Randolph Harris II International Institute

Home » sister (Page 20)

Category Archives: sister

It is Still an Ill Wind that Blows When You Leave the Hairdresser, Guilty of Spiritual Arson!

Image

Cordelia, then, is her name! Cordelia! It is a beautiful name, and that, too, is important, since it can often be very disturbing to have an ugly name together with the most tender adjectives. I already recognized her a log way off; she was walking with two other girls on her left. The movement of their walking seemed to indicate that they were about to stop. I stood on the corner and read the posters, while I continually kept my eye on my strangers. They parted. The two presumably had gone a little out of their way, for they went in a different direction. She came along toward my corner. When she had walked a few steps, one of the young ladies came running after her and cried loudly enough for me to hear it: Cordelia! Cordelia! Then the third one joined them; they put their heads together for a privy council meeting whose secrets I futilely strained my ears to hear. Thereupon they all three laughed and hurried away at a somewhat quicker pace in the direction the two had taken. I followed them. They entered a house on Stranden. I waited for a while, since there was a strong probability that Cordelia would soon come back alone. However, that did not happen. Cordelia! That is really a splendid name—indeed, the same name as that of King Lear’s third daughter, that remarkable girl whose heart did no dwell on her lips, whose lips were mute when her heart was full. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23

Image

So also with my Cordelia. She resembles her, of that I am certain. However, in another sense her heart does dwell on her lips, not in the form of words but in more heartfelt way in the form of a kiss. How ripe with health her lips! I have never seen lips more beautiful. That I actually am in love I can tell partly by the secrecy with which I treat this matter, almost even with myself. All love is secretive, even the faithless kind, if it has the appropriate esthetic element within it. It has never occurred to me to wish for confidants or to boast of my adventures. Thus is almost makes me happy that I did not come to know where she lives but the place where she frequently visits. Perhaps I thereby may also have come even closer to my goal. I can make my observations without arousing her attention, and from this firmly established point it will be difficult for me to gain admission into her family. However, should this situation turn out to be a difficulty—eh bien [well, now]!—then I will put up with the difficulty alone. Everything I do I do con amore [with love] and o I also love con amore. In the realm of human destiny, the depth of human’s questioning is more important than one’s answers. Most of God’s children are, in fact, barely presentable. The most common error made in matters of appearance is the belief that one should disdain the superficial and let the true beauty of one’s soul shine through. If there are places on your body where this is a possibility, you are no attractive—you are leaking. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

Image

James, the Lord’s brother, understood this as well as any man in history, and through the use of graphic analogies he has given us the most penetrating exposition of the tongue anywhere in literature, sacred or secular: “When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Likewise the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts,” reports James 3.3-5. The horse is an incredibly powerful animal. Takes 550 pounds (as much as puffing Olympic heavyweight lifter can hoist overhead), set it on a horse’s back, and it will barely snort as it stands breathing easily under the burden. The same horse, unburdened, can sprint a quarter-mile in about twenty-five seconds. A horse is half a ton of raw power! Yet, place a bridle and bit in its mouth and a 100-pound woman on its back who knows what she is doing and the animal can literally be made to dance. James observed the same phenomenon in ancient ships, as ships small and large were steered by an amazingly small rudder. Today it is still the same, where it be an acrobatic ski boat or the USS Enterprise. One who controls the rudder controls the ship. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23

Image

So it is with the mighty togue, that “movable muscular structure attached to the floor of the mouth” (Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary). “The tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts,” says James (v. 5). Or as Phillips has helpfully paraphrased it, “the human tongue is physically small, but what tremendous effects it can boast of.” Though it weighs only two ounces, it can legitimately boast of its disproportioned power to determine human destiny. This lives of Adolph Hitler and Winston Churchill bear eloquent testimony to the dark and bright sides of the to the dark and bright sides of the tongue’s power. The Fuhrer on one side of the Channel harangued a vast multitude with his hypnotic cadences. On the other side, the Prime Minister’s brilliant, measured utterances pulled a faltering nation together for its “finest hour.” However, we need not to look the drama of nations to see the truth of James’ words. Our own lives are evidence enough. Never doubt the power of the tiny tongue—and never underestimate it. James’ principal concern is with the destructive power of the tongue, and this produces a most provocative statement: “Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a World of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell,” (vv. 5,6). #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

Image

The tongue has awesome potential for harm, as the forest fire analogy suggests. At 9.00 one Sunday evening, October 8, 1871, poor Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicked over the lantern as she was being milked, starting the great Chicago Fire. That disaster blackened three and one half miles of the city, destroying over 17,000 buildings before it was checked by gunpowder explosions on the south line of fire. The fire lasted two days and cost over 250 lives. However, ironically that was not the greatest inferno in the Midwest that year. Historians tell us that one the same day that dry autumn a spark ignited a raging fire in the North Woods of Wisconsin, a blasé which burned for an entire month, taking more lives than the Chicago Fire. A veritable firestorm destroyed billions of yards of precious timber—all from one spark! The tongue has that scope of inflammatory power in human relationships, and James is saying that those who misuse the tongue are guilty of spiritual arson. A mere spark from an ill-spoken word can produce a firestorm that annihilates everyone it touches. Furthermore, because the tongue is a “World of evil,” it contains and conveys all the World system’s wickedness. It is party to every evil there is and actively intrudes its evil into our lives. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

Image

What is the effect of the tongue’s cosmic wickedness? “It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire” (v.6). “Course of life” is literally “the wheel of our genesis,” “genesis” referring to our human life or existence. What an apt description of human experience! About nine-tenths of the flames we experience in our lives come from the tongue. Having grabbed our imaginations with his graphic language, James adds the final touch: “and is itself set on fire by hell.” Here the language means continually set on fire. James used the same word for Hell that his brother Jesus used—“Gehenna”—derived from the perpetually burning garbage dump outside Jerusalem, a place of fire and filth where, as Jesus said, “their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9.48). Can anyone miss the point? The uncontrolled tongue has a direct pipeline to Hell! Fueled by Hell, it burns our lives with its filthy fires. However, it also, as Calvin says, an “instrument for catching, encouraging, and increasing the fires of hell.” Taking James’ word seriously, we recognize that the tongue has more destructive power than a hydrogen bomb, for the bomb’s power is physical and temporal, whereas the tongue is spiritual and eternal. The female spider is often a widow for embarrassing reasons—she regularly eats those who come her way. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23

Image

Lonely suitors and visitors alike quickly become corpses, and her dining room is a morgue. A visiting fly, having become captive, will appear to be whole, but the spider has drunk his insides so that he becomes his own hollow casket. Not a pleasant thought, especially if you have a touch of arachnophobia, as I do! The reason for this macabre procedure is that she has no stomach and so is incapable of digesting anything with her. Through tiny punctures she injects her digestive juices into a fly so that his insides are broken down and turned into warm soup. This soup she swills, even as most of us swill souls of one another after having cooked them in various enzymes: guilt, humiliations, subjectivities, cruel love—there are a number of fine, acidic mixes. And some among us are so skilled with the hypodermic word that our dear ones continue to sit up and to smile, quite as though they were still alive. This is a gruesome but effective metaphor to describe the destructive power of evilly intended words. Words do not dissolve mere organs and nerves but souls! This World is populated by walking human caskets because countless lives have been dissolved and sucked empty by another’s words. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

Image

Significantly, James does not tell us how the tongue’s destructive power is manifested in human speech. He knows that the spiritual mind, informed by the Scriptures, will have no problem in making the connections. This is also the same message Mrs. Winchester left behind in her spider web, art glass, and Shakespearean windows. It is also why Mrs. Winchester did not tolerate gossip and would let an employee go in a heartbeat for violating her will. The tongue’s destructive power in gossip lead the list, of course. A neighbour was jealous of Mrs. Winchester’s house and she fell victim to disgruntled town’s folks, who tried to ruin her professionally through rumor, and almost did. Several years later the gossiper had a change of heart and wrote Mrs. Winchester asking for her forgiveness, and she forgave her. However, there was no way the story could be erased. As Solomon wisely observed, “The words of a gossip are like choice morsels; they go down into a human’s inmost parts,” Proverbs 18.8. Gossip is greedily picked up and stored away by the hearers like tasty tidbits of filet mignon en croute au foie gras. Vigorous denial would only bring more suspicion—“So and so protests too much!” The damage was done. Hereafter the innocent Mrs. Winchester would always look into certain eyes and wonder if they had heard the story—and if they believed it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

Image

Gossip often veils itself in acceptable conventions such as “Have you hear?” or “Did you know?” or “They tell me…” or “Keep this to yourself, but…” or “I do not believe it is true, but I heard that…” or “I would not such rationalization in Christian circles is, “I am telling you this so you can pray.” This seems so pious, but the heart that feeds on hearing evil reports is a tool of Hell, and it leaves flaming fires and dead bodies in its wake. Oh, the heartache that comes from the tongue. A cousin of gossip is innuendo. Consider the ship’s first mate who after a drunken binge was written up by the captain on the ship’s log: “mate drunk off some Amsterdam and Hennessy today.” The mate’s revenge? Some months later he surreptitiously wrote on his own entry, “Captain sober today.” So it goes with the word unsaid, the awkward silence, the raised eyebrows, the quizzical look—all freighted with the misery of Hell. Gossip involves saying behind a person’s back what you would never say to one’s face. Flattery means saying to a person’s face what you would never say behind one’s back. The Scriptures warn us repeatedly against flatterers, for they are destructive people who carry a legion of unwholesome motives: “Whoever flatters one’s neighbour is spreading a net for one’s feet,” reports Proverbs 29.5. “A lying togue hates those it hurts, and a flattering mouth works ruin,” reports Proverbs 26.28. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

Image

Fault-finding seems endemic to the Christian Church. Perhaps this is because a taste of righteousness can be easily perverted into an overweening sense of self-righteousness and judgmentalism. Once while William Wirt Winchester was preaching, he noticed a lady in the audience who was known for her critical attitude. All through the service she sat and stared at his new tie. When the meeting ended, she same up to him and said very sharply, “Mr. Winchester, the strings on your tie are much too long. It is an offense to me!” He asked if any of the ladies present happened to have a pair of scissors in their purse. When the scissors were handed to him, he gave them to his critic and asked her to trim the streamers to her liking. After she clipped them off near the collar, he said, “Are you sure they are all right now?” “Yes, that is much better.” “Then let me have those shears a moment,” said Mr. Winchester. “I am sure you would not mind if I also gave you a bit of correction. I must tell you, madam, that your tongue is an offense to me—it is too long! Please stick it out…I would like to take some off.” On another occasion someone said to Mr. Winchester, “My talent is to speak my mind.” Mr. Winchester replied, “That is one talent God would not care a bit if you buried!” This is good advice for all Christians. “May the Lord cut off all flattering lips and every boastful tongue that says, ‘We will triumph with our tongues…’” reports Psalm 12.3, 4. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23

Image

Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. It does not allow that the scarifies imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many. Therefore in a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the right secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests. The only thing that permits us to acquiesce in an erroneous theory is the lack of a better one; analogously, an injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice. Being first virtues of human activities, truth and justice are uncompromising. These propositions seem to express our intuitive conviction of the primacy of justice. No doubt they are expressed too strongly. In any event I wish to inquire whether these contentions or others similar to them are sound, and if so how they can be accounted for. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

Image

To this end it is necessary to work out a theory of justice in the light of which these assertions can be interpreted and assessed. I shall begin by considering the role of the principles of justice. Let us assume, to fix ideas, that a society is a more or less self-sufficient association of persons who in the relations to one another recognize certain rules of conduct as binding and who for the most part act in accordance with them. Supposed further that these rules specify a system of cooperation designed to advance the good of those taking part in it. Then, although a society is a cooperative venture for mutual advantage, it is typically marked by a conflict as well as by an identity of interests. There is an identity of interests since social cooperation makes possible a better life for all than any would have if each were to live solely by one’s own efforts. There is a conflict of interests since persons are not indifferent as to how the greater benefits produced by their collaboration are distributed, for in order to pursue their ends they each prefer a larger to a lesser share. A set of principles is required for choosing among the various social arrangements which determine this division of advantages for underwriting an agreement on the proper distributive shares. These principles are he principles of social justice: they provide a way of assigning right and duties in the basic institutions of society and they define the appropriate distribution of the benefits and burdens of social cooperation. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

Image

Now let us say that a society is well-ordered when it is not only designed advance the good of its members but when it is also effectively regulated by a public conception of justice. That is, it is a society in which (1) everyone accepts and knows that the others accept the same principles of justice, and (2) the basic social institutions generally satisfy and are generally known to satisfy these principles. In this case while human may put forth excessive demands on one another, they nevertheless acknowledge a common point of view from which their claims may be adjudicated. If human’s inclination to self-interest makes their valiance against one another necessary, their public sense of justice makes their secure association together possible. Among individuals with disparate aims and purposes a shared conception of justice establishes the bonds of civic friendship; the general desire for justice limits the pursuit of other ends. One may think of a public conception of justice as constituting the fundamental character of a well-ordered human association. Existing societies are of course seldom well-ordered in this sense, for what is just and unjust is usually in dispute. Humans disagree about which principles should define the basis terms of their association. Yet we may still, despite this disagreement, that they each have a conception of justice. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

Image

That is, they understand the need for, and they are prepared to affirm, a characteristic set of principles for assigning basic rights and duties and for determining what they take to be the proper distribution of the benefits and burdens of social cooperation. Thus it seems natural to think the conception of justice as distinct from the various conceptions of justice and as being specified by the role which these different sets of principles, these different conceptions, have in common. Those who hold different conceptions of justice can, then, still agree that institutions are just when no arbitrary distinctions are made between persons in the assigning of basic rights and duties and when the rules determine a proper balance between competing claims to the advantages of social life. Humans can agree to this description of just institutions since the notions of an arbitrary distinction and of a proper balance, which are included in the concept of justice, are left open for each to interpret according to the principles of justice that one accepts. These principles single out which similarities and differences among persons are relevant in determining rights and duties and they specify which division of advantages is appropriate. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

Image

Clearly this distinction between the concept and the various conceptions of justice settles no important questions. It simply helps to identify the role of the principles of social justice. Some measures of agreement in conceptions of justice is, however, not the only prerequisite for a viable human community. There are other fundamental social problems, in particular those of coordination, efficiency, and stability. Thus the plans of individuals need to be fitted together so that their activities are compatible with one another and they can all be carried through without anyone’s legitimate expectations being severely disappointed. Moreover, the execution of these plans should lead to the achievement of social ends in ways that are efficient and consistent with justice. And final, the scheme of social cooperation must be stable: it must be more or less regularly complied with and its basic rules willingly acted upon; and when infractions occur, stabilizing forces should exist that prevent further violations and tend to restore the arrangement. Now it is evident that these three problems are connected with that of justice. In the absence of a certain measure of agreement on what is just and unjust, it is clearly more difficult for individuals to coordinate their plans efficiently in order to ensure that mutually beneficial arraignments are maintained. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

Image

Distrust and resentment corrode the ties of civility, and suspicion and hostility tempt humans to acts in ways they would otherwise avoid. So while the distinctive role of conceptions of justice is to specify basic rights and duties and to determine the appropriate distributive shares, the way in which a conception does this is bound to affect the problems of efficiency, coordination, and stability. We cannot, in general, assess a conception of justice by its distributive role alone, however useful this role may be in identifying the concept of justice. We must take into account its wider connections; for even though justice has a certain priority, being the most important virtue of institutions, it is still true that, other things equal, one conception of justice is preferable to another when its broader consequences are more desirable. Recognizing God helps you define the Universe as you see it. I who stand before you, I who come into your presence, I who am your worshipper, call out to you, Dear God in Heaven. You are unlimited, and are vastly greater than we are. Sweet-songed God, hear me. I come before you, Lord of the Bow, whose arrows bring healing. I ask that you help me, please heal the wounded in this planet, as their wounds vary from spiritual, financial, physical and/or mental. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

Image

King Lamont supposes that Ammon is the Great Spirit—Ammon teaches the king about the Creation, God’s dealings with humans, and the redemption that comes through Christ—Lamoni believes and falls to the Earth as if dead. About 90 years Before Christ. “And it came to pass that king Lamoni caused that his servants should stand forth and testified to the things which they had seen, and he had learned of the faithfulness of Ammon in preserving his flocks, and also of his great power in contending against those who sought to slay him, he was astonished exceedingly, and said: Surely, this is more than a man. Behold, is not this the Great Spirit who doth send such great punishments upon this people, because of their murders? And they answered the king, and said: Whether he be the Great Spirit or a man, we know not; but this much we do know, that he cannot be slain by the enemies of the king; neither can they scatter the king’s flocks when he is with us, because of his expertness and great strength; therefore, we know that he is a friend to the king. And now, O king, we do not believe that a human has such great power, for we know cannot be slain. And now, when the king heard these words, he said unto them; Now I know that it is the Great Spirit; and he has come down at this time to preserve you lives, that I might be your brethren. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

Image

“Now, this is the Great Spirit of whom our father have spoken. Now this was the tradition of Lamoni, which he had received from his father, that there was a Great Spirit. Notwithstanding they believed in a Great Spirit, they suppose that whatsoever they did was right; nevertheless, Lamont began to fear exceedingly, with fear lest he had some wrong in slaying his servants; for he had slain many of them because their brethren had scattered their flocks at the place of water; and thus, because they had had their flocks scattered they were slain. Now it was the practices of these Lamanites to stand by the waters of Sebus to scatter the flocks of the people, that thereby they might drive away many that were scattered unto their own land, it being a practice of plunder among them. And it came to pass that king Lamoni inquired of his servants, saying: Where is this man that has such great power? And they said unto him: Behold, he is feeding they horses. Now the king has commanded his servants, previous to the time of the watering of their flocks, that they should prepare his horses and chariots, and conduct him forth to the land of Nephi; for there had been a great feast appointed at the land of Nephi, by the father of Lamoni, who was king over all the land. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

Image

“Now when king Lamoni heard that Ammon was preparing his horses and his chariots he was more astonished, because of the faithfulness of Ammon, saying: Surely there has not been any servant among all my servants that has been so faithful as this man; for even he doth remember all my commandments to execute them. Now I surely know that this is the Great Spirit, and I would desire him that he come in unto me, but I durst not. And it came to pass that when Ammon had made ready the horses and the chariots for the king and his servants, he went in no the king, and he saw that the countenance of the king was changed; therefore he was about to return out of his presence. And one of the king’s servants said unto him, Rabbanah, which is, being interpreted, powerful or great king, considering their kings to be powerful; and thus he said unto him: Rabbanah, the king desireth thee to stay. Therefore Ammon turned himself unto the king, and said unto him: What wilt thou that I should do for thee, O king? And the king answered him not for the space of an hour, according to their time for he knew no what he should say unto him. And it came to pass that Ammon said unto him again: What desirest thou of me? But the king answered not. And it came to pass that Ammon, being filled with the Spirit of God, therefore he perceived the thoughts of the king. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23

Image

“And he said unto him: Is it because thou hast heard that I defended thy servants and thy flocks, and slew seven of their brethren with the sling and with the sword, and smote off the arms of others, in order to defend thy flocks and thy servants; behold, is it this that causeth thy marvelings? I say unto you, what is it, that they marvelings are so great? Behold, I am a man, and am thy servant; therefore, whatsoever thou desirest which is right, that will I do. Now when the king had heard these words, he marveled again, for he behold that Ammon could discern his thoughts; but notwithstanding this, king Lamoni did open his mouth, and said unto him: Who art thou? Art thou that Great Spirit, who knows all things? Ammon answered and said unto him: I am not. And the king said: How knowest thou the thoughts of my heart? Thou mayest speak boldly, and tell me concerning these things; and also tell me by what power ye slew and smote off the arms of my brethren that scattered my flocks—and now, if thou wilt tell me concerning these things, whatsoever thou desirest I will give unto thee: and if it were needed, I would guard thee with my armies; but I know that thou art more powerful than all they; nevertheless, whatsoever thou desirest of me I will grant it unto thee. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

Image

“Now Ammon being wise, yet harmless, he said unto Lamoni: Wilt thou hearken unto my words, if I tell thee by what power I do these things? And this is the thing that I desire of thee. And the king answered him, and said: Yea, I will believe all thy words. And thus he was caught with guile. And Ammon began to speak unto him with boldness, and said unto him: Believest thou that there is a God? And he answered, and said unto him: I do no know what the meaneth. And then Ammon said: Believest thou that there is a Great Spirit? And he said, Yea. And Ammon said: This is God. And Ammon said unto him again: Believest thou that this Great Spirit, who is God, created all things which are in Heaven and in the Earth? And he said: Yea, I believe that he created all things which are in the Earth; but I do not know the Heavens. And Ammon said unto him: The Heavens is a place where God dwells and all his holy angels. And king Lamoni said: Is it above the Earth? And Ammon said: Yea, and he looked down upon all the children of humans; and he knows all the thoughts and intents of the heart; for by his hand were they all created from the beginning. And king Lamoni said; I believe all these things which thou hast spoken. Art thou sent from God? Ammon said to him: I am a man; and man in the beginning was created after the image of God, and I am called by his Holy Spirit to teach these things unto this people, that they may be brought to a knowledge of that which is just and true. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

Image

“And a portion of that Spirit dwelleth in me, which giveth me knowledge, and also power according to my faith and desires which are in God. Now when Ammon had said these words, he began at the creation of the World, and also the creation of Adam, and told him all the things concerning the fall of man, and rehearsed and laid before him the records and the holy scriptures of the people, which had been spoken by the prophets, even down to the time that their father, Lehi, left Jerusalem. And he also rehearsed unto them (for it was unto the king and to his servants) al the journeyings of their fathers in the wilderness, and all their sufferings with hunger and thirst, and their travail, and so forth. And he also rehearsed unto them concerning the rebellions of Laman and Lemuel, and the sons of Ishmael, yea, all their rebellions did he relate unto them; and he expounded unto them all the records and scriptures from the time that Lehi left Jerusalem down to the present time. However, this is not all; for he expounded unto them the plan of redemption, which was prepared from the foundation of the World; and he also made known unto them concerning the coming of Christ, and all the work of the Lord did he make known unto them. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23

Image

“And it came to pass that after he had said all these things, and expounded them to the king, that the king believed all his words. And he began to cry unto the Lord, saying: O Lord, have mercy; according to thy abundant mercy which thou hast had upon the people of Nephi, have upon me, and my people. And now, when he had said this, he fell unto the Earth, as if he were dead. And it came to pass that his servant took him and carried him in unto his wife, and laid him upon a bed; and he lay as if he were dead for the space of two days and two nights; and his wife, and his sons, and his daughters mourned over him, after the manner of the Lamenting his loss,” reports Alma 18.1-43. Look down from Heaven, O Christ, on Thy flock and lambs, and bless their bodies and souls. Please grant those who have received Thy sign, O Christ, on their foreheads, to be Thine own in the day of judgment. A Desto, Domine, supplicationibus nostris; et me, qui etiam misericordia Tua primus indigeo, clementer exaudi; et quem non election emeriti, sed dono gratiae Tuae, constituisti hujus operis ministrum, da fiduciam Tui muneris exsequendia, et Ispse in nostro ministerio quod Tuae pietatis est operare. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23

Image

Image

How many times have you visited Sarah Winchester’s illustrious estate? Wether its liking a post, visiting virtually, or attending our day and night garden tours, we’re so grateful for all of your support!
Image

MOVE IN READY: HOME SITE 74

4 Bedrooms – 3.5 Bathrooms – 3,501 sq. ft. – $621,740

Image

Home Site 74 at Brighton Station is a beautiful Residence Four and one of the largest homes available in the market! At 3,501 square feet we are sure you’ll have enough room for the entire family here! The open concept design includes four bedrooms, three and one half bathrooms and a three car garage. Enjoy a spacious back yard with California Room included!

Image

When entering this expansive home, take note of the two story ceiling height at the entry. There is a bedroom on the first floor, located off the entry, with its own bathroom making it ideal for a guest suite or multigenerational living.

Image

The formal dining room provides ample space for entertaining and has convenient access to the kitchen via Butler’s Pantry.

Image

The kitchen comes fully equipped with our gleaming extended kitchen island, perfect for family gatherings and an entertainer’s dream! White cabinets and undercabinet lighting with stainless steel appliances, quartz counters and tile backsplash complete this stunning kitchen.

Image

Upstairs you will 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 two walk-in closets. https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/move-in-ready-home-site-74/

Image

A Merry Heart Maketh a Cheerful Countenance–We are Caught in the Power of their Revelatory Ecstasy!

