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Has the Language of Accountability Yet Been Developed?
The idea of freedom is born with every generation. Only one generation create the Constitution of the United States of American. Do not be swayed by the well-oiled, smoothly reasoned words of human wisdom. As the Great Paul wrote in First Corinthians, “Virtual words will not get you into the Kingdom of God; only virtuous acts will do that,” reports 1 Corinthians 4.20. Pay attention to what God says. Let its warm your hearts and illumine your mind. It will loosen your conscience and infuse—who knows?—a little consolation. “O taste and see that the LORD is good; how blessed is the human who takes refuge in Him!” reports Psalm 34.8. Many people are missing out on God’s best because they do not realize that the good things in life have already been paid for. They may be on their way to Heaven, but they do not realize what has been included in the price of their quest. God has made more available to people than they can imagine. Never say a word that will make you seem better educated than another. Instead, stive to mortify your verbal vices. Why? Because spiritual progress, though sometimes painful, does you more good than any amount of philosophical knowledge, which often enough can be quite pleasant, or so I have been told. When someone reads from a random pile of books, one often increases one’s learning; but just as often one strays from the One True Principle. At once one must return to the One True Book. Why? God is the One who has given adults what little knowledge they find in their petty encyclopedias; and God is the One who has given the children their pretty abecedaries. “In Whom, because of our faith in Him, we dare to have the boldness (courage and confidence) of free access (an unreserved approach to God with freedom and without fear). So I ask you not to lose heart [not to faint or become despondent through fear] at what I am suffering in your behalf. [Rather glory in it] for it is an honour to you,” reports Ephesians 3.12-13. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
Whoever hears God’s word will quickly become wise and make much progress in virtue. Woe to those who are out whiling away their time in flea markets and curiosity shoppes when they could be at home strenuously serving the Lord! God has everything we need—joy, forgiveness, restoration, peace, healing—anything we need to live at our full potential. It is all waiting for us by God’s grace. We must remember that we are the children of the Most High God, and He wants to enjoy what He has prepared for us. Just because something did no work out our way or someone disappointed us, that does not change who we are. “May He grant you out of the rich treasury of His glory to be strengthened and reinforced with mighty power in the inner man by the [Holy] Spirit [Himself indwelling your innermost being and personality]. May Christ through your faith [actually] dwell (settle down, abide, make His permanent home) in your hearts! May you be rooted deep in love and founded securely on love, that you may have the power and be strong to apprehend and grasp with all the saints [God’s devoted people, the experience of that love] what is he breadth and length and heigh and depth [of it]; [That you may really come] to know [practically, through experience for yourselves] the love of Christ, which far surpasses mere knowledge [without experience]; that you may be filled [through all your being] unto all the fullness of God [may have the richest measure of the divine Presence and become a body wholly filled and flooded with God Himself]!” reports Ephesians 3.16-19. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

Philosophy does not agree with the doctrine that humans can sink into oblivion permanently. If a humans’ fundamental nature, however hidden it be, is essentially immaterial and of the same stuff as divinity, where can one sink back to except to that self-same divinity? The mystery of evil is perhaps the profoundest of all but it cannot be understood through surface views. Evil is closely connected with suffering and the latter in its turn with Universal Laws, which again is itself an expression of the fundamental self. It is all an educative process from which nobody can escape—not even Satan himself were there such a personal devil, which philosophy does not admit, although there are evil spirits, evil beings, and evil humans. All will be saved because when seen from the timeless viewpoint they are already saved. The great mass of humanity are moving in the right direction, despite appearances to he contrary, and they shall enter the kingdom of Heaven one day. Do not doubt that; the guarantee is that they are in their hidden selves already divine. No human is beyond redemption for no human is utterly evil. The problem of evil must be considered in the light of various factors. One of these is standpoint; one human’s evil is another human’s good. Another is Universal Law; the individual has enough latitude to go to the dogs but has to suffer from the consequences of one’s acts. Then there is the question of rebirth. It seems impossible for human beings o be reborn as animals but Nature has made some provision for it. Then the ethical value of suffering must be considered. However, most important of all are the questions of the nature of God, His relation to the Universe and to humanity, and the purpose, if any, which is being worked out. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

When a human commits an act of violence and destruction against other humans, one is denounced and punished as a criminal. However, when Nature commits such an act and maims or kills a mass of people, God is not denounced. Instead, poet and priest search for some excuse, find some hidden good intention, for God’s reputation for goodness must be saved. If the forces of evolution or laws of nature, as the expression of the World-Mind, have evoked the World-Idea and with it the possibilities of evil, we must unflinchingly accept the logical conclusion. This is that the World-Mind certainly permits the presence of Evil, allows and does not hinger its actuality. Nevertheless, we should always couple with this admission the equal and attendant truth that there is a higher outcome from the working of evil, a nobler purpose in its actuality. Through the operations of the laws of recompense and the pressures of divine evolution it is transmuted into good. Evil has nowhere else to turn in the end expect to turn itself into good! To accept God as the source of this Universe but to reject God as the source of those things contained in the Universe which we dislike, is to deny God. Because we humans dislike evil and suffering, we separate them from God. However, when we do that, we separate ourselves from God. Father, I now realize that I have been existing on little faith, while You have many blessings You want to bestow on me the moment I learn how to have faith for extraordinary things, and the price has already been paid. Thank You, Father, for blessing me today. When these rare glimpses are granted, take from them as they leave all that you can get—all the strength, the wisdom, the support, and the goodwill that they can hold. One has had the glimpse. The after-period is important. For as one returns to one’s ordinary self and to the ordinary persons around one, the opportunity is offered to make an adjustment, adjustment, a fresh start by the light of what the experience revealed. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
The great experience is soon over; the released insight lasts but a few minutes or hours, but its memory last long. It is a delectable foretaste and warming anticipation of what one’s continued spiritual development may bring to humans. It lifts one far above oneself and out of one’s ordinary state of consciousness, yielding sharper understandings and creating deeper sympathies. One returns from one’s first initiation into the egoless life with a rich cargo. One carries the stability of peace. A strange feeling of safety takes possession of one at that time. One knows neither care for the uncertain future nor regret for the unpleasant past. One knows that henceforth the life of one’s being is in the hands of the higher self, and with this one is quite content. Once one has attained this inner realization, the student should cling persistently to it, for the World’s multifarious forces will come to hear of it and seek to drag one away. “Now to Him Who, by (in consequence of) the [action of His] power that is at work within us, is able to [carry out His purpose and] do superabundantly, far over and above all that we [dare] ask or think [infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, hopes, or dreams]—to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen (so be it),” reports Ephesians 3.20-12. To get up and move too soon after the glimpse has come to an end is to lose some of its Heavenly afterglow. To refrain from any movement, keeping sill and being patient, is to enjoy that glow till its last flickering moments as one may enjoy the last moments of sunset. One’s first need is to immerse oneself in the feeling, to preserve as much as one can of the glimpse. Print every detail of the Glimpse on your mind. It is a useful practice to write down every detail of the experience while it is still fresh in the mind. The record will still be there when the joy is gone. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

The fragrance of this peace lingers on long after the glimpse itself is over. “His intention was the perfecting and the full equipping of the saints (His consecrated people), [that they should do] the work of ministering toward building up Christ’s body (the church), [That it might develop] until we all attain oneness in the faith and in the comprehension of the [full and accurate] knowledge of the Son of God, that [we might arrive] at really mature manhood (the completeness of personality which is nothing less than the standard height of Christ’s own perfection), the measure of the stature of the fullness of the Christ and the completeness found in Him. So then, we may no longer be children, tossed [like ships] to and fro between chance gusts of teaching and wavering with every changing wind of doctrine, [the prey of] the cunning and cleverness of unscrupulous humans, [gamblers engaged] in every shifting form of trickery in inventing errors to mislead,” Ephesians 4.12-14. The holy feelings generated by the Glimpse ought to be protected against the World’s disintegrating power and shielded against your own tendency to dissipate them by hasty violent movements or needless irrelevant chatter. Immediately after the glimpse no word should be spoken or it may be lost the more quickly. After such a glimpse there is enchantment in the air. The annoying or disagreeable happenings of the day fail to remove it. When the inspiration derived from the glimpse is upon one, the unexpected and the unpredictable may happen for one’s benefit; but when it is gone, one is no more fortunate than one’s neighbour. The glimpse goes and the habitual daily self returns. The single and simple largeness of the one is lost in the innumerable trivialities of the other. As the glimpse fades away, one takes the ego back into consciousness again. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

However, the glimpse may not stand alone in its full purity: one may put one’s own ideas into it as an accompaniment without knowing that one has done so. The time will come when the Teacher of teachers, the Christ of christs, the Lord of Angels, will appear; God’s Paul promised that to the Colossians (3.4). Yes, God will, come to audit all the lectures, examine all the students. That is to say, “Jerusalem will be searched by lamp light,” as the Prophet Zephaniah has said (1.12) and “all the errors will spring out of the darkness,” as Paul in First Corinthians has said (4.5). That should quiet the querulous once and for all! Case in point: two humble Devouts. The University takes ten years to educate the first. As for the second, God can raise one’s mind to where one can grapple equally well with the rationalizations and ratiocinations expected of any university graduate—and God can do it in a trice! God’s pedagogy? Well, God is the Logos, and so He does no need a lot of logorrhea to make His points. Philosophers and Theologians like to entertain other opinions; God does not. Academic pride, intellectual arrogance, public disputation whose only aim is to have the upper hand, not that the Truth may appear—all these are nice, but they are certainly not God’s style. His thesis is simply put: Despite this life. Shrink from the present. Seek the next life. Look forward to that happy time. Flee honours. Endure scandals. Hope is in God. Desire nothing but God. Love God ardently above all things. About the last, loving God ardently. If you do this, you will learn what the University has promised but failed to deliver; that is to say, the secrecies and prophecies of the Divine. That is to say, you make more spiritual progress when you leave the public disputation before it is over than when you linger to make yet another distinctio rationis ratiocnatae minor. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

Sometimes God lectures in halls; sometimes God tutors in rooms. Occasionally God makes a personal impression by a miracle or a verbal expression by a metaphour. Once in a while God even takes the drape off a mystery. A book has once voice, but its many and varied readers do not necessarily come away from it with the same message. In the University Within, however, God’s is the only voice, and One is the only message. God is Lecturer, Examiner Invigilator. God interprets all thoughts, prompts all actions. All of which is another way of saying, and perhaps another way of rendering a passage in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians (12.11), He marks each examination with alpha, beta, or gamma, enhanced or diminished by pluses or minuses. Wow to the Alphas! Woe to the Gammas! A relationship that is never taken into account, although it always ought to be reckoned the chief concern is that of utility each person derives from the social confederation which provides powerful protection for the immense possession of the rich and hardly allows a poor wretch to enjoy the cottage one built with one’s own hands. Are not the advantages of society for the powerful and the rich? Are not all the lucrative posts filled by them alone? Are not all the privileges and exemptions reserved for them alone? And is not the public authority entirely in their favour? When a human of high standing steals from one’s creditors or commits other acts of knavery, is one not always certain of impunity? Are not the assaults, the acts of violence one commits, even the murders and assassination one is guilty of, are not these things hushed up and after six months not given a thought? If this is same human were robbed, the entire police force is immediately put in motion, and woe to the innocent persons one suspects. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

Does one have to pass through a dangerous area? One has escourts in rural areas. Is the axle of one’s chaise about to break? Everyone flies to one’s assistance. Is there a noisy disturbance outside one’s door? One says one word and everyone is silent. Does a crowd aggravate one? One makes a gesture and everyone steps aside from one. And better that fifty honest pedestrians going about their business should be crushed than that some lazy scoundrel’s coach should be delayed. All this respect costs one not a penny; it is the right of a rich human, not the price of riches. How different a picture is to be painted of the poor man! The more humanity owes one, the more society refuses one. All doors are closed to one, even when one has a right to open them. And if sometimes one obtains justice, it is with greater difficulty than the rich human would have obtaining a pardon. If there is an unpleasant job to do or troops to be raised, one is given preference. Besides one’s own burden, one always bears the one from which one’s more wealthy neighbour has the influence to get oneself exempted. At the least accident that happens to one, everyone avoids one. If one’s humble cart tips over, far from being helped by anyone, I count one lucky if one avoids the insults of the smart-aleck servants of some young duke who is passing by. In short, any free assistance escapes one when one needs it, precisely because one has nothing which to pay for it. However, if one has the misfortune of having and honest soul, a beautiful daughter, and a powerful neighbour, I take one for a lost human. Another no less important point to make is that the losses of poor humans are much more difficult to recoup than those of the rich, and that the difficulty of acquiring always grows in proportion to need. Nothing comes from nothing: it is just as true in business as it is in physics. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

Money breeds money, and the first pistole is sometimes harder to earn than the second million. However, there is still more. Everything the poor human pays for is forever lost to one, and remains in or returns to the hands of the rich. And since the proceeds of the taxes sooner or later pass only to those humans who take part in the government or who are closely connected with it, they have, even in paying their hare, a clear interest in increasing taxes. The social part of the two estates: You need me, for I am rich and you are poor. Let us come to an agreement between ourselves. I will permit you to have the honour of serving me, provided you give me what little you have for the trouble I will be taking to command you. If all these things are carefully combined, we will find that in order to levy taxes in an equitable and truly proportionate way, the imposition should not be made merely in proportion to the goods belonging to the contributors, but in a proportion consisting in the differences of their conditions and of the superfluity of their goods. This terribly important and difficult operation is accomplished everyday by multitudes of honest clerks who know their arithmetic; but a Plato or a Montesquieu would not have dared to undertake such a task without trembling and imploring Heaven for enlightenment and integrity. Another disadvantage of the personal tax is that it makes itself felt too much and s levied with too much severity. This does not prevent its being subject to many instances of nonpayment, since it is much easier to hide one’s head than one’s possessions from the tax rolls and prosecution. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Of all other kinds of tax assessments, the land tax or real tax has always passed for the most advantageous in countries where more thought is given to both the quantity of the proceeds and the certainty of recovering the funds, than to causing the least annoyance to the people. Some people have even dared to say that the peasant must be burdened in order to rouse one from one’s idleness, and that one would do nothing if one did not have to pay anything. However, among all the peoples of the World experience contradicts this ridiculous maxim. It is in Holland and England, where the farmer pays very little, and above all in China, where one pays nothing, that the land is best cultivated. On the other hand, wherever the worker finds oneself taxed in proportion to the product of one’s fields, one lets them lie fallow or else reaps just as much from them as one needs in order to live. For to one who loses the fruit of one’s labours gaining means of doing nothing. Imposing a fine on work is a rather unusual method of abolishing idleness. Taxes on land or on grain, especially when they are excessive, result in two disadvantages that are so terrible that they cannot in the long run avoid depopulating and ruining every country where they are established. The first comes from the lack of circulation of currency, for commerce and industry draw all the money from the rural areas into the capitols; and because the tax destroys the proportion that might still obtain between the needs of farmers and the price of one’s grain, money constantly leaves and never returns. The richer the city, the more miserable the rural areas. The proceeds from the tax pass from the hands of the prince of the financier into those of artists and merchants. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

And for the farmer, who never receives anything more than the smallest part of the proceedings, is eventually exhausted by always paying the same amount and always receiving less. How can a human live if one had veins and no arteries, or if the arteries carried blood only to within four inches of one’s heart? Chardin says that in Persia the king’s duties on commodities are also paid in commodities. This custom, which, Herodotus tells us, was practiced previously in the same country until the time of Darius, could prevent the evil of which I have been speaking. However, unless the intendents, directors, commissioners and where else, I am hard pressed to believe that the smallest part of all these products reaches the king, that grain does not in the granaries, and that fire does not consume the greater part of the warehouses. The second disadvantage comes form an apparent advantage, which lets the problems become aggravated before they are noticed: namely that grain remains cheap, and the farmer is the only one to bear the burden of the tax, which one has been unable to recoup in one’s selling price. It must be noted that one should not reason about a real tax the way one would about duties on all merchandise which in turn raise the price on all these goods and which are paid not so much by the sellers as by the buyers. For these duties on all merchandise which in urn raise the price on all these goods and which are paid not so much by the sellers as by the buyers. For these duties, however heavy they may be, are still voluntary and are paid by the seller only in proportion to one’s sales, one applies the law to private individuals. However, the farmer, who is required to pay, whether one sells or not, at a fixed rate for the land one cultivates, is not in a position to wait until one gets the price one wants for one’s produce. And even if one were not to sell it to support oneself, one would be forced to sell it to be able to pay the tax, so that sometimes it is the enormity of the assessment that keeps the produce at a low price. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
The multipurpose corporation that has emerged demands, among other things, smarter executives. It implies a management capable of specifying multiple goals, weighting them, interrelating them, and finding synergetic policies that accomplish more than a single goal at a time. It requires policies that optimize not for one, but for several variables simultaneously. Nothing could be further from the single-minded styles of the traditional Second Wave manager. Moreover, once the need for multiple goals is accepted we are compelled to invent new measures of performance. Instead of the single “bottom line” on which most executives have been taught to fixate, the Third Wave corporation requires attention to multiple bottom lines—social, environmental, informational, political, and ethical bottom lines—all of them interconnected. Faced with this new complexity, many of today’s managers are taken aback. They lack the intellectual tools necessary for Third Wave management. We know how to measure the profitability of a corporation, but how do we measure or evaluate the achievement of non-economic goals? Managers are being asked to account for corporate behaviour in areas where no real standards of accountability have been established—where even the language of accountability has yet to be developed. This explains today’s efforts to develop a new language of accountability. Indeed, accounting itself is on the edge of revolution and is about to explode out of is narrowly economic terms of reference. The American Accounting Association, for example, has issued reports of a “Committee on Non-Financial Measures of Effectiveness” and of a “Committee on Measures of Effectiveness for Social Programs.” So much work is being done along these lines that each of these reports lists nearly 250 papers, monographs, and documents in its bibliography. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

Many companies are working with consulting firms to develop methods for specifying what might be called the “trans-economic” goals of the corporation. The objective is to integrate these goals into corporate planning and to find ways of measuring the company’s trans-economic performance. In Washington, it has been suggested that the government itself should prepare a “Social Performance Index,” which would be a mechanism companies could use to assess their performance and its social consequences. Many large and medium-sized companies in Europe have been experimenting with [the social report] concept. In the Federal Republic of Germany, for example, about 20 of the larges firms now publish social reports regularly. In addition, more than a hundred others draw up social reports for internal management purposes. Some of these reports are no more than puff—accounts of the corporation’s “good works,” carefully overlooking controversial problems like pollution. However, others are remarkably open, objective, and tough. Thus a social report issued by the giant Swiss food firm, Migros-Genossenschafts-Bund self-critically confess that it pays women less than men, that many of its jobs are “extremely boring,” and that its nitrous dioxide emissions have risen over a four-years period. Says the company’s managing director, Pierre Arnold, “It takes courage for an enterprise to point out the differences between its goals and its actual results.” Companies like STEAG and the Saarbergwerke AG have pioneered the effort to relate company expenditures to specific social benefits. Less formally, companies like Bertelsmann AG, the publisher; Rank Xerox GmbH, the copier firm; and Hoechst AG, the chemical manufacturer, have radically broadened the kind of social data they make available to the public. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

A much more advanced system is employed by companies in Sweden and Switzerland and by Deutsche Shell AG in Germany. The latter, instead of publishing an annual report, now issues what it calls an Annual and Social Report in which both economic and trans-economic data are interrelated. The method used by Shell, termed “goal accounting and reporting” by Dierkes and Coppock, stipulates concrete economic, environmental, and social goals for the corporation, spells out the actions taken to achieve them, and reports the expenditures allocated to them. Shell also lists five overall corporate goals—only one of which is to achieve a “reasonable return on investment”—and specifically “carry the same weight” in corporate decision-making. The goal accounting methods force companies to make their trans-economic objectives explicit, to specify time periods for their attainment, and to open this up to public review. On a broader theoretical level, Trevor Gambling, professor of accounting at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, in a book called Societal Accounting has called for a radical reformulation of accounting that begins to integrate the work of economists and accountants with that of the social scientists who have developed social indictors and methods of social accounting. In Holland the Dean of the Graduate School of Management in Delft, Cornelius Brevoord, had designed a set of multidimensional criteria for monitoring corporate behaviour. This is made necessary, he suggests, by deep value changes in the society, among them the change from “an economic production orientation” in society to “a total well-being orientation.” Similarly, he notes a shift from “functional specialization to an interdisciplinary approach.” Both these changes strengthen the need for a more rounded concept of the corporation. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

Brevoord lists 32 different criteria by which a corporation must measure its effectiveness. These range over its relationships with consumers, shareholders, and unions to those with ecology organizations and its own management. However, he points out, even these 32 are only “a few” of the parameters along which the emerging corporation of the future will test itself. With the Second Wave economic infrastructure in a shambles, with change accelerating as de-massification spreads, with the biosphere sending danger signals, with the level of organization in society rising, and the informational, political, and ethical conditions of production changing, the Second Wave corporations is obsolete. What is happening, therefore, is a thoroughgoing reconceptualization of the meaning of production and of the institution that, until now, has been charged with organizing it. The result is a complex shift to a new-style corporation of tomorrow. In the words of William Halal, professor of management at American University, “Just as the feudal manor was replaced by the business corporation when agrarian societies were transformed into industrial societies, so too should the older model of the firm be replaced by a new form of economic institution.” This new institution will combine economic and trans-economic objectives. It will have multiple bottom lines. The transformation of the corporation is part of the larger transformation of the socio-sphere as a whole, and this in turn parallels the dramatic changes in the techno-sphere and info-sphere. Taken together, they add up to a massive historical shift. However, we are not merely altering these giant structures. We are also changing the way ordinary people, in their daily lives, behave. For when we change the deep structure of civilization, we simultaneously rewrite all the codes by which we live. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Important changes have developed in the nerve-structure and brain-formations of the human species. Body purification and strengthening are prerequisites and preparations for spiritual awakening and development. They allow the soul to awaken. The artist, the thinker, or the mystic must not neglect the muscular vigour and health of body that can be obtained through prayer and exercise. This would include deep breathing, stretching exercises, and a diet of light and easily digested foods which will not dull inspiration. Philosophical training puts must value on the quality of mental calmness, emotional composure, and on its reflected state in the body—physical stillness. The more a person’s mind is self-composed, the more will one’s whole personality be self-possessed. The passions of hatred, greed, lust, and anger cannot then bling one to the truth about one’s human situation or about the World’s nature. “In their spiritual apathy they have become callous and past feeling and reckless and have abandoned themselves [a prey] to unbridled sensuality, eager and greedy to indulge in every form of impurity [that their depraved desires may suggest and demand],” reports Ephesians 4. 19. Be grateful for all the things you do not need to know about life on this Earth. Consider yourself, though you are still alive and kicking, not part of the World. As far as you are concerned, as Galatians would put it (6.14), you are already hanging on the cross. Yes, you have to pass through many noisy patches as though you were deaf, and yes, you should open your ears to the things that bring you spiritual peace. Sometimes it is better not to meet the gaze of a troubled soul. One wants to talk, yes, but does one want to listen? #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
If you do stop to talk and the phlegm begins to fly, you are not the less pleasing to God. That is to say, if you are worsted in a hostile exchange and could have come to blows but did not, then at least your worsted’s still intact, and so is your virtue. O Lord, how long it has taken us to travel such a short distance! Look how a temporal loss sets the eyes to weeping! Even for a modest profit, we have to labour and lumber. As for a spiritual loss, it is scarcely noticed, let alone repented or retrieved. Beseeching the breath of the divine one, His life-giving breath, Hs breath of old age, His breath of waters, His breath of seeds, His breath of riches, His breath of fecundity, His breath of power, Hs breath of all good fortune, asking for His breath, and into my warm soul drawing in His grace, I add to Your grace that happily you may always live. O pity America’s host, I pray to Thee; forgive them, pardon their iniquity. O God of our salvation, save Thou us! As slaves, with eyes beseeching, seek their Lord, we came before Thee stricken, and implored: O God of our salvation, save Thou us! Triumphant Lord of lords, to Thee we pray; strife like a whirlwind scattered us, and we Thy sons lay crushed beneath the tyrant’s sway. O God of our salvation, save Thou us! Behold! with supplication how we throng—O Lord of grace and mercy,–unto Thee; Thy wondrous deeds, our never-ceasing song. O God of our salvation, save Thou us! “Flowing with milk and honey”: this Thy land spare Thou from drought. O stay her tears of woe; bind up her torrents with Thy healing hand. O God of our salvation, save Thou us! Plant us, we pray, upon a fruitful sod; send as old defenders from the foe, Thou just and righteous One! Thou faithful God! O God of our salvation, save Thou us! Recall Thy covenant with the Earth of yore, Thy sign, that while the Earth doth yet abide, Thine anger break and rend it never more. O God of our salvation, save Thou us! #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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The Awareness of Human Destructiveness Bursts!

