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Glory to God in the Highest, and on Earth Peace, Good Will Toward All Beings!

January 24, 2020 2:50 am

Come live with me, and be my love, and we will some new pleasures prove of golden sands and crystal brooks with silken lines, and silver hooks. Laughter causes the lungs to pump out carbon dioxide, the eyes to cleanse themselves with tears, the muscles to relax, the flow of adrenaline to increase, and the cardiovascular system to be exercised. Perhaps most important for those in schools, endorphins, the chemicals produced by the brain to relieve pain, are released into the bloodstream when a person laughs. Clearly, laughter is good for schools and for those who inhabit them. As we know God is just and holy. He judges sin and disciplines His children. However, God is also the God of all grace. No one knew better than the apostle Peter. Peter had a history of error, even before the nigh when he denied Jesus. Simon Peter did not exactly get started on the right foot with Jesus. One day Jesus was teaching, and the people were crowding around Him on the shore of a lake. Because of the press of the crowd, Jesus got into Peter’s boat and from it He taught the people. Afterward He said to Simon Peter, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.” “Simon answered, ‘Master, we have worked hard all night and have not caught anything. However, because you say so, I will let down the nets.’ When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break,” reports Luke 5.4-6. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

Can you hear the doubt, skepticism, and reluctance in Peter’s response? In effect he said, “Master, You do not realize we have just fished all night, but if You say so, we will do this to humor You.” Not exactly an auspicious beginning of their relationship, is it? Then there was the day Peter miraculously walked on water only to find himself sinking and having to cry out for help (Matthew 14.29-30). With their competitive spirits, the other disciples probably watched with envious awe as Peter walked on the water (they even argued on the eve of Christ’s betrayal over which of hem was considered to be the greatest, reported in Luke 22.24). However, their awe no doubt changed to derision as Peter began to sink beneath the waves. I suspect they did not let him forget that incident very quickly. Another time Peter, in loyalty, protested Jesus’ prediction of His coming death, only to be put down with the severe rebuke, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of humans,” reports Matthew 16.23. Again, on the night of Christ’s betrayal, Peter rushed to defend his Lord with the sword, only to be rebuked, Peter rushed to defend his Lord with the sword, only to be rebuked by Him (John 18.10-11). Then, of course, there is Peter’s oft-retold denial of Jesus coming right on the heels of his vehement protest, “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you,” reports Matthew 26.35. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

Undoubtedly Peter’s bitter grief at denying his Lord was aggravated by the reminder of his own proud and foolish boast reported in Matthew 26.69-75. It begins to look as if Peter could not do anything right, does it not? Even today he is held up in sermons as the ultimate example of someone who was proud, impetuous, and boastful; someone who, to use a colloquial expression, was always “sticking his foot in his mouth.” However, whom did God select to be the primary spokes person for the apostles on the day of Pentecost? Who has the privilege of preaching that first sermon when three thousand people were saved? It is Peter, who could not seem to do or say anything right, reported in Acts 2.14-41. Whom did God choose to be the preacher when He opened wide the door of salvation to the Gentiles? It was Peter at the house of Cornelius, reported in Acts 10.34-44. Who made the decisive statement at the council of Jerusalem that turned the tide against the Pharisee believers who were demanding that the new Gentile believers be circumcised and obey the law of Moses? It was Peter, reported in Acts 15.6-11. It seems as if Peter’s failures and foibles are all behind him, does it not? However, they are not. Some time later, Peter is found to be in error again. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

At Antioch Peter compromised himself in fear of the circumcision group and played the hypocrite, thereby gaining a justified public rebuke by the apostle Paul, reported in Galatians 2.11-14. The man who could do nothing right, who had seemingly become the man who could do no wrong, falls flat on his face again. However, the story does not end there. God chooses Peter to be the inspired writer of two books of the New Testament. Is it any wonder Peter refers to God as “the God of all grace,” reported in 1 Peter 5.10? Is it any wonder his last word of instruction is to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,” reports 2 Peter 3.18? Peter had personally experienced what Paul described: “But where sin increased, grace increased all the more,” reports Romans 5.20. The translation “increased all the more” probably does no capture completely the contrast Paul was seeking to convey between the results of sin and the effects of grace. The term superabounding describes the riches of God’s grace as Paul represented it in Romans 5.20. So, a good translation would be, “However, where sin abounded, grace superabounded.” Let me illustrate. A few drops of a dark-coloured ink in a glass of water will turn the water dark. However, put the glass under a kitchen faucet and turn on the water full force, and the pressure of the water will soon flush out all the dark color, leaving a glass full of clear water. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

The ink “abounds” in its effect on the water, turning in dark. However, the clean water from the faucet superabounds. It flows so abundantly and with such force, it erases all the effects of the ink. That is what Peter experienced. His failures and his sins abounded. There is no question about that. But however much his sin increased, God’s grace increased all the more. It superabounded. God blessed Peter, not in spite of his sins, but without regard to his sins. That is the way His grace operates. It looks not to our sins or even to our good deeds but only to the merit of Christ. What is the point of all this discussion about Peter and his failures and his experience of the grace of God? It is this: Most of us can identify with Peter. Regardless of how outwardly “successful” in the Christian life we may appear to others, in our hearts we know the truth. We know that in one way or another we are like Peter. We have acted in error and fallen on our spiritual faces too many times. Just like Peter, we need to be convinced in our hearts that God is the God of all grace, that He is going to bless us and use us, not according to our deserts, but as Samuel Storms said “according to [His] infinite goodness and sovereign purpose.” In order systematically to consider the situation of the discreditable person and one’s problem of concealment and disclosure, it is necessary to first examine the character of social information and of visibility. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

Before proceeding it is necessary to consider, and at considerable length, still another factor, that of identification—in the criminological and not the phycological sense. So far, the analysis of social interaction between the stigmatized and the normal has not required that those involved in the mixed contact know one another “personally” before the interaction begins. This seems reasonable. Stigma management is an offshoot of something basic in society, the stereotyping or “profiling” of our normative expectations regarding conduct and character; stereotyping is classically reserved for customers, international people, and motorists, that is, persons who fall into very broad categories and who may be passing strangers to us. There is a popular notion that although impersonal contacts between strangers are particularly subject to stereotypical responses, as persons come to be on closer terms with each other this categoric approach recedes and gradually sympathy, understanding, and a realistic assessment of personal qualities take its place. While a blemish such as a facial disfigurement might put off a stranger, intimates presumably would not be put off by such matters. The area of stigma management, then, might be seen as something that pertains mainly to public life, to contact between strangers or mere acquaintances, to one end of a continuum whose other pole is intimacy. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

The idea of such a continuum no doubt has some validity. For example, it has been shown that in addition to techniques for handling strangers, the physically disabled may develop special techniques for moving past the initial tactfulness and distance they are likely to receive; they may attempt to move on to a more “personal” plane where in fact their perceived deficit will cease to be a crucial factor—an arduous process called “breaking through.” Further, those with a bodily stigma report that, within certain limits, normals with whom they have repeated dealings will gradually come to be less put off by the disability, so that something like a daily round of normalization may hopefully develop. A person with a visual impairment cited: “There are now barbershops where I am received with some of the calmness of old, of course, and hotels, restaurants, and public buildings which I can enter without engendering a feeling that something is going to happen; a few trolly motormen and bus drivers now merely wish me ‘Good Morning,’ when I get on with my dog, and a few waiters I know serve me with traditional unconcern. Naturally, the immediate circle of my family has long since ceased doing any unnecessary worrying about me, and so have most of my intimate friends. To that extent I have made a dent in the education of the World.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

The same sheltering can presumably occur in regard to whole categories of the stigmatized: the service shops which are sometimes found in the immediate neighborhood of mental hospitals may become places with high tolerance for psychotic behaviour; the neighborhoods around some medical hospitals develop a capacity for calm treatment of those with visible disabilities; the town in which a seeing-eye school is located learns to countenance blind students engaged in the act of holding a harness attached to a human instructor all the while offering one periodic words of canine encouragement. In spite of this evidence for everyday belief about stigma and familiarity, one must go on to see that familiarity need not reduce contempt. For example, normals who live adjacent to settlements of the tribally stigmatized often manage quite handily to sustain their prejudices. It is more important here, however, to see that the various consequences of making a whole array of virtual assumptions about an individual are clearly present in our dealings wit person with whom we have had a longstanding, intimate, exclusive relationship. In our society, to speak of a woman as one’s wife is to place this person in a category of which there can be only one current member, yet a category is nonetheless involved, and she is merely a member of it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

Unique, historically entangled features are likely to tint the edges of our relation to this person; still, at the center is a full array of socially standardized anticipations that we have regarding her conduct and nature as an instance of the category “wife,” for example, that she will look after the house, entertain our friends, and be able to bear children. She will be a good or a bad wife, and be this relative to standard expectations, ones that other husbands in our group have about their wives too. (Surely it is scandalous to speak of a marriage as a particularistic relationship.) This, whether we interact with strangers or intimates, we will find that the finger tips of society have reached bluntly into the contact, even here putting us in our place. There are sure to be cases where those who are not required to share the individual’s stigma or spend much time exerting tact and care in regard to it may find it easier to accept one, just because of this, than do those who are obliged to be in fulltime contact with one. When one moves from a consideration of discredited persons to discreditable ones, much additional evidence is found that the individual’s intimates as well as one’s strangers will be put off by one’s stigma. For one thing, the individual’s intimates can become just the persons from whom one is most concerned with concealing something they perceive as shameful; some people who are interested in members of the same sex try to hide their desire, even though it is not a disease. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

When a person is homosexual, if one consults anyone at all, it is more likely to be a doctor than anyone else. However, it is not likely to be one’s own family doctor. Most of the contacts were anxious to keep their sexual preference hidden from their family. Even some of those who behave fairly openly in public are most careful to avoid arousing suspicious in the family circle. Further, while one parent in a family many share a shadowy secret about, and with, the other, the children of the house may be considered not only unsafe receptacles for the information but also of such tender nature as to be seriously damaged by the knowledge. The case of the mentally hospitalized parent is an example: In interpreting the father’s illness to younger children, almost all the mothers attempt to follow a course of concealment. The child is told either that his father is in a hospital (without further explanation) or that he is in the hospital suffering from a physical ailment (he has a toothache, or trouble with his leg, or a tummy ache, or a headache). [Wife of mental patient] “I live in horror—a perfect horror—that some people will make a crack about it to Ryan (child).” One may add that there are some stigmas that are so easily concealed that they figure very little in the individual’s relation to strangers and mere acquaintances, having their effect chiefly upon intimates—frigidity, importance, and sterility being good examples. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

This, in trying to account of the fact that alcoholism does not seem to disqualify a being from embarking upon marriage, one students suggests that: “It is also possible that the circumstances of courtship or the pattern of drinking may so lower the visibility of alcoholism that it is not a factor in mate selection. The more intimate interaction of marriage may then bring out the problem in a form recognizable to the spouse.” Moreover, intimates can come to play a special role in the discreditable person’s management of social situations, so that even where their acceptance of one is not influenced by one’s stigma, their duties will be. Instead, then, of thinking of a continuum of relationships, with categoric and concealing treatment at one end and particularistic , open treatment at the other, it might be better to think of various structures in which contact occurs and is stabilized—public streets and their strangers, perfunctory service relations, the workplace, the neighborhood, the domestic scene—and to see that in each case characteristic discrepancies are likely to occur between virtual and actual social identity, and characteristic efforts are made to manage the situation. And yet, the whole problem of managing stigma is influenced by the issue of whether or not the stigmatized person is known to us personally. However, all of this, the only sane and sound basis for human life, is precisely what is absent from the ruined heart. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

In Romans I, Paul described he progressive departure from God that leads to life as we know and see it all around us—and, sadly, within us if we have not been thoroughly transformed by Christ. As we might expect from the passages already referred to, the slide into pervasive soul corruption begins with the heart (or will) deflecting the mind from God. Human beings have always known there is a God and have had some degree of understanding of who he is and what he is like, as reported in Romans 1.19-20. Actually, they still do. However, they were not pleased that he should have the place in the Universe that he does have merely because he is who he is. And this is the key to understanding humanity’s present condition. The first of the Ten Commandments deals with this inclination away from God, as reports in Exodus 20.2-3. As Augustine saw clearly, God being God offends human pride. If God is running the Universe and has first claim on our lives, guess who is not running the Universe and does not get to have things as they please. This historian of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) titled his work Not-God because, he said, that stands as the most important hurdle an addicted person must surmount: to acknowledge, deep in the soul, not being God. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

No mastery of manipulation and control, at which alcoholics excel, can overcome the root problem; rather, the alcoholic must recognize individual helplessness and fall back in the arms of the Higher Power. “Frist of all, we had to quite playing God,” concluded the founders of AA; and then allow God himself to “play God” in the addict’s life, which involves daily, even moment-by-moment, surrender. However, in taking oneself in practice (or humanity taking itself in practice) as God, the great World-historical force of denial comes into play. It is this that accounts for the perpetual human blindness to the obvious. We can never understand human affairs at any level without taking it into account. It alone explains why “the rules of this sage” (1 Corinthians 2.8) do and are permitted to do the things they do—up to the crucifixion of “the Lord of glory” himself. Denial of reality is a capacity inseparable from the human will as we know it, and it has its greatest power when it operates without being recognized as such. (Of course by “denial” we mean to include not only rejection of what is the case, but also affirmation of what is not the case.) If life is to proceed in a World apart from God, the power of denial is absolutely essential. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

The will or spirit cannot—psychologically cannot—sustain itself for any length of time in the face of what it clearly acknowledges to be the case. Therefore it must deny and evade and delude itself. Paul’s brilliant and inspired insight into the root of human evil—“There is no fear of God before their eyes”—must never be forgotten by those who would understand spiritual formation and would themselves be transformed into Christlikeness, or by those who simply want to be responsible leaders among humanity. Now when the light of the fundamental truth and reality, God, is put out in the heart and the soul, the intellectual becomes dysfunctional, trying to devise a “truth” that will be compatible with the basic falsehood that man is God and the affections (feelings, emotions, even sensations) soon follow along on the path to chaos. “They become futile in their speculations,” Paul continued “and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools.” They pretended God was an animal—usually a monstrous animal or a human-like being—of some kind (Romans 1.21-23). However, remember, the mind is now uprooted from reality. It is committed to the truth of a falsehood. “Garbage in, garbage out” is an old story, and then the strong desires, or “lusts) (epithumiais), plunge right into the garbage along with thought. “For behold, my brethren, it is given unto you to judge, that ye may know good from evil; and the way to judge is as plain, that ye may know with a perfect knowledge, as the daylight from the dark of night,” reports Moroni 7.15. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

Only-Begotten Son of God, Who didst willingly shed Thy Blood for us, whereby Thou reconciledst Earth and Heaven; grant us so to venerate the mystery of our redemption and Thy Resurrection, that we may be enabled to live perpetually in that peace which Thou Thyself art. O God the Father Almighty, Who didst love the World with so great a love, that Thou willedst Thine Only-begotten Son to be crucified for its redemption; makes us, who are redeemed with His precious Blood, to be so fruitful in works of love, that we may have our part in the first Resurrection, and not fear the power of the second death. O my forgetful soul, awake from thy wandering dream; turn from chasing vanities, look inward, forward, upward, view thyself, reflect upon thyself, who and what thou art, why here, what thou must soon be. Thou art a creature of God, formed and furnished by him, lodged in a body like a shepherd in his tent; dost thou not desire to know God’s ways? O God, Thou injured, neglected, provoked Benefactor when I think upon thy greatness and thy goodness I am ashamed at my insensibility, I blush to life up my face, for I have foolishly erred. Shall I go on neglecting thee, when every one of thy rational creatures should love thee, and take every care to please thee? I confess that thou hast not been in all my thoughts, that the knowledge of thyself as the end of my being has been strangely overlooked, that I have never seriously considered my heart-need. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

However, although my mind is perplexed and divided, my nature perverse, yet my secret disposition still desire thee. Let me not delay to come to thee; break the fatal enchantment that binds my evil affections, and being me to a happy mind that rests in thee, for thou hast made me and canst not forget me. Let thy Spirit teach me the vital lessons of Christ, for I am slow to learn; and hear thou my broken cries. The same lofty realization which brings the self-actualized down to serve their fellow humans, isolates them from humanity at the same time. There is a wall between the self-actualizes and their detractors. They built it. They themselves must remove it. Nobody can do this for them, not even one. They must undo their self-perpetrated wrongs. One is among the great solitary spirits of humankind, yet one can never be called lonely for in oneself one is always sufficient. One is forced to live among people who are mostly several hundred Earth-lives younger than one, and consequently quite “unsympathetic” (in the European-Continental meaning of the term). Whether one keeps in touch with human affairs or keeps away from them is a matter which is entirely personal in one’s view and dependent on time, place, circumstance, and need. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

One is not strict about it, whether for oneself or others, and would certainly not quarrel with them over it. One has no need to acquaint others with the exalted nature of one’s insight, much less publicize it to the World at large. Just quietly being what one is will be enough. This will screen one from those who sneer, criticize, or attack: but the sensitive will appreciate one. Almighty God and Father, Who hast redeemed us with the precious Blood of Thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ, suffer not those who believe in Thee to be plunged into the abyss of eternal punishment; but grant that by confessing our sins we may be admitted into Thy presence, by Him on Whom Thou hast laid the iniquity of us all; that as we have been healed by His stripes, we may be defended by His unceasing protection. We confess, O Lord Jesus, that Thou hast died unto sin which was not Thine, but ours; and therefore, because having once died for the ungodly, Thou livest unto God, make us so to die unto sin once, that rising again to receive our crown, we may ever rejoice in Thine eternal gifts. Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that we who have gone through the Paschal festival, may by Thy bounty still keep it in our conduct and life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God,” reports St. Matthew 5.8. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

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With Me, the Liberty of the Country is All in All—If this be Preserved, Everything Will be Preserved; but if Lost, All Will be Lost!

January 22, 2020 2:23 am

I came upstairs into the World; for I was born in a cellar. Wise are those who learn that the bottom lie does not always have to be their top priority. Listen long enough and the person will generally come up with an adequate solution. “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves,” St. Matthew 7.15. Fundamental to much of what I wish to say is the term “congruence.” This construct has been developed to cover a group of phenomena which seem important to therapy and to all interpersonal interaction. I would like to try to define it. Congruence is the term we have used to indicate an accurate matching of experiencing and awareness. It may be still further extended to cover a matching of experience, awareness, and communication. Perhaps the simplest example is an infant. If he is experiencing hunger at the physiological and visceral level, then one’s awareness appears to match this experience, and one’s communication is also congruent with one’s experience. He is hungry and dissatisfied, and this is true of him at all levels. He is at this moment integrated or unified in being hungry. On the other hand if he is satiated and content this too is a unified congruence, similar at the visceral level, the level of awareness and the level of communication. He is one unified person all the way through, whether we tap his experience at the visceral level, the level of his awareness, or the level of communication. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16

Probably one of the reasons why most people respond to infants if that they are so completely genuine, integrated or congruent. If an infant expresses affection or anger or contentment or fear there is no doubt in our mind that he is this experience, all the way through. He is transparently fearful or loving or hungry or whatever. For an example of incongruence we must turn to someone beyond the stage of infancy. To pick an easily recognizable example take the man who becomes angrily involved in a group discussion. His face flushes, his tone communicates anger, he shakes his finger at his opponent. Yet when a friend says, “Well, let us not get angry about this,” he replied, with evident sincerity and surprise, “I am not angry! I do not have any feelings about this at all! I was just pointing out the logical facts.” The other men in the group break out in laughter at this statement. What is happening here? It seems clear that at a physiological level he is experiencing anger. This is not matched by his awareness. Consciously he is not experiencing anger, nor is he communicating this (so far as he is consciously aware). There is a real incongruence between experience and awareness, and between experience and communication. Another point to be noted here is that his communication is actually ambiguous and unclear. In its words it is a setting forth of logic and fact. In its tone, and in the accompanying gestures, it is carrying a very different message—“I am angry at you.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 16

I believe this ambiguity or contradictoriness of communication is always present when a person who is at that moment incongruent endeavors to communicate. Still another facet of the concept of incongruence is illustrated by this example. The individual himself is not a sound judge of his own degree of congruence. Thus the laughter of the group indicates a clear consensual judgment that the man is experiencing anger, whether or not he thinks so. Yet in his own awareness this is not true. In other words it appears that the degree of congruence cannot be evaluated by the person oneself at that moment. We may progress in learning to measure it from an external frame of reference. We have also learned much about incongruence from the person’s own ability to recognize incongruence in oneself in the past. Thus if the man of our example were in therapy, he might look back on this incident in the acceptant safety of the therapeutic hour and say, “I realize now I was terribly angry at him, even though at the time I thought I was not.” He has, we say, come to recognize his defensiveness at that moment kept him from being aware of his anger. The wise and good people who have died who have left their examples for imitation or their words for germination, and any living beings whom we have heard met or read about—all these are our spiritual guides; if we only make it so, all these can become masters. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16

Why then should we narrow ourselves down to a single person with a single point of view? If one cannot find entry into the society of a master, one can meditate upon the life stories of historic masters of the past. Let one take the significant situations and devotional attitudes of these great souls into their own thought and study, to analyse the one and imitate the other. Let one think often and long of their character and conduct. Let one also read and reread the written messages they have left us. In this way one will imbibe something of their quality. Such is rarity of qualified teachers that today it is no longer a question of selecting one who particularly or personally appears to the seeker, but of finding one at all! The search for a master is often fruitless and abortive. Why is this? The answer is first, that few such masters exist today and second, that few of the searchers are qualified to work with one. Those who have this knowledge are nor easily accessible nor, even when found, do they easily divulge it. They are exceedingly rare. Not only are teachers more rare but the most sensitive seekers feel shyly inhibited from approaching them. It is a claim at once irrational and unjust that no being to be saved who does not approach a master in the flesh. For few beings can find such a master nor, finding one, can they always know one expect from a distance. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16

