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New Creation—A New Chapter in Cosmic History Has Opened!
Do not go poking your nose into the virtues that may be found in the lives of your fellow Devout. And do not sniff about the laundry of their vices. Why? Because your path is in the opposite direction. “Just follow Me.” That was the Evangelist John’s answer, as it was Jesus’ before him (21.22). If one person is a such-and-such or another person says one thing but does another, what business is it of yours? You do not need to be responsible for yourself; that is how Paul put it to the Romans (14.12). And that, believe me, is more than you can handle. Beyond that, you quickly get out of your depth. And before you smack me in the face with that mullet, let me assure you God knows everyone and God see everything that happens under the sun; that is what the Preacher wrote about Him (1.14). Each person God knows inside and out, that is to say, what one thinks, what one wants, and where one is heading; that is how God’s John described Him (2.25). And that includes you. “Truly, truly, I say to you, one who believes in Me, the works that I do, one will do also; and greater works than these one will do; because I go to the Father,” reports John 14.12. So what can God do for you? Everything, if you putt it all into His hands. God wants each generation to go further than the previous generation. He wants each generation to be more blessed, to experience more of His love, goodness, and His influence in the World. He does not want you to stay where you are. What can you do for yourself? Keep the peace. That is to say, forgive the agitator one’s agitation; one stirs the pot against you, but one cannot bring it to a boil. Eventually one will find oneself in a broth of one’s own juices. One cannot deceive God. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
God did not desire one generation to shine, and then the next generation to fade into obscurity. God wants each generation to increase. “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. When the LORD your God brings you into the land He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you—a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant—then when you eat and are satisfied, be careful that you do no forget the LORD, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. Fear the LORD your God, serve Him only and take your oaths in His name. Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you; for the LORD your God, who is among you, is a jealous God and His anger will burn against you, and He will destroy you from the face of the land. Do not test the LORD your God as you did at Massah. Be sure to keep the commands of the LORD your God and the stipulations and decrees He has given you. Do what is right and good in the LORD’s sight, so that it may go well with your and you may go well with you and your may go in and take over the god land that the LORD promised on oath to your forefathers, thrusting out all your enemies before you, as the LORD said. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
“In the future, when your son asks you, ‘What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and laws the LORD our God has commanded you?’ tell him: ‘We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. Before our eyes the LORD sent miraculous signs and wonders—great and terrible—upon Egypt and Pharaoh and his whole household. However, He brought us out from there to bring us in and give us the land that He promised on oath to our forefathers. The LORD commanded us to obey all these decrees and to fear the LORD our God, so that we might always prosper and be kept alive, as is the case today. And if we are careful to obey all this law before the LORD our God, as He has commanded us, that will be our righteousness,” reports Deuteronomy 6.5-25. Some things are not worth worrying about. Swanning about in a sphere of influence. Being on a first-name basis with Worldly notables. Dispensing tokens of affection to every outstretched hand. Why? Because these activities, harmless as they may seem, do have a tendency to distract the soul and clutter the heart. I speak God’s words of wisdom and reveal God’s hidden thoughts to you, my beloved friend, but on one condition only. You must keep a weather eye open for His coming and leave the door of your heart unlocked; that is one of God’s instructions in the Last Book of His New Testament (3.20). That is to say, be on the lookout, pray while you watch, and think humble thoughts. You, too, can be so much more than your predecessors, passing on a legacy of Godly attitudes, blessings, and success to your children. Do not ever get satisfied with where you are. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
Maybe you come from a family that is not affluent. Or perhaps you come from a family with riches untold. Regardless, you can experience more than the generation preceding you. The adult has—nobody. Indeed one may have friends, a wife, a certain amount of social security, yet even so the possibility of defending oneself and of acquiring what one needs is very fragile. Even if your life and full of hardship, lack and limitation, oppression, poor health, do not pass these negative attitudes down to your children. Break the cycle and change your expectations. Trust and believe that God can make the impossible possible. Thank You, Father, that I am part of a family with a future; no longer will I be limited by my past, but I will trust You today to do things in and through my life that are even greater than the wonderful things You have done previously. The procession of the Word