Many humans, at one time, were primarily isolated, but enter relationships with members of the human family in order to satisfy their striving for please. Many of the relationships were sought after and conceived in a way that resemble relations in the marketplace. Each was only concerned with the satisfaction of one’s needs, but it is precisely for the sake of this satisfaction that one had entered into relations with others who offer what one needs, and need what one offers. Each living cell is supposed to be endowed with the two basic qualities of living matter, Eros (love) and the striving for death. We are struck by the significance of the possibility that the aggressiveness may not be able to find satisfaction in the external World because it comes up against real obstacles. If this happens, it will perhaps retreat and increase the amount of self-destructiveness holding sway in the interior. Impeded aggressiveness seems to involve a grave injury. It really seems as though it is necessary for us to destroy some other thing or person in order not to destroy ourselves, in order to guard against the impulsion to self-destruction. A sad disclosure indeed for the moralist! However, the most powerful impeding factor of all and one totally beyond any possibility of control is the death instinct. In theory of death instinct, the awareness of human destructiveness bursts forth in full strength, and destructiveness becomes the one pole of existence which, fighting with the other pole, Eros, forms they very essence of life. Destructiveness becomes a primary phenomenon of life. It is true that evil forces do exist but not true that they exist on the highest level. Insight into the ultimate sees the not. Evil is certainly present, plain to sight and unpleasant to experience, but it is not altogether, nor only what it seems. It is really an appearance, and reconcilable with the benign source of good. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Eros, present in every cell of living substance, has as its aim the unification and integration of smaller units into the unity of humankind. This is love that does not involve pleasures of the flesh, also known as the “love instinct”; love is identified with life and growth, and—fighting with the death instinct—it determines human existence. Humans are no longer conceived of as primarily isolated and egotistical, as l’homme machine, but as being primarily related to others, impelled by the life instincts which make one need union with others. Life, love, and growth are one and the same, more deeply rooted and fundamental then pleasures of the flesh and other pleasures. The change is vision shows clearly in this new evaluation of the Christian biblical commandment, “Though shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Anything that encouraged the growth of emotional ties between humans must operate against war. These ties may be of two kinds. In the first place they may be relations resembling those toward a loved object, though without having an aim for pleasures of the flesh. There is no need for psychoanalysis to be ashamed to speak of love in this connection, for religion itself uses the same words: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” This, however, is more easily said than done. The second kind of emotional tie is by means of identification. Whatever leads humans to share important interests produces this community of feeling, these identifications. And the structure of human society is to a large extent based on them. Why is history such a record of wars, oppressions, exploitations, invasions, and persecutions? Why have all the saviours, avatars, prophet, and saints succeeded only with individual humans here and there, not with the mass of humankind? #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

Is the religious dream of universal goodness nothing more than a dream? It is not a help but a self-deception to ignore the double polarity of existence, the yin-and-yang in the Universe, the shadow-self in humans. Only outside of religion, in the philosophic realm of the ultimate being, the Unique, the Real, where the entire World itself is cast out, can we talk of friction-free consciousness, and only in the deepest meditation can we share it. Although the experience is a temporary one, the peace in it so passes the understanding that “the Kingdom of Heaven” is its fit name. Here indeed is the Good raised to its highest degree. Here is a demonstration that human evil is but privation of good. What may be true on the ultimate level—the non-existence of evil, the reality of the Good, the True, the Beautiful—becomes false on the level of duality. Here the twofold powers, the opposites, do not exist, do hold the World in their sway. To deny relative evil here is to confuse different planes of being. The human who would deliberately harm one’s fellows for one’s own ends is a sinner. Evil arises only when an entity goes astray into the delusions of separateness and materialism, and thence into conflict with other entities. There is no ultimate and eternal principle of evil, but there are forces of evil, unseen entities who have gone so far astray and are so powerful in themselves that they work against goodness, truth, and justice. However, by their very nature such entities are doomed to eventual destruction, and even their work of opposition is utilized for good in the end and becomes the resistance against which evolution tests its own achievements, the grindstone against which is sharpens humans’ intelligence, the mirror in which its shows one one’s flaws. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
The lower nature in incurably hostile to the higher one. It prefers its fleeting joys with their attendant miseries, its ugly sins wit their painful consequences, because this spells life to it. Everything and everyone has a negative side. One could fill up a lifetime looking for and finding it. One could go on grumbling, criticizing, ranting, and hating. However, there is also the beneficial side of it. The philosophical attitudes seeks deeper, keeps calmer, for it finds equilibrium on another plane. The descent from faith in Holy Spirit to faith in unholy spirits happens to those who are either too weak to remain at such a high altitude or too incapable of rising from a sensate view of existence. Evil can take every form, even that of the guru, the quest, and the leaner. Some yeas ago someone asked me, “What about absolute evil?” The answer is this: with Confucius we say that sin is due to ignorance, and with Pythagoras that evil is due to the absence of good. Ignorance leads to selfishness and extreme ignorance leads to extreme selfishness, which in turn leads to extreme evil. Now, all these are relative conditions and pass away in time as the person leans one’s lessons though the series of experience and corrects one’s mistake during reincarnations. There cannot be an absolute evil because there is only one Absolute Power, one God, one Supreme Being; and it is this which inspires the highest goodness know to humans when one discovers its presence, through the Overself, in one’s heart. In that sense only I said there was an absolute good. The pairs of opposites exist only in the finite, relative, and limited World. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
There is no opposite to the Supreme Power in the timeless and infinite World, no Satan with whom God is in everlasting conflict. However, on its own level, Mind knows neither good nor bad. There is only IS-ness. It seems that there is evil in the World, but why? What bad humans have done is to let their evil grow like a noxious weed too large and their good too little, whereas good humans have cultivated a high proportion of goodness. There is no absolute evil. It is truer to talk of absolute god for that is there first. Why? Because God is there first. Humans came later and broke the divine laws little by little. They created their own evil consequences. Or for different reasons they harm others and have later to suffer for it. Humans were once looked at as machines driven by chemical processes: feelings, affects and emotions were explained as being caused by specific and identifiable physiological processes. Most of hormonology and of the neurophysiological findings of the last decades were unknown to these humans, yet with daring and ingenuity they insisted on the correctness of their approach. Needs and interests for which no somatic sources could be found were ignored, and the understanding of those processes which were not neglected followed the principles of mechanistic thinking. The model of human behaviour could be repeated today in a properly programmed computer. One develops a certain amount of tension which at a certain threshold has to be relieved and reduced, while this realization is checked by another part, the ego, which observes reality and inhibits relief when it conflicts with the needs for survival. This Freudian robot would be similar to Isaac Asimov’s science-fiction robot, but the programming would be different. Its first law would be not to hurt human beings, but to avoid self-damage or self-destruction. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

However, the new theory does not follow this mechanistic “physiologizing” model. It is centered on a biological orientation in which fundamental forces of life (and its opposite: death) become the primal forces of motivating humans. The nature of the cell—that is, of all living substance—becomes the theoretical basis for a theory of motivation, not a physiological process that goes on in certain organs of the body. The new theory was perhaps closer to a vitalistic philosophy than to the concept of the German mechanistic materialists. What motivated Dr. Freud to postulate the death instinct? One factor was probably the impact of the First World War. He, like many other humans of his time and age, had shred the optimistic vision so characteristic of the European middle class, and saw oneself suddenly confronted with a fury of hate and destruction hardly believable before August 1, 1914. From there, Dr. Freud became a man preoccupied with death. He thought of dying every day, after he was forty; he had attacks of Todesangst (“fear of death”), and sometimes he would add to his “goodbye”: “You might never see me again.” One might surmise that Dr. Freud’s disposition would have impressed him as a confirmation of his fear of death, and thus contributed to the formulation of death instinct. This preoccupation with death grew in intensity and led him to a concept in which the conflict between life and death was at the center of human experience, rather than the conflict between the two life-affirmative drives, pleasures of the flesh and ego drives. To assume that humans need to die because death is the hidden goal of one’s life might be considered a kind of comfort destined to alleviate one’s fear of death. And it is true, when people’s lives are in danger and they lack security that they learn not to fear death. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
It seems likely that many hearts in American society have waxed cold since September 11, 2001, when there was an attack on American soil that claimed the lives of over 3,500 people. Many people were too young to realize how devastating it was at the moment, but I believe the tragedy affected everyone much like Dr. Freud was confronted with the fury of hate and destruction from August 1, 1914. Acts on war in your homeland make people realize that life is not promised and it can have a psychological impact. “What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see,” reports Hebrews 11.1. Begin today to believe that what you have hoped for is going to happen, that good things are on their way. Notice, faith has to do with the unseen World. You may not be able to perceive anything beneficial happening in your life with your natural eyes today. In fact, everything may be falling apart—your finances, your health, your business, your relationships with your family and friend. All kind of problems may be on the horizon. However, do not be discoursed, turn your focus to the supernatural World, look to God and Jesus Christ for solutions and know that your harmony and peace will be restored. The World tells you that you need to live out loud and seeing is believing. However, God says seek ye the Kingdom of Heave first, and all these things will be added to you. Look through your Heavenly eyes of faith, and once you confirm something by faith, it will manifest in the physical World. What do you do when you see others being honored or elevated? You could feel bad about their feeling good. Or you could consider these as occasions for your feeling good about feeling bad. Why? #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

If only you knew it, the contempt of humans on Earth should not cause you to shed a single tear. What should you do? Direct your heart toward God in Heaven. In the past, many men did not view woman as equals with men, but some did. Overall, there was a patriarchal bias. However, the very essence of the Platonic myth is that male and female were once one and were then divided into halves, which implies, of course, that the two halves are equals, that they form a polarity endowed with the tendency to unite. Eros (love) aims at complicating life and preserving it, and hence is also conservative, because with the emergence of life an instinct is born which is to preserve it. However, we must ask, if it is the nature of the instinct to re-establish the earliest state of existence, inorganic matter, how can it at the same time tend to re-establish a later form of existence, namely life? Well, according to Plato’s report in the Symposium concerning the original unity of man who was then divided into halves by Zeus, after this division, each desiring his other half, they came together and threw their arms about one another eager to grow into one. The living substance at the same time of its coming to life was torn apart into small particles, which have ever since endeavoured to reunite through martial union and procreation. These instincts, in which the chemical affinity of inanimate matter persisted, gradually succeeded, as they developed through the kingdom of the protists, in overcoming the difficulties put in the way of that endeavour by an environment charged with dangerous stimuli—stimuli which compelled them to form a protective cortical layer. These splintered fragments of living substance in this way attained a multicellular condition and finally transferred the instinct for reuniting, in the most highly concentrated form, to the combination of two souls. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

So it is no wonder so many people feel so fractured and incomplete. Their living substance was torn apart. Do you see things getting better in your life? Or are you just drifting along, accepting whatever comes your way? “I know I was not going to get that Cresleigh Havenwood House Residence 4. Noting good ever happens to me.” “This is just my lot in life. I knew I would never get that BMW 750Li with Xdrive.” “I knew I would never be blessed.” In the face of God’s blinding glory, many of us have to be blinkered. Perhaps that is why, without our peripheral vision, we are so easily hoodwinked by Vanity. If I assess myself correctly, never has an injury been done to me by another creature, and hence I have no right, at least not yet, to make a ruckus against God, my Righteous if Riotous Lord. Why? Because I have sinned against God frequently and gravely. Deservedly, therefore, should every creature pick up one’s pike against me. So it is only reasonable to conclude that confusion and contempt are my just due. Yours, however, is praise, honour, and glory. And in the light of these considerations, unless I prepare myself—by being looked down upon by every giraffe, outsped by every gazelle, overlooked by every gryphon—I can be neither pacified and stabilized interiorly, spiritually illuminated, nor fully one with God. Do not limit God with your small thinking. Have extraordinary vision for your life and live with faith and expectancy. You will be surprised that you will become what you believe. Some of the reasons are blessings are delayed in the fulfillment of the promise for year after year, is simply the fact that we cannot see it through our eyes of faith. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

Is God trying to do something out of the ordinary in your life? Be sure to get into agreement with God. Do not tell God the reasons why things cannot happen. All the time God is trying to plant new seed of success inside of us. He is showing us that if we do not conceive in our hearts through faith, it will never come to pass. “The things which are impossible with humans are possible with God,” reports Luke 18.27. Let that word plant faith inside of your heart. You do not have to figure out how God is going to solve your problems, but turn the situation over to God. God can do what human beings cannot or will not do. God is supernatural. If you can put your trust and confidence in the Lord, God will surely bring it to pass. If you can see the invisible, God will do the impossible. In God, the love of a friend should stand. God is Ever-living, Everlasting Truth, your friend will not shed a tear if you live of die. It is because of God that love of a friend should stand. It is because of God that one should be loved, that is to say, everyone who is seemed good to you and who is very dear in this life. Without God the love of friendship will not have the strength to last. Nor is the love of friendship true and clear unless God is an integral part of it; that is as His Augustine described it in his Confessions (4.4). Which is another way of saying, you ought to be dead to two-person friendships, especially when the other person is another creature. However, when the other person is God, then something odd happens. The closer you approach God, the farther you recede from every friendly solace. Also the higher you ascend to God, the deeper you descend into yourself and the viler you appear to yourself. I want to get a grander vision for my life, Father, and then live it out with faith and expectancy, knowing that I will become what I believe. Today, I will focus on You, who You are and what You can do in and through me. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Whoever attributes good to oneself only makes it more difficult for oneself to receive the grace of God. Why? Because, as the spiritual wisdom echoing Proverbs (3.34), Psalms (55.22), and First Peter (5.5) has it, the grace of the Holy Spirit always seeks the humble heart. To annihilate yourself, to empty yourself of all created love—that is what you ought to do. And what I ought to do is fill that very same space with a very great grace. When you warm to the wonderfulness of the created World, the Creator’s respect for you begins to cool. Because of the Creator, if for no other reason, learn how to conquer yourself in all things. Do that, and you will have the strength to reach out to Divine Knowledge. However slight it may be, unruly love and irregular respect delay, even detour, your spiritual progress. The anal libido has a deep affinity to the death instinct. Now, controlling and possessing are certainly tendencies opposite of loving, furthering, liberating, which form a syndrome among themselves. However, “possession” and “control” do not contain the very essence of destructiveness, the wish to destroy, and hostility toward life. No doubt, the anal character has a deep interest in and affinity to feces as part of their general affinity to all that is not alive. Feces are the product finally eliminated by the body, being of no further use to it. The anal character is attracted by feces as one is attracted by everything that is useless for life, such as dirt, death, decay. We can say that the tendency to control and possess is only one aspect of the anal character, but milder and less malignant than hatred of life. Eros (love), therefore is looked upon as the biologically normal aim of development, while the death instinct is seen to be based on a failure of normal development and in this sense a pathological, though deeply rooted striving. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

If one wants to entertain a biological speculation one might relate anality to the fact that orientation by smell is characteristic of all four-legged mammals, and that the erect posture implies the change from orientation by smell to orientation by sight. The change in function of the old olfactory brain would correspond to the same transformation of orientation. In view of this, one might consider that the anal character constitutes a regressive phase of biological development for which there might even be a constitutional-genetic basis. The anality of the individual could be considered as representing an evolutionary repetition of a biological human functioning. The theoretician arrives at the conclusion that humans have only the alternative between destroying oneself (slowly, by illness) or destroying others; or—putting it in other words—between causing suffering either to oneself or to others. The humanist rebels against the idea of this tragic alternative that would make war a rational solution of this aspect of human existence. An alternate is repression of the instinctual demands, which are the development of culture and civilization. Some people say the Europeans created such a successful society because they learned the art of self-control. The repressed instinctual drive was “sublimated” into valuable cultural channels, but still at the expense of full human happiness. On the other hand, repression led not only to increasing civilization but also to the development of neurosis among the many in whom the repressive process did not work successfully. Lack of civilization combined with full happiness or civilization combined with neurosis and diminished happiness seemed to be the alternative. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
The contradiction between the death instinct and Eros confronts humans with a real and truly tragic alternative, a real alternative because one can decide to attack and wage war, to be aggressive, and to express one’s hostility because one prefers to do this rather than to be sick. That this alternative is a tragic one hardly needs to be proven. Something very remarkable, which we should never have guessed and which is nevertheless quite obvious. What happens to the aggressor when one renders one’s desire for aggression innocuous? One’s aggressiveness is introjected, internalized; it is, in point of fact, sent back to where it came from—that is, it is directed toward one’s own ego. There it is take over by a portion of the ego as super-ego, and which now, in the form of “conscience,” is ready to put into action against the ego the same harsh aggressiveness that the ego would have liked to satisfy upon other, extraneous individuals. The tension between the harsh super-ego and the ego that is subjected to it, is called by us the sense of guilt; it expresses itself as a need for punishment. Civilization, therefore, obtains mastery over the individual’s dangerous desire for aggression by weakening and disarming it and by setting up an agency within one to watch over it, like a garrison in a conquered city. The transformation of destructiveness into a self-punishing conscience does not seem to be as much as an advantage as it may seem to imply. According to this theory of conscience, it would have to be as cruel as the death instinct, since it is charged with its energies, and no reason is given why the death instinct should be “wakened” and “disarmed.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

Rather, it would see that the following analogy expresses the real consequences of this thought more logically: a city that has been ruled by a cruel enemy defeats one with the help of a dictator who then sets up a system that is just as cruel as that of the defeated enemy; and this, what is gained? The instinct of destruction, moderated and tamed, and, as it were, inhibited in its aim, must, when it is directed toward objects, provide the ego with the satisfaction of its vital needs and with control over nature. This is a good example of sublimation; the aim of the instinct is not weakened, but it is directed toward other socially valuable aims, in this case the “control over nature.” This sounds, indeed, like a perfect solution. Humans are freed from the tragic choice of destroying either others or themselves, because the energy of the destructive instinct is used for the control over nature. However, we must ask, can this really be so? Can it be true that destructiveness becomes transformed into constructiveness? What can “control over nature” mean? Taming and breeding animals, gathering and cultivating planets, weaving cloth, building Cresleigh Homes, manufacturing pottery and many more activities including the construction of Ultimate Driving Machines, railroads, airplanes, skyscraper: al these are acts of constructing, building, unifying, synthesizing, and, indeed, if one wanted to attribute them to one of the two basic instincts, they might be considered as being motivated by Eros rather then the death instinct. With the possible exception of killing animals for their consumption and killing humans in war, both of which could be considered as rooted in destructiveness, material production is not destructive but constructive. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
As a result of a little speculation, we have come to suppose that this instinct is at work in every living creature and is striving to bring it to ruin and to reduce life to its original condition of inanimate matter. Thus is quite seriously deserved to be called a death instinct, while procreation is the instinct represented by the effort to live. The death instinct turns into the destructive instinct when, with the help of social organs, it is directed outwards, on to objects. The organism preserves its own life, so to day, by destroying an extraneous one. Some portion of the death instinct, however, remain operative within the organism, and we have sought to trace quite a number of normal and pathological phenomena to this internalization of the destructive instinct. We have even been guilty of the heresy of attributing the origin of conscience to the diversion inwards of aggressiveness. If this process is carried too far, you will notice that it is by no means a trivial matter; it is possibly unhealthy. On the other hand if these forces are turned to destruction of the external World, the organism will be relieved and the effect must be beneficial. This would serve as a biological justification for all the ugly and dangerous impulses against which we are struggling. It must be admitted that they stand nearer to Nature than does our resistance to them for which an explanation also needs to be found. When the good is absent, the evil is present. The cynic who denies the existence of the good, the dreamer who denies the existence of the evil—each ignores the other half of life as evidence in history and in the World around one. When we go to the roots—that is what “radically” literally means—and discover that a great deal of our conscious thinking only veils our real thoughts and feelings and hides the truth; most of our conscious thought is a sham, a mere rationalization of thoughts and desires which we prefer not to be aware of. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

This is revolutionary because it leads people to open their eyes to the reality of the structure of the society they live in and hence to the wish to change it in accordance with the interests and desires of the vast majority. Much of the liberal middle class was suspected of being neurotic because their liberation of pleasures of the flesh is largely part of the ever-increasing consumerism. If people are taught to spend and spend, rather than, as in the nineteenth century, to save and save, if they were transformed into “consumers,” one had not only to permit but encourage consumption of pleasures of the flesh. It is after all the most simple and the cheapest of all consumption. Conservatives used to have a strict code of chastity and liberty of pleasures of the flesh lead to an anticonservative revolutionary attitude. If anything, historical development has shown that liberation of pleasures of the flesh has served the development of consumerism and weakened political radicalism. What more people really want is not to become more human, more free, more independent—that would mean more critical and revolutionary-minded—but they want to suffer no more than the average member of their class. They hardly see a really happy person, only a few people who have succeeded in being relatively satisfied with their lot, especially if they are successful and admired by others. Naturally, quite a few people, having a sympathetic listener to talk to, feel better, aside from the fact that as years go by experience in living makes the average person improve one’s lot, except those who are too sick to learn from experience. The contemporary capitalist society is considered to be the highest, most developed form of social structure. It is because all other social structures are more primitive or utopian, and not really successful. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

An ever-growing number of people have become aware that capitalist society is just one of innumerable social structures and is neither more nor less “real” than the societies of Central African tribes. The invention of artillery and fortifications has in our times forces the sovereigns of Europe to reestablish the use of regular standing troops to guard their fortresses. Yet however, legitimate the motives, there is reason to fear that the effect will be no less fatal. It will be no less necessary to depopulate the rural areas in order to raise armies and garrisons. To maintain them it will be no less necessary to oppress the peoples. And these dangerous establishments have in recent times been growing so rapidly in all of our part of the World, that no one can foresee anything but the imminent depopulation of Europe, and sooner, or later, the ruin of the people who inhabit it. Be that as it may, it should be noted that such institutions necessarily subvert the public domain, leaving only the wearisome resources of subsidies and taxes, which remain for me to discuss. It would be remembered here that the foundation of the social compact is property, together with its first condition that each person should be maintained in the peaceful enjoyment of what belongs to one. It is true that by the same treaty each person at least tacitly obliges oneself to be assessed for public needs. However, since this commitment cannot hard the fundamental law and presumes that contributors acknowledge the evidence of need, it is clear that to be legitimate, this assessment should be voluntary. It is not based on a private will, as if it were necessary to have the consent of each citizen, who should pay only as much as one pleases. This would be directly contrary to the spirit of the confederation. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

Rather, it should be through the general will, by majority vote, and on the basis of proportional rates that leave no room for an arbitrary imposition of taxes. This truth (that taxes can be legitimately established only by the general consent of the people or its representatives) had generally been recognized by all the philosophers and jurists who have any reputation in matters of political right. While some of them have established maxims that appear contrary, it is easy to see the private motives that moved them to do so. They stipulate so many conditions and restrictions that it all boils down to exactly the same thing. For whether the people can reuse it or whether the sovereign should not demand it, is a matter of indifference as far as right is concerned. And if it is only a question of force, it is utterly pointless to inquire what is or is not legitimate. The contributions levied on the people are of two kinds: real taxes (levied on things) and personal taxes (paid by the head). Both are called taxes or subsidies. When the people sets the amount it pays, it is called a subsidy; when it grants the entire proceeds of an assessment, it is a tax. In The Spirit of the Laws we find that a head tax is more in keeping with servitude, while a real tax is more suited to liberty. This would be incontestable, were everyone’s head share equal. For nothing would be more disproportionate than such a tax. It is especially in an exacting observance of proportions that the spirit of liberty consists. However, if a head tax is exactly proportioned to the means of private individuals and is thus at once both and personal, it is the most equitable and, as a result, the one best suited to free humans. At first these proportions appear quite easy to observe, because, being relative to each person’s position, the indications are always public. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

However, besides the fact that greed, influence-peddling, and fraud know how to leave no evidence behind, it is rare that an account is taken of all the elements that should enter into these calculations. First, one ought to consider the relationship of quantities according to which, all things being equal, someone who has ten times more goods than someone else should pay ten times more. Second, one ought to consider the relationship of use, that is, the distinction between what is necessary and what is superfluous. Someone who has only the bare necessities of life should not pay anything at all. Taxing someone who has superfluities can, in time of need, be extended to everything over and above the necessities of life. To this one will declare that, given one’s rank, what would be superfluous for a human of inferior standing is necessary for one. However, that is a lie. For humans of superior standing have two legs, just like a cowherd, and, like the cowherd, has only one stomach. Moreover, this alleged necessity of life is so little necessary to one’s standing that, if one knew how to renounce these things for some worthy cause, one could only be respected more. The people would prostrate themselves before a minister who would go on foot to the council because one had sold one’s Ultimate Driving Machines when the state had a pressing need. Finally, the law does not demand magnificence of anyone, and propriety is never reason against right. A cultivated human of taste and feeling can find much that is beautiful in nature and art; and if one is also a moral idealist, one will find much that is good and virtuous in human life and experience. However, it would be incomplete to stop there and ignore the fact that there is also around us much that is base, dark, and even evil. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
The two sides put together form a complete observation. However, it is only the mystics and philosopher who can see—because it requires a deeper penetration than the intellect and the sense can give—that the dark side deals with the World of appearances, a World which is fleeting and ephemeral, whereas the good side and the beautiful side is merely a hint of that other World closer to Reality. Evil is a very real problem in this World of time and space. Evil forces exist and must be fought with all our strength. Nevetheless the Power out of which all things and all entities come is a beneficent one. Love is its radiation. There is no evil and no pain in it. They begin only on the lower level of separation and differentiation. Wild air, World-mothering air, nestling me everywhere, that each eyelash or hair girdles; goes home betwixt the fleeciest, frilest-flixed snowflake; that is fairly mixed with riddles, and is rife in every least thing is life; this needful, never spent, and nursing element; my more than meat and drink, my meal at every wink; their air, which, by life’s law, my lung must draw and draw now but to breathe its praise. Please give rain. We are the pure who camped by water. For Jacob’s sake who set the rods in water, O speed us! He strained and rolled the stone from off the water. Please give rain! Blest heirs to Torah’s quickening water, O save us! To win for them and for their offspring water. Please give rain! Today as then we cry for water. For Moses’ sake who found his people water, O speed us! He smote the rock and lo! out gushed the water. O save us, mighty God! Please give us rain! Our sires sang round the well of water. O save us! Because of Moses at Meribah’s water, O speed us! At Thy command he gave the thirsting water. O save us, mighty God! please give rain! Thy holy servants poured Thee water. O save us! For Thy chief minstrel’s sake who longed for water, O speed us! Yet turned and made libation with the water, O save us, mighty God! Please give rain! Four plants we wave that love the water, O save us! For American’s sake, the home of living water, O speed us! The parched Earth open to the Heavens’ water, O save us, mighty God! #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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Located off of Virginiatown Road and McCourtney Road, residents of the 83 homesites of Cresleigh Havenwood will benefit from a brand new neighborhood in the charming City of Lincoln. Palo Verde Park, is just down the street and there’s plenty of recreation to take part in all around town. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/
If God Gets Up and Leaves Forever, Why Should We Shed a Tear?