In ancient times there were few books to guide the aspirant and fewer still available to one. Consequently the need of a living guide was much greater than it is now. Even in ancient times such teachers were hard to find. The self-actualized is rare who can bring riddance to one’s disciple from the sorrows which agitate one’s heart. Beings of the highest spiritual caliber are not necessarily waiting around for disciples to come to them. They know quite well that each being is one’s own teacher in the end. One more example will portray another aspect of incongruence. Mrs. Tavard, who has been stifling yawns and looking at her watch for hours, says to her hostess on departing, “I enjoyed this evening so much. It was a delightful party.” Here the incongruence is not between experience and awareness. Mrs. Tavard is well aware that she is bored. Thus it might be noted that when there is an incongruence between experience and awareness, it is usually spoken of as defensiveness, or denial to awareness. When the incongruence is between awareness and communication it is usually thought of as falseness or deceit. There is an important corollary of the construct of congruence which is not at all obvious. It may be stated in this way. If an individual is at this moment entirely congruent, one’s actual physiological experience being accurately represented in one’s awareness, and one’s communication being accurately congruent with one’s awareness, then one’s communication could never contain an expression of and external fact. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16

Accurate awareness of experience would always be expressed as feelings, perceptions, meanings from an internal frame of reference. I never know that he is uneducated or you are bad. I can only perceive that you seem this way to me. Likewise, strictly speaking I do not know that the rock is hard if I fall down on it. (And even then I can permit the physicist to perceive it as a very permeable mass of high-speed atoms and molecules.) If the person is thoroughly congruent then it is clear that all of one’s communication would necessarily be put in a context of personal perception. This has very important implications. As an aside it might be mentioned that for a person always to speak from a context of personal perception does not necessarily imply congruence, since any mode of expression may be used as a type of defensiveness. Thus the person in a moment of congruence would necessarily communicate one’s perceptions and feelings as being these, and not as being facts about another person or the outside World. The reverse does not necessarily hold, however. Perhaps I have said enough to indicate that this conception of congruence is a somewhat complex concept with a number of characteristics and implications. It is not easily defined in operational terms, though some studies have been completed and other are in process which do provide crude operational indicators of what is being experienced, as distinct from the awareness of that experience. It is believed that further refinements are possible. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16

I believe all of us tend to recognize congruence or incongruence in individuals with whom we deal. With some individuals we realize that in most areas this person not only consciously means exactly what one says, but that one’s deepest feelings also match what one is expressing, whether it is anger or competitiveness or affection or cooperativeness. We feel that “we know exactly where one stands.” With another individual we recognize that what one is saying is almost certainly a front, a façade. We wonder what one really feels. We wonder if one now what one feels. We tend to be wary and cautious with such an individual. Obviously then different individuals differ in their degree of congruence, and the same individual differs at different moments in degree of congruence, depending on what one is experiencing and whether one can accept this experience in his awareness, or must defend oneself against it. Any communication is marked by some degree of congruence. The greater the congruence of experience, awareness, and communication, the more like it is that someone will experience it as a clear communication. If all the cues from speech, tone and gesture are unified because they spring from a congruence and unity in an individua, then there is much less likelihood that these cues will have an ambiguous or unclear meaning to our audience. Consequently, the more clear the communication from an individual is, the more others will respond with clarity. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16

This is simply saying that even though an individual might be quite incongruent in one’s experiencing the topic under discussion, nevertheless one’s response will have more clarity and congruence in it than if one had experienced the other person’s communication as ambiguous. If the aspirant is fortunate enough to meet a man or woman in person or writing who genuinely represents the true and real, no effort will be made to influence one; it will be left entirely to one’s own free choice weather one follow this light hidden behind a bushel or any will-o’-the wisp masquerading as a light. It is hard to establish human contact with a master, hard to get one interested in one’s personal activities. It is not the actual meeting with a master that constitutes it importance, but the recognition that one is a master. There are beings who come as ambassadors from Heaven, and the writings or arts of beings, which come as revelators. However, unless the reaction includes recognition, the contact is fruitless, the meeting useless. How shall one know who is really a master, and who is not? It is easy at a distance of a thousand years to put an estimate on those who have left the effect of their spiritual greatness on generation after generation, but it is hard to measure contemporaries who look like other ordinary mortals. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16

The more a person is congruent in the topic about which they are communicating, the less one has to defend oneself against in this area, and the more able one is to listen accurately to another individual’s response. Putting it in other terms, one has expressed what one genuinely feels. One is therefore more free to listen. The less one is presenting a façade to be defended, the more one can listen accurately to what another person is communicating. To this degree, then, one who is expressing their point of view feels empathically understood. One feels that in so far as one has expressed oneself, (and whether this is defensively or congruently) the other individual has understood one pretty much as one sees oneself, and as one perceives the topic under consideration. For a person to feel understood is a beneficial regard for the person we are communicating with. To feel that one is understood is to feel that one has made some kind of beneficial difference in the experience of another. And this is how a therapeutic relationship is formed. To the extent a person feels they can relate to and be understood by another person and that person is not acting in malice or facetiousness towards one, an individual will find oneself experiencing fewer barriers to communication. Hence one tends to communicate oneself more as one is, more congruently. Little by little one’s defensiveness decreases. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16

Having communicated oneself more freely, with less of defensiveness, an individual is now more able to listen accurately, without a need for defensive distortion, to another’s further communication. This allows people to form a parallel therapeutic relationship with each other because they feel like they are trusted and understood and communicating with someone who has a similar intellectual ability and interests. This means that these people will have an easy time being friends and they will see a change in their personalities in the direction of greater unity and integration; less conflict and more energy utilizable for effective living; change in behavior in the direction of greater maturity. Of course you cannot force a relationship or always have a lot of friction, hostility, sarcasm is your speech. Often times, people do this with young people because they are inexperienced, but as they grow and mature they will understand that you are not a good person and not someone they want to communicate with them and no matter how much they talk to you, you will never change. This even happens with family members, which is why people eventually distance themselves from their family, for the relationships are toxic. In healthy communication, there must be a minimal wiliness on the part of two people to be in contact; an ability and minimal willingness of the part of each to receive communication from the other; and assuming the contact to continue over a period of time; then the following relationship is hypothesized to hold true. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16

The greater the congruence of experience, awareness and communication on the part of one individual, the more the ensuing relationship will involve: a tendency toward reciprocal communication with a quality of increasing congruence; a tendency toward more mutually accurate understanding of the communications; improved psychological adjustment and functioning in both parties; mutual satisfaction in the relationship. Conversely the greater the communicated incongruence of experience and awareness, the more the ensuing relationship will involve: further communication with the same quality; disintegration of accurate understanding, less adequate psychological adjustment and functioning in both parties; and mutual dissatisfaction in the relationship. With probably even greater formal accuracy this general law could be stated in a way which recognizes that it is the perception of the receiver of communication which is crucial. Thus the hypothesized law could be put in these terms, assuming the same pre-conditions as before as to willingness to be in contact, and so forth. The more that Y experiences the communication of X as a congruence of experience, awareness, and communication, the more the ensuing relationship will involve parallel acceptance and trust. Stated in this way this “law” becomes an hypothesis which it should be possible to put to test, since Y’s perception of X’s communication should not be too difficult to measure. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16

People are, of course, unsure if they should dare to communicate the full degree of congruence which they feel? At times unaware if they match their experience, and their awareness of that experience, with their communication? One may be uncertain if they should communicate themselves as they are or must their communications be somewhat less than or different from this? The sharpness of this issue is possessed in the often vividly foreseen possibility of threat or rejection. To communicate one’s full awareness of the relevant experience is a risk in interpersonal relationships. It seems to me that it is taking or not taking of this risk which determines whether a given relationship become more and more mutually therapeutic or whether it leads in a disintegrative direction. To put it another way. I cannot choose whether my awareness will be congruent with my experience. This is answered by my need for defense, and of this I am not aware. However, there is a continuing existential choice as to whether my communication will be congruent with the awareness I do have of what I am experiencing. In this moment-by-moment choice in a relationship may possess the answer as to whether the movement is in one direction or the other in terms of this hypothesized law. It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say that one is one who never inflicts pain. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16

True understand—“Knowledge of the HOLY One is understanding,” reports Proverbs 9.10. “Knowledge” in biblical language never refers to what we today call “head knowledge,” but always to experiential involvement with what is known—to actual engagement with it. Thus when Jesus defines the eternal life that one gives to one’s people as “that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent,” as reported in John 17.3, he is speaking of the grace of constant, close interaction with the Trinitarian being of God that Jesus brings into the lives of those who seek and find him. This is only a deeper and fuller understanding of Proverbs 3.5-8: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely exclusively in your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will smooth your paths. Do not imagine you have got it all figured out. Be afraid of the Lord and avoid evil. It will heal your body and bring refreshments to your bones.” Colossians 3.17 expresses the same basic fact, but now as the ultimate outcome of spiritual (trans)formation in Christ: “And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of [in the place of, on behalf of] the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father. Families and schools are part of those larger groups that we call society and state. Much has been said and written about the conformist influence that both of them exercise on the way of life of each of us. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16

I do not need to repeat these often trenchant and distressing observations. I do not need to pint to the pressures exerted by suburban neighborhoods, by the laws of competition, by political threats, and by radio and TV filling our air waves twenty-four hors daily and impressing our unconscious even as we try to resist them in our conscious center. Again, the difficulty in resisting the conformist impact of all this is that it is not evil in our social and political forms makes every acts of protest a risk, not in the sense that we risk friendship, acknowledgement, or success—this we might be able to do—but in the sense that we risk making the wrong decision and losing ourselves in it. However, even so, we must risk, as the discipled to whom Jesus spoke had to risk. We must risk “being delivered up to councils, to stand before governors and kings and queens, and bear testimony before them, to be put to death by friends and relatives, to be hated by all.” This is certainly a picture of an extreme situation, although it has happened in our century to many people. Most of us will probably never have to face such grace decisions. However, it our daily life, in dealing with society and state, we have to face social tribunals that accuse us and may condemn us, because we are not conformed to their way of life. The picture of extreme non-conformity that Jesus paints includes all the small acts of non-conformity that we must perform in our daily life. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16

Do not be conformed to the society group which you belong. Do not be conformed to those who have political power over you, even if you obey them. However, work for their transformation. God is just and holy. He judges sin and disciplines His children. However, He is also “the God of all grace” reports 1 Peter 5.10. No one knew that better than the apostle Peter. He had a history of blowing it even before the night when he dined Jesus. Simon Peter did not exactly get started on the right foot with Jesus. “Wherefore, a person being evil cannot do that which is good; neither will one have a good gift. For behold, a bitter fountain cannot bring forth good water; neither can a good fountain bring forth bitter water; wherefore, a person being a servant of the devil cannot follow Christ; and if one follow Christ one cannot be a servant of the devil. Wherefore, all things which are good cometh of God; and that which is evil cometh of the devil; for the devil is an enemy unto God, and fighteth against him continually, and inviteth and enticeth to sin, and to do that which is evil continually,” reports Moroni 7.10-13. Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that we, putting off the old man with his deeds, may live according to His life, of Whose very self Thou hast made us partakers by the healing gifts of our daily grace, Who with Thee we shall live, prosper, and have eternal life. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16

O God the Holy Spirit, that which I know not, teach thou me, keep me a humble disciple in the school of Christ, learning daily there what I am in myself, a fallen sinful creature, justly deserving everlasting destruction; O let me never lose sight of my need of a saviour, or forget that apart from Him I am nothing, and can do nothing. Open my understanding to know the Holy Scriptures; reveal to my soul the counsels and works of the blessed Trinity; instill into my dark mind the saving knowledge of Jesus; make me acquainted with His covenant undertakings and His perfect fulfillment of them, that by resting on His finished work I may find the Father’s love in the Son, His Father, my Father, and may be brought through thy influence to have fellowship with the Three in One. O lead me into all truth, thou Spirit of wisdom and revelation, that I may know the things that belong unto my peace, and through thee be made a new. Make practical upon my heart the Father’s love as thou has revealed it in the Scriptures; apply to my soul the blood of Christ, effectually, continually, and help me to believe, with conscience comforted, that it cleanseth from all sin; lead me from faith to faith, that I may at all times have freedom to come to a reconciled Father, and may be able to maintain peace with Him against doubts, fears, corruptions, temptations. Thy office is to teach me to draw near to Christ with a pure heart, steadfastly persuaded of His love, in the full assurance of faith. Let me never falter in this way. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16

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Knowledge of the HOLY One is Understanding—I Know that is a Secret, for it is Whispered Everywhere!

January 21, 2020 2:35 am

War is an invention of the human mind. The human mind can invent peace. You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late. The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism. Today’s pressures on the principalship show no signs of decreasing their intensity. Future challenges include encouraging dispersed yet centered leadership, creating a cohesive community out of increasingly diverse populations, being responsible without being in charge, changing rapidly in response to social needs without leaving people behind, building trust and confidence in an openly cynical society, and caring for people while challenging them to grow. Together, these challenges will continue to fill every day with problems to solve, puzzles to unravel, and paradoxes to manage and endure. The whole ask of psychotherapy is the task of dealing with a failure in communication. The emotionally maladjusted person, the “neurotic,” is in difficulty first, because communication within oneself has broken down, and second because, as a result of this, one’s communication with others has been damaged. If this sounds somewhat strange to you, then let me put it in other terms. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

In the “neurotic” individual, parts of oneself which have been termed unconscious, or repressed, or denied to awareness, become blocked off so that they no longer communicate themselves to the conscious or managing part of oneself. As long as this is true, there are distortions in the way one communicates oneself to others, and so one suffers both within oneself, and in one’s interpersonal relationships. The task of psychotherapy is to help the person achieve, through a special relationship with a therapist, good communication within oneself. Once this is achieved one can communicate more freely and more effectively with others. We may say then that psychotherapy is good communication, within and between people. We may also turn that statement around and it will still be true. Good communication, free communication, within or between beings, is always therapeutic. It is, then, from a background of experience with communication in counseling and psychotherapy, that I want to present to you tonight two ideas. I wish to state what I believe is one of the major factors in blocking or impeding communication, and then I wish to present what in our experience has proven to be a very important way of improving or facilitating communication. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

I would like to propose, as an hypothesis for consideration, that the major barrier to mutual interpersonal communication is our very natural tendency to judge, to evaluate, to approve or disapprove, the statement of the other person, or the other group. Let me illustrate my meaning with some very simple examples. As you leave the meeting tonight, one of the statements you are likely to hear is, “I did not like that man’s talk.” Now what do you respond? Almost invariably your reply will be either approval or disapproval of the attitude expressed. Either you respond, “I did not either. I thought it was terrible,” or else you tend to reply, “Oh, I thought it was really good.” In other words, your primary reaction is to evaluate what has been said to you, to evaluate it from your point of view, your own frame of reference. Or take another example. Suppose I say with some feeling, “I think the Republicans are behaving in ways that show a lot of good sound sense these days,” what is the response that arises in your mind as you listen? The overwhelming likelihood is that it will be evaluative. You will find yourself agreeing, or disagreeing, or making some judgment about me such as “He mist be a conservative,” or “He seems solid in his thinking.” Or let us take an illustration from the international scene. Russian says vehemently, “The treaty with Japan is a war plot on the part of the United States.” We rise as one person to say “That is a lie!” #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

This last illustration brings in another element connected with my hypothesis. Although the tendency to make evaluations is common in almost all interchange of language, it is very much heightened in those situations where feelings and emotions are deeply involved. So the stronger our feelings the more likely it is that there will be no mutual element in the communication. There will be just two ideas, two feelings, two judgments, missing each other in psychological space. I am sure you recognize this from your own experience. When you have not been emotionally involved yourself, and have listened to a heated discussion, you often go away thinking, “Well, they actually were not talking about the same thing.” And they were not. Each was making a judgment, an evaluation, from one’s own frame of reference. There was really nothing which could be called communication in any genuine sense. This tendency to react to any emotionally meaningful statement by forming an evaluation of it from our own point of view, is, I repeat, the major barrier to interpersonal communications. However, is there any way of solving this problem, of avoiding this barrier? I think that we are making exciting progress toward this goal and I would like to present it as simply as I can. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

Real communication occurs, and this evaluative tendency is avoided, when we listen with understanding. What does this mean? It means to see the expressed idea and attitude from the other person’s point of view, to sense how it feels to one, to achieve one’s frame of reference in regard to the thing one is talking about. Stated briefly, this may sound absurdly simple, but it is not. It is an approach which we have found extremely potent in the field of psychotherapy. It is the most effective agent we know for altering the basic personality structure of an individual, and improving one’s relationships and one’s communications with others. If I can listen to what one can tell me, if I can understand how it seems to one, if I can see its personal meaning for one, if I can sense the emotional flavor which it has for one, then I will be releasing potent forces of change in one. If I can really understand how one hates one’s father, or hates the university, or hates corruption—if I can catch the flavor of one’s fear or of insanity, or one’s fear of atom bombs, or of Russia—it will be of the greatest help to one in altering those very hatreds and fears, and in establishing realistic and harmonious relationships with the very people and situations toward which one has felt hatred and fear. We know from our research that such empathic understanding—understanding with a person, not about one—is such an effective approach that it can bring about major changes in personality. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

Some of you may be feeling that you listen well to people, and that you have never seen such results. The changes are very great indeed that your listening has not been of the type I have described. Fortunately I can suggest a little laboratory experiment which you can try to test the quality of your understanding. The next time you have words with your wife, or your friend, or with an experiment, institute this rule. “Each person can speak up for the previous speaker accurately, and to that speaker’s satisfaction.” You see what this would mean. It would simply mean that before presenting your own point of view, it would be necessary for you to really achieve that other speaker’s frame of reference—to understand one’s thoughts and feelings so well that you could summarize them for the individual. Sounds simple, does it not? However, if you try it you will discover it is one of the most difficult things you have ever tried to do. However, once you have been able to see the other’s point of view, your own comments will have to be drastically revised. You will also find the emotion going out of the discussion, the differences being reduced, and those differences which remain being of a rational and understandable sort. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

If it were projected into larger areas, can you imagine what this kind of an approach would mean? What would happen to a labor-management dispute if it was conducted in such a way that labor, without necessarily agreeing, could accurately state management’s point of view in a way that management could accept; and management, without approving labor’s stand, could state labor’s case in a way that labor agreed was accurate? It would mean that real communication was established, and one could practically guarantee that some reasonable solution would be reached. If then this way of approach is an effective avenue to good communication and good relationships, as I am quite sure you will agree if you try the experiment I have mentioned, why is it not more widely tried and used? I will try to list the difficulties which keep it from being utilized. In the first place it takes courage, a quality which is not too widespread. If you really understand another person in this way, if you are willing to enter one’s private World and see the way life appears to one, without any attempt to make evaluative judgments, you run the risk of being changed yourself. You might see it one’s way, you might find yourself influenced in your attitudes or your personality. This risk of being changed is one of the most frightening prospects most of us can face. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

It I enter, as fully as I am able, into the private World of a neurotic or psychotic individual, is not there a risk that I might become lost in that World? Most of us are afraid to take that risk. Or if we had a Russian communist speaker here tonight, or Senator Joseph McCarthy, how many of us would, after the shock of him being alive wore off, dare to try to see the World from each of these points of views? The great majority of us could not listen; we would find ourselves compelled to evaluate, because listening would seem too dangerous. So the first requirement is courage, and we do not always have it. However, there is a second obstacle. It is just when emotions are strongest that it is most difficult to achieve the frame of reference of the other person or group. Yet, if communication is to be established, this is the time the attitude is most needed. We have not found this to be an insuperable obstacle in our experience in psychotherapy. A third party, who is able to lay aside one’s own feelings and evaluations, can assist greatly by listening with understanding to each person or group and clarifying the views and attitudes each holds. We have found this very effective in small groups in which contradictory or antagonistic attitudes exist. When the parties to a dispute realize that they are being understood, that someone sees how the situation seems to them, the statements grow less exaggerated and less defensive, and it is no longer necessary to maintain the attitude, “I am 100 percent tight and you are 100 percent wrong.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

The influence of such an understanding catalyst in the group permits the members to come closer and closer to the objective truth involved in the relationship. In this way mutual communication is established and some type of agreement becomes much more possible. So we may say that though heightened emotions make it much more difficult to understand with an opponent, our experience makes it clear that a neutral, understanding, catalyst type of a leader or therapist can overcome this obstacle. This last phrase, however, suggests another obstacle to utilizing the approach I have described. Thus far all our experience has been with small face-to-face groups—groups exhibiting industrial tensions, religions tensions, racial tensions, and therapy groups in which many personal tensions are present. In these small groups our experience, confirmed by a limited amount of research, shows that a listening, empathic approach leads to improved communication, to greater acceptance of others and by others, and to attitudes which are more beneficial and more problem-solving in nature. There is a decrease in defensiveness, in exaggerated statements, in evaluative and critical behavior. However, these findings are from small groups. What about trying to achieve understanding between larger groups that are geographically remote? Or between face-to-face groups who are not speaking for themselves, but simply as representatives of others, like the delegates at the United Nations? #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

Frankly we do not know the answers to these questions. I believe the situation might be put this way. As social scientists we have a tentative test-tube solution of the problem of breakdown in communication. However, to confirm the validity of this test-tube solution, and to adapt it to the enormous problems of communication breakdown between classes, groups, and nations, would involve additional funds, much more research, and creative thinking of a high order. Even with our present limited knowledge we can see some steps which might be taken, even in large groups, to increase the amount of listening with, and to degrease the amount of evaluation about. To be imaginative for a moment, let us suppose that a therapeutically oriented international group went to the Russian leaders and said, “We want to achieve a genuine understanding of your views and even more important, of your attitudes and feelings, toward the United State of American. We will summarize and resummarize these views and feelings if necessary, until you agree that our description represents the situation as it seems to you.” Then suppose they did the same thing with the leaders in our own country. If they then gave the widest possible distribution to these two views, with the feelings clearly described but not expressed in name-calling, might not the effect be very great? It would not guarantee the type of understanding I have been describing, but it would make it much more possible. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

We can understand the feelings of a person who hates us much more readily when one’s attitudes are accurately described to us by a neutral third party, than we can when one is shaking one’s fist at us. However, even to describe such a first step is to suggest another obstacle to this approach of understanding. Our civilization does not yet have enough faith in the social sciences to utilize their findings. The opposite is true of the physical sciences. During the war when a test-tube solution was found to the problem of synthetic rubber, millions of dollars and an army of talent was turned loose on the problem of using that finding. If synthetic rubber could be made in milligrams, it could and would be made in the thousands of tones. And it was. However, in the social science realm, if a way is found of facilitating communication and mental understanding in small groups, there is no guarantee that the finding will be utilized. If may be a generation or more before the money and the brains will be turned loose to exploit that finding. Our research and experience to date would make it appear that breakdowns in communication, and the evaluative tendency which is the major barrier to communication, can be avoided. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

