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Squad Goals–Dope Squad Detectives
To allow corporations and cities to deal dope, but lock men and women up for these same offenses is crude, and the differences in treatment must be justified by relevant differences in treatment or condition, where relevance is defined in the light of general rules, and that every human being should be treated with at least a minimum of respect as a source of claims and not as a mere instrument for the promotion of the interest of others. The reason, and I am not justifying this because I think even smoking cigarettes should be illegal and regulated to facilities like the consumption of alcohol because it makes it hard to breath and pollutes the air and if it was done indoors at a smoking bar they could purify the air before releasing it, but people often deal drugs because they grew up poor and are uneducated and need a way to get out of strong gravitational effects of poverty that many cannot seem to escape from through legal mean. Many people feel like they are being held hostage in the ghetto, and it can be argued that it is wrong to allow wealthy people and cities with public money deal quasi legal dope, but punish victims of society who are being held hostage in poverty.
Corporations and cities being allowed to circumvent the law and cultivate and distribute marijuana, while others are severing life sentences in prison for the same thing is an abuse because it necessarily makes for more unhappiness than it prevents, and it treats a certain class of men and women in a way that is appropriate only for the guilt and creates a double standard for the wealth that makes them believe it is okay to not follow the laws. Moreover, a legal system is designed to guide conduct by laying down rules and attaching penalties to those who choose to break them. It is acceptable because the criminal males the essential choice; he, she, or they bring it on themselves. The people trapped in poverty and who have been arrested for cultivating and distributing drugs, on the other hand, have no chance to settle their own fate; they were used as a mere lever for manipulating other people’s conduct, and their own interest is subordinate to that of the other members of society. So it could be argued that many of these people in prison for selling and cultivation and possession of marijuana are technically innocent.
And punishment of the innocent ignores, in the short, fundamental procedural rules of justice and morality without which utilitarianism would make little sense, for unless every is worthy of equal consideration as a source of claims, whose interest is to count in assessing the utility of a course of action? Whom are we entitled to treat as simply a tool for advancing other people’s interest—slave by nature—and what would count as a reason for considering other people before them? This has bearing, too, on the reasons for accepting as excuses such defenses as duress, unavoidable accident, or ignorance of fact—conditions under which an offender can claim that he could not help doing what he did. “I had no choice but to sale drugs, I could not get a job and my baby was hungry and the lights got shut out and my family was about to be put out on the streets. As a man, I had to do something to provide for my family.” It could be argued punishing anyone under such conditions, when you are allowing people to deal dope who have other choices, would be pointless and, therefore, mischievous, because the threat of penalties could not possibly deter anyone in the future who was similarly placed.
People who sale drugs are considered to be hustlers—uneducated, unskilled at anything honorable, and they consider themselves nervy and cunning enough to live by their wits, exploiting any prey that presented itself. They will risk just about anything. Right now, in every big city ghetto, tens of thousands of yesterday’s and today’s school drop-outs are keeping body and soul together by some form of hustling. These people might be casually dealing card in a black jack game, and an old cook with wild and sloshed eyes, forming at the mouth, might try to be slick, and they have to drop a pistol in his face. The dope game is not fun and games. We do not want to glamorize weed and make it seem like it is okay to sale and by corporations and cities and states to get involved in the drug trade is just wrong. And people who sale and use illegal drugs inevitably moved into more and more, worse and worse, illegality and immorality. Full-time hustlers can relax to appraise what they are doing and where they are bound. As is the case in any jungle, the hustler’s every waking hour is lived with both practical and the subconscious knowledge that if one every relaxes, if one every slows down, the other hungry, restless foxes, ferrets, wolves, and vultures out there with one will not hesitate to make him their prey.