When we call something “Supernatural,” we mean that it is something which invades, or is added to, the great interlocked event in space and time, instead of merely arising from it. On the other hand this “Supernatural” part is itself a created being—a thing called into existence by the Absolute Being and given by Him a certain character or “nature.” We could therefore say that while “supernatural” in relation to this Nature (this complex event in space and time) it is, in another sense, “natural”—id est, it is a specimen of a class of things which God normally creates after a stable pattern. There is, however, a sense in which the life of this part can become absolutely Supernatural, id est, not beyond this Nature but beyond any and every Nature, in the sense that it can achieve a kind of life which could never have been given to any created being in its mere creation. If we consider it in relation not to humans, but to angels, the distinction will, perhaps, become clearer. (It does not matter, here, whether the reader believes in angels or not. I am using them only to make the point clearer.) All angels, both the “good” ones and the bad or “fallen” ones which we call devils, are equally “Supernatural” in relation to this spatio-temporal Nature: id est, they are outside it and have powers and a mode of existence which it could not provide. However, the good angels lead a life which is Supernatural in another sense as well. That is to say, they have, of their own free will, offered back to God in love the “natures” He gave them at their creation. All creatures of course live from God in the sense that He made them and at every moment maintains them in existence. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
However, there is a further and higher kind of “life from God” which can be given only to a creature who voluntarily surrenders oneself to it. This life the good angels have and the bad angels have not: and it is absolutely Supernatural because no creature in any World can have it by the mere fact of being the sort of creature it is. As with angels, so with us. The rational par of every human is supernatural in the relative sense—the sense in which both angels and devils are supernatural. However, if it is, as the theologians say, “born again,” if it surrenders itself back to God in Christ, it will then have a life which is absolutely Supernatural, which is not created at all but begotten, for the creature is then sharing the begotten life of the Second Person of the Deity. Christian writers use “spirit” and “spiritual” to mean the life which arises in such rational beings when they voluntarily surrender to Divine grace and become children of the Heavenly Father in Christ. It is in this sense, and in this sense alone, that the “spiritual” is always good. A regenerate human will find one’s soul eventually harmonized with one’s spirit by the life of Christ that is in one. Hence Christians believe in the resurrection of the body, whereas the ancient philosophers regard the body as a mere encumbrance. And this perhaps is a universal law, that he higher you rise the lower you can descend. Humans are a tower in which the different floors can hardly be reached from one another but all can be reached from the top floor. You are probably quite right in thinking that you will never see a miracle done: you are probably equally right in thinking that there was a natural explanation of anything in your past life which seemed, at the first glance, to be “rum” or “odd.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

God does not sake miracles into Nature at random as if from a pepper-caser. They come on great occasions: they are found at the great ganglions of history—not of political or social history, but of that spiritual history which cannot be fully known by humans. If your own life does not happen to be near one of those great ganglions, how should you expect to see one? If we were heroic missionaries, apostles, or martyrs, it would be a different matter. However, why you or I? Unless you live near a railway, you will not see trains go past your windows. How likely is it that you or I will be present when a peace-treaty is signed, when a great scientific discovery is made, when a dictator commits suicide? That we should see a miracle is even less likely. Nor, if we understand, shall we be anxious to do so. Nothing almost sees miracles but misery. Miracles and martyrdoms tend to bunch about the same areas of history—areas we have naturally no wish to frequent. Do not, I earnestly advise you, demand an ocular proof unless you are already perfectly certain that it is not forthcoming. Religious ideas are illusions, fulfillments of the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of humankind. The secret of their strength lies in the strength of those wishes. As we already know, the terrifying impression of helplessness in childhood aroused the need for protection—for protection through love—which was provided by the father; and the recognition that this helplessness lasts throughout life made it necessary to cling to the existence of a father, but this time a more powerful one. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

Thus the benevolent rule of a divine Providence allays our fear of the danger of life; the establishment of a moral World-order ensures that fulfillment of the demands of justice, which have so often remained unfulfilled in human civilization; and the prolongation of Earthly existence in a future life provides the local and temporal framework in which these wish-fulfillments shall take place. Karl Marx, viewed religion in socioeconomic terms—as an opiate for the oppressed masses, who without the hope of a pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by would despair of compensation for their suffering. Some even explain religion in evolutionary terms; sociobiologist E. O. Wilson boasts, “We have come to the crucial stage in the history of biology when religion itself is subject to the explanations of the natural sciences. Theology is not likely to survive as an independent intellectual discipline.” Psychology has made great strides in understanding many other important aspects of human experience—sleep, pleasures of the flesh, and hunger—so why not investigate religious behaviour as well? What psychological function does religion serve? Imagine that God’s activity is not merely an occasional intervention in a Universe from which God is otherwise remote, but rather something more basic. Imagine that falling in love, having a child, or achieving good fortune could simultaneously be understood as entirely the outcome of natural processes and also as God’s loving handiwork. Explaining a belief does not explain it away. The truth of a belief is logically distinct from its psychological function. To see why, imagine at some point in the future we were to achieve a complete understanding of why some people are believers in God. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

The psychology of religion has finished its business and is ready to close up shop. Imagine also that we have by that time come to a full understanding of why some people are atheists. It is no chore at all to imagine explanations of atheism that parallel those proposed to explain them. Perhaps, for example, atheism is psychological wish fulfillment by prideful humans who lack the intellectual humility necessary to acknowledge a being infinitely greater than themselves. Perhaps for others atheism has socioeconomic motivations—a resistance to believing religion’s teachings regarding the value of all human life and the claims of the poor upon one’s material possession, which are then, a busy cluster of research studying “the psychology of unbelief” (the actual title of a book published some years ago). One can even envision a day when someone might say that atheism itself is subject to the explanations of the natural sciences and is therefore not likely to survive as a credible intellectual idea. However, hold it (here we rise to the defense of atheism as well as theism): if both belief systems are explained, as would happen if psychology had answered all its questions, that cannot mean they are both false. Either God exists or God does not exist, so one of these beliefs must be true. The point can be extended to any other belief or attitude: knowing why you believe something says nothing about its truth or falsity. To know why someone does or does not believe in extraterrestrial beings does not tell us whether such beings exist. To know how someone has been persuaded that a vegetarian diet is healthiest and how someone else has been persuaded that a nonvegetarian diet is healthiest does not decide which diet is, in fact, healthiest. To know the biological, psychological, social, and economic factors that lead one person to become a devout believer and another a nonbeliever does not tell us whether God, in fact, exists. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

The refusal to modify people’s behaviour by a planned use of reinforcers does not really increase people’s freedom and dignity; rather, it abandons them to the whims of other controls, for better or, more often, for worse. Likewise, parents who are reluctant to impose their values on their children are in effect conceding their children, for better or for worse, to competing influences—television, music, and peers. In truth, however, few parents retreat from persuasive efforts on matter they really care about. We do not leave it to our children to decide for themselves (or under the influence of other persuasive forces) whether it is better to be honest or deceitful, kind or cruel, helpful or hostile. On such matters we all, unapologetically is sometimes ineffectively, do everything we can to socialize our children into what we believe to be right. It is primarily on matters that we ourselves do not really care that much about that we leave our children to work things out for themselves. Nevertheless, we welcome every advance toward truth, every refutation of falsehood, every approximation of reality that is more faithful to the known data. We do so believing that all truth is God’s truth and that our ultimate allegiance is to God alone rather than to the dictates of tradition or human authority. Neurotheology offers an interesting exploration of brain activity associated with spirituality, but no evidence regarding God’s existence. However, as you know, for instances, houses do not just manifest themselves, they need a creator and raw materials. Let us therefore submit ourselves to the incoming tide of science, and welcome it. Indeed, to all of God’s revelation, in whatever forms it comes. Let us be assured that God is the author of whatever truth is revealed, however surprising or unsettling it might be. Let us remember that it is therefore not just our right to freely pursue truth, but our religious duty. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
It is, indeed, part of what it means to worship God not only with our hearts, but with our minds. Many are those who have committed their hearts to Jesus; fewer are those who have also committed—through disciplined study and inquiry—their minds. “For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will also bring with Him through Jesus those who have fallen asleep [in death]. For this we declare to you by the Lord’s [own] word, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord shall in no way precede [into His presence] or have any advantage at all over those who have previously fallen asleep [in Him in death]. For the Lord Himself will descend from Heaven with a loud cry of summons, with the shout of an archangel, and with the blast of the trumpet of God. And those who have departed this life in Christ will rise first. Then we, the living ones who remain [on the Earth], shall simultaneously be caught up along with [the resurrected dead] in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so always (through the eternity of the eternities) we shall be with the Lord! Therefore comfort and encourage one another with these words,” reports 1 Thessalonians 4.13-18. Independently of the public domain, which remits to the state in proportion to the probity of those who supervise it, were on one to have had sufficient knowledge of the whole force of the general administration, especially when it is limited to legitimate means, one would be astonished at the resources leaders have for anticipating all the public needs without touching the goods of private individuals. Since they are the masters of the state’s entire commerce, nothing is easier for them than to direct it in a manner that provides for everything, often without them appearing to have been involved. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

The distribution of commodities, money and merchandise in just proportions according to time and place is the true secret of finances, and the source of their riches, provided those who administer them know how to be far-sighted enough and on occasion to take an apparent present loss so as really to obtain immense profits at some time in the distant future. When one sees a government paying duties instead of receiving them for the export of grain in years of plenty and for its import in years of scarcity, one needs to have such facts before one’s eyes to think them true; and if they had happened long ago, they would have merited being classed with novels. Suppose that, to prevent scarcity in bad years ne were to propose the establishment of public warehouses. In many countries, would not the maintenance of so useful an establishment serve as a pretext for new taxes? In Geneva, such granaries, established and maintained by a wise administration, are a public resource in bad years and the state’s chief revenue at all times. Alit et ditat [it nourishes and enriches] is the fine and just inscription one reads on the façade of the building. To show here the economic system of a good government, I have often turned my eyes toward the wisdom and happiness I would like to see reign in every country. If one examines how the needs of a state grow, one will find that this often arises in the same way as do those of private individuals: less by a true necessity than by an increase in useless desires, and that expenditures are increased for the sole reason of having a pretext for increasing income. Thus, the state would occasionally gain from not being rich, and such apparent wealth is essentially more burdensome than poverty itself. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
It is true one can hope to hold peoples in a stricter dependence by giving them with one hand what one has taken away from them with the other, and this was the style of politics Joseph used with the Egyptians. However, this vain sophism is all the more fatal to the state in that the money does not return to the same hands it left. Such maxims only serve to enrich the idle with spoils taken from useful humans. The taste for conquests is one of those most obvious and dangerous causes of this increase. This taste, often engendered by another sort of ambition than the one it seems to proclaim, is not always what it appears to be, and its true motive is not the seeming desire to increase the nation but rather the hidden desire to increase the authority of the leaders at home, with the help of the increase in size of the troops and under the cover of the diversion created in the minds of citizens by wartime objectives. What is at least very certain is that nothing is as oppressed or as miserable as conquering peoples, and even their successes serve only to increase their miseries. Even if history did not teach us this, reason would suffice to show us that the larger a state is, the heavier and more burdensome will its expenditures become. For all the provinces are required to furnish their share of the expenses of the general administration, and, in addition, each province is required to spend the same amount for its own particular administration that it would if it were independent. Add to this the fact that all fortunes are made in one place and consumed in another. This eventually upsets the equilibrium of production and consumption, impoverishing a great deal of the country to enrich a single town. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

Another source of the increase in public needs is linked to the preceding one. There may come a time when the citizens, no longer considering themselves interested in the common cause, would cease to be the defenders of the homeland, and when the magistrates would prefer to command mercenaries rather than free humans, if only to use the former at a sustainable time and place to subjugate the latter more effectively. Such was the state of Rome at the end of the Republic and under the emperors. For all the victories of the first Romans, just like those of Alexander, had been won by brave citizens who knew how to give their blood to their country in time of need, but never sold it. Marius was the first who, in the Jugurthine War, dishonoured the legions by introducing free humans, vagabonds and other mercenaries. Having become enemies of the peoples who they were assigned to make happy, the tyrants established regular standing armies, in appearance to contain foreigners and in actual fact to oppress the inhabitants. To raise these troops, farmers had to be taken away from their land; the lack of their services decreased the quality of the provisions, and maintaining these troops required the imposition of taxes which in turn increased food prices. The first disorder caused the people to murmur. Repressing them required the troops to be multiplied, and consequently the misery. And the more despair increased, the more one was constrained to increase it again to prevent its effects. On the other hand, these mercenaries, whose value could be determined on the basis of the price at which they sold themselves, were proud of their debasement, held in contempt the laws by which they were protected, as well as their comrades whose bread they ate, and believed it a greater honour to be Caesar’s satellites then Rome’s defenders. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

And given as they were to blind obedience, their task was to have their swords raised against their fellow citizens, ready to slaughter them all at the first signal. It would not be difficult to show that this was one of the principal causes of the ruin of the Roman Empire. “Thank [God] in everything [no matter what the circumstances may be, be thankful and give thanks], for this is the will of God for you [who are] in Christ Jesus [the Revealer and Mediator of that will],” reports 1 Thessalonians 5.18. Those brought up in the Second Wave civilization have a difficult time thinking of institutions as good corporate citizens. We find it hard to think of a hospital as having economic as well as medical functions, a school as having political as well as educational functions—or a corporation as having powerful non-economic or “trans-economic” functions. That recently retired exemplar of Second Wave thinking, Henry Ford II, insists that the corporation “is a specialized instrument designed to serve the economic needs of society and is not well equipped to serve social needs unrelated to its business operations.” However, while Ford and other defenders of the Second Wave resist the redefinition of the production organization, many firms are, in fact, altering both their words and their policies. Lip service and public relations rhetoric often substitute for real change. Fancy promotional brochures proclaiming a new era of social responsibility very often camouflage a robber-baron rapacity. Nevertheless, a fundamental “paradigm shift”—a reconceptualization—of the structure, goals, and responsibilities of the corporation is taking place in response to new pressures brought by the Third Wave. The signs of this change are numerous. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

Amoco has had 150 years of keeping America moving and helping to drive the U.S. economy. This leading oil company states, that “it is the policy of our company, with respect to plant locations, to supplement the routine economic evaluation with a detailed exploration of the social consequences. We look at many factors, among them the impact on the physical environment, the impact on public facilities, and the impact on local employment conditions, particularly with respect to minorities.” Amoco continues to weight economic considerations most heavily, but it assigns importance to other factors as well. And where alternative locations are similar in economic terms but “different in terms of social impact,” these social factors can prove decisive. In the event of a merger proposal, the directors of Control Data operates. And while other companies have been racing into the suburbs, Control Data has deliberately built plants in inner city areas of Washington, St Paul, and Minneapolis, to help provide employment for marginalized members of the community and to help revive urban centers. The corporation states its mission as “improving the quality, equality, and potential of people’s lives”—equality being an unorthodox goal for a corporation. In the United States of America, the advancement of women and people who are non-European American has become a long overdue matter of national policy, and some companies go as far as to reward their managers financially for meeting “affirmative action” targets. At Pillsbury, a leading food company, each of its three product groups, at one time, had to present not only a sales plan for the following year but a plan relating to the hiring, training, and promotion of women and minority group members. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

Executive incentives are linked to the attainment of these social goals. At AT&T all managers are evaluated annually. Fulfillment of affirmative actions objectives counts as part of a positive appraisal. At Chemical Bank in New York, 10 to 15 percent of a branch manager’s job performance appraisal is based on her or his social performance-sitting on community agency boards, making loans to not-for-profit organizations, hiring and upgrading marginalized groups. And the Gannet chain of newspapers, chief executive Allen Neuharth brusquely tells editors and local publishers that “a major portion” of their bonuses will “be determined on the basis of progress in these…programs.” Similarly, in many top corporations we see a distinct upgrading of the states and influence of executives concerned with the environmental consequences of corporate behaviour. Some now report directly to the president. Other companies have set up special committees on the board of directors to define the new corporate responsibilities. This social responsiveness of the corporation is not all substance. Some of this is pure public relations, of course. Some is self-serving. However, much of it actually does reflect a changed perception of corporate functions. Grudgingly, therefore, driven by protests, lawsuits, and fear of government actions as well as by more laudable motives, managers are beginning to adapt to the new conditions of production and are accepting the idea that the corporation has multiple purposes. “For you are all sons of the light and sons of the day; we do not belong either to the night or darkness,” reports 1 Thessalonians 5. 5. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

When times get tough—as they often do—or things do not go your way—as they sometimes do not—please keep on believing in God. What has Humankind done that God should respond with His grace? Reward us for not doing a thing, and we will see no reason to change. We are a hopeless lot. So, if God gets up and leaves forever, why should we shed a tear? But we will. If God does not give us what we want or ask for, who else will? Certainly I can think about this in verity and come up with a few mouthings. O Lord, I am nothing. O Lord, I can do nothing. O Lord, I find no good in myself. O Lord, there is nothing I do not need. O Lord, I am headed nowhere. Odd but true. And unless God gives us a helping hand and prop up our sagging spirits, we will just end up feeble, faltering wrecks. “You, however,” God, O Lord, “are always Yourself, and You remain as such for eternity,” said the Psalmist (102.27). That is to say, You are good, You are just, according to the standards of both spiritual and Earthly wisdom. However, I, who am proner to regress than progress, find it hard to stay long in one state of soul. As the Prophet Daniel saw in one of his visions (4.16), so I see myself passing from one stage to another in my life, and I am never in one phase long enough to establish a firm hold. “I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus,” reports Philippians 1.6. When discouragements come or when people tell you that your dreams are never going to come to pass, you are never going to be happy, and you can never change, boldly remind yourself who is at work in your life. God is turning things around in your favour. God is opening doors of opportunity for you. He is restoring relationships; He is softening people’s hearts toward you. God is completing what He started. You may not see anything happening with your natural eyes, but you must believe that in the unseen World, God is at work on your behalf. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

One thing I have noticed. My spiritual condition quickly improves when God stretched His hand to help. Be a believer, but be careful what you believe. If you go around with a victim mentality, thinking that you do not deserve the blessings of God, only focused on what is going wrong, you perceived faults, and always sad and blue and hurting, you are setting yourself up to live a dismal life. Society may in fact be doing you wrong, there may be nothing wrong with you. Others may just be jealous of who you are. Therefore, start seeing yourself as more than a conqueror, well able to succeed, strong in the Lord, the head not the tail, the successful self-actualizer, not the victim and you will reach a new level of fulfillment. Another thing I noticed is that sometimes God comes to the help of us human beings even without our having to ask. However, where I ask. Stop moving! Stand still! I am turning my head every which way, and I still cannot catch a sight of God. Only in God alone will my heart find conversion and quiescence. And may my face brighten up like Hannah’s after a prayer! A tender moment in First Samuel (1.18). Dare today to start believing in God for greater things. God does not want you to drag through life, barely making it. He does not want you to have to dig through the sofa cushions looking for change, trying to come up with enough money to pay for food and shelter, transportation, to pay your bills, or to worry about how you are going to send your children to school today and college in the future. God does not want you to be unhappy in your marriage. It is not His preference for you to live in perpetual pain. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

When, if follows, if one knows well enough to dump every consolation known to Humankind in our continuous pursuit of devotion and the Devotions of devotion, why do we have to ask, as Jeremiah did right at the beginning of his Lamentations (1.2), “Is there no one who can console me?” That being said, we must have high hopes for God’s grace and will exult when it comes. God wants us to have a good life, a life filled with love, joy, peace, and fulfillment. That does not mean it will always be easy, but it does mean it will always be good. God causes all things to work together for good to those who love Him. You can dare to believe Him for a better marriage. Start believing Him for better health. Believe for joy and peace and happiness. Start believing for increase and abundance. As often as good stuff happens to me, I give my thanks to God, whence everything comes. I, however, am vanity and “nothingness before God,” if I may echo the Psalmist (39.5), a quack, a quondam, a quisling. I would like to boast, but I do not have anything to boast about. Whence can I find something to boast about? Why do I seek to be thought well of? Are not my desires just droppings? And is not all this World Vanity gone mad? Maybe you have endured terrible disappointments. Unspeakable negative things may have happened to you, to the point that you have ceased believing for anything good to occur in your life. You have lost your dreams. You are drifting through life, taking whatever comes your way. You may be tempted to tell yourself, “I have been living this way too long.” I am never going to get any better. I have prayed, I have believed, I have done everything I know how to do. Nothing has changed. Nothing is working I might as well give up. My life is over.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Glory at its emptiest is disease at its sickest, Vanity at its noisiest. That is because it draws a Devout’s attention away from the One True Glory and denudes one of Heavenly Grace. Here is an example of what can happen. A Devout is quite pleased with oneself for what one has been able to accomplish outside the monastery walls; that is to say, one has made so many friends among the rich and famous. Now I know that makes God nervous, my Joyful if sometimes Jealous Friend, and I do not want God to think I do not know why. Why? Because one spends one’s time in the unhappy pursuit of false celebrity instead of the happy pursuit of True Virtue. However, there is True Glory and Holy Exaltation to boast in You and not in oneself, to rejoice in You name, not in one’s own virtue, and certainly not to take delight in any creature, except insofar as it has something to do with You. No matter how many setbacks we have suffered, or how rich and famous we become, God still has a great plan for our lives. We must get our hopes up. If we do not have hope, we will not have faith. And if we do not have faith, you cannot please God, and you will not see His power revealed in your life. Keep hope alive in your hearts. Never give up on your dreams. Do not allow discouragement or another setback to keep you from believing what God says about you. You are never too far gone with God. Some people say, “It is too late. My life is in too big of a mess; you cannot put Humpty Dumpty back together again.” However, God can take a mess of stones and make the most magnificent statue. There is True Glory and Holy Exaltation to boast in You and not in oneself, to rejoice in God’s name, not in one’s own virtue, and certainly not to take delight in any creature, except insofar as it has something to do with God. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

May God’s name be praised, not mine. May God’s work be magnified, not mine. May God’s Holy Name be blessed, and may no praise from human mouths be attributed to me. God is my glory, God is the exultation of my heart. In God I shall exult all day long; Psalmist again (89.16). As Paul wrote in Second Corinthians, “All I have are my infirmities—precious possessions of all” (12.5). The Jews people hoped to find glory from among their tribes. However, the sort of glory I require “comes from God alone”; that is as God said on a Sabbath in Jerusalem, and as John wrote it down (5.44). Every alp, every medal, every decoration, when compared to God’s eternal glory, is mean, not to say meaningless. My Truth, my Mercy, my God—Blessed Trinity! To You alone be braised, honour, virtue, and glory forever and ever. “Father, I close to be a believer rather than a doubter. Today, I will live with faith, trusting You for everything I need, knowing that even when tough times come, You will see me through. Now this day, my Sun Father, now that you have come out standing to your sacred place that from which we draw the water of life prayer meal—here I give unto you. Your long life, your old age, your waters, your seeds, your riches, your power, your strong spirit, of all these, to me may you grant. O God, save, yea, save, we beseech Thee. O save, O forgive, O send prosperity; yea, please save us, God of our stronghold. Please give rain. Thy lieges pour their hearts as water, O please save us! For Abram’s sake who went through fire and water, O please speed us! In courtesy he gave the angels water, O please save us, mighty God! Please give rain! For us to pass was cleft the water. O please save us! For Isaac’s sake on mountain bound for slaughter, O please speed us! He turned and digged his people wells of water. O Please save us, mighty God. Please give rain! We are the pure who camped by water. O please save us! #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

Cresleigh Homes

We’re hosting Thanksgiving this year! 🍂Can’t pass up the opportunity to fill our gorgeous island at the Brighton Station Residence 3 home with turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes. Gotta get moving on our fall decor; pumpkin carving is on the agenda this week! 🎃

Residence Three at Brighton Station boasts 2,757 square feet in this expansive two story home. There are four bedrooms, three and a half bathrooms, and a three car garage!

