold I have witnessed almost all the destruction of my people, the Nephites. And it is many hundreds of years after the coming of Christ that I deliver these records into the hands of my son; and it supposeth me that he will witness the entire destruction of my people. However, many God grant that he may survive them, that he may write somewhat concerning them, and somewhat concerning Christ, that perhaps someday it may profit them. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23

“And now, I speak somewhat concerning that which I have written; for after I had made an abridgment from the plates of Nephi, down to the reign of this king of Benjamin, of whom Amaleki spake, I searched among the records which has been delivered into my hands, and I found these plates, which contained this small account of the prophets, from Jacob down to the reign of this kind Benjamin, and also many of the words of Nephi. And the things which are upon these plates pleasing me, because of he prophecies of the coming of Christ; and my fathers knowing that many of them have been fulfilled; yea, and I also know that as many things as have been prophesied concerning us down to this day have been fulfilled, and as many as go beyond this day must surely comes to pass—wherefore, I chose these things, to finish my record upon them, which remainder of my record I shall take from the plates of Nephi; and I cannot write the hundredth part of the things of my people. However, behold, I shall take these plates, which contain these prophesyings and revelations, and put them with the remainder of my record, for they are choice unto me; and I know they will be choice unto my brethren. And I do this for a wise purpose; for thus it whispereth me, according to the workings of the Spirit of the Lord which is in me. And now, I do not know all things; but the Lord knoweth all things which are to come; wherefore, one worketh in me to do according to his will. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

And my prayer to God is concerning my brethren, that they may once again come to knowledge of God, yea, the redemption of Christ; that they may once again be a delightsome people. And now I, Mormon, proceed to finish out my record, which I take from the plates of Nephi; and I make it according to the knowledge and the understanding which God has given me. Wherefore, it came to pass that after Amaleki had delivered up these plates into the hands of king Benjamin, he took them out and put them with the other plates, which contained records which had been handed down by the kings, from generation to generation until the days of king Benjamin. And they were handed down from king Benjamin, from generation to generation until they have fallen into my hands. And I, Mormon, pray to God that they may be preserved from this time henceforth. And I know that they will be preserved; for there are great things written upon them, out of which my people and their brethren shall be judged at the great and last day, according to the word of God which is written. And now, concerning this king Benjamin—he had somewhat of contentions among his own people. And it came to pass also that the armies of the Lamanites came down out of the land of Nephi, to battle against his people. However, behold, king Benjamin gathered together his armies, and he did stand against them; and he did fight with the strength of his own arm, with the sword of Laban. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

“And in the strength of the Lord they did contend against their enemies, until they had slain many thousands of the Lamanites. And it came to pass that they did contend against the Lamanites until they had driven them out of all the lands of their inheritance. And it came to pass that after there had been false Christs, and their mouths had been shut, and they punished according to their crimes; and after there had been false prophets, and false preachers and teachers among the people, and all these having been much contention and many dissension away unto the Lamanites, behold, it came to pass that king Benjamin, with the assistance of the holy prophets who were among his people—for behold, king Benjamin was a holy man, and he did reign over his people in righteousness; and there were many holy people in the land, and they did speak the word of God with power and with authority; and they did use much sharpness because of the stiffneckedness of the people—wherefore, with the help of these, king Benjamin, by labouring with all the might of his body and the faculty of his whole soul, and also the prophet, did once more establish peace in the land. Being filled with the very essence of restoration and life, we beseech Thee, O Lord our God, that by the Heavenly Gifts which Thou art pleased to bestow on us, Thou wouldest grant us to cleave to things Heavenly; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23

Elector of Saints, blessed is the person whom Thou choosest and callest to Thyself. With Thee is mercy, redemption, assurance, forgiveness; Thou hast lifted me, a prisoner, out of the pit of sin and pronounced my discharge, not only in the courts of Heaven, but in the dock of conscience; hast justified me by faith, given me peace with Thee, made me to enjoy glorious liberty as Thy child. Save me from the false hope of the hypocrite: May I never suppose I am in Christ unless I am a new creature, never think I am born of the Spirit unless I mind the things of the Spirit, never rest satisfied with professions of belief and outward forms and services, while my heart is not right with Thee. May I judge my sincerity in religion by my fear to offend Thee, my concern to know Thy will, my willingness to deny myself. May nothing render me forgetful of Thy glory, or turn me aside from Thy commands, or shake my confidence in Thy promises, or offend Thy children. Let not my temporal occupations injure my spiritual concerns, or the cares of life make me neglect the one thing needful. May I not be inattentive to the design of Thy dealings with me, or insensible under Thy rebukes, or immobile at Thy calls. May I learn the holy art of abiding in Thee, of being in the World and not of it, making everything not only consistent with but conducive to my religion. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23

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Refreshed with the participation of the sacred Gift, we beseech Thee, O Lord our God, that we may feel the effectual working of the rite which we celebrate; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

There are Two things to Aim at in Life: First to Get What You Want; and, After that, To Enjoy it!

June 9, 2020 11:54 pm

Conflict is probably as old as life itself and some would say that it is just as right. Our understanding of human behaviour should enable us to make some distinctions between those kinds of natural phenomena that are necessary and those that we have outgrown as human beings. Conflict, in the sense of fighting and warfare within the species of humans, is an outmoded and certainly dysfunctional social process. Dysfunctional means not serving the survival needs of the organism or the structure. If you are like me, you have tried to see inside yourself, to find in you what you see in others. If you are like me, you have only ever seen darkness where others have light. You believe you have no soul. You believe you have no goodness in you. However, you are made of God like everyone else. So we have three basic social processes: cooperation, competition, and conflict. Of the three, cooperation and some forms of competition seem to be functional, while vicious competition and conflict can be shown to be devastatingly dysfunctional. The proponents of instinctive aggression claim that competitiveness and conflict have just as much natural origin, are just as functional, and have just as much survival value as cooperation. However, many others feel that a full evaluation of the biosocial nature of humans will point up to the dysfunctionality of continued hostility in a World growing daily more crowded. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25

I have attempted to cover neither all the aggravating factors that operate during the process nor the curative ones. I have not discussed, for instance, any of the difficulties or benefits that arise in connection with the individual’s brining all one’s defensive and offensive peculiarities into the relationship with the analyst—though this is an element of great significance. The steps I have described constitute merely the essential processes that must be gone though each time a new trend or conflict becomes visible. It is often impossible to proceed in the other named, since a problem may be inaccessible to the individual even when it has come into sharp focus. As we saw in the example concerning the arrogation of rights, one problem may merely disclose another which must be analyzed first. As long as every step is eventually covered, the order is of secondary importance. The specific symptomatic changes that result from analytical work naturally vary with subject tackled. When an individual recognizes one’s unconscious impotent rage and its background, a state of panic may subside. When one sees the dilemma in which one was caught, a depression may life. However, each piece of analysis well done also brings about certain general changes in the individual’s attitude toward others and toward oneself, changes that occur regardless of the particular problem that has been worked through. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25

If we were to take such dissimilar problems as an overemphasis on pleasures of the flesh, a belief that reality will accord with one’s wishful thinking, and a hypersensitivity to coercion, we would find that their analysis affects the personality in much the same way. No matter which of these difficulties is analyzed, hostility, helplessness, fear, and alienation from the self and others will be diminished. Let us consider, for example, how alienation from the self is lessened in each of these instances. A person who overemphasizes pleasures of the flesh feels alive only in experiences and fantasies involving pleasures of the flesh; one’s triumphs and defeats are confined with the sphere of pleasure of the flesh; the only asset one values in oneself is how attractive one is visually. It is only when one understands this condition that one can start to become interested in other aspects of living, and so retrieve oneself. A person for whom reality is bounded by the projects and plans of one’s imagination has lost sight of oneself as a functioning human being. One sees neither one’s limitations nor one’s actual assets. Through analytical work one ceases to mistake one’s potentialities for accomplishments; one is able not only to face but to feel oneself as one really is. The person who is hypersensitive to coercion has become oblivious to one’s own desires and beliefs, and feels that it is others who dominate and impose upon one. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25

When this condition is analyzed, one begins to know what one really wants, and hence is able to strive toward one’s own goals. In every analysis repressed hostility, regardless of its kind and source, will come to the fore and make the individual temporarily more irritable. However, each time a neurotic attitude is abandoned, irrational hostility will be diminished. The individual will become less hostile when one sees one’s own share in the difficulty instead of externalizing, and when one becomes less vulnerable, less fearful, less dependent, less demanding, and so on. Hostility is primarily allayed by a decrease in the helplessness. The stronger a person becomes, the less one feels threatened by others. The accrual of strength stems from various sources. One’s center of gravity, which had been shifted to others, comes to rest within oneself; one feels more active and starts to establish one’s own set of values. One will gradually have more energy available: the energy that had done into repressing part of oneself is released; one becomes less inhibited, less paralyzed by fears, self-contempt, and hopelessness. Instead of either blindly complying or fighting or venting sadistic impulses, one can give in on a rational basis and so becomes firmer. Finally, although anxiety is temporarily stirred up by the undermining of established defenses, each step that is profitably taken is bound to diminish it, because the individual becomes less afraid of others and oneself. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25

The general result of these changes is an improvement in the individual’s relations with others and with oneself. One becomes less isolated; to the extent that one becomes stronger and less hostile, others gradually cease to be a menace to be fought, manipulated, or avoided. One can afford to have friendly feelings for them. One’s relations with oneself improve as externalization is relinquished and self-contempt disappears. If we examine the changes that take place during analysis we see that they apply to the very conditions that brought about the original conflicts. While in the course of a neurotic development all the stresses become more acute, therapy takes the opposite road. The attitudes that arose from the necessity of coping with the World in the face of helplessness, fear, hostility, and isolation become more and more meaningless and hence can be gradually dispensed with. Why, indeed, if one feel secure within oneself and can live and strive with others without the constant fear of being submerged, should anyone want to efface or sacrifice oneself for persons one hates and who step on one? If one is able to love and is not afraid to fight, why should anyone anxiously avoid involvement with others? #RandolphHarris 5 of 25

To do this work takes time; the more entangled and the more barricaded a person is, the more time is required. That there should be a desire for brief analytical therapy is quite understandable. We should like to see more persons benefit from all that analysis has to offer, and we realize that some help is better than no help at all. Neuroses, it is true, vary greatly in severity, and mild neuroses can be helped in a comparatively short period. While some of the experiments in brief psychotherapy are promising, many, unfortunately, are based upon wishful thinking and are carried on with an ignorance of the powerful forces that operate in neurosis. In the case of sever neuroses I believe that the analytical procedure can be shortened only by so bettering our understanding of the neurotic character structure that less time will be wasted in groping for interpretations. Fortunately analysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself still remains a very effective therapist. Experience of any one of a number of kinds may be sufficiently telling to bring about personality changes. It may be the inspiring example of a truly great person; it may be a common tragedy which by brining the neurotic in close touch with others takes one out of one’s egocentric isolation; it may be association with persons so congenial that manipulating or avoiding them appears less necessary. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25

In other instances the consequences of neurotic behaviour may be so drastic or of such frequent occurrence that they impress themselves on the neurotic’s mind and make one less fearful and less rigid. The therapy effected by life itself is not, however, within one’s control. Neither hardships nor friendships nor religious experience can be arranged to meet the needs of the particular individual. Life as a therapist is ruthless; circumstances that are helpful to one neurotic may entirely crush another. And, as we have seen, the capacity of the neurotic behaviour and to learn from them is highly limited. We could rather say that an analysis can be safely terminated if the individual has acquired this very capacity to learn from one’s experience—that is, if one can examine one’s share in the difficulties that arise, understand it, and apply the insight to one’s life. Knowledge of the role that conflicts play in neurosis and the realization that they can be resolved make it necessary to redefine the goals of analytical therapy. Although many neurotic disturbances belong in the medical sphere, it is not feasible to define the goals in medical terms. Since even psychosomatic illness are essentially an ultimate expression of conflicts within the personality, the goals of therapy must be defined in terms of personality. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25

Thus seen they encompass a number of aims. The individual must acquire the capacity to assume responsibility for oneself, in the sense of feeling oneself the active, responsible force in one’s life, capable of making decisions and of taking the consequences. With this goes an acceptance of responsibility toward others, a readiness to recognize obligations in whose value one believes, whether they relate to one’s children, parents, friends, employees, colleagues, community, or country. Closely allied is the aim of achieving an inner independence—one as far removed from a mere defiance of the opinions and beliefs of others as from a mere adoption for them. This would mean primarily enabling the individual to establish one’s own hierarchy of values and to apply it to one’s actual living. In reference to others it would entail respect for their individuality and their rights, and would thus be the basis for a real mutuality. It would coincide with truly democratic ideals. We could define the goals in terms of spontaneity of feeling, an awareness and aliveness of feeling, whether in respect to love or hate, happiness or sadness, fear or desire. This would include a capacity for expression as well as for voluntary control. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25