Now that the law somewhat protects people, who deal dope for a corporation, from being robbed and having their brains blown out or dope stolen, one might say that it is morally acceptable to interview people in jail and prison, find out who was locked up for the sale, cultivation, or possession of marijuana and ask them is it is the consequence of an act freely chosen by the criminal, or if they were somehow forced into it and release those who had no other choice because we now have corporations and cities disturbing, cultivating, and possessing marijuana and they are not being arrested, having their assets auctioned off, and doing time in a government facility. In the minds of some, a man acting in ignorance or by accident cannot be said to bring his punishment on himself. Punishment, seen as a way of influencing conduct, cannot be justified if there has been no real possibility of choice. Moreover, the punishment of involuntary offenses introduces into men’s lives the possibility of disaster which they can neither foresee nor avert. They cannot be fairly tried and judged before an Earthly tribunal. We are after all justifying a particular case of punishment, but allowing others to go unpunished for the same crime who actually have more resources, which is setting a dangerous precedent.
The Gift of Blood
As poisonous adders lurk beneath the cover of the most delightful shrubberies, so falsity and deceit are concealed under alluring language. Darkness is more eligible than light to those whose deeds are evil. Most people strive to become greater than they once were. Healthy individuals purse enlightenment and power so they can be contributing members of society, and they keep working and growing, always looking for improvement. Their entire life is spent gaining more knowledge and implementing what they learn to leave the World better than they found it. However, sometimes in life people face setbacks, but great people know perseverance is the key to success. Most people have a strong desire to do more in life than they are currently doing. Unauthorized and abhorrent thoughts will sometimes invade the best human heart. However, people who have a mindset of lack and limitation focus on what they do not have and worry about losing what they have and this creates jealousy and conflict. Thoughts are very important. Did you know that in the central nervous system, sensory and motor signals can move around as fast as 220 miles per hour, and you consciously perceive them over a matter of seconds? So when you focus on what you do not have and how much others have, this experience will reduce your personal growth. Every noisy evil is missed when it is taken away.
Some people have learned to appreciate and enhance the World that exists and they are generally happy, loving, and giving. Conversely, people who operate on lack and limitation are more possessive, envious, and jealous. They spend their time plotting and gossiping. Research has indicated that people who are more concern with improvement of society would make the World more generous, appreciative, confident, and trustworthy. A work of grace in the soul discovereth itself either to him that hath it, or to standers by. How can we argue about God’s power in the other stars from the laws which he has given for our rule in this one? Many people have been manipulating religious teachings to justify their bad behavior, because they can always ask for forgiveness, and they also are down trotting of this World. Some people think that this alleged after life will be so much better than the current World that they do not take this life too serious. However, after you pass away, there is not proof that you will be in a better place, you may just be erased from the World and that is the end of your existence. Other people are so self-obsessed that they will make sure to make the best of this life so they have no regrets. From whence our greatest good springs, our greatest evils arise.
Some entitled people think so much of themselves that they do not spend much time paying attention to their actions nor how they might be perceived by others. Whereas, people who are suffering or struggling to survive, and may have less than others, often times are humble because they do not feel good enough about themselves or do not have the time to become narcissistic. Their levels of self-obsession requires them to prove themselves to themselves, and as they grow their self-esteem will increase, along with their feelings of being loved and belonging. My heart is a desert island, and my soulmate lives in it alone. Nonetheless, some people have no hearts to break. There are many ways of showing the heart. Deep, deep, and still deep and deeper must we go, if we would find out the heart of a man. Emotionally healthy people are more accepting, they love themselves and others, they are simple, independent, realize how important others are, express creativity, and display tolerance. When they inspire others, they do so for the sake of others, not for their own interest. However, sometimes when you inspire people, they get attached to you, and you become their energy source, and when you want to let go, it leaves them wanting more from you. They may feel like you belong to them, and sometimes this can put you in an awkward situation. Maybe you just wanted to uplift them, for a short period of time, but now they might want you to stay in their lives.
Although we have certain intentions, life has plans that we may not be aware of. When you inspire someone and they become attached to you, it could be because you are their soulmate and do not even realize it. The two of you identify through a process of energy fields, and belong together. You connection has opened the Universe to this other person, they become curious about you, and want to explore your World and wonder what experiences await them and what they have been missing when you were not in their lives. Your soulmate is attracted to you because they are ready for new and unusual experiences. When they are with you, they feel things they have not observed with others—their thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and beliefs grow and improve. They notice that they appreciate reality a little more. You inspire your soulmate to think new thoughts, accept change, help their imagination grow, you teach them to appreciate beauty, enjoy cultures, become more intelligent. When around you, your soulmate is more curious, has a desire for adventure, creates new fantasies, their thinking goes from pack mentality—to individual thinking, and they become more flexible, value emotions, and their vocabulary increases, they also learn to value emotions more.