in God is called generation. In proof whereof we must observe that generation has twofold meaning: one common to everything subject to generation and corruption; in which sense generation is nothing but change from non-existence to existence. In another sense it is proper and belongs to living things; in which sense it signifies the origin of a living being from a conjoined living principle; and this is properly called birth. Not everything of that kind, however, is called begotten; but, strictly speaking, only what proceeds by way of similitude. Hence a hair has not the aspect of generation and sonship, but only that has which proceeds by way of a similitude. Nor will any likeness suffice; for a worm which is generated from animals has not the aspect of generation and sonship, although it has a generic similitude; for this kind of generation requires that there should be a procession by ways of similitude in he same specific nature; as human proceeds from a human, and a horse from a horse. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
So in living things, which proceed from potential to actual life, such as humans and animals, generation includes both of these kinds of generation. However, if there is a being whose life does not proceed from potentiality to act, procession (if found in such a being) excludes entirely the first kind of generation; whereas it may have that kind of generation which belongs to living things. So in this manner the procession of the Word in God is generation; for He proceeds by way of intelligible action, which is a vital operation:—from a conjoined principle (as above described):—byway of similitude, inasmuch as the concept of the intellect is a likeness of the object conceived:—and exists in the same nature, because in God the act of understanding and His existence are the same, as shown above. Hence the procession of the Word in God is called generation; and the Word Himself proceeding is called the Son. The act of human understanding in ourselves is not the substance itself of the intellect; hence the word which proceeds within us by intelligible operation is not of the same nature as the source whence it proceeds; so the idea of generation cannot be properly and fully applied to it. However, the divine act of intelligence is the very substance itself of the one who understands. The Word proceeding therefore proceeds as subsisting in the same nature; and so is properly called begotten, and Son. Hence Scripture employs terms which denote generation of living things in order to signify the procession of the divine Wisdom, namely, conception and birth; as is declared in the person of the divine Wisdom. “The depths were not as ye, and I was already conceived; before the hills, I was brought forth,” reports Proverbs 8.24. In our way of understanding we use the word “conception” in order to signify that in the word of our intellect is found the likeness of the thing understood, although there be no identity of nature. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
Not everything derived from another has existence in another subject; otherwise we could not say that the whole substance of created beings comes from God, since there is no subject that could receive the whole substance. So, then, what is generated in God receives its existence from the generator, not as though that existence were received into matter or into a subject (which would conflict with the divine self-subsistence); but when we speak of His existence as received, we mean that He Who proceeds receives divine existence are contained both the Word intelligibly proceeding and the principle of the Word, with whatever belongs to His perfection. The Resurrection was not regarded simply or chiefly as evidence for the immortality of the soul. It is, of course, often so regarded today: I have heard a man maintain that “the importance of the Resurrection is that it proves survival.” Such a view cannot at any point be reconciled with the language of the New Testament. On such a view Christ would simply have done what all humans do when they die: the only novelty would have been that in Hs case we were allowed to see it happening. However, there is not in Scripture the faintest suggestion that the Resurrection was new evidence for something that had in fact been always happening. The New Testament writers speak of as if Christ’s achievement in rising from he dead was the first event of its kind in the whole history of the Universe. He is the “first fruits,” the “pioneer of life.” He has forced open a door that has been locked since the death of the first man. He has met, fought, and beaten the King of Death. Everything is different because He has done so. This is the beginning of the New Creation: a new chapter in cosmic history opened. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
