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Evil Spirits are Able to Exert a Great Deal of Influence Upon Humans!
The Christian Bible teaches us that acceptance of this World system which is dominated by erroneous principles, selfish desires, improper motives, and unworthy standards of value that draws humans away from God and makes them “measure of all things,” is influenced so strongly by Satan and his army of evil spirits, which caused humans to adopt attitudes and to perform deeds which hinder God’s work and harm His people is done with every trace of wickedness (depravity, malignity) and all deceit and insincerity (pretense, hypocrisy) and grudges (envy, jealousy), and slander of every kind and evil speaking of every kind. This should make us crave like newborn babies the pure spiritual milk that by it one may be nurtured and grow unto salvation. Society in every age is characterized by such iniquities as selfishness, pride, immorality, and dishonesty, in spite of the efforts of sincere people to make it a better World. Twenty-first century humans, with more technical skills and knowledge than any previous generation, is unable to solve the problems of poverty, crime, racial hatred, and war. An increasing number of people go to bed hungry every night, crime is on the rise, racial hatred has never been more intense, and wars continue to be fought all over the World. Why? Because humankind has accepted a self-centered philosophy of life, and Earth’s citizens in general are motivated by the three evils of which John speaks in his first epistle—“the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life,” reports 1 John 2.16. The “lust of the flesh” is the desire for possession. It is the gratification of self by participation. Careful study of the word “flesh” indicates that this evil propensity of humankind involves more than just sins of impurity. The term, as used by John in this passage, does not have reference to the body but to the sinful Adamic nature. The individual sinner is born with a nature that is selfish, and one is part of a social structure which operates on grasping, egocentric, and selfish principles. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
A vast majority of men and women are materialistic, live to gratify the senses, and are self-centered even in the good things they do. Nations, too, seek only what is best for themselves. Leaders in industry, education, and even religion are primarily concerned about their own welfare, often neglecting the needs of those they serve. The “lust of the flesh” drives humans to desire and obtain material possessions, and to satisfy their physical appetites and passions at the expense of spiritual values. This basic selfishness and craving for the Earthly tangible pleasures of life leads people to misuse the physical and material blessings God has given all humans to enjoy. On a Worldwide scope, it has brought about a situation in which thousands live in unparalleled luxury while millions starve. When we stop to think about it, much of the World’s unrest and unhappiness today can be traced to the “lust of the flesh.” The “lust of the eyes,” the second characteristic of this World system, is sometimes defined as “gratification by contemplation.” The use of our eyes has vast potential for either great blessing of for degradation. For example, we are able to look upon the endless beauty of creation and sing praises to the Lord. Reading God’s Word, we can meditate upon the riches of glory in joyous expectation. However, Satan and his evil partners have perverted the use of the eye, inducing wicked humans to display scenes by which lustful thoughts are incited. They capitalize upon humans’ sinfulness and natural tendency to immorality. Down through the ages, immodest dress, impure books and pictures, and unholy theatrical productions have been used to degrade and degenerate both young and old. In addition, the eye affords an opportunity to enjoy by contemplation certain evils which one cannot or dare not actually perform. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
Therefore, people from all classes of society and every age bracket are influenced by the allurement that comes through the gift of sight. Discerning people who glance at the newsstands, read the advertisements in the theater page of the newspaper, or watch the programs and commercials presented on television, know full well that “lust of the eyes” has been exploited by the powers of evil. The evidence certainly indicates that Satan and his followers are truly the “leaders of the darkness of this World.” The “pride of life,” the third characteristic of this World system, refers to vanity and ostentation. Men and women put great stock in “being somebody.” To make a name for themselves they throw impressive parties, purchase expensive automobiles, and live in luxurious homes. Their only measure of success is by these standards. Others may acquire academic degrees to display their intellectual prowess, while athletes may exert maximum effort, not principally out of team spirit, but for money and applause. The struggle for power, prestige, and even glory is at the heart of almost every human endeavour. However, through all of this, humankind has been unable to discover true happiness and satisfaction. Most people confess they are not finding pleasures they expected, but nonetheless continue on their way, ever pursuing new baubles. The invisible forces of Satan so blind humans that they do not see true values, nor recognize the folly of their vain quest for this elusive will-o’-the wisp, “the pride of life.” According to the Bible the whole social structure of this World is controlled by a pervading principle of life that is foreign to God and leads humans away from Him. True every human is a sinner by nature and alienated from God, but this inherent human selfishness, under the direction of intelligent and powerful wicked spirits, compounds this basic sinfulness by brining out the very worst in humans. Evil spirits cruelly blind and deceive fallen humanity through the lust of the flesh the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
These fallen creatures actively try to manipulate the political rulers of the World. Satan’s organized army operates quietly and invisibly in the minds and the wills of Earthly sovereigns to achieve their evil purposes. The Bible indicates the nature and course of their activity in several references. Daniel 10 teaches that specific evil spirits are assigned the task of influencing human rulers. The chapter opens with a picture of Daniel in earnest prayer. He entreats the Lord for a period of three weeks, seeking God’s favour upon the Jewish people who have returned to Jerusalem from captivity. He learned that they were experiencing difficulty in rebuilding the temple. Ezra 4, which gives the history of these former exiles, indicates that the work of restoration was interrupted by adversaries almost immediately after the foundation of the temple had been laid. Finally, three weeks after Daniel began to pray, God sent him a most amazing experience. An angel came to Daniel and said, “Fear not, Daniel; for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words. However, the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days; but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia,” reports Daniel 10.12-13. The angel declared that he had left Heaven immediately after Daniel’s first prayer, but that on his way to Earth he had encountered opposition from “the prince of the kingdom of Persia.” The Heavenly messenger went on to say that it was not until Michael came to help him that he was able to overcome this opposing “prince.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
The struggle was obviously between angelic beings, for the one speaking to Daniel was an angel, and Michael is well known as the angelic protector of Israel. (See Daniel 10.21; 12.1; Jude 9; Revelation 12.7). This “prince of the kingdom of Persia” was obviously a wicked spirit of high rank. He had been delegated by the arch-enemy of God, the devil himself, for the task of influencing the Persian government to obstruct the Israelites in their rebuilding program. Thus success of this evil spirit’s attempt was apparent upon Earth. Even while the battle between the angelic beings was taking place in the air, the rulers of Persia were hindering the Jews in the task of rebuilding their temple. The people in Jerusalem could see only the treachery of their human enemies, not knowing that invisible spirits had been exerting pressure against them behind the scenes. The leaders of Persia were not aware that their decision to oppose Israel was the result of the working of evil spirits in their minds. These human rulers were actually mere puppets, carrying out the wishes of the invisible powers who were manipulating them. Even today humans who hold high political office may be the unwitting tools of evil spirits. Many humans lust for power. National groups vie for supremacy in the economic World. In this prevailing atmosphere of selfishness, evil spirits are able to exert a great deal of influence upon humans. Opportunistic politicians become ideal underlines of these evil spirits. In addition, the followers of Satan, in dominating the godless World rulers, are able to incite beastly behaviour in them. Many living today have witnessed the indescribable brutality of Nazism and theistic Communism. Highly civilized people find great pleasure in the development of more effective weapons with which to kills members of other nations. Humans tell lies, oppress others, and commit mass murders with no hint of shame or remorse. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
In fact, it is amazing that this modern age of civilization and refinement has been characterized by an inhumanity far worse than that of the ancient barbaric times. We believe this pathological condition can be traced to the fact that many highly educated humans of influence and power have rejected God. In so doing, they have opened themselves to the activity of evil spirits. Therefore, we have a confirmation of Paul’s declaration that the real World rulers of this darkness (Ephesians 6.12) are not the humans who have positions of leadership, but the evil spirits who rule their hearts and influence their thoughts and decisions. From the commencement of the seventeenth century to the Restoration of Charles II, be barren of witchcraft proper, it must at least be admitted that it is prodigal in regard to the marvellous under various shapes and forms, from which the hysterical state of the public mind can be fairly accurately gauged. During 1642, O’Daly in his History of the Geraldines relates that during the siege of Limerick three portents appeared. The first was a luminous globe, brighter than the moon and little inferior to the sun, which for two leagues and a half shed a vertical light on the city, and then faded into darkness over the enemy’s camp; the second was the apparition of the Virgin, accompanied by several of the Saints; and the third was a lusus nature of the Saimese-twins type: all three of which O’Daly interprets to his own satisfaction. The first of these was some from of the northern lights, and is also recorded in the diary of certain Puritan officers. That learned, but somewhat too credulous English antiquary, John Aubrey, relates in his Miscellanies that before the last battle between the contending parties “a woman of uncommon Statue all in white appearing to the Bishop [Heber McMahon, who Aubrey terms Veneras] admonished him not to cross the River first to assault the Enemy, but suffer them to do it, whereby he should obtain the Victory. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
“That if the Irish took the water first to move towards the English they should be put to a total Rout, which came to pass. Ocahan and Sir Henry O’Neal, who were both killed there, saw severally the same apparition, and dissuaded the Bishop from giving him the first onset, but could not prevail upon him.” N instance of an Irishman suffering from the effects of witchcraft outside Ireland is afforded us in a pathetic petition sent up to the English Parliament between the years 1649 and 1653. The petitioner, John Campbell, stated that twelve years since he lost his sight in Co. Antrim, where he was born, by which he was reduced to such extremity that he was forced to come over to England to seek some means of livelihood for himself in craving the charity of well-disposed people, but contrary to his expectation he has been often troubled there with dreams and fearful visions in his sleep, and has been twice bewitched, insomuch that he can find no quietness or rest here, and so prays for a pass to return to Ireland. The saintly James Usher, Archbishop of Armagh, was a Prelate who, if he had happed to live at an earlier period would certainly have been numbered amongst those whose wide and profound learning won for themselves the title of magician—as it was, he was popularly credited with prophetical powers. Most of the prophecies attributed to him may be found in a little pamphlet of eight pages, entitled “Strange and Remarkable Prophecies and Predictions of the Holy, Learned, and Excellent James Usher, &c…Written by the person who heard it from this Excellent person’s own Mouth,” and apparently published in 1656. According to it, he foretold the rebellion of 1641 in a sermon on Ezekiel iv. 6, preached in Dublin in 1601. “And of this Sermon the Bishop reserved the Notes, and put a note thereof in the Margent of his Bible, and for twenty years before he still lived in the expectation of the fulfilling thereof, and the nearer the time was the more confident he was that it was nearer accomplishment, though there was no visible appearance of any such thing.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
He also foretold the death of Charles I, and his own coming poverty and loss of property, which last he actually experienced for many years before his death. The Rev. William Turner in his Compleat History of Remarkable Providences (London, 1697) gives a premonition of approaching death that the Archbishop received. A lady who was dead appeared to him in his sleep, and invited him to sup (eat supper) with her the next night. He accepted the invitation, and died the following afternoon, 21st March 1656. There is another story from Glanvill’s Relations. One Mr. John Browne of Durley in Ireland was made by this neighbour, John Mallett of Enmore, trustee for his children in minority. In 1654 Mr. Browne lay a-dying: at the foot of his bed stood a great iron chest fitted with three locks, in which were the trustees’ papers. Some of his people and friends were sitting by him, when to their horror they suddenly saw the locked chest begin to open, lock by lock, without the assistance of any visible hand, until at length the lid stood upright. The dying man, who had not spoken for twenty-four hours, sat up in the bed, looked at the chest, and said: “You say true, you say true, you are in the right (a favourite expression of his), I’ll be with you by and by,” and then lay down again, and never spoke after. The chest slowly locked itself in exactly the same manner as it had opened, and shortly after this Mr. Browne died. In the mid-1880s, during a Connecticut thunder storm, Mrs. Winchester’s husband and baby lost their lives in a tragic fire. The distracted widow turned to spiritualism and was advised to take a trip around the World. This she did, visiting mediums, spiritualists and yogis in Europe and India. Fortelling her future, one seer warned her of all the countless thousands of departed souls slain by her husband’s rifles; she must protect herself and atone for such mass murder. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
Mrs. Winchester was told to plan a castle and continue its building indefinitely because as long as it was under construction, she would live; cessation would prove immediately fatal. The head of a celebrated firm of Victorian restorers and decorators took a keen interest in Mrs. Winchester’s mansion. She constructed it for 38 years until she passed away in 1922. It is currently, approximately 24,000 square feet, and four stories tall, but at one time reached a height of 9 stories and may have been more than 50,000 square feet, but the 9-story tower and much of the 4th floor was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake. Back then, two thirds of Mrs. Winchester’s estate was dark, unbroke forests, through whose tangled paths the mysterious winter wind groaned and shrieked and howled with weird noises and unaccountable clamors. The aged told their stories to the young—tales of early life; tales of war and adventure, of forest days, of Indian captives and escapes, of bears and wildcats and panthers, of rattlesnakes, of witches and wizards, and strange and wonderful dreams and appearances and providences at the Winchester mansion. Along the iron bound gates, the stormful skies of Llanada Villa raved and thundered, and wind dashed its moaning turrets, as if to deaden and deafen any voice that might tell of the settled life of the old civilized World, and shut the estate into wilderness. In 1923, there was work being done on the Winchester mansion. It was one of special interest to many antiquarians, and they wanted to restore it. However, in the basement, a large tomb was unearthed, and needed to be moved. The workers were very loth to disturb the tomb, but it was necessary to ensure the safety of the mansion. The tomb belonged to Sarah Winchester. She mostly lived alone in the castle. Her reputation was one of mystery, the supernatural and untold wealth. It was popularly supposed that she could never be killed. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
The restorer made an especial study of old legends or family histories that came under his observation He was necessarily very well read and thoroughly well posted in all questions of folklore and medieval legend. Mrs. Winchester kept a careful record of every case she investigated involving a haunting. The manuscripts she left at her death were a special interest. From amongst them, were some particularly bizarre and extraordinary experiences. Now, the fact was, that ghost stories had been told so often about the Winchester mansion, that they were all arranged and ticketed into the minds of the movers. Still, they shivered, and clung to their knees at the mysterious tomb, and felt gentle, cold chills run down their spines. If the tomb be moved, it would have to be done in two pieces, the covering slab first and then the tomb proper. The movers decided to remove the covering slab first. Everything was ready for lifting off the covering stone, and after the men’s dinner, they started the jacks and pulleys. The slab lifted easily enough, though if fitted closely into its seat and was further secured by some sort of mortar or putty, which must have kept the interior perfectly air-tight. And it was one of those thundering stormy nights, when the winds appeared to be holding a perfect mad carnival over the mansion. They yelled and squealed round the corners; they collected in troops, and came tumbling and roaring down the chimney; and they shook and rattled the buttery door and the sink room door and the cellar door and the chamber door, with a constant undertone of squeak and clatter, as if at every door were a cold, discontented spirit, tried to warn them not to touch the tomb. People used to say Mrs. Winchester was set apart, when she was a child, to the service o’ the Devil, but many say she could never be made nothin’ but a Christian. Perhaps that was the appeal. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
She used to come to meeting with her husband, praying for the Indians. None of them were prepare for what they discovered under the cover lid of the tomb. There lay the fully dressed body of a woman, who had not aged nor decayed, but was ghastly pale, as if from starvation. The body was extraordinary fresh. Except for the appearance of starvation, life might have been only just extinct. The flesh was soft and white, the eyes were wide open and seemed to stare at them with a fearful understanding in them. The body itself was a young woman. For several moments, the movers gazed with horrible curiosity, and then it became too much for the workmen, who implored their boss to replace the covering slab. That, of course, they could not do; but he set the carpenters to work at once to make a temporary cover while they moved the tomb to its new position. This was a long job, and would take two of tree days. At sunset the next evening, they were startled by the howling of, seemingly, every dog in the village. It lasted for thirteen minutes, and then ceased as suddenly as it began This, and a curious mist that had risen round the mansion, make them feel rather anxious about Mrs. Winchester. According to the best-established traditions of the Vampire-haunted countries the disturbance of dogs or wolves at sunset is supposed to indicate the presence of one of these creatures, and local fog was always considered to be a certain sign. The Vampire has the power of producing it for the purpose of concealing its movements near its hiding-place at any time. Just before midnight, there was another outburst of hideous howling. It was commenced most distinctly by a particularly horrible and blood-curdling wail from the vicinity of the churchyard. The chorus lasted only a few minutes, however, and at the end of it, they crew say a large dark shape, like a huge dog, emerge from the fog and lope away at a rapid canter toward the open country. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
At 1.13 a.m., they saw another beast returning. It stopped at the spot where the fog seemed to commence, and lifting up its head, gave tongue to that particularly horrible long-drawn wail that the movers had noticed as preceding the outburst earlier in the evening. The boss got so frightened, you could faintly hear his teeth chatter. The next day it was discovered that some neighbouring sheepfold had been raided by a nocturnal marauder. The workmen that morning were much disturbed in mind about the howling of dogs. “We don’t like it, sir,” one of them said to the boss—“we don’t like it; there was somethin’ abroad last night that was unholy.” They were still more uncomfortable when the news came round that a large dog had made a rapid upon a flock of sheep, scattering them far and wide, and leaving thee of them dead with torn throats in the field. The boss and the crew were determined to catch the wild dog. During the afternoon, the men were lifting the temporary cover that was on the tomb, giving as an excuse the reason that they wished to obtain a portion of the curious mortar with which it had been sealed. After a slight demur, the raised the lid. If the sight that met their eyes gave them a shock. The woman was alive. And so it seemed for a moment. The corpse had lost much of its straved appearance and looked generously fresh and alive. They all believed that Mrs. Winchester was a Vampire and that is why she was so well preserved in her tomb. However, she had not yet come to full strength. It was just after midnight that the crew of movers noticed the fog creeping in again in the still of the night. Their first move was to try to penetrate the sense fog round the mansion, but there was something so chilly about it that their nerves nor stomachs were proof against it. Instead, they stationed themselves in the dark shadow of a cypress tree that commanded a good view of the jeweled front doors to the estate. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
The howling of the dogs began again, and in a few minutes, there was a large grey shape, with green eyes shining like lamps, shambling swiftly down the path towards them. The both stood very still and watched as the great beast cantered swiftly by. It was real enough, for they could hear the clicking of its nails on the stone flags. It passed within a few yards of the movers, and seemed to be nothing more nor less than a great grey wolf, thin and gaunt, with bristling hair and dripping jaws. It stopped where the mist commenced, and turned round. It was truly a horrible sight, and made their blood run cold. The eyes burnt like fires, the upper lip was snarling and raised, showing a great canine teeth, while round mouth clung and dripped a dark-coloured froth. It raised its head and gave tongue to its long wailing howl, which was answered from afar by the village dogs. After standing for a few moments it turned and disappeared into the thickest part of the fog. The boss said, “When the Devil drives: and in the face of what I have seen I must believe that some unholy forces are at work Yet, how can they work in this beautiful estate?” They set their teeth, however, and hardened their hearts. Then they went inside and replaced the cover on the tomb, took what they had collected from the estate and left. Never to return. Some believe that the movers were too afraid to return to the estate and that is why it was not completely looted and some valuables were left behind. It also why much of the damage was not repaired. I guess the estate has a way of protecting itself from those with bad intentions. Mrs. Winchester’s tomb was eventually moved to her home town New Haven, Connecticut to rest with her husband and daughter. Legend has it that it took movers six weeks, six trucks a day, to remove most of the furniture because they kept getting lost in the catacomb. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Winchester Mystery House
“Wide Unclasp the Tables of Their Thoughts.” (From Troilus and Cressida by William Shakespeare.) What do you think this quote meant to Sarah Winchester? 🧐 winchestermysteryhouse.com
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
If You Do Not Ask the Right Questions, You Do Not Get the Right Answers!
I am a citizen of the American Dream, and the revolutionary struggles of which I am a part, is a struggle against the American Nightmare. When it comes to mental health, assessment is simply the collecting of relevant information in an effort to reach a conclusion. It goes on in ever realm of life. We make assessments when we decide what Cresleigh Home to buy, or which colour we want our Ultimate Driving Machine to buy. College admissions officers, who have to select the “best” of the students applying to their college, depend on academic records, recommendations, achievement test scores, interviews, and application form to help them decided. Employers, who have to predict which applicants are more likely to be effective workers, collect information from resumes, interviews, references, and perhaps on-the-job observations. Clinical assessment is used to determine how and why a person is behaving abnormally and how that person may be helped. It also enables clinicians to evaluate people’s progress after they have been in treatment for a while and decide whether the treatment should be changed. The specific tools that are used to do an assessment depend on the clinician’s theoretical orientation. Psychodynamic clinicians, for example, use methods that assess a client’s personality and probe for any unconscious conflicts one may be experiencing. This kind of assessment, called a personality assessment, enables them to piece together a clinical picture in accordance with the principles of their model. Behavioural and cognitive clinicians are more likely to use assessment methods that reveal specific dysfunctional behaviours and cognitions. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
The goal of this kind of assessment called a behavioural assessment, is to produce a functional analysis of the person’s behaviours—an analysis of how the behaviours are learned and reinforced. The hundreds of clinical assessment techniques and tools that have been developed fall into three categories: Clinical interviews, tests, and observations. To be useful, these tools must be standardized and have clear reliability and validity. A given assessment tool may appear to be valid simply because it makes sense and seems reasonable. However, this sort of validity, called face validity, does not by itself mean that the instrument is trustworthy. A test for depression, for example, might include questions about how often a person cries. Because it makes sense that depressed people would cry, these test questions would have face validity. It turns out, however, that many people cry a great deal for reasons other than depression, and some extremely depressed people fail to cry at all. Thus an assessment tool should not be used unless it meets more exacting criteria of validity, such as high predictive or concurrent validity. Vincent van Gogh led a tortured and unhappy life. In a legendary incident the artist cut off one of his ears. Later he was admitted to a mental institution, and ultimately he committed suicide at the age of 37. Van Gogh wrote a great deal about his pain and anguish, describing mental and physical torment and hallucinations. Indeed, he observed, “There is quite definitely something or other deranged in my brain.” For years clinicians have typically agreed with van Gogh and have speculated that the artists suffered from mood disorder, schizophrenia, or both. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
However, approximately twenty years ago, these assessments were challenged. A Harvard neurologist, for example, has suggested that van Gogh in fact suffered from Geschwind’s syndrome, technically known as interictal personality disorder, caused by brain seizure disorder, or epilepsy. Van Gogh displayed many of its symptoms, including excessive drawing (hypergraphia), hyperreligiosity, and aggression. In contrast, medica specialists in Colorado have concluded that van Gogh suffered from an extreme form of Meniere’s syndrome, a disorder marked by an excessive buildup of fluid in the inner ear. The enormous pressure may produce nausea, dizziness, poor balance, pain, deafness and constant buzzing or ringing sensations. Perhaps van Gogh cut off his ear in an effort to reduce the pain. And perhaps his other problems and pains arose from severe secondary psychological problems that can accompany. Perhaps nowhere in the mental health literature has family systems theory had more of an impact than in the area of alcoholism. Family systems theory is a conceptual model, rather than a true theory, that locates causes and consequences of problematic behaviour in the larger family system in which it is embedded. Family behaviour is thought to be responsive to regulatory mechanisms that maintain the status quo, as well as a tendency to grow and change in response to dynamic qualities within and outside the family. Viewing a family as a system suggests that a disturbance in one part of the system will have an impact on other parts of the system. Applying family systems concepts to alcoholism, has uncovered that some families organize their lives around the alcoholism of an adult member, just as other families might organize their lives around children or work. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
In an early investigation of adults with alcoholism and their family members, the expression of previously inhibited positive affect between family members became extremely pronounced during drinking periods. This and later studies revealed that interactions in such families were actually more patterned, organized, and predictable while the adults with alcoholism were intoxicated. Thus alcohol ingestion serves an adaptive function in family relationships through a stabilizing phenomenon. This prompted a suggestion that there is an alcoholic system in some families, in which drinking is an integral part of the family structure that actually maintains and stabilizes the family. Similar positive effects on the family were evident in a study where family members viewed and rated video tapes (recordings with audio and visual information on them, which can be played back) of their own interactions, in the absence of actual drinking. Both mothers and adolescent children in families with paternal alcoholism rated family members as less anxious and their interactions as more friendly than those of families without alcoholism. Unfortunately, drinking and intoxication may provide only a temporary “solution” to a family’s problems, at the cost of what may ne more serious long-term ill effects. Although drinking can temporarily inject positivity into some family relationships, several laboratory investigations have also documented negative effects associated with drinking. For example, families with an alcoholic father discuss items from various questionnaire inventories while the fathers were drinking or not drinking. During their discussions, the families expressed more negative affect during the drinking versus the no-drinking condition. The nature of interactions in families without paternal alcoholism was not affected by the drinking conditions. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
The ill effects of parental alcoholism on family interactions and child rearing may begin to have an impact on family members as early as 1 year of age. In this study, families with alcoholism in at least one patent were observed interacting with their 12-month-old infants for 5 minutes in a room filled with toys. Observations of the parents’ behaviour indicated that the parents with alcoholism were less sensitive to their infants during the free play; such fathers in particular made fewer verbalizations, expressed more negative affect, and were less responsive to their infants. Self-report measures further indicate that the parents with alcoholism were more aggressive toward their spouses than those without alcoholism were. The family observation study was unique in showing that parents with alcoholism were far more depressed than those without, and that this depression mediated the relationship between parental alcoholism and sensitivity to the infants during interaction. So for many adults with alcoholism, effective parenting may be disrupted directly by the alcoholism, or by comorbid problems such as depression that in and of themselves have a negative impact on parenting behaviour. Different subtypes of alcoholism have been identified to explain the variable effects of alcohol consumption and alcoholism on family interactions and relations. In one such instance, researchers were able to characterize subtypes of alcoholism as episodic or steady drinking. Another useful distinction in alcoholism is that between high-antisociality and low-antisociality subtypes. These subtypes are defined on the basis of a measure that taps into negative social consequences of drinking, feeling of alienation, interpersonal disruption, and negative attitudes toward authority (higher scores = higher antisociality). #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Home observations of family dinner conversations revealed that wives, husbands, and children in families with high-antisociality alcoholism were all less positive, and less inclined to communicate disagreement, than were control family members. Although family interactions in the high-antisociality condition were characterized by diminished optimism, they appeared to have a cautious appearance as well, in that family members were careful to avoid open disagreement with each other. This pattern of interaction could have interesting implications for the genesis of alcoholism. For the person who develops alcoholism, the tendency to avoid communicating disagreement may lead to the internalization of problems with other family members. Instead of airing complaints, the individual is left to ruminate over them on one’s own—perhaps without seeing any change in the offensive behaviour by other family member, since they may be unaware of the problem. For this individual’s family members, the tendency to be cautious and avoid disagreement may inadvertently cause one’s problem drinking behaviour to go unchecked. In some cases, families have some ability to regulate problem drinking through punishing responses in reaction to the behaviour. However, in a family system affected by high-antisociality alcoholism, this regulatory function may be inoperative. Recognizing considerable diversity in alcoholism’s effects on family interactions, there is a proposed family alcohol phase model. According to this perspective, a family moves through various phases that correspond to the drinking behaviour of the member with alcoholism. The stable-wet phase is marked by consistent drinking, whereas the stable-dry phase is marked by general abstinence. The family is in a transitional phase either when a period of abstinence begins, or when a period of abstinence ends with episodes of drinking. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
It has been found that content variability (the range of affect and decision-making behaviour in verbal interaction) in family interactions, as well as distance regulation (use of space and rate of movement in the home), varied as a function of phase. In the stable-wet phase, families maintained the greatest distance, interacting only for purposeful reasons, while exhibiting midrange variability in their interactions. Families in the stable-dry phase exhibited a great deal of content variability in their interactions, with midrange distance regulation. Finally, those families in the transitional phase exhibited a great deal of content variability in their interactions, with midrange distance regulations. Finally, those families in the transitional phase showed a decrease in distance regulation, manifesting physical closeness, with a slight decrease in the content variability of their interactions. A 2-year longitudinal study suggested that families in the stable-wet phase were the most likely of the three to dissolve their marriages. In particular, those families in the stable-wet phase that exhibited the least intrafamily engagement during home observations of family interaction were more likely to break up over the course of the study. It has been noted that in families of alcoholics’ relationships change when parental drinking occurs. However, sometimes these changes are beneficial and sometimes they are negative. Where there are beneficial changes or adaptive outcomes, these may be somewhat short-lived. Researchers have been working to identify different subtypes of alcoholism that are associated with more negative family consequences. The poorest family processes and outcomes appear to be associated with the episodic (vs. steady), high-antisociality (vs. low-antisociality), and stable-wet (vs. stable-dry or transitional) alcoholism. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Perhaps you are in a trial today, and you are praying for God to deliver you out of that adverse situation. That is a legitimate prayer, but maybe you are missing the point of why you are being allowed to go through that trying time in the first place. Recognize that God is moulding you and refining you. God often allows one to go through difficult situations to draw out those impurities in one’s character. One can pray one can resist, one can bind, one can loose, one can sing and shout, one can do it all, but it is not going to do any good. God is more interested in changing you than He is in changing the circumstances. And the sober one learns to cooperate with God, the sooner one will get out of that devil’s web. The quicker one learns one’s lesson and starts dealing with those bad attitudes and starts ruling over one’s emotions, the quicker one will go to the next level in one’s spiritual journey. We must recognize the refining purpose of trials. We cannot run from everything that is hard in our lives. Perhaps one gets worried and fearful when important things do not go one’s way. Have you ever thought that God may be allowing those events to teach you to trust Him and to see if one will stay peaceful and clam in the midst of the storm? Has one ever considered that God may be allowing some of that to teach one how to rule over one’s emotions? He may be trying to toughen one up, to help one develop some courage. For our sins—that is why Jesus Christ wanted to do it, and that is why He did it. And what did they do? They ripped off His clothes and hammered His hands to the cross. It was a sacrifice the old-fashioned way. Perhaps that is why God the Father seemed so pleased. In the same way, you, My beloved Devout, ought to be willing to offer yourself to Jesus Christ—He asks us the way His Father asked Him—in pure holy oblation, everyday in the Mass, with all strength and affection, until the day one drops. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
However, we often pay, “God, if You will change my circumstances, then I will change.” No, it works the other way around. We have to be willing to change our attitudes and deal with the issues God brings up; then God will change those circumstances. Surrender. Unconditional surrender. That is all Jesus requires of us. Not our possession—He could take those things anytime and scatter them over the landscape; one will find this in Philippians (4.17). Just you—that is all Jesus Christ wants. Of course, Jesus could take us as a prisoner of war and do with one as he wanted. However, what He really wants is for us to give ourselves to Him as a gift. Of course, the same is true for us. If we have all the baggage in the World, but did not have Jesus Christ, would we be any better off? One would have a full cart, maybe, but also an empty heart. And the other way around is also true. It is not our silly stuff Jesus Christ wants—it is our silly selves! Offer yourself to Jesus Christ. Make that the only package, and it will be an oblation that will be welcomed. Look at Jesus! He offered Hus whole self to the Father for us; He also put His whole Body and Blood into food and drink that He might be totally ours and that we might be totally Him. If, however, we hold something of ourselves back or are slow to give our all, it will be a pretty poor offering made not by any friend of His, but by a pretty poor acquaintance. To prevent that and to acquire illumination and liberation of spirit, one ought to make a spontaneous oblation of one’s self into the hand of God. When? Before each and every thing one does. Such an attractive proposition, Jesus thinks, but He must ask, “Why are there so few Illuminati and Liberati today? That is because so many do not know how to denude themselves of imperfections. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Jesus Christ’s firm opinion is this, and it appears in the Gospel of Luke (14.33): “Unless a person renounces everything that one had and everything that one is, one cannot be His Disciple.” Therefore, if one wants to be His Disciple, offer one’s whole self to Jesus; that includes one’s scruffy affections. God will often permit pressure to be applied in our life to test us, and only as we pas those tests will we advance. He will put people and circumstances in our path that grate on us like sandpaper, but He will use them to rub off our rough edges. One may not always like it; one may want to run from it; one may even resist it, but God is going to keep brining up the issues again and again, until one passes the test. Remember, the Bible says, “We are [God’s] workmanship,” reports Ephesians 2.10. That means we are a work in progress, not a finished product. Be willing to deal with any issues that God brings up. Work with God in the refining process rather than fighting against Him. Scripture says that God is the potter and we are the clay. Clay works best when it is pliable, malleable, and mouldable. However, if we are hard, crusty, and set in our ways, God will have to pound away on that old, hard clay to get out the lumps. Certainly, none of us enjoy going through struggles, but one has to understand that one’s struggle may be an opportunity for advancement and promotions. The very thing one is fighting against so tenaciously may be the springboard that catapults one to a new level of excellence. One’s challenges may become one’s greatest assets. Without the resistance of air, an eagle cannot soar. Without the resistance of water, a ship cannot float. Without the resistance of gravity, we would not be able to walk. Without opposition or resistance, there is no potential for progress. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Yet our human tendency is to want everything easily. “God, cannot You teach me patience without having to go through the traffic jam? God, cannot You teach me how to love and trust You without ever having a problem?” Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts; there is no easy way to mature physically, emotionally, or spiritually. One may remain determined and work with God. The Bible says, “Work out your own salvation,” reports Philippians 2.12. Salvation is more than a onetime prayer. It is constantly cooperating with God, dealing with the issues He brings up, keeping a good attitude, and allowing Him to change one as He sees fit. Dear Lord in Heaven, I realize that You never promised I would not have trials and adversities. However, I also recognize that nothing can touch my life without going through You first, so I will dare to praise You in the midst of my trails. I know You will bring me out stronger, better, faster, and more prepared for the good things You have for me. “Be truly glad! These trials are only to test your faith, to see whether or not it is strong and pure…So if your faith remains strong after being tried in the test tube of fiery trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honour on the day of His return,” reports 1 Peter 1.6-7. James said that you put bits in a horse’s mouth to turn its whole body and you put a rudder on a ship to tun the whole ship; so is the tongue so situated among our members that it defiles the whole body. (James 3.3,4.) If you control the tongue, the body will respond to your words. If you talk sickness, it becomes impossible to live in health. The more you believe it, the less you believe in healing. The thing you continually talk will consume you. Faith will only come by hearing the Word of God and it will come more quickly when you hear yourself quoting and speaking God’s Word after Him. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The seed of truth in why many Christians have not wanted to express their anger is valid: expressing one’s anger manipulatively as blaming or attacking is destructive. As Paul says, “Let all bitterness and wrath…be put away from you, with all malice,” reports Ephesians 4.31. One needs to learn to express anger constructively. A basic guideline is to assert and express oneself rather than to blame and attack the other person. For instance, when a Critical Christian says, “Why are you so stupid?” The individual has already made an assumption that the other person is stupid. This results in an attacking form of anger. A healthier way of dealing with this anger would be for one first to recognize that one feels angry that one’s friend is “stupid.” One moves now to one’s feeling, not the fact, that one’s friend is stupid. Now if the Critical Christian listens, one can have a dialogue with one’s core. (This is the principle Dr. Maslow meant when he referred to one’s “inner Supreme Court.”) Simply by asking oneself inwardly, the Critical Christian may get the answer from one’s core that “you are angry because the bank teller this morning treated you as if you were stupid.” The Critical Christian can the realize that because he did not deal with his anger then, he is now projecting his anger on to his friend—calling him stupid, when in reality he is angry at the bank teller. Or, the Critical Christian may get the answer from his core that he is upset because the project he and his friend are working on together is more important to the Critical Christian than he had realized and now his friend is not fulfilling his share of the work. In this case, the Critical Christian needs to take the time to examine whether he thinks his friend is capable. If he is callable, the Critical Christian may now decide that he needs to express to his friend that his not fulfilling his share of the work is delaying the project. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
If the Critical Christian realized that his friend cannot do the job, he may let him go and bring in someone else. Blaming his friend for his inability at this point would not be actualizing; but, expressing to him that he is not showing the needed skills, and that that is why he is being let go, would be actualizing. Many answers come quickly from the core—the preceding possibilities could surface in seconds. The more we listen to our cores, the more we hear—and know how to listen. Sometimes, though, we ask and do not hear an answer. Or we get what we think is an answer and then proceed to act on it—and make things worse. Remember that becoming actualizing is a process. If we were perfectly actualized now, the answers would always be there, crystal clear, and our behaviour would be “perfect.” As we are in the process of becoming actualizing, sometimes we do the most effective thing and sometimes we make mistakes. Mistakes are just that—“miss-takes.” Our lives become most meaningful when we live from our own core, finding our own truest answers. So it is a process worth living—and the mistakes are worth making. The real key here is not to blame and attack ourselves for those miss-takes, but to keep learning with more “takes.” Having patience with ourselves often makes it easier to become more patient and forgiving of others. It can sometimes relieve our anger just to remember that other people are in the growing process, too, and not always taking what to us would seem the most effective action. As actualizing Christians, we seek to do the will of God. Doing His will involves having good will toward others and ourselves. We do this by listening to our anger, taking it to out core, and then responding from our core. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