The kitchen comes fully equipped with a large eat-in island, stainless steel appliances, quartz counters, and large walk in pantry. The openness in the design allows the Great Room and kitchen to interact with each other seamlessly.
This home comes with an en suite bedroom on the first floor making it ideal for guests, or multi-generational living. https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/residence-3/
It is so Remarkable You Have the Ability Become What You Believe!
Dreams can be wish fulfillments, dreams can express mere anxiety, but dreams can also—and this is the important point—express deep insights into oneself and into others. In order to appreciate this function of dreams, some consideration concerning the differences between the biological and psychological functions of sleeping and waking maybe useful. In the waking state thoughts and feelings respond primarily to challenge—the task of mastering our environment, changing it, defending ourselves against it. Survival is the task of waking humans; one is subject to the laws that govern reality. This means that one has to think in terms of time and space. While we sleep, we are not concerned with bending the outside World to our purposes. We are helpless, and sleep, therefore, has rightly been called the “brother of death.” However, we are also free, freer than when awake. We are free from the burden of work, from the task of attack or defense, from watching and mastering reality. We need not look at the outside World; we look at our inner World, are concerned exclusively with ourselves. When asleep we may be likened to a fetus or a corpse; we may also be likened to angels, who are not subject to the laws of “reality.” In sleep the realm of necessity has given way to the realm of freedom in which “I am” is the only system to which thoughts and feelings refer. Mental activity during sleep has a logic different from that of waking existence. As indicated before, sleep experience need not pay attention to qualities that matter only when one copes with reality. If I feel, for instance, that a person is a coward, I may dream that one changed from a man into a chicken. This change makes sense in terms of what I feel about the person, not in terms of my orientation to outside reality. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
Sleep and waking life are the two poles of human existence. Waking life is taken up with the function of action, sleep is freed from it. Sleep is taken up with the function of self-experience. When we wake from our sleep, we move into the realm of action. We are then oriented in terms of this system, and our memory operates within it; we remember what can be recalled in space-time concepts. The sleep World has disappeared. Experiences had in it—our dreams—are remembered with great difficulty. The situation has been represented symbolically in many a folktale: at night ghosts and spirits, good and evil, occupy the scene, but when dawn arrives, they disappear, and nothing is left of the intense experience. Consciousness is the mental activity in our state of being preoccupied with external reality—with acting. (The qualities of consciousness are determined by the nature of action and by the survival function of the waking state of existence.) The unconscious is the mental experience in a state of existence in which we have shut off communications with the outer World, are no longer preoccupied with action but with our self-experience. The unconscious follow from the nature of this mode of existence. The “unconscious” is the unconscious only in relation to the “normal” state of activity. When we speak of “unconscious” we really say only that an experience is alien to that frame of mind which exists while we act; it is then felt as a ghostlike, intrusive element, hard to get hold of and hard to remember. However, they day World is as conscious in our sleep experience as he night World is in our waking experience. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
The term unconscious is customarily used solely from the standpoint of everyday experience; and thus I fails to denote that both conscious and unconscious are only different states of mind referring to different states of experience. It will be argued that in the waking state of existence, too, thinking and feeling are no entirely subject to the limitations of time and space; that our creative imagination permits us to think about past and future objects as if they were present, and of distant objects as if they were before our eyes; that our waking feeling is not dependent on the physical presence of the object nor on its coexistence in time; that, therefore, the absence of the space-time system is not characteristic of sleep existence in contradistinction to waking existence, but of thinking and feeling in contradistinction to acting. This welcome objection permits me to clarify an essential point in my argument. We must differentiate between the contents of thought processes and the categories employed in thinking. Rational thought processes in the waking state are subject to categories which are rooted in a special form of existence—the one in which we relate ourselves to reality in terms of action. In my sleep existence, which is characterized by lack of even potential action, categories are employed which have reference only to my self-experience. The same holds true of feeling. Whatever I feel, in the waking state, with regard to a person whom I have not seen for twenty years, I remain aware that one is not present. If I dream about the person, my feeling deals with the person as if one were present. But to say, “as if one were present” is to express the feeling in “waking life” concepts. In sleep existence there is no “as if”; the person is present. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
Humans have a deep need to explains themselves, why one does or feels something. This is generally observed and recognized fact, usually called rationalization. If we dislike somebody, for instance, we are not satisfied with carrying this feeling but we strive to make it appear as a reasonable consequence of certain facts; thus we endow the disliked person with qualities, real or often invented, which make our dislike appear to be reasonable. The same course holds true in the case of liking or admiring a person, and can be found in its most obvious form in the mass enthusiasm for certain leaders or the mass dislike for members of certain classes or races. Dreams, on the other hand, are the result of an inherent tendency to bend feelings to the requirements of reasonableness. While we are asleep, we are not occupied with managing outer reality. We do not perceive it and we do not influence it, nor are we subject to the influences of the outside World on us. From this it follows that the effect of this separation from reality depends on the quality of reality itself. If the influence from the outside World is essentially beneficial, the absence of this influence during sleep will tend to lower the value of our dream activity, so that it will be inferior to our mental activities during the daytime when we are exposed to the beneficial influence of outside reality. However, are we right in assuming that the influences of reality is mainly a beneficial one? May it not be that it is so harmful and that, therefore, the absence of its influence tends to bring forth qualities superior to those we have when we are awake? #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
In speaking of the reality outside ourselves, reference is not made primarily to the World of nature. Nature as such is neither good nor bad. It may be helpful to us or dangerous, and the absence of our perception of it relieves us, indeed, from our task of trying to master it or of defending ourselves against it; but it does not make us either more stupid or wiser, better or worse. It is quite different with the human-made World around us, with the culture in which we live. Its effect upon us is quite ambiguous, although we are prone to assume that it is entirely to our benefit. Indeed, the evidence that cultural influences are beneficial to us seems almost overwhelming. What distinguishes us from the World of animals is our capacity to create culture. Is, then, the human-made reality outside ourselves not the most significant factor in the development of the very best in us, and must we not expect that, when deprived of contact with the outside World, we regress temporarily to a primitive, animal-like, unreasonable state of mind? Much can be said in favour of such an assumption, and the view that such a regression is the essential feature of the state of sleep, and thus of dream activity, has been held by many students of dreaming from Plato to Freud. From this viewpoint dreams are expected to be expressions of the irrational, primitive striving in us, and the fact that we forget our dreams so easily is amply explained by our being ashamed of those irrational and criminal impulses which we express when we are not under the control of society. Undoubtedly to some extent, this interpretation of dreams is true, but the question is whether it is altogether true or whether the negative elements in the influence of society do not account for the paradox that we are not only less reasonable and less decent in our dreams but that we are also more intelligent, wiser, and capable of better judgment when we are asleep than when we are awake. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
Our dreams do not only express irrational desires but also deep insights and the important task of dream interpretation is to decide when the one and when the other is the case. Take the heart from those of the heroes of faith who exemplify Godly qualities. If we are most troubled by the small-mindedness of those whose lives seem to deny the good-news message of love, peace, and reconciliation, we are also most encouraged by those whose lives bear witness to the power of deep faith. It was a young Martin Luther King Jr. who sermonized in Montgomery, Alabama, that “standing up for the truth of God is the greatest thing in the World…The end of life is to do the will of God, come what may.” Only through spiritual transformation, he said, “do we gain the strength to fight vigorously the evils of the World in a humble and loving spirit. Such hope has empowered other heroes to fight tyrannical governments. It is no accident that the only open challenge to the totalitarian state has come from humans of deep religious faith. For in their faith they are vindicated as immoral souls, and from this enhancement of their dignity they find reason why they must offer a perpetual challenge to the dominion of humans over humans. Whenever our adversaries will demand of us obedience contrary to the orders of the Gospel, we must resist. I do not know of any race, I would know of human beings. The Romanian pastor Laszlo Tokes, who, having protested the brutal oppression by his country’s dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, suffered being banned, harassed, beaten, and stabbed. Finally his people formed a protective human chain around his church and parsonage, igniting a revolution that in three days swept the country and toppled Ceausescu. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
It is rare indeed that a person has the good fortune to meet a saint, but sometimes people come as close to it as we can imagine. This is what we must emulate through a life that is empowered by prayer, Bible reading, and mediation. Being God-controlled in thought, judgment, actions, and words are fruits of the Spirit. The Spirit teachings us to display: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Again, what troubles us most about Christianity is not so much the philosophical puzzles as the seemingly un-Christian behaviour of so many of us Christians. However, then again, what inspires us most is the witness of unpretentious lives empowered by faith. We have to be able to testify to the peace and love that can flow from lives touched by grace. People have to be able to encourage others in times of uncertainty, discouragement, and self-pity to keep on—to fight the fight, to finish the race, to keep the faith. To that end, My dear Devout, you ought to tend diligently. That is to say, in every place and in every act, whether occupation or diversion, you should feel more comfortable with yourself and in command of yourself. Everything should be under your control, and not the other way around. You should be the lord and tailor of your own actions, not the slave or mercenary. You should be above it all and a true Christian, enjoying the lottery and the liberty of being a child of God. Keep an eternal perspective. “It shall be done to you according to your faith,” reports Matthew 9.29. Our expectations wield tremendous power and influence in our lives. We do not always get what we deserve, God always gives us more than we deserve. We also receive what we believe. Unfortunately, this principle works as strongly in the negative as it does in the positive. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
Many people tend to expect the worst. Some people have had their faith broken by corruption and oppression and are in the process of healing from expecting the best, but having things not in their favour. Others expect defeat, failure, and mediocrity. And usually get what they expect; they become what they believe. However, you can believe for good things just as easily as you can expect the worse. It is possible to believe for more, to see yourself performing at increasingly higher levels in every area of life. The key is to expect good things from God. When you encounter tough times, do not expect to stay there. Expect to come out of that trouble. When business gets a bit slow, do not assume you will go bankrupt; do not make plans for failure. Pray and expect God to bring you more profitable business. “Repent (think differently; change your mind, regretting your sins and changing your conduct), for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand,” reports Matthew 3.2. Know that low expectations will destroy your situation; your own thinking will bring you down. Instead, ask God for wisdom, and change what you expect. Quit expecting to fail, and start believing that you are going to succeed. The fabric of the Universe was created by the Lord God and cut and sewn by the Great Tailor Himself, having this meticulosity about everything in its place, not a frill our of place. Whatever the onslaught, you must stand firm, let the smoke and din of battle settle, and see what actually happened, not what you would have liked to happen. That is to say, do everything you can to make an accurate assessment of everything you saw and heard. In this, you would have common cause with the Great Moses. When bedeviled with problems and perils he could not handle, he fled to the Tabernacle, as the Exodist reported it (33.8), where he consulted with the Lord. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
What did he learn? Never ever to shut his eyes and ears to the Divine Response! And Moses never did. No wonder he left the Tabernacle refreshed, much wiser on many accouns concering the present and the future. And so should you. That is to say, you should flee to the secret garden of your heart, there to impore Divine Help more intensely. That is what God advised in His Matthew’s Gospel (6.6). God will help you, bu you have to cast he deciding vote. Let God use this situation for your good. Know that God is going to bring you out of this stronger than ever before. Do not agree to be defeaed. You are conspiring with the enemy by opening the door and allowing destructive thoughs, words, actions, and attitudes to dominate your life. On the other hand, if you will get into agreement with God, if you will stay focused on your possibilities, your faith can cause God to show up and work supernaturally in your life. Your faith wil help you overcome your obstacles and allow you to reach new levels of success. However, it is up to you. It depends on your outlook. Are you going to focus on your problems, or will you focus on your God? Always bring your case to God. He will dispose of it well when the Final Court sits. Do not worry. God will straighten things out. Just the thought of that should give you the strength to go on making spiritual progress now. Believe beyond that shadow of a doubt that the Lord can heal you. Know that God is able. Trust God and have confidence in God. Faith can turn any situation around. No one can have faith for you. Other people can pray for you, they can believe for you, the can quote the Scripture to you, but you must exercise faith for yourself. If you are depending on somebody else to keep you happy, or to encourage you, or to get you out of trouble, you will live in perpetual frustration and disappointment. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
Humankind gets so antsy about acquiring jus one more bauble, one more bangle. Odd thing, though. When they actually have it in their hands, there is always something wrong with it. It has this desperate flaw. That is to say, their affections play with it, then get tired of it. And it is off again on a not-so-merry chase from one unsatisfied desire to another. Therefore, when in comes to desirables, two conclusions. Obviously, one should leave the maxiatures alone. Not too obviously, the same goes for the miniatures. The truly spiritual activity of Humankind is saying no to self. The result? Abnegated Man. He is denuded himself of all material things, but still he has managed to be a breezy sort and quite secure in his own self-esteem. The Ancient Enemy, on the other hand, is a nervous, queasy sort, a skulker, always on the prowl; that is as Peter’s Firs Letter described him (5.8). Everyone he meets on the road he considers a perfect target. He never lets up, even in the field. Day and nigh he beats the bushes to arouse the unsuspecting and drive them toward invisible nets and covered traps. What is the defense? “Watch and pray,” God said in Matthew, “that you enter not into temptation,” (26.41). Take charge of your life and decide, No matter what comes against me, I believe in God. I am going to have an optimistic outlook for my life. What you believe has a much greater impact on your life than what anybody else believes. Become what you believe. Are you believing that God can help you to rise above your obstacles, to live in health, abundance, healing, and victory? Remember, you will become what you believe. Father, I believe You are able to do amazing things in my life, far beyond what I can even understand. No matter what comes my way today, I will exercise my faith and believe for spectacular things that will honour You. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
We see what appears to be evil rampant in the World, especially in this century, but it is not absolute evil. It is destined to disintegrate and vanish. How can you be so sure? Because if humans grow, they come to the truth. If one does not then, one loses one’s adulthood for a time. One’s evil goes with one. The human who lives in the truth lives in ethereal light, beautiful peace, even if the shadows are there. One sees on deeper levels where evil cannot penetrate and where the senses of unevolved humans cannot extend. If you are not able to know the great truths for yourself, then believe in them. There is that in humans which repeatedly works against their finer aspirations, which provides them with opposition. Upon this anvil one’s character is hammered out, shaped, and developed. So soon as a being limits interests and welfare to its own self exclusively, so soon is it bound to become into conflict with other beings. Thus evil originates through the first being’s ignorance, not through the presence of an absolute and eternal principle of evil. Where there is total ignorance there is total self-love. From this proceed all negativity, sensuality, indulgence, and discord. Where there is total knowledge there is total turning to the eternal IS. From this proceeds harmony, optimism, goodwill. Where hate and cruelty comes to excess, there is denial of the divine principle and reversal of the twofold truth. Where attention and attraction are partly turned to the THAT WHICH IS, there is sharing of mind and will between good and evil. The universal pretense of evil to be good and the occasional presence of some good in most evil create confusion or bewilderment in many minds and lead to wrong judgment in other minds. #RandolpHarris 11 of 17
Is there any absolute way of distinguishing good from evil? The Russian Staretz Silouan, of Mount Athos, thought there was—that however good an end might seem, if the means used to attain it was bad, then it was to be rejected. It is easy for us to see falsehood intended to lead others to act against their own welfare could be such a bad means, as also could malicious cruelty. Not to see the World as it is, with all its depravity and malice, is to be a fool, even if one happens to be a saint as well. The philosopher, like the ordinary human, sees its actuality but, unlike the ordinary human, is no stained by it. Moreover, one sees also the goodness and aspiration and, more importantly, the divine World-Idea. Evil is something which humans encounter on their journey to Good. Evil doing is what one expresses when still far from one’s destination. The redefinition is not a matter of choice but a necessary response to five revolutionary changes in the actual conditions of production. Change in the physical environment, in the lineup of social forces, in the role of information, in government organization, and in morality are all pounding the corporation into a new, multifaceted, multipurposeful shape. The first of these new pressures springs from the biosphere. In the mid-1950’s, when the Second Wave reached its mature stage in the United States of America, World population stood at only 2.75 billion. Today it is over 7.4 billion. In the mid-1950’s the Earth’s population used a mere 87 quadrillion of Btu of energy a year. Today 167.93 quadrillion Btu. In the mid-50’s, our consumption of a key raw material like zinc was only 2.7 million metric tons a year. Today it is 13.49 million tons a year. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
Measured any way we choose, our demands on the planet are escalating wildly. As a result the biosphere is sending us alarm signals—pollution, desertification, signs of toxification in the oceans, subtle shifts in the climate—that we ignore at risk of catastrophe. These warnings tell us we can no longer organize production as we did during the Second Wave. Because the corporation is the main organizer of economic production, it is also a key “producer” of environmental impacts. If we want to continue our economic growth—indeed if we wish to survive—the managers of tomorrow will have to assume responsibility for converting the corporation’s environmental impacts from negatives into positives. They will assume this added responsibility voluntarily or they will be compelled to do so, for the changed conditions of the biosphere make it necessary. The corporation is being transformed into an environmental, as well as an economic, institution—not by do-gooders, radicals, ecologists, or even government bureaucrats, but by a material change in the relationship of production to the biosphere. The second pressure springs from a little-notice change in the social environment is now far more organized than before. At one time each firm operated in what might be termed underorganized society. Today the socio-sphere, especially in the United States of America, has leaped to a new level of organization. It is packed with a withering, interacting mass of well-organized, often well-funded, associations, agencies, trade unions, and other groupings. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
In the United States of America today, some 1,370,000 companies interact with well over 90,000 schools and universities, 330,000 churches, and hundreds of thousands of branches of 13,000 national organizations, plus countless purely local environmental, social, religious, athletic, political, ethnic, and civic groups, each with its own agenda and priorities. It takes 144,000 law firms to mediate all these relationships! In this densely crowded socio-sphere, every corporate action has repercussive impacts not merely on lonely or helpless individuals but on organized groups, many of them with professional staffs, a press of their own, access to the political system, and resources with which to hire experts, lawyers, and other assistance. In his finely strung socio-sphere, corporate decisions are closely scrutinized. “Social pollution” produced by the corporation in the form of unemployment, community disruption, forced mobility, and the like is instantly spotted, and pressures are placed on the corporate to assume far greater responsibility than ever before for its social, as well as economic, “products.” A third set of pressures reflects that changed info-sphere. Thus, the de-massification of society means that far more information must be exchanged between social institutions—including the corporation—to maintain equilibrial relationships among them. Third Wave production methods further intensify the corporation’s hunger for information as raw material. The firm thus sucks up data like a gigantic vacuum cleaner, processes it, and disseminates it to other in increasingly complex ways. As information become central to production, as “information manager” proliferate in industry, the corporation, by necessity, impacts on the informational environment exactly as it impacts on the physical and social environment. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
The new importance of information leads to conflict over the control of corporate data—battles over disclosure of more information to the public, demands for open accounting (of oil company production and profit figures, for example), more pressures for “truth in advertising” or “truth in lending.” For in the new era, “information impacts” become as serious a matter as environmental and social impacts, and the corporation is seen as an information producer as well as an economic producer. A fourth pressure on the corporation arises from politics and the power-sphere. The rapid diversification of society and the acceleration of change are everywhere reflected in a tremendous complexification of government. The differentiation of society is mirrored in the differentiation of government, and each corporation must therefore interact with more and more specialized units of government. These units, badly coordinated and each with its own priorities, are, moreover, in a perpetual turmoil of reorganization. In the past there was no Environmental Production Agency or any others. Many of these organizations are relatively new. Every company thus finds itself increasingly ensnarled in politics—local, regional, national, or even transnational. Conversely, every important corporate decision “produces” at least indirect political effects along with its other output, and is increasingly held responsible for them. Finally, as Second Wave civilization wanes and its value system shatters, a fifth pressure arises, affecting all institutions—including the corporations. This is a heightened moral pressure. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
Behaviour once accepted as normal is suddenly reinterpreted as corrupt, immoral, or scandalous. Thus the Lockheed bribes topple a government in Japan. Gulf Oil’s chairman is forced to resign in the wake of a bribery scandal. The reluctance of Distillers Company in Britain to repay the victims of Thalidomide adequately, the failures of McDonnell Douglas with respect to the DC-10—all trigger tidal waves of moral revulsion. The ethical stance of the corporation is increasingly seen as having a direct impact on the value system of the society, just as significant to some as the corporation’s impact on the physical environment or the social system. The corporation is increasingly seen as a “producer” of moral effects. These five sweeping changes in both the material and non-material conditions of production make untenable the Second Wave school-book notion that a corporation is nothing but an economic institution. Under the new conditions the corporation can no longer operate as a machine for maximizing some economic function—whether production profit. The very definition of “production” is being drastically expanded to include the side, as well as the central, effects, the long-range as well as the immediate effects, of corporate action. Put simply, every corporation has more “products” (and is now held responsible for more) than Second Wave managers ever had to consider—environmental, social, informational, political, and moral, not just economic products. The purpose of the corporation is thus changed from singular to plural—not just as the level of rhetoric or public relations but at the level of identity and self-definition as well. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
In corporation after corporation we can expect to see an internal battle between those who cleave to the single-purpose corporation of the Second Wave past and those who are ready to cope with the Third Wave conditions of production and to fight for the multipurpose corporation of tomorrow. Thank you Father for your free gift of life. Because it is through this life that you draw near to us every day. It is with this life that you constantly bless us. Our Father, bless this life today. With your power enter into it. Make this life a worthy thing. A thing that carries your blessing. Let it become a reminder of your love. A reminder of life without end. Please make the life of these people to be baptized like you have requested in the Holy Bible. A thing that shines for the sake of people. A think that shines for your sake. Father, please heed this sweet life. Please make their life also sweet smelling. A thing sweet smelling that raises to God. A holy thing. A thing fitting for you. For those who sought in exile for Thy face, who knew Thy secret, who to gather grace and shun defilement, ate but pulse and water—save them that call Thee, grieving from heir place, save them, our Father. For one who witnessed wisdom’s light arise, the ready scribe of yore, who made us wise with outspread truth like spaces wider of water—O save that once full city, when she cries Save us, our Father. For their sake who with all their soul this day have come to pour their heart out and to pray, begging from Thee Thy rains of mighty water—save them who sang to Thee upon their way, save them, our Father. For their sake who have said: “Thy name be blest,” thine heritage, the sons of Thy behest, longing for Thee like land that faints for water—save them for who so long Thou seekest rest, Save them, our Father. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
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The Muted Voice Had a Richness to it that Made a Greatly Enhanced Grace!