Because it is so vital, the capacity for love and friendship should be especially mentioned in this context; love that is neither parasitic dependence nor sadistic domination but, a relationship which has no purpose beyond itself; in which we associate because it is natural for human beings to share their experience; to understand one another, to find joy and satisfaction in living together; in expressing and revealing themselves to one another. The most comprehensive formulation of therapeutic goals is the striving for wholeheartedness: to be without pretense, to be emotionally sincere, to be able to put the whole of oneself into one’s feelings, one’s work, one’s beliefs. It can be approximated only to the extent that conflicts are resolved. These goals are not arbitrary, nor are they valid goals of therapy simply because they coincide with the ideals that wise persons of all times have followed. However, the coincidence is not accidental, for these are the elements upon which psychic health rests. We are justified in postulating these goals because they follow logically from a knowledge of the pathogenic factors in neurosis. Our daring to name such high goals rests upon the belief that human personality can change. It is not only the young child who is pliable. All of us retain the capacity to change, even to change in fundamental ways, as long as we live. This is belief supported by experience. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25

Analysis is one of the most potent means of bringing about radical changes, and the better we understand the forces operating in neurosis the greater our chance of effecting desired change. Neither the analyst nor the individual is likely wholly to attain these goals. They are ideals to strive for; their practical value lies in their giving us direction in our therapy and in our lives. If we are not clear about the meaning of ideals, we run the danger of replacing an old idealized image with a new one. We must be aware, too, that it does not lie within the power of the analyst to turn the individual into a flawless human being. One can only help one to become free to strive toward an approximation of these ideals. And this means giving one as well an opportunity to mature and develop. “Think about the hundreds of years, if not thousands of years of lost women’s stories. How the hell can I not feel that there is a sense of urgency? Every woman I know that is working to tell stories of women or marginalized groups feels the same way. You do not know how long a window will last. You hope it lasts a long, long, time, but you never know,” reports Reese Witherspoon. During this time of tension and uncertainty, and as the Restoration continues, I know that God will continue to reveal many great and important things pertaining to His kingdom here on Earth. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25

To bring the mind to dwell intelligently upon God as He is presented in His Word will have the effect of causing us to love God passionately, and this love will in turn bring us to think God steadily. Thus he will always be before our minds. The first fruit of love is the musing of the mind upon God. One who is in love, one’s thoughts are ever upon the object. One who loves God is ravished and transported with the contemplation of God. “When I awake, I am still with thee,” reports Psalms 139.18. The thoughts are as travelers in the mind. David’s thoughts kept Heaven-road, “I am still with Thee.” God is the treasure, and where the treasure is, there is the heart. By this we may test our love to God. What are our thoughts most upon? Can we say we are ravished with delight when we think on God? Have our thoughts got wings? Are they fled aloft? Do we contemplate Christ and glory? Oh, how far are they from being lovers of God, who scarcely ever think of God! “God is not in all his thoughts,” reports Psalms 10.4. A sinner crowds God out of his thoughts. One never thinks of God, unless with horror, as the prisoner thinks of the judge. In this way we enter a life of worship. To think of God as he is, one cannot but lapse into worship; and worship is the single most powerful force in completing and sustaining restoration in the whole person. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25

Worship puts into abeyance every evil tendency in every dimension of the self. It naturally arises from thinking rightly of God on the basis of revealed truth confirmed in experience. We say flatly, Worship is at once the overall character of the renovated thought of life and the only safe place for a human being to stand. An old hymn contains these lines: “In our astonished reverence we confess Thine uncreated loveliness.” “Astonished reverence” is a good paraphrase for worship, as is “admiration to the point of delight.” That is the true outcome of renovation of the thought life. The first request in The Lord’s Prayer is, “Hallowed be Thy name.” It is first because it is the most important one. To the extent that God is exalted in the minds of people, and his very name is cherished with utmost respect, everything else goes right. You can verify this experimentally in yourself. Your God is too small is a message we hear often these days, and it is a message that is usually misunderstood. The point is not your God is too small to meet your needs, but your God is so small that you fail to relentlessly worship and adore him. In the renovated mind, God constantly stands as uniquely and supremely worthy. Hallowed be Thy name! This is a serious matter, for how can a symbol disintegrate if it truly partakes of the power of being-itself which it expresses? How can it fail to be revelatory, unless the reality of which it partakes also disintegrates? #RandolphHarris 12 of 25

When we speak of artistic symbols, we naturally do not encounter this problem. However, when we speak of the Unconditional as perceived in religion and faith, one does not seem to posit it with enough earnestness. One duly recognizes the difference between artistic and religious symbols. The latter has special character in that it points to the ultimate level of being, to ultimate reality, to being itself, to meaning itself. If this is admitted, how then can we declare that when a religious symbol disintegrates, it means that the encounter with Ultimate reality out of which it grew has itself disintegrated? They are the expression of an encounter with ultimate reality, and they disappear if this kind of encounter disappears. It is not theoretical criticism that kills the religious symbols. Theoretical refutation is powerless before the existential pregnancy of the symbol. However, when one adds that symbols are killed by a change in the actual encounter, one may ask how ultimate was the Ultimate that was perceived in that situation, if it can disappear? If the Unconditional is unconditional, it should be beyond the reach of the situation in which it was perceived. The situation was a necessary, symbolic mediation for it to be perceived; but a person that has intuited the Unconditional knows it once and for all, even after the various elements of the revelatory correlation have separated and lost their power. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25

This leads to a basic criticism. If we are right connecting religious symbols and the Ultimate, one cannot be right in thinking that religious symbols can die. For the Ultimate does not die. A symbol which is no longer made powerful by the existential context in which it became symbolic of Ultimate reality, remains symbolic of it by the very power of Ultimate reality already perceived. A symbol which has been truly symbolic of God is always symbolic of God. When it no longer leads to God, God comes to humans through it. This would seem to be the conclusion logically to be drawn: A symbol has truth: it is adequate to the revelation it expresses. A symbol is true: it is the expression of a true revelation. A symbol remains true as long as what it reveals is the truth. Since ultimate truth does not disintegrate, neither do its symbols. However, religious symbols are double-edged. They are directed toward the infinite which they symbolize and toward the finite through which they symbolize. One can easily understand that the symbol and, along with it, the reality from which it was take may disintegrate in mutual interdependence. Yet one cannot see why the Infinite lacks the power to maintain the symbolic relation even when the situation is no longer revelatory. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25

A constellation of religious symbols form what is calls a religious myth. Myths are symbols of faith combined in stories about divine-human encounters. One finds such myths in pagan religions, and they are present in the Old Testament and even in the New. The usage of the word “myth” is not derogatory. Myths are as necessary as symbols. The correlation of several symbols even manifests an element of human’s perception of the Unconditional which a symbol, by itself, would not convey, namely the historical and the cosmic relevance of the Unconditional. It puts the stories of the gods into the framework of time and space. If this expresses the transcendence of God above space and time, it is very legitimate. However, it is radically ambiguous. Myths can contribute to unseat the Unconditional and to make humans conceive of it as subject to time and space. This is why so many myths imply polytheism: myth divides the divine into several figures, removing ultimacy from each of them without removing their claim to ultimacy. Like symbols, therefore, myths must be criticized, and all great religious have done so. In modern times, and in the Christian context of the New Testament, this criticism has been given the name of de-mythologization, a matter which will claim our attention later. At this point it is enough to note that myth and de-mythologization belong together, just like symbol and symbol-criticism. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25

A myth which is not understood as symbolic but as literally true is a “pure myth.” Its religious value is distorted by literalism. It is taken as transcendent history of the life of God and of God’s intervention in the life of humans. Such myths must be broken. Only a broken myth has undoubted religious value, precisely because its value has resisted the radical criticism of de-mythologization. However, the criticism of myth should bear on the real, not on the imagined shortcomings of the mythical story. Pagan mythology has often been criticized for its supposed immortality, yet, these attacks are only partially justified. The relations of the mythological gods are trans-moral; they are ontological; they refer to structures of being and to conflicts of values. The only ultimately valid criticism of a myth must take account of the religious dimensions of the myth. It must be seen as an attempt to perceive and express the concept that God is living and the experience of humans faced with the fascinating mystery of the holiness of God’s life. Because it is made of symbols that are themselves the products of a series of revelatory situations, a myth may be successfully criticized only from within its own revelatory context. This is called the theological circle. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25

Only the Unconditional which the myth wants to express can judge myth. Only in its light can the myth be considered inadequate, misleading, or, perhaps, fallacious. In the light of the Ultimate, however, all myths are ambiguous. For if they combine symbols, that is, revelatory situations, the system into which these are united is not itself a revelatory situation. It is, precisely, a myth, arising out of religious imagination. Because of the bipolarity—combining genuine revelatory situations into imaginative patterns—myths must be neither destroyed, negated, nor accepted in their literalism. They must be broken, understood on the level of the ultimate dimension of existence, which they depict in ambiguous traits and colours. Christianity was born, not with the birth of the man who is called Jesus, but in the moments in which one of His followers was driven to say to Him, “Thou art the Christ.” The cornerstone of Christology is that the revelation carried by Jesus must have been known in a revelatory situation. This implies the convergence of a “miraculous,” power-revealing situation, and of someone grasping the meaning of this situation in an ecstasy of faith. The most striking such moment, as recorded in the New Testament, is the confession of Peter professing his faith that “Thou art the Christ.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 25

“Thou art the Christ” is confession with which we need to concentrate on the meaning. For the term “Christ” is evidently the central symbol of Christology. It is in the light of it that every other symbol is meaningful and that every Christian assertion about Jesus must be criticized. In the light of it, too, Christians will judge the attempts of other religions to identify the Christ differently from what Christianity asserts. With the symbol of the Christ we are at the cosmic crossroads of all religions. For, as the analysis of faith has shown, all religions try to identify the depths of humans; they endeavour to find the name of the ground of being. The concrete content of a religious faith is an equation of being-itself with the meaning of a religious symbol or myth. The essential content of every religious faith, whatever the concrete content involved, is that the depths of human is experienced the ultimate ground of all being, the Unconditional. The term Christ, in Christianity, gives a name to the Unconditional, the eternal ground of all that is. However, it is not more than a name; it is an identification with an event of history. There has been a man in whom Essential Godmandhood has appeared within existence and subjected itself to the conditions of existence without being conquered by them. By Essential Godmanhood, we mean the eternal ground of humans. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25

The analysis of human’s existential estrangement, which classical theology calls original sin, shows that by the very fact of their existence, humans have fallen from their essential being to an existential situation. The essential being of humans corresponds exactly to one’s point of contact with the Absolute. It is not only humanhood as experienced in existence, but it is also humanhood as created in God, ontologically before the fall into existence. This is called Godmanhood. Essential Godmanhood is thus being of humans prior to existence. It is humans in God. To essential humans belongs the unity of their finiteness with their infinity, and it is precisely this unity which I called Godmanhood, because it is an expression of the dialectical interdependence of finiteness and infinity. Sherem denies Christ, contends with Jacob, demands a sign, and is smitten of God—all the prophets have spoken of Christ and His Atonement—the Nephites lived out their days as wanderers, born in tribulation, and hated by the Lamanites. About 544-421 Before Christ. “And now it came to pass after some years had passed away, there came a man among the people of Nephi, whose name was Sherem. And it came to pass that he began to preach among the people, and to declare unto them that there should be no Christ. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25

“And he preached many things which were flattering unto the people; and this he did that he might overthrow the doctrine of Christ. And he labored diligently that he might lead away the hearts of the people, insomuch that he did lead away many hearts; and he knowing that I Jacob, had faith in Christ who should come, he sought much opportunity that he might come to me. And he was learned, that he had a perfect knowledge of the language of the people; wherefore, he could use much flattery, and much power of speech, according to the power of the devil. And he had hope to shake me from the faith, notwithstanding the many revelations and the many things which I had seen concerning these things; for I truly had seen Angels, and they had ministered unto me. And also, I had heard the voice of the Lord speaking unto me in very word, from time to time; wherefore, I could not be shaken. And it came to pass that he came unto me, and on this wise did he speak unto me, saying: Brother Jacob, I have sought much opportunity that I might speak unto you; for I have heard and also know that thou goest about much, preaching that which ye call the gospel, or the doctrine of Christ. And ye have lead away much of this people that they pervert the right way of God, and keep not the law of Moses which is the right way; and convert the laws of Moses into the worship of a being which ye shall say come many hundred years hence. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25

“And now behold, I, Sherem, declare unto you that this is blasphemy; for no human knowth of such things to come. And after this manner did Sherem contend against me. However, behold, the Lord God poured in His Spirit into my soul, insomuch that I did confound him in all his words. And I said unto him: Deniest thou the Christ who shall come? And he said: If there should be a Christ, I would not deny him; but I know that there is no Christ, neither has been, nor ever will be. And I said unto him: Believest thou the scriptures? And he said, Yea. And I said unto him: Then ye do not understand them; for they truly testify of Christ. Behold, I say unto you that none of the prophets have written, not prophesized, save they have spoken concerning this Christ. And this is not all—it has been made manifest unto me, for I have heard and seen; and it also has been made manifest unto me by the power of the Holy Ghost; wherefore, I know if there should be no atonement made all humankind must be lost. And it came to pass that he said unto me: Show me a sign by this power of the Holy Ghost, in the which ye know so much. And I said unto him: What am I that I should tempt God to show unto thee a sign in the thing which thou knowest to be true? Yet thou wilt deny it, because thou art of the devil. Nevertheless, not my will be done; but if God shall smite thee, let that be a sign unto thee that he has power, both in Heaven and in Earth; and also that Christ shall come. And thy will, O Lord, be done, and not mine. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25