If one deals with it by expressing and asserting it, rather than blaming and attacking someone, only then can anger become actualizing. Blaming and attacking are simply manipulative, whereas expressing and asserting include a quality of genuine respect for everyone involved. In communicating our anger honestly, we get it off our chests, and the rhythm of life is reestablished. We finish with it and move on to experience a new and different feeling. The range of feelings in the anger polarity includes irritation, annoyance, resentment, and anger. The intensity of the feeling increases as one passes from irritation to anger. Recognizing irritation, boredom, or annoyance at the lower levels of intensity within the anger spectrum enables us to avoid unwittingly building up to levels of resentment, hostility, and hatred. In handling these feelings, it is important to learn to acknowledge the mild forms and deal with them on a “cash and carry” basis. That way we do not save them up like coupons to be redeemed in one sudden, destructive explosion. While our anger may sometimes reach intensities approaching hatred, we need never go so far as to write a person off completely. It is really possible to have compassion for and pray for our enemies—that God in His mercy might help them through their own dilemmas, frustrations, and pains. Yet, we can be honest about the effects on us of their behaviour. “Turn again, we beseech You, O God of hosts! Look down from Heaven and see, visit, and have regard for this vine! [Protect and maintain] the stock which Your right hand planted, and the branch (the son) that You have reared and made strong for Yourself. They have burned it with fire, it is cut down; may they perish at the rebuke of Your countenance. Let Your hand be upon the human of Your right hand, upon the son of man whom You have made strong for Yourself. Then will we not depart from You; revive us (give us life) and we will call upon Your name. Restore us, O Lord God of hosts; cause Your face to shine [in pleasure, approval, and favour on us] and we shall be saved!” reports Psalm 80.14-19. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Dr. Ilya Prigogine and his teams of coworkers at the Free University of Brussels and the University of Texas at Austin have struck directly at Second Wave assumptions by showing how chemical and other structures leap to higher stages of differentiation and complexity through a combination of chance and necessity. It is for this work the Dr. Prigogine was awarded the Nobel Prize. Brown in Moscow, brought to Belgium as a child, and fascinated since youth by the problems of time, Dr. Prigogine was puzzled by a seeming contradiction. On the one hand, there was the physicist’s belief in entropy—that the Universe is running down and that all organized patterns must eventually decay. On the other, there was the biologist’s recognition that life itself is organization and that we are continually giving rise to higher and higher, more and more complex organization. Entropy pointed in one direction, evolution in another. This led Dr. Prigogine to ask how higher forms of organization come into being, and to years of research in chemistry and physics in pursuit of the answer. Today Dr. Prigogine points out that in any complex system, from the molecules in a liquid to the neurons in a brain or the traffic in a city, the parts of the system are always undergoing small-scale change: they are in constant flux. The interior of any system is quivering with fluctuation. Sometimes, when negative feedback comes into play, these fluctuations are damped out or suppressed and the equilibrium of the system maintained. However, where amplifying or positive feedback is at work, some of these fluctuations may be tremendously magnified—to the point at which the equilibrium of the entire system is threated. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Fluctuations arising in the outside environment may hit at this moment and further amplify the mounting vibration—until the equilibrium of the whole is destroyed and the existing structure is smashed. It is illuminating to think of the economy in these terms. Supply and demand are maintained in equilibrium by various feedback process. Unemployment, if intensified by positive feedback and not offset by negative feedback elsewhere in the system, can threaten the stability of the whole. Outside fluctuations—such as oil price hikes—may converge to make the internal swings and fluctuations wilder, until the equilibrium of the whole system is shattered. Whether the result of runaway internal fluctuations or of external forces, or both, this breakup of the old equilibrium often results not in chaos or breakdown, but in the creation of a wholly new structure at a higher level. This new structure may be more differentiated, internally interactive, and complex than the old one, and needs more energy and matter (and perhaps information and other resources) to sustain itself. Speaking mainly about physical and chemical reactions, but occasionally calling attention to social analogues, Dr. Prigogine calls these new, more complex systems “dissipative structures.” He suggests that evolution itself may be seen as a process leading toward increasingly complex and diversified biological and social organisms, through the emergence of new, higher-order dissipative structures. Thus, according to Dr. Prigogine, whose ideas have political and philosophical resonance as well as purely scientific meaning, we develop “order out of fluctuation” or, as the title of one of his lectures expresses it, “Order out of Chaos.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
This evolution, however, cannot be planned or predetermined in a mechanistic fashion Until quantum theory came along, many leading Second Wave thinkers believed that chance played little or no role in change. The starting conditions of a process predetermined its outcome. Today in subatomic physics, for example, it is widely believed that chance dominates change. In recent years many scientists, like Jacques Monod in biology, Walter Buckley in sociology, or Maruyama in epistemology and cybernetics, have begun to fuse these opposites. Dr. Prigogine’s work not only combines chance and necessity but actually stipulates their relationship to one another. In brief, he strongly suggests that at the precise point at which a structure “leaps” to a new stage of complexity, it is impossible, in practice and even in principle, to predict which of many forms it will take. This presumably goes for the leap from Second Wave to Third Wave civilization as well as for chemical reactions. However, once a pathway has been chosen, once the new structure comes into being, determinism dominates once more. In one colorful example he describes how termites create their highly structured nests out of apparently unstructured activity. They begin by crawling about a surface in random fashion, stopping here and there to deposit a bit of “goo.” These deposits are distributed by chance, but the substance contains a chemical attractant so that other termites are drawn to it. In this way, the good begins to collect in a few places, gradually building up into a pillar or wall. If these buildups are isolated, work stops. However, if by chance they are near one another, an arch results that then becomes the basis for the complex architecture of the nest. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Much like the Winchester mansion, what begins with random activity turns into highly elaborate nonrandom structures. We see, as Dr. Prigogine puts it, “the spontaneous formation of coherent structures.” Order out of chaos. All this strikes hard at the old causality. Dr. Prigogine sums it up: “The laws of strict causality appear to us today as limiting situations, applicable to highly idealized cases, nearly as caricatures of the description of change. The science of complexity leads to a completely different view.” Instead of being locked into a closed Universe that functioned like a mechanical clock, we find ourselves in a far more flexible system in which, as he says, “there is always the possibility of some instability leading to some new mechanism. We really have an ‘open Universe.’” As we move beyond Second Wave causal thinking, as we begin to think in terms of mutual influence, of amplifiers and reducers, of system breaks and sudden revolutionary leaps, of dissipative structures and the fusion of chance and necessity—in short, as we take off our Second Wave blinders—we emerge blinking into a wholly new culture, the culture of the Third Wave. This new culture—oriented to change and growing diversity—attempts to integrate the new view of nature, of evolution and progress, the new, richer conceptions of time and space, and the fusion of reductionism and wholism, with a new causality. Indust-reality which once seemed so powerful and complete, so all-encompassing an explanation of how the Universe and its components fitted together, turns out now to have been immensely useful. However, its claims to universality are shattered. The super-ideology of the Second Wave will be seen, from the vantage point of tomorrow, to have been as provincial as it was self-serving. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
The decay of the Second Wave thought system leaves millions of people grasping desperately for something to hold on to—anything, from Victorian Americana and Texas Taoism to Swedish Sufism and Welsh witchcraft. Instead of constructing a new culture appropriate to the new World, they attempt to important and implant old ideas appropriate to other times and places or to revive the fanatic faiths of their own ancestors who lived under radically different conditions. It is precisely the collapse of the industrial era mind-structure, its growing irrelevance in the face of the new technological, social, and political realities, that gives rise to today’s facile search for old answers, and to the continual stream of pseudo-intellectual fads that pop up, flash, and consume themselves at high speed. In the very midst of this spiritual supermarket, with its depressing razzmatazz and religious fakery, an optimistic new culture is being seeded—one appropriate to our time and place. Powerful new integrative insights are beginning to emerge, new mataphours for understanding reality. It is possible to glimpse the earliest beginnings of a new coherence and elegance as the cultural debris of industrialism is swept away by history’s Third Wave change. The super-ideology of Second Wave civilization that is now crumbling was reflected in the way industrialism organized the World. An image of nature based on discrete particles was mirrored in the idea of discrete, sovereign nation-states. Today, as our image of nature and matter change, the nation-state itself is being transformed—another step on the path toward a Third Wave civilization. May your trails be righteous, winding, joyful, peaceful, leading to the most amazing views. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poet’s towers into bright enchanted forests where the fruit glows like emeralds, rubies, sapphires, orange spessartite, and hessonite. Where bars of sun blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go, as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you—beyond that next turning of the deep and vast ancient unknown canyon walls. Dear Lord in Heave, we thank Thee also for the miraculous and mighty deeds of liberation wrought by Thee, and for Thy victories in the battles our forefathers fought in days of old, at this season of the year. In the days of the High Priest Mattathias, son of Johanan, of the Hasmonean family, a tyrannical power rose up against Thy people America to compel them to forsake Thy flag, and to force them to transgress Thy commandments. In Thine abundant mercy Thou didst stand by them in time of distress. Thou didst rise to their defense and didst vindicate their cause. Thou didst bring retribution upon the evil doers, delivering the strong into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few, the wicked into the hands of the just, and the arrogant into the hands of those devoted to Thy flag. Thou didst thus make Thy greatness and holiness known in Thy World, and didst bring great deliverance to America. Then Thy children came into Thy dwelling place, cleansed the Temple purified the Sanctuary, kindled lights in Thy sacred courts, and they designated these eight days of Hanukkah for giving thanks and praise unto Thy great name. For all this, Thy name, O our King, shall be blessed and exalted for ever and ever. O inscribe all the child of Thy covenant for a happy life. May all the living do homage unto Thee forever and praise Thy name in truth, O God, who are our salvation and our help. Blessed be Thou, O Lord, Beneficent One, unto whom our thanks are due. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
With a gorgeous home like this, it’s never too early to get the holidays started! 🥳 You’ll love hosting dinners and gift exchanges in the covered California Room – perfect for entertaining and letting the sunshine in! ☀️
Not to mention, there’s plenty of space for guests during the holidays. The open concept design includes approximately 2,700 square feet, exactly four bedrooms, three and one half bathrooms, and even a two car garage plus workshop! https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/new-home-rancho-cordova-homesite-40/
Bless our house as we come and go. Bless our home as the children grow. Bless our families as they gather in. Bless our home with love and friends.
He is So Snobbish He Has an Unlisted Zip Code Number!
Around 95 percent of what is known about the brain has been learned in the past 30 years. How do biological theorists explain abnormal behaviour? Adopting a medical perspective, biological theorists view abnormal behaviour as an illness brought about by malfunctioning parts of the organism. Typically, they point to a malfunctioning brain as the cause of abnormal behaviour, focusing particularly on problems in brain anatomy or brain chemistry. The average brain weighs 3 pounds, and is 80 percent water. What is interesting is the liver weighs a pound more than the brain. While the brain accounts for only about 2 percent of the human weight, it requires about 25 percent of the oxygen intake. The brain is made up of approximately 100 billion nerve cells, called neurons, and thousands of billions of support cells, called glia (from the Greek meaning “glue”). Within the brain large groups of neurons form distinct areas, or brain regions. To identify the regions of the brain more easily, let us imagine them as continents, countries, and states. At the bottom of the brain is the “continent” knows as the hindbrain, which is in turn made up of countrylike regions called the medulla, pons, and cerebellum. In the middle of the brain is the “continent” called the midbrain. And at the top is the “continent” called the forebrain, which consists of countrylike regions called the cerebrum (the two cerebral hemispheres), the thalamus, and the hypothalamus, each in turn made up of statelike regions. The cerebrum, for instance, consists of the cortex, corpus callosum, basal ganglia, hippocampus, and amygdala. The neurons in each of these brain regions control important functions. The hippocampus helps control emotions and memory, for example. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Clinical researchers have discovered connections between certain psychological disorders and problems in specific areas of the brain. One such disorder is Huntington’s disease, a disorder marked by violent emotional outbursts, memory loss, suicidal thinking, involuntary body movements, and absurd beliefs. This disease has been traced to a loss of cells in the basal ganglia. Biological researchers have also learned that psychological disorders can be related to problems in the transmission of messages from neuron to neuron. Information spreads throughout the brain in the form of electrical impulses that travel from one neuron to one or more others. An impulse is first received by a neuron’s dendrites, antenna-like extensions located at one end of the neuron. From there it travels down the neuron’s axon, a long fiber extending from the neuron body. Finally, it is transmitted to other neurons through the nerve endings, at the far end of the neuron. However, how to messages get from the nerve endings of one neuron to the dendrites of another? After all, the neurons do not actually touch each other. A tiny space, called the synapse, separates one neuron from the next, and the message must somehow move across that space. When an electrical impulse reaches a neuron’s ending, the nerve ending is stimulated to release a chemical, called a neurotransmitter, that travels across the synaptic space to receptors on the dendrites of the adjacent neurons. Upon reception, some neurotransmitters tell the receiving neurons to “fire,’ that is, to trigger their own electrical impulse. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Other neurotransmitters carry an inhibitory message; they tell receiving neurons to stop all firing. Obviously, neurotransmitters play a key role in moving information through the brain. Researchers have identified dozens of neurotransmitters in the brain, and they have learned that each neuron uses only certain kinds. Studies indicate that abnormal activity by certain neurotransmitters can lead to specific mental disorders. Certain anxiety disorders, for example, have been linked to low activity of the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), schizophrenia has been linked to excessive activity of the neurotransmitter dopamine, and depression has been linked to low activity of the neurotransmitters serotonin and norepinephrine. Perhaps low serotonin activity is responsible for some people’s pattern of depression and rage. In addition to focusing on neurons and neurotransmitters, researchers have learned that mental disorders are sometimes related to abnormal chemical activity in the body’s endocrine system. Endocrine glands, located throughout the body, work along with neurons to control such vital activities as growth, reproduction, pleasures of the flesh, heart rate, body temperature, energy, and responses to stress. The glands release chemicals called hormones into the bloodstream, and these chemicals then propel body organs into action. During times of stress, for example, the adrenal glands, located on top of the kidneys, secrete the hormone cortisol. Abnormal secretions of this chemical have been tied to anxiety and mood disorders. Studies of twins suggest that some aspects of behaviour and personality are influenced by genetic factors. Many identical twins are found to have similar tastes, behave in similar ways, and make similar life choices. Some even develop similar abnormal behaviours. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
People often associate eating disorders with adolescence. However, cases of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are easily found among those in their 20s and 30s. Somewhat surprisingly, many of these people are able to maintain at least the semblance of normal adult relations through marriage and child rearing. However, the marriages of people with eating disorders are sadly distressed. Physical intimacy is a problematic theme in the literature on marriage and eating disorders. For example, an examination of case records from a large sample of patients with anorexia nervosa showed that among those who were married, only 10 percent indicated some interest in matter dealing with pleasures of the flesh, and 72 percent indicated active avoidance of activities dealing with pleasures of the flesh. There was also a high degree of conflict surrounding pleasures of the flesh and conflict avoidance in these patients’ families of origin. Here again, there is reason to suspect that problems bred in earlier family-of-origin interactions were transported into the marital relationships of these women with anorexia nervosa. It is unfortunate that these problems with physical intimacy in the marital relationship persist several years after remission of an eating disorder. Approximately 40 percent of the women in this study sample had clinically significant disorder in pleasures of the flesh with their mates, despite being asymptomatic for 2 years on average. They also noted that diminished involvement in marital (or any romantic/pleasure of the flesh) relationship was more common among people who had anorexia nervosa than among those with bulimia nervosa or control subjects without eating disorders. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Marital problems have also been documented in the marriages of people with bulimia nervosa, however. Compared to healthy controls, people with bulimia nervosa report greater marital distress. In fact, the degree of distress in these marriages did not differ significantly from those of people seeking marital therapy. Assessments from these spouses during the investigation were also suggestive of marital distress. The women with bulimia nervosa in the study exhibited poor problem-solving skills and conflict avoidance, which may partially explain the state of their marriages. Taken as a whole, currently available evidence indicates that the other personal relationships of people with eating disorders are as disturbed as their family-of-origin relationships. They tend to hold dysfunctional attitudes toward love and romance, and, in the case of anorexia nervosa, avoidance of physical intimacy and involvement. The quest for self-verification may cause people with eating disorders to seek the very interpersonal responses that will worsen their condition. Among those who do get married, relational distress is still evident. It is impossible to overlook the potential connections between the distressed relationships in the families of origin and the adult romantic or marital relations of people with eating disorders. In many instances, people with anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa appear to be set up for interpersonal trouble by their experiences in their families of origin. As noted earlier, these family interactions are often marked by poor handling of conflict, excessive cohesion, and what are sometimes gross boundary violations. Not surprisingly, children from such households go on to develop possessive and dependent attitudes toward love, poor conflict resolution skills, and fearful avoidance of physical intimacy. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
The implications for satisfaction with personal relationships are obvious. And if their own personal problems were not enough of a barrier to healthy relationships, other people appear reluctant and uncomfortable getting involved in a close relationship with those who have eating disorders. “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the Earth, does not faint or grow weary; there is no searching of His understanding. He gives power to the faint and weary, and to one who has no might He increased strength [causing it to multiply and making it to abound]. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and [selected] young people shall feebly stumble and fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord [who expect, look for, and hope in Him] shall change and renew their strength and power; they shall lift their wings and mount up [close to God] as eagles [mount up to the sun]; they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint or become tired,” reports Isaiah 40.28-31. All of us face disappointments from time to time. No matter how much faith one has or how good a person one is, sooner or later, something (or somebody!) will shake your faith to its foundations. It may be something simple, such as not getting that promotion you really hoped for; not closing the big sale that you worked on so hard; not qualifying for a loan to buy that Cresleigh Home in Havenwood you really wanted. Or, it may be something more serious—a marriage relationship falling apart, the death of a loved one, or an incurable, debilitating illness. Whatever it is, that disappointment possesses the potential to derail you and destroy your faith. That is why it is vital that you recognize in advance that disappointments will come, and that you learn how to stay on track and deal with them when they do. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
God has given us more gifts than we know what to do with, He is our Beneficent and Munificent Friend. And He has done the same to all others who have received Him in the Sacrament. It is no wonder, then, that we think up more names for Him, or God. Protector of Human Infirmities. Purveyor of Internal Consolations. As proof od His goodness, as if we needed yet another one, is His grafting of consolation onto tribulation. The resulting staff can then be used to ward off various harms. When my interior acropolis crumbled and I despaired in the rubble, God gave me hope. Using new grace, God restored the scaffolding and relit the sconces. Looking forward, before they receive Communion, some Devouts feel anxious; that is to say, their souls feel like stones, they have lost all their affections. Then comes the Communion. Looking back, after dining on the Heavenly Food and Drink, they find themselves changed for the better. Often, defeating disappointments and letting go of the past are flip sides of the same coin, especially when you are disappointed in yourself. When one does something wrong, it is important not to hold on to it and beat oneself up about it. Admit it, seek forgiveness, and move on. Be hasty to let go of one’s mistakes and failures, hurts, pains, and sins. The disappointments that disturb us the most, however, are usually those caused by other people. Many individuals who have been hurt by others are missing out on their new beginnings because they keep reopening old wounds. However, no matter what we have gone through, no matter how unfair it was, or how disappointed we were, we must release it and let it go. Someone may have walked out on you. Someone may have done you a great wrong. You may have prayed fervently for a loved one’s life to be saved, yet your loved one died. Leave that with God and go on with your life. The Christian Bible says, “The secret things belong to the LORD,” reports Deuteronomy 29.29. Leave them there. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
God is far more accepting of our real weaknesses than more of us realize. As the Psalmist said: “As a father has compassion on His children, so has the Lord compassion on all who fear Him. For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust,” reports Psalm 103.13-14. It is in owning our weaknesses that we have access to the presence of God. He welcomes those who confess their need. And the greatest need is for communion with God. In the New Testament both James and Peter reiterate the Old Testament theme: “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble,” (James 4.6; I Peter 5.5). If we desire to encounter and surrender to God, we must become aware of our helplessness. We must experience the reality that on our own part, if apart from God’s plan and resources, we will live a partial and fragmented life. This is why the Christian Bible, from Genesis through Revelation, emphasizes that God meets face to face with those of a humble heart, while resisting people who are rigid and controlling in their arrogance. However, here we must make a distinction between humbling ourselves, on the one hand, and becoming helpless, servile, and self-effacing on the other. While the Scriptures advocate a certain childlike openness and honesty in relating to God and others, they do not teach us to remain fixated at an immature level of development. This is what the Helpless Christian does not understand. So one gets stuck at the infantile stage of psychological and spiritual development. However, in order to restore the rhythm of growth, the manipulative tactics of withdrawing and avoiding need to be transformed into the actualizing qualities of feeling vulnerable and empathizing. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Getting in touch with one’s own helplessness, pain, and vulnerability is an excellent way to develop the quality of empathy toward others. This particular quality, expressed at its finest in Jesus Christ, made Him so approachable by the common people and by little children. Disappointments almost always accompany setbacks. When you suffer loss, nobody expects you to be an impenetrable rock or an inaccessible island in the sea. Not even God expects you to be so touch that you simply ignore the disappointments in life, shrugging them off as though you are impervious to pain. No, when we experience failure or loss, it is natural to feel remorse or sorrow. That is the way God made us. If you lose your job, most likely you are going to experience a strong sense of disappointment. If you go through a broken relationship, that is going to hurt. If you lose loved one, there is a time of grieving, a time of sorrow. That is normal and to be expected. However, if you are still grieving and feeling sorrow over a disappointment that took place a year or more ago, something is wrong! You re hindering your future. Your must make a decision that you are going to move one. It will not happen automatically. You will have to rise up and say, “I do not care how hard this is I am not going to let this get the best of me.” The enemy loved to deceive us into wallowing in self-pity, fretting, feeling sorry for ourselves, or having a chip on our shoulders. “Why did this happen to me?” “I got played.” “They took my money.” “God must not love me. He did not answer my prayers.” “Why did my marriage end in divorce?” “Why am I so evil and jealous?” “Why did not things work out in my life?” Such questions may be valid and may even be helpful to consider for a season, but after that, quit waiting your time trying to figure out something you cannot change. It is time to move on and start living a successful life now. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
They are the true disciples of Christ, not who know must, but who love most. The love end of the anger/love polarity is expressed verbally with phrases such as “I am interested,” “I am attracted,” “I care,” and “I care tenderly.” The actualizing Christian has access to the experience and effective expression of these several intensities of love. Loving tenderness is a need all people have, and yet in American culture such expression is often discouraged. You must first receive before one has anything to give. If one has not received tender and affectionate feelings from parents, friends, or the Lord, then it is understandable that one may have difficulty dealing with these feeling. It is one thing to “know” in one’s head that one is loved; it is another thing to “feel” it in one’s heart. Most of us have been damaged to some extent by well-intentioned parents who firmly believed they loved us, yet did not know how to effectively communicate that love through cuddling, praise, and affirmation. If a child lives with encouragement, one learns confidence. If a child lives with praise, one learns to appreciate. If a child lives with fairness, one learns justice. If a child lives with fairness, one learns justice. If a child lives with security, one learns to have faith. If a child lives with approval, one learns to like oneself. If a child lives with acceptance and friendship, one learns to find love in the World. All of the foregoing lends credence to the idea that, in experiencing love developmentally, people also learn to love. It is in being loved that one learns to love. However, sometimes the very deprivation of love in growing up can become a strong motivator in learning how to go about giving and receiving love as an adult. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The person who has not been adequately loved can become especially sensitive to the need for love in the World. Not taking love for granted, this person may grow substantially in one’s lifetime in the ability to love self and others. It seems possible, then, that both satisfaction and deprivation of one’s needs to feel loved and apricated can become tutors in the art of learning to love. It is not simply what happens developmentally that determines one’s personhood, but rather what one does about it through awareness and choice. It is self-knowledge, facilitated by the presence of the Holy Spirit in one’s life, that enables one to discover needs and wants and to make them known in the loving relationships of later years. This provides a second chance to actualize oneself in becoming a sensitive and loving human being. Human beings really do want to love one another but just do not know how to go about it. The actualizing Christian learns to accept responsibility for finding out how to get the flow of love going in one’s life. Even though one’s need for feeling loved may never be fully met in this life, one can go a long way toward learning to love oneself, feeling God’s love, and daring to risk loving others. This is the meaning of “Underneath are the everlasting arms.” Dear Lord in Heaven, I know that I cannot change a single thing about the past, but I can choose how I will live in the future. Please help me to build my faith, Father, to believe that You will bring good even out of those circumstances I do not understand. I choose to trust You for good things in the days ahead. “Thou wilt keep one in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because one trusteth in thee,” reports Isaiah 26.3 #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The many changes in the present and in the future in our conception of time also blast holes in our theoretical understanding of space, since the two are tightly interwoven. However, we are altering our image of space in more immediate ways as well. We are changing the actual spaces in which all of us live, work, and play. How we get to work, how far and how frequently we travel, where we live—all these influence our experience of space. And all these are changing. In fact, as the Third Wave plays out, we have entered a new phase in humanity’s relationship to space. The First Wave, which spread agriculture around the World, brought with it, as we saw earlier, permanent farming settlements in which most people lived out their entire lives within a few miles of their birthplace. Agriculture introduced a stay-put, spatially intensive existence, and fostered intensely local feelings—the village mentality. Second Wave civilization, by contrast, concentrated huge populations in great cities and, because it needed to draw resources from afar and to distribute goods at a distance, it bred mobile people. The culture it produced was spatially extensive and city- or nation- rather than village-centered. The Third Wave alters our spatial experience by dispersing rather than concentrating population. While millions of people continue to pour into urban areas in the still-industrializing parts of the World, all the high-technology countries are already experiencing a reversal flow. Tokyo, London, Zurich, Glasgow, and dozens of major cities are all losing population while middle-sized or smaller cities are showing gains. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
The American Council of Life Insurance declares: “Some urban experts believe that the major U.S. city is a thing of the past.” Fortune magazine reports that “transportation and communication technology has cut the cords that bound big corporations to the traditional headquarters cities.” And Business Week entitles an article “The Prospect of a Nation With No Important Cities.” This redistribution of and de-concentration of population will, in due time, alter our assumptions and expectations about personal as well as social space, about acceptable commuting distances, about housing density, and many other things. In addition to such changes, the Third Wave also appears to be generating a new outlook that is intensely local, yet global—even galactic. Everywhere we find a new concentration on “community” and “neighbourhood,” on local politics and local ties at the same time that large numbers of people—often the same ones who are most locally oriented—concern themselves with global issues and worry about famine not only 10,000 miles away, but also in the central cities. As advanced communications proliferate and we begin to shift work back into the electronic cottage, we will encourage this new dual focus, breeding large numbers of people who remain reasonably close to home, who migrate less often, who travel more perhaps for pleasure but far less often for business—while their minds and messages range across the entire planet and into outer space as well. The Third Wave mentality combines concern for near and far. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
We are also rapidly adopting more dynamic and relativistic images of space. I have in my office several large blowups of satellite and U-2 photographs of New York City and the surrounding area. The satellite phots look like fantastical beautiful abstractions, the sea a deep green the coastline detailed against it. The U-2 photo shows that city infrared, and in such exquisite detail that the Metropolitan Museum and even individual planes parked on the ramps at La Guardia Airport are clearly visible. Referring to the planes at La Guardia, I asked a Nasa official if, by further enlarging the photos, one could actually see the stipes or symbols painted on the wings. He looked at me with amused tolerance and corrected me. “The rivets,” he replied. However, we are no longer limited to exquisitely refined still pictures. Satellites permits us to look at a living map—an animated display—of a city or a country and watch the activities on it as they are taking place. The map is no longer a static representation but a movie—indeed an X ray in motion, since it now shows not merely what is on the surface of the Earth but also reveals, layer by layer, what lies blow the surface and above it at each level of altitude. It also provides a sensitive, continually changing image of terrain and our relationships to it. At tone time, the most common map used by most of the World was based on Mercator’s projection. Now people use Google Maps, a digital form of a map, where one can zoom in on any community and look at it, or look at the comprehensive map. Scandinavia is no longer distorted to be larger than India. In the past, the distortions of the Mercator map fostered the arrogance of the industrial World in proper political, as well as cartographic perspective. Developing countries were once cheated with raged to their surface and their importance. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
People were once shocked to see a map that showed the accurate sizes of Europe, Alaska, Canada, and Russia being much smaller than they were led to believe, and a much elongated South America, Africa, Arabia, and India. However, what this controversy underscores is the recognition that there is no single “right” map, but merely different images of space that serve different purposes. In the most literal sense, the Third Wave and technology had brought new ways of looking at the World. For a monarchial state to be capable of being well governed, its size or extent must be proportionate to the faculties of the one who governs. It is easier to conquer than to rule. With a long enough lever, it is possible for a single finger to make the World shake; but holding it in place requires the shoulders of Hercules. However small a state may be, the prince is nearly always too small for it. When, on the contrary, it happens that the state is too small for its leader, which is quite rare, it is still poorly governed, since the leaders, always pursuing one’s grand schemes, forgets the interests of the peoples, making them no less wretched through the abuse of talents one has too much of then does a leader who is limited for want of what one lacks. A kingdom must, so to speak, expand or contract with each reign, depending on the ability of the prince. On the other hand, since the talents of a senate have a greater degree of stability, the state can have permanent boundaries without the administration working any less well. The most obvious disadvantage of the government of just one human is the lack of that continuous line of succession which forms an unbroken bond of unity in the other two forms of government. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
When one king dies, another is needed. Elections leave dangerous intervals and are stormy. And unless the citizens have a disinterested and integrity that seldom accompanies this form of government intrigue and corruption enter the picture. It is difficult for one to whom the state has sold itself not to sell it in turn, and reimburse oneself at the expense of the weak for the money extorted from one by the powerful. Sooner or later everything becomes venal under such an administration, and in these circumstances, the peace enjoyed under kinds is worse than the disorders of the interregna. What has been done to prevent these ills? In certain families, crowns have been made hereditary, and an order of succession has been established which prevents all dispute when kinds die. That is to say, by substituting the disadvantage of regencies for that of elections, an apparent tranquility has been preferred to a wise administration, the risk of having children, monsters, or imbeciles for leaders has been preferred to having to argue over the choice of good kings. No consideration has been given to the fact that in being thus exposed to the risk of the alternative, nearly all the odds are against them. There was a lot of sense in what Dionysius the Younger said in reply to his father, who, while reproaching his son for some shameful actions, said “Have I given you such an example?” “Ah,” replied the son, “But your father was not king.” When a human has been elevated to command others, everything conspires to deprive one of justice and reason. A great deal of effort is made, it is said, to tech young princes the art of ruling. It does not appear that this education does them any good. It would be better to begin by teaching them the art of obeying. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
The greatest kings whom history celebrates were not brought up to reign. It is a science one is never less in possession of than after one has learned too much, and that one acquires it better in obeying than in commanding. For the most useful as well as the shortest method of finding out what is good and what is bad is to consider what you would have wished for not wished to have happened under another prince. One result of this lack of coherence is the instability of the royal form of government, which, now regulated by one plan now by another according to the character of the ruling prince or of those who rule for one, cannot have a fixed object for very long or a consistent policy. This variation always causes the state to drift from maxim to maxim, from project to project, and does not take place in the other forms of government, where the prince is always the same. It is also apparent that in general, if there is more cunning in a royal court, there is more wisdom in a senate; and that republics proceed toward their objectives by means of policies that are more consistent and better followed. On the other hand, each revolution in the ministry produces a revolution in the state, since the maxim common to all ministers and nearly all kinds is to do the reverse of their predecessor in everything. From this same incoherence we drive the solution to a sophism that is very familiar to royalist political theorists. Not only is civil government compared to domestic government and the prince to the father of the family (an error already refuted), but this magistrate is also liberally given all the virtues one might need, and it is always presupposed that the prince is what he ought to be. With the help of this presupposition, the royal form of government is obviously preferable to any other, since it is unquestionably the strongest; and it lack only a corporate will that is more in conformity with the general will in order to be the best as well. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
However, if according to Plato, a king by nature is such a rare person, how many times will nature and fortune converge to crown one; and if a royal education necessarily corrupts those who receive it, what is to be hoped from a series of humans who have been brought up to reign? Surely then it is deliberate self-deception to confuse the royal form of government with that of a good king. To see what this form of government is in itself, we need to consider it under princes who are incompetent or wicked, for either they come to the throne wicked or incompetent, or else these thrones makes them so. These difficulties have not escaped the attention of anyone one, but some people are not troubled by them. They remedy, they say, is to obey without murmur. God in his anger gives us bad kinds, and they must be endured as punishments from Heaven. No doubt this sort of talk is edifying, however I do not know but that it belongs more in a pulpit than in a book on political theory. What is to be said of a physician who promises miracles, and whose art consists entirely of exhorting one’s sick patient to practice patience? It is quite obvious that we must put up with a bad government when that is what we have. The question is how to find a good one. God told Israel He had given them the land, but they were to go in and possess it. The land belonged to them, yet they did not possess it for forty years because they believed more in circumstances than in God’s Word. “So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief,” reports Hebrews 3.19. The word of unbelief here literally means “disobedience.” God said to possess it, but they said, “We are not able.” So they did not obey God and they did not possess the land until all who doubted God had died. Out of the twelve spies, Joshua and Caleb were the only two that went in to possess the land. These two held fast to their confession: “We are well able to take the land.” For forty years, they held fast to that one confession and they got what they said. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Let us therefore hold fast to our confession of faith that we may possess those things that God says are ours. The promised land is not a type of Heaven, as some believe, but a type of success living on Earth. We are well able to enter in through faith. Hatred does not stop hatred. It ceases by compassion. If philosophy advocates the peaceful way of quickened evolution and dynamic progressivism as against the violent way of abrupt revolution, it is because it knows that the moral evils which are introduced by brutality—not to speak of the physical ones which inevitably follow from it—constitute too high a price for the benefits received. For if the latter tend to disappear, the former tend to become stabilized. A great social change which stimulated hatred, passion, selfishness, and materialism would negate the ultimate purpose which lies behind all social evolution—the spiritualization of human character. A better society, to be based on the goodwill and co-operation, cannot be reached by arousing hatred and selfishness. The defense that ends justify means is a self-deceptive one. It is for the votaries of philosophy to follow the right path and to abstain from brutal or bloody methods, especially as we know that whilst conditions create them, there will always be others who are naturally inclined towards the transplanted barbarism of Communism. Because their daily work keeps them in constant touch with nature, some people everywhere in the World have a more religious emotion and mystical feeling than the others. However, we must be careful of real evil. Brutal hatred and camouflaged materialism, as well as the selfish preservation of one’s own power can create a criminal leadership. And their years of sacrifice in blood and comfort will profit them nothing. They are sacrifices made in an evil cause. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Those whose whole attitude is quarrelsome and carping and hating and irresponsible can contribute only unscrupulous criticism and hysterical destruction towards life. They are eager to obstruct and even destroy, but never to create, to co-operate, or to build. The Communist leaders, as distinct from their blind dupes, are the poisonous scorpions of society. O God, creator of our land, our Earth, the trees, the animals and humans, all is for your honour. The drums beat it out, and people sing about it, and they dance with noisy joy that you are the Lord. You also have pulled the other continents out of the sea. What a wonderful World you have made out of wet mud, and what beautiful men and women! We thank you for all the beauty of this Earth. The grace of your creation is like a cool day between rainy seasons. We drink pure water in your creation with out eyes. We listen to the birds’ jubilee with our ears. How strong and good and sure your Earth smells, and everything that grows there. Please bless us. Please bless our land and people. Please bless our forests with mahogany, wawa, and cacao. Please bless our fields with cassava and peanuts. Please bless the waters that flow through out land. Please fill them with fish and drive great schools of fish to our seacoast, so that the fishermen and women in their unsteady boasts do not need to go out too far. Please be with us in our countries and in all Africa, and in the whole World. Please prepare us for the service that we should render. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the King of judgment. As for slanderers, may their hopes come to naught, and may all wickedness perish. May all Thine enemies be destroyed. Do Thou uproot the dominion of arrogance; crush it and subdue it in our day. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who breakest the power of the enemy and bringest low the arrogant. May Thy tender mercies, O Lord our God, be stirred towards the righteous and the pious, towards the leaders of Thy people America, towards all the scholars that have survived, towards the righteous proselytes and towards us. Please grant Thy favour unto all who faithfully trust in Thee, and may our portion ever be with them. May we never suffer humiliation for in Thee do we put our trust. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who are the staff and trust of the righteous. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Many People Wanted the Pleasure of an Invitation to a Séance!