Accidental symbols have no intrinsic relationship to that which it symbolizes. Let us assume that someone has had a saddening experience in a certain city; when one hears the name of that city, one will easily connect the name with a mood of sadness, just as one would connect it with a mood of joy had one’s experience been a happy one. Quite obviously here in nothing in the nature of the city that is either sad or joyful. It is the individual experience connected with the city that makes it a symbol of a mood. The same reaction could occur in connection with a house, a street, a dress, certain scenery or anything once connected with a specific mood. The picture in the dream represents this mood, the city “stands for” the mood once experienced in it. Here the connection between the symbol and the experienced symbolized is entirely accidental. As a result, we need associations of the dreamer in order to understand what the accidental symbol means. Had one not told us about the experience one had in the city of which one dreamed or about the connection between the person one dreams of one’s experiences with this person, we could not possibly understand what these symbols mean. The universal symbol, on the contrary, is one in which there is an intrinsic relationship between the symbol and that which it represents. Take, for instance, the symbol of fire. We are fascinated by certain qualities of fire in a fireplace. First of all, by its aliveness. It changes continuously, it moves all the time, and yet there is constancy in it. It remains the same without being the same. The fire gives the impression of power, of grace and lightness. Fire is as if it were dancing and had an inexhaustible source of energy. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
When we use fire as a symbol, we describe the inner experience characterized by the same elements which we notice in the sensory experience of fire: the mod of energy, lightness, movement, grace, gaiety—sometimes one, sometimes another of these elements being predominate in the feeling. However, fire can also be destructive and devastatingly powerful; if we dream of a burning house, fire symbolizes destructiveness not beauty. Similar in some ways and different in others is the symbol of water—of the ocean or of a stream. Here, too, we find the blending of constant movement and ye of permanence. We also feel the quality of aliveness, continuity and energy. However, there is a difference; where fire is adventurous, quick, exciting, water is quiet, slow, and steady in a river or lake. The ocean, however, can also be as destructive and unpredictable as fire. The universal symbol is the only one in which the relationship between the symbol and that which is symbolizes is not coincidental but intrinsic. It is rooted in the experience of the affinity between an emotion or thought, on the other hand, and a sensory experience, on the other. It can be called universal because it is shared by all humans, in contrast not only to the accidental symbol, which is by its very nature entirely personal, but also to the conventional symbol (as for instance a traffic signal), which is restricted to a group of people sharing the same convention. The universal symbol is rooted in the properties of our bodies, our senses, and our minds, which are common to all humans, and therefore not restricted to individuals or to specific groups. Indeed, the language of the universal symbol is the one common tongue developed by the human race. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
There are many dreams in which the censorship consists of nothing but the poetic and symbolic language in which the content is expressed, but this is a “censorship” only for people with little poetic imagination. For those with a natural sense of poetry, the symbolic nature of a dream language can hardly be explained as censorship. In the following I quote a dream which can be understood even without any association and where there are no elements of censorship. On the other hand, we can see that associations brought up by the dreamer enrich our understanding of the dream: A lawyer, twenty-eight years of age, wakes up and remembers the following dream which he later reports to the analyst: “I saw myself riding on a white charger, reviewing a large number of soldiers. They all cheered me wildly.” The first question the analyst asks his patient is rather general: “What comes to mind?” “Nothing,” the man answers. “The dream is silly. You know that I dislike war and armies, that I certainly would not want to be a general.” And in addition, “I also would not like to be the center of attention and to be stared at, cheering or no cheering by thousands of soldiers. You know from what I told you about my professional problems how difficult it is for me to plead a case in court with everybody looking at me.” The analyst answers: “Yes, but it does not do away with the fact that this is your dream, the plot you have written and in which you assigned yourself a role. In spite of all obvious inconsistencies, the dream must have some meaning and must make some sense. Let us begin with your associations to the dream contents. Focus on the dream picture, yourself and the white charger and the troops cheering—and tell me what come to mind when you see this picture.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
“This memory is certainly interesting. Tell me more about your liking for that picture and your interest in Napoleon.” “I can tell you a lot about it, but I find it embarrassing. Yes, when I was fourteen or fifteen, I was rather shy. I was not very good in athletics and kind of afraid of tough kids. Oh, yes, now I remember an incident from that period which I had completely forgotten. I liked one of the tough kids very much and wanted to become his friend. We had hardly talked with each other, but I hoped that he would like me, too, if we would get better acquainted. One day—and it took a lot of courage—I approached him and asked him whether he would not like to come to my house; that I had a microscope and could show him a lot of interesting things. He looked at me for a moment, then he suddenly started to laugh and laugh and laugh. “You sissy, why don’t you invite some of your sisters’ little friends?” I turned away, choking with tears. At that time I read voraciously about Napoleon; I collected pictures of him and indulged in daydreams of becoming like him, a famous general, admired by the whole World. Was he no small of stature, too? Was he no also a shy youngster like myself? Why could I not become like him? I spent many hours daydreaming; hardly ever concretely about the means to this end but always about the achievement. I was Napoleon, admired, envied, and ye magnanimous and ready to forgive my detractors. When I went to college I, I had got over my hero worship and my Napoleon daydreams; in fact I have not thought of this period for many years, and certainly have never spoken to anyone about it. In kind of embarrasses me even now to talk to you about it.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
“’You’ forgot about it, but the other you, that which determines many of your actions and feelings, well hidden from your daytime awareness, is still longing to be famous, admired, to have power. That other you spoke up in your dream last night; but let us see why just last night. Tell me what happened yesterday that was of importance to you.” “Nothing at all; it was a day like any other. I went to the office, worked to gather legal material for a brief, went home and had dinner, went to a movie and went to bed. That’s all.” “That does not seem to explain why you rode on a white charger in the night. Tell me more about what went on at the office.” “Oh, I just remember…but this cannot have anything to do with my boss—the senior partner of the firm—for whom I collected the legal material, he discovered a mistake I had made. He looked at me critically and remarked, ‘I am really surprised—I thought you would do better than that.’ For the moment I was quite shocked—and the thought flashed through my mind that he would not take me into the firm as a partner later on as I had hoped he would. However, I told myself that this was nonsense, that anyone could make a mistake, that he had just been irritable and that the episode had no bearing on my future. I forgot about the incident during the afternoon.” “How was your mood then? Were you nervous or kind of depressed?” “No, not at all. On the contrary, I was just tired and sleepy. I found it difficult to work and was very glad when the time came to leave the office.” “The last thing of importance during that day, then, was your seeing the movie. Will you tell me what it was?” “Yes, it was the film Juarez, which I enjoyed very much. In fact, I cried quite a bit.” “First at the description of Juarez’s poverty and suffering and then when he had been victorious; I hardly remember a movie which moved me so much.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
“Then you went to bed, fell asleep, and saw yourself on the white charger, cheered by the troops. We understand a little better now why you had this dream, do we not? As a boy you felt shy, awkward, rejected. We know from our previous work that this had a general deal to do with your father, who was so proud of his success but so incapable of being close to you and of feeling—to say nothing of showing—affection and of giving encouragement. The incident you mentioned today, the rejection by the tough kid, was only the last straw, as it were. Your self-esteem had been badly damaged already, and this episode added one more element to make you certain that you could never be your father’s equal, never amount to anything, that you would always be rejected by people you admired. What could you do? You escaped into fantasy where you achieved the very things you felt incapable of achieving in real life. There, in the World of fantasy where nobody could enter and where nobody could disprove you, you were Napoleon, the great hero, admired by millions and—what is perhaps the most important thing—by yourself. As long as you could retain these fantasies you were protected from the acute pains that your feeling of inferiority caused you while you were in contact with the reality outside yourself. Then you went to college. You were less dependent on your father, felt some satisfaction in your studies, felt that you could make a new and better beginning. Moreover, you felt ashamed of your ‘childish’ daydreams, so you put them away; you felt you were on the way to being a real man. However, as we have seen, this new confidence was somewhat deceptive. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
“You were terribly frightened before every examination; if there was a young man around, you felt that no girl could really be interested in you; you were always afraid of your boss’s criticism. This brings us to the day of the dream. The thing you tried so hard to avoid had happened—your boss had criticized you; you began to feel again the old feeling of inadequacy, but you pushed it away; you felt tired instead of feeling anxious and sad. Then you saw a movie which touched upon your old daydreams, the hero who became the admired saviour of a nation after he had been he despised powerless youngster. You pictured yourself, as you had done in your adolescence, as the hero, admired, cheered. Do not you see that you have not really given up the old retreat into fantasies of glory; that you have not burned the bridges that lead you back to that land of fantasy, but start to go back there whenever reality is disappointing and threatening? Do not you see this fact, however, helps to create the very danger you are so afraid of, that of being childish, not an adult, not being taken seriously by grown-up men—and by yourself?” A modern mystic, the late William Wirt Winchester, was told from within, “Because I love you, I have given you demons since the beginning of your life, so that you would feel how dependent you are on Me.” The Overself knows what you are, what you are, what you seek, and what you need. “Ask not for healing, or longevity, or prosperity; ask only to be free!” exclaimed Vivekananda. The Overself does not have the power to heal the diseases of the body by its Grace, but whether that Grace will be thus exercised or not is unpredictable. It will do what is best for the individual in the ultimate sense, not what the ego desires. For the Divine Wisdom is back of everything every time. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Spiritual healing does not necessarily follow automatically upon the giving of complete faith. Nor does it necessarily follow upon the voluntary cleansing of the emotional nature. There are other factors involved in it. The place of suffering and sickness in the World-Idea is one of them. For those aspirants who will be satisfied with nothing short of achieving the Highest, the need of transcending the ego takes precedence over everything else, even over the body’s healing. It is impossible either to guarantee or to predict what would happen in any individual case. If one tries to get the Truth simply as a means to achieve the healing, the difficult is that the Truth eludes one. One has therefore to seek Truth and leave one’s fate to it, which will always work out for the best, materially or otherwise. Continued ill health is a great trial. The very fact that an individual has been forced to endure a life of endless suffering will surely lead one to realize that Worldly life yields littler—if any—real satisfaction or happiness, and that it is necessary to seek it in something Higher, in the Quest of the true Spiritual Life, or in God. Somewhere, sometime, this need of one’s will call forth an answer. People are attracted toward these cults either because they are in desperate need of physical healing or because they are in need of spiritual healing, or because they see in these doctrines an opportunity to satisfy both spiritual aspiration and material needs by a single faith and effort. They are trying to make the best of both Worlds. To be able to attain the Kingdom of Heaven and to gain prosperity or curse disease along with it is certainly a most attractive benefit. However, unfortunately it is also a little too good to be true. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
We would all like to have it, but can we have it. What did Jesus Himself say about this point? He said, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven and all these things shall be added unto you.” The word of greatest importance in this sentence is the word “first.” If you wish to employ the help of a higher power and feeling, then you must first give your thought, your first devotion, your first reverence, your first love to that higher power and not to any lesser thing, such as material gain or even physical cure, as the price of your worship. New Thought and Christian Science should correct their errors, for some of the things which they label as “negative” may not be so at all. It is divine love which sanctions losses, sickness, poverty, and adversities. They are not to be regarded as enemies to be shunned but rather as tutors to be heeded. Through such blows the ego may be crushed and thus allow truer thoughts to fill the emptied space. If their end and effect is to close the mind’s door to light, even pleasure and prosperity may deal a human wore blows than the so-called negatives can deal one. All inner healing depends ultimately upon the operations of grace for its effectiveness. For grace is guided by wisdom and it is not always wise for a human to be healed quickly or even at all. In the case of certain characters, good health may be but a gate to dubious activities leading to worse ills that would befall them. There are times when the Overself’s grace may manifest even in the ugly form of illness! #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
If its entry into the everyday consciousness is blocked or twisted by materialistic scepticism, animalistic obsessions, inherited complexes, or excessive extroversion, it may forcibly make its way through them. The body may then be stricken down with sickness until such time as the blockage or distortion is removed. Ramana Maharshi one told us the story of a man whom he had seen when he himself was a young man. This man was crippled, could not use his legs, and had to crawl. An old man suddenly appeared before him and commanded, “Get up and walk!” The cripple was so excited that he automatically rose up and found himself able to walk properly. When he looked round to see this strange benefactor, the man had vanished. The healing was permanent. The point here is first, not whether the vision was subjective or objective, but that the healer did not even have a familiar identity, was not recognized as a Christian saint or Hindu god, and second, that the sufferer was stimulated into having enough faith o obey the command to believe he was healed already; it was not a matter of time. A woman came for an interview who had exhausted all patience with her husband and announced that she was about to leave him. He was an alcoholic of the worst kind. I asked her to be patient with him, not to leave him, but to give him a further chance. Then I went into silence for her. An hour or two after her return homer, her husband made his first and last attempt at suicide. It failed and he was stopped before he could do any serious harm to his body. Then he fell into a deep sleep for a very long time. He awoke feeling better in every way but still despondent. A few weeks later the desire to drink left him completely and never returned. He was cured. “A miracle has happened,” was his wife’s comment in a letter. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
Dorothy Kerin was almost instantaneously restored to health and freed from diabetes and tuberculosis. Moreover, her wasted flesh filled out and a gastric ulcer vanished within an hour. At the same time she saw a vision of Jesus Christ, Mary, and the Angels. St Michael the Archangel, illustrious leader of the Heavenly army, defends us in the battle against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the World of darkness and the spirit of wickedness in high places. He comes to the rescue of humankind, whom God has mad in His own image and likeness, and purchased from Satan’s tyranny at so great a price. Holy Church venerates you as her patron and guardian. The Lord has entrusted St. Michael to the task of leading the souls of the redeemed to Heavenly Blessedness. He entreats the Lord of peace to cast Satan down under our feet, so as to keep him from further holding humans’ captive and doing harm to the Church. St. Michael carries our prayers up to God’s throne, that the mercy of the Lord does quickly come and lay hold of the beast, the serpent of old, Satan, and his demons, casting him in chains into the abyss, so that he can no longer seduce the nations. It is perfectly true that the divinity within humans will shelter, feed, and clothe one materially, as it will also do spiritually, provided one looks for it, submit oneself to its guidance, and obeys its promptings. However, it is also true that the selfsame divinity may strip prosperity and possessions from a human’s shoulders and lead one into the cold waters of destitution, and this because it has begun to make its presence felt in one’s life. It may do this or it may not, depending on individual circumstances and the human’s degree of attachment to material possessions, but whatever it does will be wise and needful. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
The healing power issues from an infinite source. There is no kind of disease which it may not cure; but it can do so only within the conditions imposed by the nature of the human body itself. When it seems that you and your physicians have exhausted all methods, read the Christian Bible, and allow a great mental stillness and inner indrawing to come over you. Then realize that the ego has to confess its total failure and cast itself on the mercy of the higher power in humiliation and prayer. Come to the understanding that one or one’s physicians are competent to cure whatever aliment you are facing, the correct way is to disbelieve that and to look to the Overself alone for healing. Continue with your medical treatment, but realize that it is God who will heal you through your various treatments. See that the stillness is its grace, that this quietness is its power. If only one will relax and let it enter, it will best cure you. So surrender to it and soon it will be healed. “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do,” reports Ephesians 2.10. Some mysterious advice. Lose yourself, and what you will find? God. Stop dead in your tracks! Do not make another move! Another choice is not necessary. No need to consult your own self-interest. Do these, and you will regain all the self-worthy you thought you had lost forever! You may not always control your temper as you know you should. You may disobey God’s Word, or slip and say things you wish you had not said. Please seek forgiveness from God and from anyone you may have offended, but do not go around beating yourself up, living in condemnation. As long as you are pressing forward, you can hold your head up high, knowing that you are a work of progress, and God is in the process of changing you. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Fall on your face when you are following God, but do not flounce right up. Down is better than up, and a new shipment of grace will arrive on your doorstep tomorrow. How often does God want one to give up, surrender oneself? As often as one moves without His permission. Please do not misunderstand. God does not condone wrongdoing, and we should not either. However, do not become so focused on your faults that you cannot enjoy who God made you to be. You have got to be happy with who you are right now and accept yourself, faults and all. Your sense of value is not based on your achievements, how well you preform, how somebody else treats you, or how popular or successful you are. Your sense of value extends from the fact that you are a child of the Most High God. As His unique creation, you have something to offer this World that nobody else has, that nobody else can be. At first blush, there is more cause for alarm in the findings of the religion-prejudice studies. American church members have tended to be more radically prejudiced than nonmembers, and those professing traditional Christian beliefs have expressed more racial prejudice than those with less traditional beliefs. Perhaps it should not shock us, for throughout history religion has provided convenient excuses—indeed, powerful justifications—for all sorts of cruelty. For the dehumanization of slavery and apartheid. For the subordination of women. The beautiful medieval town of St. Andrew, where these words are being written, was the ecclesiastical center of early Protestantism in Scotland. In the year 1643 alone—the midpoint of a 150-year reign of terror in St. Andrews and its environs—forty terrified women were judged by church elders to be witches and consigned to torture and death. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
These women and the St. Andrews martyrs who preceded them at the time of the Reformation remind us that behind religious fanaticism evil sometimes lurks. Jesus therefore reserved some of his strongest condemnation for the self-righteous religious folk of this say. From His time to ours, “not everyone who says, ‘Lord, Lord,” speaks for God. As Pascal lamented, “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” It is vital that you accept yourself and learn to be happy with who God made you to be. If you want to truly enjoy your life, you must be at peace with yourself. Many people constantly feel badly about themselves. They are overly critical of themselves, living with all sorts of self-imposed guilt and condemnation. No wonder they are not happy; they have a war going on inside. And if you cannot get along with yourself, you will never get along with other people. These are people who can start a fight in an empty house. The place to start is by being happy with who God made you to be. God wants small thing, big things, it makes no difference. What God is saying is our chiefest possession is self-love, and on the Heavenly Market it has no value. Hence, in every situation God wants us to be found stripped of our self-love. Otherwise, how can we be His, and He be ours? Disrobe your ego and leave your ego on the floor. The quicker you do this, the better the hold you will have on the situation. And the fewer your conditions and the sincerer your attitude, the more you will please God and the more you will gain for yourself. You may not be perfect—nobody is! Sure, you have some flaws—we all do! Every person has a weakness. Even the great men and woman of the Bible make mistakes. They all had shortcomings, but that did not stop God from loving them, blessing them, and using them to accomplish great deeds. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
In spite of your imperfection, to be truly free, you must have a healthy respect for yourself. Religion’s links with prejudice seem paradoxical. Religion makes prejudice and it unmakes prejudice. The unmaking of prejudice is suggested first by studies of church members; in nearly every one of more than two dozen studies, faithful church members and attenders exhibited less prejudice than irregular attenders. Second, those for whom religion is an end in itself (who agree, for example, with the statement “My religious beliefs are what really lie behind my whole approach of life”) typically express less racial prejudice than those for whim religion is more a means to other ends (who agree, for example, that “A primary reason for my interest in religion is that my church is a congenial social activity”). Third, ministers and priests—who presumably are more religiously committed and motivated than most people—have also generally been more supportive of civil rights efforts than have their own laypeople. So it seems that among the churched, the devout exhibit less prejudice and deeper feelings of human brotherhood and sisterhood than the nominally religious, who are somewhat more likely to rationalize prejudice with the assistance of religion. We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another. What, then, might be our response to bigots and love the bigotry? Hate the sin and love the sinner. Hate the bigotry and love the bigot. Be intolerant of intolerance, despise lovelessness, detest injustice, and remember: “The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Throughout or lives, God is continually forging us. They key to future success is to not be discouraged about your past or present while you are in the process of being “completed.” The Christian Bible indicates that one goes from glory to glory as we are being transformed into God’s image. Whether you realize it or not, right now God is moving you onward toward greater things. The path of righteousness gets brighter and brighter. Some make the Unconditional Surrender in public, but in their hearts they have retained certain private conditions; that is to say, they do not put their trust wholly in God. You can usually tell who they are because they take every precaution not to be caught with an empty buttery. Others offer themselves up whole and entire right from the starter. After some time, however, bullied and sullied by temptation, they return to their old ways. Baby steps, not manly strides, that is about the only spiritual progress they make after that. They live life that has little to do with freedom of heart or grace of friendship. Which is just another ways of saying, they have not really surrendered themselves fully and sacrificed themselves daily to God. Without continued acts like these, a friendship has no roots, let alone any fruits. As you go through your day, when you are tempted to get discouraged, remind yourself that according to God’s Word, your future is getting brighter; you are on your way to a new level of glory. You think you have a long way to go, but you need to look back at how far you have already come. You may not be everything you want to be, but thank God that you are not what you used to be. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
It is one of my favourite sayings, and I know I have bored you to tears with it many times. Indulge me just once more. Lose yourself, surrender yourself, and you will enjoy great internal peace. It is amazing, o God, that although You know me better than anyone, You continue to love me, faults and all. I know I cannot earn Your love, Father, so let me learn to enjoy it, to embrace it, and reflect it to others. I will give up all my stuff for God. We must stand tall and strong for God, and we will get His attention. We will be free in heart and darkness will no longer frighten us. It is important that we despoil ourselves of everything we possess, and stand here in baptismal beauty, with no possessions and no prepossessions. And follow Jesus. From this day on, make an agreement to live eternally for God. Then will slip away all the airy elephants, all the evil roughhouse, all the needless needlings. Then also will unbridled fear quiet down and unruly love come home to roost. “All who keep His commandments [who obey His orders and follow His plan, live and continue to live, to stay and] abide in Him, and He in them. [They let Christ be a home to them and they are the home of Christ.] And by this we know and understand and have the proof that He [really] lives and makes His home in us: by the [Holy] Spirit Whom He has given us,” reports 1 John 3.24. Some people seem obsessed with putting other down; they talk negatively about someone you love, or something you are passionate about. You cannot always ignore negative input, but do not let other people, systems, or circumstances influence your estimation of value. “One who commits sin [who practices evildoing] is of the devil [takes one’s character from the evil one] for the devil has sinned (violated the divine law) from the beginning. The reason the Son of God was made manifest (visible) was to undo (destroy, loosen, and dissolve) the words the devil [has done],” reports 1 John 3.8. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Unfortunately, you may have gone through some traumatic, painful experiences in which somebody mistreated you, used you, or rejected you. Maybe your husband or wife walked out on you and you and you went through a bitter divorce. Maybe a good friend or a parent, or your entire family turned on you for no reason, and you now feel alone and worthless. Perhaps your childhood experiences have left you living with feelings of guilt and shame. It is possible that you even convinced yourself that the negative things that happened in your past are all your fault, that you deserve nothing but doom and gloom, drama chaos, pain and suffering, guilt and condemnation. However, nothing could be father from the truth. “Everyone who commits (practices) sin is guilty of lawlessness; for [that is what] sin is, lawlessness (the breaking, violation of God’s law by transgression or neglect—being unrestrained and unregulated by His commands and His will),” reports 1 John 3.4. You cannot allow your self-esteem and your sense of value to be determined by how other people treat you. The Holy Bible tell us that God accept us even if the World rejects us. There is a glimmer of hope reflected in your eyes. The Lord will adopt you as His very own child. God will never reject you. He always accepts you. Do not allow the rejection of other people to cause you to reject yourself. Maybe you live with someone who is verbally abusive. Let that loose rap go in one ear and out the other. Constantly remind yourself that you are made in the image of Almighty God. Remind yourself that He has crowed you with glory and honour, that you are God’s own master piece. Do not let other people play games with your mind, deceiving you into thinking that your value has depreciated. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
You may feel that your dreams have been shattered by the choice you are your guardians have made. May you feel trapped in the devil’s trap, but there is hope! God wants to appreciate your sense of value. God wants to be a new record on the player, a new song in your heart; He wants to full you with love, faith, success, and light. God wants you to know that you are loved more than you can imagine, and He can turn your broken truths and shattered dreams into something beautiful. Hold your head up high, knowing that God is in control and He has a great plan and purpose for your life. “Beloved, do not put faith in every spirit, but prove (test) the spirits to discover whether they proceed from God; for many false prophets have gone forth into the World. By his you may know (perceive and recognize) the Spirit of God: every spirit which acknowledges and confesses [the fact] that Jesus Christ (the Messiah) [actually] has become man and has come in the flesh is of God [has God for its source],” reports 1 John 4.1-2. Your life may not have turned out exactly as you had hoped, but the Bible says that God’s ways are better and higher than our own ways. No matter what you go through in life, no matter how many disappointments you suffer, you will always be the diamond of God’s eyes. He will never give up on you. “Little children, you are of God [you belong to Him] and have [already] defeated and overcome them [the agents of the antichrist], because He who live in your is greater (mightier) than one who is in the World,” reports 1 John 4.4. I thank You, Father, that You see not just where I am today, but the potential for where I can be tomorrow. Even if other people reject me, I know that I am accepted in Heavenly places. I know that I am wholeheartedly accepted by You! #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Hail Mother, who are the Earth, hallowed by thy soil, rocks and flora that nourish and support all life. Blessed be thy wind that gives us breath and thy waters that quench, bathe and refresh all living things. Holy Earth—as one—we praise your majesty, grace and wonder. We cast out every unclean spirit, every satanic power, every onslaught of the infernal adversary, every legion, every diabolical group and sect, in the name and by the power of our Lord Jesus Christ. We command you, begone and fly far from the Church of God, from the souls made by God in His image and redeemed by the precious blood of the divine Lamb. No longer dare, cunning serpent, to deceive the human race, to persecute God’s Church, to strike God’s elect and to sift them as wheat. For Most High God commands you, He to whom you once proudly presumed yourself equal; He who will all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of truth. God the Father commands you. God the Son commands you. God the Holy Spirit commands you. Christ, the eternal Word of God made flesh, commands you, who humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death, to save our race from the perdition wrought by your envy; who founded His Church upon a firm rock, declaring that the gates of hell should never prevail against her, and that He would remain with her all days, even to the end of the World. The sacred mystery of the cross commands you, along with the power of all mysteries of Christian faith. The exalted Virgin Mary, Mother of God, commands you, who in her lowliness crushed your proud head from the first moment of her Immaculate Conception. The faith of the holy apostles Peter and Pau and the other apostles commands you. The blood of martyrs and the devout prayers of all holy men and women command you. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Therefore, accursed dragon and every diabolical legion, we adjure you by the living God, by the true God, by the holy God, by God, who so loved the World that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him might not perish but have everlasting life; to cease deluding human creatures and filling them with the poison of everlasting damnation; to desist from having the Church and hampering her freedom. Begone, Satan, father and master of lies, enemy of man’s welfare. Give place to Christ, in whom you found none of your works. Give way to the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, which Christ Himself purchased with His blood. Bow down before God’s mighty hand, tremble and flee as we call on the holy and awesome name of Jesus, before whom the denizens of hell cower, to whom the Heavenly Virtues and Powers of Dominations are subject, who the Cherubim and Seraphim praise with unending cries as they sing: Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth. For his sake who did play and dance and sing, who taught the Law with sound of pipe and string, who, thirsting sore, poured out to Thee the water—save those who trust salvation Thou wilt bring, save them, our Father. For his sake whom a whirlwind once did bear to Heaven, whose seal turned back Thy wrath, whose prayer drew fire from Heaven, which licked up dust and water—save her, O God, whose eyes are fountains fair, save her, our Father. For him who served his Lord in deed and thought, on whom twofold the spirit fell; who sought a minstrel ere the ditches filled with water—save them that sand: “Lord, who such deeds hath wrought?” Save them, our Father. For his sake, swift to do the word from Thee, who bid Thy sheep repent, and set them free from the blasphemer, staying founts of water—Save America, beautiful and fair to see, Save her, our Father. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
CRESLEIGH HAVENWOOD
Lincoln, CA | from the mid $600s
Now Selling!
Now selling! Cresleigh Havenwood features four distinct floor plans ranging from 2,293 – 3,489 square feet and offering up to five bedrooms. Each plan has been thoughtfully designed and includes great features such as single story homes, guest suites, optional offices, garage workshops, and more!
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Residence Two a spacious single story home with over 2,600 square feet of home thoughtfully designed to maximize every available foot of space. Three bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a three car garage all come included in this home. The layout if an entertainer’s dream with large kitchen and working island, dining room connected through the butler’s pantry, and a large great room overlooking the ample rear yard. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/
Do Not Threaten the Eternal Crown–This Money Came from His Family’s Estate!

If the populace were to govern itself and there were nothing interposed between the administration of the state and the citizens, they would have to assess themselves on occasion, in proportion to the public needs and the abilities of private individuals. And since no one would ever lose sigh of the payment or the use of funds, neither fraud nor abuse could slip into the management of them. The state would never be weighed down with debts, nor would the populace be crushed by taxes; or at least the assurance of how it would be used would console the people for hardship of the tax. However, things cannot happen this way; and however limited a state may be, the civil society is always too populous to be capable of being governed by all its members. Public funds must necessarily pass through the hands of the leaders who all have over and above the interest of the state, their own private interest, which is not the last to be heard. The populace, for its part, perceiving the leaders’ greed and ridiculous expenditures more than public needs, grumbles about seeing itself despoiled of necessity to furnish someone else with superfluities. And when once these manoeuvres have embittered it to a certain degree, the most honourable administration would utterly fail to reestablish confidence. If contributions are voluntary, in such circumstances, they produce nothing. If hey are forced, they are illegitimate. And the difficulty of a just and wise economy lies in the cruel alternatives of allowing that state to perish or attacking the sacred right to property which is its underpinning. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
The first thing to be done by the founder of the republic, after the establishment of the laws, is to find a sufficient fund for the maintenance of the magistrates and other officers, and for all public expenditures. If it consists of money, and public domain, if it consists of land, this fund is called aerarium or fisc. And the latter is far preferable to the former for reasons that are not hard to see. Anyone who has reflected enough on this matter could hardly be of any other opinion than the of Bodin, who views the public domain as the most upright and the most secure of all the means of providing for the needs of the state. It is worth noting that Romulus’ first concern in the division of the lands was to set aside a third of the land for this use. I confess that it is not impossible for the proceeds of a badly administered state to be reduced to nothing. However, it is not of the essence of the domain to be administered poorly. Prior to any use that fund, it ought to be assigned or accepted by the assembly of the people or the estates of the country, which should then determine its use. After this solemnity which renders this fund inalienable, it changes its nature, as it were, and its revenues becomes so sacred that diverting the least amount to detriment of its destination is not only the most infamous of all thefts but a crime of high treason. It is a great dishonour for Rome that the integrity of the quaestor Cato had been a subject of conversation, and that an emperor, on rewarding a singer’s talent with a few crowns, needed to add that money came from his family’s estate and not from the state’s. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

However, if there are not many like Galba, where will we find Catos? And once vice is no longer a cause for dishonour, what leaders will be scrupulous enough to refrain from getting their hands on the public funds left to their discretion, and not eventually fool themselves by pretending to confuse their vain and scandalous dissipations with the glory of the state, and the means of extending their authority with those of increasing its power? It is above all in this delicate part of the administration that virtue is the only effective instrument, and that the integrity of the magistrate is the only restrain capable of containing one’s greed. Books and all the ledgers of managers seems less to reveal their infidelities than to cover them up. And prudence is never as prompt at imagining new precautions as knaves are at eluding them. Therefore forget about the ledgers and papers, and place the finances in faithful hands; this is the only way to have them faithfully administered. Once the public fund is established, the leaders of the state are rightfully its administrators, for this administration constitutes a part of the government, always essential, though not always equally so. Its influence increases in proportion to the decrease of the influence of the other parts of the government. Once could say that a government has reached its final degree of corruption when the only thing left of its sinews is money. For since every government constantly tends toward diminution, this reason alone shows why no state can subsist if its revenues do not constantly increase. The first experience of the necessity of this argument is also the first sign of the interior disorder of the state. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

And the wise administrator, in giving though to finding money in order to see to present need, does not neglect to seek the distant cause of this new need, just as a sailor, on seeing water flood his vessel, does not forget, while working the pumps, to take steps to find and plug the leak. From this rule flows the most important maxim of the administration of finances, which is to work with much greater care to prevent needs than to augment revenues. However, diligent one might be, help that comes only after the misfortune took place, and more slowly, always leaves the state in distress. While one gives thought to the remedy for one problem, another problem is already making itself felt, and the resources themselves produce new difficulties. Thus in the end the nation is thrown into debt, the populace is downtrodden, the government loses all its vigour and it spends a great deal of money doing not much of anything. I believe it was from this great and well established maxim that the marvels of ancient governments flowed, which did more with their parsimony than ours do with all their treasures. And it is perhaps from this that the standard meaning of the word economy is derived, which denotes more the wise management of what one has, than the means of acquiring what one does not have. What deepens the identity crisis of the corporation still further is the emergence, against this already unsettling background, of a Worldwide movement demanding not merely modest changes in this or that corporate policy but a deep redefinition of its purposes. In the United States of America, public anger at corporations is beginning to well up at a frightening rate. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
A study by Harvard Business School whose findings sent tremours throughout the corporate World, revealed about half of all consumer polled believe they are getting worse treatment in the marketplace than they were a decade earlier; three fifths say that products have deteriorated; over half mistrust product guarantees. A worried businessman said, “It feels like siting on a San Andreas fault.” Worse yet, growing numbers of people are not simply disenchanted, irritated or angry, but irrationally and erratically afraid of new technologies and business ventures. Public confidence in American corporation is lower than at any time since the Great Depression. American business and the accounting profession are being called on the carpet for a kind of zero-based rejustification of just about everything we do. Corporate performance is being measured against new and unfamiliar norms. Similar tendencies are visible in Scandinavia, Western Europe, and even, sotto voce, in the socialist industrial nations. In Japan, as Toyota’s official magazine puts it, “A citizens’ movement of a type never before seen in Japan is gradually gathering momentum, one that criticizes the way corporations disrupt everyday life.” Certainly corporations have come under scorching attack at other times in their history. Much of today’s clamour of complaint, however, is crucially different and arises from the emerging values and assumptions of Third Wave civilization, not the dying industrial past. Throughout the Second Wave era corporations have been seen as economic units, and the attacks on them have essentially focused on economic issues. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

Critics assail corporations for underpaying working, overcharging customers, forming cartels to fix prices, making shoddy goods, and a thousand other economic transgressions. However, no matter how violent, most of these critics accept the corporation’s self-definition: they share the view of the corporation as an inherently economic institution. Today’s corporate critics start from a totally different premise. They attack the artificial divorce of economics from politics, morality, and the other dimensions of life. They hold the corporation increasingly responsible, not merely for its economic performance but for its side effects on everything from air pollution to executive stress. Corporations are thus assailed for asbestos poisoning, for using poor, marginalized, rare and/or oppressed populations as test subjects, for distorting the development of the non-industrial World, for racism, sexism, for secrecy and deception. They are pilloried for supporting unsavory regimes or political parties, from the fascist generals in Washington D.C and the racists in Sacramento to the Community party controlling the State of California and the mostly fake news media. What is at issue here is not whether such charges are justified—all too often they are. What is far more important is the concept of the corporation they imply. For the Third Wave brings with it a rising demand for a new kind of institution altogether—a corporation no longer responsible simply for making a profit or producing goods but for simultaneously contributing to the solution of extremely complex ecological, moral, political, racial, sexual, and social problems. Instead of clinging to a sharply specialized economic function, the corporation, prodded by criticism, legislation, and its own concerned executives, is becoming a multipurpose institution. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

God sees your good moves. Do not fear the judgment of Humankind, My dear Devout, especially when your conscience judges you innocent and returns a verdict of not guilty. Rather, cast your heart firmly in the Lord. Your Heavenly Father does not dwell on the times you reached the point where you were so unhappy and without hope that you could not feel any worse. “Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace,” Ephesians 6.14-15. You need the breastplate of God’s approval. Every morning, no matter how you feel, no matter what you may have done wrong the day before, you can get up and says, “Father, I thank You that You approve me, and that You are pleased with me. I thank You that I am forgiven. I know that I am a friend of God.” If you will do that, you will be amazed at what begins to happen. God will change your whole self-image, and remove the heavy load of guilt and condemnation will be lifted off you. God will restore your joy, and bless you with the ability to go out and enjoy your day with a Godly attitude. However, when the tongue of another stings, know two things. First, that something good and blessed may actually have happened. Second, that your trust in God as opposed to yourself cushioned the blow. Putting on the breastplate of God’s approval does not happen automatically; it is something we must do. Just as we put on our clothes every morning, we need to get up and consciously put on God’s approval. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
One of the worst mistakes we can make is to go through life disapproving of ourselves. Nothing will plunge you into defeat any quicker than being negative and critical toward yourself. “I do not know why I cannot do anything right?” “Why can I not get over this habit?” “How come I can not break this cycle of oppression and poverty?” Many people can blither and blather, but they are no more convincing at the end of an hour than at the beginning. Of course, satisfying everybody is never really possible. As the Great Paul reported in First Corinthians, he strove to do it in the Lord (10.33), and the Lord made him all things to all men (9.22). Nevertheless, he thought it pretty small beer when he received good reports from his peers (4.3). Paul did about as much as any one person could do for the edification and salvation of others. However, try though he did, he knew that he could not prevent himself from offending others. The best remedy was to commit himself totally to God, who knew all his strengths and weaknesses. With Patience and Humility as his only allies, then, he was able to defend himself against whatever mouthings came from the thinking crowd and whatever hurlings came from the drinking crowd. And there was another reason why he responded; his silence could be interpreted, at least in the minds of the weak, as admission of guilt. God sees in you what He made you to become. He knows you can live up to your full potential. God did not create anyone to fail. He will keep working on you and make you into the person he wants you to be. God can see your heart, but humans look at the outside. You have gifts and talents that nobody else has. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