Spencer Stone’s Prisoner
It seems to be the rule of this World, each person has what one does not want, and other people have what one does want. There are different degrees of turpitude, as there are different tempers to commit it. We have no right to intermeddle with people’s feelings when they would not tell them themselves. Few of us would care to admit that we are not in control of our emotions for that we are slaves to our reactions. There is a limit to the length of the inspection which a person can endure, under certain circumstances. Your attractive companion at a party gets drunk and behaves very embarrassingly to the other guest. Do you become aggressive and for him or her to leave? Quietly withdraw? Get bored and find the buffet? Find you are sexually excited by wild behavior? Become helplessly embarrassed and do absolutely nothing? To have in general but little feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion. The feelings of the human heart are as different as the tinctures of the skin.
We often have to respond to threatening situations that involve a tactical choice. We can choose, for example, either to fight a gang, or to run. We can find comfort in food, in the diversion of sexual experiments, or we can freeze when the level of stress simply becomes too confusing. What we feel matters much more than what we know. Feeling does not stay to calculate with weights and a balance the importance and magnitude of every object that excites it; it flows impetuously from the heart, without consulting the cooler responses of the understanding. Such patterns are natural, but if we constantly choose one particular response to the virtual exclusion of all others, they begin to dictate our behavior in an unhealthy way. Spender Stone, from Sacramento, California, USA allegedly stopped a robbery on a train, by hogtying the suspect and beating him senseless. As a result, Spencer Stone was deemed a hero and his vigilante behavior was reward by being on display in parades, winning awards, and even making several appearances on TV.
While it is prudent to run away from a gang, Spencer Stone got used to being a vigilante. He was allegedly trying to protect a female, and as a result was jumped by a gang, and stabbed several times. After bleeding all over the ground, Spencer Stone was hospitalized and in critical condition. When you are constantly trying to be a hero, you start to think that you can take control of every situation. Because there is a direct connection to the most ancient and unconscious part of the brain, these instinctual reactions are both difficult to detect and even more difficult to change. And that is why the police tell people do not try to be a hero, call the police, as they are there to protect and save you. Being a vigilante could cost you your life, endanger others, and make the situation worse. The cold part about, after the knife fight was over, the young lady allegedly left with the guys’ Spencer Stone was trying to protect her from. Sometimes it is best just to mind your own business.
Any aspect of ourselves that is essentially unconscious part is also prone to become robotic. It can become mechanical and unmoved by sentiment or sensitivity—a jump in the groove of an old record, endlessly playing the same few notes until something or someone jolts it sufficiently to break the cycle. Now, after almost dying in a gang fight, I am sure Spencer Stone is thankful to be alive and sees that he is not invincible like Superman. The idea that we might be merely an unconscious slave to something little more than a robot is enough to nudge most of us out of any rut. The eye, though it does not tell all, tells much. It is the key of character, the mirror of the soul. The eye of the spirit cannot be dimmed, neither can it be limited in its ability to see. My eyes are the vision of my indwelling Lord; they are the windows of my inner spirit and are always open to the vision of truth.
The Winchester Mystery House
A paranormal phenomenon, a mysterious curse, and an unsolved mystery. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Barriers are for those who cannot Fly
Each man has, one time or other, a little Rubicon, a clear, or a foul, water to cross. My dream is to own and manage my own coffee shop. We would serve nothing, but coffee, espresso drinks (no blended ice cream drinks), tea, sandwiches, soup, salads, European desserts, beer and wine. However, the most terrible obstacles are such as nobody can see except oneself. Have you ever wanted to do something, but because of some limits and conditions, you do not know how to reach your goals? When one reaches an impasse of knowledge about life, where one is uncertain about what to do or has excessive doubt, the psychological condition is called Aporia. As far as I know, I have exhausted all of my options that I am aware of, and in the process of discovering my own nature of virtue. So to combat my Aporia, I go to church, focus on things I like, and go to therapy. “You must keep your mind on the objective, not the obstacle,” reports William Randolph Hearst.