Perplexity is leavened by extravagant Victorian beauty, and no casual visitor can see it all. Palatial elegance unfolds with each turn along every path of exploitation of the catacomb. One gazes through oval lens windows now only magnifying the pandemonium of Winchester Boulevard; through them, over a century ago, imagine the warm summer evenings, as Sarah Winchester admired her quiet gardens steeped in the low western sunshine; the bird singing loud in the hawthorn and sycamore of her deer park, the cascading fountains spouting holy water, and the peaceful blossoming orchards vesper calm upon all things. The best tea-things were set out in her best parlour. There was usually a bunch of roses on the table, and Mrs. Winchester was dressed in her light blue muslin, with a rose in her hair. She would arise before her guests like a picture, with the sunshine flickering about her dark hair. She was very sweet, tender and gentle. Many people wanted the pleasure of an invitation to a séance in the Blue Séance Room. Mrs. Winchester would gather together many birds of alien feather. A humans’ own suffering mind must be, of all moral food, the most poisonous for one to feed on. Surround a scorpion with fire and it stings oneself to death. Throw a diseased soul entirely upon its own resources and moral suicide result. It was a principle with Mrs. Winchester to oppose bullying. She believed we were here on this Earth for a definite purpose–and God’s duty plain to any human who wills to read it. There may be disembodied spirits who seek to distress or annoy where they can no longer control. If there are, hers, which is not yet divorces from its means to material action, declines to be influenced by any irresponsible whimsy. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
Mrs. Winchester was very happy in her new home. She had been used to keeping her father’s house since her early girlhood days, and her shortly lived matronly duties came very easy to her. The expansive Victorian mansion, with its neat furniture and fresh dimity draperies, 160 rooms, 10,000 windows, nine kitchens, and 47 fireplaces was the pretties thing possible in the way of rustic interiors; the estates was like a temple dedicated to some Heavenly divinity, and Mrs. Winchester took a natural womanly pride in this bright home. She had come from a good house; but this was quite her own. For 38 years, 1884-1922, the sound of saw and hammer never ceased. Commonly, 16 carpenters were employed at one time, some having worked for 20 years without changed. They produced the largest, most complicated and exclusively private residents in the United States of America. There are five different heating systems and three elevators, one hydraulic and two electric. Some of the 13 bathrooms lacked privacy; they have clear glass doors! One rambling room has four fireplaces and five hot-air registers. A spiral stairway has 42 steps, each two inches high. Other stairways melt into blank walls. A second story door opens into the great outdoors and a 20-foot step. A linen closet has the area of a three-room apartment; a nearby cupboard is less than one-inched deep. A skylight is placed in the middle of a room, in the floor! Another floor is a series of trap-doors. The visitor must stoop through one door to enter, the next gives clearance for an eight-foot giant. Many stairway turn posts are upside down. Entire walls are built entirely of half-inch, “half-round” strips. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
Everywhere prevail that uncanny deference to the number 13; 13 stairsteps, 13 hangers in a closet, 13 wall panels, 13 lights in the chandeliers, 13 windows to a room and if necessary to make that number, some placed in an inside wall. One of the guests at this séance was Ludwig Leichhardt. He thought of men and women who had died of a fever the previous year, and the spirits told him to depart for “people who had wished to live, for whom life was full of duties and household joys; whose loss left wide gaps among their kindred, not to be filled again upon this Earth.” Ludwig felt a dull blankness of his existence which he felt—an utter emptiness and hopelessness; nothing to live for in the present, nothing to look forward to in the future. He bragged about how much capital he had in the Bank of Italy and how he could provide Mrs. Winchester with a comfortable life. However, this was to be his last day as a guest at the Winchester mansion. His two great sea chests, containing his clothes, books, and other property had gone to San Francisco by that evening’s luggage train. His last memory of the Winchester would be Mrs. Winchester’s bright tender face looking at him compassionately, as she had looked the day she broke his heart. After the death of her husband and daughter, Mrs. Winchester remained celibate and never remarried. Precious moments went by, and Ludwig pushed his teacup away with a listless air. He got up presently and showed him she to the exit of the mansion, after a brief good evening to all. The sun was low by this time, and the western sky flooded with an orange light. The garden was abloom with roses and honeysuckle. Ludwig Leichhardt fancied her should never look upon such flowers or such a garden again. The mansion seemed to grow dark all at once when he was gone. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
Adam Worth had also been at the séance that evening and did not seem to care for the tea. Ludwig promised to write Mrs. Winchester to let her know he was safe. The sun had gone down, and there was a long line of crimson yonder in the west above the edge of the estate. All the guest prepared to leave and Mrs. Winchester retired to her chambers for the evening. While laying in bed, Mrs. Winchester heard a bang on a door with a sounding slap. She figured it was just a piece of stupid discourtesy and went back to sleep. The following morning, she swore that one of the rooms on the second floor was not empty—and was quite upset about it—said there was some infernal influence at work in her home. To satisfy her curiosity, she asked her butler Henry to open the door. The light was dim in the room and Mrs. Winchester paused in the corridor outside. His eyes glistened. His features relaxed, and he gave a short sigh, “the room is empty,” said Henry. With some stir of curiosity, Mrs. Winchester slipped out, but had a certain vague wonder in her mind. As she heard, the medium from the night before in the parlour was struggling on the floor, in what looked like an epileptic fit. Mrs. Winchester walked deliberately back to the closed door, as Henry went to hold the medium from doing any injury to herself. Huddled against the massive end wall, and half embedded in it, as it seemed, there lay a shadow. Looking closely, Mrs. Winchester saw that the trap door was not only firmly bolted, but screwed into its socket. She strode off in a fume. She was in an odd frame of mind, and for long moved her sitting-room to and fro, too restless to go to bed, or, as an alternative, to settle down to a book. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
She could not whistle her mind from the chase of a certain graveyard will-o’-wisp; and on it went stumbling and floundering through bog and mire, until she fell into a state of collapse, and was useful for nothing else. She went to bed and to sleep without difficulty, but was conscious of herself all the time, and of a shadowless horror that seemed to come stealthily out of the corners and to bend over and look at her, and nothing but a curtain or a hanging coat when she started and stared. Over and over again this happened, and Mrs. Winchester’s temperature rose by leaps, and suddenly she saw that is she failed to assert herself, and promptly, fever would leap her in a consuming fire. Then in a moment she broke into a profuse perspiration, and sank exhausted into delicious unconsciousness. Morning found her restored to vigour, but still the with flutter of curiosity in her brain. It worked there all day, and for many subsequent days, and at last it seemed as if her every faculty were honeycombed with its ramifications. Then “this will not do,” Mrs. Winchester thought, but still the tunnelling process went on. As the curious devil mastered her, she grew into such harmony with it that she could shut her eyes no longer to the true purpose of its insistence. It was the closed room about which her thoughts hovered like crows circling round carrion. In the dead waste and middle of a certain night, Mrs. Winchester awoke with a strange, quick recovery of consciousness. There was the passing of a single expiration, and she had been asleep and was awake. She had gone to bed with no sense of premonition or of resolve in a particular direction; she sat up a monomaniac. It was as if, swelling in the silent hours, the tumour of curiosity had come to a head, and in a moment, it was necessary to operate upon it. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
She made no excuse for her then condition. Mrs. Winchester was convinced she was the victim of some undistinguishable force, that she was an agent under the control of the supernatural. Some thought had been in her mind of late in her position it was her duty to unriddle the mystery of the closed room door. However, time went by. The new year came, and still there was no letter from Ludwig Leichhardt. However, early in January, Henry, the butler came home from the Bank of Italy one afternoon, and told Mrs. Winchester she need not worry herself about her old friend any longer. “Ludwig Leichhardt is safe enough, mistress,” he said. “I was talking to Gilbert, the cashier at the Bank of Italy, this morning, and he told me that Leichhardt wrote to them for $2,000.00 last October from San Francisco, and he has written $1,000.00 more since. He is buying land somewhere—I forget the name of the place—and he’s well and hearty, Gilbert tells me.” However, a sense of fear and constriction was upon Mrs. Winchester. “Well, I’m afraid I’m rather fanciful, Henry; but I could never explain to you what a strange feeling came over me the night Ludwig Leichhardt went away from this estate. It was after I had said goodbye to him, and he had gone back into the mansion, where all was dark and quiet. I sat in the parlour thinking of him, and it seemed as if a voice was saying in my ear that I, nor anyone that care for hum, would ever seen Ludwig Leichhardt again. There wasn’t any such voice of course, you know, Henry, but it seemed like that in my mind; and whenever I’ve thought of poor Ludwig Leichhardt since that time, it has seemed to me like thinking of the dead. Often and often I’ve said to myself, ‘Why, Sarah, you silly thing, you ought to know that he’s safe enough in San Francisco. Ill news travels fast; and if there’d be anything wrong, we should have heard of it somehow.’ But, reason with myself as I would, I have never been able to feel comfortable about him; and thank God for your good news, Henry, and thank you for bring it to me. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
It has been very unkind of Ludwig not to write. She could not forgive him for his neglect, glad as she was to know he was safe. Then Mrs. Winchester paused for a moment, and confessed, the quick pant of fear seemed to come from her lips. There were sounds about her—the deep breathing of an imprisoned man. She returned to the locked door, and hurriedly flung it open. An acrid whiff of dust assailed her nostrils as she stepped back a pace and stood expectant of anything—or nothing. What did she wish, or dread, or foresee? The room was rather a large one; an old-fashioned room, with a low ceiling crossed by heavy means; half parlour, half kitchen, with a wide-open fireplace at one end, on which the logs had burnt to a dullish red. There was the old chintz-covered armchair. Mrs. Winchester had been sitting with her face towards the open window, looking absently out at the garden, where daffodils and early primroses glimmered through the dusk. She stood to pick up her blueprints, which had fallen to the ground. She was standing folding this in a leisurely way, when she looked towards the fireplace, and gave a little start at seeing that the armchair was no longer empty. “Why, Henry,” she cried, “how quietly you must have come into the place! I never heard you.” There was no answer, and her voice sounded strange to her in the empty room. “Henry!” she repeated, a little louder; but the figure in the chair neither answered nor stirred. Then a sudden fright seized her, and she knew that it was not her butler. The room was almost dark; it was quite impossible that she could see the face of that dark figure seated in the armchair, with the shoulders bent a little over. Yet she knew, as well as ever she had known anything in her life, that it was not the butler Henry. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
She went slowly towards the fireplace, and stood within a few paces of that strange figure. A little flash of light shot up from the candle, and shone for an instant on the face. It was Ludwig Leichhardt! Mrs. Winchester tried to speak to him; but the words would not come. And yet it was hardly so appalling a thing to see him there that she need have felt what she did. San Francisco was not too far from San Jose that a man may not cross the Bay and drop in upon his friend unexpectedly. The candle’s flame got bigger, lighting up the entire room. The chair was empty. Mrs. Winchester uttered a loud cry, and Henry entered the room. “Why, Mrs. Winchester! What’s amiss?” he said. She ran to him, sobbing hysterically, and then calming herself with an effort, told him how she had seen Ludwig’s ghost. “Why Mrs. Winchester,” Henry replied. “Ludwig Leichhardt is safe in San Francisco. It was a shadow that took the shape of your old friend, to your fancy. It’s easy enough to fancy such a thing when your mind’s full of anyone.” Ill and shaken, yet fearing death as she had never dreaded it before, Mrs. Winchester said, “It was no fancy. Ludwig Leichhardt is dead, and I have seen his ghost. I’ve a feeling that he never got to San Francisco alive, Henry,” she said. “I can’t explain how it is, but I’ve a feeling that it was so.” Mrs. Winchester spent the rest of that horrible night huddled between her crumpled sheets, fearing to look forth, fearing to think. She knew the letters had been forgeries, and could not forget the madness and the terror in learning to walk the unvext paths of placid souls. She was left with nothing but an aimless scurrying terror and the black swarm of thoughts, so that she verily fancied her reason would give under the strain. Yet she had more to endure and to triumph over. Near morning she fell into a troubled sleep, throughout which the drawn twitch of muscle seemed an accent on every word of ill-omen she had ever spelt out of the alphabet of fear. If her body rested, her brain was an open chamber for any toad of ugliness that listed to “sit at squat” in. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
Mrs. Winchester tried to convince herself that the thing she had seen was only a trick of her imagination. Another month went by, and again in the twilight the same figure appeared to her. It was standing this time, with one arm leaning on the high mantlepiece; standing facing her as she came back to the room, after having quitted it for a few minutes for some slight household duty. There was a fire burning in the fireplace. The logs were burning with a steady blaze that lit up the well-known figure and unforgotten face. Ludwig Leichardt was looking at her with an expression that seemed half reproachful, half beseeching. He was very pale, much paler than she had ever seen him in life; and as he looked, she standing just within the threshold of the door, she saw him lift his hand slowly and point to his forehead. The firelight showed her a dark red stain upon the left temple, like the mark of a contused wound. She covered her face with her hands, shuddering and uttering a little cry of terror, and then dropped half fainting upon a chair. When she uncovered her face the room was empty, there was a pool of blood on the floor, and the firelight shining cheerily upon the walls, no trace of that ghostly visitant. This time Mrs. Winchester brooded over the thoughts of the thing she had seen, firmly believing that she had looked upon the shadow of the dead, and that there was some purpose to be fulfilled by that awful vision. In the day, she had the room boarded up. The thought of this was almost always in her mind; in the dead silence of the night, she would often lie awake for hours thinking of Ludwig Leichhardt. Mrs. Winchester knew he had been waylaid and murdered. He had a good deal of money about him. Suddenly Mrs. Winchester woke to the fact that there was a knocking at her door—that there had been for some little time. She cried, “Come in!” finding a weak restorative in the mere sound of her own human voice; then remember the keys was turned, bade the visitor wait until she could come to him. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
Scrambling, feeling dazed and white-livered, out of bed, Mrs. Winchester opened the door, and met one of the gentlemen on the threshold. The man looked scared, and his lips, she noticed, were set in a somewhat boding fashion. “Come you come at once, Mrs. Winchester?” he said, “There’s summat wrong with Ludwig Leichhardt. She had now a settled conviction that some untimely fate had befallen her old friend, and that the letters from San Francisco were forgeries. Gilbert from the Bank of Italy compared the signature cards and determined that the drafts and letters were forgeries. There was one thing noticeable in the San Francisco letters—they were all exactly alike, line for line, curve for curve. This rather discomposed Gilbert; for it is a notorious fact that a man rarely signs his name twice in exactly the same manner. There is almost always some difference. Before the month was out, Ludwig Leichhardt’s ghost appeared for the third time to Mrs. Winchester. In the Tender June twilight. She was thinking of her old friend as she walked along the shadowy winding path of the deer park on her estate. It was just such a still, peaceful evening as that upon which he had stood on the edge of the common looking back at her, and waving his hand, upon that last well remembered night. He was so much in her thoughts, and the conviction that he had come from among the dead to visit her was so rooted in her mind, that she was scarcely surprised when she looked up presently, and saw a tall familiar figure moving slowly among the trees a little way before her. There seemed to be an awful stillness in the wood all at once, but there was nothing awful in that well-known figure. She tried to overtake it; but it kept always in advance of her, and at a sudden turn in the path she lost it altogether. The trees grew thicker, and there was a solemn darkness at the spot where the path took this sharp turn, and on one side of the narrow footpath there was a steep declivity and a great hollow, made by a disused gravel pit. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
She went to her mansion quickly enough, with a subdued sadness upon her, and told Henry what had happened to her. Nor did she rest until there had been a search made on the extensive grounds for the body of Ludwig Leichhardt. They searched and found him lying at the bottom of the gravel pit, half buried in loose sand and gravel, and quite hidden by a mass of furze and bramble that grew over the spot. There was an inquest, of course. The tailor who had made the clothes found upon the body identified them, and swore to them as those he had made for Ludwig Leichhardt. The pocket were all empty and turned inside out. There could be little doubt the Ludwig Leichhardt had been waylaid and murdered for the sake of the money he carried upon him that night. His skull had been shattered by a blow from a jagged stick on the left temple. The stick was found laying at the bottom of the pit a little way from the body, with human hair and stains of blood upon it. Ludwig Leichhardt had never left San Jose. It was later determined that Adam Worth had killed Ludwig Leichhardt and took his money. The Bank of Italy refunded the withdraws. Adam Worth was ultimately apprehended, with some of Ludwig Leichhardt’s property still in his possession, and he was deeply in debt. The final examination resulted in a verdict of willful murder, tried, found guilty and hung. Ludwig Leichhardt had executed a few days before his intended departure, bequeathing all he possessed to Sarah Winchester—the interest for her sole use and benefit, the principal to revert to her estate after her death. Mrs. Winchester often sits beside that quiet resting place in the spring twilight; but she had never seen Ludwig Leichhardt’s ghost since that evening in the deer park, and she knew she never would see it again. She shook with an awful thankfulness at sight of the pitfalls she had skirted and escaped—of the demon she witlessly had baffled. The joy of life was in her heart again, but chastened and made pitiful by experience. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
You are aware that evil spirit beings operating through humans in positions of authority and influence are the real motivators in human society? Yes, this is exactly what the Christian Bible teaches! Perhaps this concept seems strange to you, almost like an outmoded superstition, but the Bible definitely states that Satan in the “god of this age,” reports 2 Corinthians 4.4, and that he is the leader of a well-organized army of beings invisible to humans but very active among them. Paul tells us in Ephesians, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this World, against spiritual wickedness in high places,” reports Ephesians 6.12. These words indicate that evil spirits are organized into a military-like structure. The “principalities” are the highest ranking officers under Satan, the “powers” are officials of somewhat lower standing, and the “rulers of the darkness of this World” seem to be a special band of evil spirits whose sphere of influence includes the leaders of human government. The phrase “spiritual wickedness is high places” is better translated “spiritual hosts of wickedness in the Heavenly places,” and makes reference to the myriads of demonic hordes. They are all under the direction of Satan, who is not only named the “god of this age,” but also is called “the prince of the power of the air,” reports Ephesians 2.2. The Scriptures often speak of a close relationship between these evil spiritual and the “World.” In the Ephesians passage quoted above, you will remember that these spirit beings are called “the rulers of the darkness of this World.” The apostle John also refers to the World, and it is significant that he considers it to be the Christian’s enemy. “Love not the World, neither the things that are in the World. If any human love the World, the love of the Father is not in one. For all that is in the World, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Farther, but is of the World. And the World passeth away, and the lust of it; but one that doeth the will of God abideth forever,” reports 1 John 2.15-17. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
In addition, the same apostle declared that one who is “born of God overcometh the World,” reports 1 John 5.4, and also that “the whole World lieth in wickedness,” reports 1 John 5.19. James, the brother of Jesus, declared in his epistle, “Whosoever therefore, will be a friend of the World, is the enemy of God,” reports James 4.4. Before we can gain a full understanding of what this means, we must answer the following questions: What is this World, which if loved causes us to lose God’s friendship? What does the Bible mean when it says that the whole World “lieth in wickedness”? Certainly the Bible is not saying that Christians should not love the World of nature, nor is it implying that every person who is not a Christian is an enemy to be overcome. In fact, the Scriptures often state that the glory of God is revealed in the natural World, and it specifically instructs believers not to antagonize other people, but to love them. No, the material Universe in which we live is not opposed to us, and we are not to consider the people who inhabit the Earth as our enemies. The “World” referred to by John and James is the moral and spiritual system we call human society. Humankind, which has rejected God’s revelation, has devised explanations of life, moral standards, and principles of conduct based upon human knowledge only. Humans, on the whole, operate on erroneous principles, selfish desires, improper motives, and unworthy standards of value. The sciences, the arts, politics, and entertainment are all dominated by a humanistic approach to life which draws humans away from God and makes humans the “measure of all things.” If the period of treated of in the essay from the commencement of the seventeenth century to the Restoration of Charles II, be barren of witchcraft proper, it must at least be admitted that it is prodigal in regard to the marvellous under various shapes and forms, from which the hysterical state of the public mind can be fairly accurately gauged. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
The rebellion of 1641, and the Cromwellian confiscations, that troubled periods when the county was torn by dissention, and ravaged by fire, sword, and pestilence, was aptly ushered in by a series of supernatural events which occurred in the country Limerick. A letter dated the 13th August 1640, states that “for news we have the strangest that ever was heard of, there inchantments in the Lord of Castleconnell’s Castle four miles from Lymerick, several sorts of noyse, sometymes of drums and trumpets, sometimes of other curious musique with Heavenly vouces, then fearful screeches, and such outcries that the neighbours near cannot sleepe. Priests have adventured to be there, but have been cruelly beaten for their paynes, and carryed away they knew not how, some two miles and some four miles. Moreover were seen in the like manner, after they appear to the view of the neighbours, infinite number of armed men on foote as well as on horseback. One thing more [id est something supernatural] by Mrs. Mary Burke with tweleve servants lyes in the hose, and never one hurt, onley they must dance with them every night; they say, Mrs. Mary come away, telling her she must be wife to the inchanted Earl of Desmond. Uppon a Mannour of my Lord Bishoppe of Lymerick, Loughill, hath been seen upon the hill by most of the inhabitants aboundance of armed men marching, and these seene many tymes—and when they come up to them they do not appear. These things are very strange, if the cleargie and gentrie say true.” During the rebellion an appalling massacre of Protestants took place at Portadown, when about a hundred persons, men, women, and children, were forced over the bridge into the river, and so drowned; the few that could swim, and so managed to reach the shore, were either knocked on the head by the insurgents when they landed, or else were shit. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
It is not a matter of surprise that this terrible incident gave rise to legends and stories in which anything strange or out of the common was magnified out of all proportion. Accord to one deponent there appeared one evening in the river “a vision or spirit assuming the shape of a woman, waist high, upright in the water, naked with [illegible] in her hand, her hair dishevelled, her eyes seeming to twinkle in her head, and her skin as white as snow; which spirit seeming to stand upright in the water often repeated the word Revenge! Revenge! Revenge! Also, Robert Maxwell, Archdeacon of Down, swore that the rebels declared to him, (and some deponents made similar statements) “that most of those that were thrown from the bridge were daily and nightly seen to walk upon the River, sometimes singing Psalms, sometimes brandishing of Swords, sometimes screeching in a most hideous and fearful manner.” Both these occurrences are capable of a rational explanation. The supposed spectre was probably a poor, bereaved woman, demented by grief and terror, who stile out of her hiding-place at night to bewail the murder of her friends, while the weird cries arose from the half-starved dogs of the country-side, together with the wolves which abounded in Ireland at that period, quarrelling and fighting over the corpses. Granting the above, and bearing in mind the credulity of all classes of Society, it is not difficult to see how the tales originated; but to say that, because such obviously impossible statements occur in certain despsitions, the latter are therefore worthless as a whole, is to willfully misunderstand the popular mind of the seventeenth century. We have the following on the testimony of the Rev. George Creighton, minister of Virginia, Co. Cavan. He tells us that “drivers women brought to his House a young woman, almost naked, to whom a Rogue came upon the way, these women being present, and required her to give him her mony, or else he would kill her, and so drew his sword; her answer was, You cannot kill me unless God gives you leave, and His will be done. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
“Thereupon the Rogue thrust three times at her naked body with his drawn sword, and never pierced her skin; whereat he being, as it seems, much confounded, went away and left her.” A like story comes from the other side: “At the taking of the Newry a revel being appointed to be shot upon the bridge, and stripped stark-naked, nothing withstanding the musketeer stood within two yards of him, and shot him in the middle of the back, yet the bullet entered not, nor did him any more hurt than leave a little black spot behind it. This many hundreds were eye-witnesses of. Divers of the like have I confidently been assured of, who have been provided of diabolical charms.” Similar tales of persons bearing charmed lives could not doubt be culled from the records of every way that has been fought on this planet of ours since History began. The ease with which the accidental or unusual was transformed into the miraculous at this period is shown by the following. A Dr. Tate and his wife and children were flying to Dublin from the insurgents. On their way they were wandering over commons covered with snow, without any food. The wife was carrying a sucking child, John, and having no milk to give it she was about to lay it down in despair, when suddenly “on the Brow of a Bank she found a Suck-bottle with sweet milk in it, no Footsteps appearing in the snow of any that should bring it thither, and far from any Habitation; which preserved the child’s life, who after became a Blessing to the Church.” The Dr. Tate mentioned above was evidently the Rev. Faithful Tate, D.D., father of Nahum Tate of “Tate and Brady” fame. Much of what has passed current in the New World as White (id est, permissible) Magic is only a disguised goeticism, and may of the resplendent angels invoke with the divine rites reveal their cloven hoofs. It is not too much to say that a large majority of past psychological experiments were conducted to establish communication with demons, and that for unlawful purposes. The popular conceptions concerning the diabolical spheres, which have been all accredited by magic, may have been gross exaggerations of fact concerning rudimentary and perverse intelligences, but the willful viciousness of the communicants is substantially untouched thereby. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Happy Early Turkey Day! 🦃
The Winchester Mystery House will be closed on Thursday, Nov. 25 in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday and will reopen on Friday, Nov. 26! winchestermysteryhouse.com
When Asked His Name He Said “Legion” Because Many Demons Were Entered into Him!