ImageThe genius of our ruling class is that is has kept a majority of the people from every questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return. Nothing is more free than the imagination of a human; and though it cannot exceed that original stock of ideas, furnished by the internal and external senses, it has unlimited power of mixing, compounding, separating, and dividing these ideas, in all the varieties of fiction and vision. It can feign a train of events, with all the appearance of reality, ascribe to them a particular time and place, conceive them as existent, and paint them out to itself with every circumstance, that belongs to any historical fact, which it believes with the greatest certainty. Wherein, therefore, consists the difference between such a fiction and belief? It lies not merely in any peculiar idea, which is annexed to such a conception as commands our assent, and which is wanting to every known fiction. For as the mind has authority over all its ideas, it could voluntarily annex this particular idea to any function, and consequently be able to believe whatever it pleases; contrary to what we find by daily experience. We can, in our conception, join the head of a human to the body of a horse; but it is not in our power to believe, that such an animal has ever really existed. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25

ImageIt follows, therefore, that the difference between fiction and belief lies in some sentiment or feeling, which is annexed to the latter, not to the former, and which depends not on the will, no can be commanded at pleasure. It must be excited by nature, like all other sentiments; and must arise from the particular situation, in which the mind is placed at any particular juncture. Whenever any object is presented to the memory or sense, it immediately, by force of custom, carries the imagination to conceive that object, which is usually conjoined to it; and this conception is attended with a feeling or sentiment, different from the loose reveries of the fancy. In this consists the whole nature of belief. For as there is no matter of fact which we believe so firmly, that we cannot conceive the contrary, there would be no difference between the conception assented to, and that which is rejected, were it not for some sentiment, which distinguishes the one from the other. If I see a billiard ball moving towards another, on a smooth table, I can easily conceive it to stop upon contact. This conception implies no contradiction; but still it feels very differently from that conception, by which I represent to myself the impulse, and the communication of motion from one ball to another. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25

ImageWhere we to attempt a definition of  this sentiment, we should, perhaps, find it a very difficult, if not an impossible task; in the same manner as if we should endeavour to define the feeling of cold or passion of anger, to a creature who never had any experience of these sentiments. BELIEF is the true and proper name of this feeling; and no one is ever at a loss to know the meaning of that term; because every human is every moment conscious of the sentiment represented by it. It may not, however, be improper to attempt a description of this sentiment; in hopes we may, by that means, arrive at some analogies, which may afford a more perfect explication of it. I say then, that belief is nothing but a more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady conception of an object, than what the imagination alone is ever able to attain. This variety of terms, which may seem so unphilosophical, is intended only to express that act of the mind, which renders realities, or what is taken for such, more present to us than fictions, cases them to weigh more in the thought, and gives them a superior influence on the passions and imagination. Provided we agree about the thing, it is needless to dispute about the terms. The imagination has the command over all its idea, and can join and mix them, in all ways possible. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25

ImageIt may conceive fictitious objects with all the circumstances of place and time. It may set them, in a manner, before our eyes, in their true colours, just as they might have existed. However, as it is impossible, that this faculty of imagination can ever, of itself, reach belief, it is evident, that belief consists not in the peculiar nature or order of ideas, but in the manner of their conception, and in their feeling to the mind. I confess, that it is impossible perfectly to explain this feeling or manner of conception. We may make use of words, which express something near it. However, its true and proper name, as we observed before, is belief; which is a term, that every one sufficiently understands in common life. And in philosophy, we can go no farther than assert, that belief is something felt by the mind, which distinguishes the ideas of the judgment from the fictions of the imagination. It gives them more weight and influence; makes them appear of greater importance; enforces them in the mind; and renders them the governing principle of our actions. I hear at present, for instance, person’s voice, with whim I am acquainted; and the sound comes as from the next room. This impression of my senses immediately conveys my thought to the person, together with all the surrounding objects. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25

ImageI paint them out to myself as existing at present, with the same qualities and relations, of which I formerly knew them possessed. These ideas take faster hold of my mind, than ideas of an enchanted castle. They are very different to the feeling, and have a much greater influence of every kind, either to give pleasure or pain, joy or sorrow. Let us, then, take in the whole compass of this doctrines, and allow, that the sentiment of belief is nothing but a conception more intense and steady than what attends the mere fictions of the imagination, and that this manner of conception arises from a customary conjunction of the object with something present to the memory or senses: I believe that it will not be difficult, upon these suppositions, to find other operations of the mind analogous to it, and to trace up these phenomena to principles still more general. We have already observed, that nature has established connexions among particular ideas, and that no sooner one idea occurs to our thoughts than it introduces its correlative, and carries out attention towards it, by a gentle and insensible movement. These principles of connexion or association we have reduced to three, namely, Resemblance, Contiguity, and Causation; which are the bonds, that unite our thoughts together, and beget that regular train of reflection or discourse, which, in a greater or less degree, takes place among all humankind. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25

ImageNow here arises a question, on which the solution of the present difficulty will depend. Does it happen, in all these relations, that, when one of the objects is presented to the senses or memory, the mind is not only carried to the conception of the correlative, but reaches a steadier and stronger conception of it than what otherwise it would have been able to attain? This seems to be the case with that belief, which arises from the relation of cause and effect. And if the case be the same with the other relations or principles of association, this may be established as a general law, which takes place in all the operations of the mind. We may, therefore, observe, as the first experiment to our present purpose, that, upon the appearance of the picture of an absent friend, our idea of one is evidently enlivened by the resemblance, and that every passion, which that idea occasions, whether of joy or sorrow, acquires new force and vigour. In producing this effect, there concur both a relation and a present impression. Where the picture bears one no resemblance, at least was not intended for one, it never so much as conveys our thought to one: And where it is absent, as well as the person; though the mind may pass from the thought of the one to that of the other; it feels its idea to be rather weakened than enlivened by that transition. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25

ImageWe take a pleasure in viewing the picture of a friend, when it is set before us; but when it is removed, rather choose to consider one directly, than by reflection in an image, which is equally distant and obscure. Science cannot contradict faith; it can show that faith is not absurd, that what is believed is corroborated by documents. However, the important problem is not to investigate the sources of Christian faith scientifically. It is to determine the relation of Christ to human history. This is more than ever true in our century. We may well agree that the historical relevance of the Christological affirmation drives home more effectively than any other today. When this has been granted, other problems remain to be considered. At the age of twenty-five, I presented some theses to a group of theological friends, in which I raised and attempted to answer the question, how the Christian doctrine might be understood, if the non-existence of the historical Jesus should become historically probable. One might view this theological escapade into the impossible as a pardonable youthful adventure—radical, but not to be taken seriously. Yet, even today, I maintain the radicalism of this question. A to historical inquiry into the facts behind the rise of the biblical picture of Christ, the exposition of those facts can only lend to probability. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25

ImageThe historical Jesus not only did not appear, but receded farther and farther with every new step. None of the innumerable sketches of a historical Jesus can claim to be a profitable picture. The attempt pf historical criticism to find the empirical truth about Jesus of Nazareth was a failure. This attitude towards historical investigation is more complex than appears at face-value, and it should be neither endorsed nor dismissed rapidly. One should distinguish several elements. We must admit that the positive knowledge of Jesus given by history is only probable knowledge. This is not because documents are unavailable or deficient, but simply because historical study as such never gives more than a probable knowledge. Catholic theologians commonly call such knowledge a “moral certainty.” Terms and words are not especially important. Whether we speak, in this case, of probability or of moral certainty, we imply that historical truth has characteristics of its own, distinguishing it from the truth of mathematics, of physics, or, in another domain, of metaphysic. Historical truth is never more than a probability. If we call it a certainty, we must qualify it as “moral.” To say this is to recognize the element of validity in the position here. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25

ImageThe probability is very faint, which does not take out knowledge of the life and times of Jesus seriously enough. In the present sate of historical studies there is not the ghost of a chance that “the non-existence” of Jesus should become historically probable. The liberal theologians attempted to base Christianity on historical research. However, we condemn the role of liberal theology, along which Christ was drawn into the realm of universal or highest humanity. He became the highest expression of humankind’s possibilities, a wave (the largest perhaps) in the stream of time, subjected to its arbitrariness and ambiguity. This was bound to happen once biblical critical exegesis was erected into the norm of Christian faith. Christ was no longer the center of history, no longer the Christ. He was the historical Jesus, or whatever vague knowledge we had of him. We stand unimpeachable when we object to this as a matter of principle: The foundation of Christian belief is not the historical Jesus, but the biblical picture of the Christ. The criterion of human thought and action is not the constantly changing and artificial product of historical research, but the picture of Christ as it is rooted in ecclesiastical belief and human experience. Our opposition to strict and rigid liberal doctrines and covenants, which replace the crucified Christ by the historical Jesus, is the only sound attitude. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25

ImageChristology must be the norm of history. Instead, liberal Protestantism made historical tools the norm of Christology. It is perfectly true to say that the historical records of Jesus are themselves the products of faith; it is something else to conclude that they are historically reliable, an assertion to which forms the gist of the sections of systematic theology on the research for the historical Jesus and its failure, and on faith and historical scepticism. There is actually no logical link between the two propositions. To admit a logical link would be to admit that faith distorts facts. However, faith never distorts; it interprets. This is quite different. What was wrong with the liberal theologians who were seeking for the historical Jesus was not their interest in history (though they often fell into historicism), but that their search was not guided by the religious picture of the Christ which was that of the early Church. They became bad historians, excessively negative in their conclusions, because they had first been bad theologians. It is easy to see why we made the aforementioned propositions. The implied contrast between the evanescent historical Jesus and the Christ of faith corresponds too well to our own theological distinction between Jesus as Jesus and Jesus as Christ. It is not the man from Nazareth that matters, but our witness to the New Being in ourselves. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25

ImageOutside of the, Jesus has no place in theology. Christology is not Jesusology. It is not interested in whatever happened to the man Jesus. It is interested in the fact that the disciples perceived the Christ in Him. We insist that Jesus Christ means Jesus who is said to be the Christ. In our self-consciousness, Jesus may not always have known that he was the Christ. On the Cross at least he despaired. Looking at history in the light of this distinction between Jesus and the Christ in him, between a man and the New Being which manifested itself through him, we even imagine that maybe Jesus was not the Christ. There was a Christ: this is a matter of revelatory experiences. The Apostles experienced it directly, and we still experience it, though indirectly. We are caught in the power of their revelatory ecstasy, and so we cannot deny that there was, that there is, a Christ. However, the identity of the Christ and of Jesus is no a matter of faith. It is a point of history; and it is very questionable. Participation, not historical argument, guarantees the reality of the event on which Christianity is based. It guarantees a personal life in which the New Being has conquered the old being. However, it does not guarantee his name to be Jesus of Nazareth. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25

ImageFaith does not guarantee history. However, this is not because we misread the nature of historical inquiry. It is a result of the peculiar content of our Christology. If the New Being in the Christ is simply a form of the Protestant principle, it does not absolutely need a human bearer. Jesus is not necessary to the Christ. Yet this runs contrary to the meaning of Christianity. Of course, the Catholic faith does guarantee the identity of Jesus and the Christ, as did the Protestant faith before liberal Protestantism. One should carefully distinguish those historical elements that are essential to the meaning of the Christ for those the are not; blindness towards the historical groundwork of Christianity to say that the identity of Jesus and the Christ is not part of the kerygma (a Greek word used in the New Testament for “proclamation”). It is not enough to state that the original fact is the Apostles’ interpretation of Jesus. For how can we accept an interpretation if we do not know what is to be interpreted? How can we share the Apostles’ interpretation if we choose to doubt the identity of whom and what they interpreted? “Now concerning the spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant. Ye know that ye were Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb idols, even as ye were led. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25

Image“Wherefore I give you to understand, that no human speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost. Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all. However, the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every human to profit withal. For to one is given by the Spirit of the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; to another faith by the same Spirit; to another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues: but all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to envy humans severally as one will,” 1 Corinthians 12.1-11. Most of us are students of theology, whether we teach or learn, whether we be missionaries or educators, ministers or social workers, administrators or political leaders. However, in this particular community, we are theologians, persons who ask the question of our ultimate concern, the question of God and Hs manifestation. Whatever else we may be, we are first of all theologians. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25

ImageTherefore, it is most natural—although not most usual—for us to consider our existence as theologians. On what is this existence bases? What makes a human a theologian? What is one’s relation to other forms of existence? What is the significance of our existence as a whole? Paul makes very clear what he thinks is the foundation of all theology: the Divine Spirit. And the word of wisdom and knowledge, theology, according to the witness of the whole Christian Church, is basically a gift of the Spirit. It is one of the gifts, besides others. It is a special gift, besides other special gifts. However, it is a gift of the Spirit, and not a natural capacity. The word of knowledge—theology—is spoken to us before we can say it to others, or even to ourselves. To be a theologian means first of all to be able to receive spiritual knowledge. However, on the basis of this criterion, can we call ourselves theologians? Can we say that our theological thought is a gift of the Spirit? Are we certain that our theological existence transcends our human capacities, or that we have the word of knowledge, the word of spiritual wisdom? Paul gives a very concrete criterion for theological existence, which is also the criterion of all spiritual existence. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25

ImagePaul says: One who cries “Cursed be Jesus” does not speak in the Spirit of God; and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit. One who accepts Jesus as the Christ proves by that very acceptance that one has received the Spirit of God. For the spirit of humans alone is not capable of making the statement: “I accept Jesus as the Christ.” That statement is the mystery and the foundation of the Christian Church, the paradox and the stumbling-block, which produce curses against Christianity. It is the depth and the power which create a New Being in the World, in history, and in humans. Therefore, one who joins in the Church’s confession that Jesus is the Christ participates in the Divine Spirit. It is one who can receive the Spirit of wisdom and knowledge; it is one who can become a theologian. Theology does not exist outside the community of those who affirm that Jesus is the Christ, outside the Church, precisely because it is a gift of the Divine Spirit. Theological existence is an element of the existence of the Church. It is not simply a matter of “free” thinking, of scientific research, or of general philosophical analysis. Theology expressed the faith of the Church. It restates the paradoxical statement, Jesus is the Christ, and considers all is presuppositions and implication. Theological existence indicates the existence of one who is grasped, within the Church, by the Divine Spirit, and who has received the word of wisdom and knowledge. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25

ImageHowever, we must ask another question. If that be theological existence, which one of us can call oneself a theologian? Who can decide to become a theologian? And who can dare to remain a theologian? Do we really belong to the assembly of God? Can we seriously accept the paradox upon which the Church is built, the paradox that Jesus is the Christ? Are we grasped by the Divine Spirit, and have we received the word of knowledge as a gift? If somebody were to come and tell us that one certainly belongs to the Church, that one does not doubt that Jesus is the Christ any longer, that one continuously experiences the grip of the Divine Spirit and gift of spiritual knowledge, what should be our answer to one? We certainly should tell one that one does not fulfill even the first condition of theological existence, which is the realization that one does not know whether one have experienced the Divine Spirit, or spirits which are not divine. We would not accept one as a theologian. On the other hand, if someone were to come and tell us that one is estranged from the Christian Church and its foundations, that one does not feel the presence of the power of the Spirit, that one is empty of spiritual knowledge, but that one asks again and again the theological question, the question of an ultimate concern and its manifestations in Jesus as the Christ, we would accept one as a theologian. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25

ImageThere are many amongst us who believe within themselves that they can never become good theologians, that they could do better in almost any other realm. Yet they cannot imagine that their existence could be anything other than theological existence. Even if they had to give up theology as their vocational work, they would never cease to ask the theological question. It would pursue them into every realm. They would be bund to it, actually, if not vocationally. They could not be sure that they could fulfill its demands, but they would be sure that they were in its bondage. They who believe those things in their hearts belong to the assembly of God. They are grasped by the Divine Spirit. They have received he gift of knowledge. They are theologians. Even if your prayer is not a request for anything, you will be given benefits—an increased sense of knowing your place in the Universe, a stronger awareness of the presence of God, a development of your spiritual discipline. When praying, try to make a full-fledged ritual out of your prayer whenever possible. The benefits are real, and well worth the trouble. At their simplest, prayers are just like talking to God. You think about the Lord and talk. Talking to God is, therefore, a different form of talking to people. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25

ImageYou can show that you are talking to God by using a different style of speech. Just as you have set aside time and space for this sacred conversation, you set aside your normal ways of speech to make your prayers special. Because prayer is communication with a divine being, prayers must always be addressed to God, His son, and the Holy Ghost. Whether the divine trinity needs it or not is not the question. If you reach out to deities, like the Virgin Mary, it is only polite to call them by name. No sense starting out on the wrong foot. “And now it came to pass that as Alma was journeying from the land of Gideon southward, away to the land of Manti, behold, to his astonishment, he met with the sons of Mosiah journeying towards the land of Zarahemla. Now these sons of Mosiah were with Alma at the time the angel first appeared unto him; therefore Alma did rejoice exceedingly to see his brethren; and what added more to his joy, they were still his brethren in the Lord; yea, and they had waxed strong in the knowledge of truth; for they were humans of a sound understanding and they had searched the scriptures diligently, that they might know the word of God. However, this is not all; they had given themselves to much prayer, and fasting; therefore they had the spirit of prophecy, and the spirit of revelation, and when they taught, they taught with power and authority of God. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25

Image“And they had been teaching the word of God for the space of fourteen years among the Lamanites, having had much success in bringing many to the knowledge of the truth; yea, by the power of their words many were brought before the altar of God, to call on his name and confess their sins before him. Now these are the circumstances which attended them in their journeyings, for they had many afflictions; they did suffer much, both in body and in mind, such as hunger, thirst and fatigue, and also much labour in the spirit. Now these were their journeyings: Having taken leave of their father, Mosiah, in the first year of the judges; having refused the kingdom which their father was desirous to confer upon them, and also this was the minds of the people; nevertheless they departed out of their swords, and their arrows, and the slings; and this they did that they might provide food for themselves while in the wilderness. And thus they departed into the wilderness with their numbers which they had selected, to go up to the land of Nephi, to preach the word of God unto Lamanites. And it came to pass that they journeyed many days in the wilderness, and they fasted much and prayed much that the Lord would grant unto them a portion of his Spirit to go with them, and abide with them, that they might be an instrument in the hands of God to bring, if it were possible, their brethren, the Lamanites, to the knowledge of truth, to the knowledge of the baseness of the traditions of their father, which were not correct. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25

Image“And it came to pass that the Lord did visit them with his Spirit, and said unto them: Be comforted. And they were comforted. And the Lord said unto them also: Go forth among the Lamanites, thy brethren, and establish my word; yet ye shall be patient in long-suffering and afflictions, that ye may show forth good examples unto them in me, and I will make an instrument of thee in my hands unto the salvation of many souls. And it came to pass that the hearts of the sons of Mosiah, and also those who were with them, took courage to go forth unto the Lamanites to declare unto them the word of God. And it came to pass when they had arrived in the borders of the land of the Lamanites, that they separated themselves and departed one from another, trusting in the Lord that they should meet again at the close of their harvest; for they supposed that great was the work which they had undertaken. And assuredly it was great, for they had undertaken. And assuredly it was great, for they had undertaken to preach the word of God to a wild and hardened and ferocious people; a people who delighted in murdering the Nephites, and robbing and plundering them; and their hearts were set upon riches, or upon gold and silver, and precious stones; yet they sought to obtain these things by murdering and plundering, that they might not labour for them with their own hands. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25

Image“Thus they were a very indolent people, many of whom did worship idols, and the curse of God had fallen upon them because of the traditions of their fathers; notwithstanding the promises of the Lord were extended unto them on the conditions of repentance. Therefore, this was he cause for which the sons of Mosiah had undertaken the work, that perhaps they might bring them unto repentance; that perhaps they might bring them to know of the plan of redemption. Therefore they separated themselves one from another, and went forth among them, every human alone, according to the word and power of God which was given unto one. Now Ammon being the chief among them, or rather he did administer unto them, and he departed from them, after having blessed them according to their several stations, having imparted the word of God unto them, or administered unto them before his departure; and thus they took their several journeys throughout the land. And Ammon went to the land of Ishmael, the land being called after the sons of Ishmael, who also became Lamanites. And as Ammon entered the land of Ishmael, the Lamanites took one and bound one, as was their custom to bind all the Nephites who feel into their hands, and carry them before the king; and thus it was left to the pleasure of king to slay them, or to retain them in captivity, or cast them into prison, or to cast them out of his land, according to his will and pleasure. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25

Image“And thus Ammon was carried before the king who was over the land of Ishmael; and his name was Lamoni; and he was a descendant of Ishmael. And the king inquired of Ammon if it were his desire to dwell in the land among the Lamanites, or among his people. And Ammon said unto him: Yea, I desire to dwell among his people. And it came to pass that king Lamoni was much pleased with Ammon, and caused that his bands should be loosed; and he would that Ammon should take one of his daughters to wife. However, Ammon said unto him: Nay, but I will be thy servant. Therefore Ammon became a servant to king Lamoni. And it came to pass that he was set among other servants to watch the flocks of Lamoni, according to the custom of the Lamanites. And after he had been in the service of the king three days, as he was with Lamanitish servants going forth with their flocks to the place of water, which was called the water of Sebus, and all the Lamanites drive their flocks hither, that they may have water—therefore, as Ammon and the servants of the king were driving forth their flocks to the place of water, behold, a certain number of the Lamanites, who had been with their flocks to water, stood and scattered the flocks of Ammon and the servants of the king, and they scattered them insomuch that they fled many ways. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25

Image“Now the servants of the king began to murmur, saying: Now the king will slay us, as he had our brethren because their flocks were scattered by the wickedness of these humans. And they began to weep exceedingly, saying: Behold, our flocks are scattered already. Now hey wept because of the fear f being slain. Now when Ammon saw this his heart was swollen within him with joy; for, said he, I will show forth my power unto these my fellow-servants, or the power which is in me, in restoring these flocks unto the kind, that I may win the hearts of these my fellow-servants, that I may lead them to believe in my words. And now, these were the thoughts of Ammon, when he saw the afflictions of those whom he termed to be his brethren. And it came to pass that he flattered them by his words, saying: My brethren, be of good cheer and let us go in search of the flocks, and we will gather them together and bring them back unto the place of water; and thus we will preserve the flocks unto the king and he will not slay us. And it came to pass that they went in search of the flocks, and they did follow Ammon, and they rushed forth with much swiftness and did head the flocks of the king, and did gather them together again to the place of water. And those men again stood to scatter their flocks; but Ammon said unto his brethren: Encircle the flocks round about that they flee not; and I go and contend with these people who do scatter our flocks. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25

Image“Therefore, they did as Ammon commanded them, and he went forth and stood to contend with those who stood by the waters of Sebus; and they were in number not a new. Therefore they did no fear Ammon, for they supposed that one of their men could slay him according to their pleasure, for they knew not that the Lord had promised Mosiah that would deliver his sons out of their hands neither did they know anything concerning the Lord; therefore they delighted in the destruction of their brethren; and for this cause stood to scatter the flocks of the king. However, Ammon stood forth and began to cast stones at them with his along; yea, with mighty power he did sling stones amongst them; and thus he slow a certain number of them insomuch that they began to be astonished at his power; nevertheless they were angry because of the slain of their brethren, and they were determined that he should fall; therefore, seeing that they could not hit him with their stones, they came forth with clubs to slay him. However, behold, every human that lifted his club to smite Ammon, he smote off their arms with the edge of his sword, insomuch that they began to be astonished, and began to flee before him; yea, and they were not few in number; and he caused them to flee by the strength of his arm. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25

Image“Now six of them had fallen by the sling, but he slew non save it were their leader with his sword; and he smote off as many of their arms as were lifted against him, and thy were not a few. And when he had driven them afar off, he returned and they watered their flocks and returned them to the pasture of the king, and then went in unto the king, bearing the arms which had been smitten off by the sword of Ammon, of those who sought to slay him; and they were carried in unto the kind for a testimony of the things which they had done,” reports Alma 17.1-39. O God, Who, by Thine invisible power, dost wonderfully work out the effect of Thy Sacraments, and although we be unworthy to perform such great mysteries, yet Thou forsakes not the gifs of Thy grace, incline Thy gracious ears even to our entreaty; be present to us in Thy goodness, assist us in Thy loving-kindness, while we are observing Thy commands, O God Almighty. May that which is to be performed by our humble ministration, be fulfilled by Thine effectual power. Be present, O merciful God; that what has been done by our office and service may be confirmed by Thy benediction; through our Lord. Look down from Heaven, O Christ, on Thy flock and lambs, and bless their bodies and souls. Grant those who have received Thy sign, O Christ, on their foreheads, to be Thine own in the day of judgment. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25Image

Cresleigh Homes

Image #Meadows is the largest community at #PlumasRanch, offering 4 floor plans to choose from with all the features that make #CresleighHomes extraordinary. Check out today’s blog to learn more about this community! https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/residence-1/

ImageGod, please bless us with your grace, and may Thy hand of power have the completion of the effect on Earth as in Heaven. https://www.instagram.com/p/CDmxNoYlsS8/

Image

Image

The Spirit of Liberty Remembers that Not Even a Sparrow Falls to the Earth Unheeded!

ImageWe are a feelingless people. If we could really feel, the pain would be so great that we would stop all the suffering. A vivid example of this comes from a young man who has been a recipient of much sensitive understanding and who is now in the later stages of his therapy: Client: “I could even conceive of it as a possibility that I could have a kind of tender concern for me. Still, how could I be tender, be concerned for myself, when they are one and the same thing? But yet I can feel it so clearly—you know, like taking care of a child. You want to give it this and give it that. I can kind of clearly see the purposes for somebody else, but I can never see them for myself, that I could do this for me, you know. Is it possible that I can really want to take care of myself, and make that a major purpose of my life? That means I would have to deal with the whole World as if I were guardian of the most cherished and most wanted possession, that this I was between this precious me that I wanted to take care of and the whole World. It is almost as if I loved myself; you know, that is strange—but it is true.” Therapist: “It seems such a strange concept to realize. It would me I would face the World as though a part of my primary responsibility was taking care of this precious individual who is me—whom I love.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 22

Image Client: “Who I for—whom I feel so close to. Woof! That is another strange one.” Therapist: “It just seems weird.” Client: “Yeah. It hits rather close somehow. The idea of my loving me and taking care of me. (His eyes grow moist.) That is a very nice one—very nice.” It is, I believe, the therapist’s caring understanding—exhibited in this excerpt as well as previously—which had permitted this client to experience a high regard, even a love, for himself. Still a third impact of a sensitive understanding comes from its nonjudgmental quality. The highest expression of empathy is accepting and nonjudgmental. This is true because if you have formed an evaluative opinion of another person, it is impossible to be accurately perceptive of that person’s inner World. If you doubt this statement, choose someone you know with whom you deeply disagree and who is, in your judgement, definitely wrong or mistaken. Now try to state that individual’s views, beliefs, and feelings so accurately that one will agree that you have sensitively and correctly described one’s stance. I predict that nine times out of ten you will fail, because your judgment of the person’s views creeps into your description of them. Consequently, true empathy is always free of any evaluative or diagnostic quality. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22

ImageThe recipient perceives true empathy with some surprise: “If I am not being judged, perhaps I am not so evil or abnormal as I have thought. Perhaps I do not have to judge myself so harshly.” Thus, the possibility of self-acceptance is gradually increased. There comes to mind a psychologist whose interest in psychotherapy started as a result of his research in visual perception. In this research, many students were interviewed and asked to relate their visual and perceptual history, including any difficulties in seeing or reading, their reaction to wearing glasses, and so forth. The psychologist simply listened with interest, made no judgments on what he was hearing, and completed the gathering of his data. To his amazement, a number of these students returned spontaneously to thank him for all the help he had given them. He had, in his opinion, given them no help at all. However, it forced him to recognize that interested nonevaluative listening is a potent therapeutic force, even when directed at a narrow sector of life, and with no intent of being helpful. Perhaps another way of putting some of what I have been saying is that a finely tuned understanding by another individual gives the recipient a sense of personhood, of identity. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22

ImageThe sense of identity requires the existence of another by whom one is known, which means we need to have our existence confirmed by another. Empathy gives that needed confirmation that one does exist as a separate, valued person with an identity. Persons begin revealing material that they have never communicated before, in the process discovering previously unknown elements in themselves. Such an element may be “I never knew before that I was angry at my father,” or “I never realized that I am afraid of succeeding.” Such discoveries are unsettling but exciting. To perceive a new aspect of oneself is the first step toward changing the concept of oneself. The new element is, in an understanding atmosphere, owned and assimilated into a now altered self-concept. This is the basis, in my estimation, of the behaviour changes that can come about as a result of psychotherapy. Once the self-concept changes, behaviour changes to match the freshly perceived self. If we think, however, that empathy is effective only in the one-to-one relationship called psychotherapy, we are greatly mistaken. Even in the classroom it makes an important difference. When teachers show evidence that they understand the meaning of classroom experiences for students, learning improves. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22

ImageIt has been found that when teachers exhibit a high degree of understanding, children’s reading improves more than it does in classrooms where such understanding does not exist. This finding has been replicated in many classrooms. Jus as clients in psychotherapy find that empathy provides a climate for learning more of themselves, so students in the classroom find themselves in a climate for learning subject matter when they are in the presence of an understanding teacher. When persons are perceptively understood, they find themselves coming in closer touch with a wider range of their experiencing. This gives them an expanded referent to which they can turn for guidance in understanding themselves and in directing their behaviour. If the empathy has been accurate and deep, they may also be able to unblock a flow of experiencing and permit it to run its uninhibited course. Many people need empathic listeners. They feel wounded inside, like a physical wound, but do not like to see others feeling sorry for themselves. Yet at the same time, many people know no one will care about one’s own feelings like one cares about them, but in our culture it is not acceptable to express emotions. So they cover them up. They want to get rid of their feelings and pretend that are not hurt. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22

ImageAt the basis of their experience, there is a feeling of real tears for themselves. However, they cannot show them, must not show them, so they are covered by bitterness and the individual does not like feeling bitter and wants to transcend that emotion. Many people feel like they would almost rather absorb the hurt than to—than to feel the bitterness. And what they seem to be saying is, “I do not hurt, and I have tried to cover it up.” It is like a new discovery, as though some of the most delicate aspects of their being, physically almost, have been crushed. Therefore, it is clear people need empathic responses that encourage them in the wider exploration of, and closer acquaintance with, the visceral experiencing going on within. Most individuals are learning to listen to their guts (to use an inelegant term). One has expanded one’s knowledge of the flow of their experiencing. We may also see how this unverbalized visceral flow is used as a referent. How do people know that “guilt” is not the word to describe their feelings? They know by turning within, taking another look at this reality, this palpable process that is taking place, this experiencing. And so one can test the word “hurt” against this referent, and one finds it close. Only when one tries the phrase, “Oh you poor thing,” does it really fit the inner felt meaning of compassion and sorrow for one’s self. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22

ImageIn my judgment, many people have not only used this aspect of their experiencing as a referent, but have also learned something about this process of checking with one’s total physiological being—a learning one can apply again and again. And empathy has helped to make it possible. We also find in this slice of therapy what it means to let an experiencing run its course. This is clearly not a new feeling. So many people have often felt it before, yet it has never been lived out. It has been blocked in some way. I am quite clear as to the reality of vividness of the unblocking that will follow, because I have many times been a party to its occurrence, but I am not sure how it may best be described. It seems to me that only when a gut-level experience is fully accepted and accurately labeled in awareness can it be completed. Then the person can move beyond it. Again, it is the sensitively empathic climate that helps to move the experiencing forward to its conclusion, which, in this case, is the uninhibited experiencing of the pity one feels for oneself. We can say that when persons find themselves sensitively and accurately understood, they develop a set of growth-promoting or therapeutic attitudes toward themselves. The nonevaluative and acceptant quality of the empathic climate enables persons, as we have seen, to take a prizing, caring attitude toward themselves. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22