Wonders are no Wonders and the Wonderful
The caverns of my mind are open, and they will not close. He whose treasure is in his mind is richer than the walking mine, who carries all his honors on his back, and when Fortune is pleased to divest him of them, what is he fit for? The mind does not exist unless leagued with the soul. What is gotten with wit will be kept with wariness and increased with wisdom. Be wise, and that knowledge shall be God unto thee; be contented, and that is thy Heaven. The catalogue of true thoughts is but small; they are ubiquitous; no man’s property; and unspoken, or bruited, are the same. When we hear them why seem they so natural, receiving our spontaneous approval? Why do we think we have heard them before? Because they are but reiterate ourselves; they were in us, before we were born. The truest poets are but speakers; and some men are but duplicates of each other.
Every thought’s a soul of some past poet, hero, sage. I hope you hear my whispers for blessing and happiness and that they surround you forever. May peace and love fill your heart; beauty fills your World; and contentment and joy fill your days. I present my sincere wishes and kind thoughts. When we are not happy in our own thoughts, it is a relief to carry them out of ourselves. These new thoughts will outshine all others. There is so much tenderness in your spirit. Your tenderness seems the reflection of God’s own love. Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of Earth, overlying our hard hearts, and making them soft, trusting, and loving again. This is a time for us to share our happiness, blessing, and dedication with each other. This is a time for our friendship and dreams. A good cry [before sleep is] better than the best of medication. I forgot to ask you, are you well and healthy? My greeting is knocking on your beautiful door. My heart is full of tender feelings. My friend says nothing and we are hand in hand because silence may be the most beautiful and touching song. Good work succeeds, now and then. We never quite understand why another dislikes what we like.
A truly elegant taste is generally accompanied with an excellency of heart; true virtue is nothing else, but great taste. Though a taste for the fine arts may not always be a mark of a great mind, yet a contempt for them always indicates the contrary. Virtue is little more than active taste; and the most delicate affections of each combine in real love. Good looking, refined looking, quick witted people can be grown; but the sprightly sense of fitness of the mind, ineffable genius, comes from good breeding. Not everyone can be as mighty as you. Knowledge is sympathy and sympathy is love, and to learn it the Son of God became a man. Sympathies of all kinds are apt to beget love. Times files by, it is the time I cherish the memory of the past years and give my consecrations to you. Do not be surprised at the green grass. It this season, the flowers in the heart bloom just for you. I hope heartfelt songs are always around you and bring you endless delight. Whatever you do, have yourself the best day ever.
Be a man’s intellectual superiority what it will, you are the key to open a special moment, it is the heart that gives success. There are many a way to win in the World, but none of them is worth much without good hard work back of it. Moderation in success is necessary to its ultimate advantage. Make indifference your business and ambition your relaxation, and you will succeed. Victory depends upon ardor more than numbers. Strength is the brute form of truth. When beautiful melody flows in your dream tonight, do you realize it is me who comes into your dreams across many mountains, to fill you with eagerness and hopes? This is the most humane time full of love, it is just like sunny and beautiful June. Forget and forgive all unhappiness in the past. Let us advance hand and hand. Endless love and blessings for you, your heart is the most cherished present and everything to me forever.
Wondrous Worlds on Worlds! Love round and round me, joyful spells: all glorious, vivid, constellations, God you are! To you, the stars, we all owe our sublets raptures, thoughts and unspeakable faith to you. I will not worry because I know you are always with me. States and empires have their periods of declension, and feel in their turns what distress and poverty is, but as long as I am faithful to you, there is nothing for me to be concerned about. Why should we have low life above stairs as well as high life below stairs? It is because the spirit is inestimable that the lifeless body is so little valued. However, my body, which you have given me, is my greatest gift; I cherish it with every waking moment. It is my temple. Is the soul a shadow seated in the house of sin? Or is the body really in the soul? The separation of spirit from matter is a mystery, and the union of spirit with matter is a mystery also. This leads me to believe that our bodies are our soul, and therefore we should be kind to them and treasure them. My soul may not be perfect, but it is all I have and I love it.