It is easy to imagine how the combined grief of losing both a child and a spouse could be very crippling. However, if you have $20,000,000 (2021 inflation adjusted $347,910,691.82), and all the time in the World to help you cope, what would you do? Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester’s response to the deaths of her child and husband left a bizarre and impressive architectural reflection of her soul. After a series of violent confrontations, the Winchester Repeating Arms Company hires a private investigator to follow her. Mrs. Winchester ascends into mystery and it is soon clear that she is hiding a much bigger secret—one that is both inexplicable and shocking. A “possessed” person may have symptoms much like those that are apparent in the mentally ill. One may be deeply melancholic or depressed, appear to be withdrawn from reality, or may manifest emotions that range from ecstatic joy to violent screaming or wild ferocity. These various states may present themselves from time to time during “attacks.” Demon possession may be distinguished from insanity, however, by observing the manner in which the afflicted person speaks. An insane individual may have a mistaken concept of one’s own identity, wear clothing by which one attempts to look like the person one thinks oneself to be, but speak in one’s own voice, and in such a manner that one can tell one is doing only a superficial impersonation of the individual one thinks oneself to be. A demon-possessed person, on the other hand, is obviously controlled by the indwelling evil spirit. The wicked being may use a language or dialect the individual never knew, and sometimes will name oneself. Therefore, one should carefully note the symptoms of a disturbed person, never making the diagnosis of demon possession on the basis of a superficial judgment. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
If a believer should meet a demon-possessed individual, one would be unwise to make a frontal attack upon the powers of darkness by immediately issuing a command in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Dr. Kurt Koch, an evangelical Christian who has made a lifetime study of Satan and occultic activities, declares that whenever Christians lightly engage in an effort to cast out demons, they run the risk of being attacked by evil spirits. Such people often suffer deep spiritual depression and find themselves in an attitude of complete hopelessness. Since this is true, a believer should band together with others in a time of prayer, and no efforts should be made to expel the evil spirits until the Holy Spirit prompts someone to issue the command. Unbelievers and adherents of the non-Christian religions apparently can command evil spirits without suffering bad consequences. Archeologists have found manuscripts containing incantations and magical formulas for the expulsion of demons; and today in the Philippines and other countries of the far East, as well as in some areas of South America and Africa, pagan religious leaders seriously perform rituals to ward off or cast out evil spirits. Sometimes they beat the person who is demon-possessed, prick one with needles, or even burn portions of one’s body, thinking that this pain will drive out the evil spirits. The Jewish people in Christ’s day also used spells, magical phrases, and religious rituals to expel demons. That they sometimes appeared to be successful is clear, for Jesus said, “if I, by Beelzebub, cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore, they shall be your judges,” reports Matthew 12.27. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
In this statement the Lord Jesus Christ acknowledged that evil spirits sometimes left the bodies of their victims when incantations, spells, or magical rites were used by Jewish religious leaders. However, Christ did not say these men accomplished their goal by the power of God, nor did He imply that they were actually doing damage to the cause of Satan. He was answering the charge that He was casting out demons in the power of Beelzebub, the prince of demons. He declared that is such were the case, the kingdom of Satan would be divided against itself. Actually, the exorcists, whether Jewish or pagan, did not really possess authority over the invisible World, but the evil spirits merely cooperated with them, leaving the bodies of some of their victims to give the appearance that they had been forced out. By working with these unbelieving sorcerers, the devil aided his own cause. The demons either temporarily left the person, only to return a short time later, or entered the body of some other victim. No one should attempt to deal with the forces of evil by using the name of Jesus unless one is a child of God. Luke, in Acts 19, graphically portrays the seriousness of hypocritically dealing with the powers of darkness. Seven sons of Sceva, a professional exorcist who had no personal faith in Christ, tried to combine the words “in the name of Jesus” with their magical formula. The evil spirits, recognizing that these impostors had no right to use Jesus’s name, reacted in a violent manner. The demon-possessed individual attacked these men with superhuman strengths, so that with torn clothing and bleeding bodies they fled from the Winchester mansion. The frequency of demon possession—the record of history establishes without a doubt that demon possession was known before the Lord Jesus Christ came to Earth, and the testimony of missionaries indicates that it has continued down through the centuries. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
The public ministry of Christ, however, was accompanied by an outburst of demon possession unparalleled in history. It seems that Satan threw all his power into his battle with Jesus Christ. True, the devil is not omniscient, but he knew that Christ had come to earth to atone for sin, conquer death, and bring about the defeat of evil. John tells us that “the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil,” reports 1 John 3.8. Satan used every device at his disposal to frustrate the purpose of God in Christ. Subtle temptations, the wrath and wickedness of men, and a rash of demonic activity were part of his vain effort to prevent Jesus from performing the work He had come to accomplish. Demon possession gradually subsided during the first century A.D., and usually is not conspicuous in areas where a fairly large percentage of people have placed their faith in Jesus Christ. It appears that demons are hesitant to enter the bodies of people when informed believers are likely to cast them out in the name of Christ. Luke is the same one that is translated “bottomless pit” seven times in the book of the Revelation. We read, “And Jesus asked him, saying, ‘What is thy name?’ And he said, ‘Legion’; because many demons were entered into him. And they besought him that he would not command them to go out into the deep. And there was there and herd of many swine, feeding on the mountain; and they besought him that he would allow them to enter into them. And he permitted them,” reports Luke 8.30-32. Revelation 9 tells us that at some future time the “bottomless pit” will be opened, and a great army of evil spirits will be set free to plague humankind. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
It is at least a possibility that whenever demons are cast out of a human being in the name of Jesus Christ, they are sent to the bottomless pit, and will not be released until shortly before Christ returns to establish His kingdom. The realization that they will lose their freedom as members of the army of the “prince of the power of the air,” and be confined in the pit for an indefinite period of time, makes them hesitant to take possession of human beings. The risk is too great in an area where Christians exercise their authority in the name of Christ. People who live in civilized countries where the Gospel has been known for centuries should not rule out the possibility of demon possession, however, just because it has not been a common occurrence in these areas. Satan and his cohorts may conclude that most people, even professing Christians, will not recognize this phenomenon when they meet it. Therefore, as this age draws to a close, Satan may once again become very active in entering human bodies and controlling personalities. He will hope that the majority of humankind will either be deceived into following him or find a naturalistic explanation for the activities of the demons. This supernatural manifestation of the power of Satan and evil spirits is clearly predicted by the apostle Paul. In his second letter to the Thessalonian believers, he declares that just before Christ returns in glory, the devil will have his righthand mand upon the earth performing miracles which make him appear to be a god. Referring to the Antichrists, the apostle says, “Even him whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish, because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved,” reports 2 Thessalonian 2.9, 10. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Inasmuch as we can expect an increase of open opposition to God on the part of the Satanic hordes, we know Christ should humbly maintain fellowship with Him through full submission and ready obedience so that we may receive from Him the strength we need to overcome. James writes, “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you,” reports James 4.6-7. Peter declares, “Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil, like a roaring lion walketh about, seeking whom he may devour; whom resist steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the World,” reports 1 Peter 5.8-9. No, Satan is not dead. He is like a wounded animal and still has great power to harm those who care careless or proud. Therefore, keep awake, be on alert, read the Christian Bible and the Book of Mormon, and pray! If you do not, he may destroy your effectiveness as a Christian. For the next instance of witchcraft and the supernatural in connection with Ireland, we are compelled to go beyond the confines of our own country. Though in this connection with the Green Isle is slight, yet it is of interest as affording an example of that blending of fairy lore with sorcery which is not an uncommon feature of Scottish witchcraft-trials. In the year 1613 a woman named Margaret Barclay, of Irvine in Scotland, was accused of having her brother-in-law’s ship to be cast away by magical spell. A certain strolling vagabond and juggler, John Stewart, was apprehended as her accomplice; he admitted (probably under torture) that Margaret had applied to him to teach her some magic arts in others that “she might get gear, kye’s milk, love of man, her heart’s desire on such persons as had done her wrong.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
Through John Stewart does not appear to have granted Margaret’s request, yet he gave detailed information as to the manner in which he had gained the supernatural power and knowledge with which he was credited. “It being demanded of him by what means he profession himself to have knowledge of things to come, the said John confessed that the space of twenty-six years ago, he being travelling on All-Hallow Even night between the towns of Monygoif and Clary, in Galway, he met with the King of the Fairies and his company, and that the King gave him a stroke with a white rod over the forehead, which took from him the power of speech and the use of one eye, which he wanted for the space of three years. He declared that the use of speech and eyesight was restored to him by the King of Fairies and his company on a Hallowe’en night at the town of Dublin.” At his subsequent meeting with the fairy band, he was taught all his knowledge. The spot on which he was struck remained impervious to pain although a pin was thrust into it. The unfortunate wretch was cast into prison, and there committed suicide by hanging himself from the “cruik” of the door with his garter or bonnet-string, and so “ended his life miserably with the help of the devil his master.” A tale slightly resembling portion of the above comes from the north of Ireland a few years later. “It is storied, and the story is true,” says Robert Law in his Memorialls, “of a godly man in Ireland, who lying one day in the fields sleeping, he was struck with dumbness and deafness. The same man, during this condition he was in, could tell things, and had the knowledge of things in a strange way, which he had not before; and did, indeed, by signs make things known to others which they knew not. Afterwards he at length, prayer being made from him by others, came to the use of his tongue and ears; but when that knowledge of things he had in his deaf and dumb condition ceased, and when he was asked how he had the knowledge of these things he made signs of, he answered he had that knowledge when dumb, but how and after what manner he knew not, only he had the impression thereof in his spirit. This story was related by a godly minister, Mr. Robert Blair, to Mr. John Baird, who knew the truth of it.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
The Rev. Robert Blair, M.A., was a celebrated man, if for no other reason than on account of his disputes with Dr. Echlin, Bishop of Down, or for his description of Oliver Cromwell as a greeting (id est, weeping) devil. On the invitation of Lord Claneboy he arrived in Ireland in 1623, and in the same year was settled as (Presbyterian) parish minister at Bangor in Co. Down, with the consent of patron and people’ he remained there until 1631, when he was suspended by Dr. Echlin, and was deposed and excommunicated in November, 1634. He has left a few writings behind him, and was grandfather of the poet Robert Blair, author of The Grave. During the years of his ministry at Bangor the following incident occurred to him, which he of course attributes to demonic possession, through homicidal mania resulting from intemperate habits would be nearer the truth. One day a rich man, the constable of the perish, called upon him in company with one of his tenants concerning the baptizing of the latter’s child. “When I had spoken what I thought necessary, and was ready to turn into my house, the constable dismissing the other told me he had something to say to me in private. I looking upon him saw his eyes like the eyes of a cat in the night, did presently conceive that he had a mischief in his heart, yet I resolved not to refuse what he desired, but I keeped a watchful eye upon him, and stayed at some distance; and being near to the door of the church I went in, and invited him to follow me. As soon as he entered within the doors he fell atrembling, and I awondering. His trembling continuing and growing without any speech, I approached to him, and invited him to a seat, wherein he could hardly sit. The great trembling was like to throw him out of the seat. I laid my arm about him, and asked him what ailed him? But for a time, he could speak none. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
“At last his shaking ceased, and he began to speak, telling me, that for a long time the Devil had appeared to him; first at Glasgow he bought a horse from him, receiving a sixpence in earnest, and that in the end he offered to him a great purse full of sylver to be his, making no mention of the horse; he said that he blessed himself, and so the buyer with the sylver and gold that was poured out upon the table vanished. But some days thereafter he appeared to him at his own house, naming him by his name, and said to him, Ye are mine, for I arled you with a sixpence, which yet ye have. Then said he, I asked his name, and he answered, they call me Nickel Downus (I suppose the he repeated evil, that he should have said Nihil Damus). Being thus molested with these and many other apparitions of the Devil, he left Scotland; but being come to Ireland he did often likewise appear to him, and now of late he still commands me to kill and slay; and oftentimes, says he, my whinger hath been drawn and kept under my cloak to obey his commands, but still something holds my hand that I cannot stroke. But then I asked him who he was bidden kill? He answered, any that comes in my way; but ‘The better they be the better service to me, or else I shall kill thee.’ When he uttered these words he fell again atrembling, and was stopped in his speaking, looking lamentably at me, designing me to be the person he aimed at; then he fell a crying and lamenting. I showed him the horribleness of his ignorance and drunkenness; he made many promises of reformation, which were not well keep’d; for within a fortnight he went to an alehouse to crave the price of his malt, and sitting there long at drink, as he was going homeward the Devil appeared to him, and challenged him for opening to me what had passed betwixt them secretly, and followed him to the house, pulling his cap off his head and his band from about his neck, saying to him, ‘On Hallow-night I shall have thee, soul and body, in despite of the minister and of all that he will do for thee.’” #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
In his choice of a date his Satanic Majesty showed his respect for popular superstitions. This attack of delirium tremens (though Mr. Blair would not have so explained it) had a most salutary effect; the constable was in such an abject state of terror lest the Devil should carry him off that he begged Mr. Blair to sit up with him all Hallow-night, which he did, spending the time very profitably in prayer and exhortation, which encouraged the man to defy Satan and all his works. The upshot of the matter was, that he became very charitable to the poor, and seems to have entirely renounced his intemperate habits. Rejecting the supernatural elements in the above as being merely the fruits of a diseased mind, there is no reason to doubt the truth of the story. Mr. Blair also met with some strange cases of religious hysteria, which became manifest in outbursts of weeping and bodily convulsions, but which he attributed to the Devil’s “playing the ape, and counterfeiting the works of the Lord.” He states that one Sunday, in the midst of public worship, “one of my charge, being a dull and ignorant person, made a noise and stretching of her body. Incontinent I was assisted to rebuke that lying spirit that disturbed the worship of God, charging the same not to disturb the congregation; and through God’s mercy we met with no more of that work.” Thus modestly our writer sets down what happened in his Autobiography; but the account of the incident spread far and wide, and at length came to the ears of Archbishop Usher, who, on his next meeting with Mr. Blair, warmly congratulated him on the successful exorcism he had practised.” Spirits of a diabolical and infernal nature, are not only ready upon all occasions to become subservient to exorcists and magicians, but are ever watching opportunities of exciting evil affections in the mind, and of stirring up the wickedly inclined to the commission of every species of iniquity and vice. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
Thus by the instigation of infernal spirits, and their own promptitude, they often terrify humans with nocturnal visions; provoke melancholy people to suicide; tempt drunkards and incendiaries to set houses on fire, to burn those who are in them, and allure careless servants and others to sound and incautious sleep; that such unlucky accidents might happen besides innumerable other ways they have of executing the devices of iniquitous spirits through malicious instigations, or secret stratagems, projected for the overthrow and destruction of mortal men; especially when the work to be effected by the devil is too hard for his subtle and spiritual nature to effect, because the same belongs to the outward source or principle to which these dubious spirits more immediately belong. A few nights into Christmas, there was a festival for which the Winchester mansion was making extensive preparations. The narrow streets which had been thronged with people were now almost deserted. In the comfortable coffee-room of the Winchester mansion, Mrs. Winchester had half a dozen guests, principally commercial travellers, sat talking by light of the fire. The talk had drifted from trade to politics, from politics to religion, and so by easy stages to the supernatural. In the flicker of the light of the fire, as it shone on the glasses and danced with shadows on the walls, the conversation proved so enthralling that Henry, the waiter, whose presence had been forgotten, created a very disagreeable sensation by suddenly starting up from a dark corner and gliding silently from the room. Mrs. Winchester then said, “Of course, it is an old idea that spirits like to get into the company of human beings. A man told me once that he travelled down the Great Western with a ghost and had not the slightest suspicion of it until the inspector came for tickets. My friend said they way that ghost tried to keep up appearances by feeling for it in all its pockets and looking on the floor was quite touching. Ultimately it gave it up and with a faint groan vanished through the ventilator.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
“That’ll do, Mrs. Winchester,” said Ludwig Leichhardt. “It is not a subject for jesting,” said Adam Worth,” who had been an attentive listener. “I’ve never seen an apparition myself, but I know people who have, and I consider that they form a very interesting link between us and the after-life. There’s a ghost story connected with this mansion, you know.” “Never heard of it,” said Edward Agar, “and I have visiting this estate for some years now.” “It dates back a long time,” said Ludwig. “You’ve heard about John V. Creely also know as Jesus Procopio?” “Well, I’ve just ‘eard odds and ends, sir” said the Edward, “but I never put much count to ‘em. There was one chap ‘ere what said ‘e saw it, and the gov’ner sacked ‘im prompt.” “My father was a native of this town,” said Ludwig, “and knew the story well. He was a truthful man and a steady churchgoer, but I’ve heard him declare that once in his life he saw the appearance of Jesus Procopio in this mansion.” “And who was this Jesus?” enquired a voice. “His real name was Tomaso Rodendo, one of the most fearless and daring desperadoes that has ever figures in the criminal annals of our state. Anything he could turn his dishonest hand to,” replied Ludwig; “and he was run to Earth in this mansion one Christmas week some five years ago. He took his last supper in this very room, and after he had gone up to bed a couple of thief takers, who had followed him from San Francisco but lost the scent a bit, went upstairs with Mrs. Winchester and tried the door. It was stout oak, and fast, so one went into the yard, and by means of a short ladder got on the window-sill, while the other stayed outside the door. Those below in the yard saw the man crouching on the sill, and then there was a sudden smash of glass, and with a cry he fell in a heap on the stones at their feet. Then in the moonlight they saw the white face of the pickpocket peeping over the sill, and while some stayed in the yard, others ran into the mansion and helped the other man to break the door in. It was difficult to obtain an entrance even then, for it was barred with heavy furniture, but they got in at last, and the first thing that met their eyes was the body of Jesus dangling from the top of the bed by his own handkerchief.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
“Which bedroom was it?” asked two or three voices together. Ludwig shook his head. “That I can’t tell you; but the story goes that Jesus still haunts this mansion, and my father used to declare that the last time he had slept here that the ghost of Jesus Procopio lowered itself from the top of his bed and tried to strangle him.” “That will do” said John Creely. “I wish you’d thought to ask your father which bedroom it was.” “I believe it was my Blue Séance room said,” Mrs. Winchester. “Well, I should take care not to sleep in it, that’s all, said John shortly. “There’s nothing to fear,” said Ludwig. “I don’t believe for a moment that ghosts could really hurt one. In fact my father used to confess that it was only the unpleasantness of the thing that upset him, and that for all practical purposes Jesus’s figures might have been made of cotton-wool for all the hard they could do.” “That’s all very fine,” said John; “a ghost story is a ghost story, sir; but when a gentleman tells a tale of a ghost in the house in which one is going to sleep, I call it most ungentlemanly!” “Pooh! Nonsense!” said Ludwig, rising, “ghosts can’t hurt you. For my own part; I should rather like to see one. Good night.” “Good night,” said Mrs. Winchester and the others. “And I hope that Jesus will pay you a visit,” added John as the door closed.” “Shall I light the gas, Adam?” said Henry. “No; the fires very comfortable,” he said. “Now gentlemen, any of you know any more?” “I think we’ve had enough,” said John; “we shall be thinking we see spirits next, and we’re not all like Ludwig who’s just gone.” Old humbug!” said John. “I should like to put him to the test. Suppose I dress up as Jesus Procopio and go to give him a chance of displaying his courage?” “Bravo!” said Adam huskily, drowning one or two faint “Noes.” “No, drop it, John” said Edward. “Only for the joke,” said John, somewhat eagerly. “I’ve got some things upstairs in which I am going to play in the ‘Rivals’—knee-breeches, buckles, and all that sort of thing. It’s a rare chance. If you’ll wait a bit I’ll give you a full-dress rehearsal, entitled, ‘Jesus Procopio; or, The Nocturnal Strangler.’” #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
“You won’t frighten us,” said Adam, with a husky laugh. “I don’t know that,” said John sharply; “it’s a question of acting that’s all. I’m pretty good, ain’t I, Edward?” “Oh, you’re all right—for an amateur,” said Edward, with a laugh. “I’ll bet you level sov. You don’t frighten me,” said Adam. “Done! said John. I’ll take the bet to frighten you first and Ludwig afterwards. These gentlemen shall be the judges.” “You won’t frighten us, sir,” said Edward “because we’re prepared for you; but you’d better leave Ludwig alone. It’s dangerous play.” “Well, I’ try you first,” said John, springing up. “No gas, mind.” He ran lightly upstairs to his room, leaving the others, most of whom had been drinking somewhat freely, to wrangle about his proceedings. It ended with them going to bed. “He’s crazy on acting,” said Adam, lighting his pipe. “Thinks he’s the equal of anybody almost. It doesn’t matter with us, but I won’t let him go to Ludwig. And he won’t mind so long as he gets an opportunity of acting to us.” “Well, I hope he’ll hurry up,” said Edward, yawning; it’s after twelve now.” Nearly half an hour passed. Edward drew his watch from his pocket and was busy winding it, when Henry, the waiter, who had been sent on an errand, burst suddenly into the room and rushed towards them. “E’s comin’, gentlemen,” he said breathlessly. “Why, you’re frightened, Edward,” said Adam with a chuckle. “It was the suddenness of it,” said Edward sheepishly; “and besides, I didn’t look for seenin’ ‘im in the bar. There’s only a glimmer of light there, and ‘e was sitting on the floor behind the bar. I nearly trod on ‘im.” “He’s taking too long, I’ll go and fetch him,” said Adam. “You don’t know what this mansion is like at night, sir,” said Henry, catching him by the sleeve. “It ain’t fit to look at by yourself, it ain’t, indeed. It’s got the—what’s that?” #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
They all started at the sound of a smothered cry from the staircase and the sound of somebody running hurriedly along the passage. Before anybody could speak, the door flew open and a figure bursting into the room flung itself gasping and shivering upon them. “What is it? What’s the matter?” demanded Edward. “Why, it’s Mr. Creely.” He shook him roughly and then held some spirit to his lips. John Creely drank it greedily with a sharp intake of his breath gripped him by the arm. “Light the gas, Adam,” said Edward. Adam obeyed hastily, John Creely, a ludicrous but pitiable figure in knee-breeches and coat, a large wig all awry, and his face a mess of grease paint, clung to him, trembling. “Now what’s the matter?” asked Edward. “I’ve seen it,” said John, with a hysterical sob. “O Lord, I’ll never play the fool again, never!” “Seen what?” said the others. “Him—it—the ghost—anything!” said John wildly. “Rot!” said Adam uneasily. All distinctly heard a step in the passage outside. It stopped at the door, and as they watched with bated breath, the door creaked and slowly opened. Adam fell back opened-mouthed, as a white, leering face, with sunken eyeballs ad close-cropped bullet head, appeared at the opening. For a few second the creature stood regarding them, blinking in a strange fashion at the candle. Then with a sidling movement, it came a little way into the room and stood there as if bewildered. Not a man spoke or moved, but all watched with a horrible fascination as the creature removed its dirty neckcloth and its head rolled on its shoulder. For a minute it paused, and then holding the rag before it, moved towards Edward. The candle went out suddenly with a flash and a bang. These was a smell of powder, and something writhing in the darkness on the floor. A faint, choking cough, and then silence. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
Edward was the first to speak. “Matches,” he said in a strange voice. Adam struck one. Then he leapt at the gas and a burner flamed from the match. Edward touched the thing on the floor with his foot and found it soft. He looked at his companions. They mouthed enquiries at him, but he shook his head. He lit the candle, and, kneeling down, examined the silent thing on the floor. Then he rose swiftly, and dipping his handkerchief in the water jug, bent down again and grimly wiped the white face. Then he sprang back with a cry of incredulous horror, pointing at it. Adam’s pistol fell to the floor and he shut out the sight with his hands, but the others, crowding forward, gazed spell-bound at the dead face of John V. Creely. Before a word was spoken the door opened and Ludwig hastily entered the room. His eyes fell on the floor. “Good God!” he cried. “You didn’t—” Nobody spoke. “I told him not to,” he said in a suffocating voice. “I told him not to. I told him—” He leaned against the wall, deathly sick, put his arms out feebly, and fell fainting into Ludwig’s arms. Many mysteries have taken place in the Winchester mansion over the years. It is an extravagant maze of Victorian craftmanship—marvelous, baffling, and eerily eccentric, to say the least. Tour guide must warn people not to stray from the group or they could be lost forever! Countless questions come to mind as you wander through the mansion—such as, what was Mrs. Winchester thinking when she had a staircase built that descends seven steps and then rises eleven? The Winchester Repeating Arms Company concluding their investigation by saying, “The mystery of the Winchester mansion is unquestionably great and infinite; perhaps spirits can take human shape, and disclose secrets and treasures guarded by this estate, but we must also be aware of skilled deceivers who will talk of Heaven and Hell and the Fall.” (WRA 1888.) After Mrs. Winchester’s death, crimes resulting in the theft of cash, jewels, historical European glass, furniture, and works of art worth over $10 million by Victorian standards (2021 inflation adjusted $291,146,315.79) went missing from the estate. Is the Winchester mansion haunted? Visits and find out for yourself. Their investigation sounds inconclusive. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Winchester Mystery House
“Though she be but little, she is fierce.” ~ William Shakespeare
Did you know Sarah Winchester only stood at 4’10”? Much of the house was built to her specific height measurement including a shower, some doors, and hallways. winchestermysteryhouse.com
Does the Cause of Lunacy Lie in the Heavens or in Our Minds?
If you do not run your own life, somebody else will. Your children need your presence more than your presents because the hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any. It would hardly be accurate to day that we live now in a period of great enlightenment or dependable treatment of mental disorders. In fact, some recent surveys found that 43 percent of respondents believe that people bring on mental disorders themselves, 35 percent consider such disorders to be caused by sinful behaviours, and 19 percent point to the lack of willpower or self-discipline as a cause. Nevertheless, the last 70 years have brought major changes in the ways clinicians understand and treat abnormal functioning. There are more theories and types of treatment, more research studies, more information, and, perhaps for these reasons, more disagreements about abnormal functioning today than at any time in the past. In some ways the study and treatment of psychological disorders have made great strides, but in other respects clinical scientists and practitioners are still struggling to make a difference. Primitive societies believed that the moon had magical, mystical powers and that its changes portended events of many kinds. The moon supposedly had the power to impregnate women, to make plants grow, and to drive people crazy. Later societies also credited the power of the moon to affect behaviour, and they applied the terms “lunatic” and “lunacy” to the person and the behaviour to capture their lunar, or moonlike, qualities. Even today many institutions and people believe that behaviour is affected by the phases of the moon. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Anecdotal evidence abounds: police officers have sometimes noted more violent and bizarre crimes during the full moon, and certain hospitals have claimed to experience an increase in births. One hospital even linked the full moon to the onset of ulcers and heart attacks. A Wall Street brokers for years used the schedule of the moon as a guide in giving investment advice—successfully. A number of scientists have advanced theories to explain a lunar effect on human behaviour. Some say that since the moon causes the tides of the oceans, it is reasonable to expect that it has a similar effect on the bodily fluids of human beings, whose composition is more than 80 percent water. The increase in births might therefore be explained by the force of the moon on the expectant mother’s amniotic fluid. Similar tidal and gravitational effects have been used to explain the apparent increases in bizarre behaviour during full moons. One team of researchers has noted that a full moon seemed to have a greater impact on behaviour in the past than in current times and has attributed this difference to the lack of electricity in years past. Before the advent of artificial light, they argue, full moons were a significant source of illumination that disrupted the sleep-wake cycle. This tended to cause sleep deprivation and, consequently, psychological disturbances. Still other researchers have tried to determine whether the activity of the moon is in fact related to human behaviour by calculating the precise number of births, crimes, and unusual behaviours that occur during full moons. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Some of these investigators have indeed found an association between full moons and unintentional poisonings, aggression, absenteeism, and crime. Other researchers, however, have found no relationship between full moons and increases in violence in mental health settings, suicides, car accidents, or people seeking help for anxiety or depression. Even if an association exists, skeptics have noted that it may simply be due to people’s own expectations. That is, because certain persons expect to be influenced by a full moon, they may be more attentive and responsive to their internal sensations or desires at that time. To test this interpretation, researchers recently examined the effects of moon phases on animals who presumably have little self-awareness. One group of researchers found a significant increase in the number of people who visited emergency rooms with animal bites during full moons in a small British town, suggesting that unusual animal behaviour may indeed be affected by the moon. However, other researchers—who conducted studies with other animals, breeds, and towns—found no increase in animals bites during full moons. And so the debated continues as scientists and philosophers alike try to determine whether the cause of lunacy does indeed lie in the Heavens or our minds. How are people with severe disturbances cared for? In the 1950s researchers discovered a number of new psychotropic medications—drugs that primarily affect the brain and alleviate many symptoms of mental dysfunctioning. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
These medications include the first antipsychotic drugs, to lift the mood of depressed people; and antianxiety drugs, to reduce tension and worry. When given these drugs, many patients who had spent years in mental hospitals began to show signs of improvement. Hospital administrators, encouraged by these results and pressured by a growing public outcry over the terrible conditions in public mental hospitals, began to discharge patients almost immediately. Since the discovery of these medications, mental health professionals in most of the developed nations of the World have followed a policy of deinstitutionalization, releasing hundreds of thousands of patients from public mental hospitals. On any given day in 1955, close to 600,000 people were confined in public mental institutions across the United States of America. Today the daily patient population in the same kinds of hospitals is around 60,000. In short, outpatient care has now become the primary mode of treatment for people with severe psychological disturbances as well as for those with moderate problems. Today when severely impaired people do need institutionalization, they are usually given short-term hospitalization. Ideally, they are then given outpatient psychotherapy and medication in community programs and residences. Community mental health approach is an emphasis on social care for people with severe psychological disturbances. The approach has been helpful for many patients, but too few community programs are available to address current needs in the United States of America. As a result, hundreds of thousands of persons with severe disturbances fail to make lasting recoveries, and they shuffle back and forth between the mental hospital and the community. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
After release from the hospital, patients at best receive minimal care and often wind up living in decrepit rooming houses or on the streets. In fact, only 40 percent of persons with severe psychological disturbances currently receive treatment of any kind. At least 100,000 individuals with such disturbances are homeless on any given day; another 135,000 or more are inmates of jails and prisons. Their abandonment is truly a national disgrace. How are people with less severe disturbances treated? The treatment picture for people with moderate psychological disturbances has been more positive than that for people with severe disorders. Since the 1950s, outpatient care has continued to be the preferred mode of treatment for them, and the numbers and types of facilities that offer such care have expanded to meet the need. Before the 1950s, almost all outpatient care took the form of private psychotherapy, an arrangement by which an individual directly pays a psychotherapist for counseling services. This tended to be an expensive form of treatment available only to the wealthy. Since the 1950s, however, most healthy insurance plans have expanded coverage to include private psychotherapy, so that it is now also widely available to people with modest incomes. In addition, such as community mental healthy centers, crisis intervention centers, family service centers, and other social service agencies. The new settings have spurred a dramatic increase in the number of persons seeking outpatient care for psychological problems. Nationwide surveys suggest that one of every six adults and one of every five children between the ages of 9 and 17 now receive some form of mental health service in the course of a year. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Outpatient treatments are also becoming available for more and more kinds of problems. When Dr. Freud and his colleagues first began to practice, most of their patients suffered from anxiety or depression. These problems still dominate therapy today; almost half of all clients suffer from them. However, people with other kinds of disorders are also receiving therapy. In addition, at least 25 percent of clients enter therapy because of milder problems in living, problems with marital, family, job, peer, school, or community relationships. Yet another change in outpatient care since the 1950s has been the development of programs devoted exclusively to one kind of psychological problem. We now have, for example, suicide prevention centers, substances abuse programs, eating disorders programs, phobia clinics, and sexual dysfunction programs. Clinicians in these programs have the kind of expertise that can be acquired only by concentration in a single area. One caustic interpersonal phenomenon that has received considerable interest in the literature on eating disorders is childhood sexual abuse. A common form of abuse reported by people with eating disorders childhood sexual abuse, represents a gross violation of boundaries, particularly when perpetrated in the family context. This abuse often causes guilt, confusion, repulsion, and distrust of others. These potentially vicious psychosocial repercussions can make intimate relations later in life very difficult. Contrasting findings and possible explanations—there is at least some evidence to suggest that histories of sexual abuse are more common among those with eating disorders, especially bulimia nervosa, than what would be expected by chance alone. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
However, after numerous studies on the topic, findings remain mixed. For example, some estimates indicate that rates of childhood sexual abuse run as high as 70 percent among patients with eating disorders. One study of such patients found that 65 percent has experienced physical abuse, 28 percent has been sexually abused, and 23 percent had been raped. These statistics are shocking both for their indication of what appear to be extremely high prevalence rates of childhood sexual abuse among persons with eating disorders, and for their stark contrast to other epidemiological estimates indicating a far lower occurrence of sexual abuse in the background of such persons. For example, two reviews concluded that there was no evidence of higher rates of eating disorders among sexually abused versus nonabused women. Furthermore, one study found that among normal-weight women with bulimia nervosa, only 7 percent included a history of sexual abuse involving physical contact. Since it is estimated that the prevalence of sexual abuse in the general female population is 27 percent, it appears as if sexual abuse was less prevalent in the sample than in the general population. To complicate matters further, still another review found that rates of sexual abuse were no higher among those with eating disorders than among those in the general population. What conclusions can be drawn from the literature on childhood sexual abuse and eating disorders? First, some of the variance in these prevalence estimates can be explained by wildly discrepant operationalizations of “sexual abuse.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Second, the samples on which these estimates are based are also nonequivalent. For example, it is reasonable to expect a greater history of childhood sexual abuse in clinical samples than in samples with eating disorders drawn from the general population. Third, there is some consensus that childhood sexual abuse is neither necessary nor sufficient for the development of eating disorders in later life. This may explain the high rates of sexual abuse in some samples, and the lower rates in others. “One that covers one’s sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesses and forsakes them shall have mercy,” reports Proverbs 28.13. Abuse tends to happen and it should not. A few decades ago, several American companies authorized by the U.S. government attempted to bury toxic-waste products underground. They filled large mental containers with chemical waste and other life-threatening products, sealed the drums tightly, and buried them deep down below the topsoil. They thought that was the end of it. Within a short time, however, many of the containers began to leak and the toxic waste started seeping to the surface, causing all sorts of problems. In some locations, it killed off the vegetation and ruined the water supply. People had to move out of their homes. What went wrong? They tried to bury something that was toxic. They never dreamed that the materials they were attempting to bury were so powerful that they were too toxic for the containers to hold. They did not imagine that one day those contaminants would resurface, and they would have to deal with the problem all over again. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
However, this time, the toxic materials would be dispersed and much more difficult to deal with. Had they disposed of them properly in the first place, they would not have had this terrible problem. It is the same with us. When somebody hurts us, someone does us wrong, instead of letting it go and trusting God to make it up to us, we bury it deep down inside. We attempt to cram unforgiveness, resentment, anger, and other destructive responses into our “leakproof” containers. We seal those lids tightly, but unfortunately, just as that toxic waste tends to resurface, one day the things you have tamped into your subconscious or buried deeply in the recesses of your heart will rise to the surface and begin to contaminate your life. We cannot live with poison inside us and not expect it to eventually do us harm. Forgiveness is the key to being free from toxic bitterness. Forgive the people who hurt you. Forgive the boss who did you wrong. Forgive the friend who betrayed you. Forgive the patent who mistreated you when you were younger. Do not let the root of bitterness grow deeper and continue to contaminate your life. What does this toxic waste look like in our lives? For some people, it seeps out as anger. In other people, it smells like depression. For others, it reeks of low self-esteem. It can show up in many different ways, sometimes doing damage before we even realize it has reappeared. One can have success on the outside, but if one is bitter on the inside, it is going to spoil and taint every success. One must deal with the inside first, then one can really be happy. Then one can experience true, untainted, unalloyed success in one’s life. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
You may think forgiveness is too hard. However, you are not forgiving for their sake, you are forgiving for your sake. You are forgiving so that poison does not continue to contaminate your life. If someone has done you a great wrong, do not allow them to continue to hurt you by hanging on to it. You are not hurting them at all. You are hurting yourself. It is the laden bough that hangs low, and the most fruitful Christ who is the most humble. In American culture, there is a taboo against vulnerability, especially from dominant personalities. Seldom can we allow ourselves such phrases as “I am unsure,” “I feel vulnerable,” “I feel hurt,” or “I feel helpless.” And yet we all have these feelings from time to time. We all feel anxious, sacred, helpless, or weak. In our culture, where competition, individuality, and performance reign supreme, it is no surprise that any sense of weakness is repressed from awareness. Yet, when a part of us that is quite real is pushed out of consciousness, we are more vulnerable than ever because we lose touch with our core being. Then our energies are diverted into presenting a false self to the World. We even believe that this ideal self—secure, flawless, and capable in all situations—is our real self. This kind of vanity is the real target of the scriptural “pride goeth before destruction,” reports Proverbs 16.18. Surrender to God and understand that God is the Ground of Being. This powerful experience will enable one to get in touch with a power greater than oneself, the Supreme Being. Father, I know when I forgive those who hurt me, it pleased You. Please help me to recognize that forgiveness of others is in my best interest. “Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but one who trusts in, relies on, and confidently leans on the Lord shall be compassed about with mercy and with lovingkindness. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you [uncompromisingly] righteous [you who are upright and right standing with Him]; shout for joy, all you upright in heart!” reports Psalm 32.10-11. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