“And it came to pass that when I, Jacob, had spoken these words, the power of the Lord came upon him, insomuch that he fell to the Earth. And it came to pass that he was nourished for the space of many days. And it came to pass that he said unto the people: Gather together on the morrow, for I shall die; wherefore, I desire to speak unto the people before I shall die. And it came to pass that on the morrow the multitude were gathered together; and he spake plainly unto them and denied the things which he had taught them, and confessed the Christ, and the power of the Holy Ghost, and the ministering of Angels. And he spake plainly unto them, that he had been deceived by the power of the devil. And he spake of hell, and of eternity, and of eternal punishment. And he said: I fear least I have committed the unpardonable sin, for I have lied unto God; for I denied the Christ, and said that I believed the scriptures; and they truly testify of him. And because I have thus lied unto God I greatly fear lest my case shall awful; but I confess unto God. And it came to pass that when he had said these words he could say no more, and he gave up the ghost. And when the multitude had witnessed that he spake these things as he was about to give up the ghost, they were astonished exceedingly; insomuch that the power of God came down upon them, and they were overcome that they fell to the Earth. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25

“Now, this thing was pleasing unto me, Jacob, for I had requested it of my Father who was in Heaven; for he had heard my cry and answered by prayer. And it came to pass that peace and the love of God was restored again among the people; and they searched the scriptures, and hearkened no more to the words of this wicked man. And it came to pass that many means were devised to reclaim and restore the Lamanites to the knowledge of the truth; but it all was vain, for they delighted in wars and bloodshed, and they had an eternal hatred against us, their brethren. And they sought by the power of their arms to destroy us continually. Wherefore, the people of Nephi did fortify against them with their arms, and with all their might, trusting in the God and rock of their salvation; wherefore, they became as yet, conquerors of their enemies. And it came to pass that I, Jacob, began to be old; and the record of this people being kept on the other plates of Nephi, wherefore, I conclude this record, declaring that I have written according to the best of my knowledge, by saying that the time passes away with us, and also out lives passed away like as it were unto us a dream, we being a lonesome and a solemn people, wanderers, cast out from Jerusalem, born in tribulation, in a wilderness, and hatred of our brethren, which caused wars and contentions; wherefore, we did mourn out our days. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25

“And I, Jacob, saw that I must soon go down to my grave; wherefore, I said unto my son Enos: Take these plates. And I told him the things which my brother Nephi has commanded me, and he promised obedience unto the commands. And I make an end of my writing upon these plates, which writing has been small; and to the reader I bid farewell, hoping that many of my brethren may read my words. Brethren, adieu,” reports Jacob 7.1-27. Lord Jesus Christ, Who hast given unto us such Food of Thy goodness unto salvation and life eternal, preserve us by means of this Food in purity and without defilement, dwelling within us by Thy divine protection. Please guide us by Thy divine grace into the path of Thy holy will, which desires our good, and by it may we be fortified against all the assaults of our enemies, that we may be accounted worthy to hear Thy voice, and to follow Thee, the only mighty and true Shepherd, and to obtain the place prepared in Thy Heavenly kingdom, O our God and Saviour Jesus Christ. Life-giving God, please quicken me to call upon Thy name, for my mind is ignorant, my thoughts vagrant, my affections Earthly, my heart unbelieving, and only Thy Spirit can help my infirmities. I approach Thee as Father and friend, my portion forever, my exceeding joy. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25

I believe in Thee as the God of nature, the ordainer of providence, the sender of Jesus my Saviour. My guilty fears discourage an approach to Thee, but I praise Thee for the blessed news that Jesus reconciles Thee to me. May the truth that is in him illuminate in me all that is dark, establish in me all that is wavering, comfort in me all that is wretched, accomplish in my all that is of Thy goodness, and glorify in me the name of Jesus. I pass through a vale of tears but bless Thee for the opening gate of glory at its end. Please enable me to realize as mine the better, Heavenly country. Prepare me for every part of my pilgrimage. Uphold my steps by Thy word. Please let no iniquity dominate me. Please teach me that Christ cannot be the way if I am the end, that He cannot be redeemer if I am my own saviour, that there can be no true union with Him while the creature has my heart, that faith accepts Him as redeemer and Lord or not at all. Constant association with Him can only benefit the sensitive after all. It exalts and tutors them. However, it leaves the insensitive exactly as they were before. Long ago Jesus pointed out the futility of casting a good seed on a stony ground. Not that this lack of sensitivity is to be deprecated. Nature has set us all on different rungs of ger evolutionary ladder. No one is to blame for being what he or she is. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25

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Light of Light, and God of God, Who didst bow Thy holy Heavens, and descend to Earth for the salvation of the World, out of Thy love of humans; extend Thine Almighty right hand, and send out Thy blessings on all us. Hallow our bodies and souls by this Sacrifice which we have received, and guide our steps into the paths of righteousness, that we may behave ourselves according to Thy will, and observe Thy commandments and do them all the days of our life, and come to a blessed end, and sing a ceaseless hymn with Thy Saints to Thee, and Thy Father, and Thy Holy Spirit.
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The Spirit of Liberty is the Spirit Which is Not too Sure that it is Right and Seeks to Understand Minds

May 27, 2020 11:28 pm

The great want which humankind labours under at this present moment is sleep. The World should recline its vast head on the first convenient pillow and take an age-long nap. Which is a more effective learning strategy: reward or punishment? This question is still undecided. At present, evidence for each side is about equal. The following guidelines, however, can be applied in teaching situations, especially those involving young children. In general, rewarding desired behaviours is more effective than punishing undesired behaviours—you can still catch more files with honey than with vinegar. If punishment is necessary, it is most effective if used immediately after the undesired response. For instance, if a child must be punished, it is best done right after the child has acted incorrectly. If one parents says to the child, “Just wait until your father (or mother) gets home—then, you will get it,” the child learns to fear the arrival of the punisher and, in the process, often forgets the offense for which he or she is being punished. If punishment must be used, the reason for the punishment should be explained. “I am only doing this for your own good,” or “This hurts me more than it does you,” is less likely to teach a child a specific behaviour than saying, “I am not letting you go to the movies because you socked your little brother. This hurts him and makes him cry, and I do not want you to do it again.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 23

If it is possible, combine reward and punishment. If necessary, punish the undesired behaviour, but also be sure to reward the desired behaviour. For example, do not just spank a child for playing in the street; also praise and reward the child for playing in the yard instead. Punish the undesired behaviour, not the behaver. For instance, communicate to a child that you feel his or her behaviour is “bad”—not that you think the child is bad. Most punishment do not work on very young children. Under about one year of age, children do not understand that some behaviours are acceptable and some are not and why this is so. They may think they are being punished just for being there, and more often than not they begin to associate the punisher with punishment. When you feel emotionally charged, especially if you are filled with rage, never, never, never punish a child. Adults often forget their own strength. Children are fragile and easily hurt. The only thing a child learns through abuse is hatred and fear. There is a great distinction between negative reinforcement and abusive punishment. In many cases, punishment only suppresses or limits the undesired behaviour; it does not really extinguish it. The self-actualized open to all qualified and eager seekers the mysteries and treasures of one’s own inner experience, that they may profit by one’s past struggles and present success. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

The self-actualized brings revelations to meet our gropings, inspirations to meet our doubts. One becomes, for those docile enough to receive them, a bearer of grace and a vessel of truth, a bestower of comfort and a dispenser of confidence. Prophets and the self-actualized, teachers and saints receive the urge to share their knowledge and experience with others. Whence does this urge derive? Both lower and higher, personal and nonpersonal sources are possible. However, if from the highest, then we may say that God sends His messages to humankind through these channels. The self-actualized who starts a movement or puts one’s thoughts out, acts as a lighthouse which guides many a fumblings but aspiring soul. If one does not accept disciples individually it is because one serve humans otherwise. Those who try to get such acceptance and find themselves rebuffed may consider one selfish, cold, remote. However, they will be greatly mistaken. One can serve humankind—not each person separately but in groups or masses—and one may do this by lecturing, by writing or simply by directing one’s prayer in the appropriate way. For a writer’s books spread not only one’s ideas but also something of oneself. One can put thought on a high level but the way in which one does this depends upon one’s circumstances. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23

The self-actualized can put thought on a high level personally as a private teacher, impersonally as a public lecturer or writer, or anonymously as a proficient contemplative. All these people who have attained Reality inevitably leave a record for others or for posterity, but not necessarily with their name attached. Has anyone of the self-actualized ever vanished without leaving behind a trace of Power, knowledge, goodness, and inspiration? Even if not in words or deeds, something is left in the unseen atmosphere. They are not usually members of any sect, but circumstances or necessity may sometimes render it desirable that they be such. The self-actualized may or may not descend into the arena of action but if not one will still find ways and means to inspire, guide, or ennoble the actions of other people. One does this by teaching them and travelling among the, or by sitting still and meditating alone, or by disseminating writings among them. Even when one is unheard publicly one can help by the concentrated mind’s great power. One does what one can to introduce here and there into the consciousness of others, through whatever means one possesses, the seeds of higher ideas. These seeds may not grow and certainly may not fructify for many years, but that is not one’s affair. One knows that the vitality in these seeds and depth of mental ground in which they have been sown will inevitably lead to some result. It is enough. One has sown seed. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

One does not have to wait for roots to form, stems to grow, fruits to appear. One’s work is done. In this momentous period the true self-actualized has special work to do in trying to protect the human race from its own folly. One way is intercessory prayer which may help to mitigate the effects of the World crisis. This requires solitude. It is an impersonal contemplation and must not be disturbed by those who break into it, either to unload their personal problems or to offer personal service which in the end has the same result. Yes, some of us are genuinely aware of the soul’s existence and intimately know its freedom and blessedness. Modesty has hitherto imposed silence upon us about the fact, although compassion induced us to break it on occasions. However, we mystics must now stand on our own dignity. It is time that the World, brough to its inevitable and by us expected materialistic dead-end, should realize at last that we are not talking out of our hats but out of a real and impeccable experience. It would be an unpardonable treachery to our duty in the final and terrible World-crisis of this materialistic age if, out of false modesty or fear of intimidation by a cynical society, we who daily feel and commune with the divine presence, who realize its tremendous importance for humanity’s present condition and future life, fail to testify to its existence and reality. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

If today we venture to speak more freely and frequently, our ideas may drop into a few hospitable minds and sublimely penetrate their consciousness. It is not the self-actualizer’s function to tackle the Worldly problems which governments usually deal with: the social, political, economic, and technical ones. One’s particular work is concerned with, first, one’s ordinary duty of professional service through whatever skill one possesses to earn one’s livelihood, and second, making truth available. The mere existence of one who succeeds in identifying oneself with God benefits every sensitive person who meets one, even for a minute or two. Further, it inspires spiritual seekers who never get the chance to meet one but who hear favourably about one and respectfully receive what they hear. Finally, posterity benefits from the records left about one. Each teacher—if one is divinely commissioned—leaves a deposit of truth after he or she dies. The Master who leaves a record of one’s own climb, or a testimony to the goal’s existence, or a path pioneered for those who would follow, or an instructed disciple here and there, leaves something of oneself. Even where help may not directly and outwardly be given when difficult circumstances press on a human, it may yet be indirectly and inwardly given to one’s mind, which has to deal with, or endure, them. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23

One can awaken some persons to this divine presence within themselves, but not all. One may do this mysteriously by some unknown process, or one may do it deliberately and with the display of one’s technique. The abstract does not appeal to the masses, because it gives them nothing. However, an embodied human can be seen, heard, and touched, to that extent can be understood, to that extent one gives them something; one can be followed, admired, feared, reverenced, or worshipped. Secure as one is in one’s own peace of mind, it is inevitable that the more sensitive among those who meet one feel it too. However, those who come with hostility, personal or intellectual, will be avoided if possible or find their time cut to the shortest if not. Such a person has a catalytic action on the minds and even on the lives of those who come into sympathetic contact with one. Just by being oneself one makes the philosophic virtues real to others. One does not need to be conscious of a clearly defined mission before one sets about doing something for the enlightenment of others. There is always some means open to one, some little thing one can do to make this knowledge available or to set an example of right living. It is one’s duty to communicate what one feels there, what one finds there, to those who are excluded from it. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