The soul does not measure time by seconds, nor yet by heart-beats, but by modifications in its own quality and character. The watches of the World may stop; the planets may cease to measure the flight of time; the body may retain its pristine vigor, but in an hour, a moment almost, the heart may grow old, the man be transformed. Wake up the heart full of love, as I call your name. Only love is eternal, ploughing and shinning, and creating a path to Heaven. Let us cherish each other. Let us listen to the blessings of the Earth, in this beautiful and warm World. It is dark out here, in the pursuit of love, completely unabridged this silent fortress. My mind escapes me, feeling it in my bones. The ties that bind deny us this love. I started blind, but now my eyes are wide open. Many people say this is not our home, it is just a school, but for all we know, this could be Heaven, let us make the best of it. I wish you happy life and successful joy and I promise my love will be with you forever.
Language is Worth a Thousand Pounds a Word!
All phrases of mere compliment have their turn to be true. A man is occasionally grateful when he says, “Thank you.” How many days you teach us painstakingly and cultivate silently. You ignite the light of hope for us and enlighten my soul and wisdom. You will be in my heart forever. The clouds are still moving on and on. Your voice still rises and falls. Although today is your holiday, you still assiduously cultivate in your field. Oh, please accept my highest respects. After many years, whom I will see most in my dream, perhaps is you. After many years, whom I will talk about most, perhaps is still you. Whether daytime or night, I will cherish the burning sunlight you give me, I will be proud of this collection. I recalled you when I fell; you pushed cowardice off me and sowed hope for me. You are my idol forever. Without your painstaking cultivation and dedication, how else could wisdom bloom so gorgeously?
Weather I stay with you or go to the ends of the World, I will look for you. I will contribute the vivid dreams of yesterday and the freshest feelings to you. No words can express my thanks. I wish this pretty letter can express a few of my heartfelt acknowledgments in the bottom of my heart. You have a sun like heart. Not only do you shine on the green gardens, but also the barren wasteland. Not only do you breed colorful flowers, but also slim grass, and towering trees. In my journey of life, you enrich my soul, enlighten my wisdom and light my lamp of hope. I will be grateful to you forever. Limitless deep love is what I have for you, I wish you happy with respect. Perhaps I am capricious, naughty, and make you worry about me. Perhaps I am tenacious, unsensible, and make you angry. However, in fact, I respect you. You are the greatest man in my heart. I guarantee that I will be more obedient tomorrow than today.
In our brilliant rays of wisdom, there is still the flame you ignited in those years. Without your generous attributions, how can I harvest? Thank you! I am sleeping; it is you who breeds me into a towering tree. I am a fire; it is you who ignited me. I am an instrument; it is you who play the strings of my heart. I will remember you forever. You make my discouraged and exhausted soul renew new courage. You give me the brightest and most precious jewels of self-confidence. Then I grew and feel more comfortable with myself. Flowers understand most the selflessness of spring rains. The moon understands most the generosity of the sun. I understand the deepest love from you, kindness is love. Though we are far apart, your image remains lofty in my heart like the sun, shining on me, giving me strength, though I have been away so long, I miss you.
Every note is glimmering your love. Every rhythm is full of your deep feelings. Because of you, my music of youth is so pure and fresh. You encourage children to seek knowledge with your talent and motivation. You turn your love into sunshine to brighten the soul of children. With love, you create a warm friendly atmosphere. The sunshine, the sound of the song and cheerful laughter are everywhere and every moment. Cherished in my heart are your urgings like the spring breeze, the drizzling rain, you bring me into a colorful world, a limitless world. It is you that open the window for our souls. It is you who make us see the broad world, celestial body beyond the Galaxy, tomorrow and future, yesterday and all things millions of billions years ago. When we fly, embracing the sky with forceful position and ardent hands, we will embrace you.
Secrets of the Winchester Mansion
Long ago, in ancient California, there lived a very clever man named William Wirt Winchester, son of Oliver Fisher Winchester, Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut and famous manufacturer of the Winchester repeating rifle, had a most ambitious project, the Winchester mansion. Here, before the city of San Jose was even established, William Wirt Winchester moved to California began to have an architect build him a palace that would have outdone anything in the United States, at the time. The overall appearance was enchanting, indeed, as every castle should be. It was to have colonnades and cupolas, high enough for the king to see his warships riding at the San Francisco Bay, from the Winchester seven story Cathedral, lined on each side with noblemen’s houses. William planned a magnificent mansion that even had running water in the bathrooms. He was very proud of his skill.