We have here two very distinct moral persons, namely the government and the sovereign, and consequently two wills, one in relation to all the citizens, the other only for the members of the administration. Thus, although the government can regulate its internal administration as it chooses, it can never speak to the people except in the name of the sovereign, that is to say, in the name of the populace itself. This is something not to be forgotten. The first societies governed themselves aristocratically. The leaders of families deliberated among themselves about public affairs. Young people deferred without difficulty to the authority of experience. This is the origin of the words priests, ancients, senate and elders. The natives of North America still govern themselves that way to this day, and are very well governed. However, to the extent that inequality, wealth or power was preferred to age, and aristocracy became elective. Finally, the transmission of the father’s power, together with his goods, to his children created patrician families; the government was made hereditary, and we know of senators who were only twenty years old. There are therefore three sorts of aristocracy: natural, elective and hereditary. The first is suited only to some people; the third is the worst of any government. The second is the best; it is aristocracy properly so-called. In addition to the advantage of the distinction between the two powers, aristocracy has that of the choice of its members. For in popular government all the citizens are born magistrates; however, this type of government limits them to a small number, and they become magistrate only through elections, a means by which probity, enlightenment, experience, and all the other reasons for public preference and esteem are so many new guarantees of being well governed. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Furthermore, assemblies are more conveniently held, public business better discussed and carried out with more orderliness and diligence, the reputation of the state is better sustained abroad by venerable senators than by a multitude that is unknown or despised. In a word, it is the best and most natural order for the wisest to govern the multitude, when it is certain that they will govern for its profit and not for their own. There is no need for multiplying devices uselessly or for doing with twenty thousand men what one hundred hand-picked men can do even better. However, it must be noted here that the corporate interest begins to direct the public force in less strict a conformity with the rule of the general will, and that another inevitable tendency removes from the laws a part of the executive power. With regard to the circumstances that are specifically suitable, a state must not be so small, nor its people so simple and upright, as is the case in a good democracy. Now must a nation be so large that the leaders, scattered about in order to govern it, can each play the sovereign in one’s own department, and begin by making themselves independent in order finally to become masters. However, if aristocracy requires somewhat fewer virtutes than popular government, it also demands others that are proper to it, such as moderation among wealthy and contentment among the poor. For it appears that rigorous equality would be out of place here. It was not observed even in Sparta. Moreover, if this form of government carries with it a certain inequality of fortune, this is simply in order that in general the administration of public business may be entrusted to those who are best able to give all their time to it, but not, as Aristotle claims, in order that the rich may always be given preference. On the contrary, it is important that an opposite choice should occasionally teach people that more important reasons for preference are to be found in a man’s merit than in one’s wealth. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Neither is our image of evolution—or, for that matter, evolution itself what it used to be. Biologist, archaeologist, and anthropologists, attempting to unravel the mysteries of evolution, similarly find themselves in a bigger and more complex World than previously imagined and are discovering that laws once regarded as universal in application are actually special cases. Since Dr. Darwin, biologists have gradually developed a chart of the mechanism of evolution, called natural selection. On that basis attempts have often been made to portray all evolution—cosmic, chemical, cultural, ideological, social—as governed by a similar selection mechanism. However, such understandings seem doomed, inasmuch as the rules change at every plane. Even on the biological plane, rules once thought to apply across the board are in question. Thus scientists are being forced to ask whether all biological evolution is a response to variation and natural selection or whether, at the molecular level, it may depend instead on an accumulation of variations which result in “genetic drift” without the operation of Darwinian natural selection. Says Dr. Motoo Kimura of the National Institute of Genetics in Japan, evolution at the molecular level appears to be “quite incompatible with the expectations of Neo-Darwinism.” Other long held assumptions are being shaken as well. Biologist have told us that eukaryotes (human beings and most other forms of life) are ultimately descended from simpler cells called prokaryotes (among which are bacteria and algae). Fresh research is now undermining that theory, leading to the unsettling notion that the simpler life forms may have descended from the more complex. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Furthermore, evolution is supposed to favour adaptations that enhance survival. Yet we are now finding striking examples of evolutionary developments that seem to confer long-term benefit—at the cost of short-term disadvantage. Which does evolution favour? Then there is the startling news from, of all places, the Grant Park Zoon in Atlanta, where the chance mating of two species of ape with two quite different sets of chromosomes has produced the first known hybrid ape. Even though researchers are unsure whether the hybrid will be fertile, her bizarre genetics lend support to the idea that evolution may occur in leaps and bounds as well as through the accretion of small changes. Indeed, instead of seeing evolution as a smooth process, many of today’s life scientists and archaeologists are studying the “theory of catastrophes” to explain “gaps” and “jumps” in the multiple branches of the evolutionary record. Others are studying small changes that may have been amplified through feedback into sudden structural transformations. Heated controversies divide the scientific community over every one of these issues. However, all such controversies are dwarfed by a single history-changing fact. By 1957, as the first string of the Third Wave were being felt, Dr. Arthur Kornberg learned how DNA reproduced itself. Since then, as one popular summary describes the sequences “We have cracked the DNA code. We have learned how DNA transmits its instructions to the cell. We have analyzed chromosomes to determine genetic function. We have synthesized a cell. We have fused cells from two different species. We have isolated pure human genes. We have ‘mapped’ genes. We have synthesized a gene. We have changed the heredity of a cell.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Today genetic engineers in laboratories around the World are capable of creating entirely novel life forms. They have end-run evolution itself. Second Wave thinkers conceived of the human species as the culmination of a long evolutionary process; Third Wave thinkers must now face the fact that we are the designers of evolution. Evolution will never look the same. Like the concept of nature, evolution too is in the process of being drastically reconceptualized. With Second Wave ideas about the nature and evolution both changing, it is hardly surprising that we are also sharply re-evaluating Second Wave ideas about progress. The industrial period was characterized by a facile optimism that saw each scientific breakthrough or “new improved product” as evidence of an inevitable advance toward human perfection. Since the mid 19050’s, when Third Wave began battering Second Wave civilization, few ideas have taken as rough a beating as this cheery creed. The “beats” of the fifties and the hippies of the sixties made pessimism about the human condition, not optimism, a pervasive cultural theme. These movements did much to replace knee-jerk optimism with knee-jerk despair. Soon pessimism because positively chic. Hollywood movies of the 1950’s and 1960’s, for example, replaced the jut-jawed heroes of the 1930’s and 1940’s with alienated antiheroes—rebels without a cause, stylish gunmen, dope pushers with charm, angst-ridden motorcyclists, and hard, inarticulate (but soulful) punk. Life was a game nobody won. Fiction, drama, and art also took on a graveyard hopelessness in many Second Wave nations. By the early fifties, Camus had already defined the themes that countless novelists would subsequently purse. A British critic summed these up as: “Man is fallible, political theories are relative, automatic progress is a mirage.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Even science fiction, once filled with utopian adventures, turned bitter and pessimistic, generating countless poor imitations of Huxley and Orwell. Technology, instead of being portrayed as the engine of progress, increasingly appeared as a juggernaut destroying both human freedom and the physical environment. For many environmentalists, indeed, “progress” became a dirty word. Weighty volumes poured into the bookshops, bearing titles like The Stalled Society, The Coming Dark Age, In Danger of Progress, or The Death of Progress. As Second Wave society lurched into the seventies, The Club of Rome report on The Limits to Growth set a funereal tone for much of the decade that followed, with its projections of catastrophe for the industrial World. Upheavals, unemployment, and inflation intensified by the pandemic of 2020, adding to the spreading pall of pessimism and the rejection of the idea of the idea of inevitable human progress. Former Governor of California, Jerry Brown, spoke about the future being filled with “darkness and massive debt,” as he was leaving office, and the decline of the West—sending yet another frisson of fear down a good many spines. Whether such despair was, or is, justified remains for each reader to decide. One thing is clear, however: the notion of inevitable single-track progress, another pillar of indust-reality, is finding fewer takers as the start of the Fourth Wave civilization is looming close. There is fast a fast-spreading recognition around the World that progress can no longer be measure in terms of technology or material standards of living alone—that a society that is morally, aesthetically, politically, or environmentally degraded is not an advance society, no matter how rich or technically sophisticated it may be. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
In fact, we are moving toward a far more comprehensive notion of progress—progress no longer automatically achieved and no longer defined by material criteria lone. We are also less inclined to think of societies as moving along one track, each society traveling automatically from one cultural way-station to the next, one more “advanced” than another. There may be many branch lines, as it were, rather than a single roadbead, and societies may be able to achieve comprehensive development in a variety of ways. We are beginning to think of progress as the flowering of a tree with many branches extending into the future, the very variety and richness of human cultures serving as a measure. In this light, today’s shift toward a more diverse, de-massified World may itself come to be seen as an important forward leap—analogous to the tendency toward differentiation and complexity so common in biological evolution. Whatever happens next, it is unlikely that the culture will ever again return to the naïve, unilinear, Pollyannish progressivism that characterized and inspired the Second Wave era, unless we discover another planet we can live on and start over. Nonetheless, the past decades, therefore, have witnessed a forced reconceptualization of nature, evolution, and progress alike. These concepts, however, were in turn based on still more elemental ideas—our assumptions about time, space, matter, and causality. And the Third Wave is dissolving even these assumptions—the intellectual glue that held the Second Wave civilization together. So start the face with all deliberate speed, and try not to flop. Through frequent prayers and confessions and the sacred reception of Jesus Christ’s Host, we can get wind again and rejoin the race. If one does not do this or something like it soon, one will just never have the strength to stay on the course. Be partaker and heir of Eternal Glory. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
From adolescence on—the Author of Genesis knew this (8.21)—the senses of Humankind are prone to evil, and unless Divine Medicaments help, Humankind will go to the dogs; that is to say, proceed from the lesser sins to the greater. That is how Holy Communion pulls one back from evil and pushes one toward good. As long as your soul is entrapped, or enshrined in your mortal body, it travels through life as a part of Jesus Christ; that is as Paul put in in Second Corinthians (5.6). Therefore, your soul should be mindful of God Himself from time to time and receive its beloved Friend with a devout mind. Blessed is the soul that is finally prepared itself to receive Jesus Christ, the Lord God, with devotion! In return, He will fill that soul with spiritual joy! Happy is the mind that receives the Great Lord, welcomes as guest, receives a congenial companion, accepts a faithful friend, embraces a noble bachelor in front of a party of friends, a Friend of friends! May Heaven with all its pendants and Earth with all its ornaments pause in their tinkling orbits for a moment to homage to Jesus Christ, our Sweetest Friend! Whatever praise seeps or grace drips from the largesse of His Comedown, it is only spillage from His Ever-flowing Fount. As the Psalmist has sung, “There is no accounting for Your Wisdom” (147.5). Our hope in the Atonement empowers us with eternal perspective. Hope is an emotion which brings richness to our everyday lives. It is defined as “the feeling that events will turn out for the best. When we exercise hope, we look forward with desire and reasonable confidence. As such, hope brings a certain calming influence to our lives as we confidently look forward to future events. Sometimes we hope for things over which we have little or no control. We hope for good weather. We hope for an early spring. We hope our favourite sports team will win the World Cup, Super Bowl, or the World Series. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Such hopes make our lives interesting and can often lead to unusual, even superstitious behaviour. Other times our hopes can lead to dreams which can inspire us and lead us to action. If we have the hope to do better at work, that hope can be realized by dedicated work and sacrifice. If we have the hope to play on a winning team, that hope can lead to consistent practice, dedication, teamwork, and ultimately success. Hope can inspire dreams and spur us to realize those dreams. Hope alone, however, does not cause us to succeed. Many honourable hopes have gone unfulfilled, shipwrecked on the reefs of good intentions and laziness. Our hope in the Atonement empowers us with eternal perspective. Such perspective allows us to look beyond the here and now on into the promise of the eternities. We do not have to be trapped in the narrow confines of society’s fickle expectations. We are free to look forward to celestial glory, sealed to our family and loved ones. “Wherefore, there must be faith; and if there must be faith there must also be hope; and if there must be hope there must also be charity. And except ye have charity ye can in nowise be saved in the kingdom of God; neither can ye be saved in the kingdom of God if ye have not faith; neither can ye if we have no hope,” reports Moroni 10.20-21. Faith is rooted in Jesus Christ. Hope centers in the Atonement. Charity is manifest in the pure love of Christ. These three attributes are intertwined like strands in a cable and may not always be precisely distinguished. Together they become our tether to the celestial kingdom. “Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all humans,” reports 2 Nephi 31.20. This hope has lead humans through the ages to do remarkable things. It is my prayer that our hopes will lead to the fulfillment of our righteous dreams. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
I particularly pray our hope in the Atonement will strengthen our faith and charity and give us an eternal perspective of our future. May we all have this perfect brightness of hope. Lord, I come today seeking a financial breakthrough and your supernatural blessing. I know God that you are moving things and working all things together for my good. God, create an opening of your abundant supernatural supply. Break the curse of poverty and lack. And I thank You for all the blessings you have bestowed already. O Father the hem of whose garment is in the sky, whose grace falls from His glance, who gives life from the touch of one finger. O Father whose hair is the willow, whose breath is the riversong, who lopes through the milky way, baying, stars going out, O Lord whose deathshead holds a thousand eyes eye socket black imploded stars, who trails frail as a northern virgin on the mist, O Lord flying your bright drops to us, emblems of your love, throw your green scarf on the battered Earth once more. O smile, disrobe for us, unveil your eyes. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the holy king. We sanctify Thy name on Earth even as it is sanctified in the Heavens above, as described in the vision of Thy prophet: And the seraphim called one unto another saying: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole Earth is full of His glory. Whereupon the angles declare; Blessed be the glory of God from His Heavenly abode. And as it is written in the holy Scripture: The Lord shall reign forever; Thy God, O Zion, shall be Sovereign unto all generations. Hallelujah! Unto all generations we will declare Thy greatness and to all eternity we will proclaim Thy holiness. Our mouth shall ever speak Thy praise, O our God, for Thou art a great and holy God and King. Blessed Art Thou, O Lord, the holy God. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the holy King. Thou endowest humans with knowledge and teachest mortal humans understanding. O great us knowledge, understanding, and discernment. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who bestowest knowledge upon humans. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Do Not Leave Me. See How Hard I am Trying! Are I Not Cute?
If you want something from an audience, you give blood to their fantasies. It is the ultimate hustle. As 1800 approached, the treatment of people with mental disorders began to improve once again. Historians usually point to La Bicetre, and asylum in Paris for male patients, as the first site of asylum reform. In 1793, during the French Revolution, Philippe Pinel (1745-1826) was named the chief physician there. He argued that the patients were sick people whose illness should be treated with sympathy and kindness rather than chains and beatings. He unchained them and allowed them to move freely about the hospital grounds, replaced the dark dungeons with sunny, well-ventilated rooms, and offered support and advice. Dr. Pinel’s approach proved remarkably successful. Patients who had been shut away for decades were now enjoying fresh air and sunlight and being treated with dignity. Many improved greatly over a short period of time and were released. Dr. Pinel later brought similar reforms to a mental hospital in Paris, France for female patients, La Salpetriere. Jean Esquirol (1772-1840), Dr. Pinel’s student and successor, went on to help establish 10 new mental hospitals that operated on the same principles. Meanwhile an English Quaker named William Tuke (1732-1819) was bringing similar reforms to northern England. In 1796 he founded the York Retreat, a rural estate where about 30 mental patients lived as guests in quiet country houses and were treated with a combination of rest, talk, prayer, and manual work. “For God has done what the Law could not do, [its power] being weakened by the flesh [the entire nature of man without the Holy Spirit]. Sending His own Son in the guise of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, [God] condemned sin in the flesh [subdued, overcame, deprived it of its power over all who accept that sacrifice],” reports Romans 8.3. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
The spread of moral treatment—the methods of Dr. Pinel and Mr. Tuke, called spectful techniques, caught on throughout Europe and the United States of America. Patients with psychological problems were increasingly perceived as potentially productive human beings whose mental functioning had broken down under stress. They were considered deserving of individual care, including discussions of their problems, useful activities, work, companionship, and quiet. The person most responsible for the early spread of moral treatment in the United States of America was Benjamin Rush (1745-1813), an eminent physician at Pennsylvania Hospital. Limiting his practice to mental illness, Dr. Rush developed innovative, humane approaches to treatment. For example, he required that the hospital hire intelligent and sensitive attendant to work closely with patients, reading and talking to them and taking them on regular walks. He also suggested that it would be therapeutic for doctors to give small gifts to their patients now and then. Dr. Rush, widely considered the father of American psychiatry, also wrote the first American treatise on mental illness and organized the first American course in psychiatry. Dr. Rush’s work was influential, but it was a Boston Schoolteacher named Dorothea Dix (1802-1887) who made humane care a public and political concern in the United States of America. In 1841 Mrs. Dix had gone to teach Sunday school at a local prison and been shocked by the conditions she saw there. Before long, her interest in prison conditions broadened to include the plight of poor and mentally ill people throughout the country. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
A powerful campaigner, Mrs. Dix went from state legislature to state legislature speaking of the horrors she had observed and calling for reform. Similarly, she told the Congress of the United States of America that mentally ill people across the country were still being “bound with galling chains, bowed beneath fetters and heavy iron balls attached to drag chains, lacerated with ropes, scourged with rods and terrified beneath storms of execration and cruel blows.” From 1841 until 1881, Mrs. Dix fought for new laws and greater government funding to improve the treatment of people with mental disorders. Each state was made responsible for developing effective public mental hospitals. Mrs. Dix personally helped established 32 of these state hospitals (state-run public mental institutions in the United States of America), all intended to offer moral treatment. Similar hospitals were established throughout Europe. The Decline of moral treatment—as we have observed, the treatment of abnormality has followed a crooked path. Over and over again, relative progress has been followed by serious decline. Viewed in this context, it is not surprising that the moral treatment movement began to decline toward the end of the nineteenth century. Several factors were responsible. One was the speed with which the moral movement had spread. As mental hospitals multiplied, severe money and staffing shortages developed, recovery rates declined, and overcrowding in the hospitals became a major problem. Under such conditions it was often impossible to provide individual care and genuine concern. Another factor was the assumption behind moral treatment that if treated with humanity and dignity, all patients could be cured. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
For some, being treated with compassion and respect was indeed sufficient. Others, however, needed more effective treatments than any that had yet been developed. Many of these people remained hospitalized until they died. An additional factor contributing to the decline of moral treatment was the emergence of a new wave of prejudice against people with mental disorders. As more and more patients disappeared into large distant mental hospitals, the public came to view them as strange and dangerous. In turn, people were less open-handed when it came to making donations or allocating government funds. Moreover, many of the patients entering public mental hospitals in the United States of America in the late nineteenth century were impoverished foreign immigrants, whom the public had little interest in helping. By the early years of the twentieth century, the moral treatment movement had ground to a halt in both the United States of America and Europe. Public mental hospitals were providing only custodial care and ineffective medical treatments and were becoming more overcrowded every year. Long-term hospitalization became the rule once again. Beware of the evil eye—a number of demonological explanations for abnormal behaviour continue in today’s World. In rural Pakistan, for example, many parents apply special makeup around the eyes of their young children, as their ancestors have done for centuries. A paste of hazelnut powder and several oils, known as surma, is applied partly to protect the eyes from the smoke given off by home heating fires and partly to cool and clean the eyes. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
However, another less acknowledged reason is to ward off nazar, the “evil eye,” thought to be responsible for the many deaths among the infants and for poor health and behavioural problems in those who survive. The American Psychiatric Association recognizes two distinct subtypes of eating disorders: anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. Obesity is currently considered more of a medical condition than a mental health problem. The defining features of anorexia nervosa include a refusal to maintain a normal body weight, an intense fear of gaining weight, and a disturbance in body image and perception. Bulimia nervosa is defined by recurrent episodes of uncontrolled binge eating, inappropriate compensatory behaviours to control weight gain (exempli gratia, self-induced vomiting, misuse of laxatives or diuretics), and an undue influence of body shape and weight on self-evaluations. A chief difference between the two disorders is that individuals with bulimia nervosa are able to maintain their body weight at or above normally prescribed levels, whereas those with anorexia nervosa have a body weight below 85 percent of what is expected. Similar to depression and alcoholism, eating disorders, especially anorexia nervosa, have a lethal component. The long-term mortality for those afflicted with anorexia nervosa is estimated to be over 10 percent. The standardizes mortality ratio (observed mortality divided by expected mortality) for people with eating disorders is 3.6 for people under 20 years of age, 9.9 for those aged 20-29, and 5.7 for those over age 30. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
Among females, the lifetime prevalence of anorexia nervosa has been estimated at 0.5 percent, and 1.3 percent for bulimia nervosa. The descriptions of these disorders in the DSM-VI-TR (American Psychiatric Association, 2023). The description of these disorders in the DSM-VI-TR (American Psychiatric Association, 2023) contain references to interpersonal problems. Associated features of anorexia nervosa include social withdrawal and lessened interest in pleasures of the flesh; episodes of binge eating associated with bulimia nervosa are often triggered by interpersonal stressors. Research on interpersonal relationships and eating disorders has been typical of the work on interpersonal relationships and mental healthy more generally. The recognition of some type of relational difficulty associated with the disorder predates current investigations by at least a century and a quarter. One of Lasegue’s more notable contributions was the suggestion of “prentectomy”—hospitalization of the patients to remove them from exacerbating parental forces. Family-of-origin relationships in particular have been a focal point in this line of work. Finally, the proliferation of studies on this associated feature of eating disorders has been particularly evident over the past 50 years. In one longitudinal investigation, patients diagnosed with anorexia nervosa were followed for a period of 5 years. Among the most notable features of those who did not recover over the course of the investigation (53 percent) were unsatisfactory family-of-origin relationships and problems with making personal contacts outside the family. Findings such as these are suggestive of the important role played by social relationships in the course of the disorder. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
As noted above, research emanating from the interpersonal paradigm has sought to understand eating disorders largely through a focus on family-of-origin experiences. Extreme levels of family adaptability and cohesion, family expressed emotion (EE), inappropriate parental pressure, low parental care, parental overinvolvement, sexual abuse, and battles for control are dominant themes in the family histories of people with eating disorders. Some models and theories suggest that these family-of-origin processes play a critical role in the development of these disorders. Some problems with interpersonal communication may be secondary to these pathological family processes. In particular, there is some evidence linked childhood sexual abuse to a failure to develop adequate social skills, which in turn contributes to the development of eating disorders. Recent studies on the general personal relationships of people with eating disorders are also suggestive of interpersonal difficulties. Interpersonal rejection and distressed personal relationships are common problems in this population. Findings on family-of-origin experiences show that among those who are married, there is a strong association between eating disorders and marital distress. Like so many other psychological problems, eating disorders are situated in a network of other psychological problems with which they coexist, such as depression, borderline personality disorder (BPD), substance use disorders, and anxiety disorders. In the family-of-orientation experiences in eating disorders, there are family process variables. There is a dysfunctional interaction pattern among families of patients with anorexia nervosa. The interaction in these families often minimized conflict, with a rigid, nonadaptable style. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
These interactions were argued to be entwined with the symptoms of the disorder. Other family systems researchers and clinicians also saw eating disorders as built into and around family relations. Significant others usually interact with the bulimic in ways that exaggerate relationship characteristics that were present, but in a more subtle form, before the bulimia was revealed. The bulimia becomes a symptom around which the whole family revolves. While it may appear to be the individual’s problem, bulimia is a signal that the environment is not meeting one’s needs. In a family system perspective, disordered eating is understood to be caused and maintained by a family’s interpersonal behaviour, which itself is assumed to be influenced by the disordered eating of one of its members. Family process variables continue to receive a great deal of attention from those who seek to explain the origins and course of eating disorders. Examples of this can be found in the investigations on family cohesion and family adaptability. System-oriented researchers have emphasized these variables as two dimensions of family relationships that are crucial to healthy family functioning, provided that neither one is too extreme. Multiple studies indicate that eating disorders are associated with perceptions of low family cohesion. Although this finding has been relatively stable across child and parent reports, children with eating disorders give lower ratings of their families’ cohesiveness than their parents do. Generally, daughters’ ratings of family interaction have more diagnostic utility for predicting their eating disorders than mothers’ and especially fathers’ ratings do. Regardless of which family member’s perception is actually “correct,” the fact that a parent and a child with an eating disorder differ in their view of the family’s cohesiveness is perhaps itself diagnostically significant. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
Investigations of family adaptability have yielded less consistent results than those of cohesion. Some evidence indicates a negative association between family adaptability and symptoms of eating disorders. However, a study found more chaos, less organization, and more poorly defined boundaries in the family, all suggestive of pathologically high level of adaptability, among patients with eating disorders. In most studies, the families appeared to be extreme in their adaptability (either too much or too little) indicating potentially detrimental family relations. As in schizophrenia, family EE is emerging as an important family process variable in eating disorders. Investigation indicated that aspects of maternal EE during the interactions of patients with eating disorders and their families explained 28-34 percent of the variance in the patients’ eventual outcome and response to therapy. The extent to which mothers made openly critical comments during family interaction assessment was a stronger predictor of patients’ outcomes than a host of other impressive predictors, such as premorbid body weight, duration of illness, body mass index, and age at onset. Inappropriate parental pressure is a phenomenon that may be particularly prominent in families of people with eating disorders. When compared to both psychiatric controls and nonpsychiatric controls, one sample of patients with eating disorders experienced excessive pressure from parents. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
This phenomenon is described as “gender-inappropriate pressure, age-inappropriate pressure, and inappropriate to the child’s abilities…the adolescents felt that they had been forced into an exaggerated feminine style of behaviour, that their parents had discussed topis (such as parental pleasures of the flesh) before the adolescents were prepared to deal with such subjects, and that the adolescents had been made to engage in activities which reflected their parents’ ambitions rather than their own. This leaves an adolescent in a state of conflict between premature exposure to the World of adults and anxiety over what is involved in that World, such as sexuality and high levels of achievement. Perhaps by exerting control over their own eating, adolescents may gain some feeling of mastery or control over this conflict. The families of patients with eating disorders identified four mechanisms by which family members contributed to the eating disorders, two of which are indicative of inappropriate parental pressure: high emphasis on achievement/perfection and overconcern with beauty/appearance/thinness. In American society, it is easy to locate very young children involved in competitive activities such as gymnastics, figure skating, ballet, and beauty contests. When 3- and 4- year-olds are seriously involved in such endeavours, it is difficult to avoid wondering about whose ambition is being pursued. In cases where the motivation come largely from the parents, and where the activity places an emphasis on physical appearance, the risk for later development of eating disorders is serious. Excessive parental pressure may also engender a sense of perfectionism among children. Perfectionism involves both self-oriented aspects (expecting the self to be perfect) and socially prescribed aspects (perceiving that other expect perfection). #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
Perfectionism has proven to be a risk factor for bulimia nervosa, particularly for women who are otherwise low in self-esteem. By pressuring their children to achieve, parents may inadvertently convey the attitude that anything less than “perfect” is a failure. Children who harbour such an attitude, and then perceive that they are not meeting some perfect standard of weight or body image, may engage in binge eating as an escape response to their painful self-awareness, which is then corrected with purging. Other family process variable that have been implicated in eating disorders include disturbed affective expression, low levels of family communication, lack of parental care, excessive parental overprotectiveness and intrusiveness, and excessive parental control. This last variable has particular significance, in that that symptoms of eating disorders may be overt manifestations of a struggle for control. Particularly among women with eating disorders and a history of sexual abuse, an external locus of control (id est, feeling little personal control over one’s fate) is common. Although the struggle for control may originally be with the parents, there is no reason to believe that it may extend to others with whom such women are in relationships. The rather paradoxical nature of some of these family processes in eating disorders is nicely illustrated. It was found that parents of patients with anorexia nervosa were simultaneously more nurturing and comforting, but also more ignoring and neglecting of their daughters, than were parents of either healthy controls or patients with bulimia nervosa. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
In contrast, the patients with bulimia nervosa and their parents showed signs of hostile enmeshment. These mixed messages create ambivalence about separation for daughters with anorexia nervosa. “Yet amid all these things we are more than conquerors and gain a surpassing victory through Him Who loved us. For I am persuaded beyond doubt (am sure) that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things impending and threatening nor things to come, nor powers, nor height not depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord,” reports Romans 8.37-39. We all make mistakes, but God does not disqualify us simply because we have failed. He is the God of forgiveness. Even if you have missed your journey, God will always find a way to get you to a position of success. Some people have made some serious mistakes; they have done some things that were not the best for their life, and now they are living in guilt, condemnation, or with a sense of disqualification and disappointment and disillusionment. Several individuals feel they are in a trap house. The way to escape the trap house and trap spouse is to seek and receive God’s mercy and forgiveness, and move on with one’s life. Let go of the condemnation of the past mistakes. Seek God’s forgiveness, pick up the pieces and move on. God still have a great future for you. Keep on striving for success, continue, expect, endure in the face of opposition. Be persistent. Do not leave until you receive. Be just that stubborn about things that are significance to you, as long as it is safe and a rational desire. Have a persistent faith. True faith asks and receives. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
Persistent faith is faith that receives or takes from God. Faith takes This is what Jesus Christ is telling us. “Ask once and you receive.” That is consistent with Jesus’ teaching on prayer. Receive and keep on receiving every time you ask. If you child asks you for food, you would it to him or her. You would not make one ask a hundred more times, then change your mind The enemy would like for you to believe that is what God is like. That kind of thinking will lead one into error and hold one in bondage. The adversary wants to twist the Word and distort your image of God. Jesus Christ said, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh recieiveth.” Jesus Christ said it, ad you can be sure Jesus meant what He said. Father, today I receive Your mercy and forgiveness. Despite my past, I believe You still have great things in store for me. Teach me how to shake off disappointment, guilt, or condemnation and live today in an attitude of faith. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness,” reports 1 John 1.9. The intellect, uncontrolled by intuition and unguided by revelation, has spawned the two great masters of our time—Science holding the atom bomb and Communism holding the revolution. Science, which is the last century promised so much, gave us the terrible problem of atomic war instead. Its ardent advocates pointed at it only yesterday as the road to our salvation. Today it has become the road to our destruction. This is not to say that it was a false light, but that we mistook its proper place and claimed too much for its human possibilities. We let it run away with us and our religion. We lost ourselves and our bearings. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
The atom bomb made us regard Nature as self-operative in a solely mechanical way. It left life on Earth without spiritual meaning, without moral purpose. Communism is another Heaven-promising panacea which has helped to make this Earth a little hell. If it accepts the leadership of humans, such as Communists, who regard conscience as a disease, there can be no worthwhile future for humanity. The Communist insensibility in practice to human suffering accords ill with its vaunted idealism in theory. Communism’s twisted ethic of wild hatred, its hard cruel face, its blind slavish obedience to a brutal organization which cares more for itself than for the workers it was supposed to save, its insane preachments against religion and denial of life beyond matter, have brought enough suffering to makes claims sound absurdly exaggerated. However, the intellectual movement which produced Science and the social movement which produced Communism will not continue unchecked. They are approaching the utmost limit possible. The violent materialism for which they are responsible will culminate in the next Armageddon, which will not only end them, but also end the epoch itself. In order to lay out the general cause of the difference, a distinction has to be made here between the prince and the government. The body of the magistrates can be made up of a larger or smaller number of members. We have said that the ratio of the sovereign to the subjects was greater in proportion as the populace was more numerous, and by a manifest analogy we can say the same thing about the government in relation to the magistrates. Since the total force of the government is always that of the state, it does not vary. Whence it follows that the more of this force it uses on its own members, the less that is left to it for acting on the whole populace. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
Therefore, the more numerous the magistrates, the weaker the government. Since this maxim is fundamental, let us attempt to explain it more clearly. We can distinguish in the person of the magistrate three essentially different wills. First, the individual’s own will, which tends only to its own advantage. Second, the common will of the magistrates which is uniquely related to the advantage of the price. This latter can be called the corporate will, and is general in relation to the government, and particular in relation to the state, of which the government form a part. Third, the will of the people or the sovereign will, which is general both in relation to the state considered as the whole and in relation to the government considered as part of the whole. In a perfect act of legislation, the private or individual will should be nonexistent; the corporate power will proper to the government should be very subordinate; and consequently the general or sovereign will should always be dominant and the unique rule of all the others. According to the natural order, on the contrary, these various wills become more active in proportion as they are the more concentrated. Thus the general will is always the weakest, the corporate will has second place, and the private will is first of all, so that in the government each member is first oneself, then a magistrate, and then a citizen—a gradation directly opposite to the one required by the social order. Granting this, let us suppose the entire government is in the hands of one single human. In that case the private will and the corporate will are perfectly united, and consequently the latter is at the highest degree of intensity it can reach. However, since the use of force is dependent upon the degree of will, and since the absolute force of the government does not vary one bit, it follows that the most active of governments is that of one single human. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
On the other hand, let us suppose we are uniting the government to the legislative authority. Let us make the sovereign the prince and all the citizens that many magistrates. Then the corporate will, confused with the general will, will have no more activity than the latter, and will leave the private will all its force. Thus the government, always with the same absolute force, will have it minimum relative force or activity. These relationships are incontestable, and there are still other considerations that serve to confirm them. We see, for example, that each magistrate is more active in one’s body than each citizen is in one’s, and consequently that the private will has much more influence on the acts of the government than on those of the sovereign. For each magistrate is nearly always charged with the responsibility for some function of government, whereas each citizen, taken by oneself, exercises no function of sovereignty. Moreover, the more the state is extended, the more its real force increases, although it does not increase in proportion to its size. However, if the state remains the same, the magistrates may well be multiplied without the government acquiring any greater real force, since this force is that of the state, whose size is always equal. Thus the relative force or activity of the government diminishes without its absolute or real force being able to increase. It is also certain that the execution of public business becomes slower in proportion as more people are charged with the responsibility for it; that in attaching too much importance to prudence, too little importance is attached to fortune, opportunities are missed, and the fruits of deliberation are often lost by dint of deliberation. I have just proved that the government becomes slack in proportion as the magistrates are multiplied; and I have previously proved that the more numerous the people, the greater should be the increase of repressive force. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
Whence it follows that the ratio of the magistrate to the government should be the inverse of the ratio of the subjects to the sovereign; that is to say, the more the state increases in size, the more the government should shrink, so that the number of leaders decreases in proportion to the number of people. I should add that I am speaking here only about the relative force of the government and not about its rectitude. For, on the contrary, the more numerous the magistrates, the more closely the corporate will approaches the general will, whereas under a single magistrate, the same corporate will is, as I have said, merely a particular will thus what can be gained on the one hand is lost on the other, and the art of the legislator is to know how to determine the point at which the government’s will and force, always in a reciprocal proportion, are combined in the relationship that is most advantageous to the state. What has gone almost unnoticed is not merely a change in the patterns of participation in the market but, even more fundamentally, the completion of the entire historical process of market-building. This turning point is so revolutionary in its implications, yet so subtle, that capitalist and Marxist thinkers alike, lost in their Second Wave polemics, have scarcely noticed its signs. It fits into neither of their theories and thus has remained undetectably by them. The human race has been busy constructing a Worldwide exchange network—a market—for at least 10,000 years. In the past 360 years, ever since the Second Wave began, this process has roared forward at very high speed. Second Wave civilization “marketized” the World. Today—at the very moment when prosuming begins to rise again—this process is coming to and end. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
The immense historical meaning of this cannot be appreciated unless we are clear about what a market exchange network is. It helps to imagine it as a pipeline. When the industrial revolution burst forth on the Earth, launching the Second Wave, very few people on the planet were tired into the money system. Trade existed but only the peripheries of society were touched by it. The various networks of jobbers, distributors, wholesalers, retailers, bankers, and other elements of the trade system were small and rudimentary—providing only a few narrow pipelines through which goods and money might flow. For 360 years we poured Earth-cracking energies into building this pipeline. In was accomplished in three ways. First the merchants and mercenaries of the Second Wave civilization spread around the globe, inviting or coercing new populations to enter the market—to produce more and prosume less. Self-sufficient African tribesmen were induced or compelled to grow cash crops and dig copper. Asian who once grew their own food were put to work on plantation instead, trapping rubber trees to put tires on automobiles. Latin Americas began growing coffee for ale in Europe and the Untied States of America. With each such development the pipeline was built or further elaborated and more and more populations drawn into dependence on it. The second way in which the market expanded was through the increasing “commoditization” of life. Not only were larger populations enmeshed in the market but more and more goods and services were designed for the market, requiring a continual enlargement of the “channel capacity” of the system—a widening, as it were, of the diameter of the pipes. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
Finally, the market expanded in another way. As society and the economy grew more complex, the number of transactions required for, say, a single bar of soap to pass from producer to consumer multiplied. The more intermediaries, the more ramified the maze of channels or pipes became. This growing elaborateness of the system was itself a form of further development, like the addition of still more special tubes and values to a pipeline. Today all these forms of market expansion are reaching their outer limits. Few populations still remain to be brought into the market. Only a handful of the remotest people remain untouched by the market. Even the hundreds of millions of subsistence farmers in poor countries are at least partially integrated into the market and the accompanying money system. What remains, therefore, is a mopping-up operation at best. The market can no longer expand by engulfing vast new populations. The second form of expansion is still at least theoretically possible. With imagination, we can still, no doubt, think up additional services or goods to sell or barter. However, it is precisely here that the rise of the prosumer becomes significant. The relationships between Sector A and Sector B are complex, and many of the activities of prosumers depend on the purchase of materials or tools from the market. However, the rise of self-help, in particular, and the de-marketization of many goods and services suggests that here, too, the end of the process of marketization may be insight. Lastly, the increasing elaborateness of the “pipeline”—the growing complexity of distribution, the interpolation of more and more middlemen—also appears to be reaching a point of no return. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