If at times, and with sympathetic auditors, one’s duty becomes one’s joy, at other times and with insensitive auditors it becomes one’s cross. Jesus exemplified this in His own history. The illuminate practices a wiser philanthropy than those who are presented as models of this virtue. One has no wish to take charge of anyone’s life or undertake the management of anyone’s affairs. One is not allowed by the code of ethics corresponding to one’s knowledge to make other people’s decisions for them. Hence one can say neither yes nor no to such highly personal questions. However, one can point out the consequences which are likely to follow in each case. Basically, people are just like children. They need attention. Sometimes people are really nervous when meeting people or dealing with new situations. And some of the troublemakers really just want your attention. The people-as-child analogy can be extended to cover sibling rivalry: You cannot play cards with just one person because the other people will get jealous. Think of unruly people just as you would think of a child and that will widen tolerance of them. If their needs are like those of a child, those needs are supposed to come first. The worker’s right to anger is correspondingly reduced; as an adult one must work to inhibit and suppress anger at children. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

Should the analogy to children fail to induce the necessary deep acting, surface-acting strategies for handling “irate” can be brought into play. People are urged to “work” the customers name in, as in “Yes, Mr. Camdenski,” it is true construction of your new home is talking a little longer than expected.” This reminds the individual that he is not anonymous, that there is at least some pretension to a personal relation and that some emotion management is owed. Again, workers are told to use terms of empathy. Whatever happens, you are supposed to say, I know just how you feel. Lost your light fixture? I know just how you feel? Late for a walk though? I know just how you feel. Did not get that lot you were counting on? I know just how you feel. Employees reports that such expressions of empathy are useful in convincing people that they have misplaced the blame and misaimed their anger. Remember, to treat people like they are guests in your living room, and guests are to be made comfortable and their emotional outburst are expected to be met by support. Never get super angry with a customer, they are the source of revenue. Supervisors never speak officially of an obnoxious or outrageous customer, only of an uncontrolled customer. The term suggests that a fact has somehow attached itself to this customer—not that the customer has lost control or even had any control to lose. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

Again, the common phrase “mishandled customer” suggests a bungle somewhere up the line, by someone destined to remain lost in the web of workers that stretched from curbside to architecture. By linguistically avoiding any attribution of blame, the idea of a right to be angry at the customer is smuggled out of discourse. Linguistically speaking, the customer never does anything wrong, so he or she cannot be blamed or made the object of anger. One time, a man was waiting for a special ordered light fixture, and one of the other home buyers sagged it and had it installed in her house. The builder responded by saying politely, “I notice this man’s light fixture was installed in your house.” The dirty deed was done, but, the implication was, by no one in particular. Such implicit reframing dulls a sense of cause of effect. It separates object from verb and verb from subject. The home buyer does not feel accused, and the builder does not feel as if he or she is accusing. Emotion work has been accomplished, but it has hidden its tracks with words. Company language is aimed not only at diffusing anger, but at minimizing fear. As in the case when a refrigerator was specially ordered and delivered to the wrong address. This was labeled an incident. The term incident calms the nerves. How could we be terrified at an incident? #RandolphHarris 10 of 23

Thus, the words that workers use and do not use help them avoid emotions inappropriate to a living room full of guest. Dealing with difficult people is part of the job. It makes us angry sometimes. And anger is part of stress. So that is why I would like to talk to you about being angry. I am not saying you should do this [work on your anger] for your corporation. I am not saying you should do it for the home buyers. I am saying do it for yourselves. The only question to be seriously discussed is “How do you rid yourself of anger?” From my experience in supervisory work I know that the problem of hopelessness is often not clearly envisaged by the analyst and hence not properly dealt with. Some of my colleagues have been so overwhelmed by the individual’s hopelessness—which they recognized but did not see as a problem—that they became hopeless themselves. This attitude is of course fatal to an analysis, for no matter how good the technique or how brave the effort, the individual senses that the analyst has really given him or her up. The same holds true outside the analytical situation. Nobody can be a constructively helpful friends or mate who does not believe in the possibility of the companion’s fulfilling one’s own potentialities. Sometimes colleagues have made the opposite mistake of not taking the individual’s hopelessness seriously enough. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

They felt the individual needed encouragement and gave it—which is commendable, but quite insufficient. When this happens, the individual, even if one appreciates the analyst’s good intentions, is quite justified in being annoyed with one, since deep down one knows that one’s hopelessness is not just a mood that can be dissipated by well-meant encouragement. In order to take the bull by the horns and tackle the problem directly, it is necessary first to recognize from indirect indications like the ones cited above that the individual feels hopeless and the extent to which one feels so. Then it must be understood that one’s hopelessness is fully warranted by one’s entanglements. The analyst must realize and explicitly convey to the individual that one’s situation is hopeless only so long as the status quo persists and is regarded as unchangeable. In simplified form, the whole problem is illustrated by a scene from Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard. The family, faced with bankruptcy, are in despair at the thought of leaving their estate with its beloved cherry orchard. A man of affairs offers the sound suggestion that they build modest homes for rent on a part of the estate. With their hidebound views, they cannot countenance such a project, and since there is no other solution they remain without hope. They ask helplessly, as if they had not heard the suggestion, whether nobody can advise or help them. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

If their mentor were a good analyst he would say: “Of course the situation is difficult. However, what makes it hopes is your own attitude toward it. If you would consider changing your claims on life there would be no need to feel hopeless.” The belief that the individual can really change, which means essentially that one can really resolve one’s conflicts, is the factor that determines whether or not the therapist dare to tackle the problem and whether one can do it with a reasonable chance of success. It is here that my differences with Dr. Freud come into clear relief. Dr. Freud’s psychology and the philosophy underlying it are essentially pessimistic. This is patent in his outlook on the future of humankind as well as in his attitude toward therapy. And on the basis of his theoretical premises, he cannot be anything but pessimistic. Humans are driven by instincts which at best are only to be modified by “sublimation.” His instinctual drives for satisfaction are inevitably frustrated by society. His “ego” is helplessly tossed about between instinctual drives and the “superego,” which itself can only be modified. The superego is primarily forbidding and destructive. True ideals do not exist. The wish for personal fulfillment is narcissistic. Humans are by nature destructive and a death instinct compels them either to destroy others or to suffer. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

All these theories leave little room for an optimistic attitude toward change and limit the value of the potentially splendid therapy Dr. Freud originated. In contrast, I believe that compulsive trends in neuroses are not instinctual but spring from disturbed human relationships; that they can be changed when these improve and that conflicts of such origin can really be resolved. This does not mean that therapy based on the principles I advocate has no limitations. Much work remains to be done before we can clearly determine these limitations. However, it does mean that we have well-founded reasons for believing in the possibility of radical change. Why, then, is it so important to recognize and tackle an individual’s hopelessness? In the first place, this approach is of value in dealing with special problems like depression and suicidal tendencies. We can, it is true, lift an individual depression by merely uncovering the particular conflicts in which the person is caught at the time, without touching upon one’s general hopelessness. However, if we want to prevent recurring depressions it has to be tackled because it is the deeper source from which the depressions emanate. Nor can insidious chronic depression be coped with unless one goes to this original source. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

The same hold true for suicidal conditions. We know that such factors as acute despair, defiance, and vindictiveness lead to suicidal impulses; but it is often too late to prevent suicide after the impulse has become manifest. By paying minute attention to the less dramatic signs of hopelessness and by taking up the problem with the patient at the proper time, it is probable that many suicides could be averted. It is not that collective talk determines the mood of the workers. Rather, the reverse is true: the needed mood determines the nature of the worker’s talk. To keep the collective mood stripped of any painful feelings, serious talk of death, divorce, politics, religion, and news is usually avoided. People want to forget about COVID-19 and feel safe in the modest castles, which they imagine to be in a storybook fairytale. On the other hand, when there is time for it, mutual morale raising is common. As one said: “When one sales agent is depressed, thinking, ‘I am ugly, what am I doing as a sales representative?’ other sales representatives, even without quite knowing what they are doing, try to cheer her up. They straighten her collar for her, to get her up and smiling again. I have done it too, and needed it done.” Once established, team solidarity can have two effect. It can improve morale and thus improve service. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

However, team solidarity can also become the basis for sharing grudges against the homebuyers or the corporation. Perhaps it is the second possibility that manager meant to avoid wen in Recurrent Training they offered examples of “bad” social emotion management. One teacher cautioned her students: “When you are angry with a homebuyer, do not head for the galley to blow off steam with another sales representative.” In the galley, the second sales representative, instead of calming the angry worker down, may further rile him or her up; one may become an accomplice to the aggrieved worker. Then, as the instructor put it, “There will be two of you hot to trot.” The message is, when you angry, go to a trusted therapist who will calm you down. Consider calling him or her for a phone appoint so not to drive while angry. Even if you are not suicidal, but cannot afford a therapist, a suicide hotline may be worth trying out. Support for anger or a sense of grievance—regardless of what inspires it—is bad for service and bad for the corporation. Thus, the informal ways in which workers check on the legitimacy of a grievance or look for support in blowing off steam become points of entry for company suggestions. Corporations sometimes have Ghost-Buyers who occasionally Ghost-Buy a house, and there may be senior representative on the crew, the base supervisor, and the plainclothes company supervisors who occasionally monitor employee behaviour. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

One homebuyer was asked to fill out a company-elicited passenger opinion poll and fill out a questionnaire, and the results were presented by letter to the workers. As one male sales representative, seven years with the corporation describes it: We get told how we are doing twice a year when we are sent homebuyer evaluations. They show how the builder is competing. Oh, the homebuyers are asked to rank sales representatives: “genuinely concerned, made me feel welcome. Spoke to me more than required. Wide awake, energetic, eager to help. Seemed sincere when talking to the potential homebuyers and confirmed homebuyers. Helped established a relaxed community atmosphere. Enjoying their jobs. Treated homebuyers as individuals.” We see how this builder is doing in the competition. We are supposed to really get into it. Supervision is thus more indirect than direct. It relies on the sales representative’s sense of what homebuyers will communicate to management, who will, in turn, communicate to workers. Supervisors do more than oversee workers. Even when people are paid to be nice at all times, and when their efforts succeed, it is a remarkable accomplishment. This is possible because of emotion work, feeling rules, and social exchange. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

A profit motive is slipped in under acts of emotion management, under the rules that govern them, under the gift exchange. Who benefits now, and who pays? The lesson in deep acting—acting “as if the office is your home” and “as if this unruly homebuyer has a traumatic past”—are themselves a new development in deskilling. The mind of the emotion worker, the source of the ideas about what mental moves are needed to settle down an irate, has moved upstairs in the hierarchy so that the worker is restricted to implementing standard procedures. Of more general significance is the fact that the individual’s hopelessness constitutes a hindrance to the cure of any severe neurosis. We have to deal with a counterplay of meticulous and forward-moving forces, with resistance and incentive. Resistance is a collective term for all the forces within the individual that operate to maintain the status quo. One’s incentive, on the other hand, is produced by the constructive energy that urges one on toward inner freedom. This is the motive power with which we work and without which we could do nothing. It is the force that helps that individual overcome resistance. It makes one’s associations productive, there by giving the analyst a chance for better understanding. It gives one the inner strength to endure the inevitable pain of maturing. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

It makes one willing to take the risk of abandoning attitudes that have given one a feeling of safety and to make the leap into the unknown of new attitudes toward oneself and others. The analyst cannot drag the individual through this process; the individual oneself must want to go. It is this invaluable force that is paralyzed by a condition of hopelessness. And in failing to recognize and tackle it the analyst deprives oneself of one’s best ally in the battle against the individual’s neurosis. The individual’s hopelessness is not a problem that can be solved by any single interpretation. There is already a substantial gain if, instead of being engulfed by a feeling of doom that one regards as unalterable, the individual begins to recognize it as a problem that may eventually be solved. This step liberates one sufficiently to go ahead. There will, of course, be ups and downs. One may feel optimistic, even overoptimistic, if one acquires some helpful insight, only to succumb to one’s hopelessness again as soon as one approaches a more upsetting one. Each time the matter must be tackled anew. However, the hold it has on the individual will relax as one realizes that one can really change. One’s incentive will grow accordingly. It may be limited, at the beginning of the analysis, to a mere wish to get rid of one’s most disturbing symptoms. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23

However, the incentive gains strength as the individual becomes increasingly aware of one’s shackles, and as one gets a taste of how it feels to be free. When we shall apprehend the meaning of life, we may discover that it provides its pre-self-actualized in such prodigies. The highest service one can render is in silent contemplation, which inspires so many aspiring souls to a higher life. This is the truth. If one is sensitive, reflective, and penetrative, the mere fact that these prophets, these light-bringers and way-showers have exited at all is enough to change a human’s life. Even if one does no more than open the human mind to its higher possibilities, one does enough. Angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost—humans must pray and gain knowledge for themselves from the Holy Ghost. About 559-545 Before Christ. “And now, behold, my beloved brethren, I suppose that ye ponder somewhat in your hearts concerning that which ye should do after ye have entered in by the way. However, behold, why do ye ponder these things in your hearts? Do ye not remember that I said unto you that after ye had received the Holy Ghost ye could speak with the tongue of Angels? And now, how could ye speak with the tongue of Angels save it were by the Holy Ghost? Angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost; wherefore, they speak the words of Christ. Wherefore, I said unto you, feast upon the words of Christ; for behold, the word of Christ will tell you all things what ye should do. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