ImageBeing listened to by someone who understands makes it possible for persons to listen more accurately to themselves, with greater empathy toward their own visceral experiencing, their own vaguely felt meanings. The individuals’ greater understanding of and prizing of themselves opens to them new facets of experience which become part of a more accurately based self-concept. The self is now more congruent with the experiencing. Thus, the persons have become, in their attitudes toward themselves, more caring and acceptant, more empathic and understanding, more real and congruent. However, these three elements are they very ones that both experience ad research indicate are the attitudes of an effective therapist. So we are perhaps not overstating the total picture if we say that an emphatic understanding by another enables a person to become a more effective growth enhancer, a more effective therapist for himself or herself. Consequently, whether we are functioning as therapists, as encounter-group facilitators, as teachers, or as parents, we have in our hands, if we are able to take an empathic stance, a powerful force for change and growth. Its strength needs to be appreciated. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22

ImageHowever, the empathic process is not regarded as the only important factor in growthful relationships. In the ordinary interactions of life—between marital and partners who fixate on pleasures of the flesh, between teacher and student, employer and employee, or between colleagues or friends—congruence is probably the most important element. Congruence, or genuineness, involves letting the other person know “where you are” emotionally. It may involve confrontation and the straightforward expression of personally owned feelings—both negative and optimistic. Thus, congruence is a basis for living together in a climate of realness. However, in certain other special situations, caring, or prizing, may turn out to be the most significant element. Such situations include nonverbal relationship—between parent and infant, therapist and mute psychotic, physician and very ill patient. Caring is an attitude that is known to foster creativity—a nurturing climate in which delicate, tentative new thoughts and productive processes can emerge. Then, in my experience, there are other situations in which the empathic was of being has the highest priority. When the other person is hurting, confused, troubled, anxious, alienated, terrified, or when one is doubtful of self-worth, uncertain as to 2—then understanding is called for. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22

ImageThe gentle and sensitive companionship offered by an empathic person (who must, of course, possess the other two attitudes) provides illumination and healing. In such situations deep understanding is, I believe, the most precious gift one can give to another. No master has the right to ask any candidate for discipleship to surrender oneself absolutely, to place oneself unreservedly in the master’s hands and to obey unquestioningly the master’s orders. The trust demanded should arise of its own accord by progressive degrees as the relationship proceeds and develops, and as the master proves by one’s conduct and effectiveness to be fully worthy of it. Because one gives the master devotion one does not also have to give this individual idolatry. One’s disciples are taught how to unite independent thinking with loyal feeling in their attitude toward one. This satisfies them both. There are those who think their teacher neglects to answer their mail. Because the teacher leaves their letters so long unanswered, they conclude that one means to drop them out of one’s life. Nothing could be farther from the truth. It is true that one lacks the staff needed to handle it, that the pressure of work like writing and mediation and research notes leaves one little remaining time. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22

ImageHowever, those who have met one personally and call themselves one’s disciples often cannot understand one’s behaviour so one gives this published experience. Once inner contact is established by a single physical meeting it is not necessary to have further ones with the guide although they may be helpful.  Sri Aurobindo granted only a single minute to each individual at first or later meeting with a disciple or a candidate for discipleship. Thus it is evident that one does not consider more than sixty seconds really necessary to establish it. Not only are further physical meetings not necessary but even further personal action on one’s part, such as writing letter to the disciples are also unnecessary even though they may be helpful. Thus a spiritual guide does not need to do anything physically or write anything personally to keep up the internal contact, it being kept up by the student’s remembrance, devotion, faith, and meditation. No disciple can be effectively trained by the log distance method of an occasional exchange of letters. One needs personal supervision, personal contact, and personal discussion of one’s special problems. No conscientious teacher will ever undertake to give instructions by mail and declare it sufficient. It gives too meagre a basis for accurate understanding on the disciple’s part or for an adequate communication on the teacher’s part. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22

ImageThen again one cannot accept the position of personal counsellor under the guise of being spiritual teacher. That is no one’s work. Most students who keep on failing to recognize this fac against all previous and present warnings and who send letter after letter with every fluctuation of their personal moods and fortunes, in an attempt to wrest advice or intervention from one, may force one to break the external contact with the individual until such a time as they do realize what the true situation is. If one were to adopt a counselling position and to agree to show students how to apply the philosophical teaching to every change of their own personal life, one would soon have no time to give out those teachings at all. Consequently one must refuse to respond to all these attempts often openly but sometime hidden, often naïve but sometimes cunning, to get one personally involved in the life of the seeker or to mix both their personal problems together. So many of one’s correspondents try to force one into this highly personal self-actualized teacher-student relationship, and thus to impose their own responsibilities upon one’s shoulders, that one has to fall into lengthy periods of silence to protect oneself. Moreover, if one were to respond to the emotional Worldly problems in the way such response is desired, it would only mean the downfall to both of them and the breakdown of their pure relationship. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22

ImageTo maintain this purity, to safeguard the relationship itself, and to protect the master as well as the seeker, the proper teaching must be given from the start and that is: the teacher must be regarded as a symbol, not as a person. One is to be considered merely as an agent for that which one represents, not just another human being entering into a human relation with the disciple. Often the beginner, finding that the teacher does not fully respond to one’s emotional craving for continuous personal attention, soon becomes disappointed. This feeling may develop until it reaches a critical stage where one of two things may happen. Either one will fail to pass the test, for so it becomes, and will withdraw altogether from the relationship—perhaps even maligning the guide—or one will continue one’s trust, gain a new point of view, and make the needed change to a higher attitude in the end. If, however, one allows one’s egoism or emotion to lead one into disobedience of this rule, one will only endanger the relationship. If one persists in this disobedience, one will even find it brought to an end for a time. So few understand what is really involved in this relationship, so many misunderstanding it and are therefore disappointed by it in the beginning or along the way, that the teacher prefers with rare exceptions of well-advanced cases, not to enter into it outwardly at all but instead to offer a little friendly help with obligation. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22

ImageNo real master is ever afraid that one might lose any particular disciple. One takes possession of no one and leaves everyone as free as one found them. One understands quite well that the human’s need or search and one’s own high self’s gracious response brought the master into the picture as an indirect medium through which the response could operate. One understands, too, that all the instruction and advice, the uplift and help which one gives the disciple originate ultimately and really within the human, as the latter will one day discover when one has developed one’s own direct access to them, and therefore refuses to regard the relationship between them egotistically. The meaning of history seems rather disappointing. The sense of “let-down” recurs. If the meaning of history is that we must accept what we cannot avoid, there was really no need of the extraordinary situation of the Cross to let us know it. If the result is only that we shall continue to do, with more awareness, what we have always done anyway, there was no need for Jesus the Christ to die in a supreme testimony to his unity with being-itself. Yet, even when we are not, we are in the truth; we are in grace even when we are in sin; we are accepted even when we are estranged. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22

ImageThe all loving, eternally forgiving, unconditionally accepting Cross is the Protestant principle. It is the meaning of the cross and of the entire history of humans illuminated by the word from the Cross. No doubt that it is a valuable insight. However, it is worthy all that has prepared it? Above all, is it worth the self-sacrifice of Jesus? Surely not. All religions have reached approximations, in practice and in theory, of the Protestant principle. Thus two lines, vertical and horizontal, symbolize the meaning of human existence. The vertical lines points to the eternal meaning of existence, and the horizontal to its realization in history. We recognize here the Protestant principle that the eternal informs the temporal. Is this unique in Protestantism, or even in Christianity? Far from it: Every religion necessarily has both directions, although different religions emphasize the one or the other. Every religion, in other words, embodies the Protestant principle to some extent. Had there been no final revelation, no ultimate center of history, our World would have continued, cultures would have developed, without explicit reference to the Cross; yet they would have been unified around smaller revelations, as has been the case with non-Christian religions. The Logos would still have become flesh in a series of revelatory kairoi. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22

ImageBasis and abyss would still have joined together; and in the duality of both the Unconditioned would have manifested itself. The profane would still be inseparably conjoined to the holy. And the tension between the two would have settled down along the lines that we assign to Church and society: The Church is the perpetual guilty conscience of society and society is the perpetual guilty conscious of the Church. Granted, the New Being would not have appeared in time; the Unconditional would not have lived under the conditions of existence. However, human kind lived under the conditions of existence. However, humankind could not have missed it because, in any case, this paradox was not to be expected. This description of what would have happened to the Universe without the Christ’s appearance may seem like a caricature. Actually it is the reverse of the coin we have received. If the meaning of history is only the justification of the unjust extended to the moral, the intellectual and the metaphysical fields, we could, frankly, have managed without the Messiah. We could have discovered it by analysing the ground of being, by asking philosophers about being-itself. The imaginative element needed for the doctrine of the Absolute as both ground and abyss of dynamic truth—which is the Protestant principle, the meaning of history—which was furnished to us simply by meditating by the sea-side. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22

ImageWe bring history to the point where it borders on the revelation and is the achievement of no puny vision. It is the meaning we assign to history that leaves us still hungry and thirsty: we think we are being prepared for more. Light, in general, is associated with God, and the presence of light with the presence of God. Surrounded by all the numinous beings of Earth and sky and water, I pray with confidence, for I know God’s help is certain. I place myself at your service, God of my people. Please open me to your wishes, make me a conduit for your will, brining forth your desires in the human World. This goes before me, opening the door. Key to God, be my way-shower. Hidden in the folds of the land you dwell and have dwelt since the World began. I am one of the World’s younger children come to honor you with these offerings. To the God who rules this place, to you I offer my friendship and with it this gift. Gateway of God, please receive my offering. As it sinks deep with you, let me open the door, and let it be carried to them whim I praise in this way. “And it came to pass in the eleventh year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi, on the fifth day of the second month, there having been much peace in the land of Zarahemla, there having been no wars nor contentions for a certain number of years, even until the fifth day of the second month in the eleventh year, there was a cry of war heard throughout the land. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22

Image“For behold, the armies of the Lamanites had come in upon the wilderness side, into the borders of the wilderness side, into the borders of the land, even into the city of Ammonihah, and began to play the people and destroy the city. And now it came to pass, before the Nephites could raise a sufficient army to drive them out of the land, they had destroyed the people who were in the city of Ammonihah, and also come around the borders of Noah, and taken others captive into the wilderness. Now it came to pass that Nephites were desirous to obtain those who had been carried away captive into the wilderness. Therefore, he that had been appointed chief captain over the armies of the Nephites, (and his name was Zoram, and he had two sons, Lehi and Aha)–now Zoram and his two sons, knowing that Alma was high priest over the church, and having heard that he had the spirit of prophecy, therefore they went unto him and desired of him to know whither the Lord would that they should go into the wilderness in search of their brethren, who had been taken captive by the Lamanites. And it came to pass that Alma inquired of the Lord concerning the matter. And Alma returned and said unto them: Behold, the Lamanites will cross the river Sidom in the south wilderness, away up beyond the borders of the land of Manti. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22

Image“And behold there shall ye meet them, on the east of the river Sidon, and there the Lord will deliver unto thee thy brethren who have been taken captive by the Lamanites. And it came to pass that Zoram and his sons crossed over the river Sidon, with their armies, and marched away beyond the borders of Manti into the south wilderness, which was on the east side of the river Sidom. And they came upon the armies of the Lamanites, and the Lamanites were scattered and drive into the wilderness; and they took their brethren who had been taken captive by the Lamanites, and there was not one soul of them had been lost that were taken captive. And they were brought by their brethren to possess their own lands. And thus ended the eleventh year of the judges, the Lamanites having been driven out of the land, and the people of Ammonihah were destroyed; yea, every living soul of the Ammonihahites was destroyed, and also their great city, which they said God could not destroy, because of its greatness. However, behold, in one day it was left desolate; and the carcasses were mangled by dogs and wild beasts of the wilderness. Nevertheless, after many days their dead bodies were heaped up upon the face of the Earth, and they were covered with a shallow covering. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22

Image“And now so great was the scent thereof that the people did not go in to possess the land of Ammonihah for many years. And it was called Desolation of Nehors; for they were the profession of Nehor, who were slain; and their lands remained desolate. And the Lamanites did not come again to war against the Nephites until for fourteenth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And thus for three years did the people of Nephi have continual peace in all the land. And Alma and Amulek went forth preaching repentance to the people in their temples, and in their sanctuaries, and also in their synagogues, which were built after the manner of the Jews. And as many as would hear their words, unto them they did impart the word of God, without any respect of persons, continually. And thus did Alma and Amulek go forth, and also many more who had been chosen for the work, to preach the word throughout all the land. And the establishment of the church became general throughout the land, in all the region round about, among all the people of the Nephites. And there was no inequality among them; the Lord did pour out his Spirit on all the face of the land to prepare the minds of the children of humans, or to prepare their hearts to receive the word which should be taught among them at the time of his coming. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22

Image“That they might not be hardened against the word, that they might not be unbelieving, and go on to destruction, but that they might receive the word with joy, and as a branch be grafted into the true vine, that they might enter into the rest of the Lord their God. Now those priests who did go forth among the people did preach against all lyings, and deceivings, and envyings, and strifes, and malice, and revilings, and stealing, robbing, plundering, murdering, committing adultery, and all manner of lasciviousness, crying that these things ought not so to be—holding forth things which must shortly come; yea, holding forth the coming of the Son of God, his sufferings and death, and also the resurrection of the dead. And many of the people did inquire concerning the pace where the Son of God should come; and they were taught that he would appear unto them after his resurrection; and this the people did hear with great joy and gladness. And now after the church had been established throughout all the land—having got the victory over the devil, and the word of God being preached in its purity in all the land, and the Lord pouring out his blessing upon the people—thus ended the fourteenth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi,” reports Alma 16.1-21. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22

ImageProceeding from strength to strength, and having finished the Divine Liturgy in Thy temple, we now entreat Thee, Lord our God, please vouchsafe us to enjoy Thy perfect love. Our God and God of our fathers, on this Festival of Joy and Gladness, our hearts are filled with gratitude to Thee. Recalling the redemption of Israel from Egyptian bondage, we pray, O Lord, that the day may soon dawn when all Thy children shall be free. Recalling this day of revelation of Thy Law on Sinai, we reaffirm our unswerving devotion to Thy Torah. We pray that Thine eternal Law shall guide the lives of all Thy children. Recalling of this Sukkot Festival Thy sheltering care of our forefathers, may we, too, be every grateful for Thy protecting love and bounty. Just as our forefathers laid their offerings on Thy altar in the Temple at Jerusalem on the Three Festivals, so may we, O God, with like devotion, help in the rebuilding and restoration of Zion. Grant that our homeless and exiled brothers and sisters may soon return to the land of our fathers, there to dwell in peace. And may the observance of this Festival quicken anew our faith in Thee and our loyalty to Thy commandments. Amen. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22

Image

HUB Apartments

ImageHub Apartments offers virtual tours so you can conveniently continue the search for your perfect place. Head to their profile to learn more! https://www.hub-folsomapts.com/
ImageGod, that invisible power of your work has a remarkable effect of Thy Sacraments, and although we are unworthy to perform such great mysteries, you could give us your grace not to give up, and even answer  our prayers favorably. My we keep you in our hearts, God Almighty and constantly seek you.

#HUBApts
#CresleighHomes

Image

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Felt the Power of the ‘Life Force’ that Infuses Each of Us—Whatever this is!

Capture1There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat. What part does our awareness have in the formative function of the consciousness in human beings? I believer that consciousness has a small but very important part. The ability to focus consciousness attention seems to be one of the latest evolutionary developments in our species. This ability can be described as a tiny peak of awareness, of symbolizing capacity, topping a vast pyramid of nonconscious organismic functioning. Perhaps a better analogy, more indicative of the continual change going on, is to think of the pyramid as a large fountain of the same shape. The very tip of the fountain is intermittently illuminated with the flickering light of consciousness, but the constant flow of life goes on in the darkness as well, in nonconscious as well as conscious ways. It seems that the human organism has been moving toward the more complete development of awareness. It is at this level hat new forms are invented, perhaps even new directions for the human species. It is here that the reciprocal relationship between cause and effect is most demonstrably evident. It is here that choices are made, spontaneous forms created. We here see perhaps the highest of the human functions. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

ImageSome of my colleagues have said that organismic choice—the nonverbal, subconscious choice of way of being—is guided by the evolutionary flow. I agree; I will even go one step further. I would point out that in psychotherapy we have learned something about the psychological conditions that are most conducive to increasing this highly important self-awareness. With greater self-awareness, a more informed choice is possible, a choice more free from introjects, a conscious choice that is even more in tune with the evolutionary flow. Such a person is more potentially aware, not only of the stimuli from outside, but of ideas and dreams, and of the ongoing flow of feelings, emotions, and physiological reactions that one senses from within. The greater this awareness, the more surely the person will float in a direction consonant with the directional evolutionary flow. When a person is functioning in this way, it does not mean that there is a self-conscious awareness of all that is going on within, like the centipede whose movements were paralyzed when it became aware of each of its legs. On the contrary, such a person is free to live a feeling subjectively, as well as be aware of it. The individual might experience love, or pain, or fear, or just live in these experiences subjectively. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

ImageOr, one might abstract self from this subjectivity and realize in awareness, “I am in pain;” “I am afraid;” “I do love.” The crucial point is that when a person is functioning fully, there are no barriers, no inhibitions, which prevent the full experiencing of whatever is organismically present. This person is moving in the direction of wholeness, integration, a unified life. Consciousness is participating in this larger, creative, formative tendency. But some go even further in their theories. Researchers such as Grof and Grof (1977) and Lilly (1973) believe that persons are able to advance beyond the ordinary level of consciousness. Their studies appear to reveal that in altered states of consciousness, persons feel they are in touch with, and grasp the meaning of, this evolutionary flow. They experience it as tending toward a transcending experience of unity. They picture the individual self as being dissolved in a whole area of higher values, especially beauty, harmony, and love. The persons feels at one with the cosmos. Hard-headed research seems to be confirming the mystic’s experience of union with the universal. For me, this point of view is confirmed by more recent experience in working with clients, and especially in dealing with intensive groups. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

ImageI describe earlier those characteristics of a growth-prompting relationship that have been investigated and supported by research. However, recently, my view has broadened into a new rea which cannot as yet be studied empirically. When I am at my best, as a group facilitator or as a therapist, I discover another characteristic. I find that when I am closet to my inner, intuitive self, when I am somehow in touch with the unknown in me, when perhaps I am in a slightly altered state of consciousness, then whatever I do seems to be full of healing. Then, simply my presence is releasing and helpful to the other. There is nothing I can do to force this experience, but when I can relax an be close to the transcendental core of me, then I may behave in strange and impulsive ways in the relationship, ways which I cannot justify rationally, which have nothing to do with my thought process. However, these strange behaviours turn out to be right, in some odd way: it seems that my inner spirit has reached out and touched the inner spirit of the other. Our relationship transcends itself and becomes a part of something larger. Profound growth and healing and energy are present. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

ImageThis kind of transcendent phenomenon has certainly been experienced at times in groups in which I have worked, changing the lives of some of those involved. One participant in a workshop put it eloquently: “I found it to be a profound spiritual experience. I felt the oneness of spirit in the community. We breathed together, felt together, even spoke for one another. I felt the power of the ‘life force’ that infuses each of us—whatever this is. I felt its presence without the usual barricades of ‘me-ness’ or ‘you-ness’-it was like a meditative experience when I feel myself as a center of consciousness, very much a part of the broader, universal consciousness. And yet with that extraordinary sense of oneness, the separateness of each person present has never been more clearly preserved.” Again, as in the description of altered states of consciousness, this account partakes of the mystical. Our experiences in therapy and groups, it is clear, involve the transcendent, the indescribable, the spiritual; I am compelled to believe that I, like many others, have underestimated the importance of this mystical, spiritual dimension. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

ImageHere many readers, I am sure, will part company with me. What they wish to know, has become of logic, of science, of hard-headedness? However, before they leave me entirely, I would like to adduce some surprising support for such views, from the most unexpected quarters. Fritjof Capra (1975), a well-known theoretical physicist, has shown how present-day physics has almost completely abolished any solid concepts of our World, with the exception of energy. In a summarizing statement, he says, “In modern physics the Universe is thus experiences as a dynamic, inseparable whole which always includes the observer in an essential way. In this experience the traditional concepts of space and time, of isolated objects, and of the cause and effect lose their meaning. Such an experience, however, is very similar to that of the Eastern mystics (p.81).” He then goes on o point out the astonishing parallels of Zen, Taoism, Buddhism, and other Old World views. His own conviction is that physics and Eastern mysticism are separate but complementary roads to the same knowledge, supplementing each other in providing a fuller understanding of the Universe. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

ImageRecently, the work of chemist-philosopher Ilya Prigogine (Ferguson, 1979) offers a different perspective, which also throws new light on what I have been discussing. In trying to answer the basic question of how order and complexity emerge from the process of entropy, he has originated an entirely new theoretical system. He has developed mathematical formulas and proofs which demonstrate that the World of living nature is probabilistic, rather than solely deterministic. His views apply to all open systems in which energy is exchanged with the environment. This obviously includes the human organism. Briefly, the more complex the structure—whether a chemical or a human—the more energy it expends to maintain that complexity. For example, the human brain, with only 2 percent of body weight, uses 20 percent of available oxygen! Such a system is unstable, has fluctuations or “perturbations,” as Prigogine calls them. As these fluctuations increase, they are amplified by the system’s many connections, and thus drive the system—whether chemical compound or human individual—into a new, altered state, more ordered and coherent than before. This new state has still greater complexity, and hence, even more potential for creating change. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

ImageThe transformation from one state to another is a sudden shift, a nonlinear event, in which many factors act on one another at once. It is especially interesting to me that this phenomenon has already been demonstrated by Don (1977-1978) in his investigation of Gendlin’s concept of “experiencing” in psychotherapy (Gendlin, 1978). When a hitherto repressed feeling is fully and acceptantly experienced in awareness during the therapeutic relationship, there is not only a definitely felt physiological change, as a new state of insight is achieved. Prigogine’s theory appears to shed light on meditation, relaxation techniques, and altered states of consciousness, in which fluctuations are augmented by various means. It gives support to the value of fully recognizing and expressing one’s feelings—positive or negative—thus permitted the full perturbation of the system. Prigogine recognizes the strong resemblance between his “science of complexity” and the views of Eastern sages and mystics, as well as the philosophies of Alfred North Whitehead and Henri Bergson. His view points, he says, toward “a deep collective vision.” Rather amazingly, the title of his latest book is From Being to Becoming (1979), a strange label for a volume by a chemist-philosopher. His conclusion can be stated very briefly: “The more complex a system, the greater its potential for self-transcendence: its parts cooperate to reorganize it” (Ferguson, 1979). #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

ImageThus, from theoretical physics and chemistry comes some confirmation of the validity of experiences that are transcendent, indescribable, unexpected, transformational—the sort of phenomena that I and my colleagues have observed and felts as concomitant of the person-centered approach. As I try to take into account the scope of the various themes I have presented, along with some of the available evidence that appears to support them, I am led to formulate a broad hypothesis. In my mind, this hypothesis is very tentative. However, for the sake of clarity, I will state it in definite terms. I hypothesize that there is a formative directional tendency in the Universe, which can be traced and observed in stellar space, in crystals, in microorganisms, in more complex organic life, and in human being. This is an evolutionary tendency toward greater order, greater complexity, greater interrelatedness. In humankind, this tendency exhibits itself as the individual moves from a single-cell origin to complex organic functioning, to know and sensing below the level of consciousness, to a conscious awareness of the organism and the external World, to a transcendent awareness of the harmony and unity of the cosmic system, including humankind. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

ImageWhat I have been saying is that in our work as person-centered therapists and facilitators, we have discovered the attitudinal qualities that are demonstrably effective in releasing constructive and growthful changes in the personality and behaviour of individuals. Persons in an environment infused with these attitudes develop more self-understanding, more self-confidence, more ability to choose their behaviours. They learn more significantly, they have more freedom to be and become. The individual in this nurturing climate is free to choose any direction, but actually selects positive and constructive ways. The actualizing tendency is operative in the human being. It is still further confirming to find that this is not simply a tendency in living systems but is part of a strong formative tendency in our Universe, which is evident at all levels. Thus, when we provide a psychological climate that permits persons to be—whether they are clients, students, workers, or persons in a group—we are not involved in a chance event. We are tapping into a tendency which permeates all of organic life—a tendency to become all the complexity of which the organism is capable. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

ImageAnd on an even larger scale, I believe we are tuning in to a potent creative tendency which has formed our Universe, from the smallest snowflake to the largest galaxy, from the lowly amoeba to the most sensitive and gifted of persons. And perhaps we are touching the cutting edge of our ability to transcend ourselves, to create new and more spiritual directions in human evolution. This kind of formulation is, for me, a philosophical base for a person-centered approach. It justifies me in engaging in a life-affirming way of being. “Love never faileth; but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. However, when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known,” reports 1 Corinthians 13.8-12. Paul speaks, in the famous words of our text, of things which are perfect, or complete. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

ImageThe fragmentary things shall vanish away; the complete things shall abide. The former are temporal; the later are eternal. The fragmentary, temporal things are not merely material; they are some of the highest gifts of the Divine Spirit: prophecy, which is the interpretation of our time and history; tongues, which are our ecstatic feeling and speaking; and knowledge, which is the understanding of our existence. Even those spiritual goods shall disappear with all the material and intellectual goods. They are all fragmentary, temporal, transitory. Love alone does not disappear; it endures forever. For God Himself is love, according to John who carries through the thought of Paul. However, there is another consideration in our text which seems to contradict the words about love. Paul singles out knowledge, and points to the difference between our fragmentary, indirect and darkened knowledge, and the full, direct and total knowledge to come. He compares the childish imaginations with the mature insight of the adult. He speaks of something, which, besides love, is perfect and eternal—namely, the seeing of the truth, face to face; the knowledge which is as full as God’s knowledge of us. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

ImageHow are these two considerations united? Did Paul forget that he had just predicted the perfection and eternity of love alone? No, he did not forget; for he closes this part of his letter by re-emphasizing he abiding character of love as the greatest thing of all. Or are the words about knowledge inserted without thought of a definite connection with the rest of the passage? They are not merely inserted; for there is a link, one of the most profound phrases in this great chapter: “even as also I am fully known”—fully known, that is, by God. However, there is only one way to know a personality—to become united with that personality through love. Full knowledge presupposes full love. God knows me, because He love me; and I shall know Him face to face through a similar uniting, which is love and knowledge at the same time. Love lasts; love alone endures, and nothing else besides love, nothing independent of love. Yet, in love, the seeing face to face and the knowledge of the center of the other I are implied. It is not blind love that is the enduring love, the love that God Himself is. It is a seeing love, a knowing love, a love that looks through into the depth of the Heart of God, and into the depth of our hearts. There is no strangeness to love; love knows; it is the only power of complete ad lasting knowledge. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

ImageThere is a Greek word which can designate both knowledge and sensual love. It can designate both, because both meanings express an act of union, an overcoming of the cleavage between beings. Knowledge shall be done away with in so far as it is different from love; knowledge shall become eternal in so far as it is one with love. Therefore, the standard of knowledge is the standard of love. For Paul, the difference between knowledge and love, between seeing and acting between theory and practice, exists only when fragmentary knowledge is our concern. Full knowledge does not admit a difference between itself and love, or between theory and practice. Love overcomes the seeming opposition between theory and practice; it is knowing and doing at the same time. Therefore, it is the greatest thing of all; therefore, God Himself, the “life force” that infuses all of us, is love; therefore, the Christ, as the manifestation of the Divine Love, is full of grace and of truth. That is what Paul means; and that is the standard of knowledge he gives. “And again, my brethren, I would cite your minds forward to the time when the Lord God gave these commandments unto his children; and I would that ye should remember that the Lord God ordained priests, after his holy order, which was after the order of his Son, to teach these things unto the people. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

Image“And these priests were ordained after the order of his Son, in a manner that thereby the people might know in what manner to look forward to his Son for redemption. And this is the manner after which they were ordained—being called and prepared from the foundation of the World according to the foreknowledge of God, on account of their exceeding faith and good works; in the first place being left to choose good or evil; therefore they having chosen good, and exercising exceedingly great faith, are called with a holy calling, yea, with that holy calling which was prepared with, and according to, a preparatory redemption for such. And thus they have been called to this holy calling on account of their faith, while others would reject the Spirit of God on account of their hearts and blindness of their minds, while, if it had not been for this they might have had as great privilege as their brethren. Or in fine, in the first place they were on the same standing with their brethren; thus this holy calling being prepared from the foundations of the World for such as would not harden their hearts, being in and through the atonement of the Only Begotten Son, who was prepared. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