The costs of exchange itself, even as conventionally measured, are now outrunning the costs of material production in many fields. At some point this process reaches a limit. Computers, meanwhile, and the emergence of a prosumer-activated technology both point to smaller inventories and simplified, rather than more complex chains of distribution. Once again, therefore, the evidence points to the end of the process of marketization, if not in our time, then soon after. If our “pipeline project” is nearing completion, what might this mean for our work, our values, and our psyches? A market, after all, does not consist of the steal or shoes or cotton or canned food that flows through it. The market is the structure through which such goods and services are routed. Moreover, it is not simply an economic structure. It is a way of organizing people, a way of thinking, an ethos, and a shared set of expectations (exempli gratia, the expectation that goods purchased will indeed be delivered). The market is thus as much a psychosocial structure as an economic reality. And its effects far transcend economics. By systematically interrelating billions of people to one another, the market produced a World in which no one had independent control over one’s destiny—no person, no nation, no culture. It brought with it the belief that economics and economic motivation were the primary forces in human life. It fostered a view of life as a succession of contractual transactions, and of society as bound together by the “marriage contract” or the “social contract.” Marketization thus shaped the thoughts and values, as well as the actions, of billions and set the tone of Second Wave civilization. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
It took an enormous investment of time, energy, capital, culture, and raw materials to create a situation in which a purchasing agent in South Carolina could do business with an unseen and unknown clerk in South Korea—each with one’s own abacus or computer, each with an internalized image of the market, each with a set of expectations about the other, each performing certain predictable acts because both have been life-trained to play certain prespecified roles, each part of a giant global system involving millions, indeed billions, of others. One might plausibly argue that the construction of this elaborate structure of human relationships, and its explosive diffusion around the planet, was the single most impressive achievement of Second Wave civilization, dwarfing even its spectacular technological achievements. The step-by-step creation of this essentially sociocultural and psychological structure for exchange (quite apart from the torrent of goods and services that flowed through it) can be likened to the building of the Egyptian pyramids, the Roman aqueducts, the Great Wall of China, and the medieval cathedrals, combined and multiplied a thousandfold. This grandest construction project of all history, the laying into place of the tubes and channels through which much of the economic life of civilization pulsed and flowed, gave Second Wave civilization everywhere its inner dynamism and propulsive thrust. Indeed, if this now dying civilization can be said to have had a mission at all, it was to marketize the World. Today that mission is almost fulfilled. The heroic age of market-building is over—to be replaced by a new phase in which we merely maintain, renovate, and update pipeline. We will undoubtedly have to redesign important pieced of it to accommodate radically increased flows of information #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
The system will increasingly depend on electronics, biology and new social technologies. This, too, will no doubt require resources, imagination, and capital. However, compared with the exhausting effort of Second Wave marketization, this renewal program will absorb a far smaller fraction of our time, energy, capital, and imagination. It will use less, not more, hardware and fewer, not more people than the original process of construction. However complex conversion process to be, marketization will fail to be the central project of the civilization. More and more people are seeking intimacy, personality, and humanity. The Third Wave is therefore producing history’s first “transmarket” civilization. By trans-market I do not mean a civilization without exchange networks—a World thrown back into small, isolated, completely self-sufficient communities unable or unwilling to trade with one another. I do not mean a move backward. By “trans-market” I mean a civilization that is dependent on the market but is no longer consumed by the need to build, extend, elaborate, and integrate this structure. A civilization able to move on to a new agenda—precisely because the market has already been laid in place. And just as no one living in the sixteenth century could have imagined how the growth of the market would change the World’s agenda in terms of technology, politics, religion, art, social life, law, marriage, or personality development—so too it is extremely difficult for us today to envision the long-range effects of the end of marketization Yet these are likely to radiate into every cranny of our children’s lives, if not our own. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
The marketization project exacted a price. Even in purely economic terms this price was enormous. As the productivity of the human race rose during the past three hundred years, a significant part of that productivity—in both sectors—was set aside and allocated to the market-building project. With the basic construction task now virtually complete, the enormous energies previously poured into building the World market system become available for other human purposes. From this fact alone will flow a limitless array of civilization changes. New religions will be born. Works of art on a hitherto unimagined scale. Fantastic scientific advances. And, above all, wholly new kinds of social and political institutions. What is at stake today is more than capitalism or socialism, more than energy, food, population, capital, raw material, or jobs; what is at stake is the role of the market in our lives and the future of civilization itself. This, at its core is what the rise of the prosumer is about. Change in the deep-structure of the economy is part of the same wave of interrelated changes now striking our energy base, our technology, or information system, and our family and business institutions. These are intertwined, in turn with the way we view the World. And in this sphere, too, we are undergoing an historic upheaval. For the entire World view of industrial civilization—indust-reality—is not being revolutionized. Excerpt from an article in a Czech magazine on contemporary Czech literature: “Those ideals which were formerly given to the World by prophets of religion, headed by Jesus the Nazarene, are now practically applied by scientific socialists beginning with Karl Marx.” Such is the plausible self-deception into which so many intellectuals have fallen. This quotation shows a grave lack of understanding of religion, of the prophets, and especially of Jesus. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
This distance between the Nazarene and the author of the First Communist Manifesto is not merely horizontal, it is vertical. The two men stand on different levels, belong to different Worlds. The presence of hatred as one of its animating ingredients is a moral disadvantage to any social movement. This is one reason why modern Communism is built on an unsure foundation. From the Center Galactic Source which is everywhere at once, may everything be known as the light of mutual love. O Hidden Life vibrant in every atom; O Hidden Light! shining in every creature; O Hidden Love! embracing all in Oneness; may each who feels oneself as one with Thee, know one is also one with every other. Magnified and sanctified be the name of God throughout the World which He hath created according to His will. May He establish His kingdom during the days of your life and during the life of all the house of America, speedily, yea, soon; and say ye, Amen. May His great name be blessed for ever and ever. Exalted and honoured be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, whose glory transcends, yea, is beyond all praises, hymns, and blessings that humans can render unto Him; and say ye, Amen. When I call upon the Lord, ascribe greatness unto our God. O Lord, open Thou my lips and my mouth shall declare Thy praise. Praised art Thou, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, mighty, revered and exalted God. Thou bestowest lovingkindness and possessest all things. Mindful of the patriarchs’ love for Thee, Thou wilt in Thy love bring a redeemer to their children’s children for the sake of Thy name. Remember us unto life, O King who delightest in life, and inscribe us in the Book of Life so that we may live worthily for Thy sake, O Lord of life. O King, Thou Helper, Redeemer and Shield, be Thou praised, O Lord, Shield of Abraham. Thou, O Lord, art mighty forever. Thou callest the dead to immortal life for Thou art mighty in deliverance. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
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Rancho Cordova, CA |
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See What a Big Heart I Have? God, See How Good I am? See How Much You Need Me?
Believe it or not, the focus on mental health has been around as long as human beings. It is not a new science, but an evolving science. In fact, in the Stone Age, doctors had methods for treating mental disorders. And before the American Revolution, only 10 percent of the 3,5000 doctors in the country had any formal training. Fewer than 5 percent had medical degrees. As of the year 2021, there are nearly 1 million physicians in the United States of American, and approximately 650,000 are active. If you think about it, that is a relatively small number. By the 1970s exorcism had all but disappeared from Western culture. Then in 1973, the enormously popular book and movie The Exorcist spurred an onslaught of books and movies on demonic possession, and public interest in this kind of intervention increased dramatically. Since then, numerous evangelical ministers and charismatics have declared themselves exorcists and performed exorcisms on people with behavioural disturbances. In most such instances, the person’s problems have failed to respond to a conventional intervention such as psychotherapy or drug therapy. Typically, the exorcist blesses the person who is thought to be possessed, recites passages from the Bible, and commands the evil spirits to leave the body. Often a support group is present to pray for the person while one cries out and perhaps even thrashes on the floor, regurgitates, or flails out. During the 1900s, the techniques used by some contemporary exorcists seemed to grow more extreme, at times dangerous. The media reported cases of death by exorcism; a New York mother accidentally smothered her teenage daughter during one such procedure and a Rhode Island man jammed steel crosses down his mother-in-law’s throat. In addition, a growing number of priests began to perform spiritual cleansing ceremonies not sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church. By 2020, hundred of exorcists, from evangelical ministers and charismatics to unsanctioned priests, were performing a wide variety of exorcisms in the United State of America. Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto proesidium. Imperet Illi Deus, supplices deprecamur: tuque, princepes militioe coelestis, Satanam aliosque spiritus malignos, qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo, divina virtue. In infernum detrude. Amen. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
In order to regulate this growing field, both within and outside the church, and to ensure more acceptable procedures, the Roman Catholic church in the United States of America has become more actively involved in exorcisms during the past decade. The number of full-time exorcists formally appointed by the church increased from 1 in 1990 to 250 in 2020. Over the past several years, these officials have investigated and evaluated hundreds of cases in which individuals or their relatives or priests have sought exorcisms, determining in each case whether exorcism is appropriate. In 1999 the church issued a revised Catholic rite of exorcism for the first time since 1614, establishing rules to be followed in making such decisions and in the exorcisms themselves. For example, a church exorcism can take place only after the church-approved exorcist consults with physicians to rule out mental or physical disorders. Also church exorcism must be approved by a bishop. As a result of such rules and procedures, only a small number of potential cases actually result in church-approved exorcisms. Even a small number of exorcisms, however, is excessive in the eyes of many mental health professionals. They argue that one can never totally rule out and physical causes in cases of abnormal functioning and that exorcism—even those that are carefully selected and conducted—divert attention from more accurate explanations of abnormal behaviour and more appropriate interventions. Given its long history and deep roots, this debate is not likely to be settled in the near future. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
Now, reflecting on the Middle Ages (from the 5th century to the late 15th century), when they drew to a close, demonology and its methods began to lose favour. Towns throughout Europe grew into cities, and municipal authorities gained more power and took over nonreligious activities. Among their other responsibilities, they began to run hospitals and direct the care of people suffering from mental disorders. Medical views of abnormality gained favour once again. When lunacy trials were heled in the late thirteenth-century England to determine the sanity of certain persons, it was not unusual for natural causes, such as a “blow to the head” or “fear of one’s father,” to be held responsibility for an individual’s unusual behaviour. During these same years, many people with psychological disturbances received treatment in medical hospitals. The Trinity Hospital in England, for example, was established to treat “madness,” among other kinds of illnesses, and keep the mad “safe until they are restored to reason.” During the early part of the Renaissance, a period of flourishing cultural and scientific activity (about 1400-1700), demonological views of abnormality continued to decline. The German physician Johann Weyer (151501588), the first physician to specialize in mental illness, believed that the mind was as susceptible to sickness as the body. He is now considered the founder of the modern study of psychopathology. The care of people with mental disorders continued to improve in this atmosphere. In England such individuals might be kept at home while their families were aided financially by the local parish. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
Across Europe religious shrines were devoted to the humane and loving treatment of people with mental disorders. The best known of these shrines was actually established centuries earlier at Gheel in Belgium, but beginning in the fifteenth century, people came to it from all over the World for psychic healing. Local residents welcomed these pilgrims into their homes, and many stayed on to form the World’s first “colony” of mental patients. Gheel was the forerunner of today’s community mental healthy programs, and it continues to demonstrate the people with psychological disorders can respond to loving care and respectful treatment. Today patients are still welcome to live in foster homes in this town, interacting with other residents, until they recover. Unfortunately, these improvements in care began to fade by the mid-sixteenth century. By then municipal authorities had discovered that percentage of those with severe mental disorders and that medial hospitals were too few and too small. Increasingly, they converted hospitals and monasteries into asylums, institutions whose primary purpose was to care for people with mental illness. These institutions were founded with every intention of providing good care. Once the asylums started to overflow, however, they became virtual prisons where patients were held in filthy conditions and treated with unspeakable cruelty. The first asylum had been founded in Muslim Spain in the early fifteenth century, but the idea did not gain full momentum until the 1500s. In 1547, Bethlehem Hospital was given to the city of London by Henry VIII for the sole purpose of confining the mentally ill. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
In the Bethlehem Hospital asylum patients bound in chains cried out for all to hear. During certain phases of the moon in particular, they might be chained and whipped in order to prevent violence. The hospital even became a popular tourist attraction; people were eager to pay to loo at the howling and gibbering inmates. The hospital’s name, pronounced “Bedlam” by the local people, has come to mean a chaotic uproar. Similarly, in the Lunatics’ Tower in Vienna, patients were herded into narrow hallways by the outer walls so that tourist outside could look up and see them. In La Bicetre in Paris, patients were shackled to the walls of cold, dark, dirty cells with iron collars and given spoiled food that could be sold nowhere else. Outrageous devices and techniques, such as the “crib,” which was basically like a combination of a baby’s crib and a coffin, which was about six feet long, 12 inches off the ground, 12 inches deep, with bars on the side and a coffin top, were used in asylums, and some continued to be used during the reforms of the nineteenth century. However, for the most part, such asylums remained a popular form of “care” until the late 1700s. For most people with a personality disorder, the extent of their psychosocial problems often does not stop there. One could also say that many people with other psychosocial problems also have personality disorders. It is of interest that personality disorders are comorbid with other personality disorders. For example, one study estimated the comorbidity of HPD (histrionic personality disorder, a pervasive pattern of excessive emotionality and attention seeking) and NPD (narcissistic personality disorder, an exaggerated sense of self-worth and entitlement, coupled with a nearly insatiable thirst for attention and acclaim) at 30.4. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
The rates of personality disorders among people with major depression are astonishingly high. As many as 20-50 percent of inpatients and 50-85 percent of outpatients with major depressive disorder have a personality disorder. Chief among these are BPD (borderline personality disorder, which involves instability of interpersonal relationships, affect, and self-image; exhibiting intense and variable mood, ranging from irritability to euphoria to impulsive anger and even self-destructive behaviour) and HPD. This high rate of comorbidities (the simultaneous presence of two or more diseases or medical conditions in a patient) by appealing to common interpersonal issues. By definition, people with personality disorders have a rigid and otherwise problematic interpersonal style. This personality pathology can generate interpersonal stressors, leading to depression. In fact, researchers have identified interpersonal styles that play a role in stress generation in romantic contexts. These include a dependent style, which is submissive, fearful of abandonment, and reliant on others for self-esteem; and an obsessive-compulsive style, reflecting perfectionism, rigidity and distrust in others. These personality profiles are remarkably similar to those of DPD (a strong sense of interpersonal submission) and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. Personality disorders are also evident among those with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. As many as 38 percent of patients with bipolar disorder meet the criteria for at least one personality disorder. At the time of hospital admission in one study, 30-45 percent of patients with schizophrenia were also found to have personality disorder. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Problems as serious as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder have a profound impact on interpersonal behaviour and relationships. In schizophrenia, depending upon the particular type, delusional thinking can prompt severely withdraw and avoidant behaviour, as well as conduct that reflect ambivalence about relationships with other people. Similarly, the fluctuating affect states of patients with bipolar disorder can produce interpersonal behaviour that ranges from withdrawn to grandiose, dramatic, and voraciously self-entitled. One thread that connects all of these disorders is maladaptive interpersonal behaviour. This behavior which is intrinsic to personality disorders, may then perpetuate and maintain symptoms of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder because of the often negative and harmful interpersonal consequences it produces. Alcoholism and other substance use problems are evident in as many as 66.3 percent of makes and 33.3 percent of females with ASPD (anti-social personality disorder a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of other persons’ rights). This particular personality disorder generally precedes substance use disorders, since it is defined in part by a pattern of behaviour that is evident before the age of 15 (id est, conduct disorder), whereas evidence of full-blown substance dependence is generally not evident until later in the teens or early 20s. Problems with socialization, generally at the hands of parents, appear to be key interpersonal antecedents to both problems. Ineffective parenting, modeling of antisocial behaviour, and modeling of substance use may dually predispose young children to develop both ASPD and drug or alcohol dependence. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
In addition to being comorbid with depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other personality disorders, the incidence of personality disorders is also elevated among those with eating disorders, substance use disorders, and somatoform disorders. Problems, like depression and schizophrenia, share common interpersonal motifs with various personality disorders. In the case of eating disorders, there is no reason to suspect that the rigid and maladaptive interpersonal behaviour inherent in the personality disorders predisposes such individuals to developing these related psychosocial problems. Personality disorders are defined, in part, by inflexible and generally maladaptive modes of relation to other people. Although the personality disorders are not as well researched and understood as many other psychological problems, interpersonal relations appear to play a prominent role in both the origins and consequences of these sometimes enigmatic disorders. A number of hypotheses, some with attendant empirical support, suggest that early experiences in the family of origin may be crucial mechanisms in the pathogenesis of some personality disorders. Family interactions involving excessive admiration and attention, physical and sexual abuse, inconsistent reinforcement, and rejection are replete in descriptions of the early childhood experiences of people with personality disorders. Perhaps as a result of these pathological interpersonal experiences, people with personality disorders develop ways of relating to other people that are extremely maladaptive and unsuitable to the needs of those in their social environment. Consequently, the persistence of interpersonal problems and distress is almost guaranteed, making personality disorders particularly interactable. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Our time here on Earth is so short. What a shame it would be to allow something that happened in the past—whether it was twenty years ago or twenty minutes ago—to ruin the rest one’s life or Earth. No matter how extravagantly Jesus Christ squandered His charity, it never seemed to lessen. No matter how recklessly He paid out the fruits of His propitiation, they never seemed to be exhausted. Every time we approach the Sacrament, we ought to spend some time recollecting our souls, and praying on the great Mystery of Salvation. Whether we celebrate the Sacrament or just heat the Mass, come afresh. That is to say, think of it as the very day that Christ descended into the womb of the Virgin and was made Man. Or very day that Christ hung on the cross, suffering and dying for the salvation of Humanity. That is how to turn an experience grown dull into a truly enormous, novel, joyful event. One must make up one’s mind to do one’s best to enjoy every single day. We all make mistakes; things may not always go the way one wants them to go. We may be disappointed at times, but think about that joy and freedom that comes from making a decision to live one’s life happy anyway. It is a great goal to not allow what does or does not happen to one steal one’s joy and keep one from God’s abundant life. Sometimes an individual may allow something that happens in the morning to disrupt one’s entire day. Getting stuck in traffic can be a real let down. Being an hour late to work can produce a lot of anxiety, which will cause fear and frustration. However, do not let that ruin your day because no matter how upset one gets, there is nothing one can do to change that event when it is already set in motion. Just enjoy the day and know God is in control. Next time just wake up an hour earlier. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Sure, words can hurt us all. However, just because someone offends you in the morning, understand they may be going through something and brush it off. Often times, people’s bad attitudes have nothing to do with the personal they are projecting on. They just want to release some frustration and hurt someone else to make themselves feel better. “Lead me, O Lord, in Your righteousness because of my enemies; make Your way level (straight and right) before my face. For there is nothing trustworthy or steadfast or truthful in their talk; their heart is destructive [or a destructive chasm, a yawning gulf]; their throat is an open sepulcher; they flatter and make smooth with their tongue. Hold them guilty, O God; et them fall by their own designs and counsels; cast them out because of the multitude of their transgressions, for they have rebelled against You. However, let all those who take refuge and put their trust in You rejoice; let them ever sing and shot for joy, because You make a covering over them and defend them; let those also who love Your name be joyful in You and be in high spirits. For You, Lord, will bless the [uncompromisingly] righteous [one who is upright and in right standing with You]; as with a shield You will surround one with goodwill (pleasure and favour),” reports Psalms 5.8-12. When you wake up in the morning, do not recall mistakes from the past. Instead wake up and pray, “Father, I thank You that this is going to be a great day. I thank You that I have discipline, self-control; that I make good decisions. I may not have what I could have yesterday, but that day is gone. I am going to get up and do well today.” Wake up every morning and receive God’s love and mercy. When one makes mistakes, be so critical. Ask God for forgiveness and then move on, confident that the moment you ask, God forgives you. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
God does not want His children to mope around defeated. He wants one to get up and prepare for success and to be kind and loving. Not only is God a loving and forgiving God, but He also chooses not to remember your mistakes. If someone keeps brining up negative incidents from your past, you know that is not God. One may have done some things one is not proud of, but when one asks God to forgive one, He washed those things away. Furthermore, God does not even keep a record of it. He is not going to flip back through His DVD player and say, “Oh, wait a minute. I found something on your record back there in 2001. I cannot bless you.” No, as far as God is concerned, you do not even have a past. It is forgiven and gone. You are ready for a great present and a bight future. God let go of the past. The question is: Will you let it go? Will you quit remembering what God has chosen to forget? Behold, we come to You, O Lord, that Your Gift will do us well. Also, we want to rejoice at the party “You have so thoughtfully prepared for the poor, O God”; that felicitous phrasing is the Psalmist’s (68.10). Behold, in You everything that we can and ought to desire. You are our Salvation and Redemption, our Hope and Fortitude, our Grace and Glory. Therefore today, “Make joyful the soul of Your servant, for we are turned to You, Lord Jesus Christ,” if we may paraphrase the Psalmist; “for today is the day I lift up my soul,” (86.4). Yes, Father, I accept Your forgiveness. Thank You for loving me even when I make mistakes, poor choices, or wrong decisions. Please Help me to live today free of the past. “I will give to the Lord the thanks due to His rightness and justice, and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord Most High,” reports Psalm 7.17. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
In the government one finds the intermediate forces whose relationships make up that of the whole to the whole or of the sovereign to the state. This last relationship can be represented as one between the extremes of a continuous proportion, whose proportional mean is the government. The government receives from the sovereign the orders it gives the people, and, for the state to be in good equilibrium, there must, all things considered, be an equality between the output or the power of the government, taken by itself, and the output or power of the citizens, who are sovereigns on the one hand and subjects on the other. Moreover, none of these three terms could be altered without the simultaneous destruction of the proportion. If the sovereign wishes to govern, or if the magistrate wishes to give laws, of if the subjects refuse to obey, disorder replaces rule, force and will no longer act in concert, and thus the state dissolves and falls into despotism or anarchy. Finally, since there is only one proportional mean between each relationship, there is only one good government possible for the state. However, since a thousand events can change the relationships of a people, not only can different governments be good for different peoples, but also for the same people at different times. In trying to provide an idea of the various relationships that can obtain between these two extremes, I will take as an example the number of people, since it is a more easily expressed relationship. Suppose the state is composed of ten thousand citizens. The sovereign can only be considered collectively and as a body. However, each private individual in one’s position as a subject is regarded as an individual. Thus the sovereign is to the subject as ten thousand is to one. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
In other words, each member of the state has as one’s share only one ten-thousandth of sovereign authority, even though one is totally in subjection to it. If the populace is made up of a hundred thousand humans, the condition of the subjects does not change, and each bears equally the entire dominion of the laws, while one’s vote, reduced to one hundred-thousandth, has ten times less influence in the drafting of them. In that case, since the subject always remains one, the ratio of the sovereign to the subject increases in proportion to the number of citizens. Whence it follows that the larger the state becomes, the less liberty there is. When I say that the ratio increases, I mean that it places a distance between itself and equality. Thus the greater the ratio is in the sense employed by geometricians, the less relationship there is in the everyday sense of the word. In the former sense, the ratio, seen in terms of quantity, is measured by the quotient; in the latter sense, ratio, seen in the terms of identity, is reckoned by similarity. Now the less relationship there is between private wills and the general will, that is, between mores and the laws, the more repressive force ought to increase. Therefore, in order to be good, the government must be relatively stronger in proportion as the populace is more numerous. One the other hand, as the growth of the state gives the trustees of the public authority more temptations and the means of abusing their power, the more the force the government must have in order to contain the people, the more the force the sovereign must have in order to contain the government. I am speaking here not of an absolute force but of the relative force of the various parts of the state. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
It follows from this twofold relationship that the continuous proportion between the sovereign, the prince and the people, is in no way an arbitrary idea, but a necessary consequence of the nature of the body of politic. It also follows that since one of the extremes, namely the people as subject, is fixed and represented by unity, whenever the doubled ratio increases or decreases, the simple ratio increases or decreases in like fashion, and that as a consequence the middle term is changed. This makes it clear that there is no unique and absolute constitution of government, but that there can be as many governments of differing natures as there are states of differing sizes. If, in ridiculing this system, someone were to say that in order to find this proportional mean and to form the body of the government, it is necessary merely, in my opinion, to derive the square root of the number of people, I would replay that here I am taking this number only as an example; that the relationships I am speaking of are not measure solely by the number of humans, but in general by the quantity of action, which is the combination of a multitude of causes; and that, in addition, if to express myself in fewer words I borrow for the moment the terminology of geometry, I nevertheless, am not unaware of the fact that geometrical precision has no place in moral quantities. The government is on a small scale what the body politic which contains it is on a large scale. It is a moral person endowed with certain faculties, active like the sovereign and passive like the state, and capable of being broken down into other similar relationships whence there arises according to the other of tribunals, until an indivisible middle term is reached; that is, a single leader or supreme magistrate, who can be represented in the midst of this progression as the unity between the series of fractions and that of the whole numbers. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
Without involving ourselves in the multiplication of terms, let us content ourselves with considering the government as a new body in the state, distinct from the people and sovereign, and intermediate between them. The essential difference between these two bodies is that the state exists by itself, while the government exists only through the sovereign. Thus the dominant will of the prince is not and should not be anything other than the general will of the law. One’s force is merely the public force concentrated in one. As soon as one wants to derive from oneself some absolute and independent act, the bond that links everything together begins to come loose. If it should finally happen that the prince had a private will more active that that of the sovereign, and that he had made use of some of the public force that is available to him in order to obey this private will, so that there would be, so to speak, two sovereigns—one de jure and the other de facto, at that moment the social union would vanish and the body politic would be dissolved. However, for the body of the government to have an existence, a real life that distinguishes it from the body of the state, and for all its members to be able to act in concert and to fulfill the purpose for which it is instituted, there must be a particular self, a sensibility common to all its members, a force or will of its own that tends toward its preservation. This particular existence presupposes assemblies, councils, a power to deliberate and decide, rights, titles and privileges that belong exclusively to the prince and that render the condition of the magistrate more honourable in proportion as it is more onerous. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
The difficulties lie in the manner in which this subordinate whole is so organized within the whole, that in no way alters the general constitution by strengthening its own, that is always distinguishes its particular force, which is intended for its own preservation of the state, and that, in a word, it is always ready to sacrifice the government to the people and not the people to the government. In addition, although the artificial body of the government is the work of another artificial body and has, in a sense, only a borrowed and subordinate life, this does not prevent it from being capable of acting with more or less vigour or speed, or from enjoying, so to speak, more or less robust health. Finally, without departing directly from the purpose of its institution, it can deviate more or less from it, according to the manner in which it is constituted. From all these differences arise the diverse relationships that the government should have with the body of the state, according to the accidental and particular relationships by which the state itself is modified. For often the government that is best in itself will become the most vicious, if its relationships are not altered according to the defects of the body politic to which it belongs. It is possible that the much-bewailed decline of the Protestant work ethic is linked to this shift from production for others to production for self? Everywhere we see the decay of the industrial ethos that promoted hard work Western executive mutter darkly about this “English disease” which is supposed to reduce us all to penury if we do not cure it. “Only the Japanese will work hard,” they say. Matsuri Takahashi, a promising graduate of Japan’s top University, leapt to her death in December of 2015, leaving behind a trail of grievances over relentless days. She clocked more than 105 hours of overtime in October of 2015, before becoming depressed. Her death, deemed by the government to Karushi, or death by overwork. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
In many other cases, the very people who are supposedly unwilling to work hard on the job are often the same people who are, in fact, working hard off the job—laying bathroom tile, weaving carpets, building tables, creating computer programs, doing household chores, lending their time and talents to a political campaign, attending self-help meetings, sewing, growing vegetables in the garden, writing short stories, or remodeling the attic bedroom. Can it be that the driving motivation that powered the expansion of Sector B is now being channeled into Sector A—into prosuming? The Second Wave brought with it more than steam engines and mechanical looms. It brought with it an immense characterological change. Today we can still see this shift occurring among populations moving from First Wave to Second Wave societies—like the Koreans, for example, who are still busy expanding Sector B at the expense of Sector A. (In Sector A, people produce for their own use. In Sector B, they produce for trade or exchange.) By contrast, in the mature Second Wave societies reeling under the impact of the Third Wave—as production moves back to Sector A and the consumer is drawn back into the production process—another characterological shift begins. Later on we will explore this fascinating change. For now we need only bear in mind that the structure of personality itself is likely to be heavily influenced by the rise of presumption. Nowehere, however, are the changes wrought by the rise of the prosumer likely to be more explosive than in economics. Economists, instead of training all their guns on Sector B, will have to develop a new, more wholistic conception of an economy—will have to analyze what happens in Sector A as well and learn how the two parts relate to one another. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
As the Third Wave has begun to restructure the World economy, the economics profession has been savagely attacked for its inability to explain what is happening. It is most sophisticated tools, including computerized models and matrices, seem to tell us less and less about how the economy really works. Indeed, many economists themselves are concluding that conventional economic thought, both Western and Marxist, is out of touch with a fast-changing reality. One key reason may be that, more and more, changes of great significance lie outside Sector B—id est, outside the entire exchange process. To bring economics back in touch with reality Third Wave economists will need to develop new models, measures, and indices for describing processes in Sector A and will have to rethink many root assumptions in the light of the rise of the prosumer. Once we recognize that powerful relationships link the measured production (and productivity) in Sector B and the unmeasured production (and productivity) in Sector A, the invisible economy, we are compelled to redefine these terms. As early as the mid-1960’s, economist Victor Fuchs of the National Bureau of Economic Research sensed the problem, pointing out that the rise of services made traditional measures of productivity obsolete. Declared Fuchs: “The knowledge, experience, honesty, and motivation of the consumer affects service productivity.” However, even in these words the “productivity” of the consumer is still seen only in terms of Sector B—only as a contribution to production for exchange. There is no recognition as yet that actual production also takes place in Sector A—that goods and services produced for oneself are quite real, and that they may displace or substitute for good and services turned out in Sector B. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
Conventional production figures, especially GNP (Gross National Product, which measures the scale of the economy by totting up the value of goods and services produced it in) figures, will make less and less sense until we explicitly expand them to include what happens in Sector A. An understanding of the rise of the prosumer also helps bring the concept of cost into sharper focus. Thus we gain powerful insights once we recognize that the effectiveness of the prosumer in Sector A can lead to higher or lower costs to companies or government agencies operating in Sector B. For example, high rates of alcoholism, absenteeism, psychosis and neurosis, dysfunctional behaviour, and psychological problems in the work force all add to the “cost of doing business” as measures conveniently in Sector B. (Alcoholism alone has been estimated to cost American industry $249 billion, or about $2.05 per drink, in production time a year.) To the degree that self-help groups alleviate such problems in the work force, they reduce these operating costs. The efficiency of presumption thus affects the efficiency of production. Subtler factors also influence the cost of production in business. How literate or articulate are the workers? Do they all speak the same language? Can they tell time? Are they culturally prepared for the job? Do the social skills learned in family life add to or detract from their competence? All these character traits, attitudes, values, skills, and motivations necessary for high productivity in Sector B, the exchange sector, are produced or, more accurately, prosumed in Sector A. The rise of the prosumer—the reintegration of the consumer into production—will force us to look far more closely at such interrelationships. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
The same powerful change will compel us to redefine efficiency. Today, in determining efficiency, economists compare alternative ways of producing the same product or service. They seldom compare the efficiency of producing it in Sector B as against that of prosuming it in Sector A. Yet this is precisely what millions of people—supposedly innocent of economic theory—are doing. They are finding that, once a certain level of money income is assured, it may be more profitable, economically as well as psychologically, to prosume than to earn more cash. Nor do economists or businessmen systematically track the negative effects of Sector B efficiency on Sector A—as for example when a company demands extremely high mobility of its executives and cause a wave of stress-related illness, family breakdown, or increased alcohol intake as a result. We may very well find that what appears to be inefficient in conventional Sector B terms is, in fact, tremendously efficient when we look at the whole economy and not just part of it. TO make sense, “efficiency” must refer to secondary, not merely first order, effects, and to both sectors of the economy, not just one. What about concepts like “income,” “welfare,” “poverty,” or “unemployment”? If a person lives half-in and half-out of the market system, which products, tangible or intangible, are to be regarded as part of one’s income? How meaningful are income figures at all in a society in which prosuming may account for much of what the average person has? How do we define welfare in such a system? Should welfare recipients work? If so, should all this work necessarily be in Sector B? Or should welfare recipients be encouraged to prosume? #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
What is the real meaning of unemployment? Is a laid-off auto science engineer who puts a new roof on his or her house, or overhauls his or her care, unemployed in the same sense as one who sits idly at home watching football on television? The rise of the prosumer forces us to question our entire way of looking at the twin problems of unemployment, on the one hand, and bureaucratic waste and featherbedding, on the other. Second Wave societies have attempted to cope with unemployment, for example, by resisting technology, closing off immigration, creating labour exchanges, increasing exports, decreasing imports, setting up public works programs, cutting back on work hours, attempting to increase labour mobility, deporting whole populations, and even waging war to stimulate the economy. Yet the problem becomes more complex and difficult every day. Can it be that the problems of labour supply—both gluts and shortages—can never be satisfactorily solved within the framework of a Second Wave society, whether capitalists of socialist? By looking at the economy as a whole, rather than focusing exclusively on one part of it, can we frame the problem in a new way that helps us solve it? If production occurs in both sectors, if people are busy producing goods and services for themselves in one sector and for others in a different sector, how does this affect the argument over a guaranteed minimum income for all? Typically, in Second Wave societies, income has been inextricably linked to work for the exchange economy. However, are not prosumers also “working,” even if they are not part of the market or are only partially in it? Should not a man or woman who stays at home and rears a child, thereby contributing to the productivity of Sector B through one’s efforts in Sector A, receive some income, even if one does not hold down a paid job in Sector B? #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
An income tax credit for housewives or househusbans would reduce single parent household, and welfare and would contribute to the stimulation of the economy. The rise of the prosumer will decisively alter all our economic thinking. It will also shift the basis of economic conflict. The competition between worker-producers and manager-producers will no doubt continue. However, it will shrink in importance as prosuming increases and we move father into Third Wave society. In its place, new social conflicts will arise. Battles will flare over which needs will be met by which sector of the economy. Struggles will sharpen, for example, over licensing, building codes, and the like, as Second Wave forces attempt to hold on to jobs and profits by preventing prosumers from moving in. Teachers’ unions typically fight to keep parents out of the classroom with all the zeal of building tradesmen fighting to preserve obsolete building codes. Yet just as a number of health problems (like those deriving from overeating, lack of exercise, or smoking, for example) cannot be solved by doctors alone but require instead the active participation of the patient, so a number of educational problems cannot be resolved without the parent. The rise of the prosumer changes the entire economic landscape. Thus all these effects will be intensified and the entire World economy changed by a massive historical facts now staring us in the face—which seems to have gone unnoticed by Second Wave economists and thinkers. This last towering fact sets into perspective all we have discussed in the past few weeks on the rise of the prosumer. Oh Great Spirit of the North, we come to you and ask for the strength and the power to bear what is cold and harsh in life. We come like the buffalo ready to receive the winds that truly can be overwhelming at times. Whatever is cold and uncertain in our life, we ask you to give us the strength to bear it. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Do not let the winter blow us away. Oh Spirit of Life and Spirit of the North, we ask you for strength and for love. Oh Great Spirit of the East, we turn to you where the sun comes up, from where the power of light and refreshment come. Everything that is born comes up in this direction—the birth of babies, the birth of the puppies, the birth of ideas, and the birth of friendship. Let there be light. Oh Spirit of the East, let the colour of fresh rising in our life be glory to you. Oh Great Spirit of the South, spirit of all that is warm and gentle and refreshing, we ask you to give us this spirit of growth, of fertility, of gentleness. Caress us with a cool breeze when the days are hot. Please gives us seeds that the flowers, trees and fruits of the Earth may grow. Please give us the warmth of good friendships. Oh Spirit of the South, please send the love and growth of your blessings. Oh Great Spirit of the West, where the sun goes down each day to come up the next, we turn to you in praise of sunsets and in thanksgiving for changes. You are the great coloured sunset of the red west which illuminates us. You are the powerful cycle which pulls us to transformation. We ask for the blessing of the sunset. Please keep us open to life’s changes. Oh Spirit of the Est, when it is time for us to go into the Earth, do not desert us, but receive us in the arms of our loved one. Art Father Who art in Heaven, Thy Kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Thy dominion endureth throughout all generations. The Lord upholdeth al who fall, and raiseth up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all look hopefully to Thee. And Thou givest them their food in due season. Thou openest Thy hand ad satisfiest every living thing with favour. The Lord is righteous in all His ways, and gracious in all His works. The Lord is near unto all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth. He will fulfill the desire of them that revere Him; He will also hear their cry, and will save them. The Lord preserveth all them that love Him; but all the wicked will He bring low. My mouth shall speak the praise of the Lord; let all human bless His holy name for ever and ever. We will bless the Lord from this time forth, and forevermore. Hallelujah. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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Sold His Soul to the Devil and Purchased the Estate with the Money His Body and Soul Realized!