The solution is provided by creating a situation in which each of different parties comes to understand the other from the other’s point of view empathically, and who thus acts as a catalyst to precipitate further understanding. This procedure has important characteristics. It can be initiated by one party, without waiting for the other to be ready. It can even be initiated by a neutral third person, provided one can gain a minimum of cooperation from one of the parities. This procedure can deal with the insincerities, the defensive exaggerations, the lies, the “false fronts” which characterize almost every failure in communication. These defensive distortions drop away with astonishing speed as people find that the only intent is to understand, not judge. This approach leads steadily and rapidly toward the discovery of truth, toward a realistic appraisal of the objective barriers to communication. The dropping of some defensiveness by one party leads further dropping of defensiveness by the other part, and truth is thus approached. This procedure gradually achieves mutual communication. Mutual communication tends to be pointed toward solving a problem rather than toward attacking a person or a group. It leads to a situation in which I see how the problem appears to you, as well as to me, and you see how it appears to me, as well as to you. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

Thus accurately and realistically defined, the problem is almost certain to yield to intelligent attack, or if it is in part insoluble, it will be comfortably accepted as such. This then appears to be a test-tube solution to the breakdown of communication as it occurs in small groups. Can we take this small scale answer, investigate it further, refine it, develop it and apply it to the tragic and well-nigh fatal failures of communication which threaten the very existence of our modern World? It seems to me that this is a possibility and a challenge which we should explore. When my first wife—who is not with the Lord—and I were married, we asked that the following Scripture, which we felt God had given us as a promise, be read at our wedding: “They will by my people, and I will be their God, I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me. I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul,” reports Jeremiah 32.28-41. Note the expression of God’s goodness. He will give us singleness of heart for our own good of our children. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

God will never stop doing good to us, in fact He will rejoice in doing us good. This sounds appropriate, does it not, for two young people committed to service in full time? However, this assurance of God’s goodness was not originally given to people who were serving God or who “deserve” His goodness. Instead it was given to a group of people who were described by God as those who “have done nothing but evil in my sight from their youth” (verse 30). These people were in captivity in Babylon because of their sins over many generations. Just a few chapters before in Jeremiah, God has said to these people: This is what the LORD says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future,” reports Jeremiah 29.10-11. The goodness of God is demonstrated in His assurance of plans to prosper them and not to harm them. Note in verse 10 that God refers to His gracious promise, that is, a promise given freely without regard to the fact that they obviously did not deserve it. Here we see a vivid illustration of the truth of Samuel Storms’ statement that grace is no longer grace if God is compelled to withdraw it in the present of human demerit. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

If anyone qualified for demerits, surely the Israelites in captivity did. Yet God promised to prosper them, to rejoice in doing them god. Another insight into God’s gracious disposition is found in the prophecy of Joel. Joel prophesied judgment through a tremendous invasion of locusts that would devour all the trees and plants, resulting in widespread famine in the land. Then Joel looked forward to a day of restoration, a day when the trees would again bear fruit, the threshing floors would again be filled with grain, and the vats overflow with new wine and oil. In the midst of the prophecy of restoration, God made the following promise: “I will replay you for the years the locusts have eaten—the great locust and the young locust, the other locust and the locust swarm—my great army that I sent among you,” reports Joel 2.25. Consider the amazing generosity of God. He does not limit His promise merely to restoring the land to its former productivity. He says He will repay them for the years the locusts have eaten, years that they themselves forfeited to the judgment of God. God could well have said, “I will restore your land to its former productivity, but it is too bad about those years you lost. They are gone forever. That is the prince you pay for sin.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

God would have been generous just to have restored them, but He went beyond that. God would cause their harvests to be so abundant they would recoup the losses from the years of famine. God says He will repay them, though He obviously owes them nothing. From time to time I have opportunity to minister individually to people who in some way have really “blown it” in life. For some, it may have been before they became Christians; for others it occurred while they were believers. Usually these people lament their “lost” years, the years when they served sin instead of God, or years that were wasted as Christians. I try to encourage these people about the grace of God. I cannot promise them God will “repay” those lost years as He did for the Israelites, but I can assure them that it is God’s nature to be gracious. I encourage them to pray to this end and to realize, as they pray, that they are coming to a God who does not withhold His grace because of demerits. “For behold, if a person being evil giveth a gift, one doeth it grudgingly; wherefore it is counted unto one the same as if one had retained the gift; wherefore one is counted evil before God. And likewise also is it counted evil unto a being, if one shall pray and not with real intent of heart; yea, and it porfiteth one nothing, for God recevieth none such,” reports Moroni 7.8-9. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

Almighty and everlasting God, Who hast vouchsafed the Paschal mystery in the covenant of a being’s reconciliation; grant unto our souls, that what we celebrate by our profession we may imitate in our practice; through Jesus Christ our Lord who will bless us with everlasting love and eternal life. O God the Holy Spirit, Thou who dost proceed from the Father and the Son, have mercy on me. When thou didst first hover over chaos, order came to birth, beauty robed the World, fruitfulness sprang forth. Move, I pray thee, upon my disordered heart; take away the infirmities of unruly desires and hateful lusts; life the mists and darkness of unbelief; brighten my soul with the pure light of truth; make it fragrant as the garden of paradise, rich with every goodly fruit, beautiful with Heavenly grace, radiant with rays of divine light. Fulfill in me the glory of thy divine offices; be my comforter, light, guide, sanctifier; take of the things of Christ and show them to my soul; through thee may I daily learn more of God’s love, grace, compassion, faithfulness, beauty; lead me to the cross and show me His wounds, the hateful nature of evil, the power of Satan; may I there see my sins as the nails that transfixed him, the cords that bound him, the thorns that tore him, the sword that pierced him. Help me to find in his death the reality and immensity of his love. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

Open for me the wondrous volumes of truth in his, “It is finished.” Increase my faith in the clear knowledge of atonement achieved, expiation completed, satisfaction made, guilt done away, my debt paid, my sins forgiven, my person redeemed, my soul saved, hell vanquished, Heaven opened, eternity made mine. O Holy Spirit, deepen in me these saving lessons. Write them upon my heart, that my walk be sin-loathing, sin-fleeing, Christ-loving; and suffer no devil’s device to beguile or deceive me. O God, Who by Christ’s Resurrection restores us to life eternal; raise us up to the Author of our salvation, Who is seated at Thy right hand that He Who came to be judged for our sake, may come to judge in our favour, Jesus Christ Thy Son our Lord, Who with thee we may enter he shrine of Heaven, and that we may abandon bleak despair and hard cynicism. Lord, please keep us from becoming engulfed in the agency of moral wickedness. Let us take your unseen hand and may you be our personal saviour or spiritual guide, whether dead or alive—someone who we believe to have come to enlighten human kinds. Lord, become our secret refuge, and may we deserve your grace. May our intellectual effort be sustained beyond the stage of ordinary beings in which we now rest. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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Each Person is an Architect of One’s Own Fate!

January 20, 2020 3:41 am

I am as sober as a judge. Some folks rail against other folks, because other folks have what some folks would be glad of. Societies of beings are just like individuals, in that both at any given moment offer ambiguous potentialities of development. Whether a young man enters business or the ministry may depend on a decision which has to be made before a certain day. He takes the place offered in the counting-house, and is committed. Little by little, the habits, the knowledges, of the other career, which once lay so near, cease to be reckoned even among his possibilities. At first, he may sometimes doubt whether the self he murdered in that decisive hour might not have been the better of the two; but with the years such questions themselves expire, and the old alternative ego, once so vivid, fades into something less substantial than a dream. It is no otherwise with nations. They may be committed by kinds and ministers to peace or war, by generals to victory or defeat, by prophets to this religion or to that, by various geniuses to fame in art, science, or industry. A war is a true point of bifurcation of future possibilities. Whether it fail or succeed, its declaration must be the starting-point of new policies. Just so does a revolution, or any great civic precedent, become a deflecting influence, whose operations widen with the course of time. Communities obey their ideals; and an accidental success fixes an ideal, as an accidental failure blights it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15

The fermentative influences of geniuses must be admitted as, at any rate, one factor in the changes that constitute social evolution. The community may evolve in many ways. The accidental presence of this or that ferment decides in which way it shall evolve. Why the very birds of the forest, the parrot, the mino, have the power of human speech, but never develop it of themselves; some one must be there to teach them. So with us individuals. Rembrandt must teach us to enjoy the struggle of light with darkness, Wagner to enjoy the peculiar musical effects; Dickens gives a twist to our sentimentality, Artemus Ward to our humor; Emerson kindles a new moral light within us. But it is like Columbus’s egg. “All can raise the flowers now, for all have got the seed.” But if this be true of the individuals in the community, how can it be false of the community as a whole? If shown a certain way, a community may take it; if not, it will never find it. And the ways are to a large extent indeterminate in advance. A nation may obey either of many alternative impulses given by different people of genius, and still live and be prosperous, just as a being may enter either of many businesses. Only, the prosperities may differ in their type. Sometimes when you think about all the bad things that you read in the newspaper and then you walk inside a classroom and see this you realize that there are so many good things in the World. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15

Few, if any, of us ever realize the far-reaching effects of our existence. The consequences of our choices and actions spread out into the World like ripples of water, affecting many people in ways we could never imagine. Your influence is etched in the lives of those who have been fortunate to be in your presence. Therefore, never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow. A community is a living thing. It is the peculiarity of living things not merely that they change under the influence of surrounding circumstances, but that any change which takes place in them is not lost but retained, and as it were built into the organism to serve as the foundation for future actions. If you cause any distortion in the growth of a tree and make it crooked, whatever you may do afterwards to make the tree straight the mark of your distortion is there; it is absolutely indelible; it has become part of the tree’s nature…Suppose, however, that you take a lump of gold, melt it, and let it cool…No one can tell by examining a piece of gold how often it has been melted and cooled in geologic ages, or even in the last year by the hand of beings. Any one who cuts down an oak can tell by the rings in its trunk how may times Winter have frozen it into widowhood, and how many times Summer has warmed it into life. A living being must always contain within itself the history, not merely of its own existence, but of all its ancestors. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15

Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave. The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community. Many wonder, where do we find great people? The question has two conceivable answers: one’s origin is supernatural, or it is natural. Is one’s origin supernatural? Then one is a deputy god, and we have theocracy once removed—or, rather, not removed at all…Is this an unacceptable solution? Before one can remake one’s society, one’s society must make one. All those changes of which one is the proximate initiator have their chief causes in the generations one descended from. Of there is to be anything like a real explanation of those changes, it must be sought in that aggregate of conditions out of which both one and they have arisen. If anything is humanly certain it is that the great person’s society, properly so called, does not make one before one can remake it. Physiological forces, with which the social, political, geographical, and to a great extent anthropological conditions have just as much and just as little to do as the condition of the crater of Vesuvius has to do with the flickering of this gas by which I write, and what make one. Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better. Do your duty, and leave the rest to the gods. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15

The differences between one nation and another, whether in intellect, commerce, art, morals, or general temperament, ultimately depend, not upon any mysterious properties of race, nationality, or any other unknown and unintelligible abstractions, but simply and solely upon the physical circumstances to which they are exposed. No geographical environment can produce a given type of mind. It can only foster and further certain types fortuitously produced, and thwart and frustrate others. Once again, its function is simply selective, and determines what shall actually be only by destroying what is absolutely incompatible. An Arctic environment is incompatible with improvident habits in its denizens; but whether the inhabitants of such a region shall unite with their thrift the peacefulness of the Eskimo or pugnacity of the Norseman is, so far as the climate is concerned, an accident. Evolutionists should not forget that we all have five fingers not because four or six would not do just as well, but merely because the first vertebrate above the fishes happened to have that number. One owed one’s prodigious success in founding a life of descent to some entirely other quality—we know not which—but the inessential five fingers were taken in tow and preserved to the present day. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15

So of most social peculiarities. Which of them shall be taken in tow by the few qualities which the environment necessarily exacts is matter of what physiological accident shall happen among individuals. The illiterate of the future will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. Simply because no individuals were born there with patriotism and ability enough to inflame their country’s people with national pride, ambition, and thirst for independent life does not mean that patriotism cannot appeal or inspire one’s mental attitude of faith in devotion towards their nation. Some people gain this devotion towards their country, together with obedience to their nation by drawing inner help and inspiration telepathically from others. Thus they create for themselves a mental relationship which, to that extent, is not different from what would have come into being as part of the regular instruction that their ancestors received. Youth need also to be reminded that even after instruction on why national pride is import, they must also be sufficiently sensitive to have the capacity to feel this patriotism within themselves and display that power in the things they produce, and always engage in the work of self-improvement. The best wood-pile will not blaze till a torch is applied, and the appropriate torches seem to have been wanting. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15

Sporadic great people come everywhere. However, for a community to get vibrating through and through with intensely active life, many geniuses coming together and in rapid succession are required. This is why great epochs are so rare—why the sudden bloom of Egypt, Greece, an early Rome, a Renaissance, Victorian America, is such a mystery. Blow must follow blow so fast that no cooling can occur in the intervals. Then the mass of the nation grows incandescent, and many continue to glow by pure inertia long after the originators of its internal movement have passed away. We often hear surprise expressed that in these high tides of human affairs not only the people should be filled with stronger life, but that individual geniuses should seem to exceptionally abundant. This mystery is just about as deep as the time-honored conundrum as to why great rivers flow by great towns. All mental progress must result from a series of adaptive changes, in the sense already defined of that word. We know what a vast part of our mental furniture consists of purely remembered, not reasoned, experience. It is one of the tritest of truisms that human intelligences of a simple order are very literal. Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it. People have to live with themselves, and they should see to it that they always have good company. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15

Many are slaves of habit, doing what they have been taught without variation; dry, prosaic, and matter-of-fact in their remarks; devoid of humor, except of coarse physical kind which rejoices in practical joke; taking the World for granted; and possessing in their faithfulness and honesty the single gift by which they are sometimes able to warm us into admiration. However, even this faithfulness seems to have a sort of inorganic ring, and to remind us more of the immutable properties of a piece of inanimate matter than of the steadfastness of a human will capable of alternative choice. When we descend to the brutes, all these peculiarities are intensified. And every notice of their ways must receive a deep impression of the fatally literal character of the few, simple, and treadmill-like operations of their minds. However, turn to the highest order of minds, and what a change! Instead of thoughts of concrete things patiently following one another in a beaten track of habitual suggestion, we have the most abrupt cross-cuts and transitions from one idea to another, the most rarefied abstractions and discriminations, the most unheard of combinations of elements, the subtlest associations of analogy; in a word, we seem suddenly introduced into a seething caldron of ideas, where everything is fizzling and bobbing about in a state of bewildering activity, where partnerships can be joined or loosened in an instant, treadmill routine in unknown, and the unexpected seems the only law. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15

Always do right. That will gratify some people and astonish the rest. We are drowning in information and starving for knowledge. Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another. According to the idiosyncrasy of the individual, the scintillations will have one character or another. They will be sallies of wit and humor; they will be flashes of poetry and eloquence; they will be constructions of dramatic fiction or of mechanical device, logical or philosophic abstractions, business projects, or scientific hypotheses, with trains of experimental consequences based thereon; they will be musical sounds, or images of plastic beauty or picturesqueness, or visions of moral harmony. However, whatever their differences may be, they will all agree in this—that their genesis is sudden and, as it were, spontaneous. That is to say, the same premises would not, in the mind of another individual, have engendered just that conclusion; although, when the conclusion is offered to the other individual, one may thoroughly accept and enjoy it, and envy the brilliancy of one to whom it first occurred. Genius flashes out of one brain, and no other, because the instability of that brain is such as to tip and upset itself in just that particular direction. However, the important thing to notice is that the good flashes and the bad flashes, the triumphant hypotheses and the absurd conceits, are on an exact equality in respect of their origin. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15

Aristotle’s absurd Physics and his immortal Logic flow from one source: the forces that produce the one produce the other. When walking along the street, thinking of the blue sky or the fine spring weather, I may either smile at some grotesque whim which occurs to me, or I may suddenly catch an intuition of the solution of a long-unsolved problem, which at that moment was far from my thoughts. Both notions are shaken out of the same reservoir—the reservoir of a brain in which the reproduction of images in the relations of their outward persistence or frequency has long ceased to be the dominant law. However, to the thought, when it is once engendered, the consecration of agreement with outward relations may come. The conceit perishes in a moment, and is forgotten. The scientific hypothesis arouses in me a fever of desire for verification. I read, write, experiment, consult experts. Everything corroborates my notion, which being then published in a book spreads from review to review and from mouth to mouth, till at last there is no doubt I am enshrined in the Pantheon of great diviners of nature’s ways. The environment preserves the conception which it was unable to produce in any brain less idiosyncratic than my own. Originally, machines, instruments, preservative power of the social environment and all other institutions were flashes of genius in an individual head, of which the outer environment showed no sign. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15

Adopted by the race and become its heritage, they then supply instigations to new geniuses whom they environ to make new inventions and discoveries; and so the ball of progress rolls. However, take out the geniuses, or alter their idiosyncrasies, and what increasing uniformities will increasing uniformities will the environment show? Over and over again the Bible portrays God as gracious and generous, blessing His people freely without regard to their demerits, rather than because of their merits. (I use the word gracious not in its commonly accepted meaning of kindness and courtesy, but in the biblical sense of one disposed to deal with others on the basis of grace.) We see God’s gracious disposition even before the Fall in the Garden of Eden when as yet there were no merits or demerits. The Scripture says, “And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food,” reports Genesis 2.9. It was not just the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that was good for food and pleasing to the eye (see 3.6). God did not place only one desirable tree in the garden with a “look but do not eat,” sign hung on it just to tempt Adam and Eve. Rather He placed all kinds of trees in the garden that were delightful to see and to eat from. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15

I enjoy fresh fruit, and I like to go to the supermarket in the Summer when all the peaches, plums, pears, strawberries, and cantaloupes are on display. I am dazzled. I want some of all of them. Think what it must have been like for Adam to have all kinds of trees that not only produced delectable food but were also beautiful to behold. If I am dazzled today, think of what Adam’s reaction must have been. However, God did still more for Adam. God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him,” report Genesis 2.18. God knew Adam needed a companion, and He graciously met that need, because it is His disposition to be generous. God anticipated and provided for every need Adam could possibly have. Then Adam sinned. What would happen now to the gracious and generous disposition of God? Would God cease to be gracious? Would God say, “I was generous to you, giving you everything you needed, and yet you disobeyed Me. From now on you are on your own. Fend for yourself”? God did not say that. Instead He dealt mercifully and graciously with Adam and Eve. Yes, today we are still living with the eternally cataclysmic consequences that came out of the Fall; God did judge Adam as He has said He would. However, in the midst of all that God did one more thing: “The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them,” reports Genesis 3.21. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15

Right in the midst of fulfilling His role as Judge, God took note of Adam and Eve’s need for clothes, and for a little while, He assumed the role of a tailor. Why, in the midst of all the weighty and eternal issues, did God take time to make clothes for two people who had just flagrantly disobeyed Him, and who through that had brought sin and misery upon the whole human race? God did it because it is His nature to be gracious and to meet our needs without regard to our deserts. Neither Adam’s innocence nor his sin were the cause of God’s grace. God was gracious because it is part of His eternal nature to be so. Fear of God, however, is the beginning of wisdom. Although not the end or outcome of wisdom, to be sure, it is the indispensable beginning, I believe, and the principle part. One begins to get smart when he or she fears being crosswise of God: fear of not doing what one wants and not being as one requires. Fear is the anticipation of harm. The intelligent person recognizes that his or her well-being is possessed in being in harmony with God and what God is doing in the Kingdom. God is not mean, but he is dangerous. It is the same with other great forces he has placed in reality. Electricity and nuclear power, for example, are not mean, but they are dangerous. One who does no, in a certain sense, “worry” about God, simply is not smart. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15

Meditation does not mean surrender. Nor does it mean building walls where bridges are needed. My growing inclination toward the old Church and her solutions of the problems of God and the World, state and Church, were nourished by the overwhelming impression made upon me by early Christian art in Italy. What no amount of study of Church history has brought about was accomplished by the mosaics in ancient Roman basilicas. What was once the life-substance and inheritance of us all and what we have lost, and a deep yearning awakens in us for the departed youth of our culture. The result of this tension was either a decision against the one or the other side, or a general scepticism or a split-consciousness which drove one to attempt to overcome the conflict constructively. The latter way, the way of synthesis, was my own way. Nevertheless, I was and I am a theologian, because the existential question of our ultimate concern and the existential answer of the Christian message are and always have been predominant in my spiritual life. We beseech Thee, O Lord, be pleased by the Paschal remedies to grant unto us that we may learn to scorn Earthly desires, and to long after things Heavenly; though Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant, O merciful God, that in the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ we may indeed have our portion; through the same our Lord who will remove all obstructions and bless us with eternal life. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15

Lord Jesus Christ, fill me with thy Spirit that I may be occupied with hid presence. I am blind—send him to make me see; dark—let him say, “Let there be light!” May God give me faith to behold my name engraven in thy hand, my soul and body redeemed by thy blood, my sinfulness covered by the life of pure obedience. Replenish me by his revealing grace, that I may realise my indissoluble union with thee; that I may know thou hast espoused me to thyself for ever, in righteousness, love, mercy, faithfulness; that I am one with thee, as a branch with its stock, as a building with its foundation. May his comforts cheer me in my sorrows, his strength sustain me in my trails, his blessings revive me in my weariness, his presence render me a fruitful tree of holiness, his might establish me and peace and joy, his incitements make me ceaseless in prayer, his animation kindle un me undying devotion. Send him as the searcher of my heart, to show me more of my corruptions and helplessness that I may flee to thee, cling to thee, rest on thee, as the beginning and end of my salvation. May I never vex him by my indifference and waywardness, grieve him by my cold welcome, resist him by my hard rebellion. Answer my prayers, O Lord, for thy great name’s sake. “I remember the word of God which saith by their works ye shall know them; for if their works be good, then they are good also,” reports Moroni 7.5. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15

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In Nature there are Neither Rewards Nor Punishments–there are Consequences!