I do not mean, of course, that the writers of the New Testament disbelieved in “survival.” On the contrary they believed in it so readily that Jesus on more than one occasion has to assure them that He was not a ghost. From he earliest times the Jewish people, like many other nations, had believed that humans possessed a “soul” or Nephesh separable from the body, which went at death into the shadowy World called Sheol: a land of forgetfulness and imbecility where none called upon God any more, a land half unreal and melancholy like the Hades of the Greeks or the Niflheim of the Norsemen. From it shades could return and appear to the living, as Samuel’s shade had done at the command of the Witch of Endor. In much more recent times there had arisen a more cheerful belief that the righteous passed at death to “Heaven.” Both doctrines are doctrines of “the immortality of the soul” as a Greek or modern Englishman understands it: and both are quite irrelevant to the story of the Resurrection. The writers look upon this event as an absolutely novelty. Quite clearly they do no think they have been haunted by ghost from Sheol, nor even that they have had a vision of a “soul” in “Heaven.” It must be clearly understood that if the Psychical Researchers succeeded in proving “survival” and showed that the Resurrection was an instance of it, they would not be supporting the Christian faith but refuting it. If that were all that had happened to the original “gospel” would have been untrue. What the apostles claimed to have seen did not corroborate, nor exclude, and had indeed nothing to do with, either the doctrine of “Heaven” or the doctrine of Sheol. Insofar as it corroborated anything it corroborated a third Jewish believe which is quite distinct from both these. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
This third doctrine taught in “the day of God” peace would be restored and World dominion given to America under a righteous King: and that when this happened the righteous dead, or some of them, would come back to Earth—not as floating wraiths but as solid humans who cast shadows in the sunlight and made a noise when they tramped the floors. “Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust,” said Isaiah, “And the Earth shall cast out the dead,” (xxvi. 19). What the apostles thought they had seen was, if not that, at any rate a lonely first instance of that: the first movement of a great wheel beginning to turn in the direction opposite to that which all humans hitherto had observed. Of all the ideas entertained by humans by death it is this one, and this one only, which the story of the Resurrection tends to confirm. If the story is true, then it is this Hebrew myth of resurrection which begot it. If the story is true, then the hint and anticipation of the truth is to be found not in popular ideas about ghosts nor in eastern doctrines of re-incarnation nor in philosophical speculations about the immortality of the soul, but exclusively in the Hebrew prophecies of the return, the restoration, the great reversal. Immortality simply as immortality is irrelevant to the Christian claim. There are, I allow, certain respects in which the risen Christ resembles the “ghost” of popular tradition. Like a ghost He “appears” and “disappears”; locked doors are no obstacle to Him. On the other hand He Himself vigorously asserts that He is corporeal (Luke xxiv. 39-40) and eats broiled fish. It is at this point that the modern reader becomes uncomfortable. He becomes more uncomfortable still at the words, “Don’t touch me; I have not yet gone up to the Father” (John xx. 17). For the voices and apparitions, we are, in some measure, prepared. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
However, what is this that must not be touched? What is all this about going “up” to the Father? Is He not already “with the Father” in the only sense that matter? What can “with the Father” in he only sense that matters? What can “going up” be except a metaphor for that? And if so, why has He “not yet” gone? These discomforts arise because the story the “apostles” actually had to tell begins at this point to conflict with the story we expect and are determined beforehand to read into their narrative. It seems that the sentiment of humanity evaporates and weakens in being extended over the entire World, and that we cannot be affected by the calamities in America or Japan the way we are by those of a European people. Interest and commiseration must somehow be limited and restrained to be active. For since this inclination in us can be useful only to hose with whom we have to live, it is a good thing that the humanity concentrated among citizens takes on a new force through the habit of seeing each other and through the common interest that unites them. It is certain that the greatest miracles of virtue have been produced by the love of the country. In joining together the force of self-love and all the beauty of virtue, this sweet and lively sentiment takes on an energy that, without disfiguring it, makes it the most heroic of all the passions. This is the passion that produced so many immortal actions whose radiance dazzles our feeble eyes, and so many great humans whose ancient virtues were thought to be fables once the love of country because the object of derision. We should not find this surprising. The ecstasies of tender hearts appear utterly fanciful to anyone who has not felt them. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
And the love of country, a hundred times more ardent and delightful than that of a mistress, likewise cannot be conceived except by being felt. However, it is easy to observe, in all the hearts it inflames and in all the actions it inspires, that fiery and sublime ardor which the purest virtue is lacking when it is separated from the love of country. Let us dare to compare Socrates oneself to Cato. The one was more a philosopher; the other more a citizen. Athens was already lost, and Socrates had no other country but the whole World. Cato always carried his country in the bottom of his heart. He lived only for it and could not outlive it. The virtue of Socrates is that of the wisest of men. However, compared with Caesar and Pompey, Cato seems like a god among mortals. One teaches a few individuals, combats the sophist and dies for the truth. The other defends the state, liberty and the laws against the conquerors of the World, and finally leaves the Earth when he no longer sees as country to serve. A worthy student of Socrates would be the most virtuous of his contemporaries. A worthy imitator of Cato would be the greatest. The virtue of the first would constitute his happiness; the second would seek one’s happiness in that of others. We ought to be taught by the one and led by the other, and that alone would decide our preference. For a people consisting of wise humans never been produced; however, it is not impossible to make a people happy. Do we want people to be virtuous? Let us begin then by making them love their country. However, how can they love it, if their country means nothing more to them than it does to people who are not native to their lands, allotting to them only what it cannot refuse to anyone? #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