Sarah Winchester was truly overcome by the loss of her month-old baby girl, and a grief magnified 15 years later by her husband’s sudden death. Doctors and friends urged her to leave the east, seek a milder climate and search for some all-consuming hobby. One physician did suggest that she “build a house and do not employ an architect.” On arrival in San Jose, she immediately started remodeling the newly purchased, unfinished farmhouse. She found the planning kept her grief-disturbed mind occupied and she became thoroughly enthused, but certainly, something was still bothering her. “Why can you not just be nice and quiet? What have you done all morning but shake my awnings, tug at my window street-mirror and the cord on it, play with the bellpull wire from the fourth floor, push against the windowpanes—in short, proclaim your existence in every way as if you wanted to beckon me out to you? Yes, the weather is fine enough, but I have no inclination; let me stay home. You playful exuberant zephyrs, you happy lads, go by yourselves; have your fund as always. Go your way! Leave me out of it. But then you think you have no enjoyment in it; you are not doing it for your own sake.” Many have said that the Winchester mansion is haunted by legions of spirits and perhaps even demons. The New Testament includes a number of references to people afflicted with what we term “demon possession.” Skeptics have looked upon these accounts as reflections of the ignorance and superstition prevalent during the times of our Lord’s ministry. Others contend that Jesus Christ, knowing that the public attributed disease and insanity to evil spirits, was only accommodating Himself to their way of thinking. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
A careful reading of the gospels and the book of Acts, however, indicated that Christ and His apostles accepted the reality of evil spirits, and taught their followers to fear them. It is therefore imperative that we turn to the Scriptures to find out exactly what demon possession is, the measure of human responsibility involved, and the believer’s course of action when one encounters a demon-possessed individual. The nature of demon possession: A demon-possessed person is one who has been invaded by evil spirits. They may control one’s body, one’s mind, or both. Sometimes they produce only physical illness, but at other times their wretched victims are grossly immoral, speak blasphemously, and exhibit supernatural strength. They obviously have been mastered, mind and body, by a superior force. In understanding the nature of demon possession, we must first take note that the Bible cites a number of demon-produced illnesses with all the characteristics of known diseases. The gospel writers were careful to distinguish between natural and demon-caused afflictions, as is evident in the first chapter of Mark. “And in the evening, when the sun did set, they brought unto him all that were diseased, and those who were possessed with demons. And he healed many that were sick of diverse diseases, and cast out many demons; and permitted not the demons to speak, because they knew him,” reports Mark 1.32, 34. When sickness did not involve evil spirits, the Lord restored health to the individual with no mention of demons. If the illness was the result of demonic invasion, however, Jesus healed by commanding the evil spirits to leave the victim’s body. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
For example, the boy who had a deaf and dumb spirit (Mark 9.14-29) manifested the symptoms that mark epilepsy, but in healing him, the Lord rebuked a “foul spirit.” When it left, the spirit threw the lad into violent convulsions. Matthew gives the account of a man afflicted with dumbness whom Jesus healed by casting out an indwelling demon (Matthew 9.32-25). Christ also cured a man who was blind and dumb by ordering the demon to leave his body (Matthew 12.22). Luke, telling of a woman who had been seriously crippled for eighteen years, said she had “a spirit of infirmity,” reports Luke 13.11. After healing her, the Lord Jesus Christ spoke of her as “a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years,” reports Luke 13.16. In none of these instances did the demons lead the individual into blasphemous speech or immoral conduct. The afflictions were only physical in nature. In addition to causing many varieties of physical suffering, evil spirits often took control of a person’s mental faculties and organs of speech. The two wild men in Gadara, appearing to be insane, possessed strength far beyond that of ordinary men, lived in tombs with the gruesome remains of dead bodies, and were so feared that people avoided the territory they inhabited (Matthew 8.28-34; Luke 8.26-36). When they saw Jesus, they cried out, “What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? Art thou come here to torment us before the time?” reports Matthew 8.29. These words, though coming from the mouths of the men, were obviously spoken by the evil spirits. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
Luke, focusing his attention upon the more prominent of the two, tells us that after the Lord had cast the demons out of the man, he was found by the people of the area “sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind,” reports Luke 8.35. This kind of demon possession, in which the victim could not control one’s own mind and speech, was more spectacular, but also more tragic, than that which manifested itself in physical illness alone. The person who experienced only bodily affliction could still make intelligent choices, but others had no control over what they said and did. Human responsibility and demon possession: Christian Bible students are not agreed concerning the extent of human responsibility in demon possession. It appears that sometimes the individual was in no way accountable for this invasion of one’s personality. The body who suffered seizures similar to those of epilepsy had been afflicted from early childhood (Mark 9.21). These convulsions sometimes came upon the lad as he was standing by water or fire, and almost cost him his life when he fell. Since this physical affliction came upon him at such a young age, it would seem that he did nothing to cause demonic invasion of his body. On the other hand, many believe that God would not permit evil spirits to take over a human personality unless that individual first weakened one’s will by voluntarily yielding to temptation. If one accepts this premise, one will consider those who are violent, unclean, and blasphemous because of demon possession to be partly responsible for their present state. They likely male themselves susceptible to demonic invasion of their personalities by persisting in sinful practices. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
The believer’s authority over demons: The Lord Jesus Christ cast out demons on numerous occasions. Eight of the recorded miracles involve demon expulsions, but the gospels indicate that He exercised this power many other times. Luke declares, “And demons also came out of many, crying out, saying, ‘Thou art Christ, the Son of God.’ And he, rebuking them, did not allow them to speak; for they knew that he was Christ,” Luke 4.41. The gospel writers seem to indicate that whenever Christ encounter a demon-possessed individual, He expelled the evil spirit without difficulty. As the Lord of the invisible World, Jesus spoke with absolute authority, and the demon had no alternative but to do what He commanded. Mark records, “And he healed many that were sick of diverse diseases, and cast out many demons; and permitted not the demons to speak, because they knew him,” reports Mark 1.34. The Lord also commissioned the Twelve to exercise authority over evil spirits. In Chapter 3 of Mark’s gospel we read: “And he appointed twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach, and to have authority to heal sickness, and to cast out demons,” reports Mark 3.14-15. On other occasions, He gave this power to a larger group, for He sent out seventy disciples on a special mission, and they returned in joyous excitement, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject unto us through thy name,” reports Luke 10.17. Today the power to resist and overcome evil spirits in the name of Jesus belongs to every believer. The Holy Spirit indwells even the weakest Christian (1 Corinthians 6.19). and the least gifted among those who trust in Christ have received all the benefits of salvation. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
James makes it clear that a believer who humbly trusts God can cause Satan, the supreme ruler of the demon World, to flee. “But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you, reports James 4. 6, 7. If one who knows Christ can successfully resist the commander-in-chief of the demonic hordes, one certainly can overcome the soldiers who make up the army of Satan when they seek to lead one into sin. Casting demons out of an afflicted person is another matter, however, and believers must exercise extreme care when they are confronted with demon possession. These evil spirits may be very powerful, and sometimes can be expelled only after a time of heart searching and earnest prayer on the part of the Christians who are seeking to deliver the possessed person. Mark tells us of an occasion when a father was disappointed in the apostles, who themselves had become discouraged when they were unable to help a demon-possessed boy. Jesus rebuked them for their spiritual lack, saying, “This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer,” reports Mark 9.29. (The words “and fasting,” which occur in our King James Version are not found in the best Greek manuscripts. Furthermore, there would have been no opportunity for the disciples to fast in connection with their attempt to heal this boy.) This Scripture passage certainly indicates that no believer should attempt to cast out demons unless one exercises strong faith, renounces sin, and lives in continuous fellowship with the Lord. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
Missionaries who have encountered demon possession say that sometimes the victory is won by a simply command uttered in the name of the Lord Jesus. (The phrase “in the name Lord Jesus” really means, “by the authority of Jesus.”) In other instances, however, God’s servants have found it necessary to engage in a period of prayers and confession of sin. Nevius, in his book entitled Demon Possession and Allied Themes, recounts numerous instances of demon possession which he and his co-workers in China found during the last half of the nineteenth century. This man’s character and theological position make one a trust worthy source of information. He said that demons often spoke to the missionaries as they were about to cast them out of a hapless victim, sometimes pleaded for mercy, often resisted, but always were forced to leave after Christians prayed together and gave the command in the name of the Lord Jesus. Representatives of Christ in many other lands dominated by heathen religions discover a great deal of demon possession. They also are unanimous in declaring that through prayer and a command “in the name of the Lord Jesus” they have been able to expel the evil spirits. Christians must exercise caution whenever they encounter someone who seems to be demon-possessed. In the first place, one ought to be sure the person is suffering from demon passion rather than a condition resulting from some physical, psychological, or spiritual disorder. Some people are greatly harmed when they are wrongly told that they are demon-possessed. They actually need help from a medical doctor, psychiatrist, or spiritual counselor, but instead keep on seeking to expel evil spirits. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
An interesting trial of a clergyman or the practice of unhallowed arts took place early in 1606—interesting and valuable, if for no other reason than that it is the first instance of such a case being discovered in the Rolls at the Record Office (not counting those of the Parliament of 1447), though we hope that it will not prove to be a unique entry, but rather the earnest of others. Shorn of legal redundancies it runs as follows: “Inquiry taken before our lord King at the King’s Court the Saturday next after the three weeks of Easter in the 6th year of James I by the oath of upright and lawful men of the County of Louth. Who say, that John Aston, late of Mellifont, Co. Louth, clerk, not having a fear of God before his eyes, but being wholly seduced by the devil, on December 1st at Mellifont aforesaid, and on divers other days and places, wickedly and feloniously used, practised, and exercised drivers invocations and conjurings of wicked and lying spirits with the intent and purpose that he might find and rcover a certain silver cup formerly taken away at Mellifont aforesaid, and also that he might understand where an in what region the most wicked traitor Hugh, Earl of Tyrone, then was, and what he was contriving against the said lord the King and the State of this kingdom of Ireland, and also that he might find out and obtain drivers treasures of gold and silver concealed in the Earth at Mellifont aforesaid and at Cashel in the country of the Cross of Tipperary, feloniously and against the peace of the said lord the King. It is to be known that the aforesaid John was taken, and being a prisoner in the Castle of the City of Dublin by warrant of the lord King was sent into England, therefore further proceedings shall cease.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
His ultimate fate is not known; nor is it easy to see why punishment was not meted out to him in Ireland, as he had directly contravened section 4 of the Elizabethan Act. Possibly the case was unique, and so King James may have been anxious to examine in person such an interesting specimen. If so, Heaven help the poor parson in the grip of such a witch hunter. In the year 1609 there comes from the County of Tipperary a strange story of magical spells being counteracted by the application of a holy relic; this is preserved for us in that valuable monastic record, the Triumphalia S. Crucis. At Holy Cross Abbey, near Thurles, there was preserved for many years with the greatest veneration a supposed fragment of the True Cross, which attracted vast numbers of people, and by which it was said many wonderful miracles were worked. Amongst those that came thither in that year was “Anastasia Sobechan, an inhabitant of the district of Callan (Co. Kilkenny), tortured by magical spells (veneficis incantationibus collisa), who at the Abbey, in presence of the Rev. Lord Abbot Bernard [Foulow], p;aced a girdle round her body that had touched the holy relic. Suddenly she vomited small pieces of cloth and wood, and for a whole month she spat out from her body such things. The said woman told this miracle to the Rev. Lord Abbot while she was healed by the virtue of the holy Cross. This he took care to set down in writing.” That most diligent gleaner of things strange and uncommon, Mr. Robert Law, to whom we are deeply indebted for much of the matter in this volume, informs us in his Memorialls that in the first half of the seventeenth century there was to be found in Ireland a celebrated Doctor of Divinity, in Holy Orders of the Episcopal Church, who possessed extreme adroitness in raising the Devil—a process that some would have us to believe to be commonly practised in Ireland at the present day by persons who have no pretensions to a knowledge of the Black Art! #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Mr. Law also gives the modus operandi at full length. A servant-girl in the employment of Major-General Montgomerie at Irvine in Scotland was accused of having stolen some silverwork. “The lass being innocent takes it ill, and tells them, If she should raise the Devil she should know who took these things.” Thereupon, in order to summon that Personage she went into a cellar, “takes the Bible with her, and draws a circle about her, and turns a riddle on end from south to north, or from the right to the left hand [id est, contrary to the path of the sun in the Heavens], having in her right hand nine feathers which she pulled out of the tail of a black cock, and having read the 51st [Psalm?] forwards, “O COME, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the Rock our salvation! Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to Him with songs of praise! For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods. In His hand are the deep places of the Earth; the heights and strength of this hills are His also. The sea is His, for He made it; and His hands formed the dry land. O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker [in reverent praise and supplication. For He is our God and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Today, if you will hear His, harden not your hearts as at Meribah and as at Massah in the day of temptation in the wilderness. When your fathers tried My patience and tested Me, proved me, and saw my work [of judgment]. Forty years long was I grived and disgusted with that generation, and I said, It is a people that do err in their hearts, and they do not approve, acknowledge, or regard My ways. Wherefore I swore in My wrath that they would not enter My rest [the land of promise,” she reads backwards chapter ix., verse 19, of the Book of Revelations.” “Dniknam fo driht a yortsed ot detarebil erew raey dna, htnom, yad detnioppa eht ni ruoh taht rof ssenidaer neeb dah ohw slegna ruof eht os.” Upon this the Devil appeared to her, and told her who was the guilty person. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
She then cast three of the feathers in the Devil, and bade him to return to the place from whence he came. This process she repeated three ties, until she had gained all the information she desired; she then went upstairs and told her mistress, with the result that the goods were ultimately recovered. However, escaping Scylla she fell into Charybdis; her uncanny practices came to the ears of the authorities, and she was apprehended. When in prison, she confessed that she had learnt this particular branch of the Black Art in the house of Dr. Colville in Ireland, who habitually practised it. That instructor of youth in such un-Christian practices, the Rev. Alexander Colville, D.D. was ordained in 1622 and subsequently held the vicarage of Carnmoney, the prebend of Carncastle, and the Precentorship of Connor. He was possessed of considerable wealth, with which he purchased the Galgorm estate, on which he resided; this subsequently passed into the Mountcashel family through the marriage of his great granddaughter with Stephen Moore, first Baron Kilworth and Viscount Mountcashel. Where Dr. Colville got the money to purchase so large an estate no one could imagine, and Classon Porter in his useful pamphlet related for us the manner in which popular rumor solved the problem. It was said that he had sold himself to the Devil, and that he had purchased the estate with the money his body and soul head realized. Scandal even went further still, and gave exact terms which Dr. Colville had made with the Evil One. These were, that the Devil was at once to give the Doctor his hat full of gold, and that the latter was in return, at a distant but specified day, to deliver himself body and soul to the Devil. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
The appointed place of meeting was a lime-kiln; the Devil may have thought that this was a delicate compliment to him on account of the peculiarly homelike atmosphere of the spot, but the Doctor had different ideas. The Devil produced the gold, whereupon Dr. Colville produced a hat with a wide slit in the crown, which he boldly held over the empty kiln-pit, with the result that by the time the terms of the bargain were literally complied with, a very considerable amount of gold lay at the Doctor’s disposal, which he prudently used to his Worldly welfare. So far, so good. However, there are two sides to every question. Years rolled by, brining ever nearer and nearer the time at which the account had to be settled, and at length the fatal day dawned. The Devil arrived to claim his victim, and found him sitting in his house reading his Christian Bible by the light of a candle, whereupon he directed him to come along with him. The Doctor begged that he might not be taken away until the candle, by which he was reading, was burned out. To this the Devil assented, whereupon Dr. Colville promptly extinguished the candle, and putting it between the leaves of the Bible locked it up in the chest where he kept his gold. The candle was thus deposited in a place of safety where there was no danger of any person coming across it, and thus of being the innocent cause of the Doctor’s destruction. It is even said that he gave order that the candle should be put into his coffin and buried with him. So, we may presume, Dr. Colville evaded the payment of his debt. Our readers may perchance wonder why such stories as the above should have become connected with the reverend gentleman, and an explanation is not hard to be found. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
Dr. Colville was a well-known divine, possessed of great wealth (inherited lawfully, we may presume), and enjoyed considerable influence in the country-side. At this time Ulster was overrun by triumphant Presbyterianism, which the Doctor, as a firm upholder of Episcopacy, opposed with all his might, and thereupon was spoken of with great acerbity by his opponents. It is not too uncharitable, therefore, to assume that these stories originated with some member of that body, who may well have believed that such had actually happened. Over a century ago, one of those great supernatural stories happened at the estate of Sarah Winchester. It was nearly five o’clock; the short day was drawing in, and the Winchester mansion began to fil with shadows, while curious noises—the muffled footfalls and distant talking voices that had been perceptible all day—seemed, no doubt because of the fading light and the consequently quickened sense of hearing, to become more frequent and insistent. President Theodore Roosevelt, who was an avid fan of the Winchester rifle said, “The riles have come. They are beautiful weapons and I am confident will do well.” He had attended a great national convention; and after an exciting week, was returning home, having a long and difficult journey before him. A pair of magnificent horses, attached to a light buggy, flew merrily enough over a rough country road for a while; but towards evening stormy weather reduced the roads to a dangerous condition, and compelled the President to relinquish his purpose of reaching home that night, and to stop at the Winchester mansion, whose interior illuminated by blazing wood-fires, spread a glowing halo among the dripping trees as he approached it, and gave promise of warmth and luxury. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
Drawing upon the grand estate, President Roosevelt saw through its laced curtain windows that there was no lack of company within. Every angel told him that beasts as well as humans were cared for. At the open door appeared the form of a man who, at the sound of wheels, but not seeing in the outside darkness whom he addressed, called out, “’Tain’t no Earlthy use a-stoppin’ here.” Caring more for his chattels than for himself, the President paid no further regard to this address than to call loudly for the landlord. At the tone of authority, the man outline more civilly announced himself to be the butler; yet so far from inviting the traveller to alight, insisted that the house was “as full as it could pack;” but that there was a place a little farther down the road where the gentleman would be certain to find excellent accommodations. “What stables have you here?” demanded President Roosevelt, giving no more heed to this than the former announcement; but bidding his servant to alight, and preparing to do so himself. “Stables!” replied the baffled butler, shading his eyes so as to scrutinize the newcomer, ‘stables, Cap’n?” “Yes, stables. I want you to take care of my horses; I can take care of myself. Some shelter for cattle you must have by the look of these traps,” pointing to the wagons. “I do not want my horses to be kept standing out in this storm, you know.” The President leaped to the ground, directing his servant to cover the horses and then get out his valise; while the butler, thus defeated, assumed the best grace he could to say that he would see what could be done “for the horses.” “I am the President, may man,” added President Roosevelt in a milder tone, as he stamped his cold feet on the porch and shook off the rain from his travelling gear; “I am used to rough fare and a hard couch: all we want is shelter. A corner of the floor will suffice for me and my rug; a private room I can dispense with at such times as these.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
However, in another minute they were in the sitting-room of the house, a small, high chamber with a stone floor, full of moving shadows cast by a wood-fire that flickered on a great hearth Something of the character of an oratory was imparted to it by a tall crucifix, which reached almost to the ceiling on one side; the figure was painted of the natural colours, the cross was black. Under this stood a chest of some age and a solidity, and when the lamp had been brought, and chairs set. Mrs. Winchester brought out of a chest a large book, wrapped in a white cloth, on white cloth a cross was rudely embroidered in red thread. Even before the wrapping had been removed, the President began to be interested by the size and shape of the volume. “Too large for a missal,” he thought, “and not the shape of an antiphoner; perhaps it may be something good, after all.” The next moment the book was opened, and the President felt that he had at last lit upon something better than good. Before him lay a large folio, bound, perhaps, late in the seventeenth century, with the arms of Cannon Alberic de Mauleon stamped in gold on the sides. There may have been a hundred and fifty leaves of paper in the book, and on almost every one of them was fastened a leaf from an illuminated manuscript. Such a collection the President had hardly dreamed of in his wildest moments. Here were ten leaves from a copy of Genesis, illustrated with pictures, which would not be later than 700 AD. Further on was a complete set of pictures from a Psalter, of English execution, of the very finest kind that the thirteenth century could produce; and, perhaps best of all, there were twenty leaves of uncial writing in Latin, which, as a few words seen here and there told him at once, must belong to some very early unknow patristic treatise. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
Could it possibly be a fragment of the copy of Papias “On the Words of Our Lord,” which was know to have exited as late as the twelfth century at Nimes? In any case, his mind was made up; that book must return to Cambridge with him, even if he had to draw the whole of his balance from the bank and stay at the Winchester mansion till the money came. He glanced up at Mrs. Winchester to see if her face yielded any hint that the book was for sale. Mr. Winchester was pale, and her lips were working. “If monsieur will turn to the end,” she said. In the meantime a separate table was brought, on which the butler had sat a clean coarse cloth, and a savoury supper of broiled ham, hot corncakes, and coffee.” The monsieur turned on, meeting new treasures at every rise of a leaf; and at the end of the book he came upon two sheets of paper, of which more recent date than anything he had yet seen, which puzzled him considerably. They must be a contemporary, he decided, with the unprincipled Canon Alberic, who had doubtless plundered the Chapter library of St Bertrand to form this priceless scrap-book. On the first of the paper sheets was a plan, carefully drawn and instantly recognizable by a person who knew the ground, of the south aisle and cloisters of St Bertrand’s. There were curious signs looking like planetary symbols, and a few Hebrew words in the corners; and in the north-west angle of the cloister was a cross drawn in gold paint. Blow the plan were some lines of writing in Latin, which ran thus: “Responsa 12 Dec. 1694. Interrogatum est: Invenaimne? Responsum est: Invenies. Fiamne dives? Fies. Vivamne invidendus? Vives. Moriarne in lecto meo? Ita.’ (Answers of the 12th of December, 1694. It was asked: Shall I find it? Answer: Thou shalt. Shall I become rich? Thou wilt. Shall I live an object of envy? Thou wilt. Shall I die in my bed? Thou wilt.) #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
The President kept looking through the book, what he then saw impressed him. The drawing he saw was no longer in existence, there is a photograph of it (which Mrs. Winchester possessed) which fully bears out that statement. The pictures in question was a sepia drawing at the end of the seventeenth century, representing, one would say at first sight, a biblical scene; for the architecture (the picture presented an interior) and the figures had that semi-classical flavour about them which the artists of two hundred year ago thought appropriate to illustrations of the Bible. On the right was King on his throne, the throne elevated on twelve steps, a canopy overheard, soldiers on either side—evidently King Solomon. He was bending forward with outstretched scepter, in attitude of command; his face expressed horror and disgust, yet there was in it also the mark of imperious command and confident power. The left half of the picture was the strangest, however. The interest plainly centered there. On the pavement before the throne were grouped four soldiers, surrounding a crouching figure which must be described in a moment. A fifth soldier lay dead on the pavement, his neck distorted, and his eyeballs starting from his head. The four surrounding guards were looking at the King. In their faces the sentiment of horror was intensified; they seemed, in fact, only restrained from flight by their implicit trust in their master. All this terror was plainly excited by the being that crouched in their midst. There are not any words that can convey the impression of which this figure makes upon anyone who looks at it. Once, the photograph was showed to a lecturer on morphology—a person who was abnormally sane and unimaginative in the habits of the mind. He absolutely refused to be alone for the rest of that evening, and told Mrs. Winchester that afterwards for many night he had not dared to put out his light before going to sleep. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
However, the main traits of the figure, at first you saw only a mass of coarse, matted black hair; presently it was seen that this covered a body of fearful thinness, almost a skeleton, but with the muscles standing out like wires. The hands were of a dusky pallor, covered, like the body, with long, coarse hairs, and hideously taloned. The eyes, touched in with a burning yellow, had intensely black pupils, and were fixed upon the throned King with a look of a beast-like hate. Imagine one of the awful bird-catching spiders of South America translated into human form, and endowed with intelligence just less than human, and you will have some faint conception of the terror inspired by the appalling effigy. Many hours had passed and President Roosevelt said, “Don’t say another word about it. But my friend; you have not a spare sleeping-room that I can use for the night? If not, find me a corner—a clean corner.” After a great deal of hesitation, Mrs. Winchester said, “The fact is that there is as comfortable a room as the best folks can wish; but—the most mysterious whispers, imparted the startling fact that this most desirable sleeping-room is haunted.” Mrs. Winchester had come to be very suspicious of admitting guests. The President ensure her that it would be better than sitting up all night or sleeping in the barn with the horses. President Roseville became interested in Mrs. Winchester’s confidences, but could only gather in further explanation that for some time past all the travellers who has occupied that room had “made off in the middle of the night, never showing their faces at the mansion again.” On endeavouring to arrest one or more in their nocturnal flight, they—all more or less terrified—had insisted on escaping without a moment’s delay, assigning no other reason than that they had seen a ghost. The President replied, “Let the Chamber be got ready directly, and please have a good fire built in the fireplace at once.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
In a reasonable time, President Roosevelt was beckoned out of the parlour, and conducted to the second floor by the butler, who, after receiving a cheerful “goodnight,” paused on the landing to hear his guest bolt and bar the door within, then push a piece of furniture against it. “Ah,” murmured the butler, as a sort of misgiving came over him, “if a apparishum has a mind to come to thar, ‘tain’t all the bolts and bars in California as ‘ll kpi’en away.” However, the President’s precaution of securing his door, as also that of placing his revolvers in readiness, had not the slightest reference to the reputed ghost. Spiritual disturbances of such kind he feared not. Spirit tangible were already producing ominous demonstrations in the room below, nor was it possible to conjecture what troubles these might evolve. The only light was that of the roaring, crackling, blazing wood-fire, and no other was needed. At this time a growing feeling of discomfort had been creeping over him—nervous reaction, perhaps. But what storm-benighted traveller, when fierce winds and rains are lashing around, can withstand the cheering influences of a glorious log-fire? It charms away uneasiness, and causes all that is dull and dead around to laugh and dance in its bright light. By the illumination of just fire, President Roosevelt observed that the apartment offered nothing worthier of remark than that the furniture was superior to anything that might be expected in a Victorian mansion. In truth, Mrs. Winchester had expended a considerable sum in fitting up this, the first chamber. By the swaggering tread of unsteady feet about the house, or when the boisterous shouts below raged above the outside storm, he glanced up from his papers to congratulate himself upon this aggregable seclusion. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
Thus the President sat for an hour, then he heaped fresh logs upon the hearth, looked again to his revolvers, and retired to rest. The bell in the belfry was striking one thirteen in the am, the President awoke. He awoke suddenly from a sound sleep, flashing, as it were, into full consciousness, his mind and memory clear, all his faculties invigorated, his ideas undisturbed, but with a perfect conviction that he was not alone. He lifted his head. A man was standing a few feet from the bed, and between it and the fire, which was still burning, and burning brightly enough to display every object in the room, and to define the outline of the intruder clearly. His dress also and his features were plainly distinguishable: the dress was a travelling-costume, in fashion somewhat out of date; the features wore a mournful and distressed expression—the eyes were fixed upon the President. The right arm hung down, and the hand partially concealed. His attention with then caught by an object lying on the red cloth just by his left elbow. Two or three ideas of what it might be flitted through his brains with their own incalculable quickness. “A penwiper? No, no such thing in the house. A rat? No, too black. A large spider? I trust to goodness not—no. Good God! a hand like the hand in that picture!” In another infinitesimal flash he had taken it in. Pale, dusky skin, covering nothing but bones and tendons of appalling strength; coarse black hairs, longer than ever grew on a human hand; nails rising from the ends of the fingers and curving sharply down and forward, gray, horny and wrinkled. He jumped out of his bed with deadly, inconceivable terror clutching his heart. The shape, whose left hand rested on the table, was rising to a standing posture, its right hand crooked above his scalp. There was black and tattered drapery about it; the coarse hair covered it as in the drawing. The lower jaw was thin—what can I call it?—shallow, like abeast’s; teeth showed behind the black lips; there was no nose; the eyes, of a fiery yellow, against which the pupils showed black and intense, and the exulting hate and thirst to destroy life which shone there, were the most horrifying feature in the whole vision. There was intelligence of a kind in them—intelligence beyond that of a beast, below that of a man. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
The feelings which this horror stirred in President Roosevelt were the intensest physical fear and the most profound mental loathing. What did he do? What could he do? The man seemed about to advance still closer to the bed, and returned the occupant’s gaze with a fixed stare. “Stand, or I’ll fire!” cried the President, taking in all this at a glance, revolver in hand. The man remained still. “What is your business here?” demanded Roosevelt, thinking he was addressing one of the roughs from below. The man was silent. “If you value your life, leave the room,” shouted the president, pointing his revolver. The man was motionless. “RETIRE! Or by Heaven I’ll send a bullet through you!” But the man moved not an inch. The President fired. The bullet lodged in the breast of the stranger, but he started not. The President fired again and the shot entered the heart, pierced the body, and lodged in the wall beyond; and the President beheld the hole where the bullet had entered, and the firelight glimmering though it. And yet the intruder stirred not. Astounded, the President dropped his revolver, and stood face to face before the unmoved man. “President Roosevelt,” spake the deep solemn voice of the perforated stranger, “in a vain you shoot me—I am already dead.” The President, with all his bravery, grasped, spellbound. The firelight gleamed through the hole in the body, and the eyes of the shooter were riveted there. “Fear nothing,” spake the mournful presence; “I seek but to divulge my wrongs. Until my death shall be avenge my unquiet spirit lingers here. Listen.” Speechless, motionless was the President; and the mournful apparition thus slowly and distinctly continued. “Four years ago, I was hired to be a foreman. One I trusted plunged a dagger into my heart while I slept. He covered my wound with a plaster. He reigned to mourn my death. He told the people here I died of a heart-complaint; that I had long been ailing. I had gold treasures. With my treasure secreted beneath his garments he paraded mock grief at my grave. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
“Then he depated. In distant parts he sought to forget his crime; but his stolen gold brought him only the curse of an evil conscience. Rest and peace are not for him. He now prepares to leave his native land for ever. Under an assumed name that man is this night in San Francisco. In a few hours he will sail for Europe. President Roosevelt, you must prevent it. Justice and humanity demand that a murderer roam not at large, nor squander more of the wealth that is by right my children’s. Not until the spirit of my murderer shall be separated from the mortal clay can my spirit rest in peace.” And vanished. Most of the civilians you meet either do not want to know to know about the supernatural or blame you for brining it into their lives once you tell them about it. President Roosevelt tried to revisit the Winchester, but the Butler would not allow him inside because of the damage he did to the chamber. Mrs. Winchester had a remarkable memory and knew the location of every piece of material in the mansion, even in the vast store-rooms. The full scope of her generosity, charity, and many kindly acts will forever remain unknown and such was her sincere desire. Her donations were never made public. She contributed to charities of all faiths. In 1911 in New Haven, she established the William Wirt Winchester Memorial Sanitorium for Tuberculosis, endowing it with $1,200,000 (2021 adjusted for inflation $32,539,882.35). There were the little but visible acts that we nearby dwellers particularly noticed; those daily carriage trips with soup and hot food for a newly arrived settler on Stevens Creek Road, a man dying from Tuberculosis; those annual, unheralded trips to old Cupertino Church where my mother and other woman of The Ladies Aid Society collated used clothing for the local poors’ children. I remember a small boy’s thrill as he watched her liveried coachman alight from the polished Victoria and stagger up the church steps with a huge hamper of clothes, not used clothes, but dozens of newly purchased garments! That was Mrs. Winchester, the writer and many another contemporary remember. We never knew her intimately, but how we now wish we had! #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
Winchester Mystery House
The Winchester Mystery House features some very strange oddities like the door-to-nowhere. What purpose do you think it served Sarah during her time?