January 18, 2020 2:59 am

We grew up in a World of stability with spasms of change. Today we live in a World of change with spasms of stability. There are large numbers of young people who are radical not just in their political demands but in another respect that is closely linked to the rejection of authoritarian morality. The rebellion is directed not solely at authority (all revolutions voice a protest against authority) but at the patriarchal principle and the morality rooted in that principle, a morality that calls obedience a virtue and disobedience a sin. If these youngsters do not do what they are supposed to do, a phenomenon of great significance that follows from this morality, is that, people develop guilt feelings. If the youth violate the patriarchal principle and the morality it is founded on, instead of doing what their own hearts, their own feelings, their own humanity tells them to do, they submit to an authoritarian order that punishes them with guilt. What characterizes a large number of young people and what makes them so likable for so many of the rest of us, myself included, is, I think that they have freed themselves from the guilt feelings imposed by authoritarian morality. They have, by and large, discarded the guilt that has been drilled into the New World humankind in the Judeo-Christian tradition for the last two thousand years and put aside the fear of acting outside the norms that have determined our behavior to such a great extent. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14

However, in doing so they have not become immoral themselves. On the contrary, they are in search of new principles of morality. And here I have to mention another distinctive feature of this young generation: a new honesty. They do not feel the same compulsion that earlier generations did to make up excuses for themselves, to rationalize, to refuse to call a spade a spade. One result is that they sometimes use language that is of questionable taste and that puts off people raised in the old tradition. However, the key point is that they give expression to an honesty that is completely at odds with the dishonesty prevalent in bourgeois, patriarchal society, where we always have to hide what we feel guilt about and where we always have to act as if we were the very incarnation of all good qualities. We cannot admit that nothing human is alien to u, because such an admission would push us to the brink of disobedience. However, at the moment when we understand and acknowledge that the reality of a human includes both one’s best and one’s worst, at that moment we become fully human. Instead of feeling outraged over our negative potential, we have to experience that, too, as part of our humanity. Dr. Sigmund Freud contributed a great deal to the new honesty. Indeed, he opened up a wholly new dimension of honesty. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14

Before Dr. Freud we took it at face value when people assured us of their good intentions. However, now, after Dr. Freud’s discovery and systematic study of the unconscious, asseverations of good intentions will not do any more. We want to know what the unconscious motives behind those good intentions are. And we have come to the realization that it makes little difference whether someone is aware of one’s bad intentions or whether one is simply clever enough to rationalize them and so hide them both from others and oneself. Indeed, someone with truly evil intentions may have achieved greater honesty with oneself than someone who has repressed one’s evil intentions from one’s conscious mind and is therefore in an even better position to carry them out because one can package them in the guise of good and virtuous ideas. Ever since Dr. Freud, we have had to face the fact that we are responsible not only for our conscious minds and our good intentions but also for our unconscious. Our actions and not our words alone speak for us. It is even possible that our words mean nothing at all. However, Dr. Freud’s work is not the only reason we have for being suspicious o mere words. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14

We have also had the experience of seeing human dishonesty lead us into wars in which hundreds of millions of people were killed or, for the sake of honor, voluntarily marched off to their deaths. All those deaths can be traced back to lies and empty slogans. We have good reason today to be less impressed than ever by what people say. Words and ideas come cheap and can be done up in all kinds of packages. That is why young people are less inclined to ask, “What did you think about all that?” and ask instead, “What did you do? What were your motives?” I think this effect of Dr. Freud’s work, the introduction of a new honesty into our lives, is of far more importance in the development of the New World than the revolution in the pleasures of the flesh that happened around 1925, if that is what you want to call it. Some people believe it would have come about even without Dr. Freud, but I think since he is so heavily referenced, even today, that pleasures of the flesh would still be repressed and hidden behind closed doors without his influence. Yet, the thought is that we cannot exhort people to obtain everything they need to satisfy their senses and at the same time urge abstinence of pleasures on the flesh on them. However, if no one came along encouraging people to express the passions of the flesh, perhaps our society would still be more Victorian because it would still be engrained in our culture, like religion. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14

Still, others believe that in a consumer society pleasures of the flesh will inevitably become a consumer article. A number of industries depend on that fact, and a lot of money is spent t maintain the attractiveness of the flesh. That represents a change from earlier times but, and so it is kind of a revolution. People are no longer wearing long dresses and covering every square inch of their flesh, they now make close to even expose parts that are traditionally hidden from the public. You have to call it a sexual revolution. Women are now spending a lot of money making up their faces to get men to focus on what is visible to the public and people just cannot seem to take no for an answer these days. The story on pleasures of the flesh is on shaky grounds. Because it is considered sinful, people who act upon them feel guilty and those who do not make be pressured and stigmatized by society for not, so they may feel guilty. All is not gold that glitters. Because of our consumer orientation, pleasures of the flesh are exploited increasingly to disguise a lack of intimacy. We use physical intimacy alone cannot emotional intimacy. Emotional intimacy, a genuine harmony between two people, may well be inked with physical intimacy, may even begin with it, and can be confirmed again and again by it, but those two kinds of intimacy are not identical. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14

At those moments when we lack emotional intimacy we are most likely to substitute physical intimacy for it. And if we are normally constituted both physically and mentally, that is quite easy to do. The younger generation, as I have said, rejects the patriarchal kind of consumerism, which is exemplified in young people’s use of drugs. Their parents buy cars, clothes, jewelry; the children take drugs. There are many reasons why they reach for drugs (partially because California and other states have legalized marijuana) and tend to develop an ever greater dependency on them, reasons that demand our careful consideration; but whatever else drug dependency is, it is also an expression of that same lazy, passive Homo consumens that the children criticize in their parents but that they themselves also represent in a different guise. The young people, too, are always waiting for something to come to them from the outside, waiting for the high of drugs, the high of pleasures of the flesh, the high of the rock rhythms that hypnotize them, carry them off, sweep them away. Those rhythms do not encourage activity. They transport the young into an orgiastic state, into a state like a drug high, in which they forget themselves and so are profoundly passive. An active human being does not forget oneself; one is oneself and is constantly becoming oneself. One becomes more mature, one becomes more adult, one grows. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14

A passive person is, as I suggested before, an eternal suckling babe. What one consumes is ultimately of little consequence to one. One simply waits with open mouth, as it were, for whatever the bottle offers. Then one is gradually sated without having to do anything oneself. None of one’s psychic powers is called into play, and finally one grows tired and sleepy. The sleep one experiences is often a narcosis, an exhaustion induced by boredom, more than a sleep of healthy regeneration. Once again you may feel that I am exaggerating here, but estimates suggest that more people than we would imagine are having that kind of experience. And the media involved in producing our false needs keep reassuring us that it is our level of consumption that demonstrates the high level of our culture. The question we have to ask in our society of bad, superfluous affluence that no one can possibly digest and that contributes nothing to our vitality—the question we have to ask is whether we can still manage, in principle at least, to create a good affluence. Can we somehow make good, truly productive use of the overabundant production we are technologically capable of, a use that serves human beings and their growth? That should be possible if we will understand that what we have to do is encourage and satisfy those needs that makes people more active, livelier, freer, that they will not be driven by their feelings or simply react to stimuli but will be open and attentive and determined to realize their own potential, to enliven, enrich, and inspire themselves and others. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14

One prerequisite for accomplishing that is, of course, to reorganize not only our work but also our so-called leisure. Our free time is, for the most part, nothing but lazy time. It provides us with an illusion of power because we can bring the World into our living rooms by pressing a button on the TV set or because we can get behind the wheel of a car and fool ourselves into thinking the engine’s 1,400 horsepower is our own. We have truly “free time” only to the extent that we cultivate needs that are rooted in humans and that move one to become active. That is why work has to stop being monotonous and boring. And the central problem we face in organizing our work is: How can we make work interesting, exciting, lively? Here we come up against an even ore basic question: What is the point of our work? Is it to increase production and consumption? Or is it to promote the development and growth of human beings? It is usually claimed that the one cannot be separated from the other. What is good for industry is good for people, and vice versa. That sounds like the proclamation of some lovely, preordained harmony, but in fact it is an outright lie. It is easy to demonstrate that many things that were beneficial to industry were bad for people. And that is our dilemma today. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14

If we continue on the path we are on, progress will be achieved only at the expense of human beings. And so we have to make a choice. To put it in biblical language, we have to choose between God and the Democrats. That may sound very dramatic, but if we are going to talk seriously about life, then thins do get dramatic. What I have in mind here is not only the question of life and death but also whether we will choose the increasing death in the life we see around us or will opt for lives of vitality and activity. The whole point of life is to become increasingly vital, more full of life. People deceive themselves about that. They live as if they have stopped living or as if they have never begun to live. Our folk wisdom tells us that everyone over forty is responsible for one’s own face. That means that our own life histories will reveal whether we have lived our lives rightly or wrongly (not rightly or wrongly in a moral sense but in terms of our own unique being). And the most glowing funeral orations with their lists of achievement cannot gloss over the crucial question that we must not avoid answering: Were we or are we truly alive? Do we live our own lives, or are they lived on someone else’s terms? I agree with thinkers like Marx and Disraeli, who were convinced that luxury is no less an evil than poverty. And by luxury they meant what we have been calling superfluous affluence here. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14

However, if we want to make genuine abundance our goal instead, we will have to make some fundamental changes in our ways of living and thinking. I am, of course, fully aware of the great difficulties that are possessed in the way of effecting such changes. I think that the changes can be effected only if people feel a deep need for more life and less routine, only if they reject boredom and respond to needs that make them more vital and spontaneous, freer and happier. Many nations (mainly the underdeverloped ones) dream that they would be happy if they only had everything that Americans has. However, America is where more people than in any other country have learned that all our modern comforts do is tend to make us passive, impersonal, and manipulable rather than happy. It is no coincidence that our rebellious youth comes primarily from the middle and upper classes, in which superfluous affluence is most apparent. That kind affluence may make for happiness in our imaginations, in our fantasies, but it does not make us happy in our heart of hearts. It seems extremely important to me to grasp clearly a principle that is essential to formulating our strategies in the art of living. We will botch out lives if we pursue conflicting goals and do not realize that they are at odds with each other and are mutually exclusive. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14

Human beings will become physically ill if they pursue conflicting goals. They lose their equilibrium, their self-confidence, their powers of discrimination. They no longer know what is good for them. The first thing we have to do, the, is to ask ourselves in all honesty what the conflicting goals are that we are pursuing. Why are they incompatible? What damage is the conflict between them causing in us? These questions cannot be answered by speeches and certainly not by propaganda, which does nothing but make fanatics of people. Every single one of us should try to call oneself to account and think something along this line: “You will live only a short time. Who are you, and what is it you really want?” If we give ourselves up to the kind of affluence that is ultimately poverty, ultimately misery, we shall be squelching the richness that is ready to unfold and flourish within us; and on our decision for superfluity or abundance, for a good or bad affluence, depends no more nor less than the future of humankind. I strongly recommend the discipline of elevation. If you could not be who you are, who would you like to be? If I could not be who I am, I would most like to be…my wife’s second husband. A commitment to building up your wife is of greatest importance. Men, if you think what your wife does is less important than what you do, you are wrong, and you have big problems. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14

Compliments on your wife’s kindness and her daily provisions should be commonplace, as should showing her respect. And I know men love golf, but if you love your wife, there must be times when you forsake the Heavenly green because you value her interests and simply love her. Years ago, in the Midwest, a farmer and his wife were lying in bed during a storm when the funnel of a tornado suddenly lifted the roof right off the house and sucked their bed away with them still in it. The wife began to cry, and the farmer called to her that it was no time to cry. She called back that she was so happy, she could not help it—it was the first time they had been out together in twenty years! One of the major “staying” factors that keeps couples together is time spent together. Make sure you maintain this priority. Your calendar reveals what is important to you, so write her calendar into yours. Schedule weekly ties together that do not just “happen.” Be creative. Date! Surprise her. Be extravagant. Men, when was the last time you opened the door for her…said “I love you” or complimented her, wrote her a loving note, sent her flowers, dated her, or gave her extraspecial attention? To keep a new marriage going, it requires careful attention, developed skill, and work. Men, are you working on the second most important relationship of your life (God is first)? Act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14

O God, Who hast bestowed upon us the Paschal remedy, let Thy Heavenly gift accompany Thy people; that what is now the cause of their delight in time, may hereafter be their joy throughout eternity; through Jesus Christ our Lord anything is possible. Blot out, we beseech Thee, O Lord, the handwriting made by the law of sin, which Thou hast made void in us by the Paschal mystery, through the Ressurrection of Thy Son; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. “And their meetings were conducted by the church after the manner of the workings of the Spirit, and by the power of the Holy Ghost; for as the power of the Holy Ghost led them whether to preach, or to exhort, or to pray, or to supplicate, or to sing, even so it was done,” reports Moroni 6.9. O Lord God, I pray not so much for graces as for the Spirit himself, because I feel his absence, and act by my own spirit in everything. Give me not weak desires but the power of his presence, for this is the surest way to have all his graces, and when I have the seal I have the impression also; He can heal, help, quicken, humble suddenly and easily, can work grace and life effectually, and being eternal he can give grace eternally. Save me from great hindrances, from being content with a little measure of the Spirit, from thinking thou wilt not give me more. When I feel my lack of Him, light up life and faith, for when I lose thee I am either in the dark and cannot see thee, or Satan and my natural abilities content me with a little light, so that I seek no further for the Spirit of life. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14

Teach me then what to do. Should I merely humble myself and not stir up my heart? Should I meditate and use all means to bring him near, not being contented by one means, but trust Him to give me a blessing by the use of all, depending only upon, and waiting always for, thy light, by use of means? It is a duty or an error to pray and look for the fullness of the Spirit in me? Am I mistaken in feeling I am empty of the Spirit because I do not sense his presence within, when all the time I am most empty and could be more fully by faith in Christ? Was the fullness of the Spirit in the apostles chiefly a power, giving the subsistence outside themselves in Christ, in whom was their life and joy? Teach me to find and know fullness of the Spirit only in Jesus. We beseech Thee, O Lord, be pleased by the Paschal remedies to grant unto us that we may learn to scorn Earthly desires, and to long after things Heavenly; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant, O merciful God, that in the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ we may in very deed have our portion; through the same our Lord Who art in Heaven. Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God that we who celebrate the Paschal solemnities may evermore live in Thy sanctifying grace; through out ever providing and guiding light, Jesus Christ, our Lord. O God, Who by the Paschal solemnity hast bestowed healing gifts on the Word, let Thy Heavenly bounty attend Thy people, that they may both attain to perfect freedom, and advance to everlasting life’ through Jesus Christ our Lord bless it be. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14

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Live Life with Love and Trust that Love Will Come Down to Earth and Save Us All Because Love is All I Got!

January 17, 2020 2:47 am

The person of life upright, whose guiltless heart is free from all dishonest deeds or thought of vanity has balanced their greatly increased sensitivity. It is not through any conceited sense of personal superiority that they keep apart from others. They are entitled to an environment which least opposes them, least emits discords at every thought, and most harmonizes with their nature and habits. They must themselves create such an environment: the World cannot always offer it. Thus the paradox arises that because they have entered into secret unity with all beings, the adepts must stand aloof from all beings. The custodians of this knowledge may have the appearance of living aloof from the human race, but it is appearance only When one is among those who do not understand, nothing will shake one’s reserve on these truths. What else can such a being do but give only the surface of oneself, only a part of one’s knowledge to them? If they are too insensitive to feel the subtle presence that one feels, and too self-enclosed to be interested in it, one can at least keep it from being profaned by sceptical remarks or sneering criticisms. The humble, who are not developed enough to understand but are willing to give their faith, may share one’s treasure to a limited extent; but the arrogant, who are too educated or too Earthy to understand, may not. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15

The self-actualized is not hiding behind a mask—for one can still be sincere in all one’s talk or traffic with others—rather, one is keeping back one’s deepest self from full free expression. The people who can save society are those whom it knows least and disdains most. They are people who have found out its shallowness and meanness and turned their faces toward Truth. They live aside and are not to be found in the ranks we may expect them to be in, as a rule, for some are only acting as pillars in society and propping up society’s crumbling edifice in order to save their jobs. However, the beings who have uncovered life, who can provide society with insight and foresight, make no attempt to press upon the public attention. When the World wants them, it will search for them. They can afford to bide their time for they know food is only for the hungry. Even in the outer life, one and one’s kind must be reserved and withdrawn; it cannot be helped. One cannot descend any more to the residence of inwardly shabby, the intuitionally destitute. Although self-actualized people identify themselves with society’s true welfare, they manage to keep themselves detached from their personal affairs. We humans are a race of walking and working somnambulist. Only the illuminate is really awake. One finds the mass of humanity goes on as complacently unaware of its spiritual need as ever. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15

Most of society does not want the truth the self-actualized has, but only truth that suits, comforts, and preserves its narcissism. The masses of society want a label of being enlightened when they are unwilling or unable to do the work it takes to become self-actualized. The more original one’s presentation of the truth, the deeper the source from which one draws it, the less do most people, with their mass-conditioned minds, want it. It is not the prophet oneself who is conscious of one’s place in history but those in the circle around one, those who follow long after one is dead, and those who write about one. For the sense of mission, the relationship with past and future generations, the work to be done in the present epoch—all these things belong to the ego’s thoughts about itself, to the concern with self. One is satisfied to let oneself be used by God, to abandon all care about them into God’s hands, to go where one is bidden and to do what one is urged to do. The thirst for fame and the striving of ambition are totally absent from such a being. How can one crimp and cramp one’s private sense of truth within the narrow limits of some being’s opinion? The strange infinitude of mind overpowers one, the mystic reaches of the Unknown haunt one continually; how then is one to walk into some mental prison and keep company with the spiritual captives of one’s time? #RandolphHarris 3 of 15

The self-actualized stands outside all this drama and watches it as a spectator, sometimes with a slight smile of pleasure, sometimes with a mild frown of distress, never with a hard cold attitude but always with a settled resignation to the decree of God’s grace and the will of God. If, now and then, one suggests a moment, a change or a view-expanding idea to one of the actors, it is not to be regarded as an act of interference but as itself part of the person’s own spiritual understanding, or the higher will’s grace. One is neither unduly uncommunicative nor the reverse. One understands the need of respecting evolutionary need, rejects the theory of universal equality, and pracitses the discipline of speech. However, one’s compassion is always active, one’s willingness to share truth and give blessings never absent. If in the presence of God one realizes the futility of human speech about it, in the presence of groping, seeking, suffering beings one hold back no word which will comfort, guide, or inspire. If the self-actualized gives inner help which people need, one does so with no desire and no expectation of reward, as a physician might reasonably expect. One gives out of the fullness of one’s heart, out of one’s extraordinary capacity for sympathy through self-identification with others. However, this may not often be understood, first, because one will not desert one’s habitual calm to put on an emotional display at the bidding of convention, and second, because one consults with wisdom as to what one shall do, which is not always what people want one to do. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15

The self-actualized who works for the good of humanity must respect one’s own definition of good and one’s own knowledge of the best way to work. Otherwise, one would be no better than the social reformer, the state’s people and the clergy, and the moralist—one would have only an intellectual or emotional understanding of life, and not a mystical and integral one. Do not reproach one for one’s reserve. One is ready to share and share generously. However, it must be done in one’s way, at one’s time, and according to one’s circumstances. For one’s perception is unclouded by the ego, and yours may not be. For when some people make their demands on the self-actualized, remember that there are many others making a similar demand. The enlightened try to live as to acquit oneself honourably before God rather than before humans. One has lived long enough to hear many who once praised one, now abuse one. Hence one has lived long enough to know that unless one remains uniformly serene and inwardly detached from the World’s opinion, there can be no true happiness for one. One has been taught by God to stand unmoved by the disloyalties of so-called friends and the defections of short-sighted followers. One is too wise and experienced to expect either real justice or correct understanding from them. It will not be possible for them to understand one or one’s point of view or one’s logic by a mere exchange of words, so one refrains from attempting what is so useless. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15

Suffice that one replies with silence. If people cannot read that silence, cannot understand who and what one is from inner being alone, then they must go to the gossips, the critics, the enemies, and misunderstanders of one for an interpretation of one’s character, motives, and record. They will then take appearances for reality, and delude themselves and others. Therefore, it is that with most of humanity one has and can have nothing to do. Occasionally one meet one who reads one with the inner sight, who speaks one’s wordless language, and then they recognize each other. For the rest, each descent from one’s solitude into society nails one to the cross. It is not only that they feel so much at odds with the World that they stand aside from it and refrain from mixing in its society. It is as much or more that they have found a way of life which seems to them the best, the truest, and the most spiritually profitable. They feel it is essential to follow this way wheresoever it leads them, and whether in or out of society. The self-actualized will not need to advertise oneself as such. People who are sensitive or discerning will come in time to recognize one’s rare inspiring quality. Others who are in vital need of the peace that emanates from one or of the truth that fills one’s words will learn, sooner or later, by some way or another, of one’s existence and beat a pat or send a letter to one’s door. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15

Society is passing through a period of mental upheaval which probably has not been seen since the 15^th century and it is so intense that many people have become menaced by the collective psychosis of humanity. Part of this upheaval is connected with people’s need to develop their own, independent points of view and not allow the media to frame their beliefs for them. A period of inner uncertainty will start to be felt as people break away from news outlets. It would be no exaggeration to call it a state of disorientation. Many will or are currently feelings totally suspended in mid-air, for they have not yet found their own consciousness. Above all, they understand that it is necessary to develop a new attitude towards their families, friends, coworkers and others in the community. One must resolve for the present not to bring any theoretical premises to bear upon them, but to wait and see what they would tell of their own accord. One’s aim should be to leave things to chance, fate, destiny. The result may be that one will spontaneously report their dreams and fantasies to you, and all you have to do is ask, “What occurs to you in connection with that?” or, “How do you mean that, where does that come from, what do you think about that?” The interpretations will seem to follow of their own accord from their replies and associations. One may consider avoiding all theoretical points of view and simply helping one to understand the dream-images by themselves, without applications of rules and theories. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15