It would be worse still if they did not enjoy even civil welfare, and if their goods, their life or liberty were at the discretion of powerful humans, without it being possible or permitted for them to dare to invoke the laws. In such circumstances, subjected to the duties of the civil state without enjoying even the rights of the state of nature and without being able to use their strength to defend themselves, they would as a result be in the worst condition in which free humans can find themselves, and the word “country” could have only an odious or ridiculous meaning for them. There is no point to believing that one can strike or cut off an arm without pain being transmitted to the head. And it is no more believable that the general will would permit a member of the state, whoever one might be, to injure or destroy another member than that the fingers of a human in one’s right mind would put out one’s eyes. Individual welfare is so closely linked to the public confederation that, were it not for the attention one should pay to human frailty, this convention would be dissolved by right if just one citizen were to perish who could have been saved, if jus one citizen were wrongly held in prison, and if a single litigation were to be lost because of an obvious injustice. For when these fundamental conventions are violated, it is no longer apparent what right or what interest could maintain the populace in the social union, unless it is restrained by force alone, which bring about this dissolution of the civil state. In effect, is it not the commitment of the body of the nation to provide for the maintenance of the humblest of its members with as much care as for that of all others? #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
And is the welfare of a citizen any less the common cause than the welfare of the entire state? If someone were to tell us that it is good that one person should perish for all, I would admire this saying when it comes from the lips of a worthy and virtuous patriot who dedicates oneself willingly and out of duty to die for the welfare of one’s country. However, if this means that the government is permitted to sacrifice an innocent person for the welfare of the multitude, I hold this maxim to be one of the most despicable that tyrant has ever invented, the most false that one might propose, the most dangerous one might accept, and the most directly opposed to the fundamental laws of society. For far from it being the case that one individual should die for all, all have committed their goods and their lives in defense of each of them, so that individual weakness would always be protected by public force, and each member by the entire state. After conjuring up an image of the attrition of the people, one after another, press the partisans of this maxim to explain better what they mean by body of the state, and you will see that eventually they will reduce it to a small number of human who are not the people, but the officers of the people, and who, having obliged themselves by a personal oath to perish for its welfare, maintain they prove by this that it is the people’s place to die for them. Does anyone want to find examples of the protection that the state owes its members, and of the respect it owes their persons? These examples are to be found only among the World’s most illustrious and courageous nations, and it is exclusively among free peoples where one knows what a human is worth. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
It is commonly known how great was the perplexity in which the whole republic in Sparta found itself, when there arose the question of punishing a guilty citizen. In Macedonia, a human life was such an important matter that, in all his grandeur, Alexander, that powerful monarch, would not have dared to put to death in cold blood a Macedonian criminal unless the accused had appeared to defend oneself before one’s fellow citizens and had been condemned by them. However, the Romans were preeminent among all the peoples of the Earth for the government’s deference toward private individuals and for its scrupulous attention to respecting the inviolable rights of all the members of the state. Nothing was as sacred as the life of the simple citizens. There needed to be no less than the assembly of the entire people in order to condemn one of them. Neither the senate itself nor the consuls, in all their majesty, had the right to do this. And among the most powerful people in the World the crime and punishment of a citizen was a public affliction. It also appeared so harsh to shed blood for any crime whatever, that by the Lex Porcia the death penalty converted to exile for all those who wished to outlive the loss of so sweet a country. Everything in Rome and in the armies betokened that love of a fellow citizen for one another, and that respect for whoever had the honor to bear it. That hat of a citizen free from slavery, the civic crown of one who had saved the life of another: these were things that were viewed with the greatest pleasure in the midst of the celebrations of their military triumphs. And it is worth noting that of the crowns with which in time of war one honors noble actions, only the civic crown and that of victors were made of grass and leaves, all the rest being made of gold. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