Stop thinking about what you cannot do and look at what you can do. If I may use the words of God’s Isaiah (51.12), who are you that you should fear Mere Mortal Man? He is here today but gone tomorrow. If I may use the words of God’s First Maccabist (2.63). Fear God, yes, but do not lose your water over humanmade terrors. What real harm can insults or injuries do you? The tout or the lout who specializes in this sort of behaviour actually does more harm to oneself than to you. And that is in this life; in the next, there is nowhere to hide, nowhere to run. The judgment of God awaits one, no matter who one is; Paul assured the Romans of that (2.3). The remedy? Put God in first place. And do not waste time and energy tossing quarrelsome words about. Good advice from Paul in his Second to Timothy (2.14). However, what happens in the present moment if you do not succumb to concussion and suffer contusion you do not deserve? First off, do not get indignant, and do not threaten your eternal crown by outbursts of all, God the One who will rescue you from all confusion. And God is the One who will reward you according to your just deserts. God’s Paul assured the Romans of that (2.6), and so He assures you. The Scripture says, “Be confident of this. He that began a good work in you will continue to perform it until it is perfectly complete,” reports Philippians 1.6. God is never going to quit working on us. He is not going to get halfway through and say, “I am tired of dealing with you.” “You keep making that same mistake.” “You have got so many faults, I have had it with you.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
No, God is going to keep working on you until you are more valuable than all the diamonds in the Universe. In fact, you already are! You just have to come into your full potential and you will see what God already sees about you. Therefore, keep persevering. Do not allow the devil to keep replaying your mistake, distorting your legacy, slandering your character. One day the legendary artist Michelangelo was standing in front of a huge rock. With his hammer and chisel, he was working on the rock, in the beginning stages of sculpting it into a piece of art. He knew it was going to be a long, drawn-out process. Somebody came along and said, “What are you doing wasting your time working on that big piece of junk?” Michelangelo said, “There is a beautiful angel trapped in this rock, and I am doing my best to let him out.” The master artist saw something that other people could not see because they did not have the talent and the skill and the vision to create. Michelangelo’s David state is what he ended up creating and it has captivated the World for centuries. It is considered one of art history’s major master pieces. The fine detail make it look like a 17-foot-tall marble made with the perfect body, gorgeous hair, and the exquisite facial features known to man. It was all formed from a single block of marble between 1501 and 1504, and weighs six tons. The sculpture portrays David, a biblical figure. In a particularly well-known narrative (1 Samuel 17), David battles Goliath, a colossal Philistine. Against all odds, an unarmored David knocks down his enemy. The statue of David symbolizes unwavering courage, unexpected strength, and biblical perseverance that a nation should see in itself. And that is what God sees in us. One may have made a lot of mistakes, but stay focused on what you can become and God will get you where you need to be. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
God sees you are a valuable son or daughter whom He created in His own image. He is not done working on your yet. God loves you, He approves of you, and God’s approval is something He put in you before the foundation of the World. It is not based on your achievements or performance. It is based solely on the fact that you are His child and He sees the best in you. God accepts you. God approves you. There is nothing you can do and there is nothing anybody else can do that will ever change your value in God’s eyes. Father, I thank You that You have already accepted and approved of me. I may not be perfect, but I am trying, and I am going out today with my head held high, knowing that You are in the process of changing me. Four missionaries—Oliver Cowdery, Parley P. Pratt, Peter Whitmer, and Ziba Peterson—knew they must leas their new friends in Kirtland and continue their journey westward to preach to the Indians. Doctor Frederick G. Williams, who had been baptized at Kirtland, went with them. They stopped several days and preached to the Wyandotte Indians in Ohio. On December 20, 1830, they left Cincinnati, Ohio, by boat to go to St. Louis, Missouri. Because the weather turned cold and ice blocked the river, their boat docked at Cairo, Illinois, and these men walked two hundred miles to St. Louis. This was not unusual. Many travelers walked in those says. They had walked most of the way from New York and people along the way opened their homes to give them food and shelter. God had sent them on a mission to preach to the Lamanites (Indians), and they were anxious to reach the western land. The winter was very cold, and there would be no boat to western Missouri until spring, but not one of them suggested waiting until spring. They walked. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
The worst snowstorms the country had ever seen raged through Missouri as these men walked the two hundred and fifty miles from St. Louis to Independence. Many mornings it was twelve degrees below zero, and it snowed day after day until the snow was four feet deep. There were few roads in those days. Though sometimes there were trials the humans could follow, most of the time they walked in knee-deep snow across trackless land. At times they walked days before they saw a house. They carried their extra clothing, books, and food on their backs. Their food consisted of frozen bread and pork, and at time the bread was so frozen they could bite off only pieces of the outside crust. However, they kept going and God was with them. Their mission was inspired by Jesus Christ, and they were protected and happy even though it was difficult journey. They arrived in the tiny western Missouri town of Independence on January 31, 1831, after walking nearly a month in the terrible winter storms. Two of the men immediately started a tailor shop in Independence, where they made clothing. Three of them, including Oliver Cowdery and Parley Pratt, crossed into Kansas which was Indian territory, to take the angel message to the Lamanites. There they were taken to the chief of the Delaware Indians, a man who had long been the chief and was called the Great Grandfather. He was seated on a sofa of furs, skins, and blankets before a fire in the center of his two-room cabin. The chief welcomed the missionaries and motioned for them to sit down on blankets and robes. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
The Indian women brought a tin pan full of beans and corn cooked together. This tasted very good, but there was just one wooden spoon so the man had to take turns eating. One of the Indians understood English, and he could interpret what the missionaries said to the old chief. The men told the chief about the Book of Mormon and asked him to call a council of his Indians. At first the chief refused, but after they explained more about the book, he was interested and called his Indians together. Within an hour forty Indians came and shook hands with the missionaries and sat around them. Oliver Cowdery then talked to them in the words they could understand. “Chief and members of the council,” he said, “we are glad to talk to you as our native brothers and friends. We have come a long way from the rising sun to being you glad news, across he rivers and through the deep snows so you might know the things which will do the native man good as well as the pilgrims. “Once the natives were many, and the land from the rising to the setting sun was theirs, for the Great Spirit gave it to them. There were no pilgrims then, but now the natives are few, they are por and the pilgrims many. “Thousands of moons ago when the native man lived in peace in this land, the Great Spirit talked with them and taught them his law and his will. They wrote these things in a book which was written on plates of gold and handed down from father to son for many ages. The people were wealthy and strong and mighty. However, they became wicked and killed each other. They killed the wise men and the prophets of the Great Spirit, and tried to destroy the book. The Great Spirit was angry and would speak to them no more. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
“The Great Spirit commanded Mormon and Moroni—their last wise men and prophets to hide the book in the Earth so it might be saved. He promised that later it would be given to the pilgrims who would come to the land that they might again bring it to the native man so they might learn the Will of the Great Spirit. The Great Spirit promised that if the native man would receive the book and learn the things written in it and do them, they would be happy again and live in peace. Then the native man would become great with plenty to eat and good clothes to wear, and find favour with the Great Spirit and be His children.” Oliver then explained how Joseph Smith had prayed to the Great Spirit, and how the angel told him about the book. It was written in the language of the native man’s forefathers so that young man could not read it. However, the angel gave him a way to translate the book so it could be written on paper, and be printed, and now there were thousands of copies of the book. Oliver gave the chief a Book of Mormon. The Indians talked this over in their own language. Then the chief said the missionaries, “We are truly thankful to our pilgrim friends who have come so far to tell us the good news of our forefathers. It makes us feel glad in here,” and he placed his hand over his heart. The Indian chief promised they would build a council house where the missionaries could teach the Indians. Several of the Indians could read, and they were given copies of the Book of Mormon. The Indians were so interested that the government men in charge of the Indians were distributed. They forbade the missionaries to preach to the Indians any more and ordered them to leave the Indian country. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
The three men then returned to Independence to preach to pilgrim men, some of them who believed and were baptized. Though the missionaries could not preach again these Indians, they felt they had accomplished much as now Indians in New York, in Ohio, and in Kansas had heard the story of heir forefathers. They hoped they might teach them more at a later time. The next month Parley Pratt was sent back to New York to reports on their work and to get more copies of the Book of Mormon, because they had given away all they had brought with them. The Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father; and He is distinct from the Son, according to the words, “I will ask My Father, and He will give you another Paraclete,” reports John 14.16. Therefore in God another procession exists besides the procession of the Word. There are two processions in God; the procession of the Word, and another. In evidence whereof we must observe that procession exists in God, only according to an action which does not tend to anything external, but remains in the agent itself. Such an action in an intellectual nature is that of the intellect, and of the will. The procession of the Word is by way of an intelligible operation. The operation of the will within ourselves involves also another procession, that of love, whereby the object loved is in the lover; as, by the conception of the word, the object spoken of or understood is in the intelligent agent. Hence, besides the procession of the Word in God, there exists in Him another procession called the procession of love. There is no need to go out infinitude in the divine processions; for the procession which is accomplished within the agent in an intellectual nature terminates in the procession of the will. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

All that exists in God, is God; whereas the same does not apply to others. Therefore the divine nature is communicated by every procession which is not outward, and this does not apply to other natures. Though will and intellect are not diverse in God, nevertheless the nature of will and intellect requires the processions belonging to each of them to exist in a certain order. For the procession of love occurs in due order as regards the procession of the Word; since nothing can be loved by the will unless it is conceived in the intellect. So as there exists a certain order of the Word to the principle whence He proceeds, although in God the substance of the intellect and its concept are the same; so, although in God the will and the intellect are the same, still, inasmuch as love requires by its very nature that it proceeds only from the concept of the intellect, there is a distinction of order between the procession of love and the procession of the Word in God. Many additional-more perplexing—studies have accumulated on the links between religion and altruism and between religion and prejudice. Most of the studies of altruistic behaviour have observed people’s willingness to help in minor emergencies—to mail an addressed lost letter found on the sidewalk, to call the garage for a stranded motorist who just spent her only spare change calling the wrong number, to assist someone in an adjacent room who was heard to fall off a ladder. However, there is no evidence that [highly religious people] are any more likely than he less religious to help someone in need. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
The more religious may see themselves as more helpful and caring; they may even been seen this way by others. However, when it comes to action, there is no evidence that they are more helpful. Other research asks, Who are the long-term altruists? Who gives most generously of time and money? Most of America’s top philanthropists are religious: Jewish, Mormon, Protestant, and Catholic. And most attribute their philanthropic urges at least in part to their religious background. It is not just the superrich and generous. Americans who said they never attended church or synagogue reported giving away 1.1. percent of their incomes. Weekly attenders were two and a half times as generous. This 24 percent of the population gave 48 percent of all charitable contributions. The other three-quarters of Americans gave the remaining half. Follow-up surveys in 2015, 2020, and 2021 confirmed the faith-philanthropy correlation. A half dozen national surveys also reveal that faith is linked to volunteerism. Charitable and social-service volunteering was reported by 28 percent of those who rated religion “not very important” in their lives and by 50 percent of those who rated it “very important.” People who think Godliness unrelated to goodliness might also want to consider: Who most often adopts children? Who sponsors the nation’s food pantries and soup kitchens? Who first took medicine into the developing World and opened hospitals? Who sheltered orphans? Who spread literacy and established schools and universities? And who led movements to abolish the slave trance, end apartheid, and establish civil rights? Let no one be smug. It is true that many are good without God, that many believers go to sleep behind bars each night, and that toxic religion can undergird terrorism. #RandolphHaris 17 of 18

Yet the accumulating evidence indicates that, in general, faith tethers self-interest and nurtures character. Godliness and goodliness do seem more than typographically linked. Ice mountain melted ages ago, and made this ridge, this place changes. Now we are rooted in it, we of the old ones, we of the new ones from afar; oatgrass meadow, dougals fir thicket, we are rooted in the ridge of changes in the time of changes. The winds carry strange smells; this is a day of change. Great ones above and below, please bless us! O shining One above, please feed us with your light! O soft ones, sky darkeners, please wash us with your raindrops! O powers above us, bless us with your gift, for we reach up to you, branching wood and sap. O Earthmother from whom we grow, sandy gravel into whom our roots branch wood and sap deep down, bless us in our night-sleep, in our death and decay. Please bless us, dark Earth as we give back that which we have received as we make a forest of blessing a ridge of blessing for the future to grow upon. For those of old who went Thy wars to fight whole-hearted, in their hands Thy saving might; chosen when gathering in their palms the water—save them for ever faithful in Thy sight, save them, our Father. For him, that only son, who crushed the foe, sacred from birth, a Nazarite to grow, for whom from out a jaw-bone gushed forth water—Save! even for Thine holy name save now! Please save us, our Father. For his sake who is favour yet grew on when through their sinfulness the throngs had gone; who, turning men from sin, spake: “Now draw water”—please save her more fair than America when she shone, please save her, our Father. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
Cresleigh Homes
Dining in the big house or the small house tonight? We’ll be serving fruit snacks and goldfish crackers in the small house…😂
The best floorplans include space for all the indoor and outdoor fun your family needs! We’re loving the open, spacious flow of the Mills Station Residence 4 home!

Residence Four at Mills Station boasts 2,692 square feet in the largest home in the community. The open concept design includes four bedrooms, three and one half bathrooms and a two car garage plus workshop.

The Home Hub, located off the entry, can be used as a study, office, or kids play room. The kitchen comes fully equipped with a large eat-in island, stainless steel appliances, and quartz counters and opens onto the spacious great room.

Upstairs you’ll find the Owner’s retreat, two bedrooms, and the loft perfect for a game room or TV lounge. The Owner’s retreat is spacious and inviting with a large bedroom and spa like bathroom featuring a free-standing soaking tub, walk-in shower, dual vanities, and large walk-in closet.
Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier. Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Google Mini to help connect everything together! https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/residence-4/
I Have Been Haunted by Anxiety–Who Will Trust Us with the True Wealth?

It is important to learn to control your Earthly body because you may think you are saved, and on Judgment Day find yourself roasting in Hades with the Morning Star. Society and culture play a significant role in individual human development. The main task of humans in life is to give birth to oneself, to become what one potentially is. The most important product of one’s effort is one’s own personality. Many dreams tend to hide their rue meaning and express it in forms which are not dissimilar to a political writer in a dictatorship, who expresses one’s thought between the lines or speaks about an event in classical Greece while really referring to contemporary event. This, the dream is never an open communication but is to be compared to a coded writing which has o be deciphered in order to be understandable. The coding has to be done in such a way that even the dreamer feels safe when one expresses ideas in one’s dream which do not fit into the thought patterns of the society in which one lives. The censorship has more of a social character then assumed, but at the moment this is of no importance. What matters is that the dream must be decoded. However, this insight in its simple and strict and uncompromising formulation often leads to erroneous results. Not every dream needs to be decoded and the degree of coding differs very much from dream to dream. Whether and to what extent coding is necessary depends on the sanctions which society puts against those who think unthinkable thoughts in their sleep and it also depends on such individual factors as how submissive and frightened a person is, and hence to what degree one feels in need of coding a thought which can be dangerous. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
When I say dangerous, I do not refer particularly to external sanctions of society against those who have dangerous thoughts. Indeed that happens too, and is not invalidated by the objection that after all our sleep thoughts—that is, our dreams—are secret and nobody knows about them. If it is important to avoid dangerous thoughts, one must not even think them in one’s dreams because they must remain deeply repressed. By dangerous thoughts, I mean thoughts which a person would be punished or might suffer in one’s daily life for having, if they were known. There are such thoughts, as we all know, and people have a good sense of what they had better not say and hence had better not think if they do not want to suffer disadvantages. However, I am speaking here mainly of thoughts which are dangerous not because they say something specific which would be sanctioned, but because they move out of the frame of reference of common sense. They are thoughts which are not shared by anybody else or by more than a very small group and hence they put a person in the position of feeling isolated, alone, out of contact. It is this very experience which contains the nucleus of insanity which occurs when a person has cut off completely any connection with others. However, we must go a little further than this. It is not an accident that simple-minded people, however spiritual, should blend the ideas of God and Heaven and the blue sky. It is a fact, not a fiction, that light and life-giving heat do come down from the sky to the Earth. The analogy of the sky’s role to begetting and of the Earth’s role to bearing is sound as far as it goes. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

The huge dome of the sky is of all things sensuously perceived the most like infinity. And when God made space and Worlds that move in space, and clothed our World with air, and gave us such eyes and such imaginations as those we have, He knew what the sky would mean to us. And since nothing in His work is accidental, if He knew, He intended it. We cannot be certain that this was not indeed one of the chief purposes for which Nature was created; still less that it was not one of the chief reasons why the withdrawal was allowed to affect human senses as a movement upwards. (A disappearance into the Earth would beget a wholly different religion.) The ancients in letting the spiritual symbolism of the sky flow straight into their minds without stopping to discover by analysis that it was a symbol, were not entirely mistaken. In one way were perhaps less mistaken than we. For we have falling into an opposite difficulty. Let us confess that probably every Christian now alive finds a difficulty in reconciling the two things one has been told about “Heaven”—that it is, on the one hand, a life in Christ, a vision of God in this life, the body seems almost irrelevance. And if we try to conceive our eternal life as one in a body (any kind of body) we tend to find that some vague dream of Platonic paradises and gardens of the Hesperides has substituted itself for that mystical approach which we feel (and I think rightly) to be more important. However, if that discrepancy were final then it would follow—which is absurd—that God was originally mistaken when He introduced our spirits into the Natural order at all. We must conclude that the discrepancy itself is precisely one of the disorders which the New Creation comes to heal. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

The fact that the body, and locality and locomotion time, now feel irrelevant to the highest reaches of the spiritual life is (like the fact that we can think of our bodies as “coarse”) a symptom. Spirit and Nature have quarrelled us; that is our disease. Nothing we can yet do enables us to imagine its complete healing. Some glimpses and faint hints we have: in the Sacraments, in the use made of sensuous imagery by the great poets, in the best instances of love, in our experiences of the Earth’s beauty. However, the full healing is utterly beyond our present conceptions. Mystics have got as far in contemplation of God as the point at which the sense are banished: the further point, at which they will be put back again, has (to the best of my knowledge) been reached by no one. The destiny of redeemed human is not less but more unimaginable than mysticism would lead us to suppose—because it is full of semi-imaginables which we cannot a present admit without destroying the essential character. One point must be touched on because, though I kept silence, it would none the less be present in most readers’ minds. The letter and spirit of scripture, and of all Christianity, forbid us to suppose that life in the New Creation will be an existence of pleasures of the flesh; and this reduces our imagination to the withering alternative either bodies which are hardly recognizable as human bodies at all or else of a perpetual fast. As regards the fast, I think our present outlook might be like that of a person being told that pleasures of the flesh were the highest bodily pleasure should immediately ask whether you get paid at the same time. On receiving the answer “No,” he might regard absence of money as the chief characteristic of pleasures of the flesh. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

In vain would you tell him that the reason why lovers in their carnal raptures do not bother about money is that they have something better to think of. The young man knows money: he does not know the absolute thing that excludes it. We are in the same position. We know the life of pleasures of the flesh; we do not know, except in glimpses, the other things which, in Heaven, will leave no room for it. Hence where fulness awaits us we anticipate fasting. In denying that life of pleasures of the flesh, as we now understand it, makes any part of the final beatitude, it is not of course necessary to suppose that the distinction of genders will disappear. What is no longer needed for biological purposes may be expected to survive for splendour. Passionate intimacy is the instrument both of chastity, virginity, and conjugal virtue; neither men nor women will be asked to throw away weapons they have used victoriously. It is the beaten and the fugitives who throw away their swords. The conquerors sheathe theirs and retain them. As it stands here on Earth, the Law of Chastity states we are to have pleasures of the flesh only with our spouse to whom we are legally married. No one, male or female, is to have pleasures of the flesh before marriage. After marriage, pleasures of the flesh are permitted only with our spouse. “Thou shalt not commit adultery; and one that committeth adultery, and repenteth not, shall be cast out,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 42.24. I am well aware that this last paragraph may seem to many readers unfortunate and to some comic. However, that very comedy, as I must repeatedly insist, is the symptom of our estrangement, as spirits, from Nature and our estrangement, as terrestrial beings, from Spirit. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

The whole conception of the New Creation involves the belief that this estrangement will be healed. A curious consequence will follow. The archaic type of thought which could not clearly distinguish spiritual “Heaven” from the sky, is from our point of view a confused type of thought. However, it also resembles and anticipates a type of thought which will one day be true. That archaic sort of thinking will become simply the correct sort when Nature and Spirit are fully harmonized—when Spirit rides Nature so perfectly that the two together make rather a Centaur than a mounted knight. I do not mean necessarily that the blending of Heaven and sky, in particular, will turn out to be specially true, but that that kind of blending will accurately mirror the reality which will then exist. There will be no room to get the finest razor-blade of thought in between the Spirit and Nature. Every state of affairs in the New Nature will be the perfect expression of a spiritual state and every spiritual state the perfect informing of, and blood upon, a state of affairs; one with it as the perfume with a flower or the “spirit” of great poetry with its form. There is thus in the history of human thought, as elsewhere, a pattern of death and rebirth. The old, richly imaginative thought which still survives in Plato has to submit to the deathlike, but indispensable, process of logical analysis: nature and spirit, matter and mind, fact and myth, the literal and the metaphorical, have to be more and more sharply separated, till at las purely mathematical Universe and a purely subjective mind confront one another across an unbridgeable chasm. However, this descent also, if thought itself is to survive, there must be re-ascent and the Christian conception provides for it. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

Those who attain the glorious resurrection will see the dry bones clothed again with flesh, the fact and the myth remarried, the literal and the metaphorical rushing together. With this awakening one begins to relate one’s own purpose in life to the universal purpose. Like the falling of a bandage from the eyes of a blindfolded man, there will come plainly into one’s understanding the recognition of one’s past misdeeds, foolhardiness, and failings—all of them the consequence of one’s ignorant clinging to the ego. This is the vision which may come to one before one begins to purify oneself. A vivid, intense, and self-critical revelation of how “sinful” one has been may preceded, accompany, or follow the glimpse. It may shake one to one’s core. However, it cannot be said that one feels one has betrayed one’s best and higher being any more than it can be said a child has betrayed the adult it has not yet grown into. One understands this at the same time and so forgives oneself. That glorious glimpse wherein the All becomes bathed in the light of meaning, when the reality behind comes through and leaves one enriched: it is as if a web of illusion spun around the mind falls away. From that time one will look out on the World with clearer eyes. In the mystical happening of the Glimpse, the human gets the intuition that this is what one belongs to; here one can find rest. In the sunlit tranquility of such moments, one recognizes one’s true stature. In short, one possesses a kind of double entity, harbouring at times within one’s breast a life and consciousness that seem higher than what was originally and still is normally one’s own. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
In this moment of illumination one is able to look into the image of one’s own self, to see what is best and highest in it and accept that as one’s goal and ideal henceforth. One will know only that one stands in the presence of authority and love, truth and power, wisdom and beauty. The experience tells one vividly, luminously, and memorably that there is an existence beyond the physical one and a consciousness beyond the personal one. Another reason why glimpses are given to humans is to show one—as in a magic mirror—that there is such a thing as the Overself. These brief enlightenments give us clues to both the true way and the true goal. They point within. As the picture of the True comes forth, it obliterates the picture of the False which held one so long. The glimpse gives one an untrammelled consciousness of this freer and higher self. Disjointed fragments of comprehension may be picked up now and then, when the World-scene is lightened up by some grace. The passing from hope to certainty comes with the glimpse. As the glimpse lengthens, it draws the human to look into oneself. It is showing one what one is deep down—a vivid and personal demonstration! From that time life is susceptible of a higher interpretation, and its situations of a psychological meaning. The mind is irradiated with the light of a new understanding. The heart is lifted up into the joy of a new experience. What one now knows, one knows outside all doubting, immovably and unshakeably. One is now sure that there is a higher power behind this World. When this felicitous glimpse comes to a human it beings one certitude. One knows now that God IS and where He is. The glimpse not only throws a fresh impersonal light on all the episodes of one’s personal history that went before, but also on those which are happening now. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

One who penetrates to this inner citadel discovers what Saint Augustine called “the eternal truth of the soul.” The glimpse confirms existing religious faith and so strengthens it. At such times one feels the World mystery, for now that one knows so much esoteric truth one knows so little of THATT which is behind it all. The rapture of finding truth comes because it is truth. The revelation wells up slowly, quietly, deeply; it is unflatering and continues so long as one does not interrupt or interfere with it by one’s own thoughts. It is really one’s own innermost guide and guru, one’s higher self. It is in such moments of enlightenment that one comes to see that all these evils may be there, but they will do. “Seeing the point” which solves the problem of existence, suddenly getting the glimpse of what all this means, and nothing how it was here all the time staring one in the face, may cause a human to break out abruptly into laughter at oneself. One knows from this experience that one is incipient with a love that the World does not ordinarily know, with a goodness that it seldom sees in action, and with an understanding that lights up dark places in the course of life. Each glimpse is a precious gift to be treasured. However, we must also remember that it not only comes, but it also goes. This remembrance should make us treat its aftermath very carefully, very delicately, and very watchfully. The remark so often made that “Heaven is a state of mind” bears witness to the wintry and deathlike phase of this process in which we are now living. The implication is that if Heaven is a state of mind—or, more correctly, of the spirit—then it must be only a state of the spirit, or at least that anything else, if added to that state of spirit, would be irrelevant. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
That is what every great religion except Christianity would say. However, Christian teaching by saying that God made the World and called it good teaches that Nature or environment cannot be simply irrelevant to spiritual beatitude in general, however far in one particular Nature, during the days of her bondage, they may have drawn apart. By teaching the resurrection of the body it teaches that Heaven is not merely a state of the spirit butt a state of the body as well: and therefore a state of Nature as a whole. Christ, it is true, told His hearers that the Kingdom of Heaven was “within” or “among” them. However, His hearers were not merely in “a state of mind.” The planet He had created was beneath their feet, His sun above their heads; blood and lungs and guts were working in the bodies He had invented, photons and sound waves of Hs devising were blessing them with the sigh of His human face and the sound of His voice. We are never merely in a state of mind. The prayer and the meditation made in howling wind or quiet sunshine, in morning alacrity or evening resignation, in youth or age, good health or ill, may be equally, but are differently, blessed. Already in this present life we have all seen how God can take up all these seeming irrelevancies into the spiritual fact and cause them to bear no small part in marking the blessing of that moment to be the particular blessing it was—as fire can burn coal and wood equally but a wood fire is different from a coal one. From this factor of environment Christianity does not teach us to desire a total release. We desire, like St. Paul, not to be un-clothed but to be re-clothed: to find not the formless Everywhere-and-Nowhere but the promised land, that Nature which will be always and perfectly—as present Nature is partially and intermittently—the instrument for that music which will then rise between Christ and us. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

And what, you ask, does it matter? Do not such ideas only excite us and distract us from the more immediate and more certain things, the love of God and our neighbours, the bearing of the daily cross? If you find that they so distract you, think of then no more. I most fully allow that it is of more importance for you or me to-day to refrain from one sneer or to extend one charitable thought to an enemy than to know all that Angels and Archangels know about the mysteries of the New Creation. I write of these things because they are the most important but because this essay is about miracles. I suspect that our conception of Heaven as merely a state of mind is not unconnected with the fac that the specifically Christian virtue of Hope has in our time grown so languid. Where our father, peering into the future, saw gleams of gold, we see only the mist, white, featureless, cold and never moving. The though at the back of all this negative spirituality is really one forbidden to Christians. They, of all humans, must no conceive spiritual joy and worth as things that need to be rescued or tenderly protected from time and place and matter and he senses. Their God is the God of corn and oil and premium cranberry juice. He is the glad Creator. He has become Himself incarnate. The sacraments have been instituted. Certain spiritual gifts are offered us only on condition that we perform certain bodily acts. After that we cannot really be in doubt of His intention. To shrink back from all that can be called Nature into negative spirituality is as if we ran away from Ultimate Driving Machines instead of learning to ride in the gentleman’s express. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

There is in our present pilgrim condition plenty of room (more room than most of us like) for abstinence and renunciation and mortifying our natural desires. However, behind all asceticism the thought should be, “If we cannot be trusted even with the wealth that perishes, who will trust us with the true wealth the true wealth?” If I cannot control my Earthly body, who will trust me with a spiritual body? These small and perishable bodies we now have were given to us as pines are given to schoolboys. We must learn to manage: not that we may some day be free of horses altogether but that some day we may ride without worry, confident and rejoicing, those greater mounts, those winged, shining and World-shaking horses which perhaps even now expect us with impatience, pawning and snorting in the King’s stables. Not hat the gallop would be of any value unless it were a gallop with the King; but how else—since He has retained His own charger—should we accompany Him? [The Lord Said,] “My gracious favour is all you need. My power works best in your weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weakness, so that the power of Christ may work through me, reports 2 Corinthians 12.9. My dear Devout, as you already know, there is no security in this life. As long as you live, you will have to bear spiritual arms. Why? Every day you traffic among enemies, and every day you are impugned from the right as well as from the left; that is as Paul described the Christian condition in his Second Letter to the Corinthians (6.7). Indeed, they are coming at you from all sides. If, therefore, you do not protect yourself with the Psalmist’s shield of patience (91.4), you will not be long without a wound. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