“Wherefore, now after I have spoken these words, if ye cannot understand them it will be because ye ask not, neither do ye knock; wherefore, ye are not brought into the light, but must perish in the dark. For behold, again I say unto you that if ye will enter in by the way, and receive the Holy Ghost, it will show unto you all things what ye should do. Behold, this is the doctrine of Christ, and there will be no more doctrine given until after he shall manifest himself unto you in the flesh. And when he shall manifest himself unto you in the flesh, the things which he shall say unto you shall ye observe to do. And now I, Nephi, cannot say more; the Spirit stoppeth mine utterance, and I am left to mourn because of the unbelief, and the wickedness, and the ignorance, and the stiffneckedness of humans; for they will not search knowledge, when it is given unto them in plainness, even as plain as word can be. And now, my beloved brethren, I perceive that ye ponder still in your hearts; and it grieveth me that I must speak concerning this thing. For if ye would hearken unto the Spirit which teacheth a human to pray, ye would know that ye must pray; for the evil spirit teacheth not a human to pray, but teacheth one that one must not pray. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

“However, behold, I say unto you that ye must pray always, and not faint; that ye must not perform anything unto the Lord save in the first place ye shall pray unto the Father in the name of Christ, that he will consecrate thy performance unto thee, that thy performance may be for the welfare of thy soul,” reports 2 Nephi 32.1-9. Please send forth, O Lord, we beseech Thee, the Holy Spirit, to make these present offerings Thy Sacrament unto us, and purify our hearts for its reception. Privileges—O Lord God, please teach e to know that grace precedes, accompanies, and follows my salvation, that it sustains the redeemed soul, that not one link of its chain can ever break. From Calvary’s cross wave upon wave of grace reaches me, deals with my sin, washes me clean, renews my heart, strengthens my will, draws out my affection, kindles a flame in my soul, rules throughout my inner human, consecrates my every thought, word, work, teaches me Thy immeasurable love. How great are my privileges in Christ Jesus! Without him I stand far off, a stranger, an outcast; in him I draw near and touch his kingly sceptre. Without him I dare not lift up my guilt eyes; in him I gaze upon my Father-God and friend. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23

Without him I hide my lips in trembling shame; in him I open my mouth in petition and praise. Without him all is wrath and consuming fire; in him is all love, and the repose of my soul. Without him is gaping hell below me, and eternal anguish; in him its gates are barred to me by his precious blood. Without him darkness spreads its horrors in front; in him an eternity of glory is my boundless horizon. Without him all within me is terror and dismay, in him every accusation is charmed into joy and peace. Without him all things external call for my condemnation; in him they minister to my comfort, and are to be enjoyed with thanksgiving. Praise be to thee for grace, and for the unspeakable gift of Jesus. Although by the revelation of grace in this life we cannot know of God “what He is,” and thus are united to Him as to one unknown; still we know Him more fully according as many and more excellent of His effects are demonstrated to us, and according as we attribute to Him some things known by divine revelation, to which natural reason cannot reach, as, for instance, that God is Thee and One. For the images either received from sense in the natural order, or divinely formed in the imagination, we have so much more excellent intellectual knowledge, the stronger the intelligible light is in humans; and thus through revelation given by the images a fuller knowledge is received by the infusion of the divine light. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23

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Humans were Born Free, and Everywhere Humans are in Chains!

May 20, 2020 12:41 am

When people are regarded superficially their differences are accentuated. However, as we understand each other, differences fade and the oneness of humans emerges—the same needs, the same fears, the same struggles, the same desires. Here comes everybody! Education stands firmly as the cornerstone of our great nation. A commitment to education is a commitment to our children and their future. Our children are our most precious resource and we, as citizens and communities, must never forget that the skills and knowledge we provide our children with today will become the foundation of tomorrow. We must make certain that the opportunity for a quality education is available for all children. The dedication and tireless efforts put forth by our educators to enhance the learning process is essential to the growth and prosperity of our communities and our nation. If you lecture upon morality, or political economy, official bodies will be found to make this request to the Government: That henceforth science be taught not only with sole reference to free exchange (to liberty, property, and justice), as has been the case up to the present time, but also, and especially, with reference to the facts of legislation (contrary to liberty, property, and justice) that regulate French industry. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24

That, in public lecterns salaried by the treasury, the professor abstain rigorously from endangering the slightest degree the respect duet to the laws now in force. So that is a law exists that sanctions slavery or monopoly, oppression or plunder, in any form whatever, it must not even be mentioned—for how can it be mentioned without damaging the respect that it inspires? Still further, mortality and political economy must be taught in connection with this law—that is, under the supposition that it must be just, only because it is law. Another effect of this deplorable perversion of the law is that it gives to human passions and to political struggles, and, in general, to politics, properly so called, an exaggerated importance. I could prove this assertion in a thousand ways. However, I shall confine myself, by way of an illustration, to bringing it to bear upon a subject which has of late occupied everybody’s mind: universal suffrage. Whatever may be thought of it by the adepts of the school of Rousseau, which professes to be very far advanced, but which I consider 20 centuries behind, universal suffrage (taking the word in its strictest sense) is not one of those scared strict and rigid doctrines with respect to which examination and doubt are crimes. Serious objections may be made to it. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24

In the first place, the word universal conceals a gross sophism. There are, in France, 67,000,000 inhabitants. To make the right of suffrage universal, 67,000,000 electors should be reckoned. The most extended system reckons only 18,000,000. Approximately 74 percent, then, are excluded. Upon what principle is this exclusion founded? Upon the principle of incapacity. Universal suffrage, then, means: universal suffrage of those who are capable. In point of fact, who are the capable? Are age, gender, and judicial condemnation the only conditions to which incapacity is to be attached? On taking a nearer view of the subject, we may soon perceive the reason why the right of suffrage depends upon the presumption of incapacity; the most extended system differing from the most restricted in the conditions on which this incapacity depends, and which constitutes not a difference in principle, but in degree. This motive is, that the elector does not stipulate for oneself, but for everybody. If, as the republicans of the Greek and Roman tone pretend, the right of suffrage had fallen to the lot of every one at one’s birth, it would be an injustice to adults to prevent women and children from voting. Why were women in the past, and minors currently prevented from voting? Because they are presumed to be incapable. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24

And why is incapacity a reason for exclusion from voting? Because the elector does not reap alone the responsibility of one’s vote; because every vote engages and affects the community at large; because the community has a right to demand some assurances, as regards the acts upon which its well-being and its existence depend. I know what might he said in answer to this. I know what might be objected. However, this is not the place to settle a controversy of this kind. What I wish to observe is that, that this same controversy (in common with the greater part of political questions) that agitates, excites, and unsettles the nations, would lose almost all its importance if the law had always been what it ought to be. In fact, if law were confined to causing all persons, all liberties, and all properties to be respected—if it were merely the organization of individual right and individual defense—if it were the obstacle, the check, the chastisement opposed to all oppression, to all plunder—is it likely that we should dispute much, as citizens, on the subject of the greater or lesser universality of suffrage? Is it likely that it would compromise that greatest of advantages, the public peace? Is it likely that the excluded classes would not quietly wait for their turn? Is it likely that the enfranchised classes would be very jealous of their privileges? And is it not clear, that the interest of all being one and the same, some would act without much inconvenience to others? #RandolphHarris 4 of 24

However, if the fatal principle should come to be introduced, that, under pretense of organization, regulation, protection, or encouragement, the law may take from one party in order to give to another, help itself to the wealth acquired by all the classes that it may increase that of one class, whether that of the agriculturists, the manufacturers, the ship owners, or artist and comedians; then certainly, in this case, there is no class which may not try, and with reason, to place its hand upon the law, that would not demand with fury its right of election and eligibility, and that would overturn society rather than not obtain it. Even beggars and vagabonds will prove to you that they have an incontestable title to it. They will say: “We never buy wine, tobacco, or salt, without paying the tax, and a part of this tax is given by law in perquisites and gratuities to humans who are rich than we are. Others make use of the law to create an artificial rise in the price of bread, land, meat, dairy, fuel, water, iron, or cloth. Since everybody traffic in law for one’s own profit, we should like to do the same. We should like to make it produce the right to assistance, which is the less affluent human’s plunder. To effect this, we ought to be electors and legislators, that we may organize, on a large scale, alms for our own class, as you have organized, on a large scale, protection for yours. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24

“Do not tell us that you will take cause upon yourselves, and throw to us $1,400,000 francs to keep us quiet, like giving us a bone to pick. We have other claims, and, at any rate, we wish to stipulate for ourselves, as other classes have stipulated for themselves!” How is this argument to be answered? Yes, as long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true mission, that it may violate property instead of securing it, everybody will be wanting to manufacture law, either to defend oneself against plunder, or to organize it for one’s own profit. The political question will always be prejudicial, predominant, and absorbing; in a word, there will be fighting around the door of the Legislative Palace. The struggle will be no less furious within it. To be convinced of this, it is hardly necessary to look at what passes in the Chambers in France and England; it is enough to know how the question stands. With this understanding, let us examine the value, the origin, and the tendency of this popular aspiration, which pretends to realize the general good by general plunder. The Socialists say, since the law organizes justice, why should it not organize labour, instruction, and religion? Why? Because it could not organize labour, instruction, and religion, without disorganizing justice. For remember, that law is force, and that consequently the domain of the law cannot properly extend beyond the domain of force. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24

When law and force keep a person within the bounds of justice, they impose nothing upon one but a mere negation. They only oblige one to abstain from doing harm. They violate neither one’s personality, one’s liberty, nor one’s property. They only guard the personality, the liberty, the property of others. They hold themselves on the defensive; they defend the equal right of all. They fulfill a mission whose harmlessness is evident, whose utility is palpable, and whose legitimacy is not to be disputed. This is so true that, as a friend of mine once remarked to me, to say that the aim of the law is to cause justice to reign, is to use an expression that is not rigorously exact. It ought to be said, the aim of the law is to prevent injustice from reigning. In fact, it is not justice that has an existence of its own, it is injustice. The results from the absence of the other. However, when the law, through the medium of its necessary agent—force—imposes a form of labour, a method or a subject of instruction, a creed, or a worship, it is no longer negative; it acts positively upon humans. It substitutes the will of the legislator for their own will, the initiative of the legislator for their own initiative. They have no nee to consult, to compare, or to foresee; the law does all that for them. The intellect is for them a useless encumbrance; they cease to be humans; they lose their personality, their liberty, their property. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24

Try to imagine a form of labour imposed by force, that is not a violation of liberty; a transmission of wealth imposed by force, that is not a violation of property. If you cannot succeed in reconciling this, you are bound to conclude that the law cannot organize labour and industry without organizing injustice. When, from the seclusion of one’s office, a politician takes a view of society, one is struck with the spectacle of inequality that presents itself. One mourns over the sufferings that are the lot of so many of our brethren, sufferings whose aspect is rendered yet more sorrowful by the contrast of luxury and wealth. One ought, perhaps, to task oneself whether such a social state has not been caused by the plunder of ancient times, exercised in the way of conquests; and by plunder of more recent times, effected though the medium of the laws? One ought to ask oneself whether, granting the aspiration of all humans to well-being and improvement, the reign of justice would not suffice to realize the greatest activity of progress, and the greatest amount of equality compatible with that individual responsibility that God has awarded as a just retribution of virtue and vice? One never gives this thought. One’s mind turns towards combinations, arrangements, legal or factitious organization. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24

One seeks the remedy in perpetuating and exaggerating what has produced the evil. For, justice apart, which we have seen is only a negation, is there any one of these legal arrangements that does not contain the principle of plunder? You say, “There are people who have no money,” and you apply to the law. However, the law is not a self-supplied fountain, whence every stream may obtain supplies independently of society. Nothing can enter the public treasury, in favour of one citizen or one class, but what other citizens and other classes have been forced to send to it. If everyone draws from it only the equivalent of what one has contributed to it, your law, it is true, is no plunder, but it does nothing for people who want money—it does not promote equality. It can only be an instrument of plunder. Examine, in the light, the protection of tariffs, subsidies, right to profit, right to labour, right to assistance, free public education, progressive taxation, gratuitousness of credit, social workshops, and you will always find at the bottom legal plunder, organized injustice. You say, “There are people who want knowledge,” and you apply to the law. However, the law is not a torch that sheds light that originates within itself. It extends over a society where there are people who have knowledge, and others who have not; citizens who want to learn, and other who are disposed to teach. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24