Thus is was that Rome was virtuous and became the mistress of the World. Ambitious leaders! A shepherd governs one’s dogs and one’s flocks, and one is but the humblest of humans. If it is a fine thing to command, it is when those who obey us can honour us. Therefore respect your fellow citizens and you will make yourselves respectable. Respect liberty and your power will increase daily. Never go beyond your rights, and eventually they will be limitless. Let the homeland, therefore, show itself as the common mother of all citizens. Let the advantages they enjoy in their homeland endear it to them. Let the government leave them a large enough part of the public administration so that they can feel that they are at home. And let the laws be in their sight merely the guarantees of the common liberty. These rights, fine as they are, belong to all humans. However, without appearing to attack them directly, the bad will of the leaders easily reduces their effect to nothing. The law that is abused at the same time serves the powerful as an offensive weapon and as a shield against the weak, and the pretext of the public good is always the most dangerous scourge of the people. What is most necessary and perhaps the most difficult in the government is rigorous integrity in dispensing justice to all and especially in protecting the poor against the tyranny of the rich. The greatest evil is already done when there are poor people to defend and rich ones to keep in check. It is only at intermediate levels of wealth that the full force of the laws is exerted. Laws are equally powerless against the treasures of the rich and against the wretched state of the poor. The first eludes them; the second escapes them. The one breaks the webbing and the other slips through. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
Beyond this, one can easily imagine the work-at-home household becoming something radically different: an “electronic expanded family.” Perhaps the most common family form in First Wave societies was the so-called extended family, which brought several generations together under the same roof. There were also “expanded families” which, in addition to the core members, included an unrelated orphan or two, an apprentice or additional farm hand, or others. One can likewise picture the work-at-home family of tomorrow inviting an outsider or two to join it—for example, a colleague from the husband’s or wife’s firm, or perhaps a customer or supplier engaged in related work, or, for that matter, a neighbour’s child who want to learn the trade. One can foresee the legal incorporation of such a family as a small business under special laws designed to foster the commune-cum-corporation or the cooperative. For many the household would become an electronic expanded family. It is true that most of he communes formed in the 1960’s and 1970’s fell rapidly apart, seeming to suggest that communes, as such, are inherently unstable in high-technology societies. A closer look reveals, however, that the ones that disintegrated most rapidly were those organized primarily for psychological purposes—to promote interpersonal sensitivity, to combat loneliness, to provide intimacy, or the like. Most had no economic base and saw themselves as utopian experiments. The communes that have succeeded over time—and some have—are, by contrast, those that have had a clear external mission, an economic base, and a practical, rather than purely utopian, outlook. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
An external mission welds a group together. It may, indeed, provide the necessary economic base. If this external mission is to design a new product, to handle the “electronic paperwork” for a hospital, to do the data processing for an insurance company department, to set up the scheduling for a commuter airline, to prepare catalogs, or to operate a technical information service, the electronic commune of tomorrow may, in fact, turn out to be a quite workable and stable family form. Moreover, since such electronic expanded families would not be designed as a rebuke to everyone else’s lifestyle or for demonstration purposes but rather as an integral part of the main wiring of the economic system, the chances for their survival would be sharply improved. Indeed, we may find expanded households linking up to form networks. Such networks of expanded families could supply some needed business or social service, cooperating to market their work or setting up their own version of a trade association to represent them. Internally, they might or might not share pleasures of the flesh across marriage lines. They might or might not be heterosexual. They might be childless or child-ful. In brief, what we see is the possible resurrection of the expanded family. Today some 6 percent of American adults live in ordinary extended families. One might easily imagine a doubling or tripling of this number in the next generation, with some unis expanding to include outsiders. This would be no trivial even but a movement involving millions in the United States of America alone. For community life, for patterns of love and marriage, for the reconstitution of friendship networks, for the economy and the consumer marketplace, as well as for our psyches and personality structure, the rise of the electronic expanded family would be momentous. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