Are you allowing your weaknesses and insecurities to keep you from being your best? Are you making excuses as to why you cannot take a new leadership position at work, or get involved in some program in your church, serve in your community, or help a friend in need? Rather than giving too much attention to your insecurities and weaknesses, decide today to focus on your God. Moreover, if you do not place your heart firmly in God, with the pure intention of suffering everything for God’s sake, you will not be able to sustain that ardor of yours, not will you be able to reach the palm of success at the end. God loves you and wants to help you achieve extraordinary success. You may have some doubt to your competence, but God will help you to overcome that. “These times I called upon the Lord and besought [Him] about this and begged that it might depart from me; but He said to me, My grace (My favour and loving-kindness and mercy) is enough for you [sufficient against any danger and enables you to bear the trouble manfully]; for My strength and power are made perfect (fulfilled and completed) and show themselves most effective in [your] weakness. Therefore, I will all the more gladly glory in my weakness and infirmities, that the strength and power of Christ (the Messiah) may rest (yes, may pitch a tent over and dwell) upon me! So for the sake of Christ, I am well pleased and take pleasure in infirmities, insults, hardships, persecutions, perplexities, and distresses; for when I am weak [in human strength], than I am [truly] strong (able, powerful in divine strength),” reports 2 Corinthians 12.9-10. God does not want your status to be based on someone else’s values. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
When you base you worth on nonbiblical concepts that are contrary to God’s opinion of you, it hurts His feelings. Yet many people do just that. Consequently, they feel insignificant and unworthy to receive God’s attention, much less His blessings. Their poor self-image keeps them from exercising their God-given gifs and authority, and it robs them of experiencing the abundant life their Heavenly Father wants them to have. Most often, the lack of joy and meaning in their lives is a direct result of how those individuals see themselves. What to do now? Verily, you have to act vilely, that is to say, heat up your resistance against all who oppose you. For the Torrid there will be manna at the end, or so the Book of Revelations promises (2.17); but for the Torpid there will be only misery in the aftermath. Beware of associating with or adopting the attitudes of people who, through their negative outlook and lack of self-esteem, will rob you of the greatness that God has for you. People may seem more powerful than you, like giants. However, our God is formidable, and much bigger. Granted the people are strong and can start a fight in an empty house, our God is stronger. Because of Him, we are well able. Let us go in at once and possess the land. Rest and repose you will have, but do you want it in this life or the next? Choose one. But which one. Which is better to choose, great rest or great patience? Choose the latter. Seek True peace, not on Earth, but in Heaven; not in Humankind or in other creatures, but in God alone. For the love of God you ought to freely undergo everything; that is to say, labours and dolors, temptations and vexations, anxieties and necessities, infirmities and injuries, apprehensions and reprehensions, humiliations and confusions. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

All these are stepping-stones to virtue. They test the raw recruit for Christ; they are materials of the Heavenly Crown. How do you see yourself? Do you see yourself as successful? Healthy? Upbeat? Happy? Do you see yourself as being used by God? Do you see yourself as “well able” to do what God wants you to do, strong in the Lord and the power of His might? Or have you allowed yourself to become defeated? God sees you as “well able” people, not disabled, not crazy, not broken, not evil, not ugly. Not because we are so powerful, but because our God is so powerful! When you face adversity and hardship in life, you can rise up with boldness and confidence, knowing that because of God, you are well able to overcome them. Learn to see yourself as God sees you—as a winner, an overcomer, as “well able.” God wants you to accomplish great things in life, and He has put incredible potential, gifts, and talents within you to enable you to do so. Start stepping out in faith and acting on the desire that He has placed in your heart. I acknowledge my weakness, Father, knowing that as I trust You to work in and through me, You make me strong. You make me adequate despite my insecurities; You provide the power to accomplish all that You ask me to do. Reward time. For a good if short life, God will return Eternal Life. For finite confusion on this Earth, God will give Infinite Confirmation. Do you think you will always have spiritual consolations? God’s Saints did not have them all the time. Most of the time what they had were depressions, temptations, and desolations. However, they withstood them patiently, knowing that, as Paul had told the Romans (8.18), “The passions of this time are not to be compared to the attainments of future glory.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

Do you want to have right away what many have scarcely obtained after many tears and great labours? “Wait for the Lord like everyone else,” advised God’s Psalmist (27.14), “then act like a man!” And take comfort. Do not be different. Do not give it up. Let your body and soul constantly radiate the patience of God. I will be with your every step of the way, as My Psalmist has promised (19.15), and in the end God will reward you handsomely. “And they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land. They have heard that You, Lord, are in the midst of this people [of America], that You, Lord, are seen face to face, and that Your cloud stands over them, and that You go before them in a pillar of fire by night,” reports Numbers 14.14. Even more mystifying and upsetting for them is the crack-up of the industrial mass society in which they were trained to operate. Second Wave managers were taught that mass production, that a mass market wants standardized goods, that mass distribution is essential, that “masses” of uniform workers are basically all alike and can be motivated by uniform incentives. The effective manager learned that synchronization, centralization, maximization, and concentration are necessary to achieve one’s goals. And in a Second Wave environment these assumptions were basically correct. Today, as the Third Wave strikes, the corporate manager finds all one’s old assumptions were basically correct. Today, as the Third Wave is up and running, the corporate manager finds all one’s old assumptions challenged. The mass society itself, for which the corporation was designed, is de-massifying. No merely information, production, and family life, but the marketplace and the labour market as well are breaking into smaller, more varied pieces. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

The mass market has split into ever-multiplying, ever-changing sets of min-markets that demand a continually expanding rage of options, models, types, sizes, colour, and customizations. So physical stores need to be larger, and to accommodate the demands of consumers and the vast range of products expected, they are moving to new suburban communities where they can still find land that is available for development to build these superstores to accommodate all the products consumers expect in the marketplace. Stores that find they cannot meet consumer demand, notice a reduction in revenue because consumer turn to the holy grail, the Internet. BMW used to basically have three cars, the 3 Series, 5 Series, and 7 Series, now they have well over 30 different models in production. The vice president of BMW said, “we will be going into greater specialization with more different departments.” The fast-increasing variety of goods and services in the high technology nations is often explained away as an attempt by the corporation to manipulate the consumer, to invent false needs, and to inflate profits by charging a lot for trivial options. No doubt, there is truth to these charges. Yet something deeper is at work. For the growing differentiation of goods or services also reflects the growing diversity of actual requirements, desires, values, and lifestyles in a de-massified Third Wave/Fourth Wave society. This rising level of social diversity is fed by further divisions in the labour market, as reflected in the proliferation of new occupations, especially white-collar and service fields. Newspaper want ads calmour of “Vydec Secretary” or “Mini-Cooper computer Programmer,” while at a conference on the service professions I watched a psychologist list 68 new occupations from consumer advocate, corporate attorney, and Yoga instructor to psycho-chemotherapist and federal private investigators. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

As our jobs become less interchangeable, people do too. Refusing to be treated as interchangeable, they arrive at the workplace with an acute consciousness of their ethnic, religious, professional, sexual, subcultural, and individual differences. Groups that throughout the Second Wave era fought to be “integrated” or “assimilated” into mass society now refuse to melt their differences. They emphasize instead their unique characteristics. And Second Wave corporations, still organized for operation in a mass society, are still uncertain how to cope with this rising tide of diversity among their employees and customers. Though sharply evident in the United States of America, social de-massification is progressing rapidly elsewhere as well. In Britain, which once regarded itself as highly homogenous, marginalized groups, from Pakistanis, West Indians, Cypriots, and Ugandan Asians to Turks and Spaniards now intermingle with a native population itself becoming more heterogeneous. Meanwhile, a tidal influx of Japanese, American, German, Dutch, Arabic, and African visitors leave in their wake American hamburger stands, apple pie, baseball, Japanese tempura restaurants and signs in store windows that read “Se Habla Espanol.” Around the World, underrepresented ethnic groups reassert their identities and demand long-denied rights to jobs, income, and advancement in the corporation. Australian Aborigines, New Zealand Maoris, Canadian Eskimos, American Africans, Chicanos, and even Asians once regarded as politically passive are on the move and many are turning into Republicans because they believe in private property and lower corporate taxes, as many are business owners. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

From Maine to the Far West, Native Americans assert “Native Power,” demand the restoration of tribal lands, and dicker with the OPEC countries for economic and political support. Even in Japan, long the most homogenous of the industrial nations, the signs of demassification are mounting. An uneducated convict overnight emerges as spokes person for a small group of Ainu people. The underrepresented Koran groups grows restless, and sociologist Masaaki Takane of Sophia University says, “I have been haunted by anxiety….Japanese society today is quickly losing its unity and disintegrating.” In Denmark scattered streets fights break out between Danes and immigrant workers and between leather-jacket motorcyclists and long-hair youth. In Belgium the Walloons, the Flemish, and the Bruxelloises reactivate ancient, indeed preindustrial, rivalries. In Canada Quebec threatens to secede, corporations padlock their headquarters in Montreal, and English-speaking executives throughout the country take crash courses in French. The forces that made mass society have suddenly been thrown into reverse. Nationalism in the high-technology context becomes regionalism instead. The pressures of the melting pot are replaced by the new ethnicity. The media, instead of creating a mass culture, de-massify it. In turn all these developments parallel the emerging diversity of energy forms and the advance beyond mass production. All these interrelated changes create a totally new framework within which the production organization of society, whether called corporations or socialist enterprises, will function. Executives who continue to think in terms of the mass society are shocked and confused by a World they no longer recognize. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

If it were part of a larger program of living that included the spiritual, the Occidental worship of bodily arts, cultures, sports, exercises, and regimes would be excellent. However, it is not. The Occidental mostly stops and ends with glorification of the body. There is a most important difference between the work done in ordinary physical culture and the work done in this system. Those who jump about on a gymnasium floor or lift weights or engage in outdoor sports do so usually for the body’s sake. However, students who follow philosophic teachings practice their exercises for the Quest’s sake. This fully respects the body and cares scrupulously for it. It would be a delusion to believe that the practice of these physical disciplines alone can bring enlightenment. It is not obtainable by stretching the body, or holding the breath, although these may quite indirectly help to prepare the way for obtaining it. The ego must be transcended. It is necessary to make a daily ritual of these cleansing habits and physical exercises as it is of religious or mystical ones. They should be combined, the physical exercises as it is of religious or mystical ones. They should be combined; the physical being practiced before the spiritual as a preparation for it and for the day’s activity. Tai Chi is a system of slow, gentle, graceful movements combined with meditation. It can be used either for self-defense, health, or aesthetics. Breath control is a vial element of this practice. Weight and pressure are made to sink down to what is called in Zen the Hara Center (near the solar plexus). This system belongs to Chinese Taoism. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Long ago the dervishes in the Near East used a system of training which gave extraordinary control over the muscular system, swift reflexes, and striking mental concentration. For example, they would direct the movements of one limb while at the same time they directed another limb in a different way. Too much exercise may be as harmful in the end as too little, while improper exercise may be more injurious than either. Those who show their impatience by constantly tapping with their fingers or who betray their nervousness by fidgeting with their feet would benefit by a course in hatha yoga, but all such exercises are prohibited to anyone suffering from high blood pressure. Do not stifle me with the strange scent of low growing mountain lilies—do no confuse me with the salubrious odor of honeysuckle! I cannot separate in my mind sweetness from sweetness—mimosa from wild white violets; magnolia from Cape Jasmine! I am from the north tide country, I can understand only the scent of seaweed; salt marsh and scrub pine riding on the breath of an amorous frog! O do not confuse me with sweetness upon sweetness; let me escapes safely from this gentle madness—let me go back to the salt of sanity in the scent of the sea. For that glad prophetess who danced before the camp, to them whose heart was sad and sore, from whom there rose and sank a well of water—save them that dwelt in goodly tents of yore, save them our Father. For him who in the tent was fain to stay, on whom the spirit shone, who went his way O’er Jordan, and Thou didst divide the water—save her, the beautiful and pure as day, save her, our Father. For his sake who besought a sign, who cried “Where by Thy wonders?” and at morning-tide wringed dew from out the fleece, a bowl of water—save her who was in America a bride, save her, our Father. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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Scatter the Peoples Who Want War!
Cyclamens were my wife’s favourite flowers and I reproached myself for so rarely remembering to being her flowers, which was what she liked. Forgetting is very often determined by an unconscious purpose and it always enables one to deduce the secret intentions of the person who forgets. A young woman was accustomed to receiving a bouquet of flowers from her husband on her birthday. One year his token of his affection failed to appear, and she burst into tears. Her husband came in and had no idea why she was crying till she told him that today was her birthday. He clasped his hand to his head and exclaimed: “I am sorry, but I had quite forgotten. I will go out at once and fetch your flowers.” However, she was not to be consoled; for she recognized that her husband’s forgetfulness was proof that she no longer had the same place in his thoughts as she had formerly. This lady, Bianca, had met my wife two days before, and told her that she was feeling quite well and enquired after me. Some year ago she had come to me for treatment. A flower is a symbol of love, Eros, friendship and joy. Although we may not be perfect, God wants us to feel God about ourselves. He knows we are going to make mistakes, but he is not focusing on our mistakes and weaknesses, but what we did right. God is pleased with His creation. As long as we preserver, making a point to do as well as we can, we can be confident, having faith that God is leading us to success. However, there are times in our lives when we may be a bit sad, tired, and overcome by problems. Maybe some of us are experiencing some bad habits we need to let go of, but do not become overwhelmed by guilt and condemnation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
Sometimes things in life may wreak havoc with our affections. What is true today is false tomorrow—that sort of thing. Will you or nill you, that is the rhythm of life, so long as you shall live. You are happy one moment; the next thing you know, you are sad. At peace, then in an uproar. Fervent, then tepid. Studious, then stupid. Serious, then supercilious. However, the wise person who is well instructed in the ways of the spirit is not swayed by the huffs and puffs of the Mutables. One pays little attention to the flips and flops of affections within. Nor does one care from which corner of the chart the wind of instability blows. All one does is bend one’s mind to the task at hand; that is to say, to make progress toward the vowed and desired destination. How can one remain firm of purpose through the topsy-turvy of a lifetime? Simply by placing one eye on the intention and the other eye on the Lord. Repent and make an hones effort to change and know that God is in the process of helping you achieve your goals. The purer the eye of intention, the longer the glass through which it peers. However, even the long glass, pure as its intention is, will dawdle at the middle distance when something delightful presents itself. A dipping caravel, for example, laden with cloth and silk, sugar and diamonds, heading for Antwerp. Self-seeking leaves strawberry makes on the soul, and rare is the person without them. Self-seeking always damages the sight of the soul, and rare is the person who has the vision one was born with. Always aim the lens in the right direction and focus it at the farthest point. That is where you will find God. If not, try cleansing the lens. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16

Because if you are constantly at strife within yourself, feeling you are not good enough, your spiritual progress will be thwarted. You may not be the best at the things you set out to do, but what matters is that you are trying. Living with a heavy heart, feeling down about yourself will keep you from becoming the success that God want you to be. You have to learn to love yourself as you are. For no one on this planet is perfect. We all have things in our lives we need to improve upon. Do not go wasting your time and affection on wordlings whose only thought is to stack high and deep the things of the World. Instead, praise God with great reverence and great warmth. When I feel God next to me, everything seems to go swimmingly. However, when I think God is out and about, I plummet like a rock. God brings the heart to tranquillity and certain festival joyfulness. Pleasure with God near, how sweet it is! Please with God nowhere to be found, how brief it is! Pleasure for us Devouts can be had, only if the Lord has something to do with it. Either that, or God’s grace has to be an ingredient somewhere in the mix, perhaps a soupcon of sapience. When one of us has a moment of happiness with God, it has an unexpected effect. The res of creation seems to have this pleasant patina on it. Who is there in the World to whom God has not already been a cause of delight? Alas, there are quite a few. They are the Worldly wise and the fleshly wise, but when it comes to God’s wisdom, they are noways wise. Paul advised the Romans on this very point (8.6). However, wherever they are, Vanity runs riot, and Death hands in the air. And where are Your followers, O Lord? If anywhere, they are off the beaten path making their way through bog and fen; that is to say, up to their hips in Contempt of the World and Mortification of the Flesh. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16

However, why are these last, at least by some, generally recognized as the truly wise persons in this World? Because they have made the pilgrimage from Vanity to Verity, Flesh to Spirit. God has found them, and under the guise of good they find God in creation and praise Him so for all the good in creation. How different, how wildly different, are the pleasures of Creator from the pleasures of the creature! They are as different as Timelessness from time, Uncreated Light from created light. Sadly, many people do not really like themselves They have a war raging within. They are constantly thinking or speaking negatively about themselves. They feel guilty, inferior, they cannot get along with other people. We must learn to accept ourselves, faults and all, if we want to go to a higher level. We have come to grips with the fact that we are going to have some weakness. We will always have some imperfections throughout our lives. When we do not live up to our own unrealistic expectations, we need to give ourselves a break, and not to be so hard and critical on ourselves. Keep in mind that God love you because He made you and He knows everything about you. When an individual learns to overcome being so hard on themselves and others is when God will take one to a new level of success, as He is constantly changing you for the best. When people do not accept themselves and the imperfections they cannot change, they go through life feeling wrong on the inside. That affects how a person’s self-image and how they see the World. This will have an impact on your relationships with others and God. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
Now, we do not have to accept our mistakes, we can keep trying to change for the better. The most important thing is to have a good heart and be what is righteous. Know that God is still refining people as long as they are on this Earth. Understand God loves you and is pleased with you. My prose begins to turn to prayer. O Perpetual Light, transcending all source of created light! Let the ragged lightning bolt from the sky, search the nooks and crannies of my soul. Purify, glorify, clarify, vivify—with all Your powers—my spirit that it may cling to You with joyful hugs. Oh, when will this blessed and desirable moment come, when we will see each other face to face?! That is the sort of moment Paul wrote about to the Colossians, where everyone—Greek and Jew, slave and slaver, circumcised and uncircumcised, civilized and not so civilized—all are one in Christ (3.11). Why hast it not happened already? How much longer do I have to wait? Up to this point in my sad life, there lives, in a shack out back, the Old Man Paul’ Letters speak of; that is to say, the unregrenerate human who is climbing all over the Cross, but has yet to learn which side is up; one says one’s dying to oneself and to the World but, if one is, it is the longest death scene since Prometheus on the rock! Paul wrote something similar to the Romans (6.6). Up to this point the itch outlasts the scratch; concupiscence attacks the defenses within—Paul to the Galatians (5.17); the quiet kingdom of my heart is aflame with war and the fumes of war. If I may use the words of Psalmist. But You, O Lord, who “dominate the power of the sea, and mitigate the roll of the wave,” (89.9), rise up and help me (44.26). “Scatter the peoples who want war” (68.30). #RandolphHarris 5 of 16

Pulverize them with the engine of Your virtue. Dazzle them with You wonders, I beg You, and Your powerful right hand will be glorified, as Jesus son of Sirach would say (36.6). Why do I want You to do all this? Because there is no other hope our refuge for a boke like me, except in You, my Lord God. Father, sometimes I have a hard time seeing myself the way You see me, so please remind me occasionally through Your Word, or through messages in everyday life. Thank You for making me special, for this royal blood flowing through my veins, and for no giving up on me when I make mistakes or wrong choices. Please keep changing me, making me better, more like You. “O LORD you have searched me [thoroughly] and have known me. You know my downsitting and my uprising; You understand my thought afar off. You sift and search out my path and my lying down, an You are acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue [still unuttered], but, behold, O Lord, You know it altogether. You have beset me and shut me in—behind and before, and You have laid Your hand upon me. Your [infinite] knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high above me, I cannot reach it. Where could I flee from Your presence? If I ascend up into Heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol (the place of the dead), behold, You are there. If I take the winds of the morning or dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall Your hand lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me and the night shall be [the only] light about me. Even the darkness hides nothing from You, but the night shines as the day; the darkness and the light are both alike to You. For You did form my inward parts; You did knit me together in my mother’s womb. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16

“I will confess and praise You for You are fearful and wonderful and for the awful wonder of my birth! Wonderful are Your works, and that my inner self knows right well. My frame was not hidden from You when I was being formed in secret [and] intricately and curiously wrought [as if embroidered with various colours] in the depths of the Earth [a region of darkness and mystery]. Your eyes saw my unformed substance, and in Your book all the days [of my life] were written before ever they took shape, when as yet here was none of them. How precious and weighty also are Your thoughts o me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I could count them, they would be more in number than the sand. When I awoke, [could I count to the end] I would still be with You. If You would [only] slay the wicked, O God, and the men of blood depart from me—who speak against You wickedly, Your enemies who take Your name in vain! Do I not hate them, O Lord, who hate You? And am I not grieved and do I not loathe those who rise up against You? I hate them with perfect hatred; they have become my enemies. Search me [thoroughly], O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there is any wicked or hurtful way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting,” reports Psalm 139.1-24. Every religion can point to those who exemplify its aspirations. Christianity can point to its Martin Luther Kings and Sarah Winchesters, and Mother Teresas, its Albert Schweitzers, and William Randolph Hearsts, and Desmond Tutus, its contribution to the spread of hospitals and universities and to the abolition of slavery. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16

Yet for many people the most troubling thing about Christianity is some deep philosophical problem. For reasons many of you may recalled, we can live peaceably with impenetrable philosophical puzzles. What troubles us is something more concrete: the behaviour of many people who count themselves as disciples of the one who taught, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself,” and even “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Every religion is plagued by those who exploit it or their own purposes or embarrass and defame it by their behaviour. Thus every skeptic, and indeed every believer, can point to those whose lives suggest that religion is a sham—those who profess the love of Christ and practice hate, who preach honesty and fail to reports all their income, who proclaim the unity of the church and attack people whose doctrines or values differ from their own, who promote selflessness and are vain to the core, who pretend concern and could not care less. Can the irreligious not be moral? Thus responded skeptics after Senator Joseph Lieberman recalled George Washington’s warning “never to indulge the supposition that ‘morality can be maintained without religion.’” Is America more civil and moral than secular Scandinavia? the skeptics asked. The Swedes may skip church, but they take better care of their poor and their elderly and provide a higher percentage of the national budge to humanitarian efforts than we do. Creation of the new White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives rejoiced the God-and-goodness debate. The canard that Godliness and goodliness are linked in any way but typographically must be taken on faith, for no evidence supports it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16

Some Christians have given Christianity a bad name. And then came September 11, 2001. The “insane courage” that enabled this horror supposedly came from religion. If a martyr’s death is equivalent to pressing the hyperspace button and zooming through a wormhole to another Universe, it can make the World a very dangerous place. To fill a World with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. There was perhaps a warped religious idea of martyrdom and the afterlife was at work on those ill-fated flights. And it may be true, that religion at its worst can be toxic and superstitious—which is something healthy religion must ever be vigilant about (much as science is vigilant about pseudoscience). However, anecdotes aside—“I can counter the believer-terrorist with believer-humanitarians,” responds the believer—what does the evidence show? Medicine, twisted, can kill people. However, we would want to further evidence before deciding whether medicine is bad. The vivid examples—the worst and the best—capture our attention but do not decide the issue: Do self-professed Christians more than others tend to display the fruit of the Spirit, or their opposites? Is the Christian religion a source more of compassion or intolerance? The extremes—the churchgoing civil rights activists and the churchgoing extremist groups—cancel each other out. So it remains for dispassionate research with ordinary people to help us decide the issue. The evidence shows, first, that faith-rooted values give many people a reason to behave morally when no one is looking. Religions encourage people to seek meaning beyond everyday existence. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
Religion people exhort people to purse causes greater than their personal desires. The opposed orientation, self-indulgent materialism, seeks happiness in the pursuit and consumption of material goods. In one U.S. national survey, frequent worship attendance predicted lower scores on a dishonesty scale that assessed, for example, self-serving lies, tax cheating, and failing to report damaging a parked car. Moreover, in cities where more than nine in ten people are church members, you can more readily leave your car unlocked than in Seattle, where fewer than a third are. Even the eighteenth-century French writer Voltaire, to whom Christianity was an “infamy” that deserved crushing, found the influence of faith useful among the masses. “I want my attorney, my tailor, my servants, even my wife to believe in God,” he wrote, because “then I shall be robbed and cuckolded less often.” He once silenced a discussion about atheism until he had dismissed the servants, lest in losing their faith they might lose their morality. The University of Pennsylvania criminologist Byron Johnson examined forty religion-delinquency studies, including hi own. His conclusion: “Most delinquent acts were committed by juveniles who had low levels of religious commitment. Those juveniles whose religiosity levels were in the middle to high levels committed very few delinquent acts.” Even when controlling for other factors such as socioeconomic level, neighbourhood, and peer influences, kids who went to church were seldom delinquent. Self-described Christians in the Western World also engage in much less promiscuity of pleasures of the flesh, much less drug and alcohol abuse, and much less violent crime and delinquent behaviour. Because religion-morality links are correlational, the direction of cause and effect is sometimes ambiguous. Nevertheless, such findings hint that when the church is clear and forceful in its ethical prescriptions, it may be influential. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
The statement in St. Mark that He sat down at the right hand of God we must take as a metaphour: it was indeed, even for the writer, a poetical quotation, from Psalm CX. However, the statement that the holy Shape went up and vanished does not permit the same treatment. What troubles us here is not simply the statement itself but what (we feel sure) the author meant by it. Granted that there are different Natures, different levels of being, distinct but not always discontinuous—granted that Christ withdrew from one of those to another, that His withdrawal from one was indeed the first step in His creation of the other—what precisely should we expect the onlookers to see? Perhaps mere instantaneous vanishing would make us most comfortable. A sudden break between the perceptible and the imperceptible would worry us less than any kind of joint. However, if the spectators say they saw first a short vertical movement and then a vague luminosity (that is what “cloud” presumably means here as it certainly does in the account of the Transfiguration) and then nothing—have we any reason to object? We are well aware that increased distance from the centre of this planet could not in itself be equated with increase of power or beatitude. However, this is only saying that if the movement had no connection with such spiritual events, why then it had no connection with them. Movement (in any direction but one) away from the position momentarily occupied by our moving Earth will certain be to us movement “upwards.” To say that Christ’s passage to a new “Nature” could involve no such movement, or no movement at all, within the “Nature” he was leaving, is arbitrary. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16

Where there is passage, there is departure; and departure is an event in the region from which the traveller is departing. All this, even on the assumption that the Ascending Christ is in a three-dimensional space. If it is not that kind of body, and space is not that kind of space, then we are even less qualified to say what the spectators of this entirely new event might or might not see or feel as if they had seen. There is, of course, no question of a human body as we know it existing in interstellar space as we know it. The Ascension belongs to a New Nature. We are discussing only what the “joint” between the Old Nature and the new, the precise moment of transition, would look like. However, what really worries us is the conviction that, whatever we say, the New Testament writers meant something quite different. We feel sure that they thought they had seen their Masters setting off on a journey for a local “Heaven” where God sat in a throne and where there was another throne waiting for Him. And I believe that in a sense that is just what they did think. And I believe that, for this reason, whatever they had actually seen (sense perception, almost by hypothesis, would be confused at such a moment) they would almost certainly have remembered it as a vertical movement. What we must not say is that they “mistook” local “Heavens” and celestial throne-rooms and the like for “spiritual” Heaven of union with God and supreme power and beatitude. You and I have been gradually disentangling different senses of the word Heaven throughout this essay. I may be convenient here to make a list. Heaven can me the unconditional Divine Life beyond all Worlds. Blessed participation in that Life by created spirit. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16