William built a huge labyrinth, which had many false turns and dead-ends that no one who entered it could ever find a way out. The mansion had a Gothic appearance by romantic additions of curious windows, corbels, and crenellations. When the labyrinth was finished, the angry Minotaur was sealed inside it. When the Minotaur was hungry, his roar shook the palace causing the 1906 earthquake, which was a magnitude 8.3 on the Richter scale. It was an extravagant maze of Victorian craftsmanship—marvelous, baffling, beautiful, and eccentric, to say the least. There was a switch back staircase, which has seven flight of stairs with 44 steps, rising only nine feet, miles of twisting hallways with secrete passage ways in the walls, supposedly it was to confuse the ghost or the Minotaur that might be following him. It is estimated that 500 to 600 rooms were built.
There are stairs that lead to the ceiling, doors that go nowhere and that open onto walls, and chimneys that stop just short of the roof. There are 47 fireplaces built of rosewood, cherry, mahogany, Italian marble, oak, teak, and pipestone; all hand carved and no two alike; 10,000 windows, 2 grand ball rooms, and the main staircase has 13 steps. There are different heating systems and three elevators, one hydraulic and two electric. Some of the 13 bathrooms lacked privacy, they have clear glass doors! One rambling room has 4 fireplaces, and hot air registers. A second story door opens into the great outdoors and a 20 foot step. A linen closet has the area of a 3 room apartment; a nearby cupboard is less than one inch deep. There is a skylight places in the middle of a room, in the floor! Another floor is apparently a series of trap doors. Exterior faucets project unexpectedly from under second story windows.
There is a door only 4 feet tall, the next gives clearance for an 8 foot giant. Many stairway turn posts are upside down. Entire walls are built entirely of half inch, half round strips. Everywhere prevails that strange deference to the number 13; 13 stair steps, 13 hangers in a closet, 13 wall panels, 13 lights in the chandeliers, 13 windows to a room, an Italian porcelain sink that has 13 drain holes. There is also a 7—11 staircase built in the shape of a letter “Y”, enabling servants to quickly get to three different levels of the house. There is a blue séance room and a set of $30,000.00 solid golf dinner service. Talk begat rumor and as the years passed and new towers and gables rose behind the six—foot hedge of Llanda Villa, the rumors grew to establish legend. Some started to say that the Winchester mansion was a rendezvous for legions of ghosts, with special attention accorded those created by a Winchester rifle slug.
At night, passers—by heard ghostly music wafting from the dark mansion, and a pack of ferocious hellhounds and a staff of armed bodyguards surrounded the mansion. William was satisfied. William wanted to leave the mansion after it was completed. He told his father Oliver Winchester that he wanted to leave the mansion. “Great King, with your permission, I shall take my leave. My work is done, and I wish to return to Athens with my son,” said William Winchester. “You will do no such thing. You know the secret of the labyrinth. How do I know you will not tell somebody how to find the way through the twisting passageways?”
“I pledge to you that I will do no such thing!” protested William. However, King Oliver Winchester had William Winchester and his son seized, they were locked in a tall tower, at the very edge of the palace grounds. They were kept under close guard in the tower. “Father, are we going to be locked in this tower forever?” Asked William’s son, Randolph. “I am a great inventor, Randolph,” replied William. “This is a difficult problem, but I shall think of a solution. However, while Sarah Winchester (William’s wife), was pregnant with her daughter Anne, lightning struck the tower, and it burned to the ground, killing William and his son.
Shortly after Sarah gave birth, her daughter Anne died also. Sarah Kept building on the mansion, until her death 5 September 1922, the mansion was incomplete, though it had been underconstruction for 38 years. Today, it is open to visitors. However, they are told to keep close to the tour guides so they do not get lost. Some of the mansion was split up and turned into houses for masons, there used to be 160 acres of land, but only 4 remain, and the mansion is now 160 rooms, and the seven story tower was dismantled.