No one wants to be dominated, or unable to express their perspective—it is the same concept with God and human beings. God gave us free will so we would not be forced to be good, He wants our nature to guide us in the direction which is right for us, so when we die, we are placed in the sector that best fits our nature. The nearer we approach to the middle of life, and the better we have succeeded in entrenching ourselves in our personal attitudes and social positions, the more it appears as if we have discovered the right course and the right ideals and principles of behaviour. For this reason we suppose them to be eternally valid, and make a virtue of unchangeably clinging to them. We overlook the essential fact that the social goal is attained only at the cost of a diminution of personality. Many—far too many—aspects of life which should also have been experienced are possessed in a lumber-room among dusty memories; but sometimes, too, they are glowing coals under grey ashes. Statistics show a rise in the frequency of mental depression in men about forty. We see that in this phase of life—between thirty-five and forty—an important change in the human psyche is in preparation. At first it is not a conscious and striking change; it is rather a matter of indirect signs of a change in the human psyche is in preparation. At first it is not a conscious and striking change; it is rather a matter of indirect signs of a change which seems to take its rise in the unconscious. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15

Often it is something like a slow change in a person’s character; in another case certain traits may come to light which had disappeared since childhood; or again, one’s previous inclinations and interest begin to weaken and others take their place. Conversely—and this happens very frequently—one’s cherished convictions and principles, especially the moral ones, begin to harden and to grow increasingly rigid until, somewhere around the age of fifty, a period of intolerance and fanaticism is reached. It is as if the existence of these principles were endangered and it were therefore necessary to emphasize them all the more. The wine of youth does not always clear with advancing years; sometimes it grows turbid. All the phenomena mentioned above can best be seen in rather one-sided people, turning up sometimes sooner and sometimes later. Their appearance, it seems to me, is often delayed by the fact that the parents of the person in question are still alive. It is then as if the period of youth were being unduly drawn out. I have seen this especially in the case of men whose fathers were long-lived. The death of the father then has the effect of a precipitate and almost catastrophic ripening. I know of a pious man who was a churchwarden and who, from the age of forty onward, showed a growing and finally unbearable intolerance in matter of morality and religion. At the same time his moods grew visibly worse. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15

At last he was nothing more than a morbid lowering pillar of the Church. In this way he got along until the age of fifty-five, when suddenly, sitting up in bed in the middle of the night, he said to his wife: “Now at last I have got it! I am just a plain rascal.” Nor did this realization remain without results. He spent his declining years in riotous living and squandered a goodly part of his fortune. Obviously quite a likeable fellow, capable of both extremes! The very frequent neurotic disturbances of adult years all have one thing in common: they want to carry the psychology of the youthful phase over the threshold of the so-called years of discretion. Who does not know those touching old gentlemen who must always warm up the dish of their student days, who can fan the flame of life only by reminiscences of their heroic youth, but who, for the rest, are stuck in a hopelessly wooden Philistinism? As a rule, to be sure, they have this one merit which it would be wrong to undervalue: they are not neurotic, but only boring and stereotyped. The neurotic is rather a person who can never have things as one would like them in the present, and who can therefore never enjoy the past either. As formerly the neurotic could not escape from childhood, so now one cannot part with his youth. He shrinks from the grey thoughts of approaching age, and, feeling the prospect before him unbearable, is always straining to look behind him. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15

Just as the childish person shrinks back from the unknown in the World and in human existence, so the grown an shrinks back from the second half of life. It is as if unknown and dangerous task awaited him, or as if he were threatened with sacrifices and losses which he does not wish to accept, or as if his life up to now seemed to him so fair and precious that he could not relinquish it. Therefore, in the midst of great joy, do not promise anyone anything. In the midst of great anger, do not answer anyone’s letter. The greatest good we can do for others is not to share our riches with them, but to reveal theirs to them. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. In other words, God is worthy of being loved with every single facet of human personality, not simply with one or two aspects of our nature. Note carefully that we must also have an intellectual love for God with the mind. We get a hint at what might be included in loving God with the mind in the context preceding Jesus’s answers. In Matthew 22.23-33 a group of Sadducees (who did not believe in the resurrection of the dead) tried to trap Jesus with an intellectual argument involving a story of a woman who had successively been married to seven brothers. Whose wife will she be in she resurrection? they asked. Jesus’ options seemed to be: (1) deny the resurrection, (2) accept polygamy and adultery be affirming her marriage to all seven in Heaven, or (3) unfairly and arbitrarily limit her marriage to one brother only. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15

It is interesting to note that Jesus did something His followers should emulate: He intelligently answered the Sadducees’ question! First, He addressed the surface issue by denying the necessary condition for the Sadducees’ argument to get off the ground; that is, He denied that there is marriage in Heaven. He then went for the deeper issue about the resurrection, and His strategy is instructive. He cites what on the surface appears to be a verse inadequately related to the issue of resurrection: “’I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ He is not the God of the dead but of the living.” As a young Christian, I was puzzled by Jesus’ response because I myself could have cited other verses than this one, for example, Daniel 12.2, which explicitly affirms the resurrection. Or so I thought. Jesus’s genius is revealed when we recognize that He had studied Sadducean theology and knew that they did not accept the full authority of the prophets, including Daniel. He also knew that the very passage He used was one of the very defining verses for the entire Sadducean party! His argument hinged on the tense of the Hebrew verb. Jesus does not say, “I was the God of Abraham, and so forth,” but, “I am (continue to be) the God of Abraham, et cetera,” a claim that could be truly only if Abraham and others continued to exist. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15

For our purposes, two things are important about the narrative. First, Jesus revealed His intellectual skills in debate by: (1) showing His familiarity with His opponents’ point of view; (2) appealing to common ground (a text all the disputants accepted) instead of expressing a biblical text He accepted but rejected (Daniel 12.2); and (3) deftly using the laws of logic to dissect His opponents’ argument and refute it powerfully. Second, because it forms the immediately preceding context for Matthew 22.37-39, this incident may inform at least part of what it means to love God intellectually: be prepared to stand up for God’s truth and honor when they are challenged, and do so with carefully thought-out answers. The younger generation is playing a central role in the moral crisis we are currently experiencing. I am thinking in particular of the radicals among our young adults, when I say “radicals” I do not mean the ones who called themselves radicals and seem to think they can justify any and all violence by calling it “radical.” Many young people are simply childish, not radical. They are suffering from childhood diseases of Communism. However, there are large numbers of young people who are radical not just in their political demands but in another respect that is closely linked to the rejection of authoritarian morality. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15

The way we live our days is the way we live our life. “For I remember the word of God which saith by their works ye shall know them; for if their works be good, then they are good also. For behold, God hath said a person being evil cannot do that which is good; for if one offereth a gift, or prayeth unto God, except one shall do it with real intent it profiteth one nothing,” Moroni 7.5-6. O God, Who by Thine Only-begotten Son hast overcome death, and opened unto us the gate of everlasting life; grant us, we beseech Thee, that we who celebrate the solemnities of our Lord’s Resurrection, may by the renewing of Thy Spirit arise from the death of the soul; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. O Holy Spirit, as the Sun is full of light, the ocean full of water, Heaven full of glory, so may my heart be full of thee. Vain are all divine purposes of love and the redemption wrought by Jesus except thou work within, regenerating by thy power, giving me eyes to see Jesus, showing me the realities of the unseen World. Give me thyself without measure, as an unimpaired fountain, as inexhaustible riches. I bewail my coldness, poverty, emptiness, imperfect vision, languid service, prayerless prayers, praiseless praises. Suffer me not to grieve or resist thee. Come as power, to expel every rebel lust, to reign supreme and keep me thine; come as teacher, leading me into all truth, filing me with all understanding. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15

Comes as love, that I may adore the Father, and love him as my all; come as joy, to dwell in me, animate me; come as light, illuminating the Scripture, moulding me in its laws; come as sanctifer, body, soul and spirit wholly thine; come as helper, with strength to bless and keep, directing my every step; come as beautifier, brining order out of confusion, loveliness out of chaos. Magnify to me thy glory by being magnified in me, and make me redolent of thy fragrance. O Almighty God, hear Thy people, who are this day met to glorify the Resurrection of Thy Son our Lord; and guide them on from this festival to eternal gladness, from the exulting joy of this solemnity to joys that have no end. For this is the day of human’s Resurrection, the birthday of eternal life; in which we have been satisfied with Thy mercy in the morning, in which the Blessed One Who cometh in the Name of the Lord, and Who is our God, hath shone upon us. We beseech Thee, O Lord, to preserve with watchful love those whom Thou hast cleansed; that those who have been redeemed by Thy Passion may rejoice in Thy Resurrection. O God, Who hast appointed the Paschal Sacrifice for the World’s salvation, be propitious to our supplications, that our supreme High Priest, interceding for us, my reconcile us, in that He is like unto us, absolve us, in that He is equal to Thee, even Jesus Christ our Lord, Who with Thee we shall overcome obstacles and have World peace and eternal life. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15

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And Grace Always Gives Far More than We Have “Earned.”

January 16, 2020 5:11 am

Traveling is almost like talking with people of other centuries. There are strings in the human heart that had better not be vibrated. Things turn out best for the people who make the best out of the way things turn out! Our great weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. It is quite noticeable that our clients tend in the direction of permitting each member of the family to have one’s own feelings and to be a separate person. This may seem like a strange statement, but it is actually a most radical step. Many of us are perhaps unaware of the tremendous pressure we tend to put on our wives, our husbands, our children, to have the same feelings we do. It is often as we said, “If you want me to love you, then you must have the same feelings I do. If I feel your behavior is bad, you must feel so too. If I feel a certain goal is desirable, you must feel so too.” Now the tendency which we see in our clients is the opposite of this. There is a willingness for the other person to have different feelings, different values, differ goals. In short, there is a willingness for one to be a separate person. It is my belief that this tendency develops as the person discovers that one can trust one’s own feelings and reactions—that one’s own deep impulses are not destructive or catastrophic, and that one need not be guarded, but can meet life on a real basis. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

As one learns that one can trust oneself, with one’s own uniqueness, one becomes more able to trust one’s wife, or one’s child, and to accept the unique feelings and values which exist in this other person. One woman wrote a letter explaining something she had experienced in her family. “I realized that I had not sown my 14-year-old son Phil any real love in a long time, because I was so resentful of standards that I have always thought were important. Since I have stopped taking most of the responsibility for his goals, and responded to him as a person, as I always have to Sarah, for instance, it is surprising what changes have appeared in his attitudes. Not Earth-shaking—but a heartwarming beginning. We no longer heckle him about his school work, and the other day he volunteered that he had gotten an S—satisfactory grade on Mrs. Swanson’s trigonometry exam the first time this year.” A few months later I heard from her husband. “You would not recognize Phil….While he is hardly garrulous, he is not nearly the sphinx that he was, and he is doing much better in school, although we do not expect him to be graduated cum laude. You should take a great deal of credit for his improvement, because he began to blossom when I finally began to trust him to be himself, and ceased trying to mold him into the glorified image of his father at a similar age. Oh to undo our past errors!” #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

This concept of trusting the individual to be oneself has some to have a great deal of meaning to me. I sometimes fantasy about what it would mean if a child were treated in this fashion from the first. Suppose a child were permitted to have one’s own unique feelings—supposed one never had to disown one’s feelings in order to be loved. Suppose one’s parents were free to have and express their own unique feelings, which often would be different from one’s, and often would be different between themselves. I like to think of all the meanings that such an experience would have. It would mean that a child would grow up respect oneself as a unique person. It would mean that even when one’s behavior had to be thwarted, one could remain open “ownership” of one’s feelings. It would mean that one’s behavior would be a realistic balance, taking into account one’s own feelings and the known and open feelings of others. One would, I believe, be a responsible and self-directing individual, who would never need to conceal one’s feelings from oneself, who would never need to live behind a façade. One would be relatively free of the maladjustments which cripple so many of us. If I have been able correctly to discern the trends in the experience of our clients, then client-centered therapy seems to have a number of implications for family life. Let me attempt to restate these in somewhat more general form. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

It appears that an individual finds it satisfying in the long run to express any strong or persistent emotional attitudes in the situation in which they arise, to the person with whom they are concerned, and to the depth to which they exist. This is more satisfying than refusing to admit that such feelings exist, or permitting them to pile up to an explosive degree, or directing them toward some situation other than the one in which they arose. It seems that the individual discovers that it is more satisfying in the long run to live a given family relationship on the basis of the real interpersonal feelings which exist, rather than living the relationship on the basis of pretense. A part of this discovery is that the fear that the relationship will be destroyed if the true feelings are admitted, is usually unfounded, particularly when the feelings are expressed as belonging to oneself, not as stating something about the other person. Our clients find that as they express themselves more freely, as the surface character of the relationship matches more closely the fluctuating attitudes which underlie it, they can lay aside dome of their defenses and truly listen to the other person. Often for the first time they begin to understand how the other person feels, and why one feels that way. Thus mutual understanding begins to pervade the interpersonal interactions. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

Finally, there is an increasing willingness for the other person to be oneself. As I am more willing to be myself, I find I am more ready to permit you to be yourself, with all that implies. This means that the family circle tends in the direction of becoming a number of separate and unique persons with individual goals and values, but bound together by the real feelings—beneficial and disadvantageous—which exist between them, and by the satisfying bond of mutual understandings of at least portion of each other’s private Worlds. It is in these ways, I believe, that therapy which results in the individual becoming more fully and more deeply oneself, results also in one’s finding greater satisfaction in realistic family relationships which likewise promote the same end—that of facilitating each member of the family in the process of discovering, and becoming, oneself. If we could sell our experiences for what they cost us, we would all be millionaires. Next is the discipline of communication. Recently the readers of a popular women’s magazine were asked the question, “If you could change your husband, what would you change?” The overwhelming consensus was they would like them to communicate better. They indicated that even more, they would like their husbands to listen. All that can be said is that, the two people happened to hit on the same thought—and Shakespeare made use of it first, that is all. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

The stereotype is the husband buried in the morning newspaper at breakfast, preferring to read a news agency report of the latest scandal in a European government, the scores of yesterday’s athletic contests, and the opinions of a couple of columnists whom one will never meet rather than listen to the voice of the person who has just shared his bed, poured his coffee, and fried his eggs, even though listening to that live voice promises love and hope, emotional depth and intellectual exploration far in excess of what he can gather informationally from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Christian Science Monitor put together. Men, the discipline of communication demands that you set aside regular time to talk—and that you really do talk, and that you communicate more than facts, that you communicate feelings—that you learn to talk in metaphors and similes with phrases that begin, “I feel like…” And it means that you listen. It is recommended that 65 percent of an executive’s time should be spent listening. How much more so the wise husband. The Biblical, prophetic illumination of the human soul in its lostness is empathic, starkly clear, and repeated over and over, from Moses and Samuel to Jesus, Paul, and John. The only path of spiritual transformation today is still possessed through this illumination. It must be gratefully and humbly accepted and applied, to oneself above all. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

When the prophet Jeremiah, for example, says, “The heart is more deceitful than all these and is desperately sick: Who wan understand it?” we have to recognize from our heart that we are the ones spoken of, that, indeed, I am the one described. Only then is a foundation laid for spiritual formation into Christlikeness. The initial move toward Christlikeness cannot be toward self-esteem, because of confusion about what self-esteem means, and because, realistically, I am not okay and you are not okay. We are all in serious trouble. That must be our starting point. Self-esteem in such a situation will only breed self-deception and frustration—as is now increasingly recognized, by the way. For the realities of our soul will still be what they are and will still have the consequences for evil that they naturally do—regardless of what we or others may say to “pump ourselves up” and really, to conceal and deny who we ae. A high opinion of ourselves will only make those consequences more difficult to deal with. Denial—usually in some form of rationalization—is the primary device that humans use to deal with their own wrongness. It was the first thing out of the mouths of Adam and Eve after they sinned, and it continues up to the latest edition of the newspaper. The prophetic witness from God must throw itself against the massive weight of group and individual denial, often institutionalized and subtly built into our customary ways of speaking and interacting. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

Jesus addressed leaders of his day in language that may see harsh and pitiless to us, but that was the only possible way he could be of help to them, strongly self-defended as they were; and perhaps the same is true of us as well. “You Pharisees clean the outside of the dish, but your insides are full of greed and filth. How foolish of you! Is not God as interested in your insides as your outside?” reports Luke 11.39. And, “If you wash a dish well on the inside, will not the outside come clean in the process?” reports Matthew 23.26. Jesus proceeds to point out how they love and vie for public recognition of “approval” (Luke 11.43) and how in doing so they are like graves, all nice prettied up on the outside, but full of disgusting rot inside (verse 44; compare Matthew 23.27-28). They were unable to believe in Jesus because they sought to be honored by each other (John 5.44). They desired to be exalted. Spiritual transformation does not lie in this direction, for them or for us. In the financial World, an investment that doubles itself in a few years is considered an excellent investment. Yet that is only a hundred percent gain. Jesus promises us not one hundred but ten thousand percent return. Why does Jesus use such an astonishing amount as ten thousand percent? He is telling us that God’s reward is out of all proportion to our service and sacrifice. He is telling us that in the Kingdom of Heaven God’s reward system is based not on merit but on grace. And grace always gives far more than we have “earned.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

The generosity and the magnanimity of God are so great that he accepts nothing from us without rewarding it beyond all computation. The vast disproportion existing between our work and God’s reward of it already displays his boundless grace, to say nothing of the gift of salvation which is made before we have even begun to do any work. God calls us to service Him, not because He needs us, but because we need Him. Then His reward for our service is always for our service is always out of proportion to our efforts—as Jesus said to Peter, “a hundred times as much,” reports Matthew 19.29. The ontology of love leads to the basic assertion that love is one. This contradicts the main trend in the recent discussions of the nature of love. They were useful in so far as they directed the attention to the different qualities of love. However, they were and are misleading in so far as they consider the differences of qualities as differences of types. The error was not that one distinguished the qualities of love—on the contrary, more distinctions should have been made in what was often comprehended under the name eros. The error was that one did not start with an understanding of love as one. Such an understanding, of course, would have led to an ontological analysis. For only the relation of love to being as such can reveal its fundamental character. If love in all its forms is the drive towards the reunion of the separated, the different qualities of the one nature of love become understandable. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

Traditionally epithymia (desire) is considered the lowest quality of love. It is identified with the desire to sensual self-fulfillment. There is a strong interest on the part of philosophical and theological moralists in establishing a complete gap between this quality and those which are supposed to be higher and essentially different. On the other hand, there is a tendency on the naturalist side to reduce all the other qualities of love to the epithymia quality. A solution of this problem is only possible in the light of the ontological interpretation of love. First of all it must be said that libido—to use the Latin word—is misunderstood if it is defined as the desire for pleasure. This hedonistic definition is, like hedonism generally, based on a wrong psychology which itself is the consequence of a wrong ontology. Humans strive to reunite themselves with that to which they belong and from which one is separated. And this is true not only of humans but of all living beings. They desire food, movement, growth, participation in group, intimacy, and so forth. The fulfilment of these desires is accompanied by pleasure. However, it is not the pleasure such which is desired, but the union with that which fulfils the desire. Certainly, fulfilled desire is pleasure, and unfulfilled desire is pain. However, if one derives from these facts the pain-pleasure principle in the sense that life essentially consists of feeling from pain and striving for pleasure, it is a distortion of the actual process of life. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

Whenever this happens life is corrupted. Only a perverted life follows the pain-pleasure principle. Unperverted life strives for that of which it is in want, it strives for union with that which is separated from it, though it belongs to it. This analysis should remove the prejudice towards libido, and it can give criteria for the partial acceptance, partial rejection of Dr. Freud’s libido theory. In so far as Dr. Freud descries libido as the desire of the individual to get rid of his tensions, he has described the perverted form of libido. And he has acknowledged this implicitly (though not intentionally) be deriving the death-instinct from the infinite, never fulfilled libido. Dr. Freud describes human’s libido in its perverted, self-estranged stage. However, his description, in which he joins many Puritans (old and new ones who would be embarrassed by this alliance) mises the meaning of libido as the normal drive towards vital self-fulfillment. In the light of this analysis it is justified to say that epithymia is a quality which is not lacking in any love relation. To this extent the naturalists are right. However, they are wrong if they interpret libido or epithymia as the striving for pleasure for the sake of pleasure. The attempts to establish an absolute contrast between agape and eros usually presuppose an identification of eros and epithymia. Certainly, there is epithymia in every eros. However, eros transcends epithymmia. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

Eros strives for a union with that which is a bearer of values because of the values it embodies. This refers to the beauty we find in nature, to the beautiful and the true in culture, and to the mystical union with that which is the source of the beautiful and the true. Love drives towards union with the forms of nature and culture and with the divine sources of both. This eros is untied with epithymia if epithymia is the desire for vital self-fulfillment and not for the pleasure resulting from this union. This valuation of eros is attacked from two sides. Love as eros is depreciated by those theologians who depreciate culture and by those who deny a mystical element in human’s relation to God. However, it is a rather self-defying attitude if somebody depreciates culture and does it in terms of culture, if one, for instances, uses millennia of linguistic culture in order to express one’s rejection of culture. Without eros towards truth, theology would not exist, and without the eros towards the beautiful no ritual expression would exist. Even more serious is the rejection of the eros quality of love with respect to God. The consequence of this rejection is that love towards God becomes an impossible concept to be replaced by obedience to God. However, obedience is not love. It can be the opposite of love. Without the desire of humans to be reunited with their origin, the love towards God becomes a meaningless word. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

It is important to look at history, but at the same time look beyond history to the ultimate power and meaning and majesty of being. There are two orders of being: the human, political, historical order, and the divine, eternal order. If we know these two orders, we can speak, moving continually between the depth of human nothingness and the great height of divine creativity. The human order, the order of history, is primarily the order of growing and dying. “Surely the people is grass.” Human’s experience of melancholy, awakened by fading and perishing nature, is symbolic of their transitoriness. Generations after generations grow up, struggle, suffer, enjoy and disappear. Should we talk all this seriously? Should we take it more seriously than the growing and fading of the grass? The prophet, when one was asked to speak to one’s nations raised the questions: Why speak to them? They are grass. We could continue: Why write and work and struggle for them? They are grass. What matter, when after a few years all those for who we wrote and spoke and struggled will have vanished? They were grass, the grass withered, the flowers faded. That is the order of history. However, the other order appears at the horizon: The word of God shall stand forever! #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