Image“And thus being called by this holy calling, and ordained unto the high priesthood of the holy order of God, to teach his commandments unto the children of humans, that they also might enter into his rest. This high priesthood being after the order of his Son, which order was from the foundation of the World; or in other words, being without beginning of days or end of years, being prepared from eternity to all eternity, according to his foreknowledge of all things—now they were ordained after this manner—being called with a holy calling, and ordained with a holy ordinance, and taking upon them the high priesthood of the holy order, which calling, and ordinance, and high priesthood, is without beginning or end—thus they become high priests forever, after the order of the Son, the Only Begotten of the Father, who is without beginning of days or end of years, who is full of grace, equity, and truth. And thus it is. Amen. Now, as I said concerning the holy order, or this high priesthood, there were many who were ordained and because high priests of God; and it was on account of their exceeding faith and repentance, and their righteousness before God, they choosing to repent and work righteousness rather than to perish; therefore they were called after this holy order, and were sanctified, and their garments were washed white through the blood of the Lamb. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

Image“Now they, after being sanctified by the Holy Ghost, having their garments made white, being pure and spotless before God, could not look upon sin save it were with abhorrence; and there were many, exceedingly great many, who were made pure and entered into the rest of the Lord their God. And now, my brethren, I would that ye should humble yourselves before God, and bring forth fruit meet for repentance, that ye may also enter into that rest. Yea, humble yourselves even as the people in the days of Melchizedek, who was also a high priest after this same order which I have spoken, who also took upon him the high priesthood forever. And it was this same Melchizedek to whom Abraham paid tithes; yes of one-tenth part of all he possessed. Now these ordinances were given after this manner, that thereby the people might look forward on the Son of God, it being a type of his order, or it being his order, and this that they might look forward to him for a remission of their sins, that they might enter into the rest of the Lord. Now this Melchizedek was a king over the land of Salem; and his people had waxed strong in iniquity and abomination; yea, they had all gone astray; there were full of all manner of wickedness. However, Melchizedek having exercised might faith, and received the office of the high priesthood according to the holy order of God, did preach repentance unto his people. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

Image“And behold, they did establish peace in the land in his days; therefore he was called the prince of peace, for he was the king of Salem; and he did reign under his father. Now, there were many before him, and also there were many afterwards, but none were greater; therefore, of him hey have more particularly made mention. Now, I need not rehearse the matter; what I have said may suffice. Before, the scriptures are before you; if ye will wrest them it shall be to your own destruction. And now it came to pass that when Alma has said these words unto them, he stretched forth his hand unto them and cried with a mighty voice, saying: Now is the time to repent, for the day of salvation draweth nigh; yea, and the voice of the Lord, by the mouth of angels, doth declare it unto all nations; yea, doth declare it, that they may have glad tidings of great joy; yea, and he doth sound these glad tidings among all his people, yea, even to them that are scattered abroad upon the face of the Earth; wherefore they have come unto us. And they are made know unto us in plain terms that we may understand, that we cannot err; and this because of our being wanderers in a strange land; therefore, we are his highly favoured, for we have these glad tidings declared unto us in all part of our vineyard. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Image“For behold, angels are declaring it unto many at this time in our land; and this is for the purpose of preparing the hearts of the children of human to receive his word at the time of his coming in his glory. And now we only wait to hear the joyful news declared unto us by the mouth of angels, of his coming; for the time cometh, we know not how soon. Would to God that it might be in may day; but let it be sooner or later, in it I will rejoice. And it shall be made known unto just and holy humans, by the mouth of angels, a the time of his coming, that the words of our father may be fulfilled, according to that which they have spoken concerning him, which was according to the spirit of prophecy which was in them. And now, my brethren, I wish from the inmost part of my heart, yes, with great anxiety even unto pain, that ye would hearken unto my words, and cast off your sins, and not procrastinate the say of your repentance; but that ye would humble yourselves before the Lord, and call on his holy name, and watch and pray continually, that ye may not be tempted above that which ye can bear, and thus be led by the Holy Spirit becoming humble, meek, submissive, patient, full of love and long-suffering. Having faith n the Lord; having a hope that ye shall receive eternal life; having the love of God always in your heart, that ye may be lifted up at the last day an enter into his rest. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

Image“And may the Lord grant unto you repentance, that ye may not bring down his wrath upon you, that ye may not be bound down by the chains of hell, that ye may not suffer the second death. And Alma spake many more words unto the people, which are not written in this book,” reports Alma 13.1-31. Please attend, O Lord Jesus Christ our God, from Thy holy habitation, and from the glorious throne of Thy kingdom, and come to sanctify us, Thou Who sittest above with the Father, and art here invisibly present with us; please vouchsafe with Thy mighty hand to impart Thine immaculate Body and Thy precious Blood to us, and by us to all Thy people. Possessive love is natural. We want to have and keep what we love. However, when an object is another human being, there is an inevitable desire for the return of our love, for the restriction of their affection to us alone, so that we give is not given in purity but in extended selfishness. Hence when other love you they want to deprive you of your freedom. But when the disciple loves you, one must give you freedom. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20Image

BRIGHTON STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH

Rancho Cordova, CA |

Now Selling!

Image

Single-story living with a contemporary twist. 🧬 Swipe to see how the light fills the rooms at Residence 1 in #BrightonStation!

ImageWe have a Residence 1 home ready for move-in! Home Site 79 is fully equipped with everything you expect from one of our homes, including a large eat-in island in the kitchen, spacious Great Room, and private Owner’s suite. 🏡  https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/home-site-79/

ImageThe functions of your word, O Lord, allow us to live rejoicing in the bounty. You ask us to pray, so that the capacity of the ministry, to whom You have forgiven this people, and bestow upon humans, is sufficient grace of serving Jesus Christ.
#CresleighRanch
#CresleighHomes

Image

Love is Full of as Many Mysteries as the Winchester Mansion, it Can be Beautiful and Bizarre!

ImageHow far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty World. Why then the World is mine oyster, which I with sword will open. How beautiful it is to be in love; how interesting it is to know that one is in love. This, you see, is the difference. I can become furious at the thought that she disappeared before me the second time, and ye in a certain sense I am glad of it. The image I have of her hovers indefinitely somewhere between her actual and her ideal form. I now have this image before me, but precisely because either it is actuality or actuality is indeed the occasion, it had a singular magic. I feel no impatience, for she must live here in the city, and at this moment that is enough for me. This possibility is the condition for the proper appearance of her image—everything will enjoyed in slow drafts. And should I not be calm—I, who can regard myself as a favourite of the gods, I, whose lot was the rare good fortune of falling in love again. This is something that cannot be elicited by skill or study—I is a gift. However, if I have succeeded in stirring up an erotic love again, I do want to see how long it can be sustained. I coddle this love as I never did my first. The opportunity falls to one’s lot rarely enough—therefore the point is truly to utilize it if it does come along, for it is dismaying that it is no art to seduce a young lady but it is a stroke of good fortune to find one who is worth seducing. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

Image Love is full of as many mysteries as the Winchester mansion, it can be beautiful and bizarre, and this falling in love is also a mystery, even though a minor one. Most people rush ahead, become engaged or do other unwise things, and in a turn of hand everything is over, and they know neither what they have won nor what they have lost. Two times she has appeared before me and has disappeared; that means she will appear more often. When Joseph had interpreted Pharaoh’s dream, he added: But the fact that you dreamed twice means that it will be fulfilled soon. Yet, if one could discern somewhat ahead of time the forces whose emergence forms the content of life, it would be interesting. At present she is living in all her tranquil peace; she does not have even an inkling of my existence, even less of what is going on within me, to say nothing of the assurance with which I gaze into her future, for my soul is demanding more and more actuality, and it is becoming stronger and stronger. If at first sight a young lady does no make such a deep impression on a person that she awakens the ideal, then ordinarily the actuality is not especially desirable; but if she does, then no matter how experienced a person is he usually is rather overwhelmed. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

ImageI always advise the person who is not sure of one’s hand, his eye, and his victory to venture the attack in this first state, in which, precisely because he is overwhelmed, he has supranatural powers—for being overwhelmed is a curious mixture of sympathy and egotism. He will, however, miss out on an enjoyment, for he does not enjoy the situation since he himself is wrapped up in it, hidden in it. Which the more beautiful is difficult to decide—which is the more beautiful is difficult to decide—which is the more interesting is easy. It is, however, always best to come as close as possible to the line. This is the real enjoyment, and what others enjoy I do not know for sure. Mere possession is very little, and the means such lovers use are usually paltry enough; they do not even reject money, power, alien influence, sleeping positions, excreta. However, what pleasure is there in live if absolute is not intrinsic to it, that is, from the one side—but ordinarily that takes spirit, and such lovers generally do not have that. I am not alone in seeing such an actualizing tendency as the fundamental answer to the question of what makes an organism “tick.” This tendency involves a development toward the differentiation of organs and functions; it involves enhancement through reproduction. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

ImageSzent-Gyoergyi says that he cannot explain the mysteries of biological development without supposing an innate drive in living matter to perfect itself. The organism, in its normal state, moves toward its own fulfillment, toward self-regulation and an independence from external control. However, is this view confirmed by other evidence? Let me point to some of the work in biology that supports the concept of the actualizing tendency. One example, replicated with different species, is the work of Hans Driesch with the sea urchins many years ago. Driesch learned how to tease apart the two cells that are formed after the first division of the fertilized egg. Had they been left to develop normally, it is clear that each of these two cells would have grown into a portion of a sea urchin larva, the contributions of both being needed o form a whole creature. So it seems equally obvious that when two cells are skillfully separated, each, if it grows, will simply develop into some portion of a sea urchin. However, this assumption overlooks the directional growth. It is found that each cell, if it can be kept alive, now develops into a whole sea urchin larva—a bit smaller than usual, but normal and complete. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

ImageI have chosen this example because it seems so closely analogous to my experience in dealing with individuals one-to-one therapeutic relationships, in facilitating intensive groups, in providing freedom to learn for students in classes. In these situations, I am most impressed with the fact that each human being has a directional tendency toward wholes, toward actualization of one’s potentialities. I have not found psychotherapy or a group experience effective when I have tried to create in another individual something that is not already there; I have found, however, that if I can provide the conditions that allow growth to occur, then this positive directional tendency brings about constructive results. The scientist with the divided sea urchin egg was in the same situation. He could not cause the cell to develop in one way or another, but when he focused his skill on providing the conditions that permitted the cell to survive and grow, the tendency for growth and the direction of growth were evident, and came from within the organism. I cannot think of a better analogy for therapy or the group experience, where, if I can supply a psychological amniotic fluid, forward movement of a constructive sort will occur. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

ImageI would like to add one comment which may be clarifying. Sometimes this growth tendency is spoken of as though it involved the development of all the potentialities of the organism. This is clearly not true. As one of my colleagues pointed out, the organism does not tend toward developing its capacity for nausea, nor does it actualize it potentiality for self-destruction, nor its ability to bear pain. Only under unusual or perverse circumstances do these potentialities become actualized. It is clear that the actualizing tendency is selective and directional—a constructive tendency, if you will. Those who favour the view of an actualizing tendency does not need to be inhibited by the belief that it is in conflict with modern science or theories of knowledge. It is now theorized that the genetic code necessary to specify the characteristics of the mature organism. Instead, it contains a set of roles determining the interactions of the dividing cells. Much less information is needed to codify the rules than to guide every aspect of maturing development. Thus information can be generated within the organism system—information can grow. Hence, Driesch’s sea urchin cells are doubtless following the coded rules and, consequently, are able to develop in original, not previously or rigidly specified ways. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

ImageAll this goes deeply against the current (and possibly outdated) epistemology of the social sciences, which holds that a cause is followed in a one-way direction by an effect. In contrast, Murayama and others believe that there are mutual cause-effect interactions which amplify deviations and permit new information and new forms to develop. This morphogenetic epistemology appears to be basic to understanding of all living systems, including all growth processes in organisms. Murayama states that an understanding of biology “lies in the recognition that biological processes are reciprocal causal processes, not random processes.” On the other hand, as he points out elsewhere, an understanding of biology does not emerge from an epistemology based on one-way cause-effect systems. Thus, there is great need to rethink the stimulus-response, cause-effect basis on which most of social science rests. The work in the field of sensory deprivation shows how strong is the organismic tendency to amplify diversities and create new information and new forms. Certainly, tension reduction, or the absence of stimulation, is a far cry from being the desired state of the organism. Dr. Freud could not have been more wrong in his postulate that “The nervous system is an apparatus which would even, if this were feasible, maintain itself in an altogether unstimulated condition.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

ImageOn the contrary, when deprived of external stimuli, the human organism produces a flood of internal stimuli, sometimes of the most bizarre sort. Lilly was one of the first to tell of his experiences when suspended weightless in a soundproof tank of water. He speaks of trancelike states, mystical experiences, the sense of being tuned in on communication networks no available to ordinary consciousness, and ever experiences that can only be called hallucinatory. It is very clear that when a person is receiving an absolute minimum of external stimuli, one is opened to a flood of experiencing at a level far beyond that of everyday living. The individual most certainly does not lapse into homeostasis, into a passive equilibrium. This occurs only in diseased organisms. Thus, to me it is meaningful to say that the substratum of all motivation is the organismic tendency toward fulfillment. This tendency may express itself in the widest range of behaviours and in response to a wide variety of needs. To be sure, certain basic wants must be at least partially met before other needs become urgent. Consequently, the tendency of the organism to actualize itself may at one moment lead to the seeking of food or satisfaction in pleasures of the flesh, and yet, unless these needs are overpoweringly great, even these satisfactions will be sought in ways that enhance, rather than diminish, self-esteem. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

ImageAnd the organism will also seek other fulfillment in its transactions with the environment. The need for exploration of and producing change in the environment, the need for play and for self-exploration—all of these and many other behaviours are basically expressions of the actualizing tendency. In short, organisms are always seeking, always initiating always “up to something.” There is one central source of energy in the human organism. This source is a trustworthy function of the whole system rather than of some portion of it; it is most simply conceptualized as a tendency toward fulfillment, toward actualization, involving not only the maintenance but also the enhancement of the organism. There are many who criticize this point of view. They regard it as too optimistic, not dealing adequately with the negative element, the evil, the dark side in human beings. Consequently, I would like to put this directional tendency in a broader context. There appears to be a formative tendency at work in the Universe, which can be observed at every level. This tendency has received much less attention than it deserves. Physical scientists up to now have focused primarily on “entropy,” the tendency toward deterioration, or disorder. They know a great deal about this tendency. Studying closed systems, they can give it a clear mathematical description. They know that order tends to deteriorate into randomness, each stage les organized than the last. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

ImageWe are also very familiar with deterioration in organic life. The system—whether plant, animal, or human—eventually deteriorates into a lesser and lesser degree of functioning organization, or order, until decay reaches a stasis. In one sense, this is what one aspect of medicine is all about—a concern with the malfunctioning or deterioration of an organ or the organism as a whole. The complex process of death of the physical organism is increasingly well understood. So a great deal is known of the universal tendency of systems at all levels to deteriorate in the direction of less and less orderliness, more and more randomness. When this system operates, it is a one-way street: the World seems to be a great machine, running down and wearing out. However, there is far less recognition of, or emphasis on, the even more important formative tendency which can be equally well observed at every level of the Universe. After all, every form that we see or know emerged from a simpler, less complex form. This is a phenomenon which is at leas as significant as entropy. Examples could be given from every form of inorganic or organic being. Let me illustrate with just a few. In appears that every galaxy, every star, every planet, including our own, was formed from a less organized whirling storm of particles. Many of these stellar objects are themselves formative. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

ImageIn the atmosphere of our Sun, hydrogen nuclei collide to form molecules of helium, which are more complex in nature. It is hypothesized that in other stars, even heavier molecules are formed by such interactions. I understand that when the simple materials of the Earth’s atmosphere which were present before life began—hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, in the form of water and ammonia—are infused by electrical charges or by radiation, heavier molecules begin to form first, followed by the more complex amnio acids. We seem only a step away from the formation of viruses and the even more complex living organisms. A creative, not disintegrative process, is at work. Another fascinating example is the formation of crystals. In every case, from less ordered and less symmetrical fluid matter there emerges the startlingly unique, ordered symmetrical and often beautiful crystalline form. All of us have marveled at the perfection and complexity of the snowflake. Yet it emerged from formless vapour. When we consider the single living cell, we discover that it often forms more complex colonies, as in coral reefs. Even more order enters the picture as the cell emerges into an organism of many cells with specialized functions. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

ImageI do not need to portray the whole gradual process of organic evolution. We are all familiar with the steadily increasing complexity of organisms. They are not always successful in their ability to cope with the changing environment, but the trend toward complexity is always evident. Perhaps, for most of us, the process of organic evolution is best recognized as we consider the development of the single fertilized human ovum through the simplest stages of cell division, then the aquatic gill stage, and on to the vastly complex, highly organized human infant. There is a manifest and increasing order in evolution. Thus, without ignoring the tendency toward deterioration, we need to recognize fully what Szent-Gyoergyi terms “syntropy” and what Whyte calls the “morphic tendency,” the ever operating trend toward increase order and interrelated complexity evident at both the inorganic and the organic level. The Universe is always building and creating as well as deteriorating. This process is evident in the human being, too. The Nephite monetary system is set forth—Amulek contends with Zeezrom—Christ will not save people in their sins—only those who inherit the kingdom of Heaven are saved—all humans will rise in immortality—there is no death after the Resurrection. About 82 Before Christ. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

Image“Now it was in the law of Mosiah that every human who was a judge of the law, or those who were appointed to be judges, should receive wages according to the time which they laboured to judge those who were brought before them to be judged. Now, if a human owed another, and one would not pay that which one did owe, one was complained of to the judge; and the judge executed authority, and sent forth officers that the human should be brought before him; and he judged the man according to the law and the evidences which were brought against him, and thus the man was compelled to pay that which he owed, or be stripped, or be cast out from among the people as a thief and a robber. And the judges received from one’s wages according to one’s time—a senine of gold; and this is according to the law which was given. Now these are the names of the different pieces of their gold, and of their silver, according to their value. And the names are given by the Nephites, for they did not reckon after the manner of the Jews who were at Jerusalem; neither did they measure after the manner of the Jews; but they altered their reckoning and their measure, according to the minds and the circumstances of the people, in every generation, until the reign of the judges, they having been established by king Mosiah. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

Image“Now the reckoning is thus—a senine of gold, a seon of gold, a shum of gold, and a limnah of gold. A senum of silver, an amnor of silver, an ezrom of silver, and an onti of silver. A senum of silver was equal to a senine of gol, and either for a measure of barely, and also for a measure of every kind of grain. Now the amount of a seon of gold was twice the value of a senine. And a shum of gold was twice the value of a seon. And a limnah of gold was the value of them all. And an amnor of silver was as great as four senums. And an onti was as great as them al. Now this is the value of the lesser numbers of their reckoning—a shibion is half of a senum; therefore, a shiblon for half a measure of barely. And a shiblum is a half of a shiblon. And a leah is the half of a shiblum. Now this their number, according to their reckoning. Now an antion of gold is equal to three shiblons. Now, it was for the sole purpose to get gain, because they received their wages according to heir employ, therefore, they did stir up the people to riotings, ad all manner of disturbances and wickedness, that they might have more employ, that they might get money according to the suits which were brought before them; therefore they did stir up the people against Alma and Amulek. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

Image“And this Zeezrom began to question Amulek, saying: Will ye answer me a few questions which I shall ask you? Now Zeezrom was a man who was expert in the devices of the devil, that he might destroy that which was good; therefore, he said unto Amulek: Will ye answer the questions which I shall put unto you? And Amulek said unto him: Yea, if it be according to the Spirit of the Lord, which is in me; for I shall say nothing which is contrary to the Spirit of the Lord. And Zeezrom said unto him: Behold, here are six onties of silver, and all these I will give thee if thou wilt deny the existence of a Supreme Being. Now Amulek said: O thou child of hell, why tempt ye me? Knowest thou that the righteous yieldeth to no such temptations? Believest thou that there is no God? I say unto you, Nay, thou knowest that there is a God, but thou lovest that lucre more than him. And now thou hast lied before God unto me. Thou sadist unto me—Behold these six onties which are of great worth, I will give unto thee—when thou hadest it in thy heart to retain them from me; and it was only thy desire that I should deny the true and living God, that thou mightest have cause to destroy me. And now behold, for this great evil thou shalt have they reward. And Zeezrom said unto him: Thou sayest there is a true and living God? #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

Image“And Amulek said: Yea, there is a true and living God. Now Zeezrom said: Is there more than one God? And I answered, No. Now Zeezrom said unto him again: How knows thou these things? And he said: An angel hath made them known uno me. And Zeerom said again: Who is he that shall come? Is it the Son of God? And he said unto him, Yea. And Zeezrom said again: Shall he save his people in their sins? And Amulek answered and said unto him: I say unto you he shall not, for it is impossible for him to deny his word. Now Zeezrom said unto the people: See that ye remember these things; for he said there is but one God; yet he saith that the Son of God shall come, but he shall not save his people—as though he had authority to command God. Now Amulek saith again unto him: Behold thou hast lied, for thou sayest that I spake as though I had authority to command God because I said he shall not save his people in their sins. And I say unto you again that he cannot save them in their sins; for I cannot deny his word, and he hath said that no unclean thing can inherit the kingdom of Heaven; therefore, how can ye be saved, except ye inherit the kingdom of Heaven? Therefore, ye cannot be saved in your sins. Now Zeezrom saith again unto him: Is the Son of God the very Eternal Father? #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

Image“And Amulek said unto him: Yea, he is the very Eternal Father of Heaven and of Earth, and all things which in them are; he is the beginning and the end, the first and the last; and he shall come into the World to redeem his people; and he shall take upon him the transgressions of those who believe on his name; and these are they that shall have eternal life, and salvation cometh to none else. Therefore the wicked remain as though there had been no redemption made, expect it be the loosing of the bands of death; for behold, the day cometh that all shall rise from the dead and stand before God, and be judged according to their works. Now, there is a death which is called a temporal death; and the death of Christ shall loose the bands of this temporal death, that all shall be raised from this temporal death. The spirit and the body shall be reunited again in its perfect form; both limb and join shall be restored to its proper frame, even as we now are at this time; and we shall be brought to stand before God, knowing even as we know now, and have a bright recollection of all our guilt. Now, this restoration shall come to all, both old and young, both bond and free, both male and female, both the wicked and the righteous; and even so much as a hair of their heads be lost. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Image“However, every thing shall be restored to its perfect frame, as it is now, or in the body, and shall be brought and be arraigned before the bar of Christ the Son, and God the Father, and the Holy Spirit, which is one Eternal God, to be judged according to their works, whether they be good or whether they be evil. Now, behold, I have spoken unto you concerning the death of the mortal body, and also concerning the resurrection of the mortal body. I say unto you that this mortal body is raised to an immortal body, that is from death, even from the first death unto life, that they can die no more; their spirits uniting with their bodies, never to be divided; thus the whole becoming spiritual and immortal, that they can no more see corruption. Now, when Amulek had finished these words the people began again to be astonished, and also Zeezrom began to tremble. And thus ended the words of Amulek, or this is all that I have written,” reports Alma 11.1-46. Sovereign Lord, Thy will is supreme in Heaven and Earth, and all beings are creatures of Thy power. Thou art the Father of our spirits; Thy inspiration gives us understanding, Thy providence governs our lives. However, O God, we are sinners in Thy sight; thou hast judged us so, and if we deny it we make Thee a liar. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

ImageYet in Christ Thou art reconciled to Thy rebellious subjects; please give us the ear of faith to hear him, the eye of faith to see him, the hand of faith to receive him, the appetite of faith to feed upon him; that we might find him light, riches, honour, eternal life. Thou art the inviting one, may we hearken to Thee; the almighty instructor, teach us to live to Thee; the light-dweller, inaccessible to humans and angels, hiding Thyself behind the elements of creation, but known to us in Jesus; possess our minds with the grandeur of Thy perfections. Thy love to us in Jesus is firm and changeless, nothing can separate us from it, and in the enjoyment of it nothing can make us miserable. Preserve us from hypocrisy and formality in religion; enable us to remember what thou art and what we are, to recall Thy holiness and our unworthiness; help us to approach Thee clothed with humility, for vanity, forwardness, insensibility, disorderly affection, backwardness to duty, proneness to evil are in our hearts. Let us never forget Thy patience, wisdom, power, faithfulness, care, and never cease to respond to Thy invitations. O LORD GOD, there is no blessing we implore but Thou art able to give hast promised to give, hast given already to countless multitudes, all unworthy and guilty like ourselves; make us willing to receive the supply of our need from Thy bounty. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19Image

 

Image

Just because 2020 had other plans, does not mean you have to! Check out today’s blog post for socially distant outdoor activities to pass the time with this summer. ☀️ Link in bio. https://cresleigh.com/blog/

ImageFor your bounty, to this end, please convince us of sin, soften our hard hearts, to bewail our folly, ingratitude, pride, unbelief, rebellion, corruption. Through the law may we die to the law, then look with wonder, submission, delight, to the provision Thou hast made for the glory of Thy name in the salvation of sinners. Please give us a hope that makes us not ashamed, a love that excites to holy obedience, a joy in Thee that is our strength, a faith in Thy Son who loved us and died for us. May we preserve in duty when not fully conscious of Thee, wait upon Thee and keep Thy way, be humble and earnest suppliants at Thy feet, live continually as on the brink of eternity. #CresleighHomes

ImagePlease let us be at Thy disposal for the duties and evens of life, submit our preferences to Thy wisdom and will, resign our enjoyments if Thou shouldest require it as our absolute Proprietor and best Friend. In our unworthiness and provocations please make us grateful for the means of grace ad the ordinances of religion and please teach us to profit by them more than we have done. Please help us to be in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, to enter upon the sabbath mindful of its solemnities, duties, privileges, setting all things Worldly aside while we worship Thee. May we know the blessedness of humans whose strength is in Thee, and in whose hearts are the highway to Heaven.

Image

Winchester Mystery House

A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
🗝 winchestermysteryhouse.com

If there was More Rest for Souls in Our World, this Temple be as in the Hearts of the People for whom Saved the Union!

ImagePerhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind. In the case of the son, the projection-making factor is identical with the mother-imago, and this is consequently taken to be the real mother. The projection can only be dissolved when the son sees that in the realm of his psyche there is an imago not only of the mother but of the daughter, the sister, the beloved, the Heavenly goddess, and the chthonic Baubo. Every mother and every beloved is forced to become the carrier and embodiment of this omnipresent and ageless image, which corresponds to the deepest reality in a man. It belongs to him, this perilous image of Woman; she stands for the loyalty which is in the interests of life he must sometimes forgo; she is the much needed compensation for the risk, struggles, sacrifices that all end in disappointment; she is the solace for all the bitterness of life. And, at the same time, she is the great illusionist, the seductress, who draw him into life with her Maya—and not only into life’s reasonable and useful aspects, but into its frightful paradoxes and ambivalences where good and evil, success and ruin, hope and despair, counterbalance one another. Because she is his greatest danger she demands from a man his greatest, and if he has it in him she will receive it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 26

Image

This image is “My Lady Soul,” as Spitteler called her. I have suggested instead of the term “anima,” as indicating something specific, for which the expression “soul” is too general and too vague. The empirical reality summed up under the concept of the anima forms and extremely dramatic content of the unconscious. It is possible to describe this content in rational, scientific language, but in this way one entirely fails to express its living character. Therefore, in describing the living processes of the psyche, I deliberately and consciously give preference to a dramatic, mythological way of thinking and speaking, because this is not only more expressive but also more exact than an abstract scientific terminology, which is wont to toy with the notion that its theoretic formulations may one fine day be resolved into algebraic equations. The projection-making factor is the anima, or rather the unconscious as represented by the anima. Whenever she appears, in dreams, visions, and fantasies, she takes on personified form, thus demonstrating that the factor she embodies possesses all the outstanding characteristics of a feminine being. She is not an invention of the conscious, but a spontaneous product of the unconscious. Nor is she a substitute figure for the mother. #RandolphHarris 2 of 26

ImageOn the contrary, there is every likelihood that the numinous qualities which make the mother-image so dangerously powerful derive from the collective archetype of the anima, which is incarnated anew in every male child. Since the anima is an archetype that is found in men, it is reasonable to suppose that an equivalent archetype must be present in women; for just as the man is compensated by a feminine element, so woman is compensated by a masculine one. I do not, however, wish this argument to give the impression that these compensatory relationships were arrived a by deduction. On the contrary, long and varied experience was needed in order to grasp the nature of anima and animus empirically. Whatever we have to say about these archetypes, therefore, is either directly verifiable or at least rendered probable by the facts. At the same time, I am fully aware that we are discussing pioneer work which by its very nature can only be provisional. Just as the mother seems to be the first carrier of the projection-making factor for the son, so is the father for the daughter. Practical experience of these relationships is made up of many individual cases presenting all kinds of variations on the same basic theme. A concise description of them can, therefore, be no more than schematic. #RandolphHarris 3 of 26

ImageWoman is compensated by a masculine element and therefore her unconscious has, so to speak, a masculine imprint. This results in a considerable psychological difference between men and women, and accordingly I have called the projection-making factor in women the animus, which means mind or spirit. The animus corresponds to the paternal Logos just as the anima corresponds to the maternal Eros. However, I do not wish or intend to give these two intuitive concepts to specific a definition. I use Eros and Logos merely as conceptual assistants to describe the fact that women’s consciousness is characterized more by the connective quality of Eros than by the discrimination and cognition associates with Logos. In men, Eros, the function of relation, is usually less developed then Logos. In women, on the other hand, Eros is an expression of their true nature, while their Logos is often only a regrettable accident. It gives rise to misunderstandings and annoying interpretations in the family circle and among friends. This is because it consists of opinions instead of reflections, and by opinions I mean a priori assumptions that lay claim to absolute truth. Such assumptions, as everyone knows, can be extremely irritating. As the animus is partial to argument, one can best be seen a work in disputes were both parties know they are right. #RandolphHarris 4 of 26

ImageMen can argue in a very womanish way, too, when they are anima-possessed and have thus been transformed into the animus of their own anima. With them the question becomes one of personal vanity and touchiness (as if they were females); with women it is a question of power, whether of truth or justice or some other “ism”—for the dressmaker and hairdresser have already taken care of their vanity. The “Father” (id est, the sum of conventional opinions) always plays a great role in female argumentation. No matter how friendly and obliging a woman’s Eros may be, no logic on Earth can shake her if she is ridden by the animus. Often the man has the feeling—and he is not altogether wrong—that he cannot use legal means of persuasion. He is unaware that this highly dramatic situation would instantly come to a banal and unexciting end if he were to quit the field and let a second woman carry on the battle (his wife, for instance, if she herself is not they fiery war horse). This sounds idea seldom or never occurs to him, because no man can converse with an animus for five minutes without becoming the victim of one’s own anima. Anyone who still had enough sense of humour to listen objectively to the ensuing dialogue would be staggered by the vast number of commonplaces, misapplied truisms, clichés from newspapers and novels, shop-soiled platitudes of every description interspersed with vulgar abuse and brain-splitting lack of logic. #RandolphHarris 5 of 26

ImageIt is a dialogue which, irrespective of its participants, is repeated millions and millions of times in all the languages of the World and always remains essentially the same. This singular fact is due to the following circumstances: when animus and anima meet, the animus draws his sword of power and the anima ejects her poison of illusion and seduction. The outcome need not always be negative, since the two are equally likely to fall in love (a special instance of love at first sight). The language of love is of astonishing uniformity, using the well-worn formulas with the utmost devotion and fidelity, so that once again the two partners find themselves in a banal collective situation. Yet they live in the illusion that they are related to one another in a most individual way. In bot its positive and its negative aspects the anima/animus relationship is always full of “animosity,” id est, it is emotional, and hence collective. Affects lower the level of the relationship and bring it closer to the common instinctual basis, which no longer has anything individual about it. Very often the relationship runs its course heedless of its human performers, who afterwards do not know what happened to them. Whereas the clouds of “animosity” surround the man is composed chiefly of sentimentality and resentment, in woman it expresses itself in the form of opinionated views, interpretations, insinuation, and misconstructions, which all have purpose (sometimes attained) of severing the relations between two human beings. #RandolphHarris 6 of 26

ImageThe woman, like the man, becomes wrapped in a veil of illusions by her demon-familiar, and, as the daughter who alone understands her father (that is, is eternally right in everything), she is translated to the land of sheep, where she is put to graze by the shepherd of her soul, the animus. In talking of imagination when it presents its images in the present, we may consider what the imagination is doing in parabolic poetry. It was seen at work in the fable, similitude, and parable. In these manifestations of inventive activity, the imagination seems to function for the human being in the same way it functions for the divine spirit. It makes tangible that which is intangible. This kind of operation gives to parabolic poetry a higher character, and an appearance of something sacred and venerable. This sort of poetry is thus coloured because religion itself commonly uses its assistance as a means of communication between divinity and humanity. Here, then, with the case of divine communication before us, we find imagination manifested in poetry in two ways. First, one duty of poetry is to teach. This is could do only if imagination illustrates the work of reason. In olden times, particularly, the inventions and conclusions of human reason (even those that are now common and trite) being then new and strange, the minds of humans were hardly subtle enough to conceive them, unless they are brought nearer to the sense by this kind of resemblances and examples. #RandolphHarris 7 of 26

ImageAnd hence ancient times are full of all kinds of fables, parables, enigmas, and similitudes; as may appear by the numbers of Pythagoras the enigmas of the Sphinx, the fables of Plato, and the like. So parables are before arguments, and the force of them is still excellent because arguments cannot be made so perspicuous nor true examples so apt. So it is that the imagination translates the abstractions of understanding and reason into images. Not only does reason become palpable, but through the inventive activity of imagination it is made fitting for an audience. The second office of poetry was that of infoldment or all allusion, when the object is not to teach plainly but to teach darkly, when the secrets and mysteries of religion, policy, and philosophy are involved in fables or parables. Between 1605, the publication of The Advancement of Learning, and 1623, the appearance of De Augmentis Scientiarum, we acquired greater respect for mysteries than we had earlier. In 1609 we devoted great care to the explication of thirty-one fables of antiquity, and much later we greatly enlarged thee of them—Pan, Perseus, and Dionysius—which served us as illustrations of three of our major divisions of philosophy: natural philosophy, politics, and ethics. #RandolphHarris 8 of 26

ImageFables revealed the earliest of human mysteries, extending back in time far beyond their narrators—exempli gratia, Homer and Hesiod—and by implication they bodied forth the shadows of human’s primitive imagination. Indeed, in the parable here is invented the figure to shadow the meaning. Imagination also made absent things present at those times when it was allied with reason in a distinctly creative function. The unique cooperation with reason appears to have assigned only to the province of rhetoric as the practical art of communication via both speech and written word. It is true, as we have seen, that in poetry imagination joined with reason to produce inventions and that it gave substance to things abstract. However, in its poetic activity is could at times indulge in play; it could join and sever natural experience in unnatural ways, and escape the strictest rules of reason. In rhetoric, on the other hand, imagination worked with reason in strictly rational ways. It engaged in joint creation with reason yet it had to obey the dictates of reason. The duty and office of Rhetoric is to apply Reason to Imagination for the better moving of the Will. Rhetoric is one of the rational arts and imagination is to serve it. Rhetoric is subservient to the imagination, as Logic is to the understanding; and the duty and office of Rhetoric, if it be deeply looked into, is no other than to apply and recommend the dictates of reason to imagination, in order to excite the appetite and Will. #RandolphHarris 9 of 26

ImageAccordingly, the subject of Rhetoric, is none other than the Imaginative or Insinuative Reason. Reason and imagination together created a credible object or an argument, and the effect was insinuative. In what manner there was insinuation we shall see later on. In the cooperation of imagination with reason, imagination was under the control of reason, and reason was not at the back and called of imagination. Such mastership was essential to rational life if reason through imagination were to command the will and affections: if the affections themselves were brought to order, and pliant and obedient to reason, it is true there would be no great use of persuasions and insinuation to give access to the mind, but naked and simple propositions would be enough. However, the affections do on the contrary make such secessions and raise such mutinies and seditions…that reasons would become captive and servile, if eloquence of persuasions did not win the imagination from the affections’ part, and contract a confederacy between the reason and imagination against them. Not only should the will and conduct be under a person’s voluntary control but the decisions and products of reason acting alone are ethereal abstractions, difficult or impossible for the common mind to cope with. #RandolphHarris 10 of 26

ImageWhat is necessary, if reason is to prevail, is to transform the abstract into the concrete, the immaterial into the material, the nonsensory into the sensory: it is the business of rhetoric to make pictures of virtue and goodness, so that they may be seen. For since they cannot be showed to the sense in corporeal shape, the next degree is to show them to the imagination in as lively representations as possible, by ornament of words. The method of the Stoics, who thought to thrust virtue upon people by concise and sharp maxims and conclusions to shew Reason only in subtility of argument, which has little sympathy with the imagination and will of humans, has been justly ridiculed. In working creatively with reason, what was imagination supposed to do? Doubtless there is no way of describing what is going on when imagination is working with reason. One can only be sure of the result. The nature of the operation itself can only be hinted at. The religious law demands that one accepts ideas and strict and ridge doctrines, that are believed to be the doctrines of salvation and traditions, the acceptance of which is the condition of one’s salvation from anxiety, despair, and death. So we try to accept them, although they sometimes may become strange or doubtful to us. #RandolphHarris 11 of 26

ImageWe labour and toil under the religious demand to believe things we cannot believe. This sometimes results in us trying to escape the law of religion. We try to cast away the heavy yoke of the doctrinal law imposed on us by Church authorities, orthodox teachers, pious parents, and fixed traditions. We become critical and sceptical. We cast away the yoke; but none can live in the emptiness of mere scepticism, and so we return to the old yoke in a kind of self-torturing fanaticism and try to impose it on other people, on our children or pupils. We are driven by an unconscious desire for revenge, because of the burden we have taken upon ourselves. Many families are disrupted by painful tragedies and many minds are broken by this attitude of parents, teachers and priests. Others unable to stand the emptiness of scepticism, find new yokes outside the Church, new doctrinal laws under which they begin to labour: political ideologies which they propagate with religious fanaticism; scientific theories which they defend with strict religious doctrines and covenants; and utopian expectations they pronounce as the condition of salvation for the World, forcing whole nations under the yoke of their creeds which are religions, even while they pretend to destroy religion. #RandolphHarris 12 of 26

ImageWe are all labouring under the yoke of religion; we all, sometimes, try to throw away old or new doctrines or strict and rigid covenants, but after a little while we return, again enslaving ourselves and others in their servitude. The same is true of the practical laws of religion. They demand ritual activities, the participation in religious enterprises, and the study of religious traditions, prayer, sacraments, and meditations. They demand moral obedience, inhuman self-control and asceticism, devotion to humans and things beyond our possibilities, surrender to ideas and duties beyond our power, unlimited self-negation, and unlimited self-perfection: the religious law demands the perfect in all respects. And our conscience agrees with this demand. However, the split in our being is derived from just thus: that the perfect, although it is the truth, is beyond us, against us, judging and condemning us. So we try to throw away the ritual and moral demands. We neglect them, we hate them, we criticize them; some of us display a cynical indifference toward the religious and moral law. However, since mere cynicism is as impossible as mere scepticism, we return to old or new laws, becoming more fanatic than ever before, and take a yoke of the law upon us, which is more self-defying, more cruel against ourselves, and more willing to coerce other people under the same yoke in the name of the perfect. #RandolphHarris 13 of 26

ImageJesus Himself becomes for these perfectionists, puritans and moralists a teacher of the religious law putting upon us the heaviest of all burdens, the burden of His law. However, that is the greatest possible distortion of the mind of Jesus. This distortion can be found in the minds of those who crucified Him because He broke the religious law, not by fleeing from it like the cynical Sadducees, but by overcoming it. We are all permanently in danger of abusing Jesus by stating that e is the founder of a new religion, and bringer of another, more refined, and more enslaving law. And so we see in all Christian Churches the toiling and labouring of people who are called Christians, serious Christians, under innumerable laws which they cannot fulfill, from which they flee, to which they return, or which they replace by other laws. This is the yoke from which Jesus wants to liberate us. He is more than a priest or a prophet or a religious genius. These all subject us to religion. He frees us from religion. They all make new religious laws; He overcomes the religious law. “Take my yoke upon you and learn of me…for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” This does not indicate a quantitative difference—a little easier, a little lighter. It indicates a contradiction! #RandolphHarris 14 of 26

ImageThe yoke of Jesus is easy in itself, because it is above law, and replaces the toiling and labouring with rest in our souls. The yoke of religion and law presupposes all those splits and gaps in our souls which drive us to the attempt to overcome them. The yoke of Jesus is above those splits and gaps. It has overcome them whenever it appears and is received. It is not a new demand, a new doctrine or new power of transforming life. He calls it a yoke, He means that is comes from above and grasps us with saving force; if He calls it easy, He means that it is given before anything we can do. It is being, power, reality, conquering the anxiety and despair, the fear and the restlessness of our existence. It is here, amongst us, in the midst of our personal tragedy, and the tragedy of history. Suddenly, within the hardest struggle, it appears as a victory, not attained by ourselves, but present beyond expectation and struggle. Suddenly we are grasped by a peace which is above reason, that is, above our practical striving for the good. The true—namely, the truth of our life and of our existence—has grasped us. We know that now, in the moment, we are in the truth, in spite of all our ignorance about ourselves and our World. We have not become wiser and more understanding in any ordinary sense; we are still children in knowledge. #RandolphHarris 15 of 26

ImageHowever, the truth of life is in us, with an illuminating certainty, uniting us with ourselves, giving us great and restful happiness. And the good, the ultimate good, which is not good for something else, but good in itself, has grasped us. We know that now, in this moment, we are in the good, in spite of all our weakness an evil, in spite of the fragmentary and distorted character of our Self and the World. We have not become more moral or more saintly; we still belong to a World which is subject to evil and self-destruction. However, the good of life is in us, uniting us with the good of everything, giving us the blessed experience of universal love. If this should happen, and in such a measure, we should reach our eternity, the higher order and spiritual World to which we belong, and from which we are separated in our normal existence. We should be beyond ourselves. The new being would conquer us, although the old being would not disappear. Where can we feel his new reality? We cannot find it; but it can find us. It tries to find us during our whole life. It is in the World; it carries the World; and it is the cause of the fact that our Self and our World are not yet thrown into utter self-destruction. Although it is hidden under anxiety and despair, under finitude and tragedy, it is in everything, in souls and bodies, becomes everything derives life from it. #RandolphHarris 16 of 26

ImageThe new being means that the old being has not yet destroyed itself completely; that life is still possible; that our souls still gather force to go forward; and that the good and the true are not extinguished. It is present, and it will find us. Let us be found by it. It is stronger than the World, although it is quiet and meek and humble. That is the meaning of the call of Jesus, “Come unto Me.” For in Him this new being is present in such a way that it determines His life. That which is hidden in all things, that which appears to us sometimes in the great elevations of our soul, is the forming power of this life. It is the uniqueness and he mystery of His Being, the embodiment, the full appearance of the New Being. That is the reason that He can say words which no prophet or saint has ever said: that nobody knows God save Him and those who receive their knowledge through Him. These words certainly do not mean that He imposes a new theology or a new religious law upon us. They mean rather that He is the New Being in which everybody can participate, because it is universal and omnipresent. Why can He call Himself meek and lowly in heart after he has said words about His uniqueness, words that, in anyone else’s mouth, would be blasphemous arrogance? It is because the New Being that forms Him is not created by Him. He is created by it. It has found Him, as it must find us. #RandolphHarris 17 of 26

ImageAnd since His Being is not the result of His striving and labouring, and since it is not servitude to the religious law but rather victory over religion and law that makes His uniqueness, He does not impose religion and law, burdens and yokes, upon humans. If He called us o the Christian religion or to the Christian doctrines or to the Christian morals, we would turn down His call with hatred. If He gave us new commands for thinking and acting, we would not accept His claim to be meek and humble and to give rest to our souls. Jesus is not the creator of another religion, but the victor over religion; He is not the maker of another law, but the conqueror of law. We, the ministers and teachers of Christianity, do not call you to Christianity but rather to the New Being to which Christianity should be a witness and nothing else, not confusing itself with that New Being. Forget all Christian doctrines; forget your own certainties and your own doubts, when you hear the call of Jesus. Forget all Christian morals, your achievements and your failures, when you come to Him. Nothing is demanded of you—no idea of God, and no goodness in yourselves, not your being religious, not your being Christian, not your being wise, and not your being moral. #RandolphHarris 18 of 26

ImageHowever, what is demanded is only your being open and willing to accept what if given to you, the New Being, the being of love and justice and truth, as it is manifest in Him Whose yoke is easy and Whose burden is light. Let me close, as I began, with a personal word. Believe me, you who are religious and Christian. If it were for the sake of Christianity, it would be not worthwhile to teach Christianity. And believe me, when it comes, we interpret the call of Jesus for our time, you who are estranged from religion and far away from Christianity, it is not our purpose to make you religious and Christian. We call Jesus the Christ not because He brought a new religion, but because He is the end of religion, above religion and irreligion, above Christianity and non-Christianity. We spread His call because it is the call to every human in every period to receive the New Being, that hidden saving power in our existence, which takes from us labour and burden, and gives rest to our souls. Do not ask in this moment what we shall do or how action shall follow from the New Being, from the rest in our souls. Do not ask; for you do not ask how the good fruits follow from the goodness of a tree. They follow; action follows being, and new action, better action, stronger action, follows new being, better, truer, and more just, if there was more rest for our souls in our World. #RandolphHarris 19 of 26

ImageIf they grew out of a more profound level of our life, our actions would be more creative, more conquering, conquering the tragedy of our time. For our creative depth is the depth in which we are quiet. “Now these are the words which Amulek preached unto the people who were in the land of Ammonihah, saying: “I am Amulek; I am the son of Giddonah, who was the son of Ishmael, who was a descendant of Aminadi; and it was that same Aminadi who interpreted the writing which was upon the wall of the temple, which was written by the finger of God. An Aminadi was a descendant of Nephi, who was the son of Lehi, who came out of the land of Jerusalem, who was a descendent of Manasseh, who was the son of Joseph who was sold into Egypt by the hands of his brethren. And behold, I am also a man of no small reputation among all those who know me; yea, and behold, I have many kindreds and friends, and I have also acquired much richness by the hand of my industry. Nevertheless, after all this, I never have known much of the ways of the Lord, and his mysteries and marvelous power. I said I never had know much of thee things; but behold, I mistake, for I have seen much of his mysteries and his marvelous power; yea, even in the preservation of the lives of this people. #RandolphHarris 20 of 26

Image“Nevertheless, I did harden my heart, for I was called many times and I would not hear; therefore I knew concerning these things, yet I would not know; therefore I went on rebelling against God, in the wickedness of my heart, even until the fourth day of this seventh month, which is in the tenth years of e reign of the judges. As I was journeying to see a very near kindred, behold an angel of the Lord appeared unto me and said: Amulek, return to thine own house for thou shalt feed a prophet of the Lord; yea, a holy man, who is a chosen man of God; for he has fasted many days because of the sins of this people, and he is an hungered, and thou shalt receive him into thy house and feed him, and he shall bless thee and thy house; and the blessing of the Lord shall rest upon thee and thy house. And it came to pass that I obeyed the voice of the angel, and returned towards my house. And as I was going thither I found the man whom the angel said uno me: Thou shalt receive into thy house—and behold it was this same man who has been speaking unto you concerning the things of God. And the angel said uno me he is a holy man because it was said by an angel of God. And again, I know that the things whereof he hath testified are true; for behold I say unto you, that as the Lord liveth, even so has he sent his angel to make these things manifest unto me; and this he has done whole this Alma hath dwelt at my house. #RandolphHarris 21 of 26

Image“For behold, he hath blessed mine house, he hath blessed me, and my women, and my children, and my father and my kinsfolk; yea, even all my kindred hath he blessed, and the blessing of the Lord hath rested upon us according to the words which he spake. And now, when Amulek had spoken these words the people began to be astonished, seeing there was more than one witness who testified of the things whereof they were accused, and also of the things which were to come, according to the spirit of prophecy which was in them. Nevertheless, there were some among them who thought to question them, that by their cunning devices they might catch them in their words, that they might find witness against them, that they might deliver them to their judges that they might be judged according to the law, and that they might be slain or cast into prison, according to the crime which they could make appear or witness against them. Now it was those men who sought to destroy them, who were lawyers, who were hired or appointed by the people to administer the law at their times of trials, or at the trials of the crimes of the people before the judges. Now these lawyers were learned in all the arts and cunning of the people; and this was to enable them that they might be skillful in their profession. #RandolphHarris 22 of 26

Image“And it came to pass that they began to question Amulek, that thereby they might make him cross his words, or contradict the words which he should speak. Now they knew not that Amulek could know of their designs. However, it came to pass as they began to question him, he perceived their thoughts, and he said unto them: O ye wicked and perverse generation, ye lawyers and hypocrites, for ye are laying the foundations of the devil; for ye are laying traps and snares to catch the holy ones of God. Ye are laying traps and snares to catch the holy ones of God. Ye are laying plans to pervert the ways of the righteous, and to bring down the wrath of God upon your heads, even to the utter destruction of this people. Yea, well did Mosiah say, who was our last king, when we was about to deliver up the kingdom, having no one to confer it upon, causing that this people should be governed by their own voices—yea, well did he say that is the time should come that the voice of this people should choose iniquity, that is, if the time should come that this people should fall into transgression, they would be ripe for destruction. And now I say unto you that well doth the Lord judge of your iniquities; well doth he cry unto this people, by the voice of his angels: Repent ye, repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand. #RandolphHarris 23 of 26

Image“Yea, well doth he cry, by the voice of his angels that: I will come down among my people, with equity and justice in my hands. Yea, and I say unto you that if it were no for the prayers of the righteous, who are now in the land, that ye would even now be visited with utter destruction; yet it would not be by flood, as were the people in the days of Noah, but it would be by famine, and by pestilence and the sword. However, it is by the prayers of the righteous that ye are spared; now therefore, if ye will cast out the righteous from among you then will not the Lord stay his hand; but in his fierce anger he will come out against you; then ye shall be smitten by famine, and by pestilence, and by the sword; and the time is soon at hand expect ye repent. And now it came to pass that the people were more angry with Amulek, and they cried out, saying: This man doth revile against our laws which are just, and our wise lawyers whom we have selected. However, Amulek stretched forth his hand, and cried the mightier unto them, saying: O ye wicked and perverse generation, why at Satan got such great hold upon your hearts? Why will ye yield yourselves unto him that he may have power over you, to blind your eyes, that ye will not understand the words which are spoken, according to their truth? #RandolphHarris 24 of 26

Image“For behold, have I testified against your law? Ye do not understand: ye say that I have spoken against your law; but I have not, but I have spoken in favour of your law, to your condemnation. And now behold, I say unto you, that the foundation of the destruction of this people is beginning to be laid by the unrighteousness of your lawyers and judges. And now it came to pass that when Amulek had spoken these words the people cried out against him, saying: Now we know that his human is a child of the devil, for he hath lied unto us; for he hath spoken against our law. And now he says that he has not spoken against it. And again, he has reviled against our lawyers, and our judges. And it came to pass that the lawyers put it into their hearts that they should remember these things against him. And there was one among them whose nae was Zeezrom. Now he was the foremost to accuse Amulek and Alma, he being one of the most expert among them, having much business to do among the people. Now the object of these lawyers was to get gain; and they got gain according to their employ,” reports Alma 10.1-32. O God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, we hope in Thy word. There we see Thee, not on a fearful throne of judgment, but on a throne of grace, waiting to be gracious, and exalted in mercy. #RandolphHarris 25 of 26

ImageThere we hear Thee saying, not “Depart ye cursed,” but “Look unto me and be ye saved, for I am God and there is none else.” They that know Thy name put their trust in Thee. How many now glorified in Heaven, and what numbers living on Earth, are Thy witnesses, O God, exemplifying in their recovery from the ruins of the Fall the freeness, riches and efficacy of Thy grace! All that were every saved were saved by Thee, and will through eternity, exclaim, “Not unto us, but uno Thy name give glory for Thy mercy and truth’s sake.” Thou hast chosen to transact all Thy concerns with us through a mediator in whom all fullness dwells and who is exalted to be prince and Saviour. To him we look, on him we depend, through him we are justified. May we derive relief from his sufferings without ceasing to abhour sin, or to long after holiness; feel the double efficacy of His blood, tranquillizing and cleansing out consciences; delight in His service as well as in His sacrifice; be constrained by His love to live not to ourselves but to Him; cherish a grateful and cheerful disposition, not murmuring and repining if our wishes are not indulged, or because some trials are blended with our enjoyments, but, sensible of our desert, and impressed with the number and greatness of Thy benefits, may we bless and praise Thee at all times. #RandolphHarris 26 of 26Image

Image

Working is easy in the super comfortable chairs at @HUBApts’ Business Center. 🙌 The complimentary WiFi is an added bonus. 😍 https://sites.google.com/fpimgt.com/hubvirtualtours/home
ImageHead over to their account to learn more about modern living in #Folsom!

ImageO Lord God, Father Almighty, please bless and sanctify this sacrifice of praise, which has been offered unto Thee, to honour and glory of Thy Name; and pardon the sins of Thy people, and hear my prayer, and forgive me all my sins; through Christ our Lord. #CresleighHomes

Image

Winchester Mystery House

A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
🗝 winchestermysteryhouse.com winchestermysteryhouse.com/recent-links

An Ocean Dim, Sprinkled with Many an Isle, Spreads Awfully Before Me!