The law can only do one of two things; either allow a free operation to this kind of transaction, id est, let this kind of want satisfy itself freely; or else preempt the will of the people in the matter, and take from some of them sufficient to pay professors commissioned to instruct others for free. However, in this second case, there cannot fail to be a violation of liberty and property—legal plunder. You say, “Here are people who are wanting in mortality or religion,” and you apply to the law; but law is force, and need I say how far it is a violent and absurd enterprise to introduce force in these matters? As the result of its systems and of its efforts, it would seem that socialism, notwithstanding all its self-compliancy, can scarcely help perceiving the monster of legal plunder. However, what does it do? It disguises it cleverly from others, and even from itself, under the seductive names of fraternity, solidarity, organization, association. And because we do not ask so much at the hands of the law, because we only ask it for justice, it alleges that we reject fraternity, solidarity, organization, and association; and they brand us with the name of individualists. We can assure them that what we repudiate is not natural organization, but forced organization. It is not free association, but the forms of association that they would impose upon us. It is not spontaneous fraternity, but legal fraternity. It is not providential solidarity, but artificial solidarity, which is only an unjust displacement of responsibility. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24

In any encounter of humans with humans, power is active, the power of the personal radiation, expressed in language and gestures, in the glance of the eye and the sound of the voice, in face and figure and movement, expressed in what one is personally and what one represents socially. Every encounter, whether friendly or hostile, whether benevolent or indifferent, is in some way, unconsciously or consciously, a struggle of power with power. In this struggle decisions are made continuously about the relative power of being, actualized in all those who are involved in the struggle. Creative justice does not deny these encounters and the conflicts implicit in them. For this is the price which must be paid for the creativity of life. Such struggles start in the life of an individual in the moment of one’s conception and go on up to the moment of one’s last breath. They permeate one’s relations to everything and everybody one encounters. Justice is the form in which these struggles lead to ever-changing decision about the power of being in each of the struggling beings. The impression given by this picture, the truth of which can hardly be denied, is the complete dependence of justice in personal encounters on the power of relation between person and person. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24

However, this impression is false because it does not take into consideration that every being which enters the struggle of power with power has already a definite power of being. It is a plant and not a stone, a beast and not a tree, a man and not a dog, a female and not a male. These and innumerable other qualities are given before the struggle in the personal encounter starts and they are the basis for the intrinsic claim for justice, which every being has. However, this claim has a large margin of indefiniteness, rooted in the dynamic side of every power of a being. And it is this undefined element in the power of a being about which new decision are always me. This of course is also the source of all injustice. If the new decision destroy the essential claim of a being, they are unjust. It is not unjust that in the struggle between power and power one of the beings involved shows a superior power of being. The manifestation of this fact is not unjust but creative. However, injustice occurs if in this struggle the superior power uses its power for the reduction or destruction of the inferior power. This can happen in all forms of personal encounters. Most frequent are those forms in which the personal encounter occurs within the frame of an institutional structure and the preservation and growth of the institution gives the pretext for unjust compulsion. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24

There is unjust psychological compulsion in family relations, in educational relations and in all other authority relations. It often happens that parents who look at a young child with an especially severe or angry expression become responsible for a life-long abnormal anxiety of the child. It feels rejected and loses any self-assurance concerning the power and justice of its own being. Its just claims are repressed or transformed into unjust ones, exempli gratia unconscious destructiveness against itself or against others. This, on the other hand, gives the parents a feeling of being resisted or avoided by the child. Their intrinsic claim as parents is not fulfilled either. Authority can, besides its external compulsory power, exercise a psychological compulsion which conflicts with the justice of person-to-person encounters. Here the large problem arises as to whether there is a type of authority which is, by its very nature, unjust, and another one which is by its very nature just. This seems to be the case: there is “authority in principle” and there is “authority in fact.” Authority in principle means that a person has authority by the place one occupies and that one is beyond criticism because of the place. So—to give the most famous example—the Pope as Pope is ultimate authority for every Catholic believer. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24

Thus, the Bible as Bible is ultimate authority for every orthodox Protestant. Thus, the dictator as dictator is ultimate authority in a totalitarian system. Thus, parents are authority for infants and try to remain in this place for ever. So teacher become authorities for pupils without trying to liberate the pupils from their authority. All this “authority in principle” is unjust authority. It disregards the intrinsic claim of group, or, as it is called if it has a manifest center, a social organism. An organism is the more developed and has a greater power of being, the more different elements are united around an acting center. Therefore, humans produce the richest, most universal and most powerful social organisms. However, the individuals who constitute this organism are each independent centers for themselves, and so they can resist the unity of the social organism to which they belong. And there the limits of the analogy between biological and social organism becomes visible. In a biological organism the parts are nothing without the whole to which they belong. This is not the case in social organisms. They destiny of an individual who is separated from the group to which one belongs may be miserable but the separation is not necessarily fatal. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24

The fate of a limb which is cut off from the living organism to which it belongs is in decay. In this sense no human group is an organism in the biological sense. Neither is the family the cell of a quasi-biological organism, nor is the nation something like a biological organism. This statement is politically significant. Those who like to speak of social organisms do it usually with a reactionary tendency. They want to keep dissenting groups in conformity and they use for this purpose biological metaphors in a literal sense. Prussian conservatism and Roman Catholic family glorification agree at this point. However, the individual person is not a limb of a body; one is an ultimate, independent reality, with both personal and social functions. The individual human is a social being, but the society does not create the individual. They are interdependent. Another moral problem is the inability to take a definite stand and the undependability that goes with it. The neurotic rarely takes a stand in accordance with the objective merits of a person, idea, or cause but rather on the basis of one’s own emotional needs. Since these, however, are contradictory, one position can easily be exchanged for another. Hence many neurotics are readily swayed—unconsciously bribed, as it were—by the lure of greater affection, greater prestige, recognition, power, or “freedom.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 24

This applies to all their personal relationships, whether individual or as part of a group. They often cannot commit themselves to a feeling or opinion about another person. Some unsubstantiated gossip may alter their opinion. Some disappointment or sight, or what is felt as such, may be reason enough to drop a “very good friend.” Some difficulty encountered may turn their enthusiasm into listlessness. They may change their religious, political, or scientific views because of some personal attachment or resentment. They may take a stand in a private conversation but give way under the slightest pressure by some authority or group—often without knowing why they changed their opinion or even that they have do so at all. A neurotic may unconsciously avoid obvious wavering by not making up one’s mind in the first place, but “sitting on the fence,” leaving every alternative open. One may rationalize such an attitude by pointing to the actual intricacies of the situation, or one may be determined by a compulsive “fairness.” Unquestionably a genuine striving to be fair is valuable. It is true also that a conscientious wish to be fair makes it harder to take a definite stand in many situations. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24

However, fairness can be a compulsory part of the idealized image, and its function then is to make taking a stand unnecessary, while at the same time allowing the person to feel “anointed” for being above prejudiced struggle. In this case there is a tendency to be indiscriminate in believing that two viewpoints are really not so contradictory, or that in a dispute between two persons there is right on both sides. It is a pseudo objectivity which prevents a person from recognizing the essential issues in any matter. Earlier I mentioned our various list of “do’s and do not’s.” We have looked at some typical “do not’s”: do not go to the beach, do not play pool, do not eat peanut butter. If this list seems humorous to you, you are wondering how anyone could have such unusual notions, consider that your own list could look just as foolish to someone else. However, foolish or not is not the issues. The issue is that God has not appointed any of us to be the Thought Police or other believer. However, what about the “do’s.” By the “do’s” I am thinking particularly of activities I call spiritual disciplines: having regular private devotions, studying the Bible, memorizing Scripture, meeting with a group Bible study, or faithfully attending a weekly prayer meeting. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24

Spiritual disciplines are provided for our good, not for our bondage. “Spiritual disciplines were made for human, not humans for spiritual disciplines,” reports Mark 2.27. We can become just as legalistic about our “do’s” as we can about the “do nots.” In fact, newer believers coming into our fellowship from totally unchristian backgrounds usually do not have many cultural “do nots.” However, the spiritual disciplines are fertile ground for legalistic thinking. They can easily become a performance measurement by which we gauge whether to expect God’s blessing or not. If I have been doing pretty well, having a regular quiet time, studying my Bible, and so on, then I am hopeful about God’s blessing. However, if I have not been doing so well—have not “been faithful” as we say—then, I might as well go back to bed. We get more legalistic about spiritual disciplines with others. We try subtly (or maybe not so subtle) coercion by communicating ever so slightly that a person who is not practicing the same disciplines we are is not “committed.” Or we do not allow a person into our “in” group if he or she is not doing what we do. Again we think God should lead everyone else in spiritual growth as He does us. I do not think we should actively promote spiritual disciplines. They are absolutely necessary for growth in our Christian lives. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24

And since ours is a largely undisciplined age, many believers are losing out on the benefits of those disciplines that could help them grow to maturity in Christ. However, we should promote them as benefits, not as duties. Perhaps we should stop talking about being “faithful” to have a quiet time with God each day, as if we were doing something to earn a reward. It would be better to talk about the privilege of spending time with the God of the Universe and the importance for our own sake of being consistent in the practice. If we are involved in a one-to-one discipling relationship, we must remember Paul’s attitude when he wrote, “Not that we Lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, because it is by faith you stand firm,” reports 2 Corinthians 1.24. In a one-to-one discipling relationship, we are there to serve, not to Lord it over the other person. We should encourage the use of spiritual disciplines and do all we can to help the person succeed in them, but we should never require them as a condition of acceptance—either by God or by us. We must remember that the methods of spiritual disciplines are a means to the end, not the ends themselves. We need to teach grace before commitment, because, as we saw, grace understood and embrace will always lead to commitment. However, commitment required will always lead to legalism. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24

Christ will minister to the Nephites—Nephi foresees the destruction of his people—they will speak from the dust—the Gentiles will build up false churches and secret combinations—the Lord forbids humans to practice priestcrafts. About 559-545 Before Christ. “And after Christ shall have risen from the dead he shall show himself unto you, my children, and my beloved brethren; and the words which he shall speak unto you shall be the law which ye shall do. For behold, I say unto you that I have beheld that many generations shall pass away, and there shall be great wards and contentions among my people. And after the Messiah shall come there shall be signs given unto my people of his birth, and also of his death and resurrection; and great and terrible shall that say be unto the wicked, for they shall perish; and they perish because they cast out the prophets, and the saints, and stone them, and slay them; wherefore the cry of the blood of the saints shall ascend up to God from the ground against them. Wherefore, all those who are proud, and that do wickedly, the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of Hosts, for they shall be as stubble. And they that kill the prophets, and the saints, the depths of the Earth shall swallow them up, saith the Lord of Hosts; and mountains shall cover them, and whirlwinds shall carry them away, and buildings shall fall upon them and crush them to pieces and grind them to powder. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24

“And they shall be visited with thunderings, and listenings, and Earthquakes, and all manner of destructions, for the fire of the anger of the Lord shall be kindled against them, and they shall be as stubble, and the day that cometh shall consume them, saith the Lord of Hosts. O the pain, and the anguish of my soul for the loss of the slain of my people! For I, Nephi, have seen it, and it well nigh consumeth me before the presence of the Lord; but I must cry unto my God: They ways are just. However, behold, the righteous that hearken unto the words of the prophets, and destroy them not, but look forward unto Christ with steadfastness for the signs which are given, notwithstanding all persecution—behold, they are they which shall not perish. However, the Son of Righteousness shall appear unto them; and he shall heal them, and they shall have peace with him, until three generations shall have passed away, and many of the fourth generation shall have passed away in righteousness. And when thee things have passed away a speedy destruction cometh unto my people; for, notwithstanding the pains of my soul, I have seen it; wherefore, I know that it shall come to pass; and they sell themselves for naught; for, the reward of their pride and their foolishness they shall reap destruction; for because they yield unto the devil and choose works of darkness rather than light, therefore they must go down to hell. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24

“For the Spirit of the Lord will not always strive with a human. And when the Spirit ceaseth to strive with a human then cometh speedy destruction, and this grieveth my soul. And as I spake concerning the convincing of the Jews, that Jesus is the very Christ, it must needs be that the Gentiles be convinced also that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God. And that he manifesteth himself unto all those who believe in him, by the power of the Holy Ghost; yea, unto every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, working mighty miracles the children of humans according to their faith. However, behold, I prophesy unto you concerning the last days; concerning the days when the Lord God shall bring these things forth unto the children of humans. After my seed and the seed of my brethren shall have dwindled in unbelief, and shall have been smitten by the Gentiles; yea, after the Lord God shall have camped against them round about, and shall have laid siege against them with a mount, and raised forts against them; and after they shall have been brought down low in the dust, even that they are not, yet the words of the righteous shall be written, and the prayer of the faithful shall be heard, and all those who have dwindled in unbelief shall not be forgotten,” reports 2 Nephi 26.1-15. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24

We beseech Thee, O Lord, please let the earnest desire of Thine obedient people move Thy pity, and let their faithful supplication obtain Thy mercy; that what they cannot claim by merits they may receive by the abundance of Thy pardon; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Great God, in public and private, in sanctuary and home, may my life be steeped in prayer, filled with the spirit of grace and supplication, each prayer perfumed with the incense of atoning blood. Please help me, please defend me, until from praying ground I pass to the realm of unceasing praise. Urged by my need, invited by Thy promises, called by Thy Spirit, I enter Thy presence, worshipping Thee with Godly fear, awed by Thy majesty, greatness, glory, but encourage by Thy love. I am all poverty as well as all guilt, having nothing of my own with which to repay Thee, but I bring Jesus to Thee in the arms of faith, pleading his righteousness to offset my iniquities, rejoicing that he will weigh down the scales for me, and satisfy Thy justice. I bless Thee that great sin draws out great grace, that, although the least sin deserves infinite punishment because done against an infinite God, yet there is mercy for me, for where guilty is most terrible, there Thy mercy in Christ is most free and deep. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24

Please bless me by revealing to me more of his saving merits, by causing Thy goodness to pass before me, by speaking peace to my contrite heart; strengthen me to give Thee no rest until Christ shall reign supreme within me, in every thought, word, and deed, in a faith that purifies the heart, overcomes the World, works by love, fastens me to Thee, and ever clings to the cross. O God of Heavenly powers, Who givest more than we ask or deserve; please grant, we beseech Thee, that what we cannot have by reliance on our own deserts may be granted to us by Thy mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. May Thy perpetual gifts, O Lord, be confirmed to Thy faithful servants, that in receiving them they may seek Thee, and in seeking Thee may endlessly receive them; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Bless, O Lord, Thy family in Heavenly places, and fill them with Thy spiritual gifts; grant them love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, gentleness, hope, faith, chastity; that being replenished with all Thy gifts, they may attain their desires of coming safe unto Thee; through our Lord. Take away from us, we beseech Thee, O Lord, all our iniquities, and the spirit of pride and arrogance, which Thou resistest, and fill us with the spirit of fear, and give us a contrite and humbled heart, which Thou dost not despise,–that we may be enabled with pure minds to enter into the Holy of Holies; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24

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God Bless the Inventor of Sleep, the Cloak that Covers All People’s thoughts, the Food that Cures All Hunger!