Second, the order of history is an order of sin and punishment. The exile, following the destruction of Jerusalem, was, as all the prophets said, the punishment of the people for their sins. We do not like words such as sin and punishment. They seem to us archaic, barbaric, and invalid in the light of modern psychology. However, whenever I have met exiles of high moral standards and insights, I have discovered that they feel responsible for what has happened within their own countries. And very often I have met citizens of democratic countries, citizens of this country, who have expressed a feeling of guilt for the situation of the World today. They were right, and the exiles were right: they are responsible, as are you and I. Whether or not we call it sin, whether or nor we call it punishment, we are beaten by the consequences of our own failures. That is the order of history. However, at the horizon the other order appears, saying that our struggles are not in vain, that our iniquity is pardoned. There is a third element in the order of history, uniting finiteness and sin: the tragic law which controls the historical process, the law which ordains that human greatness utterly fall. There is human greatness in history. There are great and conquering nations empires; there are even nations and empress which manifest a certain righteousness. There are princes and even good princes; there are judges and even just judges. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

There are states and constitutions and even states and constitutions which provide a certain amount of freedom; there are social orders and even some which provide a certain amount of equality. There are creative spirits and even some which have the power of knowledge and understanding. However, just in being great and powerful and righteous they touch the divine sphere, and they become arrogant, and they are brought to nothing. They are without roots; they wither; the divine storm blows over them, and they vanish. That is the subject of Greek tragedy. That is the message of the prophet to the nations of the World. They are all subject to the law of tragic self-destruction—the bad and the good, individuals and nations, the weak and the heroic. And again the other order, the order beyond history and tragedy, appears at the horizon: He gives power to the faint and their strength is renewed, so that they shall mount up with wings as eagles. The order beyond the order of history is the divine order. And it is paradoxical: humans are like grass, but the word of God spoken to them shall stand forever. Humans stand under the law of sin and punishment, but the divine order breaks through it and brings forgiveness. Humans faint, falling from the height of their moral goodness and youthful power, and just when they have fallen and are weakest, they run without weariness and rise up with wings as eagles. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

God acts beyond all human assumptions and valuations. He acts surprisingly, unexpectedly, paradoxically. The negative character of the historical order is the absolute order of the divine order. The weak and despairing, the sinful and tragic in the historical order are the strong and victorious in the divine order. The prophet also speaks of the paradoxical destiny of the servant, the elected nation. Described as a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, it is despised and rejected in the human order. Who does not think, hearing these words, of the exiles not only of Israel but of all nations of the World? However, the divine order appears. The exiled nation, or (as the Christians later, historically wrong, spiritually right, interpreted it) the Man on the Cross, represents another order, an order in which the weakest is the strongest, the most humiliated, the most victorious. This historical, human order is overcome by the suffering servant, the crucified Saviour. If we doubt this paradox, if we despair about our situation, if our exile is without hope or meaning for us, the prophet should fill us with shame for the arrogance of our rationalism and the narrowness of our moralism. He points to the creation of the World, of humankind, of history. He asks, “Who has directed the Spirit of God? With whom took He counsel and who instructed Him and taught Him the path of justice?” #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

We always wish to teach God the path of justice. We tell God that He must punish the bad and reward the good, especially in relation to ourselves. However, God accepts no counsel concerning the course of history, as He took no counsel concerning the structure of the World, with all its natural destruction, cruelty, and transitoriness. The divine order cannot be judged according to the measures of the historical order, the measures of human comfort and morality, democracy and civilization. That was the answer Job received from God when he struggled with Him about the unintelligible injustice of his historical fate. God did not justify Himself in moral categories; He triumphantly pointed to the unexplorable greatness of nature which cannot be measures according to the measure of human righteousness. However, if the divine order and the historical order have nothing to do with each other, how can the divine order concern us at all? How can eternity and forgiveness and divine help concern us if we are in the other order, the historical order, standing under the law of finiteness and weakness and punishment? How can the divine order comfort us in our misery? How can we listen to the words of the prophets which tell us of the end of our warfare? There are three answers to this question. First, the divine order is not the historical order; and we should not confuse these two orders. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

No life is able to overcome finiteness, sin, and tragedy. The illusions of our period have been that modern civilization and conquer then, and that we can achieve security in our own existence. Progress seemed to have conquered tragedy; the divine order seemed to be embodied in the progressive, historical order. However, for nearly six decades our generation has received blow after blow, destroying that illusion, and driving to despair and cynicism those who wanted to transform, and thought they could transform, the historical order into a divine order. Let us learn from the catastrophe of our time at least the fact that no life and no period are able to overcome finiteness, sin, and tragedy. The second answer is that there is another order to which we, as human beings, belong, an order which makes humans always dissatisfied with what is given to one. Humans transcend everything in the historical order, all the heights and depths of one’s own existence. They pass, as no other being is able to pass, beyond the limits of their given World. Humans participates in something infinite, in an order which is not transitory, not self-destructive, not tragic, but eternal, holy, and blessed. Therefore, when one listens to the prophetic word, when one hears of the everlasting God and of the greatness of His power and the mystery of His acts, a response is awakened in the depth of the human soul; the infinite within one is touched. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

Every being knows, that in some depth of their soul that greatness of God is true. Our despair itself, our inability to escape ourselves in life and in death, witnesses to our infinity. The third answer is that the two orders, the historical and the eternal, although they can never become the same, are within each other. The historical order is not separated from the eternal order. What is new in the prophets and in Christianity, beyond all paganism, old and new, is that the eternal order reveals itself in the historical order. The suffering servant of God and the enemies because of whim one suffers, the Man on the Cross and those who fainted under the Cross, the exiled and persecuted in all periods of history, have all transformed history. The strong in history fall; the strength of each of us is take from us. However, those who seem weak in history finally shape history, because they are bound to the eternal order. We are not a lost generation because we are a suffering, destroyed generation. Each of us belongs to the eternal order, and the prophet speaks to all of us: Comfort ye, comfort yet, my people! “And they were strict to observe that there should be no iniquity among them; and whoso was found to commit iniquity, and three witnesses of the church did condemn them before the elders, and if they repented not, and confessed not, their names were blotted out, and they were not numbered among the people of Christ. However, as they oft as they repented and sought forgiveness, with real intent, they were forgiven,” report Moroni 6. 7-8. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

The time has come that we have longed for; what greater or better work can be found than to proclaim that might of our Risen Lord? Bursting open the doors of the grave, He has displayed to us the glorious banner of His Resurrection. Through Him the sons of light are born to life eternal; the courts of the kingdom of Heaven are opened to believers; and by the law of a blessed intercourse, Earthly and Heavenly things are interchanged. For by the Cross of Christ we have all been redeemed from death, and by His Resurrection the life of us all has risen again. While He has assume our mortal nature, we acknowledge Him as the God of majesty; and in the glory of the Godhead we confess Him God and Man: Who by dying destroyed our death, and by rising again restored out life—even Jesus Christ our Lord. O Son of God and Son of Man, Thou wast incarnate, didst suffer, rise, ascend for my sake; Thy departure was not a token of separation but a pledge of return; Thy word, promises, sacraments, show thy death until thou come again. That day is no horror to me, for thy death has redeemed me, thy Spirit fills me, thy word governs me. I have trusted thee and thou hast not betrayed my trust; waited for thee, and not waited in vain. Thou wilt come to raise my body from the dust, and re-unite it to my soul, by a wonderful work of infinite power and love, greater than that which bounds the oceans’ waters, ebbs and flows the tides, keep the stars in their courses, and gives life to all creatures. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

This corruptible shall put on incorruption, this moral, immortality, this natural body, a spiritual body, this dishonoured body, a glorious body, this weak body, a body of power. I triumph now in thy promises as I shall do in their performance, for the head cannot live if the members are dead; beyond the grace is resurrection, judgment, acquittal, domination. Every event and circumstance of my life will be dealt with—the sins of my youth, my secret sins, the sins of abusing thee, of disobeying thy words, the sins of neglecting ministers’ admonitions, the sins of violating my conscience—all will be judged; and after judgment, peace and rest, life and service, employment and enjoyment, for thine elect. O God, keep me in this faith, and ever looking for Christ’s return. I hold that if the Almighty had ever made a set of people that should do all the eating and none of the work, He would have made them with mouths only and no hands. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. Would that there were an award for people who come to understand the concept of enough. Good enough. Successful enough. Thin enough. Rich enough. Socially responsible enough. When you have self-respect, you have enough. You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you. Anything we can conceive, through God we can achieve. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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Tell Me that I Will Always be the One that You Want, Do Not Know What I Would do if I Ever Lose You!

January 15, 2020 4:59 am

Well, now, there is a remedy for everything except death. Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to stay in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that! It is not what name others call you that matters, but name you respond to that truly determines who you are. If asked in a poll, although most people would say they believe in God, and though church attendance still remains high and confessions of atheism are relatively rare, it is still perfectly clear that the crisis in modern society has also had a negative effect on religion. Theologians themselves have realized this and have spoken quite openly about the anguish religion as we know it is currently going through. The development began centuries ago, but the closer we come to the present, the greater its rate of acceleration has been. Because religion fulfills a double function, its collapse leaves us with a double loss. Our religion, based primarily on the Judeo-Christian tradition, provides us with both an explanation of the natural World and moral principles—an ethic. Those two functions have nothing to do with each other, for how you explain the natural World is one thing, and what moral principles and values you have is quite another. However, the two functions were not originally separated, and there are a number of reasons why not. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

First of all, the idea that the World was created by a God who incorporated in Himself the highest intelligence, wisdom, and power was a plausible, indeed, a rational hypothesis. And even if you are a convinced Darwinist who sees the development of the World and of humans as a consequence of natural selection or mutation, you may still feel that the population of God the Creator is much easier to understand and accept than the rather complex alternative; for evolutionary theory claims that humans in their present form are the product of certain principles that went into effect hundreds of millions of years ago and that are to some degree subject to pure chance or, at best, to the laws of natural selection. Dr. Darwin’s explanation of the natural World seems altogether logical and plausible, but despite that it remains alien to our minds. Here is a story illustrating the profound corruption of the soul. It is a story about a church that would generally be regarded as successful or prosperous. Whether real or imagined, I leave you to ponder. In actuality you will find many churches that are a close fit to this description. The church in question was founded out of conflict in another church. It called its first pastor, and things seemed to be going well until that pastor committed adultery, and used to church funds to buy a brand new Mercedes Benz because one of the young women in the church had the most expensive Mercedes-Benz. The pastor also committed various other improper financial acts. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

The congregation dismissed the pastor, and a second pastor was appointed. He was very popular and the church grew, but he resigned after four years from stress, or an episode of neurosis, depending on whom you believed. A third pastor came and was quite popular. Again, the church grew, but after a while he started giving himself salary raises, which the congregation did not knowingly approve. After ten years he left, started another church within ten miles of his former church, and took three hundred members with him. A fourth pastor was called. Everything seemed fine. Then he has an affair involving pleasures of the flesh with another man, which he eventually disclosed to his board and staff, after being caught in the church bathroom with his britches down around his ankles in the throes of passion, and he expected them to cover it up. In the midst of much lying and discord in the board and staff, the church seemed to go on as before. Of course the people in the community came to know about the affair anyway. A year or so later the pastor received a call from a larger church a two-hour drive away. He took the position, leaving behind a congregation, board, and staff full of strife and anger. This all happened in cone congregation over a period of thirty-six years. I use this story because, in the language of Peter, “judgment must begin at the house of God.” It is there we see soul ruin at its greatest. If we cannot simply do what is right there, where can we? #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

The story is also illustrative of the extent to which sin, in a form everyone plainly recognizes as such, undermines even the efforts of Christ’s own people to be his people. That is its power. Although the degree and details differ, the story of this church is—in spite of come very fine exceptions—all too common. (Leading Christian magazines now feature regular sections where the sad story is told month by month.) I have also chosen the story as an illustration because a major part of the response by Christians to manifest sin, in this case, was to cover it up. This is not uncommon. No doubt it was “for the sake of the ministry,” as is usually said. The “confessions” of various pastors were often half-truths or less and were clearly matters of a formality which would, supposedly, allow the pastors and staff members to “get on with God’s business.” The exist of the last pastor left the church board and staff bitterly divided over the issues of loyalty to the former pastor and over whether or not the truth of what had happened should be publicly stated. A long period followed in which almost every meeting was filled with anger and tension and in which people retreated into their various camps, hardly speaking to each other. The words of James ring true: “Where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice,” reports James 3.16. Most Christians have never been in an intimate fellowship where the corrupted condition of the human soul did not in fact prevail—that is, in a fellowship in which they could assume that everyone would do what everyone knew to be right. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

And many people in our culture have, on the basis of their experiences, simply given up on the church—many of them in the name of God and righteousness. However, it is still a known fact that you have had church members who have tried to kill others by poisoning them and stating that they have a right to do so. What kind of God are those type of people serving? Satan. In a period of a few weeks, some years back, three nationally known pastors in California were publicly exposed for sins involving pleasures of the flesh. That is wat is now called “news.” However, pleasures of the flesh are far from being the only problem. The presence of vanity, egotism, hostility, fear, indifference, racism, homophobia, class discrimination, and down right meanness can be counted on among professing Christians. Maybe the need artificial sweetener in their sweet tea to add a little more Southern charm and pleasantness to their personality? Their opposites cannot be counted on or simply assumed in the “standard” Christian group; and the rare individual who exemplified them—genuine purity and humility, death to selfishness, freedom from rage and depression, and so on—will stand out in the group with all the obtrusiveness of a sore thumb. He or she will be a constant hinderance in the group process and will be personally conflicted by those processes, for he or she will not be living on the same terms as the others. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

Now for the rest of the verse from Peter: “If judgment first begins at the house of God, what shall be the outcome for those who give no heed to the gospel of God? And if it is difficult for the righteous to be saved, what will happen to the Godless and rebellious,” reports 1 Peter 4.17. It really may be about the same outside as within. The daily news, courts, law offices, community, family, and educational and penal institutions provide a constant outpouring of wrongness and wrongdoing that wells up from the malformed human spirit, mind, soul, body, and social context. Diogenes, the ancient Greek, lit a lantern and walked the streets of Athens at noonday looking for an honest man. He never found one, it is said. However, as in the church, so in life generally, a few ready to deal with the realities of the deeper self, in themselves or in others. And those few are not exactly welcomed by others. Sokrates tried to deal with the realities of the soul Athens and was killed for it. This is the customary fate of the “prophet.” Jesus was not crucified for saying, “Behold the lilies of the field, how they toil not, neither do they spin,” but for saying, “Behold the Pharisees, how they steal.” Humans have always had a need, even in their earliest, most primitive stages, to form a picture of the World and of its creation. One version of the creation that goes back in time claims that human beings were made out of blood that flowed from someone who had been killed. Not everyone was made of that blood, however. Only the brave were. Cowards and women were made from the flesh of the two legs. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

That is an ancient version of the theory that Konrad Lorenz has put forward, namely, that human beings have n inborn instinct to kill, a blood lust. It was nice, of course, of the people who believed in the myth to exempt women from that blood lust, but it was not so nice of them then to throw women in with the cowards. Things have not changed much even today. According to the prejudices of modern society, women have less conscience, are more vain and cowardly, and are less realistic than men. Now all those claims are notoriously false. In many cases the shoe could easily be put on the other foot. Most women know what a pathetic figure a man can cut when he is unwell. He is much more given to self-pity and much less secure than a woman, in some cases. However, no one admits that for fear of destroying the myth. We see the same thing happening here that we see in racial stereotypes. What men say about women has no more basis in fact that what democrats say about republicans. Even Dr. Freud claimed that women have less conscience than men. Now I find it hard to imagine how anybody could have less conscience than men. What those claims, are, of course, is nothing more than propaganda about the inferiority of an enemy, which is a tactic the main stream media uses against anyone they do not like these days. The news should actually be called the propaganda department, much of what they report is sleezy gossip and malicious lies. The meteorologist used to be considered the biggest liars and unreliable, now it is the anchors and field reporters who are consider liars and incompetent. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

That kind of propaganda turns up whenever one group dominates another and discourages rebellion by holding the self-confidence of the dominated group down to an absolute minimum. That is by way of a little footnote to one of the functions of religion I mentioned above, to wit, an explanation of the natural World. Everything went along just fine until sin and dysfunction became acceptable. Dr. Darwin taught us that if we looked at creation of the World and of humans from a rational and scientific point of view we could dispense with the idea of God and explain those phenomena by the laws of evolution. It is easier for the average person to grasp the idea of God, but for science after Dr. Darwin the creation was no longer a mystery. In the light of the theory of evolution, “God” was reduced to a working hypothesis and the story of the creation of the World and of humans to a myth, a poem, a symbol, which clearly expressed something but could no longer be regarded as scientific truth. We have rejected the attempt to restrict love to its emotional element. However, there is no love without the emotional element, and it would be a poor analysis of love which did not take this element into consideration. The question is only how to relate it to the ontological definition of love. One can say that love as an emotion is the anticipation of the reunion which takes place in every love-relation. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

Love, like all emotions, is an expression of the total participation of the being which is in an emotional state. In the moment in which one is in the fulfillment of the desire for reunion is anticipated and the happiness of this reunion is experienced in imagination. This means that the emotional element in love does no precede the others ontologically but that the ontologically founded movement to the other one expressed itself in emotional ways. Love is a passion: this assertion implies that there is a passive element in love, namely the state of being driven towards reunion. Infinite passion for God, no less then the passion of the flesh, a consequence of the objective situation, namely of the state of separation of those who belong together and are drive towards each other in love. The ontology of love is tested by the experience of love fulfilled. There is a profound ambiguity about this experience. Fulfilled love is, at the same time, extreme happiness and the end of happiness. The separation is overcome. However, without the separation there is no love and no life. It is the superiority of the person-to-person relationship that it preserves the separation of the self-centered self, and nevertheless actualizes their reunion in love. The highest form of love and that form of it which distinguishes the Old World and the New World cultures is the love which preserves the individual who is both the subject and the object of love. In the loving person-to-person relationship Christianity manifests its superiority to any other religious tradition. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

To be everywhere primarily and absolutely, is proper to God. Now to be everywhere primarily is said of that which in its whole self is everywhere; for if a thing were everywhere according to its parts in different places, it would not be primarily; thus if a being has white teeth, whiteness belongs primarily not to the man but to his teeth. However, a thing is everywhere absolutely when it does not belong to it to be everywhere accidentally, that is, merely on some supposition; as a grain of millet would be everywhere, supposing that no other body existed. It belongs therefore to a thing to be everywhere absolutely when, on any supposition, it must be everywhere and this properly belongs to God alone. For whatever number of places be supposed, even if an infinite number be supposed besides what already exist, it would be necessary that God should be in all of them; for nothing can exist except by Him. Therefore to be everywhere primarily and absolutely belongs to God and is proper to Him: because whatever number of places be supposed to exist, God must be in all of them, not as to a part of Him, by as to His very self. The universal, and also primary matter are indeed everywhere; but not according to the same mode of existence. Number, since it is an accident, does not, of itself, exist in place, but accidentally; neither is the whole but only part of it in each of things numbered; hence it does not follow that it is primarily and absolutely everywhere. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

The whole body of the Universe is everywhere, but not primarily; forasmuch as it is not wholly in each place, but according to its parts; nor again is it everywhere absolutely, because, supposing that other places existed besides itself, it would not be in them. If an infinite body existed, it would be everywhere; but according to its parts. Were there one animal only, its soul would be everywhere primarily indeed, but only accidentally. When it is said that the soul sees anywhere, this can be taken in two senses. In one sense the adverb “anywhere” determines the act of seeing on the part of the object; and in this sense it is true that while it sees the Heavens, it sees in the Heavens; and in the same way I feels in the Heavens; but it does not follow that it lives or exists in the Heavens, because to live and to exist do not import an act passing to an exterior object. In another sense it can be understood according as the adverb determines the act of the seer, as proceeding from the seer; and thus it is true that where the soul feels and sees, there it is, and there it lives according to this mode of speaking; and thus it does not follow that it is everywhere. Once the religious explanation of the natural World lost its power to convince, religion lost some authority. All that remained for it to stand on was the propagation of moral postulates. “Love thy neighbor,” the Old Testament says. “Love the stranger.” The New Testament says, “Love your enemies.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

How can anyone who takes those instructions seriously be successful in modern society? Anyone who follows those precepts is a fool. One will fall behind, not get ahead. We preach the moral precepts of the Bible but do not practice them. We run on two separate tracks. Altruism is praised; we are supposed to have love for our neighbors. However, at the same time the pressure to succeed keeps us from practicing these virtues. In my opinion it is altogether possible in our society to be a good Christian or a good Jew, that is, a loving human being, without starving to death. What matters is your level of competence and the courage needed to adhere to the truth and persist in love rather than give yourself up for the sake of your career. However, all that notwithstanding, it remains a fact that Christian or Jewish morality maybe incompatible with the morality of success, of ruthlessness, of selfishness, of not giving, of not sharing. Since that point will be obvious to anyone who reflects on it, I need not dwell on it here. Anyway, this double standard in our morality has been described and criticized often. To sum up, then, the ethic that dominates in modern capitalism has amputated religion’s others foundation of authority. Religion no longer functions as a promulgator of values, for people no longer trust it in that role either. God has abdicated both as the creator of the World and as the spokesperson for values like love of neighbor and the overcoming of greed. However, humanity does not seem either willing or able to do without religion entirely. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

Humans do not live by bread alone. One has to have a vision, a faith, that awakens one’s interest and elevates one above mere animal existence. A regression to earlier heathenism and worship of idols holds no attraction for modern humans, but I think we can say that our century is developing a new religion, one I would like to call the religion of technology. There are two particular aspects of this religion I would like to mention here. One is the promise the Trump Tower, the dream of unlimited and instant gratification. New needs are being produced every minute; there is no end to them; and humankind, like an eternal suckling babe, waits with an open heart, expecting to receive consideration and concern and unconditional love, and expecting to be fed more and more delicious food and sweet, nourishing nectar. This is a paradise of total gratification, a paradise of superfluity that makes us lazy and passive. Technology’s goal becomes the elimination of effort. The other aspect of this religion is more complex. Ever since the Renaissance, humanity has concentrated its intellectual efforts on penetrating and understanding nature’s secrets. However, nature’s secrete were, at least to some extent, also the secrets of nature’s creator. For four hundred years humans have invested their energies in plumbing nature’s mysteries so that one will be able to control nature. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