ImageGood name in man and woman, dear my Lord, is the immediate jewel of their souls; who steals my purse, steals trash; ‘tis something, nothing; ‘Twas mine, ‘its his and has been slave to thousands; but one that filches from me my good name robes me of that which not enriches one, and makes me poor indeed. However, love is blind, and lovers cannot see the pretty follies themselves commit. Osmosis, the principle of absorption as a result of being with or near a thing or person, is active here as elsewhere. If the disciple sits relaxed in body and emptied in mind, one’s silent influence can lift up the other person’s inner being much more easily. With election season coming up, socialism has been an intensely debated topic, which most do not seem to truly understand, and most its principles do not represent American values. Socialism is a political value or ideology which places central value on equality or egalitarianism among persons and that is a good thing. However, socialism goes even further concerning issues of income or material wealth, and socialism does not preclude democracy. Essentially socialism is redistribution of wealth, which takes income from the wealthy and gives it to the less affluent. Wealth redistribution because institutionalized a century ago on the revenue side of the Federal budget with the passage of the 16th Amendment allowing income taxation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23

ImageAs money flooded in to governments from higher, broader and more progressive income taxation, wealth redistribution spread to the expenditure side of Federal and state budgets in the form of government welfare programs and payments. Many people believe that is acceptable because it is the government’s job to help those who cannot help themselves, and with the COVID-19 crisis so many people are living in fear and wondering how they will afford their mortgage, rent, food, electric bills, auto maintenance and other living and travel related expenses. However, another goal of socialism is end private property, the community would own the property. They also want to regulate the wages people get paid so that everyone can have a living wage by equalizing pay. That would mean essentially a doctor and a cashier might earn the same wage to ensure that someone with less skill can support themselves. And it does not stop there, government would own and control all factors of production and like they are doing right now, force your business to close at a certain hour because it seems like a reasonable thing to do. They could also mandate a mandatory curfew and establish a dictatorship which strips the public of their vote and appoints leaders into office. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

ImageSocialism has mainly become a democratic agenda. Our youth are being taught that economic freedom leads to wealth inequality and that wealth inequality and income inequality leads to poverty. However, everyone should have the option to earn money and become rich. There are measures at place in the system to make sure that people have a chance at equality. Not only do we have laws to outlaw discrimination, but education is a key factor that helps people generate more wealth because it allows them to get higher paying jobs. People can also learn skills and trades and becoming really good at what they do and get ahead in life. Karl Marx and his lifelong collaborator Friedrich Engels are commonly seen to be the founding fathers of communism, one form of socialism based upon the elimination of private property and thus the supposed material inequalities which stem from that. For Marx and Engels, the economic resources of society should be produced in accordance with the skills, abilities, or talents of each individual contributing to their best effort, and then distributed according to what each individual “needs.” This is usually captured by the slogan, “From each according to one’s ability, to each according to one’s needs.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 23

ImageThat slogan means that individuals would not work because of self-interest or the incentive to maximize the “profit” from their labour, but would maximize their efforts for the collective good, even if this means that those who work less will receive more, presumably because their “needs” are greater than others. However, I am sure you could imagine how making everything equal would disrupt lives in America. People would have to demolish houses and build them all the same size, depending on the size and composition of families. The same would go with office space, it would all have to be equal. I guess cars would be assigned to people depending on their need, but while the public is giving up their rights and freedoms, you could be that appointed leaders would still be making more than everyone else. Today the countries in Western Europe and the United States of America have mixed economics, where there is a combination of private and state property, a mixture of free and state- or politically-controlled markets, a relatively greater recognition of the rights of women, First Nations people, racial and ethnic groups, and a range of welfare services or resources allotted to those considered in need of them. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

ImageWe use the term “welfare states” to refer to these mixed economics, because they usually combine private property, some relatively free markets, and regulation of fair trading or business practices along with providing various “welfare rights” or “entitlements” to various groups designated for them by the political process in society. In the reading, “The Nonexistence of Basic Welfare Rights,” libertarian Tibor Machan calls into question whether there should be such welfare rights or entitlements, even for those who are poor, mentally or physically disabled, or elderly. Machan says that libertarians agree that such groups deserve their impoverished or disadvantaged condition because they have made significant contributions to their plight by choices they have made earlier in their life. This position is countered in John Rawls’ 1971 book, A Theory of Justice, which tries to combine the ideas of capitalism, socialism, libertarianism, utilitarianism, and contract theory into a comprehensive theory of liberty and social justice. Rawls says that, if one stops to think and reflect, it is really in our best interests to support some basic welfare right or entitlements, because it is entirely possible that we or our beloved family members may find themselves in one of these less fortunate conditions. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

ImageThe views of Machan and other libertarians are commonly taken to advocate a position for a limited or minimal state, that is, they would recognize the legitimacy of state powers only for doing those things which we cannot do for ourselves (such as national security or protecting national/coastal borders). Rawls and other like-minded liberals feel more comfortable with legitimizing state powers for various kinds of welfare right or entitlements. What these should be, and what should be the relative responsibilities for paying the costs of these services or entitlements is being hotly disputed in the United States of America as various partisans prepare for the 2020 national elections. The issues raised in these readings are still very much alive in our culture, and current politics are informed by these important ideas of the recent centuries. Nonetheless, some people think that no matter how you look at it, the World is being used as a weapon. Countries that are rich in natural resources of oil, gas, wood, coffee, beef, corn, tamarind, honey, lithium, diamonds, gold, and other resources are having these products extracted and exported. Corporate globalization, as a result, is producing considerable ecological destruction and agricultural plunder. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23

ImageAnd many of the resources being harvested, like in the Congo, a portion of the rainforest the size of Mississippi with trees hundred of years, was illegal logged because the government is poor and unable to enforce regulation, are leaving only a small portion of this vast wealth behind. The rest of the sizeable profits are being taken by the various levels of people who play an economic role intermediate between producer and retailer or consumer and the higher level investors and financiers. So global emphasis on economic growth leads to the disenfranchisement and disposability of local peoples. The power of corporate glocalization is the power to command the extraction of natural and human resources outside of its own domain; and this process, imposed on the rest of the World through current political structures and arrangements, creates vast economic injustices and material inequalities. Humans cannot be reduced to their material interests, incentives, or desires, their lives are actually multifaceted, multilayered, and deeply complex. Just as our Human Genome Project has only managed to raise many more questions about human biological and physical nature, so do these researcher and theories of human social and economic nature raise new questions and issues about human complexity. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

ImageOrganizations—whether governmental, industrial, educational, or medical—have traditionally been administered through a hierarchical distributive of power. At the top is one person, as in a corporation or in the Catholic Church, or a small group, as in the Communist party. Though in various ways power flows to the top from those who are governed, the organization is usually experienced as a process of control flowing down from the top. This may be through the medium of others and regulations, or through selectively given rewards such as promotions and salary increases. In recent years many large American corporations have been modifying this extreme hierarchical control. They have endeavoured to diffuse authority, responsibility, and initiative throughout the organization, especially in all levels of management. In other countries—notably Sweden—experimentation is being carried further to the worker level. In all these efforts, those in control have tried to increase open communications in all directions: from below upward; from top management downward; horizontally from department to department, from skilled specialist to skilled specialist. Constructive effects have been felt in certain industries. Much has depended upon the genuineness of the desire of top management to create opportunities for individuals in the organization to maximize their personal development. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

ImageSuch constructive trends, however, are often neutralized or contradicted by two elements. One is the fact that almost without exception management retains the “right” to hire and fire. The second is the fact that increasing profits, rather than the growing of persons, is seen as the primary goal. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to present to the heads of large corporations the possibility of a person-centered approach to administration. I distributed to the group in advance of our meeting some noes to provoke a discussion. These notes represent my personal view of the meaning of a person-centered administration. When it comes to leadership there are two extremes: Influence and Impact, and Power and Control. When it comes to Influence and Impact what donates them is giving autonomy to persons and groups, freeing people to do their thing, expressing own idea and feelings as one aspect of the group data, facilitating learning, stimulating independence, in thought and actions, accepting the unacceptable innovative creations that emerge, and delegating, giving full responsibility, offering feedback, and receiving it, encouraging and relying on self-evaluation, finding rewards in the development and achievements of others. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

ImageWhat denotes power and control is making decisions, giving orders, directing subordinates’ behaviour, keeping own ideas and feelings reserved and secretive, exercising authority over people and organization, dominating when necessary, coercing when necessary, teaching, instructing, advising, evaluating others, giving rewards, being rewarded by own achievements. Here are my personal preferences, convictions, and experiences, which focus on the left end of the leadership continuum. I want very much to have influence and impact—by influencing and impact I mean behaviour on my part which makes a difference in the behaviour of others, but not through imposing my views on them, or exercising control over them—but I have rarely desired to, or known how to, exercise control or power. My influence has always been increased when I have shared my power or authority. By refusing to coerce or direct, I think I have stimulated learning, creativity, and self-direction. These are some of the products in which I am most interested. I have found my greatest reward in being able to say “I made possible for this person to be and achieve something he or she could not have been or achieved before.” In short I gain a great deal of satisfaction in being a facilitator of becoming. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23

ImageBy encouraging people’s ability to evaluate themselves, I have stimulated autonomy, self-responsibility, and maturity. By freeing people to do their thing, I have enriched their life and learning, and my own as well. The element in myself I prize most is the degree of ability I have to create a climate of real personal freedom and communication around me. I love to be in contact with younger people, with their capacity for fresh thought and creative action, or with the fresh and growing portion of a person of any age. These were not simply theoretical ideas. They had grown out of a revolution in my own way of being as an administrator, of course, healthy and safety of employees is also in the forefront. In my establishment, for nearly twenty years, I have had administrative responsibility for staff groups of one sort or another. I had developed ways of handling administrative problems—ways which had become fairly well fixed. Certainly as I became more and more deeply interested in a client-centered type of counseling, it was furthest from my mind that it would ever affect the way in which I dealt with organizational problems. It is only in the las two or three years that I have been really aware of the revolution in administrative procedure which it might bring about. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

Image The effectiveness of a client-centered approach in counseling means that these concepts continually force themselves into other areas where one had not thought of using them. “For myself, I have found it both difficult and rewarding to attempt to apply these concepts in administration.” I did indeed find it both puzzling and difficult to practice a person-centered administration at the Counseling Center. We followed many directions in our attempts, and even some of those which seemed blind alleys at the time later proved to have value. In a staff group which grew to approximately fifty, there was always excitement and change and personal growth. I never seen such dedicated group loyalty, such productive and creative effort, as I saw during those twelve years. Working hours meant nothing, and at all hours of the day, far into the night, and on weekends and holidays, staff members were working because they to. I learned many strange things from the experience at the Counseling Center. It was quite dismaying to me at first that we never seemed to be able to finish the right way of operating the Center. First all decisions were made by consensus. That was too burdensome. We delegated decision-making to a small group. That proved slow. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

ImageWe chose a coordinator, and agreed to abide by her decisions, though like a prime minister she could be given a vote of no confidence. Only gradually did I realize that there is no right way. The life and vitality and growing capacity of the Center was closely bound up with its lack of rigidity, with its continually surprising capacity to change its collective mind, and to utilize a new mode of operation. When power was distributed, I have found that is was no big thing to be the coordinator or chairman of the budget committed or whatever. Consequently administrative tasks were very often sought by the newest members of the staff, because I was an avenue of becoming acquainted with the workings of the operation. An intern might chair a group making up next year’s budget. The newest staff member might head a planning group, or a group to pass on membership or promotions. We never did do away entirely with distinctions between secretarial staff, graduate students in training, interns, and staff members. Senior members of the group were freed to spend more time on research and therapy, knowing that if the various administrative task groups failed accurately to represent the sentiment of the members, their decisions would be rejected by the staff as a whole. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

ImageI found the enormous importance of personal feeling sin administrative matters. Often the staff would spend hours (or so it seemed) in arguing some trivial issue, until a perceptive member would see and state the feelings underlying the issue—a personal animosity, a feeling of insecurity, a competition between two would-be leaders, or just the resentment of someone who had never really been heard. Once the feelings were out in the open, the issue which had seemed so important became a nothing. On the other hand when the staff was in open communication with one another, heavy issues such as the allocation of the budget for the following year, the election of a coordinator, the adoption of an important policy might take only minutes to decide. In a working group with close and often intimate communication, it is very difficult to terminate a member of the group. Only one in the twelve years was a person fired, and that after any many attempts to help the individual, and after several warnings that one’s questionable work and practices simply could not be tolerated by the group. On the other hand many of our appointments were to one-year internships, and we could not take all of these people onto our staff. Consequently in this area it might be a problem of selecting two people, and terminating four or five. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

ImageFor the staff, when we had to terminate people, it too was a very painful experience, and many were the compromises in the way of nominal and unpaid appointments, or part-time assignments, in order to find a human solution to a potentially hurtful termination. We developed quite effective ways of dealing with crises. When the threat or crisis arose from outside the group—a drastic budget cut back or an attack by the department of psychiatry, for example—the group tended to coalesce immediately and to delegate full authority to a member or members to deal with the crisis on the basis of their best judgment. When the crisis was internal—a smoldering feud between two staff member’s actions—then the tendency was always to call special meetings of the whole staff to air the personal feelings involved and to facilitate some sort of acceptable interpersonal solution. It is very rare for the impact of a person-centered approach to move upward in the organization. Our way of working in he Counseling Center did not change the administrative practices of the dean under whose supervision we operated. Certainly we had no effect on the total administration of the university, which was decidedly hierarchical. I believe this learning is simply one of the facts of life. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

ImageAn individual with a person-centered philosophy can often carve out an area of freedom of action, as I did in my relationship with the dean, and then implement this philosophy to the full with those who are, in the organization chart, “under” him or her. However, it is not likely that this approach will seep upward in the organization unless there is a high degree of receptiveness to innovation among those in the top posts. There is one other learning which comes partially from my experience at the Counseling Center, but even more from experience with other groups. If I am somewhat insecure, not quite willing to share power and authority with the group, feeling some need to control, then I must be open about it. If it knows, clearly and unequivocally, those behaviours which will be controlled by the one in power and those areas in which the individual or the group is free to choose, it is perfectly possible for an organization or a group to function with some freedom and some control. This may not be an ideal situation, but it is a perfectly viable one. I have found, however, from bitter experience, that to grant to the group pseudo-control, which I may take from them in a crisis, is a devastating experience for all concerned. I have learned my wish to vest authority in the group must, above all else, be genuine. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

ImageIn Chapter 8 of The Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi, Francis gives his friend Leo a teaching about what “perfect joy” is. They are trudging through the snow from Perugia to the home of their group at St. Mary of the Angeles. For their brotherhood to give a great example of holiness and edification in all lands would not be perfect joy, Francis says. Nor would a great ministry of healing and raising the dead. Nor would possession of all languages and all science, nor all understanding of prophecy and Scripture, and insight into the secrets of the soul. Nor would even the conversation of all unbelievers to faith in Christ! By this point brother Leo is amazed, and he begs Francis to teach him “wherein is perfect joy.” The reply is that if, when they come to their quarters—dirty, wet, and exhausted from hunger—they are rejected, repeatedly rebuffed, and finally driven away by force, then “if we accept such injustice, such cruelty, and such contempt with patience, without being ruffled and without murmuring,” and “if we bear all these injuries with patience and joy, thinking of the suffering of our Blessed Lord, which we would share out of love for Him, write O Brother Leo, that here, finally, is perfect joy.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

ImageA master may give out one’s teachings, methods, and instructions. Sooner or later some among one’s followers—if not one’s opponents—will twist them, reinterpret then, modify them, or even deform them. This process even starts during one’s lifetime, but becomes considerable and important only after that—when one is no longer present to attend to needed corrections. This shows that not all who hear one understand what they hear, and that there are different levels of capacity among the followers. “And now it came to pass that Alma returned from the land of Gideon, after having taught the people of Gideon many things which cannot be written, having established the order of the church, according as he had before done in the land of Zarahemla, yea, he returned to his own house at Zarahemla to rest himself from the labours which he had performed. And thus ended the ninth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And it came to pass in the commencement of the tenth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi, that Alma departed from thence and took his journey over into the land of Melek, on the west of the river Sidon, on the west by the borders of the wilderness. And he began to teach the people in the land of Melek according to the holy order of God, by which he had been called; and he began to teach the people throughout all the land of Melek. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

Image“And it came to pass that the people came to him throughout all the borders of the land which was by the wilderness side. And they were baptized throughout all the land; so that when he had finished his work a Melek he departed thence, and traveled three days’ journey on the north of the land of Melek; and he came to a city which was called Ammonihah. Now it was the custom of the people of Nephi to call their lands and their cities, and their villages, yea, even all their small villages, after the name of him who first possessed them; and thus it was with the land of Ammonihah. And it came to pass that when Alma had come to the city of Ammonihah he began to preach the word of God unto them. Now Satan had gotten great hold upon the hearts of the people of the city of Ammonihah; therefore they would not hearken unto the words of Alma. Nevertheless Alma laboured much in the spirit, wrestling with God might prayer, that he would pour out his Spirit upon the people who were in the city; that he would also grant that he might baptize them unto repentance. Nevertheless, they hardened their hearts, saying unto him: Behold, we know that thou art Alma; and we know that thou art high priest over the church which thou hast established in many parts of the land, according to your tradition; and we are not of thy church, and we do not believe in such foolish traditions. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23

Image“And now we know that because we are not of thy church we know that thou hast no power over us; and thou hast delivered up the judgment seat unto Nephihah; therefore thou art not the chief judge over us. Now when the people had said this, and withstood all his words, and reviled him, and caused that he should be cast out of their city, he departed thence and took his journey towards the city which was called Aaron. And it came to pass that while he was journeying thither, being weighed down with sorrow, wading through much tribulation and anguish of soul, because of the wickedness of the people who were in the city of Ammonihah, it came to pass while Alma was thus weighed down with sorrow, beheld an Angel of the Lord appeared unto him, saying: Blessed art thou, Alma; therefore, lift up thy head and rejoice, for thou hast great cause to rejoice; for thou hast been faithful in keeping the commandments of God from the time which thou receivedst thy first message from him. Behold, I am he that delivered it unto you. And behold, I am sent to command thee that thou return to the city of Amonihah, and preach again unto the people of the city; yea, preach unto them. Yea, say unto them, except they repent the Lord God will destroy them. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

Image“For behold, they do study at this time that they may destroy the liberty of thy people, (for this saith the Lord) which is contrary to the statues, and judgments, and commandment which he had given unto his people. Now it came to pass that after Alma had received his message from the Angel of the Lord he returned speedily to the land of Ammonihah. And he entered the city by another way, yea, by the way which is on the south of the city of Ammonihah. And as he entered the city he was an hungered, and he said to a man: Will ye give to an humble servant of God something to eat? And the man said unto him: I am a Nephite, and I know that thou art a holy prophet of God, for thou art the man whom an angel said in a vision: Thou shalt receive. Therefore, go with me into my house and I will impart unto thee of my food; and I know that thou wilt be a blessing unto me and my house. And it came to pass that the man received him into his house; and the man was called Amulek; and he brought forth bread and meat and set before Alma. And it came to pass that Alma ate bread and was filled; and he blessed Amulek and his house, and he gave thanks unto God. And after he had eaten and was filled he said unto Amulek: I am Alma, and am the high priest over the church of God throughout the land. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

Image“And behold, I have been called to preach the word of God among all this people, according to the spirit of revelation and prophecy; and I was in this land and they would not receive me, but they cast me out and I was about to set my back towards this land forever. However, behold, I have been commanded that I should turn again and prophesy unto this people, yea, and to testify against them concerning their iniquities. And now, Amulek, because thou hast fed me and taken me in, thou art blessed; for I was an hungered, for I had fasted many days. And it came to pass that the people did wax more gross in their iniquities. And the word came to Alma, saying Go; and also say unto my servant Amulek, go forth and prophesy unto this people, saying—Repent ye, for this saith the Lord, except ye repent I will visit this people in mine anger; yea, and I will not turn my fierce anger away. And Alma went forth, and also Amulek, among the people, to declare the words of God unto them; and they were filled with the Holy Ghost. And they had power given unto them, insomuch that they could not be confined in dungeons; neither was it possible that any human could slay them; nevertheless they did not exercise their power until they were bound in bands and cast into prison. Now, this was done that the Lord might show forth His power in them. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23

Image“And it came to pass that they went forth and began to preach and to prophesy unto the people, according to the spirit and power which the Lord had given them,” reports Alma 8.1-32. O Lord God, Thou art our preserver, governor, Saviour, and coming judge. Quieten our souls to call upon Thy name; detach us from the influence of the flesh and the senses; impress us with the power of faith; promote in us spirituality of mind that will render our services acceptable to Thee, and delightful and profitable to ourselves. Please bring us into that state which attracts thine eye, and prepare us to receive the proofs of Thy love. Please show us our danger, that we may fly to Thee for refuge. Please make us sensible of our sin’s disease, that we may value the good Physician. Placard to us the cross, that it may slay the enmity of our hearts. Please help us to be watchful over our ways, jealous over our tempers, diligent over our hearts. When we droop, revive us when we loiter, quicken us, when we droop, revive us, when we loiter, quicken us, when we go astray, restore us. Possess us with more of that faith which is the principle of all vital Godliness. May we be rich in Faith, strong in faith, live by faith, walk by faith, experience the joy of faith, do the work of faith, hope through faith. Perceiving nothing in ourselves, may we find in the Saviour wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, redemption. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23Image

Cresleigh Homes

EPQYCk4UYAAo7zXThe best part of living in a Cresleigh home is the freedom of your #FlexSpace. Make it an office, a playroom, a gym—if you can dream it, you can make it a reality! https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/residence-4/

ImageO God, the Fountain of goodness, and Source of kindness, Who dost not straightway condemn the sinner, but compassionately waitest for one’s repentance; I pray Thee to wipe away the foulness of my offences, and make me meet to preform the office laid upon me; and that I who have unworthily undertaken, and tremblingly execute, the ministration of Thine altar, may be rendered strong to perform it, and be found justified among those who have pleased Thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Image

#PlumasRanch
#CresleighHomes

 

 

Lie to Me, I Promise I Will Believe, but Please Don’t Leave Even if this Results in the Destruction of the Human Heart!

ImageNeither a borrower nor a lender be; for a loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any human. Economic theories and ideologies are important perspectives on justice, especially since the eighteenth century in Europe, when revolutions and counter-revolutions eventually destroyed feudal economies and their monarchies. Capitalism and socialism emerged as central ideologies from the ashes of these profound social and cultural changes. These revolutions raised the question of the role of justice in society, whether to insure a certain level of economic parity between the social classes (what is called distributive justice) or to provide for the peace and security of all persons in society? What is the role of private property, and what should be the rules of its fair exchange? As early as 1690 John Locke argued that private property was a natural right, that al persons should be able to buy and sell whatever they had or could produce, and in his classic 1776 work, The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith argued that the system of free markets was superior for both producing the greatest prosperity in society as well as reducing he inequalities between the social classes. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

ImageA right is considered to be a universal claim which any of all individuals may legitimately makes upon society. These were important works in the development of utilitarianism, initially proposed by various British theorists, which held that justice was that which produced the greatest good for the greatest number (not necessarily all) persons in society. These early British and Scottish thinkers had a very important effect on the United State of America’s funding fathers who wrote the United States of America’s Declaration of Independence and the United States of America’s Constitution, which give legal force and standing to the ideal of liberty, private property, and the protection of some political rights, for some people. What we call “capitalism” is a political value or ideology which promotes the relative freedom of persons to do what they wish with their labour, as long as it does not bring hard to others, and to enjoy or invest in the “fruits of their labours.” If individuals are fortunate enough to produce a relative excess or “profit” from their labours, then they should be free to invest these “profits” in whatever manner they decide. If reinvested, these “profits” become “capital,” from which the capitalism is derived, and using profits in such a manner potentially grows and expands the overall economy. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

ImageAccording to many promoters of capitalism, this freedom or liberty to work as one will, and consume or reinvest the products of one’s labour, is not only consistent with ideal of liberty, but it additionally reduces the potential for conflict between the social classes, and this makes for a more harmonious or peaceful social order. Trust lays the cable and trust keeps it in place. Doubt serves the cable and mistrust destroys it altogether. Therefore it is prudent and proper for an individual to clear one’s doubts and answer one’s questions before choosing the lifestyle which one is to approach as one’s faith, and not after the choice has been made. It is essential for people to realize that in life it is the mental attitude, especially the faith and devotion—rather than outward association and physical contact—that is of true importance. Faith is not concerned with details of Christ’s existence, but with its meaning. The center of history is not central through accidental happenings, but through its essential purport. Under the conditions of existence, however, meaning is made obscure by it very medium itself. Existence is ambiguous. It is abyss and depth, negation and affirmation. The individual contradicts the universal. The concrete opposes the abstract. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

ImageThe message of the final revelation must be both concrete and universal; it must be set in an existential situation if it is to reach people who are caught in the snare of existence; and it must be universal, above existence, if it is to reach people outside of the small circle of the intimates of Jesus of Nazareth during his Earthly life. The criterion of the final revelation will therefore be given when its bearer negates oneself as a limited and limiting being to affirm the eternal. A revelation is final if it has the power of negating itself without losing itself. The same thought is beautifully expressed in an important passage which epitomizes this doctrine on the Christ as the medium of the final revelation: The question of the final revelation is the question of a medium of revelation which overcomes its own finite conditions by sacrificing them, and itself with them. One who is the bearer of the final revelation must surrender one’s finitude—not only one’s life but also one’s finite power and knowledge and perfection. In doing so, one affirms that one is the bearer of the final revelation (the “Son of God” in classical terms). One becomes completely transparent to the mystery one reveals. This gives us one characteristic of the medium of the final revelation: self-negation. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

ImageHowever, who can negate oneself so completely that only the eternal shines through one? One can give up only what one has mastered. Hence a second characteristic: the bearer of the final revelation must be perfect, that is, perfectly united to the power to be, in living communication with the ground of being, in constant communion with being-itself. However, in order to surrender oneself completely, one must possess oneself completely. And only one can possess—and therefore surrender—oneself completely who is united with the ground of one’s being and meaning without separation and disruption. This is precisely what we find in the Christ: complete surrender because of complete self-possession in the power of the ground of being. In the picture of Jesus as the Christ we have the picture of a man who possesses these qualities, a man who, therefore, can be called the medium of final revelation Nowhere is the picture clearer than in the symbol of the Cross, where Jesus sacrificed himself as Jesus to himself as the Christ, himself as finite to himself as he bearer of the New Being. The Christological affirmation may also be expressed in terms of Kairos. Christology claims to provide the ultimate meaning of history. Or, rather, it claims that in Jesus as the Christ the ultimate meaning of history was revealed. What is that mean? #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

ImageIn Jesus as the Christ a decision was made which decided the orientation of history. Jesus the Christ, accepting his self-effacement, affirmed ultimate being. He unveiled the ultimate truth. He pronounced an ultimate judgment on which the destiny of humankind and history depends. The Catholic Middle Ages developed an objective, “super-rational and static” conception of knowledge. In contrast, there is no Protestant conception of knowledge. This absence results from the difficulty of elaborating a conception of knowledge which is “irrational and dynamic.” Yet this is what knowledge is. The knowledge that is reached in the intense experience of Kairos, the knowledge that reveals the basic meaning of a historical period, is relative to a decision, namely to the “yes” which accepts the meaning of Kairos. If the even of Jesus as the Christ is truly the universal Kairos, the acceptable time in which the meaning of all history is achieved by the self-transcendence of the Christ, then the knowledge which derives from it must have a universal character. It must be a “knowledge of knowledge,” to which every other knowledge must be referred, the criterion of every judgment. There is precisely a judgement that underlies all others. It is the expression of the relation of knowledge to the Unconditional. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

ImageThe judgment that is removed from ambiguity, the judgment of absolute unequivocal truth, can be only the fundamental judgment about the relationship of the Unconditioned and the conditioned. This absolute standpoint, or absolute judgment, is the content of the message of the Christ; it judges every other judgment and is the criterion of every other knowledge. The content of this judgment is just this—that our subjective thinking never can reach the unconditioned truth, that it must always remain in the realm of ambiguity. This judgment is plainly the absolute judgment which is independent of all its forms of expression, even of the one by which it is expressed here. It is the judgment which constitutes truth as truth. In these somewhat abstract terms, the human condition never is the Unconditional; only self-negation, the knowledge of one’s ambiguities, does justice to the Ultimate. Jesus is the Christ only because he transcends himself. The Unconditional appears under the conditions of existence only by pointing out the vanity of existence. The supreme Kairos was precisely a moment of time when this absolute judgment on humans was pronounced. The Kairos, the fateful moment of knowledge, is absolute insofar as it places one at this moment before the absolute knowledge. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

ImageThe Cross has shown it as the self-transcendence of Christ, which he affirmed in the waste of an uncalculated self-surrender, in the most complete and the most holy waste. In all this we may recognize an old friend. In a word, the meaning of history, as manifested in the Cross of the Christ, is the Protestant principle. In the Cross we find a resolution of the tension between the conditioned and the Unconditional: the one shines through the other. If every religious word is an interpretation of the tension between the conditionally and the unconditionally real, between realism and self-transcendence, the word from the Cross is self-transcendent realism. The Christ exhibits no mark of estrangement between oneself and God, because He conquers estrangement; yet He displays the marks of finitude and he participates in the tragic element of existence. In spite of this, His permanent unity with God is evident. Into this unity he accepts the negatives of existence without removing them. This is done by transcending them in the power of this unity. This is the New Being as it appears in the biblical picture of Jesus as the Christ. The Protestant principle teaches that negativities must be accepted because they are already transcended in the power of God. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

ImageIt asserts that no created channel can convey the meaning of being-itself; yet precisely because it cannot and insofar as it cannot, it does. Being-itself is affirmed in the self-negation of created being. There is no other way of speaking of the ground of being than in the breakdown of our self-satisfied existence. No judgment is removed from ambiguity, expect the judgment is equivocal. All judging, questioning, answering indirectly posits an absolute judgment concerning the Unconditional: the Unconditional is, and is true, in spite of human’s conditioned attempt to reach it. Thus the absolute standpoint is a position which can never be taken. If it were ever taken by a human, it would be conditioned by that human’s estranged existence. Only the One who is unestranged from the power of being takes it: Jesus the Christ self-transcending oneself on the Cross. The Protestant principle also says—and this is another form of the negation of the finite—that every institution and event has demonic possibilities. That is, its power and meaning may be distorted from the ground of power and meaning. Yet the Christian confession contains the certainty that the demonic has been overcome. The overcoming of the demonic is another form of the Protestant principle: not even the ben and the distorted place ultimate hurdles in the path of grace. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