This new vision of the extended family is not presented here as inevitable, not as better or worse than some other type of family, but simply as one example of the many new family forms likely to find viable niches in the complex social ecology of tomorrow. Sometimes I go about pitying myself while I am carried by the wind across the sky. It is the wind that gave them life. It is the wind that comes out of our mouths now that gives us life. When this ceases to blow we die. In the skin at the tips of our fingers we see the trail of the wind; it shows us the wind blew when our ancestors were created. O Lord and Redeemer, beside Thee there is none to save. Thou art mighty and redeemest. I was brought low, but Thou didst save me. O God of salvation who deliverest and savest, save Thy supplicants, save them that hope in Thee. Sustain thy lambs; increase the Earth’s riches. Cause to flourish and save each shrub, and condemn not the Earth to infertility, but sweeten and save its fruits. Urge on the rain-mists that they discharge their showers, and hold not back the clouds. Thou who openest Thine hand to sustain Thy creatures, satisfy the thirsty with water. Save them that call on Thee at morn, yea, do Thou save them. Save Thy whole-hearted servants, yea, save them, we beseech Thee. O save human and beast; save one who is flesh, sprit and soul; sinew, bone and skin; form and image of wondrous frame; beauty akin, alas, to vanity, and like the beasts that perish; radiance and glorious stature. Renew the face of the Earth and cause trees to sprout from the arid soil. Bless the vine-press and the corn, vineyards and sycamores upon he fair-bounded Earth. Please grant that the reviving rains send forth their fragrance to make fertile the Earth, to nurture the green herbs, to foster the pleasant fruits, and to strengthen the bubs. Send rain upon the tender shoots, and let cool waters flow, supplementing with the latter rain. Sustain the World which Thou hast founded, yea, save our Earth, suspended in space. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
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You are Giving Away Your Soul—The Blood is Life!
This morning I saw a star twinkling just over the nine-story tower—the first since the beginning of May. My son, when he was examined, because he would not confess that he was guilt when he was innocent, they tied him neck and heels till the blood gushed out at his nose, and would have kept him so twenty-four hours if one more merciful than the rest had not taken pity on him and caused him to be unbound. These actions are very like the Popish cruelties. A man’s outer case generally gives some indication of the soul within. He has told me several times that the thought of death was a pleasant one to him, which is a sad thing for a young man to say; he cannot be much more than thirty. Some great sorrow must have taken him and blighted his whole life. Why of course, they were in effect saying, the Devil can impersonate the innocent, just as we have said all along. God might permit Satan to impersonate the virtuous. But surely, he would not permit discord in the Winchester mansion? I should have thought Mrs. Winchester’s staff would have been above such vulgar delusions. All this disquisition upon superstition leads me up to the fact that my son saw a ghost last night—or at least, says that he did, which of course is the same thing. Indeed the fellow is honestly frightened, and I had to give him some chloral and bromide of potassium this morning to stead him down. He has been hired as a ranch had to work at the estate. When grounds keepers found a mutilated cow, some of the other men thought he had been possessed by the devil, and torture him to confess. I was obliged to pacify him by keeping as grave a countenance as possible during his story, which he certainly narrated in a very straightforward and matter-of fact way. No one wanted Mrs. Winchester to believe the curse was real and the hauntings had started again. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
“I was on the balcony,” he said, “about four bells in the middle watch, just when the night was at its darkest. There was a bit of a moon, but the clouds were blowing across it so that you could not see far from the mansion. John Brunton, the foreman, came after from the tool shed and reported a strange noise on the estate. I came down and went forward and we both heard I, sometimes like a bairn crying and sometimes like a wench in pain. I have been seventeen years to the country and I never heard an animal, old or young, make a sound like that. As we were standing on the rear porch the moon came out from behind the cloud, and we both saw a sort of black figure moving across the farm in the same direction that we had heard the cries. We lost sight of it for a while, but it came back insight, and we could just make it out like a shadow amongst the trees. I sent a hand art for the rifles, and Brunton and I went down to the fruit orchard, thinking it might be a bear. When we got near the trees I lost sight of Brunton, but I pushed on in the direction where I could still hear the cries. I followed them for a mile or may more, and then running round a well I came right on to the top of it standing and waiting for me seemingly. I do not know what it was. It was not a bear any way. It was tall and black and straight. This black dog, or the devil in such a likeness, running all along down the body of the mansion with great swiftness, and incredible haste, he passed between two people, wrung the necks of them both. I made my way for the mansion as hard as I could run, and precious glad I was to find myself inside. I signed articles to do my duty by the estate, and on the estate I will say, but you will not catch me on the grounds after sundown.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