One’s most deep-seated motive was to cease being a mere spectator of the natural World and to become able to create that World oneself. It is difficult to express precisely what I want to say here, but if I were to state what I mean in its most radical form, I would have to say: Humans wanted to become God. What God was able to do, humans wanted to be able to do, too. I think the spectacle and the enthusiasm we witnessed when the astronauts first set foot on the Moon had the quality of a pagan religious ceremony. That moments represented the human’s first step on the way to overcoming one’s human limitations and becoming God. Even Christian newspapers were saying that the conquest of the Moon was the greatest thing to happen since the creation of the Universe. Now it is a bit imprudent of Christians to say that—after the creation itself—there is another event more important tan the Incarnation. However, that was all forgotten in the moment when people were themselves witness to the fact of human’s stepping outside the laws that hard limited one before, overcoming the force of gravity, and setting on a path to infinity. It is God making the impossible possible, much like he may one day allow humans to discover the secrete to resurrection and immortality. I mean, in the 1970s, liver transplants where not possible, in the 1800s, humans could not fly into space and now they can. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

Technology emerging as a new God, perhaps an extension of God’s power. That is why scientists have to coverup what they are doing and humans rationalize their advancements because there are things most people do not have the mental ability to recreate. Technology is becoming the Great Mother who will feed all her children and satisfy all their demands. Technological capability has become a moral obligation, and has become the very source of our morality. If God is dead, then anything would be permitted, but then the World He created would also cease to exist. If people no longer believe in God, if God was no longer a reality that forms their thoughts and actions, then we have a good reason to ask whether they will not become totally immortal, whether they will not stop looking to any kind of moral principles for guidance. That is a question we have to take seriously, and if we are feeling pessimistic, we may conclude that it is exactly what has happened and that our morality is continuing to decline all the time. There are significant differences between now and earlier times. In 1914, for example, the warning nations adhered to two internationally accepted rules. Civilians were not killed, and no one was tortured. Today it is taken for granted that civilians will be killed in the course of any and all hostilities, because warring parties no longer accept any limitations on their use of forces. Then, too, technology cannot make allowances for that kind of differentiation. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

Technology kills anonymously, like Agent Orange, which was manufactured by Dole, the same people you buy fruits and vegetables from. And if you did not know, Agent Orange not only killed people, but it caused cancer and alter army’s DNA and some of them passed on birth defects to their children. Leaders kill these days with sprays or by pressing a button, and unlike people impacted by 9/11 or other weed killer, Dole has never had to compensate their victims. Because people do not see their opponent of their fighter supporting them, they are not moved by sympathy or compassion. Some people actually find it funny to tease people who have cancer or who have been injured because of war, because it makes them feel better about their pathetic lives, unattractiveness and lack of success. And torture is the rule today, not the exception. Everyone tries to deny that, but it is generally known fact. The use of torture to obtain information is widespread and even used by politics like Jerry Brown, Kevin Johnson, Gavin Newsom and Darrel Steinberg. We would be astonished to know in how many counties, cities, states, and countries of the World torture is used. Perhaps we need not say that cruelty is on the increase, but it would be hard to deny that humanity and the moral prohibitions that go with it are declining. That has brought about a great change in the World, but on the other hand we can see that new moral principles are coming to the fore; we find them in the younger generation, for example, in their struggle for peace, for life, against destruction and war. They are not just mouthing empty phrases. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

Many people and not just young ones are insisting that we learn to live in a World of law and order, kindness and fairness, love and harmony. They are reestablishing their allegiance to God. Billions of people have become sensitive to the destruction of life on so many fronts, to inhumane wars in which there is not even a pretense of self-defense. We see a new mortality of love taking shape, too, in opposition to the consumer society. The new morality may have its flaws, but it remains impressive in its protest against empty forms and words. We see evidence of a new morality, too, in the self-sacrifices made in the political realm, in the numerous struggles for liberation and self-determination that are going on today. Those are encouraging developments. God and other religions like Buddhism provide us with a glowing example of how come cultures develop moral principles. Those principles are rooted and flourish in humane soil. Human beings cannot live and be happy without God because when they do not acknowledge His authority, they seem to lose sight of what is good and righteous. We cannot, however, force God on people, he granted them free will. To be of God is something that has to emerge from them. People have to be deeply rooted in need to act morally. Immortality cases them to lose their inner harmony and balance. And it is immortality going under the guise of mortality if people are told that they have to kill, that they have to obey, that they should pursue only their own selfish interests, that sympathy will be a hindrance to them, and so forth. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

If voices of that kind grow too loud they can drown out a person’s own inner voice, the voice of one’s humanistic conscience. That it why so many people are turning the news and radio off. It is evil mixed in with entertainment. Otherwise they will get the idea that God is dead, politicians are their only hope, and everything is permitted. “And the church did meet together off, to fast and to pray, and to speak one with another concerning the welfare of their souls. And they did meet together oft to partake in nourishment in remembrance of the Lord Jesus,” reports Moroni 6.5-6. It is very meet and right, with all powers if heart and mind, and with the service of the lips, to praise the invisible God, the Father Almighty, and His Only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ, Who paid the debt of Adam for us to the eternal Father, and effaced the bond of the ancient guilt by the Blood poured forth in loving-kindness. For this is the Paschal festival in which that true Lamb is slain, and the door-posts hallowed by His Blood: in which first Thou didst bring our fathers, the children of Israel, out of Egypt, and madest them to pass over the Red Sea dry-shod. This then is the night which cleared away the darkness of sin by a pillar of radiance. This is the night which now throughout the World restores to grace and unties to holiness believers in Christ, separated from Worldly vices and from the gloom of sin. This is the night in which Christ broke the bonds of death, and ascended a Conqueror from the grave. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

For to be born had been no blessing to us, unless we could have been redeemed. O the wonderous condescension of Thy loving-kindness towards us! O the inestimable tenderness of Thy love! To redeem the servant, Thou gavest up the Son. This holy night, then, puts to flight offences, washes away sins, and restores innocence to the fallen, and joyousness to the sad. O truly blessed night which spoiled the Egyptians and enriched the Hebrews—the night in which Heaven and Earth are reconciled! We pray Thee therefore, O Lord, that Thou wouldest preserve Thy servants in the peaceful enjoyment of this Eternal happiness, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Lord Jesus, if I love thee my soul shall seek thee, but can I seek thee unless my love to three is kept alive to this end? Do I love thee because thou art good, and canst alone do me good? It is fitting thou shouldest not regard me, for I am vile and selfish; yet I seek thee, and when I find thee there is no wrath to devour me, but only sweet love. Thou dost stand as a rock between the scorching Sun and my soul, and I live under the cool lee-side as one elect. When my mind acts without thee it spins nothing but deceit and delusion; when in my affections act without thee noting is seen but dead works. O how I need thee to abide in me, for I have no natural eyes to see thee, but I live by faith in one whose face to me is bright than a thousand Suns! #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

When I see that all sin is in me, all shame belongs to me; let me know that all good is in thee, all glory is thine. Keep me from the error of thinking thou dost appear gloriously when some strange light fills my heart, as if that were the glorious activity of grace, but let me see that the truest revelation of thyself is when thou dost eclipse all my personal glory and all the honour, pleasure and good of this World. The Son breaks out in glory when he shows himself as one who outshines all creation, makes people poor in spirit, and helps them to find their good in one. Grant that I may distrust myself, to see my all in thee. It is my experience of World-wandering that those who most know truth are themselves the least known among people. This is partly because so few seek that kind of truth which is theirs—the highest—partly because it is their own wish to remain inaccessible to all except these few seekers, and partly because their completely ego-free character is utterly without any ambition to put themselves forward in public under any pretext whatsoever, whether to gain the benefits and advantages of such a position or to practise so-called service. However, eager a Master may be to reveal truth, one is forced, by indifference and miscomprehension of the World, to conceal it. It is not an isolation due to arrogance, to too high a notion of one’s own status. It is the others who are really apart, by their animalism or egotism. One is not alien to humanity but only alien to what is low and bestial in humanity. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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Well, the Dream that was Walking and the Dream that was Talking and the Heaven in My Arms was You!

January 14, 2020 2:06 am

Flowers have expression of countenance as much as humans and animals. Some seem to smile; some have a sad expression; some are pensive and diffident; others again are plain, honest and upright, like the broad-faced sunflower and the hollyhock. The greater thing in this World is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are going. Leaders know that while their position gives them authority, their behavior earns them respect. It is consistency between words and actions that builds a leader’s credibility. What matter most is not so much in what exterior events one has been involved, as what interpretation one’s conscience has given them. The genesis of thought should reveal the intentionality of its product. This product may indeed misrepresent the underlying intention. It acquires a life of its own, which may cut many of the strings that tie it to its origin. This may be the fault of the author. One may have been unfortunate in the expressions that one chose. Yet it may also be the responsibility of one’s readers. They have not paid one enough attention; they have misread one’s words; they have understood one’s writings in a situation that was totally foreign to one’s own. They only way to check the accuracy of our judgment is to trace the growing process in which one’s doctrine was shaped. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

Counseling seems to have an effect on the way our clients experience their family relationships. The client discovers, often to one’s great surprise, that a relationship can be lived on the basis of the real feelings, rather than on the basis of a defensive pretense. There is a deep and comforting significance to this. To discover that feelings of shame and anger and annoyance can be expressed, and that the relationship still survives, is reassuring. To find that one can express tenderness and sensitivity and fearfulness and yet not be betrayed—this is a deeply strengthening thing. It seems that part of the reason this works out constructively is that in therapy the individual learns to recognize and express one’s feelings as one’s own feelings, not as a fact about another person. Thus, to say to one’s spouse “What you are doing is all wrong,” is likely to lead only to debate. However, to say “I feel very much annoyed by what you are doing,” is to state one fact about the speaker’s feelings, a fact which no one can deny. It no longer is an accusation about another, but a feeling which exists in oneself. “You are to blame for my feelings of inadequacy” is a debatable point, but “I feel inadequate when you do thus and so” simply contributes a real fact about the relationship. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

However, it is not only at the verbal level that this operates. The person who accept one’s own feelings within one’s self, finds that a relationship can be lived on the basis of these real feelings. Sometimes we may feel that we are negatively affecting a person and their dependence on us may make us feel that we are being dominated and controlled. This could lead one to see that the part one is playing is cowardly. However, as one begins to better understand one’s self, one will come to an inward conclusion to try to live in the relationship according to what one believes is rights, rather than in terms of the other individual’s wishes. As a result this may lead to a stupendous discovery that as we accept ourselves more, we are much more able to meet some of our own needs as well as the needs of others. One can do the things one wants to do without allow others to hold them back by coming to an understanding that there are other people who can also share the responsibility of taking care of our loved ones. Yet it is unnecessary to allow our new found freedom to allow us to become callus and selfish. We should to be affectionate towards our loved ones and make a point to try to understand what they are saying and feeling. By listening and taking advantage of our freedom, one may actually be able to enjoy their loved ones more. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

When they feel they have no rights of their own, people become resentful of their family. It may seem as though nothing but difficulty could result from letting these feelings exist openly in the relationship. Yet one will notice that by tentatively permitting them to enter the situation one will find one’s self acting with more assurance, more integrity. The relationship improves rather than deteriorates. Most surprising of all, when the relationship is lived on the basis of the real feelings, one finds that resentment and hate are not the only feelings one has toward one’s family member. Fondness, affection and enjoyment are also feelings which enter the relationship. It seems clear that there may be moments of discord, dislike, and anger between members in a family. However, there will also be respect and understanding and liking. Family members will seem to have learned what many other clients have also learned, that a relationship does not have to be lived on a basis of pretense, but can be lived on the basis of the fluctuating variety of feelings which actually exist. From our discussion, it may seem that it is only negative feelings which are difficult to express or live. This is far true. Mr. Schneider, a young professional man, found it fully as difficult to discover the beneficial feelings which lay beneath his façade as the negative. A brief excerpt will indicate the changed quality of his relationship with this three-year-old daughter. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Mr. Schneider says, “The thing I was thinking about as I rode down here was—how differently I see our little girl—I was playing with her this morning—and—we just, ah, well—why is it so hard for me to get words out now? This was a really wonderful experience—very warm, and it was a happy and pleasant thing, and it seems that I saw and felt her so close to me. Here is what I think is significant—before, I could talk about Jill. I could say good things about her and funny little things she would do and just talk about her as though I were and felt like a real happy father, but there was some unreal quality…as thought I was just saying these things because I should be feeling this stuff and this is the way a father should talk about his daughter but somehow this was not really true because I did not have these negative and mixed up feelings about her. Now I do thing she is the most wonderful kid in the World.” Therapist: “Before, you felt as though ‘I should be a happy father’—this morning you are a happy father.” Mr. Schneider: “It certainly felt that way this morning. She just rolled around on the bed…and then she asked me if I wanted to go to sleep again and I said okay and then she said well, I’ll go get my blankets and then she told me a story about three stories in one, all jumbled up and it just felt like this is what I really want. I want to have this experience. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

“It felt that I was, I felt grown up, I guess. I felt that I was a man…now this sounds strange, but it did feel as though I was a grownup responsible loving father, who was big enough, and serious enough, and also happy enough to be the father of this child. Whereas before I did feel weak and maybe almost undeserving, ineligible to be that important, because it is a very important thing to be a father.” Mr. Schneider has found I possible to accept his warm and loving feelings toward himself as a good father, and to fully accept this warm love for his little girl. He no longer has to pretend he loves her, fearful that some different feeling may be lurking underneath. I think it will not surprise you that shortly after this he told me how he could be much more free in expressing anger and annoyance at his little daughter, also. He is learning that the feelings which exist are good enough to live by. They do not have to be coated with a veneer. Experience in therapy seems to bring about another change in the way our clients live in their family relationships. They learn something about how to initiate and maintain real two-way communication. To understand another person’s thoughts and feelings thoroughly, with the meanings they have for one, and to be thoroughly understood by this other person in return—this is one of the most rewarding of human experiences, and all are too rare. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

Individuals who have come to us for therapy often report their pleasure in discovering that such genuine communication is possible with members of their own families. In part this seems to be due, quite directly, to their experience of communication with the counselor. It is such a relief, such a blessed relaxation of defenses, to find oneself understood, that the individual wishes to create this atmosphere for others. To find, in the therapeutic relationship that one’s most awful thoughts, one’s most bizarre and abnormal feelings, one’s most ridiculous dreams and hopes, one’s most evil behaviors, can all be understood by another, is a tremendously releasing experience. One begins to see it as a resource one could extend to others. However, there appears to be an even more fundamental reason why these clients can understand members of their families. When we are living behind a façade, when we are trying to act in ways that are not in accord with our feelings, then we dare not listen freely to another. We must always have our guard up, lest one pierce the pretense of our façade. However, when a client is living in the way I have been describing, when one tends to express one’s real feelings in the situation in which they occur, when one’s family relationships are lived on the basis of the feelings which actually exist, then one is no longer defensive and one can really listen to, and understand, another member of one’s family. One can let oneself see how life appears to this other person. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

All seeking and finding of spiritual instruction through a spiritual teacher becomes real, in the end, on a mental plane only. Therefore one should direct one’s efforts in that direction with complete faith. The difficulty which you mention about finding a teacher need not be overrated. You have within yourself a ray of God, which is your own soul. If you pray to and beseech it constantly for guidance, it will surely lead you to all that you really need to know. Those whose quest of God through a master has failed them should take this very failure as instruction on the quest itself. Let them remember that God is everywhere present, that there is no spot where God is not. Therefore, God is in them too. This indwelling presence of the Soul. Let them turn to it directly, no longer seeking someone else to act as an intermediary, no longer running here and there in search of one. Just where they are now is precisely where they may establish contact with God through their own Soul. Let them pray to it alone, mediate on it, obey its intuitive behests, and they will not need any human agent. From this moment they should look to no one else, should depend on their own forces. However, since these are lying latent within and need to be aroused, the aspirants need to exert themselves through physical regimens that will provide the energies needed for this great effort. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

If you can find someone whose person attracts you most, or whose teachings appeal to you more than those of others, or whose writings inspire you above all other people’s writings, then make one your spiritual guide. You do not have to apply for one’s permission for it is to be done within the privacy of your own inner life. You are not dependent on one’s personal acceptance or rejection for the idea of one which you believe in and the image of one which you form to become alive and effectual. However, you will object, is not the whole process a self-deceptive one and does it not lead to worthless hallucination? We replay, it could become that if you misuse it and misinterpret it results, but it need not if you work it aright. For telepathy is a fact. Your faith in, and remembrance of, the other being lays a cable from your inner being to one’s own and there will follow back along it a response to your attitude. However, sometimes many people naively expect their teachers to be what one cannot be; too many look for a materialization of a highly imaginary fairy-tale figure of their own creation; too many wrongfully demand a miracle-working, supernaturally saint-like and sentimentally loving creature from another World. They unreasonably and unrealistically want one to look like a spectacular Angel and behave like a god untroubled by human needs. It is a surprise that they are disappointed when they find one to be just a human being, a real person. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

A vision without a task is a dream. A task without a vision is drudgery. However, a task with vision can change the World. All problems concerning the relation of love to power and justice, individually as well as socially, become insoluble if love is basically understood as emotion. Love would be a sentimental addition to power and justice, ultimately irrelevant, unable to change either the law of justice or the structures of power. Most of the pitfalls in social ethics, political theory, and education are due to a misunderstanding of the ontological character of love. On the other hand, if love is understood in its ontological nature, its relation to justice and power is seen in a light which reveals the basic unity of the three concepts and the conditioned character of its conflicts. Life is being in actuality and love is the moving power of life. In these two sentences the ontological nature of love is expressed. They say that being is not actual without the love which drives everything that is towards everything else that is. In human’s experience of love the nature of life becomes manifest. Love is the drive towards the unity of the separated. Reunion presupposed separation of that which belongs essentially together. It would, however, be wrong to give to separation the same ontological ultimacy as to reunion. For separation presupposes an original unity. Unity embraces itself and separation, just as being comprises itself and non-being. It is impossible to unite that which is essentially separated. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

Without an ultimate belongingness no union of one thing with another can be conceived. The absolutely strange cannot enter into a communion. However, the estranged is striving for reunion. In the loving joy about the other one the joy about one’s own self-fulfillment by the other is also present. That which is absolutely strange to me cannot add to my self-fulfillment; it can only destroy me if it touches the sphere of my being. Therefore love cannot be described as the union of the strange but as the reunion of the estranged. Estrangement presupposes original oneness. Love manifests its greatest power there where it overcomes the greatest separation. And the greatest separation is the separation of self from self. Every self is self-related and a complete self it completely self-related. It is an independent centre, indivisible and impenetrable, and therefore is rightly called an individual. The separation of a completely individualized being from any other completely individualized being is itself complete. The centre of a completely individualized being, and it cannot be made into a mere part of a higher unity. Even as a part it is indivisible and it is as such more than a part. Love reunited that which is self-centered and individual. The power of love is not something which is added to an otherwise finished process, but life has love in itself as one of its constitutive elements. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

It is the fulfillment and the triumph of love that it is able to reunite the most radically separated beings, namely individual persons. The individual person is both most separated and the nearer of the most powerful love. God is in all things by His presence. He is in all things by His essence. Therefore, God is in all things by His power, inasmuch as all things are subject to His power; He is by His essence, inasmuch as He is present to all as the cause of their being. God’s substance is present to all thing as their cause. Knowledge and will require that the thing known should be in the one who knows, and the thing willed in the one who wills. Hence by knowledge and will things are more truly in God than God in things. However, power is the principle of acting on another; hence by power the agent is related and applied to an external thing; thus by power an agent may be said to be present to another. No other perfection, except grace, added to substance, renders God present in anything as the object known and loved; therefore only grace constitutes a special mode of God’s existence in things. There is, however, another special mode of God’s existence in beings by union, which will be treated in its own place. If appetite among physical things is of this nature, it clearly includes the mechanism of sympathy and antipathy. All concords and discords of music are (no doubt) sympathies and antipathies of sound. And so likewise in that music which we call broken music, or consort music, some consorts of instruments are sweeter than others… as the Irish harp and base viol agree well…organs and the voice agree well. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

As we become keenly aware of the phenomenon of sympathetic vibration, in which one vibrating body will set a similar body into vibration, we will start to equate this sympathy with similitude. It seems, both in ear and eye, the instrument of sense hat a sympathy or similitude with that which gives the reflexion for as the sight of the eye is like a crystal, or glass, or water; so is the ear a sinuous cave, with a hard bone to stop and reverberate the sound; which is like to the places that report echoes. Such useful and sound inferences as may be drawn from observing the resemblances of objects in motion might well be handled as consents and aversions. Operations that are deeply hid, as sympathies often are, invite superstition and abuse by magicians and alchemists. I am almost weary of the words sympathy and antipathy on account of the superstitions and vanities associated with them. Furthermore, what are called occult and specific properties, or sympathies and antipathies, are in great part corruptions of philosophy. Strife and friendship in nature are the spurs of motions and the keys of work. From them are derived the union and repulsion of bodies, the mixture and separation of parts, the deep and intimate impressions of virtues [exempli gratia, innate forces and strengths], and that which is termed the junction of actives with passives; in a word, the magnolia nature. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

The power of correlative forces—what is active is potentially passive and what is passive is potentially active—was widely accepted, and is to be seen among the presuppositions of grammar, logic, and the nature of the intellect. There cannot be, however much hope of discovering the consent of things before the discovery of Forms and Simple Configurations. All natural bodies exercise a sort of choice in receiving what is agreeable, and avoiding what is hostile and foreign. The magnet attracts iron, the body assimilates food and rejects wastes, humours and juices course up and down the body, the heart and pulse beat—all thee and many other things are done without sense. Some bodies and substances near each other seem to feel or perceive each other’s presence. They move in relation to each other only if a reciprocal perception precede the operation. A body perceives the passages by which it enters; it perceives the force of another body to which it yields; it perceives the removal of another body which held it fast, when it recovers itself; it perceives the disruption of its continuity, which for a time it resists; in short there is Perception everywhere. These illustrations of perception are also illustrations of consent, and we focus on the aspect of experience that is at least close to touch and feeling. It is difficult to see that perception calls attention to anything that has not already been described under sense activity, consent, and appetite. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

Certainly, we cannot mean to endow all nature with universal sensation, for we censure persons who, with perception in mind have gone too far, and attributed sense to all bodies. “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” reports Romans 8.32. The fact that God deals with His children on the basis of grace without regard to merit or demerit is a staggering concept. It is opposed to almost everything we have been taught about life. We have been generally conditioned to think that if we work hard and “pay our dues” in life, we will be rewarded in proportion to our work. “You do so much, you deserve so much” is a commonly accepted principle in life. However, God’s grace does not operate on a reward for works basis. It is much better than that. God is generous beyond all measure or comparison. The Scripture says, “God so love the World that he gave his one and only Son;” and Paul spoke of this as God’s “indescribable gift” (John 3.16, 2 Corinthians 9.15). God’s inexpressible generosity, however, does no stop at saving us; it provides for all our needs and blessings throughout our entire lives. As Paul said in Romans 8.32, “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” Paul used the argument of the greater to the lesser to teach us God’s generosity. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