ImageIn contrast to the day-by-day experience of demonic domination, of estrangement, the Protestant principle affirms what has been experienced in the revelatory event of the Cross: There is only one certainty, that the demonic is overcome in eternity, that in eternity the demonic is depth of the divine and in unity with divine clarity. The ultimate meaning of history, as manifested in the Cross of the Christ and formulated in the Protestant principle, is therefore to accept estrangement as a contrasted participation in the divine unity: “to say ‘yes’ to one’s own life and life in general, in spite of the driving forces of fate, in spite of the insecurities of daily existence, in spite of the catastrophes of existence and the breakdown of meaning. Hopes may disappoint, dreams may fade away, what we thought ours may be taken from us, life may be threatened, what we had planned may fail; yet through our choices and decisions, whether right or wrong, through our doctrines and beliefs, whether true or false, there runs a unifying thread: Protestantism points to one who is the truth that liberates to being of one whose being is the truth. Once again, we reach the principle of justification by faith. We reach the meaning of the Cross, which stands at the heart of history. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

ImageThe cross is an instrument of death, of “losing your life.” The teaching here is exactly the same as in the statements about losing and finding our lives. It is one of comparative costs, as the verses that follow in Luke 14 show. “If you come to me, and do not prefer me over (do not ‘hate’) your own father, mother, wife, children, brothers and sisters—yes, and your very own life (soul)—you cannot be my apprentice,” reports Luke 14.26. And then he uses an absolutely shocking image—one all too familiar to his hearers, but rather hard for us fully to appreciate today. It was that of a man carrying on his back the lumber that would be used to kill him when he arrived at the place of execution. “Whoever does not come after me carrying his own cross cannot by my apprentice,” reports Luke 14.27. Those who are not genuinely convinced that the only real bargain in life is surrendering ourselves to Jesus and his cause, abandoning all that we love to him and for him, cannot learn the other lessons Jesus has to teach us. They cannot proceed to anything like total spiritual transformation. Not that he will not let us, but that we simply cannot succeed. If I tell you that you cannot drive an Ultimate Driving Machine unless you can see, I am not saying I will not let you, but that you cannot succeed even if I do. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

ImageStill, from within the life that remains “lost” to God, the teaching of the Cross and of abandoning all that is “first” in ordinary human life seems repulsive and impossible. And it has often been disastrously misinterpreted, resulting in the destruction, not the renovation, of the human heart and life. It remains a dangerous half-truth if left to sand on its own. It is a negation that in practice can only rest on affirmation. Thus in Jesus’s own ministry he came proclaiming access to the kingdom of God: to God’s present care and supervision, available to all through confidence in himself. “Repent, for life in the kingdom of the Heavens is now available to you,” was what he said. And his presence, actions, and teachings manifested and explained the kingdom. He made “disciples” by presenting them with the kingdom and introducing them into it by reaching their hearts, changing their vision of reality and their intentions for life. Consider one of his “parables of the kingdom”: “The kingdom of the Heavens is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a human found ad concealed it. He was ecstatic. He sold everything he had and bought the field” reports Matthew 13.44. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

Image Imagine that you discovered gold or oil in a certain property and no one else knew about it. Can you see yourself being sad and feeling deprived for having to gather all your resources and sacrifice them in order to buy that property? Hardly. Now you know what it is like to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Jesus! Some pain is included, no doubt, because the old attachments are still there in our hearts and lives. They never all disappear at once. And we may experience some uncertainty from time to time especially at the start. However, the progress of spiritual formation will soon take care of that. The new vision becomes an attachment and takes on an ever greater reality as we progress; and that, in turn, pushes the old attachments toward the exits of our lives—which we then are not sad to see go. Indeed we are happy about it. We come to want to not want what we now want, and to want to not think of what now lives before our minds; and we come to want to be made willing for what we are not really willing. Chris will be born of Mary—He will loose the bands of death and bear the sins of His people—those who repent, are baptized, and keep the commandments will have eternal life—filthiness cannot inherit the kingdom of God—humility, faith, hope, and charity are required. About 83 Before Christ. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

ImageIt is not only needful to link up with the guide in a general way by a right attitude of faith and devotion towards one but also to link up in a special way by a daily meditation which seeks to put the disciple’s mind in rapport with the guides. “Behold my beloved brethren, seeing that I have been permitted to come unto you, therefore I attempt to address you in my language; yea, by my own mouth, seeing that it is the first time that I have spoken unto you by the words of my mouth, I having been wholly confined to the judgment-seat, having had much business that I could not come unto you. And even I could not have come now at this time were it not that the judgment-seat hat been given to another, to reign in my stead; and the Lord in much mercy hath granted that I should come unto you. And behold, I have come having great hopes and much desire that I should find that ye had humbled yourselves before God, and that ye had continued in the supplicating of his grace, that I should find that ye were blameless before him, that I should find that ye were not in the awful dilemma that our brethren were in Zarahemla. However, blessed be the name of God, that he hath given me to know, yea, hath given me to know, yea, hath given unto me the exceedingly great joy of knowing that they are established again in the way of his righteousness. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

Image And I trust, according to the Spirit of God which is in me, that I shall also have joy over you; nevertheless I do no desire that my joy over you should come by the cause of so much afflictions an sorrow which I have ad for the brethren at Zarahemla, for behold, my joy over you should come by the cause of so much afflictions and sorrow which I have had for the brethren at Zarahemla, for behold, my joy cometh over them after wading through much affliction and sorrow. However, behold, I trust that ye are not in a state of so much unbelief as were your brethren; I trust that ye are not lifted up in the pride of your hearts; yea, I trust that ye have not set your hearts upon riches and the vain things of the World; yea, I trust that you do not worship idols, but that ye do worship the true and the living God, and that ye look forward for the remission of your sins, with an everlasting faith, which is to come. For behold, I say unto you there be many things to come; and behold, there is one thing which is of more importance than they all—for behold, the time is not far distant the Redeemer liveth and cometh among his people. Behold, I do not say that he will come among us at the time of his dwelling in his mortal tabernacle; for behold, the Spirit hath not said unto me that this should be the case. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

Image“Now as to this thing I do not know; but this much I do know, that the Lord God hath power to do all things which are according to his word. However, behold, the Spirit hath said this much unto me, saying: Cry unto this people, saying—Repent ye, and prepare the way of the Lord, and walk in his paths, which are straight; for behold, the kingdom of Heaven is at hand, and the Son of God cometh upon the face of the Earth. And behold, he shall be born of Mary, at Jerusalem which is the land of our forefathers, she being a virgin, a precious and chosen vessel, who shall be overshadowed and conceive by the power of the Holy Ghost, and bring forth a son, yea, even the Son of God. And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and his that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sickness of his people. And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon hem their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities. Now the Spirit knoweth all things; nevertheless the Son of God suffereth according to the flesh that he might take upon him the sins of his people, that he might blot out their transgressions according to the power of his deliverance; and now behold, this is the testimony which is in me. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

Image“Now I say unto you that ye must repent, and be born again: for the Spirit saith if ye are not born again ye cannot inherit the kingdom of Heaven; therefor come and be baptized unto repentance, that ye may be washed from your sins of the World, who is mighty to save and to cleanse from all unrighteousness. Yea, I say unto you come and fear not, and lay aside every sin, which easily doth beset you, which doth bind you down to destruction, yea, come and go forth, and show unto your God that ye are willing to repent of your sins and enter into a covenant with him to keep his commandments, and witness it unto him this day by going into the waters of baptism. And whosoever doeth this, and keepth the commandments of God from thenceforth, the same will remember that I say unto him, yea, he will remember that I said unto him, he shall have eternal life, according to the testimony of the Holy Spirit, which testifieth in me. And now my beloved brethren, do you believe these things? Behold, I say unto you, yea, I know that ye believe them; and the way that I know that ye believe them is by the manifestation of the Spirit which is in me. And now because your faith is strong concerning that, yea, concerning the things which I have spoken, great is my joy. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

Image“For as I said unto you from the beginning, that I had much desire that ye were not in the state of dilemma like your brethren, even so I have found that my desires have been gratified. For I perceive that ye are in the paths of righteousness; I perceive that ye are in the path which leads to the kingdom of God; yea, I perceive that ye are making his paths straight. I perceive that it has been made known unto you, by the testimony of his word, that he cannot walk in crooked paths; neither doth he vary from that which he hath said; neither hath he s shadow of turning from the right to the left, or from that which is right to that which is wrong; therefore, his course is one eternal round. And he doth not dwell in unholy temples; neither can filthiness or anything which is unclean be received into the kingdom of God; therefore I say unto you the time shall come, yea, and it shall be at the last day, that one who is filthy shall remain in one’s filthiness. And now my beloved brethren, I have said these things unto you that I might awaken you to a sense of your duty to God, that ye may walk after the holy order of God, after which ye have been received. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Image“And now I would that ye should be humble, and be submissive and gentle; easy to be entreated; full of patience and long-suffering; being temperate in all things; being diligent in keeping the commandments of God at all times; asking for whatsoever things ye stand in need, both spiritual and temporal; always returning thanks unto God for whatsoever things ye do receive. And see that ye have faith, hope, and charity, and then ye will always abound in good works. And Lord bless you, and keep your garments spotless, that ye may at last be brought to sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the holy prophets who have been ever since the World began, having your garments spotless, in the kingdom of Heaven to go no more out. And now my beloved brethren, I have spoken these words unto you according to the Spirit which testifieth in me; and my soul doth exceedingly rejoice, because of the exceeding diligence and heed which ye have given uno my word. And now, may the peace of God rest upon you, and upon your houses and lands, and upon your flocks and herds, and all that you possess, your women and your children, according to your faith and good works, from this time forth and forever. And thus I have spoken. Amen,” reports Alma 7.1-27. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

ImageCreator, Upholder and Proprietor of all things, we cannot escape from Thy presence and control, nor do we desire to do so. Our privilege is to be under the agency of Thy omnipotence, righteousness, wisdom, patience, mercy and grace; for Thou art Love with more than parental affection. We admire Thy goodness, stand in awe of Thy power, abase ourselves before Thy purity. It is the discovery of Thy goodness alone that can banish our fear alure us into Thy presence, please help us to bewail and confess our sins. We review our past guilt and are conscious of present unworthiness. We bless Thee that Thy steadfast love and attributes are essential to our happiness and hope; Thou hast witnessed to us Thy grace and mercy in the bounties of nature, in the fullness of Thy providence, in the revelations of Scripture, in the gift of Thy Son, in proclamation of the gospel. Please make sus willing to be saved in Thy own way, perceiving nothing in ourselves but all in Jesus. Please help us not only to receive Him, but to walk in Him, depend upon Him, commune with Him, follow Him, follow Him as dear children, imperfect, but still pressing forward, not complaining of labour, but valuing rest, not murmuring under trials, but thankful for our state. And by so doing please let us silence the ignorance of foolish humans. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

Image

BRIGHTON STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH

Rancho Cordova, CA |

Now Selling!

ImageAn extra-spacious Great Room, in this 2,427 square foot single story home, means an extra-long sectional to stretch out and settle in for a #Monday movie marathon. 🎥

ImageCheck out #BrightonStation Residence 2 on our website! Link in our bio to take a virtual tour. https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/residence-2/

ImageO God, please grant me your fondness and grace me with your goodness. Lord, you are the CHURCH’S ORIGIN, and one who does not at once stop the transgression  before the judges, may seek your pity, but has to repent as you have been waiting for; we ask that the guilt of our misery  is enough to cause us to do righteousness and polish us for to do the job worthy  of your name. The ministry of the altar is a major responsibility, and those who have taken upon the calling sometimes feel unworthy of your blessing. In our bewilderment, shall we become strong and may you place mercy and endurance in our hearts. I will be found among those who have been justified.

Image

#CresleighRanch
#CresleighHomes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Winners Do Not Try to Know What they Feel or Try to Let themselves Feel!

ImageNow, my child, why do you no remain standing quite calmly in the doorway? There is absolutely nothing against a young lady’s entering a doorway during a shower. I do it myself when I have no umbrella, sometimes even when I have one, as now, for example. Moreover, I could mention several estimable ladies who have not hesitated to do it. Jus be calm, turn your back to the street; then the passersby cannot even tell whether you are just standing there or are about to enter the building. However, it is indiscreet to hide behind the door when it is standing half open, chiefly because of the consequences, for the more you are concealed, the more unpleasant it is to be surprised. However, if you have concealed yourself, then stand very still, commending yourself to your good guardian spirit and the care of all the Angels; especially avoid peeking out to see whether the rain is over. If you really want to be sure of it, take a firm step forward and look up gravely at the sky. However, if you stick your head out somewhat inquisitively, self-consciously, anxiously, uncertainly, quickly draw it back—then any child understands this movement; it is called playing hide-and-seek. And I, who always join in games, should I hold back, should I not answer when I asked? #RandolphHarris 1 of 23

ImageDo not think I am harbouring any disrespectful thoughts about you; you did not have the slightest ulterior motive in sticking your head out—it was the most innocent thing in the World.In return, you must not affront me in your thoughts; my good name and reputation will not tolerate it. Moreover, it was you who started this. I advise you never to speak to anyone about this incident; you are in the wrong. What do you propose to do other than what any gentleman would do—offer you my umbrella. –Where did she go? Splendid! She has hidden herself down in the porter’s doorway. What a darling young lady, cheerful, contented. –“Perhaps you could tell me about a young lady who this very moment stuck her head out of this door, obviously in need of an umbrella.” –You laugh. –Perhaps you will allow me to send my servant to fetch it tomorrow, do you recommend that I call an Ultimate Driving Machine? —Nothing to thank me for; it is only common courtesy. –That is one of the most delightful young ladies I have seen in a long time; her glance is so innocent and yet so saucy, he manner so lovely, so chaste, and yet she is inquisitive. –Go in peace, my child. If it were not for a green cloak, I might have wished to establish a closer acquaintance. –She walks down along Store Kjobmagergade. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

Image How innocent and full of confidence, not a trace of prudery. She how lightly she walks, how pertly she tosses her head—the green cloak requires self-denial. Estrangement from display, from feeling, and from what feelings can tell us is not simply the occupational hazard of a few. It has firmly established itself in the culture as permanently imaginable. All of us who know the commercialization of human feeling at one remove—as witness, consumer, or critic—have become adept at recognizing and discounting commercialized feelings: “Oh, they have to be friendly, that is their job.” This enables us to ferret out the remaining gestures of a private gift exchange: “Now that smile she really meant just for me.” We subtract the commercial motive and collect the personal remainders matter-of-factly, almost automatically, so ordinary has the commercialization of human feeling become. However, we have responded in another way, which is perhaps more significant: as a culture, we have begun to place an unprecedented value on spontaneous, “natural” feeling. People want to be their “authentic” selves. To pursue authenticity as an ideal, as something that must be achieved, is to be self-built into the structure of the World they live in. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23

ImageThis World, they say, represses, alienated, divides, denies, destroys the self. To be oneself in such a World is not a tautology but a problem. Still, we are intrigued by the unmanaged heart and what it can tell us. The more our activities as individual emotion managers are managed by organization, the more we tend to celebrate the life of unmanaged feeling. This cultural response found its prophets in late eighteenth-century philosophers like Rousseau and its disciples in the Romantic movement of the nineteenth-century; but widespread acceptance of the view that spontaneous feeling is both precious and endangered has occurred only recently, in the mid-twentieth century. According to Lionel Trilling, in his classic work Sincerity and Authenticity, here have been two major turning points in the public evaluation of expressed feeling. The first was the rise (and subsequent fall) of the value that people put on sincerity. The second was a rise in the value placed on authenticity. In the first case, the value attached to sincerity rose as its corresponding flaw, insincerity or guile, became more common. In the second case, I think the same principle has been worked: the value placed on authentic or “natural” feeling has increased dramatically with the full emergence of its opposite—the managed heart. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

ImageBefore the sixteenth century, Trilling says, insincerity was neither a fault nor a virtue. “The sincerity of Achilles or Beowulf cannot be discussed; they neither have nor lack sincerity.” It simply had no relevance. Yet during he sixteenth century, sincerity came to be admired. Why? The answer is socioeconomic. At this period in history, there was an increasing rate of social mobility in England and France; more and more people found it possible, or conceivable, to leave the class into which they had been born. Guile became an important tool for class advancement. The art of acting, of making avowals not in accord with feeling, because a useful tool for taking advantage of new opportunities. As mobility became a fact of urban life, so did guile and people’s understanding that guile was a tool. Sincerity for its part came to be seen as an inhibition of the capacity to act before a multiplicity of audiences or as an absence of the psychic detachment necessary to acing. The sincere, “honest soul” came to denote a “simple person, unsophisticated, a bit on the dumb side.” It was considered “dumb” because the art of the surface acting was increasingly understood as a useful tool. When mobility became a fact of urban life, so did the art of guile, and the very interest in sincerity declined. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

Image If sincerity has lost its former status, if the word itself has for us a hollow sound and seems almost to negate its meaning, that is because it does not propose being true to one’s self as an end but only a means. Modern audiences, in contrast to nineteenth-century ones, became bored with duplicity as a literary theme. It has become too ordinary, too unsurprising: “The hypocrite-villain, the conscious dissembler, has become marginal, even alien, to the modern imagination of the moral life. The situation in which a person systematically misrepresents oneself in order to practice upon the good faith of another does not readily command our interest, scarcely our credence. The deception we best understand and most willingly give our attention to is that which a person works upon oneself.” The point of interest has moved inward. What fascinates us now is how we fool ourselves. What seems to have replaced our interest in sincerity is an interest in authenticity. In both the rise and the fall of sincerity as a virtue, the feeling of sincerity “underneath” was assumed to be something solid and permanent, whether one was true to it or betrayed it. Placing a value on guile amounted to placing a value on detachment from that solid something underneath. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23

ImageThe present-day value on “authentic” or “natural” feeling may also be a cultural response to a social occurrence, but the occurrence is different. It is not the rise of individual mobility and the individual use of guile in pleasing a greater variety of people. It is the rise of the corporate use of guile and the organized training of feeling to sustain it. The more the heart is managed, the more we value the unmanaged heart. Rousseau’s Noble Savage was not guided by any feeling rules. He simply felt what he felt, spontaneously. One clue to the modern-day celebration of spontaneous feeling is the growing popularization of psychological therapies, especially those that stress “getting in touch with” spontaneous feeling. Consider them: Gestalt, bioenergetic, biofeedback, encounters, assertiveness training, transactional analysis, transcendental meditation, rational-emotive therapy, Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD) therapy, feeling therapy, implosive therapy, Endoscopic Thoracic Sympathectomy (ETS), primal theory, conventional psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis. Therapy books, as the linguist Robin Lakoff has said, are to the modern times what etiquette books were to the nineteenth. This is because etiquette has itself gone deeper into emotional life. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

ImageThe introduction of new therapies and the extension of older ones have given a new introspective twist to the self-help movement that began in the last century. The significance of the growth of new therapies cannot be dismissed by the argument that they are simply a way of extending jobs in the service sector by creating new needs. The question remains, why these needs? Why the new need to do something about how you feel? The new therapies have also been criticized, as the one self-help movement was, for focusing on individual solutions to the exclusion of social ones and for legitimating the message “Look out for Number One. This critique is not wrong in itself, but it I partial and misleading. It is my own view that capacity is lost or injured, it is wise to restore it in whatever way one can. However, to attach the cure to a solipsistic or individualistic philosophy of life or to assume that one’s injury can only be self-imposed is to contribute to what I have called (with optimism) a “prepolitical” stance. To that twist is now added the value on unmanaged feelings. As practitioners of Gestalt therapy put it: “The childish feelings are important not as a past that must be undone but as some of the most beautiful powers of adult life that must be recovered: spontaneity, imagination.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

ImageAgain, in Born to Win, two popularizers of transactional analysis collapse a more general viewpoint into a simple homily: “Winners are not stopped by heir contradictions and ambivalences. Being authentic, they know when they are angry and can listen when others are angry with them.” Winners, the suggestion is, do not try to know what they feel or try to let themselves feel. They just know and they just feel, in a natural, unprocessed way. Ironically, people read a book like Born to Win in order to learn how to try to be a natural, authentic winner. Spontaneity is now cast as something to be recovered; the individual learns how to treat feeling as a recoverable object, with ego as the instrument of recovery. In the course of “getting in touch with our feelings,” we make feelings more subject to command and manipulation, more amenable to various forms of management. While the qualities of Rousseau’s Noble Savage are celebrated in modern pop therapy, he did not act in the way his modern admirers do. The Noble Savage did not “let” himself feel good about his garden. He did not “get in touch with” or “into” his resentment. He had no therapist working on his throat to open up a “voice block.” He did no go back and forth between hot and cold tubs while hyperventilating to get in touch with his feelings. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

ImageNo therapist said to him, “Okay, Noble Savage, let us try to really get in your sadness.” He did not imagine that he owed others any feeling or that they owed him any. In fact, the utter absence of calculation and will as they have become associated with feeling is what nowadays makes the Noble Savage seem so savage. However, it is also—and this is my point—what makes him so noble. Why do we place more value now on artless, unmanaged feeling? Why, hopelessly and romantically, do we imagine a natural preserve of feeling, a place to be kept “forever wild”? The answer must be that it is becoming scarce. In everyday life, we are all to some degree students of Stanislavski; we are only poorer or better at deep acting, closer or more remote from incentives to do it well. We have carried our ancient capacity for gift exchange over a great commercial divide where the gifts are becoming commodities and the exchange rates are set by corporations. Jean-Jacques Rousseau as a flight attendant for Delta Airlines might add to his eighteenth-century concern for the faceless soul beneath the mask a new concern for the market intrusion into the ways we define ourselves and for how, since his say, that intrusion has expanded and organized itself. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23

ImageTo make my desires paramount is what Paul again described as having a “flesh mind” or “mind of the flesh,” which is a state of death (Romans 8.6). Such a mind “sows to one’s flesh”—invests only in one’s natural self—and “out of that flesh reaps corruption” (Galatians 6.8). “Corruption” or “coming apart” is the natural end of the flesh. “Flesh” can only be preserved by being caught up within the higher life of the kingdom of God and thus “losing” the life peculiar to it. In other words, when Jesus says that those who find their life or soul shall lose it, he is pointing out that those who think they are in control of their life—“I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul,” as the poet William Ernest Henley said—will find that they definitely are not in control: they are totally at the mercy of forces beyond them, and even within them. They are on a sure course to disintegration and powerlessness, of lostness both to themselves and to God. They must surrender. By contrast, if they give up the project of being the ultimate point of reference in their life—of doing only what they want, of “sowing to the flesh” or to the natural aims and abilities of a human being—there can be hope. If they in that sense lose their life in favour of God’s life, or for the sake of Jesus and what he is doing on Earth—remember the ongoing World revolution he is now conducting—then their soul (life) will be preserved and thus given back to them. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

ImageWhat does that mean? It means that they will then for the first time be able to do what they want to do. Of course they will be able to steal, lie and murder all they want—which will be none at all. However, they will also be able to be truthful and transparent and helpful and sacrificially loving, with joy—and they will want to be. Their life will be in this way caught up in God’s life. They will want the good and be able to do it, the only true human freedom. The mind set on the spiritual is in that sense “life and peace” (Romans 8.6), because it lives from God and, “sowing into the spirit, out of the spirit reaps the eternal kind of life,” (Galatians 6.8). So—and this is of utmost importance to those who would enter Christian spiritual formation—life as normally understood, where the object is securing myself, promoting myself, indulging myself, is to be set aside. “Can I still think about such things?” you may ask. Yes, you can. However, you increasingly will not. And when you do, as formation in Christlikeness progresses, they simply will not matter. In fact, they will seem ridiculous and uninteresting. Jesus’ words on not being anxious about what will happen to you and his admonitions to consider the flowers and the birds (Luke 12.13-34) will seem obviously sane and right, whereas they previously sounded obviously crazy and wrong, or “out of touch with reality.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

ImageThis principle is CUSTOM or HABIT. For wherever the repetition of any particular act or operation produces a propensity to renew the same act or operation, without being impelled by any reasoning or process the understanding; we always say, that this propensity is the effect of Custom. By employing that word, we pretend not to have given the ultimate reason of such a propensity. We only point out a principle of human nature, which is universally acknowledged, and which is well known by its effects. Perhaps, we can push our enquiries no father, or pretend to give the cause of this cause; but must rest contend with it as the ultimate principle, which we can assign, of all our conclusions from experience. It is sufficient satisfaction, that we can go so far; without repining at the narrowness of our faculties, because they will carry us no farther. And it is certain we here advance a very intelligible proposition at least, if not a true one, when we assert, that, after the constant conjunction of two objects, heat and flame, for instance, weight and solidity, we are determined by customer alone to expect the one from the other appearance of the other. This hypothesis seems even the only one, an inference, which we are not able o draw from one instance, that is, in no respect, different from them. Reason is incapable of any such variation. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

ImageThe conclusions, which it draws from considering one circle, are the same which it would form upon surveying all the circles in the Universe. However, no person, having seen only one body will move after a like impulse. All inferences from experience, therefore, are effects of custom, not of reasoning. Limitations and restraints of civil government, and a legal constitution may be defended, either from reason, which reflecting on the  great frailty and corruption of human nature, teaches, that no human can safely be trusted with unlimited authority; or from experience and history, which inform us of the enormous abuses, that ambition, in every age and country, have been found to make of so imprudent a confidence. The Christological affirmation is that Jesus as the Christ is the center of history. His manifestation was the Kairos in which the meaning of the whole of history was perceived. When Jesus says that the right hour has come, that the kingdom of God is at hand, he pronounces the victory over the law of vanity. This hour is not subject to the circle of life and death and all the other circles of vanity. In the life of Jesus, the hour of Calvary particularly emphasizes the breakthrough of the eternal. The event at Golgotha is one which concerns the Universe, including all nature and all history. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

ImageSince this moment the Universe is no longer what it was; nature has received another meaning; history is transformed and you and I are no more, and should not by any more, what we were before. The meaning of history has been revealed. From that tie on all thins are anew. When the apostles say that Jesus is the Christ, they mean that in him the new eon which cannot become old is present. Christianity lives through the faith that within it there is the new which is not just another new thing but rather the principle and representation of all really new in humans and history. History is Christology and Christology is history forms the sum and substance of our view of history. History is conditioned by the appearance of an unconditioned meaning not as a demand but as an existent, not as an idea but as the temporal and paradoxical anticipation of the ultimate perfection. The problem of history combines with the Christological problem. Christology, being the definition and description of this (central) point in rational terms, is at the same time the basis on which the interpretation of history really rests. This does not mean that history may demonstrate Christology. We should always remember that a revelatory situation is not subject to the scalpel of scientific analysis. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

ImageA historical record cannot classify he center of history along with other, more peripheral, events. One can perceive the center and discern the meaning of history only as one can receive a revelation, in ecstasy and faith. On the one hand, Christology may show the universal dimension implied in the event of the Christ. Christianity gives an abstract and universal meaning to the Christological idea; this abstract meaning must be justified. So is it if therewith the universal claim implied in the constitution of a center of history is expressed. Theologians must show that the Christological affirmation solves the dilemma of all humankind, that it provides a satisfactory answer to all he forms that the quest for the New Being has taken. The historical type of the expectation of the New Being embraces itself and the non-historical type, while the non-historical is unable to embrace the historical type. Christology unites the horizontal direction of the expectation of the New Being with the vertical one. This horizontal, or historical, direction characterizes Western thought, while the vertical, or mystical, direction marks Eastern thought. The Christian faith affirms the Christ, not only as the historical Messiah, but also as the Man on the Clouds of the prophet Daniel; it affirms him both as Saviour and divine Wisdom. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

ImageIn our Saviour with His divine Wisdom, were the Kairos, the dynamic advent of the eternal, and the logos, the universal transcosmic presence of the divine. Thanks to this, Christology does not appear as a strange insertion within the trend of ideas concerning the philosophy of history. On the other hand, it is not a matter of proof that Jesus as the Christ is effectively the center of history. Christology is a possible answer to the basic question implied in history, an answer, of course, which can never be proved by arguments, but is a matter of decision and fate. One who is confronted by the picture of the Christ in the Christian faith is caught up in a revelatory situation. Not only one’s own past, but the whole past of humankind helps to determine one’s answer: this is the element of fate implied in the situation. And the future is at stake, for is meaning or its meaninglessness depends on the answer: this is the element of decision. Being grasped by the center of history means being grasped without limitations and conditions, by an absolute power. The fate in which we are grasped by a center of history in such a way is named “predestination” in religious terminology; the decision in which we grasp that which grasps us, is named faith. Christ is indeed the center of history, but only for faith. Historical erudition cannot reach this in document.  #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