That is his story given as far as I can in his own words. I do not know what happened there. I fancy what he saw must in spite of his denial, have been a young bear erect upon its hind legs, and attitude which they often assume when alarmed. In the uncertain light this would bear a resemblance to a human figure, especially to a man whose nerves were already somewhat shaken. Whatever it may have been, the occurrence is unfortunate, for it has produced a most unpleasant effect upon the crew. Their looks are more sullen than before and their discontent more open. The double grievance made more dreadful when a barn of dead bodies was found on the edge of the estate. Written in blood, “Keep building,” and a huge bloody hand print was discovered on the wall. Some say it was the Devil’s handprint. In the old days in the New World, people used to say “I put my hand and seal” on a document when signing it. In the Old World this was literal in some cases. The emperor of Japan in ancient in ancient days “signed” important documents by dipping his hand in blood and putting a full bloody handprint on the page. In the history of pacts with the Devil, people were supposed to sign their names in blood. I have seen a couple of alleged pacts from earlier centuries. Blood undoubtedly stressed the seriousness of the signing. The Devil may sometimes have a permission to represent an innocent person as tormenting such as are under diabolical harassments, but that such things are rare and extraordinary. You were giving away your soul. The Blood is life. Afflicted persons were subject to diabolical torments; making evidence of such torments was accepting the word of the Devil; worse, accepting such evidence was holding commerce with the Devil, and therefore in itself a kind of witchcraft. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
The afflicted persons do tell who are witches, of which, some they know and some they do not. Secondly, they tell who did torment such a person, though they know not the person. Thirdly, they are tormented themselves by he looks of the persons that are present, and recovered again by the touching of them, they recover, or do not fall into torment. Fifthly, they can tell when a person is coming before they see them, and what clothes they have [on], and some, what they have done for several years past, which nobody else ever accused them with nor do not yet think them guilty of. Sixthly, the dead out of their graves do appear unto them and tell them that they have been murdered, and require them to see them to be revenged on the murderers, which they name to them, some of which persons are well known to have died their natural deaths, and been publicly buried in the sight of all humans. Now if these things be so, I thus affirm: First, that whatsoever is done by them that is supernatural is either divine or diabolical. Secondly, that nothing is or can be divine but what has God’s stamp upon it, to which he refers for trial (Isaiah viii. 19,20): If they speak not according to these, there is no light in them. Thirdly, and by that rule none of these actions of theirs have any warrant in God’s Word, but are condemned wholly. First, it is utterly unlawful to inquire of the dead or to be informed by them (Isaiah viii. 19). It was an act of the Witch of Endor to raise the dead, and of a reprobate Saul to inquire of him (1 Samuel xxviii.8, 11-14; Deuteronomy viii. ii). Secondly, it is a like evil to seek to them that have familiar spirits (Leviticus xix.31). It was the sin of Saul in the forementioned place (1 Samuel xxviii.8) and of wicked Manasses (2 Kings xxi.6). #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
Thirdly, no more is it likely that their racking and tormenting should be done by God or good angels, but by the Devil, whose manners has ever been to be so employed. Witness his dealing with the poor child (Mark v.2-5) besides what he did to Job (Jon ii.7) and all the lies he told against him to the very face of God. Fourthly, the same may be rationally said of all the rest. Who should tell them things that they do not see but the Devil, especially when some things that they tell are false and mistaken? May we believe the confessed witches that do accuse anyone? Can the fruit be better than the tree? If the root of all their knowledge be the Devil, what must their testimony be? Their testimony may be legal against themselves, because they know what themselves do. However, their words should not be taken against those who denied the charges and whose previous behaviour had been blameless. The fits to which the afflicted and of come of the confessors were subject to, they were the Devil’s way of force them to accuse the innocent. We see by woeful and undeniable experience, both in the afflicted persons and the confessors, some of them, that the Devil torments them at his pleasure to force them to accuse others. The accusations of the apparently innocent makes some people think that both the afflicted and the confessors are liars. However, perhaps the sufferings are pitiable and genuine. It is possible that the Devil is lying through them. And no matter who is lying, the effect of the lie is still the same. For if they counterfeit, the wickedness is the greater in them and the less in the Devil; but if they be compelled to it by the Devil against their wills, then the sin is the Devil’s and the suffering is theirs. However, if their testimonies be allowed of, to make persons guilty by, the lives of innocent persons are alike in danger by them, which is the solemn consideration that does disquiet the country. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