Human Experience is Usually Paradoxical
We have endured a major attack, over a three-week period, been under extreme stress and have not back down, we stand fourth with perseverance and pride. Everyone fancies the laws which fill his pockets to be God’s laws. Little spirits will always accommodate themselves to the subject they would work upon: will fawn upon a sturdy-tempered person: will insult the meek. Many accept the but half-worthy for fear a still worse should offer. We might dispense with the sweet in the coffee, could we escape from the bitter of life. We cannot all be sound: we have got to be the way we are made. All are not born to buffet with adversity. However, one who can heroically endure adversity will bear prosperity with equal greatest adversity. Men love not the remembrance of their crime; firm friendships can be never founded on the basis of guilt; hence the wicked have no sympathy for each other in the hour of adversity. Abused and prosperity is oftentimes made the very means of our greatest adversity. People in difficulty and distress, or in any manner at odds with the World, can endure a vast amount of harsh treatment, and perhaps be the stronger for it; whereas, they give way at once before the simplest expression of what they perceive to be genuine sympathy.
Therefore, I will teach them—this time I will teach them. My power and might. Then they will know that my name is the LORD Randolph. Never was a nature more perfectly fortunate. It was not a restless, apprehensive, ambitious spirit, running a race with the tyranny of fate, but a temper so unsuspicious as to put Adversity off its guard, dodging and evading her with the easy, natural motion of wind-shifted flower. He knows himself, and that is in him, who knows adversity. The likelihood of great calamities occurring seldom obtrudes upon the minds of the ignorant men; for the things which wise people know, anticipate, and guard against, the ignorant can only become acquainted with by meeting them face to face. And even when experiences has taught them, the lesson only serves for that day. Oh LORD, my strength and my fortress, my refuse in the tie of distress, to you the nations will come from the ends of the Earth and say, our Father possessed nothing, but false gods, worthless idols that did them no good. Do men make their own gods? Yes, but they are not gods! Cursed in the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strengths and whose heart turns away from the LORD.
He will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes. He will dwell in the parches places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives. However, blessed is the people who trust in the Lord. Even the children remember their alters. My mountain in the land and your wealth and all your treasures I will give away as plunder, together with your high places, because of sin throughout your country. Through your own fault you will lose the inheritance I gave you. I will enslave you to enemies in a land you do not know, for you have kindled my anger, and it will burn forever. However, blessed is the people who trust in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not feat when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought, and never fails to bear fruit. I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve. Like a partridge that hatches eggs it did not lay, is the man who gains riches by unjust means.
They said, “Come, let’s make plans against Randolph; for the teaching of the law by the priest will not be lost, nor will counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophets. Some come, let’s attack him with our tongues and pay no attention to anything he says.” Listen to me O Lord; hear what my accusers are saying! Should good be repaid with evil? Yet they have dug a pit for me. Remember that I stood before you and spoke in their behalf to turn your wrath away from the. So give their children over to famine; hand them over to the power of the sword. Let their wives be make childless and widows; let their men be put to death, their young men slain by the sword in battle. Let a cry be heard from their houses when you suddenly bring invaders against them, for they have dug a pit to capture me and have hidden snares for my feet. However, you know, O LORD, all their plots to kill me. DO not forgive their crimes or blot out their sins from your sight. Let them be overthrown before you; deal with them in the time of your anger. In April of your age, you should be like April. In youth, as at the opera, everything seems possible. Youth!
There is absolutely nothing in the World, but youth! The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming. Aggressors lay themselves open to severe reprisals. From rough outside, serene and gentle influences often proceed. What is the use of living cheap when you have got no money? You might as well live dear. Peachy-cheeked charmers with the skeleton throats. While the grass grows, the steed starves. There are really no miseries except natural miseries; conventional misfortunes are mere illusions. Tomorrow, 21 December 2014, at 15.03 is Winter Solstices, which is the longest night of the year, and the shortest day. A long, deep sob of that mysterious, wondrous happiness that is one with pain. The impetuosity of passion unrequited is bearable, even if it stings and anathematizes–there is a triumph in the humiliation, and a tenderness in the strife.
Randolph Harris II International Institute 