May 19, 2020 1:13 am

The rewards of educating comes from a teachers’ innate belief that every day they have the opportunity to enrich the lives of their students by igniting the human spirit, dignifying the human experience, and inspiring human excellence. You know the old saying, “If you plan ahead God goes with you.” Commerce is everything, but everybody goes about consulting astrologers, talking about magic, and trying to drive out evil spirits. People have families, eat, drink, and try to achieve success in every way possible, yet carry on all the time about luck. Now Americans do not talk about demons, no, but they rattle on about “negative thinking,” and “self-destructive ideas” and “bad self-image.” It is a lot the same, Babylon and America. The law has become perverted! The law—and, in its wake, all the collective forces of the nation—the law, I say, not only diverted from its proper direction, but made to pursue one entirely contrary! The law has become the tool of every kind of avarice, instead of being its check! The law guilty of that very iniquity which it was its mission to punish! Truly, this is a serious fact, if it exists, and one to which I feel bound to call the attention of my fellow citizens. We hold from God the gift that, as far as we are concerned, contains all others, Life—physical, intellectual, and more life. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24

However, life cannot support itself. One who has bestowed it, has entrusted us with the care of supporting it, of developing it, and of perfecting it. To that end, He has provided us with a collection of wonderful faculties; He has plunged us into the midst of a variety of elements. It is by the application of our faculties to these elements that the phenomena of assimilation and of appropriation, by which life pursues the circle that has been assigned to it are realized. Existence, faculties, assimilation—in other words, personality, liberty, property—this is human. It is of these three things that it may be said, apart from all demagogic subtlety, that they are anterior and superior to all human legislation. It is not because humans have made laws, that personality, liberty, and property exist. On the contrary, it is because personality, liberty, and property exist before hand, that humans make laws. What, then, is law? Law is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense. Nature, or rather God, has bestowed upon every one of us the right to defend one’s person, one’s liberty, and one’s property, since these are three constituent or preserving elements of life; elements, each of which is rendered complete by the others, and that cannot be understood without them. For what are our faculties, but the extension of our personality? And what is property, but an extension of our faculties? #RandolphHarris 2 of 24

If every person has the right of defending, even by force, one’s person, one’s liberty, and one’s property, a number of humans have the right to combine together to extend, to organize a common force to provide regularly for this defense. Collective right, then, has its principle, its reason for existing, its lawfulness, in individual right; and the common force cannot rationally have any other end, or any other mission, than that of the isolated forces for which it is substituted. Thus, as the force of an individual cannot lawfully touch the person, the liberty, or the property of another individual—for the same reason, the common force cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, the liberty, or the property of individual classes. For this perversion of force would be, in one case as in the other, in contradiction to our premises. For who will dare to say that force has been given to us, not to defend our rights, but to annihilate the equal rights of our brethren? And if this be not true of every individual force, acting independently, how can it be true of the collective force, which is only the organized union of isolated forces? It is not for one to work for humanity by only helping particular persons and by alleviating isolated distresses. One’s form of service must be stretch over wider areas, must affect a multitude of persons. However, this is possible only if one works in deeper ground and through secret unobtrusive ways. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24

The World being what it is, human nature what it has long been, and human affairs all-too-repetitious, one will not waste time and energy attempting to re-arrange the by surface efforts. One may do nothing more than put one’s mite of cheering truth and softening goodness into the grim World around one, but this will be enough. One cannot contribute more than one has. The ultimate result of this contribution may be little, but one has tried to do God’s will on Earth. Nothing, therefore, can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense; it is the substitution of collective for individual forces, for the purpose of acting in the sphere in which they have a right to act, of doing what they have a right to do, to secure persons, liberties, and properties, and to maintain each in its right, so as to cause justice to reign over all. Just the fact that one is here, on this planet and at this time, makes its own contribution to humanity’s welfare. This is still true even though one may not try to manage other people’s lives on the plea of serving them. One’s service may not be immediately, or locally, apparent; it may need time to come up from the subconscious levels that are the deeper layers of mind and spirit, but it will be nevertheless real. Although it is not one’s direct purpose, one’s existence will lessen humanity’s suffering, and increase its hope and goodwill through obeying and enforcing law and order. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24

And if people established upon this basis were to exist, it seems to me that order would prevail among them in their acts as well as in their ideas. It seems to me that such people would have the most simple, the most economical, the least oppressive, the least to be felt, the most restrained, the most just, and, consequently, the most stable Government that could be imagined, whatever its political form might be. For under such an administration, everyone would feel that one possessed all the fullness, as well as all the responsibility of one’s existence. So long as personal safety was ensured, so long as labour was free, and the fruits of labour secured against all unjust attacks, no one would have any difficulties to content with in the State. When prosperous, we should not, it is true, have to thank the State for our success; but when unfortunate, we should no more think of taxing it with our disasters than our less affluents think of attributing to it the arrival of hail or of frost. We should know it only by the inestimable blessing of Safety. Those who cross this path may feel like it is only a once in a lifetime experience, and they will receive instruction, even though they are not outwardly being taught. America is under God’s divine blessing and God’s grace has bestowed us with Manifest Destiny, which has influenced kings and rulers and leaders of humans and culture. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24

Manifest Destiny has guaranteed America with the birth rite to expand its boarders from sea to shining sea. The poem of the Statue of Liberty is a prophecy that one day, America will be One World, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I mean, really, who would not like to move around the World and be protected by the laws, rights, and justice that Americans are granted on their beautiful island? Americans have emerged into public view in order to quicken the pace of evolution by active external work, but some do not have their spiritual identity and as a result their efforts where not always successful because they had to deal with frail stubborn human nature. Knowing this convinces us better than printed arguments of the eternal Spiritual truths. It may further be affirmed, that, thanks to the non-intervention of the State in private affairs, our wants and their satisfactions would develop themselves in their natural order. We should not see less affluent families seeking for literary instruction before they were supplied with bread. We should not see those great displacements of capital, of labour, and population, that legislative measures occasion; displacements that render so uncertain and precarious the very sources of existence, and thus enlarge to such an extent the responsibility of Governments. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24

Unhappily, law is by no means confirmed to its own sphere. Nor is it merely in some ambiguous and debatable views that it has left it proper sphere. It has done more than this. It has acted in direct opposition to its proper end; it has destroyed its own object; it has been employed in annihilating that justice which it ought to have established, in effacing amongst Rights, that limit which it was its true mission to respect; it has placed the collective force in the service of those who wish to traffic, without risk and without scruple, in the persons, the liberty, and the property of others; it has converted plunder into a right, that it may protect it, and lawful defense into a crime, that it may punish it. How has this perversion of law been accomplished? And what has resulted from it? The law has been perverted through the influence of two very different causes—naked greed and misconceived philanthropy. Let us speak of the former. Self-preservation and development is the common aspiration of all human, in such a way that if every one enjoyed the free exercise of one’s faculties and the free disposition of their fruits, social progress would be incessant, uninterrupted, inevitable. However, there is also another disposition which is common to them. This is to live and to develop, when they can, at the expense of another. This is no rash imputation, emanating from a gloomy, uncharitable spirit. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24

History bears witness to the truth of it, by the incessant wars, the migrations of races, sectarian oppressions, the universality of slavery, the frauds in trade, and the monopolies with which it annals universal, and invincible sentiment that urges it towards its well-being, and makes it seek to escape pain. Humans can only derive life and enjoy from a perpetual search and appropriation; that is, from a perpetual application of one’s faculties to objects, or from labour. This is the origin of property. However, also one may live and enjoy, by seizing and appropriating the productions of the faculties of one’s fellow humans. This is the origin of plunder. Now, labour being in itself a pain, and humans being naturally inclined to avoid pain, it follows, and history proves it, that whatever plunder is less burdensome than labour, it prevails; and neither religion nor morality can, in this case, prevent it from prevailing. When does plunder cease, then? When it becomes more burdensome and more dangerous than labour. It is very evident that the proper aim of law is to oppose the fatal tendency to plunder with the powerful obstacle of collective force; that all its measures should be in favour of property, and against plunder. However, law is made, generally, by one human, or by one class of humans. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24

And as law cannot exist without the sanction and the support of preponderant force, it must finally place this force in the hands of those who legislate. This inevitable phenomenon, combined with the fatal tendency that, we have said, exists in the heart of humans, explains the almost universal perversions of law. It is easy to conceive that, instead of being a check upon injustice, it becomes its most invincible instrument. It is easy to conceive that, according to the power of the legislator, it destroys for its own profit, and in different degrees amongst the rest of the community, personal independence by slavery, liberty by oppression, and property by plunder. It is in the nature of humans to rise against the injustice of which they are the victims. When, therefore, plunder is organized by law, for the profit of those who perpetrate it, all the plundered classes tend, either by peaceful or revolutionary means, to enter in some way into the manufacturing of laws. These classes, according to the degree of enlightenment at which they have arrived, may propose to themselves two very different ends, when they thus attempt the attainment of their political rights; either they may wish to put an end to lawful plunder, or they may desire to take part in it. Woe to the nation where this latter thought prevails amongst the masses, at the moment when they, in their turn, seize upon the legislative power! #RandolphHarris 9 of 24

Up to that time, lawful plunder has been exercised by the few upon the many, as is the case in the case in countries where the right of legislating is confined to a few hands. However, now it has become universal, and the equilibrium is sought in universal plunder. The injustice that society contains, instead of being rooted out of it, is generalized. As soon as the injured classes have recovered their political rights, their first thought is not to abolish plunder (this would suppose them to possess enlightenment, which they cannot have), but to organize against the other classes, and to their own detriment, a system of reprisals—as if it was necessary, before the reign of justice arrives, that all should undergo a cruel retribution—some for their iniquity and some for their ignorance. It would be the consequences of such a perversion? It would require volumes to describe them all. We must content ourselves with pointing out the most striking. In the first place, it would efface from everybody’s conscience the distinction between justice and injustice. No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree, but the safest way to make them respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality are in contradiction to each other, the citizen find oneself in the cruel alternative of either losing one’s moral sense, or of losing one’s respect for the law—two evils of equal magnitude, between which it would be difficult to choose. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24

It is so much in the nature of law to support justice that in the minds of the masses they are one and the same. There is in all of us a strong disposition to regard what is lawful as legitimate, so much so that many falsely derive all justice from law. It is sufficient, then, for the law to order and sanction plunder, that it may appear to many consciences just and sacred. Slavery, protection, and monopoly find defenders, not only in those who profit by them, but in those who suffer by them. If you suggest a doubt as to the morality of these institutions, it is said directly—“You are dangerous experimenter, a utopian, a theorist, a despiser of the laws; your would shake the basis upon which society rests.” The imagination is responsible for imagery of all kinds. It is the representation of an individual thought. The imagination reproduces images made originally by the senses or held in memory and creates images either in cooperation with reason or in its own right. These functions are in turn revealed in three kinds of imagination, the first joined with belief of that which is to come; the second joined with memory of that which is past; and the third is of things present, or as if they were presented; imaginations are feigned and at pleasure; as if one should imagine such a person to be in the vestments of a Pope, or to have wings. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24