ImageTo know the ultimate meaning of history requires commitment, courage, and decision, the decision for the Christ. To one who has not been caught in this revelation, Christology is foolishness and scandal. To one who has been, Christ is final revelation. We already know that the center of history gives meaning to past, present, and future; it constitutes history as the meaning of time. The scope of the Christological affirmation should be explored further. “Now it came to pass in the sixth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi, there were no contentions nor wars in the land of Zarahemla; but the people were afflicted, yea, greatly afflicted for the loss of their brethren, and also for the loss of their flocks and herds, and also for the loss of their fields of grain, which were trodden under foot and destroyed by the Lamanites. And so great were their afflictions that every soul had cause to mourn; and they believed that it was the judgments of God sent upon them because of their wickedness and their abomination; therefore they were awakened to a remembrance of their duty. And they began to establish the church more fully; yea, and many were baptized in the waters of Sidon and were joined to the Church of God; yea, they were baptized by the hand of Alma, who had been consecrated the high priest over the people of the church, by the hand of his father Alma. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

Image“And it came to pass in the seventh year of the reign of the judges there were about three thousand five hundred souls that united themselves to the Church of God and were baptized. And thus ended the seventh year of the judges over the people of Nephi; and there was continual peace in all that time. And it came to pass in the eighth year of the reign of the judges, that the people of the church began to wax proud, because of their exceeding riches, and their fine silks, and their fine-twined linen, and because of their many flocks and herds, and their gold and their silver, and all manner of precious things, which hey had obtained by their industry; and in all these things were they lifted up in the pride of their eyes, for they began to wear very costly apparel. Now this was the cause of much affliction to Alma, yea, and to many of the people whom Alma had consecrated to be teachers, and priests and elders over thus church; yea, many of them were sorely grieved for the wickedness which they saw had begun to be among the people. For they saw and beheld with great sorrow that the people of the church began to be lifted up in the pride of their eyes, and to set their hearts upon riches and upon the vain things of the World, that they began to be scornful, one towards another, and they began to persecute those that did not believe according to their own will and pleasure. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23

Image“And thus, in this either year of the reign of the judges, there began to be great contentions among the people of the church; yea, there were envying, and strife, and malice, and persecutions, and pride, even to exceed the pride of those who did not belong to the Church of God. And thus ended the eighth year f the reign of the judges; and the wickedness of the church was a great stumbling-block to those who did not belong to the church; and thus the church began to fail in its progress. And it came to pass in the commencement of the ninth year, Alma saw the wickedness of the church, and he saw also that the example of the church began to lead those who were unbelievers on from one piece of iniquity to another, thus bringing on the destruction of the people. Yea, he saw great inequality among the people, some lifting themselves up with their pride, despising others, turning their backs upon the needy and the naked and those who were hungry, and those who were athirst, and those who were sick and afflicted. Now this was a great cause for lamentations among the people, while others were abasing themselves, succoring those who stood in need of their succor, such as imparting their substance to the poor and the needy, feeding the hungry, and suffering all manner of afflictions for Christ’s sake, who should come according to the spirit of prophecy. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

Image“Looking forward to that day, thus retaining a remission of their sins; being filled with great joy because of the resurrection of the dead, according to the will and power of deliverance of Jesus Christ from the bands of death. And now it came to pass that Alma, having seen the afflictions of the humble followers of God, and the persecution which were heaped upon them by the remainder of his people, and seeing all their inequality, began to be very sorrowful; nevertheless he Spirit of the Lord did not fail him. And he selected a wise man who was among the elders of the church, and gave him power according to the voice of the people, that he might have power to enact laws according to the laws which had been given, and to put them in force according to the wickedness and the crimes of the people. Now this man’s nae was Nephihah, and he was appointed chief judge; and he sat in the judgment-seat to judge and to govern the people. Now Alma did not grant unto him the office of being high priest over the church, but he retained the office of high priest unto himself; but he delivered the judgment-seat unto Nephihah. And this he did that he himself might go forth among his people, or among the people of Nephi, that he might preach the word of God unto them, to stir them up in remembrance of their duty, and that he might pull down, by the word of God, all the pride and craftiness and all the contentions which were among his people, seeing no way that he might reclaim them save it were in bearing down in pure testimony against them. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

Image“And thus in the commencement of the ninth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi, Alma delivered up the judgment-seat to Nephihah, and confined himself wholly to the high priesthood of the holy order of God, to the testimony of the word, according to the spirit of revelation,” reports Alma 4.1-20. The words which Alma, the High Priest according to the holy order of God, delivered to the people in their cities and villages throughout the land. God of All Sovereignty, Thy greatness is unsearchable, Thy name most excellent, Thy glory above the Heavens; ten thousand minister to Thee, ten thousand times ten thousand stand before Thee; in Thy awful presence we are less than nothing. We do not approach Thee because we deserve Thy notice, for we are sinners; our necessities compel us, Thy promises encourage us, our broken hearts incite us, the Mediator draws us, Thy acceptance of others moves us. Look Thou upon us and be merciful unto us; please convince us of the penalty and pollution of sin; please give us faith to believe, and, believing, to have life in Jesus; may we enter into His sufferings; please let us see Thy hand in the instruments of our grief, rejoicing that they are from Thy over-ruling providence. Please let us see Thy hand in the instruments of our grief, rejoicing that they are from Thy over-ruling providence. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23

ImagePlease let not our weeping hinder sowing; now sorrow, duty. While living in a World of change please let us seek the abiding city. Be with us to our journey’s end that we may glorify Thee in death as in life. We bless Thee for preservation, supplies, mercies, and to Thee, Keeper of souls, we commit all we are and have. May no evil befall us, no sickness come nigh us, no horror disturbs us! May our conscience be clear, our hearts pure, our sleep sweet! And with the innumerable company who neither slumber nor rest we join in ascribing blessing, honour, glory and power to the lamb upon the throne, for ever and ever. O Merciful and pitying Lord, Who supportest us by sparing us, and sanctifies us by forgiving; please vouchsafe pardon to our sins, and grant that those who attend on the Heavenly Sacraments may be free from all offence, through Jesus Christ our Lord. He is merciful, and full of compassion. O Lord, Who dost gladden us by sparing the powerless. Our Saviour loves us by pardoning the gifts of the Holy Ghost. Please grant pardon of our sins, and receive the sacraments of our celestial-service, to be free from every fault I have. Please grant this blessing. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23Image

Image

Home site 76 at #PlumasRanch features a large kitchen with spacious work island, open floor plan, butler’s pantry, 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms—should we go on? In addition to the beautiful design, its premium location backs up to beautiful orchards. 🌳

ImageThis home in the Riverside community is available for move-in now! See our website for more details, or give us a call at 530-870-8748 to set up a viewing appointment. https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-riverside-at-plumas-ranch/move-in-ready-home-site-76/

ImageO God, Who providest for They people with tenderness, and rulest over them in love; please give the Spirit of wisdom to those to whom Thou hast given the authority of government; that from the well-being of the holy sheep may proceed the eternal joy of the pastors; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, Who, to your people, the indulgence of the consultation, and the love of dominion; please give the Spirit of wisdom, to whom you have given the government of the discipline; from the progress of the eternal joy of your children, we are forever grateful.  #CresleighHomes

Image

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are Just Illusion Makers and the Sun Will Always Shine and the Sky Will Always be Blue!

ImageSpring is here. Everything is burgeoning, the young women also. Their cloaks are laid aside; presumably my green one, too, has been hung up. This is the result of making a young lady’s acquaintance in the street, not in society, where on e is immediately told her name, her family, where she lives, whether she is engaged. The last is extremely important information for all sober and steady suitors, to whom it would never occur to fall in love with an engaged young lady. Such an ambler would then be in mortal distress if he were in my place; he would be utterly demolished if his efforts to obtain information were crowed with success and with the bonus that she was engaged. This, however, does not bother me very much. An engagement is nothing but a comic predicament. I fear neither comic nor tragic predicaments; they only ones I fear are the langweilige [boring] ones. So far, I have not come up with a single bit of information, although I certainly have left nothing untried and many times have felt the truth of the poet’s words: Nox et hiems longaque viae, saevique dolores mollibus his castris, et labour omnis inest [Night, storm, long journeys, cruel pains all kinds of pains are in his dainty camp]. Perhaps she does not live here in the city at all; perhaps she is from the country, perhaps, perhaps—I can fly into a rage over all these perhapses, and the angrier I become, the more the perhapses. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

ImageI always have money at hand in order to be able to set out upon a journey. In vain do I look for her at the theater, at concerts, at dances, on the promenades. In a certain sense, I am pleased; a young woman who participates in such amusements a great deal is usually not worth conquering; she most often lacks the originality that for me is and remains the conditio sine qua non [indispensable condition]. It is not as incomprehensible to find a Preciosa among the gypsies as in the market places where young women are offered for marriage—in all innocence—good Heavens, who says otherwise! However, it is not right for the would-be disciple to take the new relationship as an excuse for releasing oneself from all personal responsibilities, all personal decisions. One should not expect the teacher to take entire charge of one’s entire life for one. Nor is it right for a teacher to accept such a position, to play a role consisting of father and mother and God combined into a single person toward an individual who has reached adult life. It will not help a disciple to let one evade one’s responsibilities and shrink one’s decisions. If the atmosphere between them is surcharged with emotion alone without the restraining balances of reason and common sense, this is the kind of situation which is likely to be brought about. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

Image A wise teacher will try to meet disciples upon the proper ground between accepting such helpless dependence and rebuffing it brusquely altogether. Any other meeting would be unhealthy emotionally and unsound intellectually. Why insist on rash personal relations with your friend? Why go to one’s house, or know one’s mother and brothers and sisters? Why be visited by one at your own? Are these things material to our covenant? Leave this touching and clawing. Let one be to me a spirit. A message, a thought, a sincerity, a glance from one I want, but not news pottage. I can get politics and chat, neighbourly conveniences from cheaper companions. Should not the society of my friend be to me poetic, pure, universal and as great as nature itself? In a social system animated by competition for property, the human personality was metamorphosed into a form of capital. Here it was rational to invest oneself only in properties that would produce the highest return. Personal feeling was a limitation since it distracted the individual from calculating one’s best interest and might pull one along economically counterproductive path. Although human personality remains a medium of competition, the competition is no longer confined to individuals. Institutional purposes are now tied to the workers’ psychological arts. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

ImageIt is not simply individuals who manage their feelings in order to do a job; whole organizations have entered the game. The emotion management that sustains the smile in a real estate representative competes with the emotion management that upholds the smile on other home builders. What was once a private act of emotion management is sold now as labour in public-contact jobs. What was once a privately negotiated rule of feeling or display is not set by the company’s Standard Practice Division. Emotional exchanges that were once idiosyncratic and escapable are now standardized and unavoidable. Exchanges that were rare in private life become common in commercial life. Thus a customer assumes a right to vent unmanaged hostility against a real estate representative who has no corresponding right—because one is paid, in part, to relinquish it. All in all, a private emotional system has been subordinated to commercial logic, and it has been changed by it. It does not take capitalism to turn feeling into a commodity or to turn our capacity for managing feeling into an instrument. However, capitalism has found a use for emotion management, and so it has organized it more efficiently and pushed it further. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

ImageAnd perhaps it does take a capitalist sort of incentive system to connect emotional labour to competition and to go so far as to actually advertise a “sincere” smile, train workers to produce such a smile, supervise their production of it, and then forge a link between this activity and corporate profit. When people like you, they like the company you work for, too. It takes considerable sophistication for a company to make this into an ordinary, trivial thought for a worker to be urged to bear in mind. Massive people-processing—and the advanced engineering of emotional labour that makes it possible—is a remarkable achievement. It is also an important one, for a good part of modern life involves exchange between total strangers, who, in the absence of countermeasures and in the pursuit of short-term self-interest, might much of the time act out of suspicion and anger rather than trust and good will. The occasional lapses from the standard of civility that we take for granted remind us of the crucial steadying effect of emotional labour. However, like most great achievements, the advanced engineering of emotional labour leaves new dilemmas in its wake, new human costs, and I shall focus now on these. For without a clear understanding of these psychological costs, we can hardly begin to find ways of mitigating or removing them. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

ImageThese are three stances that workers seem to take toward work, each with its own sort of risk. In the first, the worker identifies too wholeheartedly with the job, and therefore risk burnout. In he second, the worker clearly distinguishes oneself from the job and is less likely to suffer burnout; but one may blame oneself for making this very distinction and denigrate oneself as “just an actor, no sincere.” In the third, the worker distinguishes oneself from one’s act, does not blame oneself for this, and sees the job as absolutely requiring the capacity to act; for this worker there is some risk of estrangement from acting altogether, and some cynicism about it—“We are just illusion makers.” The first stance is potentially more harmful than the other two, but the harm in all three could be reduced, I believe, if workers could feel a greater sense of control over the conditions of their work lives. The first kind of worker does not see one’s job as one of acting. One has little or no awareness of a “false self.” One is likely to offer warm, personal service, but one is also warm on behalf of the company—“when people like you, they like the company too.” One offers personalized service, but one one’s self become identified with the ized part of it. One is not so good at depersonalizing inappropriately personal behaviour toward one. For these reasons, one is more likely to suffer stress and be susceptible to burnout. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

ImageInstead of removing the idea of a “self” from the job either by will or by art, such a person often reacts passively: one stops caring and becomes remote and detached from the people one serves. Some real estate representatives who describe themselves as poor at depersonalizing reported periods of emotional deadness: “I was not feeling anything. It was like I was not really there. The guy was talking. I could hear him. However, all I heard was dead words.” This sense of emotional numbness reduces stress by reducing access to the feelings through which stress introduces itself. It provides an exit from overwhelming distress that allows a person to remain physically present on the job. Burnout spares the person in the short term, but it may have a serious long-term cost. The human faculty of feeling still “belongs” to the worker who suffers burnout, but the worker may grow accustomed to a dimming or numbing of inner signals. And when we lose access to feeling, we lose a central means of interpreting the World around us. As a precaution against burnout many experienced workers develop a “healthy” estrangement, a clear separation of self from role. They may sometimes feel “phony”—because at a given moment they feel that they should not be acting at all or that they are not acting well enough. However, by differentiating between an acting and a nonacting side of themselves, they make themselves less vulnerable to burnout. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

ImageNow when the company institutes a speed-up—when it maintains its call for emotional labour but sets up conditions that make it impossible to deliver—the worker may become estranged from the acting itself. One may refuse to act at all, thus withdrawing one’s emotional labour altogether. Since the job itself calls for good acing, one will be seen as doing the job poorly. One may respond to the constantly negative consequences of this by trying not to take any consequences at all, by trying not to be there. If in the first stance the worker is too much present in the role, in the third stance, one is not present enough. In all three, the essential problem is how to adjust one’s self to the role in a way that allows some flow of self into the role but minimizes the stress the role puts on the self. In all three cases, the problem of adjusting self to role is aggravated by the worker’s lack of control over the conditions of work. The more often “tips” about how o see, feel, and seem are issued from above and the more effectively the conditions of the “stage” are kept out of the hands of the actor, the les one can influence one’s entrances and exits and the nature of one’s acting in between. The less influence one has, the more likely it is that one of two things will occur. Either one will overextend oneself into the job and burn out, or one will remove oneself from the job and feel bad about it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

ImageWorker control over the conditions of good acting boils down, in the end, to practical politics. The company wanted to take two real estate representatives off two of their sites, but the union was adamantly opposed, and they won. Now that is a multimillion-dollar decision. However, it is a good thing they won. They thought they could have some control over that decision. It was not just money they wanted. They wanted some say over their work lives so they could do the job like they wanted. However, even such actions by organized workers cannot solve the whole problem. For whenever people do acting for a living, even if they have some control over the stage, they inhabit their own stage faces with caution: behind the mask, they listen to their own feelings at low volume. Cheerfulness in the line of duty becomes something different from ordinary good cheer. This applies much more to the real estate representatives, who must try to be genuinely friendly to a line of strangers, than to the commissary worker, who can feel free to hate packing the three-hundredth vanilla Jell-O pudding cup onto a lunch tray. Yet, whoever entrusts oneself to a maser or one’s mind to a teaching, cannot escape one’s own personal responsibility for what one does. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

ImageThis is not to absolve either the self-actualized or the author of the teaching from one’s own responsibility, which they also have, but it is to make clear that the followers are it too. If history is seen as time between a beginning and an end, we can say that not beginning and end determine the center, as is the case in spatial measurements, but that he center of history determines its beginning and end from the meaning of an historical process. This means that history lasts as long as he revelatory power of its center is experienced, first by anticipation, then by participation. Before this here may be a pre-history, a meaningless time or, rather, a time whose meaning was unperceived. After it, one could conceive of a post-history, another stretch of time deprived of a center and which itself perhaps would be a pre-history before another center is expected. All this, however, is mere speculation; such a possibility is purely abstract. It helps us to see, nevertheless, that the important point of history is that which gives it meaning, its center. Everything else revolves around it. Properly speaking, the center of history is constitutive of it: the meaning of a period arises out of a revelatory situation. History is constituted by the fact that is center is constituted, or—since this is not an arbitrary act—by the fact that its center is constituted, or—since this is not an arbitrary act—by the fact that a center proves to be a center through creating history. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

ImageBy a series of well-timed steps, we have led the audience to the brink of the Christological affirmation. First, we have defined history as the meaning of time. Second, we have shown that his meaning comes to light in moments of intense experience of which one may say, “This is the acceptable time, the Kairos.” At that precise moment, the eternal invades he temporal. Third, we have shown that while each period of history may receive it only from a universal Kairos which will be its center. The fourth step, to which we are now coming, is that Jesus as the Christ is the center of history, the point where salvation manifests itself as the content of history. Before explaining this, I should mention an intriguing point. The center of history cannot be conceived of as future: It cannot be sought for in the future, for the meaning of the future is determined by it. We think that the future will be meaningful only on the basis of a principle which we already possess. However, this is not all: The center cannot lie in the present either. For the present has no historical meaning unless it explains the past too. It has such a meaning only if it is the point in which are joined the historical fate which is born in the past, and the historical decision which provides the future. This is to say that the present must itself refer to some meaningful point in the past, to a past Kairos in the light of which the present is meaningful. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

ImageNo present can be a historical center for itself. As a matter of fact, every center of history in any religion or culture has always been seen as a point of reference in the past. If we remember in our analysis of time, the present is, in a sense, both the past and the future, this remark on the past character of the center of history is not as striking as it may seem. At any moment when we are grasped by the power of Kairos, we are in contact with a super-historical reality, and experience the presence of the past in the present. The conclusion which this imposes on Christology does not affect our conscious of the center of history in Jesus as the Christ. However, it does affect our view of the self-consciousness of the Christ. For if the advent of the Christ in Jesus is the center of history for us, it cannot have been the center of history for Jesus. The implications of this will claim our attention later. In 1899 four reporters from Denver, Colorado, met by chance on a Saturday night in a Denver railroad station. Al Stevens, Jack Tournay, John Lewis, and Hal Wilshire worked for the four Denver papers: The Post, the Times, the Republican and the Rocky Mountain News. Each had the unenviable task of finding a scoop for the Sunday edition. They hoped to spot a visiting celebrity arriving that evening by train. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

ImageHowever, none showed up, so the reporters wondered what on Earth they would do. As they discussed options in a nearby saloon, Al suggested they make up a story. The other three laughed—at first. However, before long they were all agreed—they would come up with such a whopper that n one would question it and their respective editors would congratulate them on their find. A phony local story would be too obvious, so they decided to write about someplace far away. They agreed on China. “What if we say tha some American engineers, on their way to China, told us they are bidding on a major job: the Chinese government is planning to demolish the Great Wall?” Harold was not sure the story would be believable. Why would the Chinese ever tear down the Great Wall of China? “As a sign of international goodwill, to invite foreign trade.” By 11 P.M. the four reporters had worked out the details, and the next say all four Denver newspapers carried the story—on the front page. The Times headlines that Sunday read: “Great Chinese Wall Doomed! Peking Seeks World Trade!” Of course, the story was a ridiculous tall tale made up by four opportunistic newsmen in a hotel bar. However, amazingly their story was taken seriously and soon ran in newspapers in the Eastern United States of America and even abroad. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

ImageWhen the citizens of China heard that the Americas were sending a demolition crew to dismantle the Great Wall, most were indignant, even enraged. Particularly angry were members of a secret society made up of Chinese patriots already against any kind of foreign intervention. Moved to action by the news story, they attacked the foreign embassies in Peking and murdered hundreds of missionaries from abroad. In the next two month twelve thousand troops from six countries, working together, invaded China to protect their country people. The bloodshed of that time, born out of a journalistic hoax fabricated in a saloon in Denver, was the time of violence known ever since as the Boxer Rebellion. What power the written or spoken word has! The Great Wall is very precious to the people of China, it is a sacred monument, much like a church, and natives often get dressed up like they are going to church to visit the spiritual center. It is also a major tourist attraction. The Great Wall of China receives more than 10 million visitors per year. So it is never good to threaten World Wonders.  Nations have risen and nation have fallen to the tongue. Lives have been elevated and lives have been cast down by human speech. Goodness has flowed like a sweet river from out mouth, and so has the cesspool. The tiny tongue is a mighty force indeed. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

ImageWords have the power to hurt or to heal, to bring down, or to raise up. And the words we say to ourselves are quite possibly the most powerful words of all. We need to watch ourselves, and our thoughts, and our words, and our deeds, especially as followers of Christ. “And it came to pass that the Nephites who were not slain by the weapons of war, after having buried those who had been slain—now the number of the slain were not numbered, because of the greatness of their number—after they had finished burying their dead they all returned to their lands, and to their houses, and their wives, and their children. Many women and children had been lain with the sword, and also many of their flocks and their herds; and also many of their fields of grain were destroyed, for they were trodden down by the hosts of humans. And now as many of the Lamanites and the Amlicites who had been slain upon the bank of the river Sidon were cast into the waters of Sidon; and behold their bones are in the depths of the sea, and they are many. And the Amlicites were distinguished from the Nephites, for they had marked themselves with red in their foreheads after the manner of the Lamanites; nevertheless they had not shorn their heads like unto the Lamanites. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

Image“Now the heads of the Lamanites were shorn; and they were naked, save it were skin which was girded about their loins, and also their armour, which was girded about them, and their bows, and their arrows, and their stones, and their slings, and so forth. And the skins of the Lamanites were dark, according to the mark which was set upon their fathers, which was a curse upon them because of their transgression and their rebellion against their brethren, who consisted of Nephi, Jacob, and Joseph, and Sam, who were just and holy men. And their brethren sought to destroy them, therefore they were cursed; and the Lord God set a mark upon them, yea, upon Laman and Lemuel, and also the sons of Ishmael, and Ishmaelitish women. And this was done that their seed might be distinguished from the seed of their brethren, that thereby the Lord God might preserve his people, that they might not mix and believe in incorrect traditions which would prove their destruction. And it came to pass that whosoever did mingle his seed with that of the Lamanites did bring the same curse upon his seed. Therefore, whosoever suffered himself to be led away by the Lamanites was called under that head, and there was a mark set upon him. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

Image“And it came to pass that whosoever would not believe in the tradition of the Lamanites, but believed those records which were brought out of the land of Jerusalem, and also in the tradition of their fathers, which were correct, who believed in the commandments of God and kept them, were called the Nephites, or the people of Nephi, from that time forth—and it is they who have kept the records which are true of their people, and also of the people of the Lamanites. Now we will return again to the Amlicites, for they also had a mark set upon them; yea, they set the mark upon themselves, yea, even a mark of red upon their foreheads. Thus the word of God is fulfilled, for these are the words which he said to Nephi: Behold, the Lamanites have I cursed, and I will set a mark on them that they and their seed may be separated from thee and Thy seed, from this time henceforth and forever, except they repent of their wickedness and turn to me that I may have mercy upon them. And again: I will set a mark upon him that mingleth his seed with thy brethren, that they may be cursed also. And again: I will set a mark upon him that figheth against thee and thy seed. And again, I say he that depareth from thee shall no more be called thy seed; and I will bless thee, and whomsoever shall be called thy seed, henceforth and forever; and these were the promises of the Lord unto Nephi and to his seed. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

Image“Now the Amlicites knew not that they were fulfilling the words of God when they began to mark themselves in their foreheads; nevertheless they had come out in the open rebellion against God; therefore it was expedient that the curse should fall upon them. Now I would that ye should see that they brought upon themselves the curse; and even so doth every human that is cursed bring upon oneself one’s own condemnation. Now it came to pass that not many days after the battle which was fought in the land of Zarahemla, by the Lamanites and the Amlicites, that there was another army of the Lamanites came in upon the people of Nephi, in the same pace where the first army met the Amlicites. And it came to pass that there was an army sent to drive them out of their land. Now Alma himself being afflicted with a wound did not go up to battle at this time against the Lamanites; however, he sent up numerous army against them; and they went up and slew many of the Lamanites, and drove the remainder of them out of the borders of their land. And then they returned again and began to establish peace in the land, being troubled no more for a time with their enemies. Now all these things were done, yea, all these wars and contentions were commenced and ended in the fifth year of the reign of the judges. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Image“And in one year were thousands and tens of thousands of souls sent to the eternal World, that hey might reap their rewards according to their works, whether they were good or whether they were bad, to reap eternal World, that they might reap eternal happiness or eternal misery, according to the spirit which they listed to obey, whether it be a good spirit or a bad one. For every human receiveth wages of one whom one listeth to obey, and this according to the words of the spirit of prophecy; therefore let it be according to the truth. And thus endeth the fifth years of the reign of the judges,” reports Alma 3.1-27. The disciple’s reverence for the Master can still hold room for sight of the latter’s failings and imperfections. If one gets enough inspiration from the Master to help one’s spiritual life, it would be a foolish decision to leave one because of those failings and imperfections. Graciously cast Thy light, O Lord, upon go on and prosper, and its pastors, by Thy governance, may become acceptable to Thy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Most High God, the Universe with all its myriad creatures is Thine, made by Thy word, upheld by Thy power, governed by Thy will. However, Thou art also the Father of mercies, the God of all grace, the bestower of all comfort, the protector of the saved. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

ImageThou hast been mindful of us, hast visited us, preserved us, given us a goodly heritage—the Holy Scriptures, the joyful gospel, the Saviour of souls, we came to Thee in Jesus’ name, make mention of His righteousness only, plead His obedience and sufferings who magnified the law both in its precepts and penalty, may we be justified by His blood, saved by his life, joined to His Spirit. Let us take up His cross and follow Him. May the agency of Thy grace prepare us for Thy dispensations. Makes us willing that Thou shouldest choose our inheritance and determine what we shall retain or lose, suffer or enjoy; if blessed with prosperity may we be free from its snares, and use, not abuse, its advantages; may we patiently and cheerfully submit to those afflictions which are necessary. When we are tempted to wander, hedge up our way, excite in us abhorrence of sin, wean us from the present evil World, assure us that we shall at last enter Immanuel’s land where none is ever sick, and the Sun will always shine. Many have a lack of compassion.  Almighty please give service to our successful course and people like you are in your heart pleasing because Thou art holy. May the President that commands the nation keep society in their right mind. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

Image

Image

Our homes in our latest community at #PlumasRanch took influence from modern design trends, like patterned tile and spacious center work islands. The end result is definitely drool-worthy. 🤤

ImageWe have TWO homes in the Riverside community that are move-in ready! Check them out on our website. Link in bio. 🙌 https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-riverside-at-plumas-ranch/move-in-ready-home-site-77/

Image

O merciful God and eternal King, please give a prosperous course to our service; and that we may become pleasing in Thy sight by means of the devotion of Thy people, do Thou preside over Thy holy flock; and guide Thou the wills of all into the observance of Thy commands. During your church, O Lord, thy goodness, shine; and the flocks are everywhere, and to Thy I guarantee my heart.  #CresleighHomes

Image