The whole Nature or system of conditions in which redeemed human spirit, still remaining human, can enjoy such participation fully and forever. This is the Heaven Christ goes to “prepare” for us. The physical Heaven, the sky, the space in which Earth moves. What enables us to distinguish these senses and hold them clearly apar is not any special spiritual purity but the fact that we are the heirs to centuries of logical analysis: not that we are sons to Abraham but that we are sons to Aristotle. We are not to supposed that writers of the New Testament mistook Heaven in sense four of three for Heaven in sense two or one. You cannot mistake a half sovereign for a sixpence until you know the difference between them. In their idea of Heaven all these meanings were latent, ready to be brought out by later analysis. They never thought merely of the blue sky or merely of a “spiritual” Heaven. When they looked up at the blue sky they never doubted that there, whence light and heat and the precious rain descended, was the home of God: but the other hand, when they thought of one ascending to Heaven they never doubted He was “ascending” in what we should call a “spiritual” sense. The real and pernicious period of literalism comes far later, in the Middle Ages and the seventeenth century, when the distinctions have been made and heavy-handed people try to force the separated concepts together again in wrong ways. The fact that Galilaean shepherds could not distinguish what they say at the Ascension from that kind of ascent which, by its very nature, could never been seen at all, does not prove on the one hand that they were unspiritual, nor on the other that they saw nothing. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
A human who really believes that “Heaven” is in the sky may well, in one’s heart, have a far truer and more spiritual conception of it than many modern logicians who could expose that fallacy with a few strokes of one’s pen. For one who does the will of the Father shall know the doctrine. Irrelevant material splendours in such a man’s idea of the vision of God will do harm, for they are not there for their own sakes. Purity from such images in a merely theoretical Christian’s idea will do no good if they have been banished only by logical criticism. The experience is neither an abstract supposition nor an intellectual series of thoughts. It is felt in quite intimate and very personal way. It is immeasurably more convincing than any thought-series could be, however plausible and logical they were. One knows of what divine stuff one is inwardly made, in what starry direction one is daily going, and on what self-transforming task one is constantly working. It can only reveal to one or two facets of its nature at each glimpse. The power can touch one’s will, and the grace can move one’s heart, but that is all. Humans are so wrapt in themselves that even when the glimpse happens, they look at the experience as their own, in origin occurrence and result. They seldom look at it from the other side. For it also an attempt by the Overself first to reveal Itself, second to communicate with them. One’s outlook becomes more spacious, one’s understanding more lucid, one’s intuition more immediate. In those revelatory moments the “I,” the essence of personality, is found to be only the thought of itself. It is the difference between trying to know and actually knowing. To see this truth for the first time is to experience something which will be long remembered. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
To find some higher meaning in one’s personal existence is to fortify one’s will and to buttress one’s ideals; to ascertain the fact that there is a link between this Universe of time and space with a Mind which is above both, is to experience an indefinable satisfaction. While the glimpse these comes a curious feeling of absolute certitude, happy certitude, utter doubtlessness. The truth is there plainly before one and deeply sensed with one. This experience of the ultimate oneness of all things of one’s own part in that oneness is, of course, well known in mystical experience—especially in nature mysticism but also in some kinds of religious mysticism, and certainly in philosophic mysticism. The first effect is to make one feel that one is not alone, that the Universe is behind one and that one does not need to be crushed by anxieties, worries, and fears—all pertaining to the little self. Such an experience is indeed an excellent counter to them. The fact is that all actual enlightenment is self-enlightenment; it is given to a human by oneself, that is, by one’s own best self. It is generally brief, but enough to provide a glimpse of that self and a touch of its revelatory energy. They are “glimpses of the eternal” and “peeps into timelessness,” a development which we could not get as animals but only as humans. It is then only that human, interwoven with the World-Mind, deep in holy happy adoration, is sure. A glimmering of what it means to see with the intelligence that there is a Higher Power and that is plays a role in human affairs not less than in the Universe’s, come to one. We read in the Bhagavad Gita of Arjuna’s cosmic vision. He was given a glimpse of a part of the universal order, the World-Design, the World-Idea. Other who have had this glimpse saw other parts of it, such as he evolution of the center of consciousness through the animal into the human kingdom, an evolution which is recapitulated in a very brief form by an embryo in the womb. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
Consciousness may expand into infinity or contract into a point. Some have had this experience through mystical meditation and others through physical chemical drugs, but the point is that they are temporary experiences of the fact that we live in a humanmade World, that the time orders and space dimensions are mental constructs and are alterable, that consciousness is the basic reality, that it can assume many different forms, and that ordinary, average human consciousness is merely one of those forms. This tells us why the insights of the seers like Jesus differed so greatly from those of ordinary human beings. With a glimpse comes revelation. One feels that one belongs to an immortal race, that there is an inner Reality behind all things, and that the ultimate source is a beneficent one. By means of this light in one’s mind, one will begin to understand scriptures, all the World’s scriptures, with a new ease. What would the World be, once bereft of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. For one above one’s brethren set to shine:–yet we but a fourth of Judah’s line—whereof it is said “His buckets flowed with water”—so save not, Lord, for our sake, but for Thine, save now, our Father. For one more meek than all humans and more true, whose merit brought down manna on the dew, chosen redeemer, drawn from out of the water—save her that ever looketh forth anew, save her, our Father. For one who was as angels are above, who, meetly clad, did in Thy precincts move in holiness, all purified with water—save her, O Lord, her that is sick with love, save her, our Father. For that glad prophetess who danced before the camp, to them whose heart was sad and sore, for whom there rose and sank a well of water—Save them that dwelt in goodly tents of yore save them, our Father. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
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A dream which has not been interpreted is like a letter that has not been opened. There is a need for one to recognize that a dream is a message which we send to ourselves and which we have to understand in order to comprehend ourselves. Dr. Freud was the first individual to give the interpretation such a systematic and scientific basis. He gave us the tools for understanding of dreams, which anybody can use provided one learns how to handle them. One can hardly exaggerate the significance of dream interpretation. First of all it makes us aware of feelings and thoughts that exist within ourselves and yet which we are not aware of while we are awake. The dream, as Dr. Freud once put it, is the royal way to the understanding of the unconscious. Secondly the dream is a creative act in which the average person demonstrates creative powers of those whose existence one has no idea when one is awake. Dr. Freud discovered, furthermore, that our dreams are not the simple expressions of unconscious strivings but that they are usually distorted by the influence of a subtle censorship which is even present when we are asleep and forces us to distort the true meaning of our dream thoughts (the “latent dream”). Thus, if they are disguised, the censor is deceived, as it were, and permits the hidden thoughts to pass the frontier to consciousness. This concept led Dr. Freud to the assumption that every dream (with the exception of children’s dreams) is distorted and has to be restored to its original meaning by dream interpretation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
During the night, humans have many impulses and desires, especially in the nature of pleasure and the surreal, which would interrupt one’s sleep were it not that one experiences these wishes as fulfilled in the dream and hence does not have to wake up to seek realistic satisfaction. Dreams are the disguised expression of fulfillment of wishes. However, one obvious objection to this theory is that we have many nightmares which would be difficult to explain as fulfillment of a desire, since they are painful to the point of sometimes interrupting sleep. Yet, this may be because there are sadistic or masochistic wishes which produce great anxiety but are still wishes which the dream satisfies even though another part of us is frightened of them. Other dreams may also represent any feeling, wish, fear, or thought that is sufficiently important to be present during our sleep, and its appearance in dreams is a sign of its importance. Many dreams do not contain a wish but offer an insight into one’s own situation or into the personality of others. In order to appreciate this function, one must consider the particularity of the state of sleep. During sleep we are liberated from the task of sustaining our existence by work or by defending ourselves against possible dangers. (Only signals of an emergency wake us up from our sleep.) We are not under the influence of the social “noise,” by which I mean the opinion of others, common nonsense and common pathology. Perhaps one could say that sleep is the only situation where we are really free. This has consequences: we see the World subjectively and not from the viewpoint that guides us in our waking life objectively—that is to say, as we must see it in order to manipulate it. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

For instance, in a dream the element of fire might express love of destructiveness, but that is a different fire from the one which one can bake a cake. The dream is poetic and it speaks the universal language of symbolism which is basically common to all times and all cultures. It is, together with poetry and art, a universal language which humankind has developed. In the dream we do not see the World as we have to see it when we manipulate it; rather, we see the poetic meaning it has for us. You have heard the saying, “Do not cast your pearls before swine,” well that goes for your dreams and even things you may share in therapy. Some people are rationalists with a lack of artistic or poetic inclination, and hence they have almost no feeling for symbolic language whether expressed in dreams or poetry. The lack forces upon them a very narrow concept of symbols. One ether understands them as psychological disturbance or sexual in nature—and the range of possibilities in the respect is great, since a line and a circle are exceedingly widespread forms of symbolism—or one understands them only by finding out through associations with what else they were connected. It is one of the most peculiar contradictions that many professionals are so little capable of understanding symbols. “Now the Angel of the Lord came and sat under the oak (terebinth) at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, and his son Gideon was beating wheat in the winepress to hide it from the Midianites. And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, The Lord is with you, you mighty man of [fearless] courage. And Gideon said to him, O sir, if the Lord is with us, why is all this befallen us? And where are all His wondrous works of which our fathers told us, saying, Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

“However, now the Lord has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian. The Lord turned to him and said, Go in this your might, and you shall save Israel from the hand of Midian. Have I not sent you? Gideon said to Him, Oh Lord, how can I deliver Israel? Behold, my clan is the poorest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house. The Lord said to him, Surely I will be with you, and you shall smite the Midianites as one man,” reports Judges 6.11-16. This feature, more than any other, brings out the wide gulf which separates the Hebraic from the Greek view of knowledge. In the latter, knowledge itself is purely theoretical…whereas in the Old Testament the person who does not act in accordance with what God has done or plans to do has but a fragmentary knowledge. For example, the Hebrew word for know generally refers to something one does. To know love, we must not only know about love but act lovingly. Likewise, to hear the word of God means not only to listen but also to obey. We read in the New Testament that by loving action a person knows God, for those who do what is true come to the light. Jesus declared that whoever would do the will of God would know God, that God would come and dwell within those who heeded what He said, and that we would find ourselves not by passive contemplation but by losing ourselves as we take up the cross. The wise human, the one who built one’s house on rock, differed from the foolish him in that one acted on God’s Word. Merely saying, “Lord, Lord,” does not qualify us as disciples; discipleship means doing the will of the Father. Over and over again, the Christian Bible teaches that the gospel power can be known only by living it. “The Lord touched their eyes, saying ‘It shall be done to you according to your faith,’” reports Matthew 9.29 #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

Our theological understanding of faith is informed by this biblical view of knowledge. Faith grows as we act on what little faith we have. Just as experimental subjects become more deeply committed to something for which they have suffered and witnessed, so also do we grow in faith as we act it out. Faith is born of obedience. The proof of Christianity really consists in following. Only the doer of the Word is its real hearer. Follow the way by which [the committed] began; by acting as if they believed, taking the holy water, having masses, et cetera. Even this will naturally make you believe. Believe in God and you will have to face hours when it seems obvious that this material World is the only reality: disbelieve in God and you must face hours when this material World seems to shout at your that it is not all. No conviction, religious or irreligious, will, of itself, end once and for all [those doubts] in the soul. Only the practice of Faith resulting in the habit of Faith will gradually do that. People are told they ought to love God. They cannot find any such feelings in themselves. What are they to do? The answer is act as if you did. Do not sit around trying to manufacture feelings. Ask yourself, “if I were sure that I loved God, what would I do?” When you have found the answer, go and do it. “The LORD is with you, O valiant warrior,” reports Judges 6.12. How you see yourself and how you feel about yourself will have a tremendous impact on how far you go in life and whether or not you fulfill your destiny. The reason your self-concept is so important is that you will probably speak, act, and react as the person you think you are. Psychologist have proved that you will most consistently perform in a manner that is in harmony with the images you have of yourself. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

If you see yourself as unqualified, unattractive, inferior, or inadequate, you will probably act in accordance with your thoughts. How can we apply the faith-follow-action principle to leading a church, to planning worship, and to nurturing personal faith? First, a top priority for churches must be to make their members active participants, not mere spectators. Many dynamic religious movements today—ranging from sects like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, and the Unification Church to charismatics and discipleship-centered communities—share and insistence that all on board be members of the crew. That is easier said than done, but it does provide a criterion by which to evaluate procedures for admitting and maintaining members. As a local church makes decisions and administers its program, it should constantly be asking, Will this activate our people and make priests of our believers? If research on persuasion is any indication, this will best be accomplished by direct, personal calls to committed action, not merely by mass appeals and announcements. In worship, too, people should be engaged as active participants, not as mere spectators of religious theater. Research indicates that passively received spoken words have surprisingly little impact on listeners. Changes in attitude resulting from spoken persuasion are less likely to endure and influence subsequent behaviour than attitude changes emerging from active experience. What is needed is to have listeners rehearse and act on what they hear. When the people sing responses, write their own confessions, contribute prayer, read Scripture responsively, takes notes on the sermon, utter exclamations, bring their offerings forward, pass the peace, make the sign of the cross, or sit, stand, and kneel—acts that viewers of the electronic church do not perform—they are making their worship their own. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
The principle has its limits, of course. We can become so preoccupied with doing things that we no longer have time to quietly receive God’s Word of grace and direction for our lives. Like the Pharisees, we can substitute our deeds for God’s act or to think that any kind of action will do. To say that action nurture growth in faith is not to tell the whole story of faith. However, it does tell part of the story. The action-attitude interplay can also inform Christian education and Christian nurture. Researchers have found that the attitudes most likely to affect our actions are those that we form by experience. We might therefore consider new methods of encouraging faith. Few Christian families appreciate and reap the benefits of family worship. Old Testament family practices helped people remember the might acts of God. When today’s Jewish family celebrates the Passover by eating special foods, reading prayers, and singing psalms, all of which symbolize their historical experience, they are helped to renew the roots of deep convictions and feelings. Among Christians, family celebrations are becoming more common during Advent. With a boost from the church, home-based activity could be extended to celebrate all the great themes of the church year. Although church and family ritual may sometimes degenerate into a superficial religious exercise, few of us appreciate the extent to which the natural ritual of our own personal histories has shaped who we are. Many of the things we did without question in childhood have long since become an enduring part of our self-identities. Indeed, because we have internalized our own rituals, we find it difficult to recognize them as rituals; but it is easy to recognize other people’s rituals. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

The overarching objective on which all these points converge is this: we need to create opportunities for people to enact their convictions, thereby confirming and strengthening their Christian identity. Biblical and psychological perspectives link arms in reminding us that faith is like love. If we hoard it, it will shrivel. If we use it, exercise it, and express it, we will have it more abundantly. Every person has an image of oneself. The question is, does your image of who you are line up correctly with who God says you are? Individuals who see themselves as God sees them are usually happy about who they are. Do not look for your reflection in others. Know that you have been created in God’s image and He has crowed you with tremendous honor. “What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of [Earthborn] man that You care for him? Yet You have made him but a little lower than God [or Heavenly beings], and You have crowned him with glory and honor,” reports Psalm 8.4-5. Christians who see themselves as God sees them feel good about themselves, because they know that God loves them and He feels good about them! They can honestly say, “Thank You, Father, for creating me the way You did. I know that You have a purpose and a plan for me, and I would rather be me than any other person on Earth. You have promised that You have good things in store for me, and I cannot wait to discover them!” My dear Devouts, just being within earshot of the way of perfection should, not turn you away or make you depressed. Rather, it should provoke you to fly higher, and if that makes your nose bleed, to sigh more for such a life while still on Earth. Would that you have arrived at a point where you no longer love yourself above all else! #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

Would that you stood at the ready for Jesus’ command, and the command of the Father has put over us. That would please Jesus much, and our whole life on Earth would pass in joy and peace. God wants us to see ourselves as priceless treasure. He wants us to feel good about ourselves God knows we are not perfect, that we have faults and weaknesses, and sometimes we make mistakes. And yet, God loves us anyway. He created us in His image, and He is continually shaping us, conforming un to His character, helping us to become even more like Him. That is why it is important that we learn to love ourselves, faults and all, not because of pride or egoism, but because that is how our Heavenly Father loves us. We can hold our head up high and walk with confidence knowing that God loves us unconditionally. His love for us is based on what we are, not on what we do. However, up to this point, if I may be permitted a painful observation, My dear Devout, many of us have a lot of excess baggage to leave behind. We could resign it totally to Jesus Christ. Then we would get what we want. Gold refined in the fire by Jesus—that tis to say, as it is in the Last Book of the New Testament (3.18), rich in Celestial Wisdom, poor in all other wisdoms. Jesus has said it before, and He will say it again. While on this Earth, we should be humbler and have more faith and follow the Ten Commandments. There was a community in Virginia, where someone lost their life because they were a victim of a crime. The community responded by going to church more and putting the Ten Commandments back in the school because these rituals and laws remind us to be good people. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

God believes in us even more than we believe in ourselves. So often, we sense God telling us that He has something big for us to do. However, we say, “Oh, God, I cannot do that. I am just a nobody. I do not have the skills or talent.” God sees you as successful. You may not believe that you are at the pinnacle of success, but that does not change God’s image of you. God still sees you exactly as His Word describes you. You may feel unqualified, insecure, or overwhelmed by life; you may feel weak, fearful, and insignificant, but today dare to start seeing yourself as God see you—successful! We are also prepared for reality with a ground floor (Nature) and then above that one floor and one only—an eternal, spaceless, timeless, spiritual Something of which we can have no images and which, if it presents itself to human consciousness at all, does so in a mystical experience which shatters all our categories of thought. What we are not prepared for is anything in between. We feel quite sure that the first step beyond the World of our present experience must lead either nowhere at all or else into the blinding abyss of undifferentiated spirituality, the unconditioned, the absolute. That and an angelic World. That is why many believe in immortality who cannot believe in the resurrection of the body. That is why Pantheism is more popular than Christianity, and why many desire a Christianity stripped of its miracles. I cannot now understand but I well remember, the passionate conviction with which I myself once defended this prejudice. Any rumour of floors or levels intermediate between the Unconditioned and the World revealed by our present sense I rejected without trial as “mythology.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
Yet it is very difficult to see any rational grounds for the dogma that reality must have no more than two levels. There cannot, from the nature of the case, be evidence that God never created and never will create, more than one system. Each of them would be at least extra-natural in relation to all the others: and if any of them is more concrete, more permanent, more excellent, and richer than another it will be to that other super-natural. Nor will a partial contact between any two obliterate their distinctness. In that way there might be Natures piled upon Natures to any height God pleased, each Supernatural to that below it and Subnatural to that which is surpassed it. However, the tenor of Christian teaching is that we are actually living in a situation even more complex than that. A new Nature is being not merely made but made out of an old one. We live amid all the anomalies, inconveniences, hopes, and excitements of a house that is being rebuilt. Something is being pulled down and something going up in its place. To accept the idea of intermediate floors—which the Christian story will, quite simply, force us to do if it is not a falsehood—does not of course involve losing our spiritual apprehension of the top floor of all. Most certainly, beyond all Worlds, unconditioned and unimaginable, transcending discursive thought, there yawns forever he ultimate Fact, the fountain of all other facthood, the burning and undimensioned depth of the Divine Life. Most certainly also, to be united with that Life in the eternal Sonship of Christ is, strictly speaking, the only thing worth a moment’s consideration. And in so far as that is what you mean by Heaven, Christ’s divine Nature never left it, and therefore never returned to it: and His human nature ascended thither not at the moment of the Ascension but at every moment. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

In that sense not one word that the spiritualizers have uttered will, please God, ever be unsaid by me. However, it by no means follows that there are not other truths as well. I allow, indeed I insist, that Christ cannot be at “the right hand of God” except in a metaphorical sense. I allow and insist that the Eternal Word, the Second Person of the Trinity, can never be, nor have been, confined to any place at all: it is rather in God that all places exist. However, the records say that the glorified, but still in some sense corporeal, Christ withdrew into some different mode of being about six weeks after the Crucifixion: and that He is “preparing a place” for us. “And let us not lose heart and grow weary and faint in acting nobly and doing right, for in due time and at the appointed season we shall reap, if we do not loosen and relax our courage and faint,” reports Galatians 6.9. “There is [now no distinction] neither Jewish or Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” reports Galatians 4.24. “You also must be ready therefore, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not expect Him,” reports Matthew 24.44. It is not enough to have citizens and to protect them; it is also necessary to give some though to their substance. And seeing to the public needs is an obvious consequence of the general will, and the third essential duty of government. This duty is not, as should be apparent, to fill the granaries of private individuals and to exempt these people from working, but rather to maintain abundance so within their reach that to acquire it, labour is always necessary and never useless. It also extends to al the operations regarding the preservation of the public treasury and the expenditures of the public administration. Thus, after having discussed the general economy in relation to the government of persons, it remains for us to consider it in relation to the administration of goods. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

This part offers no fewer difficulties to resolve or contradictions to overcome than the preceding one. Certainly the right to property is the most sacred of all the citizens’ rights, and more important in certain respects than liberty itself, either because it is more intimately linked with the preservation of life, or because, being easier to usurp and more difficult to defend than one’s person, more respect needs to be given to what can more easily be stolen, or finally because property is the true foundation of civil society and the true guarantee of the citizens’ commitments. For if goods were not answerable for persons, nothing would be so easy as eluding one’s duties and scoffing at the laws. On the other hand, it is no less certain that the maintenance of the state and of the government demand costs and expenditures. And since anyone granting the end cannot refuse the means, it follows that the members of the society should contribute their goods toward its preservation. Moreover, it is difficult on the one hand to maintain the security of the property of private individuals without attacking it on the other. And it is impossible for all the regulations bearing on inheritance, wills, and contracts not to restrict the citizens in certain respects regarding the disposition of their estate, and consequently regarding their right to property. However, besides what I have already said about the unanimity which reigns between the authority of the law and the liberty of the citizen, there is, in relation to the disposition of goods, an important point to be made which eliminates several difficulties. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
The nature of the right to property does not extend beyond the life of the property owner, and the moment a human dies, one’s estate generally no longer belongs to that individual. Thus, prescribing to one the conditions under which one can dispose of them is actually less an apparent alteration of one’s right than it is a real extension of it. In general, although the institution of the laws which govern the power of private individuals in the disposition of their own estate belongs only to the sovereign, the spirit of the laws which the government must follow in carrying them out is that, from father to son and from relative to relative, the family’s goods should leave the family and be alienated as little as possible. There is good reason for this in favour of children, to whom the right to property would be quite useless, were the father to leave them nothing, and who, moreover, having often contributed by their labour to the acquisition of the father’s goods, are associated in their own right with his right. However, another reason, more remote and no less important, is that nothing is more baneful to mores and to the republic than continual changes of status and fortune among the citizens, changes that are the proof and the source of a thousand disorders which overturn and confuse everything, and because of which neither those who were raised for one things and find themselves destined for another nor those who rise nor those who fall can adopt the maxims or the lights suitable to their new status, and much less fulfill its duties. The corporate identity crisis is intensified by the speed at which events are moving. For they very speed of change introduces a new element into management, forcing executives, already nervous in an unfamiliar environment, to make more and more decisions at a faster and faster pace. Response times are honed to a minimum. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
At the financial level the speed of transactions is accelerating since banks have computerized. They are even offer lone services twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. For a fee, you can even get a lone at 1am, deposited into your account with in a few hours. Some banks have even relocated geographically to take advantage of time zone differences. Time zones can be used as a competitive edge. In this hotted-up environment, the big corporations are driven almost willy-nilly to invest and borrow in various currencies not on an annual, a ninety-day, or even a seven-day basis, but literally on an overnight minute-to-minute basis. A new corporate officer has appeared in the executive suite—the “international cash manager,” who remains plugged into the Worldwide electronic casino twenty-four hours a day, searching for the lowest interest rates, the best currency bargains, the fastest turnaround. Nor is this function trivial. Like famers who make more from selling land than from growing food, some major corporations are making more profit—or racking up greater losses—from currency and financial manipulation than from actual production. Also, a new storm of online banks are creating a tsunami of new financial institutions for customers to choose form and offering high investment rate, zero interest loans, and direct deposit advances for free because they know consumers do not read the fine print. They can offer such good deals because they are not federally insured, so their customers could lose all of their money and never get it back. However, that is unlikely, unless a disaster happens. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
In marketing, a similar acceleration is evident. Marketers must respond quickly in order to insure the survival for tomorrow. Network TV programmers are accelerating their decisions on killing new TV series that show rating weakness. No more waiting six of seven weeks, or a season. Another example: Johnson & Jonson learns that Bristol-Myers is determined to undersell J&J’s Tylenol. Does J&J adopt a wait-and-see attitude? No. In an amazingly short times, it moves to cut Tylenol’s prices in stores. No more weeks or months of procrastination. The very prose is breathless. In engineering, in manufacture, in research, in sales, in training, in personnel, in every department and branch of the corporation the same quickening of decision-making can be detected. And once more we see a parallel process, though less advanced, in the socialist industrial nations. COMECON, which used to revise prices every five years when it issued its five-year plan, has been forced to revise its prices annually in an attempt to keep up with the faster pace. Before long it will be six months, then even less. The results of this generalized speedup of the corporate metabolism are multiple: shorter product life-cycles, more leasing and renting more frequent buying and selling, more ephemeral consumption patterns, more fads, more training time for workers (who must continually adjust to new procedures), more frequent changes in contracts, more negotiations and legal work, more pricing changes, more job turnover, more dependence on data, more ad hoc organization—all of it exacerbated by inflation. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

The result is a high-stakes, high-adrenalin business environment. Under these escalating pressures it is easy to see why so many business people, bankers, and corporate executives wonder what exactly they are doing and why. Brought up with the Age of Information certainties, they see the World they knew tearing apart under the impact of an accelerating wave of change. Water flows from high in the mountains. Water runs deep in the Earth. Miraculously, water comes to us, and sustains all life. Water flows over these hands. May I use them skillfully to preserve our precious planet. O Lord, the God of America, You are rigidly just and righteous, for we are left a remnant that is escaped, as is this day. Behold, we are before You in our guilt, for none can stand before You because of this. for one who was a perfect human ‘mid all. Who once was saved through goodness at Thy call, Redeemed from overflowing floods of water—Save her who standeth steadfast as a wall, save her, our Father. For one unblemished in one’s works and ways though tried tenfold who, lifting up one’s gaze, saw angel forms, and ran to give them water—save her that shineth as the sunlight’s rays, save her, our Father. For that loved son who asked his aged sire, “Where is the lamb for offering made by fire?” For one who heard the tidings, “Here is water”—save her that wandereth in exile dire, save her, our Father. For one’s sake who before one’s brother came to take one’s blessing—hoping in Thy name; for one whose flocks increased by troughs of water—save her that was a palm-tree in her fame, save her, our Father. For one who meet to serve Thee Thou didst deem, apparelled as a bridegroom doth beseem; At Massah tried, at Meribah’s sad water—O save that goodly mountain of our dream, Save her, our Father. Love myself? Those words do not come easy for me, Father. However, with all my heart, I want to learn how to love myself, not so I can be America’s Next Top Model and bask in self-adulation, but so I can more deeply appreciate who You have made me to be, and that I might more effectively express Your #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
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