Paul said if God gave His Son for our salvation (the greater), will He not also give us all blessings (the lesser)? No blessing we will ever receive can possibly compared with the gift of God’s Son to die for us. God demonstrated Hid gracious generosity to the ultimate at the cross. And Paul based the assurance that we can expect God to meet all our other needs throughout life on the fact that God has already met our greatest need. Note that Paul said God will graciously or feely give us all things. Just as salvation is given freely to all who trust in Christ, so all blessings are given freely to us, also through faith in Christ. Just as you cannot earn your salvation but must receive it as a gift, so you cannot earn the blessings of God but must receive them also as gifts given through Christ. When a man commits himself to love his wife “as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,” he will ever be faithful to her. One thing the Church can count on is the fidelity of the Bridegroom. And this is the one thing a wife whose husband loves like Christ can rest on. Above all let him [the groom] preserve towards her an inviolable faith, and an unspotted chastity, for this is the marriage ring, it ties two hearts by an eternal band; it is like the cherubim’s flaming sword set for the guard of paradise. Chastity is the security of love, and preserves all the mysteriousness like the secrets of a temple. Under this lock is deposited security of families, the union of affections, the repairer of accidental breaches. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

The word of God shall stand forever. There is something eternal to which we can cling: Be not afraid, the Lord God shall come with strong hand. So the wave rises, and then again it falls: the nations are as a drop of water and a piece of dust; all the nations are as nothing before God, they are counted as less than nothing. Again the wave rises: God stands above the circle of the Earth, above all created things, above the highest and the lowest! And when once more the wave falls and the servant of God complains that one does not receive justice from God, the answer is that God acts beyond human expectations. He gives power to the faint and to one that hath no might God increaseth strength. God acts paradoxically; He acts beyond human understanding. “I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this World, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect,” reports Romans 12.1-2. We all want to know God’s will, but this text is telling us we cannot unless we present our bodies, including our soul and minds, to the Lord for transformation and renewal! By “presenting our bodies,” Paul means we must be available to do the hard work of understanding what God has said in His Word and take the time to study it in order to have our minds transformed. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Hear us, O never-failing Light, Lord our God, our only Light, the Fountain of light, the Light of Thine Angles, Thrones, Dominions, Principalities, Powers, and of all intelligent beings; Who has created the light of Thy Saints. May our souls be lamps of Thine, kindled and illuminated by Thee. May they shine and burn with the truth, and never go out in darkness and ashes. May we by Thy house, shining from Thee, shining in Thee; may we shine and fail not; may we ever worship Thee; in Thee may we be kindled, and not be extinguished. Being filled with the splendor of Thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ, may we shine forth inwardly; may the gloom of sins be cleared away, and the light of perpetual faith abide within us. “O God, the Eternal Father, we ask thee in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ, to bless and sanctify this bread to the souls of all those who partake of it; that they may eat in remembrance of the body of thy Son, and witness unto thee, O God, the Eternal Father, that they are willing to take upon them the name of thy Son, and always remember him, and keep his commandments which he hath given them, that they may always have his Spirit to be with them. Amen,” reports Moroni 4.3. O Father of Jesus, help me to approach thee with deepest reverence, not with presumption, not with servile fear, but with holy boldness. Thou art beyond the grasp of my understanding, but not beyond my love. Thou knowest that I love thee supremely, for thou art supremely adorable, good, perfect. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

My heart melts as the love of Jesus, my brother, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, married to me, dead for me, risen for me; God is mine and I am His, given to me as well as for me; I am never so much mine as when I am his, or so much lost to myself until lost in him; then I find my true humanity. However, my love is frost and cold, ice and snow; let His love warm me, lighten my burden, be my Heaven; may it be more revealed to me in all its influences that my love to Him maybe more fervent and glowing; let the might tide of His everlasting love cover the rocks of my sin and care; then let my spirit float above those things which had else wrecked my life. Make me fruitful by living to that love, my character becoming more beautiful every day. If traces of Christ’s love-artistry be upon me, may he work on with his divine brush until the complete image be obtained and I be made perfect copy of Him, my Master. O Lord Jesus, some to me, O Divine Spirit, rest upon me, O Holy Father, look on me in mercy for the sake of he well-beloved. O God, the Eternal Father, we ask thee, in he name of thy Son, Jesus Christ, to bless and sanctify our souls, so that we make remember Christ and his Spirit always be with us. May we truly repent of all our sins and be cleansed by the power of the Holy Ghost. And God keep us in the right way, keep us continually watchful unto prayer, relying alone upon the merits of Christ, who is the author and the finisher of our faith. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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Well, the Dream that was Walking and the Dream that was Talking and the Heaven in My Arms was You!

January 12, 2020 6:42 am

Happiness means self-fulfillment and is given to those who use to the fullest whatever talents God bestows upon them. Our very survival as principals may hinge on our ability to understand and deal with change. Do not be afraid to take a big step. You cannot cross a chasm in two small jumps. No person is an Island, entire of itself; every being is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main. It is important for human beings to communicate and try to live with one another. Any person’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Humankind; and therefore never send to know for who the bell tolls; I tolls for thee. We must open u a whole new dimension of thinking, fresh and original to break down the barriers that create isolation. in World where of our own mental safety and health are imperative, beings have to learn to be a part of humankind. Perhaps learning from the struggles of others to live in a satisfying fashion will have some meaning for you. What then, are some of the ways in which clients change in their family living, as a consequence of client-centered therapy? In the first place it is our experience that our clients gradually come to express more fully, to members of their families as well as to others, their true feelings. The greater thing in this World is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are going. Leaders know that while their position gives them authority, their behavior earns them respect. It is consistency between words and actions that builds a leader’s credibility. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15

This expression of true feelings applies to feelings that might be thought of as negative—resentment, anger, shame, jealousy, dislike, annoyance—as well as feelings which might be thought of as beneficial—tenderness, admiration, liking, love. It is as thought the client discovers in their therapy that it is possible to drop the mask one has been wearing, and become more genuinely oneself. A husband finds himself becoming furiously angry with his wife, and expressing this anger, where before he had maintained—or thought he had maintained—a calm and objective attitude toward her behavior. It is as though the map of expression of feeling has come closer to expressing the feelings which really exist in them, rather than hiding their true feelings from the other person, or from the other person and themselves. Perhaps an illustration or two would make this point more clear. A young wife, Mrs. Goffman, comes for counseling. Her complaint is that her husband, Josh, is very formal and reserved with her, is inconsiderate, that they are incompatible when it comes to pleasures of the flesh and rapidly growing apart. As she talks out her attitudes the picture changes rather drastically. Mrs. Goffman expresses the deep guilt she has regarding her life before her marriage, when she had affairs with a number of men, mostly married. She realizes that though with most people she is a gay (happy) and spontaneous person with her husband she is still, controlled, lacking in spontaneity. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15

Mrs. Goffman also sees herself as demanding that her husband be exactly what she wishes him to be. At this point counseling is interrupted by the counselor’s absence from the city. She continues to write to the counselor expressing her feelings, and adding, “If I could only say things to him (her husband) I could be myself at home. But what would that do to his trust in people? If you were my husband and learned the truth, would you find me repulsive? I wish I were a ‘nice gal’ instead of a ‘Babe.” I have made such a mess of things.” This followed by a letter from which a lengthy quotation seems justified. She tells how irritable she has been—how disagreeable she was when company dropped in one evening. After they left, “I felt like a louse for behaving so badly…I was still feeling sullen, guilty, angry, at myself and Josh—and just about as blue as they come. So, I decided to do what I have been really wanting to do and putting off because I felt it was more than I could expect from any man—to tell Josh what was making me act that terrible way. It was even harder than telling you—and that was hard enough. I could not tell it in such minute detail but I did manage to get out some of those sordid feelings about my parents and then even more about those ‘damn’ men. The nicest thing I have ever heard him say was ‘Well, maybe I can help you there’—when speaking of my parents. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15

“And he was very accepting of the things I had done. I told him how I felt so inadequate in so many situations—because I have never been allowed to do so many things—even to know how to play cards. We talked, discussed, and really got down deep into so many of both our feelings. I did not tell him as completely about the men—their names, but I did give him an idea of about how many. Well, he was so understanding and things have cleared up so much that I TRUST HIM. I am not afraid now to tell him those silly little illogical feelings that keep popping into my head. And if I am not afraid then maybe soon those silly things will head. And if I am not afraid ten maybe soon those silly things will stop popping. The other evening when I wrote to you I was almost ready to pull out—I even thought of just leaving town. (Escaping the whole affair.) However, I realized that I would just keep running from it and not be happy until it was faced. We talked over children and though we have decided to wait until Josh is closer to finishing school, I am happy with this arrangement. Josh feels as I do about the things we want to do for our children—and most important the things we do not want to do to them. So if you do not get any more desperate sounding letters, you know things are going along as okay as can be expected. Now, I am wondering—have you known all along that that was the only thing I could do to bring Josh and me closer? That was the one thing I kept telling myself would not be fair to Josh. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15

“I thought it would ruin his faith in me and in everyone. I had a barrier so big between Josh and me that I felt he was almost a stranger. The only way I pushed myself to do it was to realize that if I did not at least try his response to the things that were bothering me, it would not be fair to him without giving him a chance to prove that he could be trusted. He proved even more than that to me—that he has been down in hell too with his feelings—about his parents, and a good many people in general.” I believe this letter needs no comment. It simply means to me that as she had experiences in therapy the satisfaction of being herself, of voicing her deep feelings, it became impossible for her to behave differently with her husband. She found that she had to be and express her own deepest feelings, even if this seemed to risk her marriage. Another element in the experience of our clients is a somewhat subtle one. They find that, as in this instance, expression of feelings is a deeply satisfying thing, where formerly it has nearly always seemed destructive and disastrous. The difference seems to be due to this fact. When a person is living behind a front, a façade, his unexpressed feelings pile up to some explosion point, and are then apt to be triggered off by some specific incident. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15

However, the feelings which sweep over the person and are expressed a such a time—in a temper storm, in a deep depression, in a flood of self-pity, and the like—often have an unfortunate effect on all concerned because they are so inappropriate to the specific situation and hence seem so unreasonable. The angry flare-up over one annoyance in the relationship may actually be the pent-up or denied feelings resulting from dozens of such situations. However, in the context in which it is expressed it is unreasonable and hence not understood. Here is why therapy helps to break a vicious circle. As the client is able to pour out, in all their accumulated anguish, fury, or despair, the emotions which one has been feeling, and as one accepts these feelings as one’s own, they lose their explosiveness. Hence one is more able to express, in any specific family relationship, the feelings aroused by that relationship. Since they do not carry such an overload from the past, they are more appropriate, and more likely to be understood. When they occur, gradually the individual finds oneself expressing one’s feelings, and not at some much later point after they have burned and festered in one. There is little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. That little difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it is beneficial or negative. “Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth, peace, good will toward people,” reports St. Luke 2.14. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15

Traditionally, the question of passing has raised the issue of the “visibility” of a particular stigma, that is, how well or how badly the stigma is adapted to provide means of communicating that the individual possesses it. For example, former mental patients and expectant unmarried fathers are similar in that their failing is not readily visible; they visually impaired, however, are easily seen. Visibility, of course, is a crucial factor. That which can be told about an individual’s social identity at all times during one’s daily round and by all persons one encounters therein will be of great importance to one. The consequence of a presentation that is perforce made to the public at large may be small in particular contacts, but in every contact there be some consequences, which, taken together, can be immense. Further, routinely available information about one is the base from which one must begin when deciding what tack to take in regard to whatever stigma one possesses. Thus, any change in the way the individual must always and everywhere present oneself will for these very reasons be fateful—this presumably providing the Greeks with the idea of stigma in the first place. Since it is through our sense of sight that the stigma of others most frequently becomes evident, the term visibility is perhaps not too misleading. Actually, the more general term, “perceptibility” would be more accurate, and “evidentness” more accurate still. A stammer, after all, is a very “visible” defect, but in the first instance because of the sound, not sight. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15

Before the concept of visibility can be safely used even in this corrected version, however, it must be distinguished from three other notions that are often confused with it. Firs, the visibility of a stigma must be distinguished from its “known-about-ness.” When an individual’s stigma is very visible, one’s merely contacting others will cause one’s stigma to beknown about. However, whether others know about the individual’s stigma will depend on another factor in addition to its current visibility, namely, whether or not they have previous knowledge about one—and this can be based on gossip about one or a previous contact with one during which one’s stigma was visible. Secondly, visibility must be distinguished from one of its particular bases, namely, obtrusiveness. When a stigma is immediately perceivable, the issue still remains as to how much it interferes with the flow of interaction. For example, at a business meeting a participant in a motorized mobility chair is certainly seen to be in some kind of wheelchair, but around the conference table one’s failing can become relatively easy to disattend. On the other hand, a participant with a speech impediment, who in many ways is much less disabled than someone in a wheelchair, can hardly open one’s mouth without destroying any unconcern that may have arisen concerning one’s failing, and one will continue to introduce uneasiness each time thereafter that one speaks. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15

The very mechanics of spoken encounters constantly redirect attention to the defect, constantly making demands for clear and rapid messages that must constantly be defaulted. It may be added that the same failing can have different expressions, each with a different degree of obtrusiveness. For example, a visually impaired person with a white cane gives quite visible evidence that one is blind; but this stigma symbol, once noted, can sometimes be disattended, along with what it signifies. However, the blind person’s failure to direct one’s face to the eyes of one’s co-participants is an event that repeatedly violates communication etiquette and repeatedly disrupts the feedback mechanics of spoken interaction. Thirdly, the visibility of a stigma (as well as its obtrusiveness) must be disentangled from certain possibilities of what can be called its “perceived focus.” We normals develop conceptions whether objectively grounded or not, as to the sphere of life activity for which an individual’s particular stigma primarily disqualifies one. When a person does not appeal to us, for example, has its initial prime effect during social situations, threatening the pleasure we might otherwise take in the company of its possessor. We perceive, however, that one’s condition ought to have no effect on one’s competency in solitary task, although of course we may discriminate against one here simply because of the feelings we have about looking at one. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15

Ugliness, then, is a stigma that is focused in social situations. Other stigmas, such as a heart condition, are felt to have no initial effect on the individual’s qualification for face-to-face interaction; they lead us to discriminate in such matters as job allocation, and affect immediate social interaction only, for example, because the stigmatized individual may have attempted to keep one’s differentness a secret and feels unsure about being able to do so, or because the others present know about one’s condition and are making a painful effort not allude to it. Many other stigmas fall in between these two extremes regarding focus, being perceived to have a broad initial effect in many different areas of life. For example, a person with cerebral palsy may not only be seen as burdensome in face-to-face communication, but may also induce the feeing that one is questionable as a solitary task performer. The question of visibility, then, must be distinguished from some other issues: the known-about-ness of the attribute, its obtrusiveness, and its perceived focus. This still leave unconsidered the tacit assumptions that somehow the public at large will be engaged in the viewing. However, as we shall see, specialists at uncovering identity can be involved, and their training may allow them to be immediately struck by something that is invisible to the laity. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15

A physician who meets on the street a man with dull red discoloration of the cornea and notched teeth is meeting someone who openly displays two Hutchinson’s signs and is likely to be syphilitic. Others present, however, being medically blind, will see no evil. In general, then, the decoding capacity of the audience must be specified before one can speak of a degree of visibility. Make a careful list of all things done to you that you abhorred. Do not do them to others, ever! To love our wives as our own bodies is a grand and great thing. It means granting her the same importance, the same value, “the same existential gravity that we take for granted in ourselves.” She becomes as real as we are to ourselves. She is me. How do we love our wives as our own bodies? How do we care for her as we do for ourselves? The answer involves three incarnations. The first is a physical incarnation. You must love your wife with all your heart and understand that her body is as important as yours, and that her comfort matters, as does her adornment, and care. A second way to love our wives as our own bodies is emotional incarnation. So many men make the emotional differences between men and women subject to degrading humor. They belittle the female disposition, as if male stoicism were superior. They realize the differences, but may no allowances for them and do not attempt to understand. No man can claim obedience to God and do this! It is a flat-sided masculinity which imagines that understanding another is a feminine trait. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15

Actually such understanding of the complementary natures of God gave man and woman is the mark of fully developed, mature man. Then, of course, there must be social incarnation. “Archie Bunkers” think their wives spend their day lugging power tools out to the sandbox for their kids to play with, or discarding one sock for every pair in the drawer. Of course, women have many social settings: the home, the office, the classroom. However, I remember a profitable incarnation I experienced when my wife visited her sister in Connecticut for a week, leaving me in charge of our four small children. I fixed the meals, changed thousands and thousands of diapers, fixed hurts, settled quarrels, gave baths, cleaned up catastrophes, and cleaned them up again. I was at work before I got up and after I went to bed. The experience so marked me that in my mind I invented a new kitchen, modeled after a car wash. The floors slope to a large drain in the middle of the room. A hose hangs on the wall, nozzle ready to spray things down after the meal. It was an incarnation I was not anxious to repeat again, but as my wife says, “It was good for you!” Men, we are called to a divinely appointed self-love: to love our wives as our own bodies, to care for them as Christ does the Church. Loving our wives’ bodies as our own demands a triple incarnation: physical, emotional, and social. We are devoted the same energy, time, and creativity to our wives as to ourselves. We are to cherish our constant souls. Envy the woman who is loved like this. Even more, envy the being who loves like this—for he is like Christ. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15

Men, what a challenge Ephesians 5 presents us—sacrificial love (love is like death!), sanctifying love (love that elevates), and self-love (loving your wife as much as you love your own body). If this calls for anything, it calls for some holy sweat. Marriage is not an achievement which is finished. It is a dynamic process between two people, a relation which is constantly being changed, which grows or dies. Men, the all-encompassing call to love our wives as Christ loved the Church demands specific disciplines. We must begin with the discipline of commitment. I have grown tougher with the years in my demands on couples who want me to perform their wedding ceremonies. I tell them that wedding vows are a volitional commitment to love despite how one feels. I explain that it is rubbish to think one can break one’s vows because one does not “feel” in love. I point out that the Scriptures call us to “put on love” (Colossians 3.14)—and despite the canard about such love being hypocritical, it is never hypocrisy to put on a Christian grace. I tell them that if there is the tiniest thought in the back of their minds, they can get out of the marriage. if the other person is not all they expected, I will not perform the ceremony. The truth is, marriages which depend on being “in love” fall apart. Those which look back to the wild promises they vowed in the marriage ceremony are the ones who make it. There is no substitute for covenant plus commitment. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15

Grace is not only to be received by us, it is, in a sense, to be extended to others. I say “in a sense” because our relationship to other people is different from God’s relationship to us. He is the infinitely superior Judge and moral Governor of the Universe. We are all sinners and are on an equal plane with one another. So we cannot exercise grace as God does, but we can relate to one another as those who have received grace and who wish to operate on the principles of grace. In fact, we will not experience the peace with God and the joy of God if we are not willing to extend grace to others. This is the point of Jesus’ parable of the unmerciful servant in Matthew 18.23-34. He told the story of a man who was forgiven a debt of ten thousand talents (millions of dollars), but who was unwilling to forgive a fellow servant who owed him a hundred denarii (a few dollars). The unstated truth in the parable, of course, is that our debt of sin to God is “millions of dollars,” whereas the debt of others to us is, by comparison, only a few dollars. The person who is living by grace sees this vast contrast between one’s own sins against God and the offenses of others against oneself. One forgives others because one has been so graciously forgiven. One realizes that, by receiving God’s forgiveness through Christ, one has forfeited the right to be offended when others hurt one. One practices the admonition of Paul in Ephesians 4.32 “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 15

O Christ, be favourable to our desires and prayers, and make prosperous to us this coming night of holy blessings; that in it we may rise from the dead, and pass over into life, with Thee, O Saviour of the World. O Lord God, Thou hast commanded me to believe in Jesus; and I would flee to no other refuge, wash in no other fountain, build on no other foundation, receive from no other fullness, rest in no other relief. His water and blood were not served in their flow at the cross, may they never be separated in my creed and experiences; may I be equally convinced of the guilt and pollution of sin, feel my need of a prince and saviour, implore of him repentance as well as forgiveness, love holiness, and be pure in heart, have the mind of Jesus, and tread in his steps. Let me not be at my own disposal, but rejoice that I am under the care of one who is too wise to err, too kind to injure, too tender to crush. May I scandalize none by my temper and conduct, but recommend and endear Christ to all around, bestow good on every one as circumstances permit, and decline no opportunity of usefulness. Grant that I may value my substance, not as the medium of pride and luxury, but as the means of my support and stewardship. Help me to guide my affections with discretion, to owe no man anything, to be able to give to one that needeth, to feel it my duty and pleasures to be merciful and forgiving, to show to the World the likeness of Jesus. “Now Christ spake these words unto them at the time of his first appearing; and the multitude heard it not, but the disciples heard it; and on as many as they laid their hands, fell the Holy Ghost,” Moroni 2.3. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15

CRESLEIGH MEADOWS AT PLUMAS RANCH

Plumas Lake, CA | from the mid $300’s

Now Selling!

Cresleigh Meadows is now available! Found just north of Feather River Boulevard, Cresleigh Meadows is home of the largest neighborhood in Plumas Ranch as well as the popular Bear River Park. With four floor plans available, ranging from approximately 2,000 – 3,500 square feet offering, three to five bedrooms, we are certain you will find the home that fits your needs and lifestyle.

Popular design elements include open floor plans, large kitchen islands, and flex spaces are staples in Cresleigh homes. Multi-generational living options also available in select homes. https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/residence-4/

Randolph Harris II International Institute

Category Archives: veteran

Glory to God in the Highest, and on Earth Peace, Good Will Toward All Beings!

Cresleigh Homes

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Well, the Dream that was Walking and the Dream that was Talking and the Heaven in My Arms was You!

CRESLEIGH MEADOWS AT PLUMAS RANCH

Plumas Lake, CA | from the mid $300’s

Now Selling!

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