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
🗝 winchestermysteryhouse.com
Nothing Ever Turns Out Right! Somebody Take Care of Me! God, Why Not Make Everything O.K.?
Such great devotion was in vogue in the days the Ark of God was being built, as was remembrance of divine praise at the Ark of the Covenant. However, that was then, and this is now. Should I not, and indeed the rest of the Christian population, have more reverence, more devotion, in the presence of the Mystery and in the reception of Sacrament? Every year, any number of Christians go to great pains to visit as many shrines as they can, there to ay respects to the relics of the Saints and to hear of the wonders worked through the Saints’ intercession. Of course, the pilgrims reverence with their lips the holy bones resting on silk and cased in gold, but they also gawk at the sumptuousness of the churches housing the shrines. You know what is wrong with this picture? Right in front of one, on this very altar, without one’s having to lift a finger, let alone a foot, God is alive and well. That is to say, God, Holy of Holies, Creator of Humankind, and Lord of Angels. However, if I wonder what the dearest Lord and Friend has against pilgrimage? Perhaps this flurry of activity seems holy at first, but in reality it is a curiosity that plagues all Humankind. That is to say, there is a certain freshness that comes with hithering and thithering, with seeing new things in toxic places. However, when people tally up the expense of pilgrimaging, they have paid too much for too little. That is to say, the fruit of a pilgrimage is conversion, reform of life. However, that seems to have taken a back seat in their minds, if not their souls; they have preferred happy times in holy places to the True Contrition they could find at home, at the Winchester, the shrine where their soul resides. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Here and now, in the Sacrament of the Altar, He is totally present, Jesus, Man and Christ. Right here, within one’s grasp, Eternal Salvation awaits, to be harvested just as often one undertake Communion with dignity and devotion. Pilgrims, beware! The paths to this shrine are rocky, and slippery are the pavers marked Levity, Curiosity, and Sensuality; for true cobbles, rely only on Firm Faith, Devout Hope, and Sincere Charity. O God, Invisible Creator of the World, how wondrously You treat us! How sweetly and graciously You carry on with Your chosen—these are the people You have invited to join you in Your Sacrament! Yes, I know You low opinion of Us Devouts, but I just have to say that the Sacrament has a special appeal to our hearts. We are truly faithful friends of Yours, and we have planned our whole lives around reformation of soul. As a result, we frequently receive this Most Worthy Sacrament, and from it we derive the great grace of devotion and the love of virtue. O admirable yet hidden grace of the Sacramento, only the faithful of Christ have known it well! The faithless and the sinful, however, have no experience to match it. Every relation is based either on quantity, a double and half; or on action and passion, as the doer and the deed, the father and the son, the master and the servant, and the like. Now as there is no quantity in God, for He is great without quantity, as Augustine says (De Trin. I, !) it follows that a real relation in God can be based only on action. Such relations are not based on the actions of God according to any extrinsic procession, forasmuch as the relations in God can be understood only in regard to those actions according to which there are internal, and not external, processions in God. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
These processions are two only, as above explained, one derived from the action of the intellect, the procession of the Word; and the other from the action of the will, the procession of love. In respect of each of these processions two opposite relations arise; one of which is the relation of the person proceeding from the principle; the other is the relation of the principle Himself. The procession of the Word is called generation in the proper sense of the term, whereby it is applied to living things. Now the relation of the principle of generation in perfect living beings is called paternity; and the relation of the one proceeding from the principle is called filiation. However, the procession of Love has no proper name of its own; and so neither have the ensuing relations a proper name of their own. The relation of the principle of this procession is called spiration; and the relation of the person proceeding is called procession: although these two names belong to the processions or origins themselves, and not to the relations. In those things in which there is a difference between the intellect and its object, and the will and its object, there can be a real relation, both of science to its object, and of the willer to the object willed. In God, however, the intellect and its object are one and the same; because by understanding Himself, God understands all other things; and the same applies to His will and the object that He wills. Hence, it follows that in God these kinds of relations are not real; as neither is the relation of a thing to itself. Nevertheless, the relation to the word is a real relation; because the word is understood as proceeding by an intelligible action; and not as a thing understood. For when we understand a stone; that which the intellect conceives from the thing understood, is called the word. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Intelligible relations in ourselves are infinitely multiplied, because a human understands a stone by one act, and by another act understands that one understands the stone, and again by another, understands that one understands this; thus the acts of understanding are infinitely multiplied, and consequently also the relations understood. This does not apply to God, inasmuch as He understand all things by one act alone. Ideal relations exist as understood by God. Hence it does not follow from their plurality that there are many relations in God; but that God knows these many relations. Equality and similitude in God are not real relations; but are only logical relations. The way from one term to another and conversely in the same; nevertheless the mutual relations are not the same. Hence, we cannot conclude that the relation of the father to the son is the same as that of the son to the father; but we conclude this of something absolute, if there were such between them. “Let one gives one’s cheek to the One Who smites one [even through His human agents]; let one be filled [full] with [men’s] reproach [in meekness]. For the Lord will not cast off forever!,” reports Lamentations 3.30-31. What are the signs whereby one shall know that this is an authentic glimpse of reality? First, it is and shall remain ever present. There is no future in it and no past. Second, the pure spiritual experience comes without excitement, is reported without exaggeration, and needs no external authority to authenticate it. The glimpse also does in part for a human what initiation did in some ancient mystical institutions. It sets one on the road of a new life, a life more earnestly and more consciously devoted to the quest of Overself. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
The glimpse silently bids one dedicate, or rededicate anew, the remainder of one’s life on Earth to this undertaking. It is a baptism with inner light more far-reaching than the baptism with physical water. The motives and reactions of a spiritually intuitive human will necessarily be on a higher level than those of a human driven by animal and Worldly compulsions only. And once you are reborn in the heart, life will become what it should be—the realization that you are outworking a higher destiny than the merely personal one. Another noteworthy mark of the true glimpse is its purificatory effect. This is usually temporary but in a few cases it has been permanent. When one has this first unprecedented experience, when one knows and feels that one is a part of divine being, one is born “in Christ.” However, it is not for one to stand at street corners and announce to the multitude that one has had this glimpse. The sustained consciousness of the Overself puts its mark upon a human’s face. They are humans with “the shine” on their faces, like the one who descended from Sinai. One emerges from the old human that one was, from the ego-ridden nature, as a snake emerges from its old skin. The old self which one has left behind and which once so occupied one’s interest now seems ugly, bad, and dull. So great is the change in one that it also seems like a stranger, not entitled to bear one’s name. However synical and blasé may have been one’s attitude in earlier days, it will yield to and melt in the sunny light of this second birth. Those who have experienced a glimpse of this blessed Reality or, better, established themselves in it, may share its atmosphere with others in silent communion. However, on a lesser level, they may also share with the in phrased speech the thoughts it provokes. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
The more one becomes familiar with this experience, the easier one can describe it. One who has been touched by the goodness comes out of one’s sleep, says the Old World wisdom. For one has a knowledge which appears as a special and unusual kind of awareness that escapes most other people. There comes a time when out of the silence within oneself there comes the spiritual guidance which one needs for one’s further course. It comes sometimes as a delicate feeling, sometimes as a strong one, sometimes in a clearly formulated message, and sometimes out of the circumstances and happenings themselves. Not only does it tell one and teach one, but sometimes it does the same for others. Such is the effect of the Divine Life now working increasingly within one. You are saved the moment this divine power takes possession of you, but not otherwise. The dictionary defines an eccentric as a person who deviates from common behaviour patterns or displays odd or whimsical behaviour. However, how can we separate a psychologically healthy person who has unusual habits from a person whose oddness is a symptom of psychopathology? For years, little research was done on eccentrics, but some recent studies and reviews seem to have started the ball rolling. For example, the researcher David Weeks studied 1,000 eccentrics over a 10-year period and was able to pin-point 15 characteristic common to them. Altogether, he estimates that as many as 1 in 5,000 persons may be “classic, full-time eccentrics.” Men and women seem equally prone to such patterns. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Weeks suggests that eccentrics do not typically suffer from mental disorders. Whereas the unusual behaviour of persons with mental disorders is thrust upon them and usually causes them suffering, eccentricity is chosen freely and provides pleasure. In short, eccentrics know they are different and glory in it. Similarly, the thought process of eccentrics are not severely disrupted, and they do not leave the person dysfunctional. In fact, it was also discovered the eccentrics actually had fewer emotional problems than the general population. Perhaps being an “original” is good for mental health. The eccentrics in his study also seemed physically healthier than others, visiting a doctor only once every eight years on average. Weeks concludes that most eccentrics, despite their deviant behaviour—perhaps even because of it—are happy, well-adjusted, and joyful people. According to Weeks, the following 15 qualities (in descending order of importance) are characteristic of eccentrics. The first 5 are the most definitive, but possessing any 10 may qualify a person as an eccentric: Nonconforming, creative, strongly curious, idealistic, happily obsessed with a hobby (often more than one), aware from early childhood of being different from others, intelligence, opinionated and outspoken, noncompetitive, unusual eating or living habits, not interested in the opinions or company of others, mischievous sense of humour, single, eldest or only child, bad speller. Are you eccentric? #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Once clinicians decide that a person is indeed suffering from some form of psychological abnormality, they seek to treat it. Treatment, or therapy is a procedure designed to change abnormal behaviour into more normal behaviour; it, too, requires careful definition. For clinical scientists, the problem is closely related to defining abnormality. Therapy has three essential features: A sufferer who seeks relief from the healer. A trained, socially accepted healer, whose expertise is accepted by sufferer and one’s social group. A series of contact between the healer and the sufferer, through which the healer, often with the assistance of a group, tries to produce certain changes in the sufferer’s emotional state, and behaviour. Some clinicians view abnormality as an illness and so consider therapy a procedure that helps cure the illness. Others see abnormality as a problem in living and therapists as teachers of more functional behavior and thought. Clinicians even differ on what to call the person undergoing therapy: those who see abnormality as an illness speak of the “patient,” while those who view it as a problem in living refer to the “client.” Because both terms are so common, many use them interchangeably. Despite their differences, most clinicians do agree that large numbers of people need therapy of one kind or another. People with histrionic personality disorder (hereafter abbreviated as HPD) exhibit a pervasive pattern of excessive emotionality and attention seeking. Their social interactions are characterized by inappropriately seductive or provocative behaviour, rapidly shifting and shallow emotions, excessively impressionistic speech that is lacking in detail, and self-dramatization. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Persons with HPD tend to use physical appearances to draw attention to themselves, consider relationships to be more intimate than they really are, and are rather easily influenced by other people. These persons are resistant to being pushed into the background, and want to be made to feel special, with a tendency toward anger and jealousy when not acknowledged. Using a Structural Analysis of Social Behaviour, it has been discovered that people with HPD wish for active love and protection while harbouring a fear of being ignored by others. Unquestionably, the interpersonal theatrics of these people are cries for attention, and most of their symptoms are in the service of this primary goal. A distinctive quality of HPD is its inherent interpersonal quality: Interaction with others is required for expression of the disorder. Obviously something is seriously awry on the interpersonal terrain of persons with HPD. Although such people are often judged to be more physically attractive than their nondisordered peers, this physical attractiveness is associated with a greater reliance on immature defense mechanisms, such as projection and regression. These findings suggest a pattern of superficial relations based on gaining attention through physical attractiveness, in the absence of any well-developed interpersonal coping and problem-solving skills. Compared to healthy controls, persons with HPD score lower in assertiveness involving pleasures of the flesh despite their flirtations, and exhibit more phobic attitudes toward pleasures of the flesh. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Expectedly, the subjects with HPD in this study also reported lower martial satisfactions than controls. These same respondents indicated relatively high levels of preoccupation with pleasures of the flesh, along with boredom and dysfunction with pleasures of the flesh. In a unique study with gay men, Johnson et al. (2000) found that symptoms of HPD were negatively correlated with receiving social support, and positively correlated with interpersonal conflict and loneliness. In an epidemiological study, it would found that the prevalence rate of HPD was about five times higher in divorced and separated persons than in people who were married. Looking back at the early interpersonal experiences of people with HPD, one sees a pattern of turmoil. For example, sexual abuse is often evident in the early home environments of such individuals. In a similar study, people with Cluster B (dramatic-emotional”) personality disorders (id est, antisocial personality disorder, BPD, HPD, and NDP) indicated that they experienced a pattern of parental overprotection coupled with lower parental care. Although parental overprotection and sexual abuse may appear antithetical at first glance, each is indicative of poor boundary regulation. Other family-of-origin processes that are related to HPD include high achievement orientation, an intellectual/cultural orientation, and high levels of parental control. What cases HPD? Undoubtedly this disorder, like other personality disorders, grows out of an amalgamation of temperament (which comes from genetic predisposition) and character (which is the developing aspect of one’s personality that is shaped by experience). #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
The character of people with HPD may be strongly tied to interpersonal interactions. Experts believe that this disorder is often preceded by rare parental punishment and unpredictable parental rewarding, resulting in the creation of behaviours that are directed toward securing rewards, developing a sense of personal competence, and seeking approval for approval’s sake. In developing this social learning hypothesis, it has been noted that when parents offer approval on a variable schedule, the child who will later develop HPD becomes frustrated, and learns to exaggerate one’s behaviours in the service of obtaining compliments and affection. Unless the parents recognize this conduct for what it is worthy, a vicious cycle is established in which the child performs increasingly dramatic and caricatured behaviours to secure positive responses from one’s parents. Like other old habits the die heard, this pattern of conduct is carried over beyond the childhood home to adult interpersonal relations. Psychodynamic theories of HPD originally characterized the disorder as hysterical personality. It was believed that the symptoms are the results of childhood sexual abuse. Traumatic memories of the abuse were assumed to be repressed. The strong tendencies toward repression were thought to explain the vague and shallow cognitive pattern that is so characteristic of people with HPD. From the psychodynamic perspective, the sexualization of social interactions in HPD is a defense against the fear of sexual aggression and victimization. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
By summoning that which is feared, persons with HPD may develop a sense of mastery over this fear by replacing it with attraction. This psychodynamic perspective, notwithstanding its dubious falsifiability, clearly locates the origin and consequences of the disorder in interpersonal experiences. Somewhere in between the social learning and psychodynamic hypothesis, is the pathogenic hypothesis, based on the Structural Analysis of Social Behaviour. There are three identifiable early interpersonal experiences that figure prominently in the pathogenesis of HPD. First, these people were often loved for their good looks and entertainment value as children. Second, as children, these people quickly learned that physical appearance and charm were functional for getting what they wanted from others. Finally, their early family environments were unpredictable and chaotic. However, it was this very chaos that kindled a sense of drama in their families, in which these children could play a role. People with HPD conduct their lives in a frantic search for attention, trapped between the exploitation of sexuality and flirtation to gain this attention, and fear of its eventuality. Their interpersonal theatrics, emotional flightiness, and shallow cognitive style may have their origins in early family experiences. Proponents of both social learning and psychodynamic hypotheses converge on the belief that family dynamics such as parental boundary violation (manifested in sexual abuse and overportectivness) and inconsistent parental reinforcement set in motion the patterns of emotion, cognition, and social behaviour that are characteristic of HPD. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
People become more psychologically healthy (fully functioning, self-actualizing), they become more tolerant of “opposites” within themselves, and become more able to accept others with all their uniqueness. Others may have mistreated you, somebody may have walked out on you, or maybe you prayed fervently, yet God did not answer your prayer the way you had anticipated. That is over and done. You cannot change the past; there is nothing you can do about it now. However, you must make a decision. Are you going to relive all those painful memories, or are you going to stay in an attitude of faith? You must walk out of any emotional bondage in which you have been living. Nobody can do it for you. You must rise up out of those ashes. You must forgive the people who have hurt you. You have to release all those hurts and pains. Leave the past behind. When you go through situations you do not understand, do not become bitter. Do not question God. Learn to just wash your face, keep a good attitude, and move on. Get ready for the new things God has in store for you. If you will stay in an attitude of faith and success, God has promised that He will turn those emotional wounds around. He will use them to your advantage, and you will come out better than you would have had they not happened to you. Humans alone, of all the creatures of the Earth, can change their own pattern. Humans alone are the architect of their destiny. The greatest discovery of our generation is that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Christians often think in terms of opposites—right/wrong, good/bad, sinful/goodness—instead of the principle of transcendence of opposites. The actualizing Christian learns to transcend these opposites. Openness to experience all that one is can be expressed as follows: I am neither good nor bad, I am both. I am neither spiritual nor sensual, I am both. I am neither generous nor selfish, I am both. I am neither honest nor dishonest, I am both. I am neither a saint nor a sinner, I am both. However, God accepts me, forgives me, and loves me just as I am. And I can accept, forgive, and love myself and others. The testimony of the actualizing Christian is not that one is perfect, but rather that one is being perfected by the healing love and power of God. The process of being made whole involves gradual transformation of one’s entire being. Every polarity has both manipulative and actualizing alternatives. To be consistently actualizing, a person must learn to transform manipulative behaviours into actualizing counterparts. On the strength polarity, the egocentric manipulative tactics of striving and achieving need to be transformed into interpersonal qualities of cooperating and contributing. The latter two actualizing qualities have a respect and sensitivity that the manipulative forms do not possess. Cooperating with others in a sharing way allows us to express our own strengths while at the same time seeking the common good. Contributing is not something that is grasped at or forced, but rather is a reflection of our true capabilities. Our attitude becomes cooperative rather than competitive. We give up the attempt to be omniscient and omnipotent. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
When we function in this way, we do not feel threatened by someone else’s contributions or accomplishments. We are also quick to admit our deficiencies and to integrate our strengths with the contributions of others. This is the basis for the virtue of courage or realistic self-confidence. On the weakness polarity, withdrawing and avoiding need to be transformed into feeling vulnerable and empathizing. The actualizing Christian learns that one can honestly share feelings of inadequacy, fear, or helplessness. In sharing feelings of vulnerability, a person becomes more accepting and tolerant of others, and hence more empathetic. Herein lies the virtue of humility. Some years ago, my great grandmother went back home to Sweden for the first time in thirty years. Late one night we received a concerned phone call from her during which she said that the Gripsholm, the boat she was supposed to return on, had collided in New York Harbor with the Andrea Dorea, an Italian ship. We discussed her alternatives, and it seemed the only things she could do would be to take her first airplane trip. This may not seem like a large accomplishment these days, but for my mother, who was over seventy years old, this was a fearful and difficult task. The next day she bravely climbed the steps of the huge 707, turned the corner, and sat down in her seat—which happened to be next to Eleanor Roosevelt! Eleanor Roosevelt was an empathetic woman who herself had suffered much in her life. So immediately her empathy expressed itself to my great grandmother, who obviously was somewhat shaken at being on her first plane trip. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
The Worldly, yet gentle woman pulled a rose from the bouquet the Swedish government had given her on departure—and gave it to my great grandmother. Great grandmother was deeply moved by this gesture and immediately felt vulnerable and open to this beautifully warm woman. During the next five hours on their journey to America, the two of the chattered together like neighbours over the back fence, as my great grandmother often did with her friends in Rockford, Illinois. Elanor Roosevelt is an example of a truly humble person. Since she was genuinely away of her own feelings of vulnerability, she could reach out to others, including my mother, with a special warmth and sensitivity. On the love polarity, the manipulative patterns of pleasing and placating are transformed into the actualizing traits of affirming and caring. There is a freedom to praise and nurture both oneself and others. Built into the combination of affirming and caring the firmness and warmth. From these qualities emerge the virtue of compassion, a sure mark of the actualizing Christian. From the anger polarity arise asserting and expressing, the actualizing counterparts of blaming and attacking. The person who expressed anger graciously and diplomatically exhibits the virtue of confrontation with caring, or “speaking the truth in love.” There is a real wisdom built into the warp and woof of human nature. It is as though God intended a sensitive set of checks and balances in order to create a reliable source of guidance and inspiration within each person. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Love that is expressed fully bring qualities of tenderness, caring, and nurturing into the World. However, to find its finest balance, love must be offset with a certain firmness and power that is captured in the feeling of anger. Anger provides the energy for confronting the World in a caring way. Likewise, the feelings of strength and weakness both balance and check each other. From strength a person derives a certain air of confidence, boldness, and dignity. However, with the balancing effect of weakness, the virtue of humility is added; so one can express strength in gentle and humble ways. It is our belief that as one becomes more balanced in expressing these behavioural opposites, one will experience a connectedness to others and to God in a warmhearted, open and sharing way. Connectedness if the key to understanding others and growing with them in mutually supportive ways. Heavenly Father, I admit that sometimes I am more surprised when You do answer my prayers than when You do not. I know that I do not deserve Your kindness, that like Prince Lestat, I have made some bad decisions, done wrong, and deserve nothing. However, thank You for loving me even through my mistakes, failures, and wrong choices. Please help me, Father, to trust You through my disappointments. The practice of prayer, when done as an exercise can harmonize cosmic energies, so that the will of God will manifest in your life naturally. While praying for good things and thanking God, mentally direct the energy towards your general surrounding so you can mentally connect it with the cosmic life-force. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Remember that the purpose of this lengthened prayer is not only to empty your temple of negative energy, but also to empty your environmental of bad energy. It will help to empty the mind of its tumult and the nerves of their agitation, and focus on your prayer as deeply as possible. Until you learn to build your faith, you may want to repeat your prayer, in different ways, until you learn how to expand your conversations with God and Jesus. Imagine a steam of golden-white energy being drawn from the Holy Trinity and radiated throughout the body. This enables one to better receive cosmic current of life-force. It also strengthens the power of self-control, of disciplining the body. “Only fear the Lord and serve Him faithfully with all your heart; for consider how great are the things He has done for you. However, if you still do wickedly, both you and your king shall be swept away,” reports 1 Samuel 12.24-25. “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” reports Matthew 6.13. Most people believe that the Lord sends the trials, tests, and temptations of life. If the trails and temptations come from God, I wonder why Jesus said to pray that you enter not into? If God knows everything and we know the Word says God has all knowledge, then I wonder why God would have to try and test us to find out what we would do in a certain situation. The Word also says that Jesus Christ is the author and finisher of our faith. (Hebrews 12.2.) Now since Jesus has authored our faith, God does not need to try it. He knows it will work. The enemy is the one trying our faith. Jesus said, Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
What evil is Jesus Christ talking about? The evil and trials and temptations. We can rise to a new level of faith when we realize that it is the thief that steals, kills and destroys. It is Jesus that gives life abundantly. When you draw the battle line, you will have 50 percent of the battle won. This will set you at liberty in your prayer life. You can use your faith shield to quench every fiery dart of the adversary. However, if God put it on you, until you determine the cause, you cannot use your faith. You cannot believe the thing will go away. The enemy suggests that God might be using this to perfect you. It sounds logical, but it is stronghold of the adversary. Now let me refresh your memory in this area. In the 8th chapter of Luke, verse 22, Jesus said to the disciples, Let us go over unto the other side, then He fell asleep in the back of the ship. A storm of wind arouse on the lake and waves were lapping into the boat. The disciples began to say, Master, we perish. Jesus Christ arose and rebuked the wind and the sea. Then He asked them, “Where is your faith?” Was that storm sent of God to try their faith? No. That storm was designed by the adversary to get the Word out of them and it worked well. “The ones alone the path are those who have the Word sown [in their hearts], but when they hear, the adversary comes at once and [by force] takes away the message which is sown in them,” reports Mark 4.15. They told Jesus what the devil said. The devil had told them that they would all drown. However, Jesus said, “We are going to the other side.” His Words did not abide in them. In 1 John 3.8, we find that Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil. If the storm was of God, then Jesus came to undo everything that the enemy was doing. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Jesus Christ rebuked the wind because the storm had been caused by the enemy. He has perverted nature and used the atmosphere to bring floods, storms and tornadoes. However, headlines proclaim, God Visited Our City Last Night With a Tornado. No greater lie has ever been told! When lightning struck a certain plant in Arkansas, it blew up, killing several people and injuring many others. The newspapers called it an act of God. No bigger lie has ever been told. Those things are perversions of nature. The Enemy has perverted the things God created for good. Genesis 1.31 says, “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” Lightning was what killed Job’s cattle. The King James calls it “fire from Heaven.” One translation says “lightning.” In other words, the enemy used the elements of the Earth and atmosphere to destroy Job’s cattle. However, Job said The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, which is actually recorded in the Bible. However, Job was not under the anointing when he said it. He was deceived. He thought it was God but you can plainly read in Job, chapter 1, that it was the adversary who had caused Job’s problems. If you believe that God brings these things on you, you cannot use your faith to get rid of them. There is no place in the Bible where it says, “Take the shield of faith and quench all the fiery darts of God!” You would not dare pray for deliverance from something God is using to perfect you. However, when you get the battle line drawn and see that the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy and that Jesus came to give us abundant life, then you can use your faith. You will be able to pray accurately. You can come against the evil forces and prevail. Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked (Ephesians 6.16). #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
When we have financial problems, most of the time it is the enemy’s work. Sometimes it is our own fault. It is not God, trying to teach us something! When we have problems in areas of the physical body, it is an attack of the enemy, because Jesus said for us to pray, Thy will be done in Earth as it is in Heaven. God’s will is that we walk in health on this Earth and that is the way we should pray. Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as they soul prospereth (3 John 2). O Great Spirit whose voice I hear in the winds, and whose breath gives life to all the World, hear me! I am small and weak, I need your strength and wisdom. Let me walk in beauty, and make my eyes ever behold the red and purple sunset. Make my hands respect the things you have made and my ears sharp to hear your voice. Make me wise so that I may understand the things you have taught my people. Let me learn the lessons you have hidden in every leaf and rock. I seek strength, not to be greater than my brother, but to fight my greatest enemy—myself. Make me always ready to come to you with clean hands and straight eyes. So when life fades, as the fading sunset, my spirit may come to you without shame. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me besides the still waters. He restoreth my soul; He guideth me in straight paths for His name’s sake. Ye, though I walk through the Sacramento valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; Thou hast anointed my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 