Examination of the three kind of imagination, the first joined with the memory of that which is to come; the second joined with memory of that which is past; and the third is of things present, as if they were present, discloses the reproductive and creative roles of imagination, and about the force of imagery qua imagery, exempli gratia, imagination intensive. What is the representation of an individual thought? At the level of understanding and reason, thought could be so abstract as to be impalpable. Imagination has the power of rendering abstract thought tangible. The tangible manifestation appeared most widely as words in speech and writing, for the words were the images of thought, the images of cogitations. Thinking can occur in the absence of imagery, but if it were to be available to sense, it has to appear as auditory and verbal imagery. Thought images serve as if they were the contents of perception, but thinking does not take place at all without some kind of an image. The mind can frame a purely mental proposition without the use of words. So from the point of view of the mind that makes them, the imagery of speech and language is the concrete analogue of abstract thought. The imagination thus gives body to thought. A thought occurred, an image followed upon it. Imagery is in this sense a re-presenting of thought. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24

The objectification of thought as verbal imagery is strikingly perceived when one contemplates the context within which we locate speech and writing along with the communication, or transmission, of ideas among the rational or intellectual arts. We distinguish four intellectual or logical activities, and these give their names to corresponding arts. Reason is the discursive movement of the understanding, and logic is a term applied to the study of its modes of discursion as they appear in discourse. There is invention—the finding and discovering of ideas; there is judging—the evaluation and criticism of the results of invention; there is memory—the retention of what is judged acceptable; and there is the transmission and communication of ideas. The first three of these activities are mental, or as more properly, psychological, processes. They were unavailable to our sense directly. To the extent that they became available as discourse, rather than through spirit (human or divine) or in other nondiscursive, immediate ways, they must appear as material and form. So we place under the transmission of ideas three other features of intellectual discursiveness; the organ of discourse, the method of discourse, and the illustration of discourse. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24

The organ of discourse deals with the smallest physical elements, and the smallest number of them, that can be used alone or in combination to depict thought and its process. In ordinary languages these are speech and writing, though other kinds of characters have been used, such as hieroglyphics. Abstractly considered, the organ of discourse is grammar; concretely considered, the organ of discourse is speech and writing. The organ is so designated precisely because reason in its discursiveness needs and organ. On the other hand, the understanding as such, or pure reason, does not require an organ. In brief, the sound images of voice and speech and the visual images of language written are the simplest and most pervasive products of imagination. They are somehow bound in with thought. Imagine and thought are two facets of a unitary whole. The whole may be a modulation of the spirit. As to miracle, it is the sign-event which has occasioned or provoked the ecstatic awareness of revelation. It does not require special supernatural interference in natural process. The structure of natural causality is not broken. What happens is that certain natural events, when encountered in a special turn of mind, point to the mystery of being and non-being, and induce the beholder to commit oneself unconditionally to this revelation. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24

The sign-events in which the mystery be being gives itself consist in special constellations of elements of reality in correlation with special constellations of elements of the mind. Miracle occasions ecstasy; yet the event in question has become a miracle only through ecstasy. The subjective and the objective condition one another. Taking these revelatory elements together, one can say that ecstasy is the miracle of the mind and that miracle is the ecstasy of reality. By definition, religion originates in a correlation of miracle and ecstasy. The basic problem of all religions, however, is that literally anything may be a medium of revelation. Any event may be a miracle. Nature, history, groups, individuals and the word may be, and have been, mediums of revelation. The multiplicity of revelatory situations is at the origin of many different symbols of ultimate concern which have been developed by religions. Faith is unique. However, its symbols are manifold. Could there be only one symbol, there would be only one concrete content of faith, and therefore one religion. This naturally raises the problem of a final revelation: is there one revelatory event that transcends and underlies all others? The problem of Christianity and of its universal claim is thus posited. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24

No discussion of Christianity is meaningful if we leave out the sight of conception of a revelatory experience: a final revelation, if there is one, is first of all a constellation of revelatory character. The discipline of petitionary prayer: The practice of prayer—the list, the quiet, the place, the time, the posture, preparation, and the length—all suggest one thing—discipline. Work—candidly, prayer is work, not a sport. It is not something that you do if you like it, or devote your spare time to, or do only if you are good at it. Prayer is the proper work of the soul which loves Christ (Ephesians 6.18): And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayer and requests. With this in mind, be alter and always keep on praying for all the saints. This is a call to work! We must never wait until we feel like praying—otherwise we may never pray, unless, perhaps, we fall headfirst into an open wall. The context of Paul’s charge in Ephesians 6 is spiritual warfare—and that is what prayer is! Christian people face the World in prayer. Work and war, war and work—these are the words we must keep before us if we are to become humans of prayer. “Now I, Nephi, do speak somewhat concerning the words which I have written, which have written, which have been spoken by the mouth of Isaiah. For Behold, Isaiah spake many things which were hard for many of my people to understand; for they know not concerning the manner of prophesying among the Jews. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24

“For I, Nephi, have not taught them many things concerning the manner of the Jews; for their works were works of darkness, and their doings were doings of abominations. Wherefore, I write unto my people, unto all those that shall receive hereafter these things which I write, that they may know the judgments of God, that they come upon all nations, according to the word which he hath spoken. Wherefore, hearken, O my people, which are of the house of Israel, and give ear unto my words; for because the words of Isaiah are not plain unto you, nevertheless they are plain unto all those that are filled with the spirit of prophecy. However, I give unto you a prophecy, accord to the spirit which is in me; wherefore I shall prophesy according to the plainness which hath been with me from the time that I came out from Jerusalem with my father; for behold, my soul delighteth in plainness unto my people, that they may learn. Yea, and my soul delighteth in the words of Isaiah, for I came out from Jerusalem, and mine eyes hath beheld the things of the Jews, and I know that the Jews do understand the things of the prophets, and there is none other people that understand the things which were spoken unto the Jews like unto them, save it be that they are taught after the manner of the things of the Jews. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24

“But behold, I, Nephi, have not taught my children after the manner of the Jews; but behold, I, of myself, have dwelt at Jerusalem, wherefore I know concerning the regions round about; and I have made mention unto my children concerning the judgments of God, which hath come to pass among the Jews, unto my children, according to al that which Isaiah hath spoken, and I do not write them. However, behold, I proceed with mine own prophecy, according to my plainness; in the which I know that no person can err; nevertheless, in the days that the prophecies of Isaiah shall be fulfilled people shall know of a surety, at the times when they shall come to pass. Wherefore, they are of worth unto the children of humans, and one that supposeth that they are not, unto them will I speak particularly, and confine the words unto mine own people; for I know that they shall be of great worth unto them in the last days; for in that day shall they understand them; wherefore, for their good have I written them. And as one generation hath been destroyed among the Jews because of iniquity, even so have they been destroyed from generation to generation to generation according to their iniquities; and never hath any of the been destroyed save it were foretold them by the prophets of the Lord. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24

“Wherefore, it hath been told them concerning the destruction which should come upon them, immediately after my father left Jerusalem; nevertheless, they hardened their hearts; and according to my prophecy they have been destroyed, save it be those which are carried away captive into Babylon. And now this I speak because of the spirit which is in me. And notwithstanding they have been carried away they shall have return again, and possess the land of Jerusalem; wherefore, they shall be restored again to the land of their inheritance. However, behold, they shall have wars, and rumors of wars; and when that day cometh that the Only Begotten of the Father, yea, even the Father of Heaven and of Earth, shall manifest himself unto them in the flesh, behold, they will reject him, because of their iniquities, and the hardness of their hearts, and the stiffness of their necks. Behold, they will crucify him; and after he is laid in a sepulcher for the space of three days he shall rise from the dead, with healing in his wings; and all those who shall believe on his name shall be saved in the kingdom of God. Wherefore, my soul delighteth to prophesy concerning him, for I have seen his day, and my heart doth magnify his holy name. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24

“And behold it shall come to pass that after the Messiah hath risen from the dead, and hath manifested himself unto his people, unto as many as will believe on his name, behold, Jerusalem shall be destroyed again; for wo unto them that fight against God and the people of his church. Wherefore, the Jews shall be scattered among all nations; yea, and also Babylon shall be destroyed; wherefore, the Jews shall be scattered by other nations. And after they have been scattered, and the Lord God hath scourged them by other nations for the space of many generations, yea, even down from generation to generation until they shall be persuaded to believe in Christ, the Son of God, and the atonement, which is infinite for all humankind—and when that say shall come that they shall believe in Christ, and worship the Father in his name, with pure hearts and clean hands, and look not forward any more for another Messiah, then, at that time, the day will come that it must needs be expedient that they should believe these things. And the Lord will set his hand again the second time to restore his people from their lost and fallen state. Wherefore, one will proceed to do a marvelous work and a wonder among the children of humans. Wherefore, he shall bring forth his words unto them, which words shall judge them at the last day, for they shall be given them for the purpose of convincing them of the true Messiah, who was rejected by them. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24

“And unto the convincing of them that they need not look forward any more for a Messiah to come, for there should not any come, save it should be a false Messiah which should deceive the people; for there is save one Messiah spoken of by the prophets, and that Messiah is one who should be rejected of the Jews. For according to the words of the prophets, the Messiah cometh in six hundred years from the time that my father left Jerusalem; and according to the words of the prophets, and also the word of the Angel of God, his name shall be Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And now, my brethren, I have spoken plainly that ye cannot err. And as the Lord God liveth that brought Israel up out of the land of Egypt, and have unto Moses power that he should heal nations after they have been bitten by the poisonous serpents, if they would cast their eyes unto the serpent which he did raise up before them, and also gave him power that he should smite the rock and the water should come forth; yea, behold I say unto you, that as these things are true, and as the Lord God liveth, there is none other name given under Heaven save it be this Jesus Christ, of which I have spoken, whereby humans can be saved. Wherefore, for this cause hath the Lord God promised unto me that these things which I write shall be kept and preserved, and handed down unto my seed, from generation to generation, that the promise may be fulfilled unto Joseph, that his seed should never perish as long as the Earth should stand. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24

“Wherefore, these things shall go from generation to generation as long as the Earth shall stand; and they shall go according to the will and pleasure of God; and the nations who shall possess them shall be judged of them according to the words which are written. For we labour diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God; for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do. And, notwithstanding we believe in Christ, we keep the law of Moses, and look forward with the steadfastness unto Christ, until the law shall be fulfilled. For, for this end was the law given; wherefore the law hath become dead unto us, and we are made alive in Christ because of our faith; yet we keep the law because of the commandments. And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins. Wherefore, we speak concerning the law that our children may know the deadness of the law; and they, by knowing the deadness of the law, may look forward unto that life which is in Christ, and know for what end the law is given. And after the law is fulfilled in Christ, that they need not harden their hearts against him when the law ought to be done away. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24

“And now behold, my people, ye, are a stiffnecked people; wherefore, I have spoken plainly unto you, that ye cannot misunderstand. And the words which I have spoken shall stand as a testimony against you; for they are sufficient to teach any human the right way; for the right way is to believe in Christ and deny him not; for by denying him ye also deny the prophets and the law. And now behold, I say unto you that the right way is to believe in Christ, and deny him not; and Christ is the Holy One of Israel; wherefore ye must bow down before hum, and worship him with all your might, mind, and strength, and your whole soul; and if ye do this ye shall in nowsie be cast out. And, inasmuch as it shall be expedient, ye must keep the performances and ordinances of God until the law shall be fulfilled which was given uno Moses. O LORD God, Who hast taught us to pray all together, and hast promised to hear the united voices of two or three invoking Thy Name; hear now, O Lord, the prayers of Thy servants unto their salvation, and give us in this World knowledge of Thy truth, and in the World to come life everlasting. Living by prayer—O God of the open ear, please teach me to live by prayer as well as by providence, for myself, soul, body, children, family, church; please give me a heart frameable to Thy will; so might I live in prayer, and honour Thee, being kept from evil, known and unknown. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24

Please help me to see the sin that accompanies all I do, and the good I can distil from everything. Let me know that the work of prayer is to bring my will to thine, and that without this it is folly to pray; when I try to bring Thy will to mine it is to command Christ, to be above him, and wiser than he: this is my sin and pride. I can only succeed when I pray according to Thy precept and promise, and to be done with as it pleases Thee, according to Thy sovereign will. When Thou commandest me to pray for pardon, peace, brokenness, it is because Thou wilt give me the thing promised, for Thy glory, as well as for my good. Help me not only to desire small things but holy boldness to desire great things for Thy people, for myself, that they and I might live to show Thy glory. Teach me that it is wisdom for me to pray for all I have, out of love, willingly, not of necessity; that I may come to Thee at any time, to lay open my need acceptably to Thee; that my great sin lies in my not keeping the savour of Thy ways; that the remembrance of this truth is one way to the sense of Thy presence; that there is no wrath like the wrath of being governed by my own lusts for my own ends. Regard, O Lord, the prayers of Thy family, and please grant Thine assistance to their humble supplications; that, by means of the assistance which they require, they may persevere in the confession of Thy Name: through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24

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