The Devils have a natural power which makes them capable of exhibiting what shape they please I suppose nobody doubts, and I have no absolute promise of God that they shall not exhibit mine. It is the opinion generally of all Protestant writers that the Devil may thus abuse the innocent. My son told me of another experience he had while working at the Winchester mansion. “I dreamt that it was night and that I was lying in my bed. (My bed stood with its foot toward the window; in front of the window there was a row of old walnut trees. I know it was winter when I had the dream, and nighttime.) Suddenly the window opened of its own accord, and I was terrified to see that some black wolves were sitting on the big walnut tree in front of the window. There were six or seven of them. The wolves were quite black, and looked more like foxes or sheep dogs, for they had big tails like foxes and they had their ears pricked like dogs when they pay attention to something. In great terror, evidently of being eaten up by the wolves, I screamed and woke up. I swore there was something there. I could feel it, hovering over me. It is watching, it is waiting, I think it is even mocking me.” Apart from this absurd outbreak of superstition, things are looking rather more cheerful. Mrs. Winchester loved the new year; she loved the idea of a fresh start for everyone. She always made a resolution, one a year, and unlike most people, she kept hers. Every year she tried to talk her staff into making one, but some of them never saw the point. The estate was undergoing heavy construction. Some workers reported seeing a ghost woman in nineteenth-century dress. That is not what was strange. What was strange is the fact that it was there was a thunder storm, but no rain was falling on a section of the mansion were the roof was still being added to the nine-story tower. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
Mrs. Winchester wanted the tower because she said that she could get visions of the spirit World more clearly there. I always got a wee bit creeped out in the tower because the crucifix on the wall would turn upside down when anyone went near it. The Devil is said to appear there twice a year, on the vernal equinox and Halloween. The tower marks the grace of one of his children, born of a human witch and dead after a few days. I am learning about the hauntings at the Winchester mansion. Everyone has heard about them, but they all have different stories. In the World of spirits there is always a very great number of them, but there is no fixed time for their stay on Earth; for some are translated to Heaven and others confined to Hell soon after their arrival; whilst some stay on Earth days, weeks, maybe even centuries. Gerald Pomper thinks that my son devoted himself to construction of the Winchester simply for the reason that it is the most dangerous occupation which he could select, and that he courts death in every possible manner. He mentioned several instances of this, one of which is rather curious, if true. It seems that on one occasion he did not put in an appearance on the estate, and a substitute had to be selected in his place. That was at the time the tower was near completion. When he turned up again next spring he had a puckered wound in the side of his neck which he used to endeavour to conceal with his cravat. Whether the mate’s inference is true or not, it was certainly a strange coincidence. Of course, Johann Weikhard von Valvasor recorded the first written documented on vampires. Jure Grando Alilovic (1579-1656) was a villager from the region of Istria (in modern-day Croatia) who may have been the first real person described as a vampire in historical records. He was referred to as a strigoi, a local word for something resembling a vampire and a warlock. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
Jure Grando lived in Kringa, a small town in the interior of the Istrian peninsula near Tinjan. He died in 1656 due to illness but according to legend, returned from the grave at night as a vampire and terrorized his village until his decapitation in 1672. The legend tells that, for 16 years after his death, Jure would arise from his grave by night and terrorize the village. The village priest, Giorgio, who had buried Jure sixteen years previously discovered that at night somebody would knock on the doors around the village, and on whichever door he knocked, someone from that house would die. This is why Mrs. Winchester boarded up the East Wing of her mansion. During one of her seances, she said Jure communicated with her. No telling? When you contact the spirit World, there is no telling what will come through. Some of the spirit in the mansion may be hundred of years old. Mrs. Winchester owned an original copy of Die Ehre deB Herzogthuma Crain, which she kept locked away in a safe. Vampires are said to infest come parts of this country. These Vampires are supposed to be the bodies of deceased persons, animated by evil Spirits, which come out of the graves, in the night-time, suck the blood of many of the living, and thereby destroy them. Petar Blagojevic was also accused of being a Vampire, and was alleged to have killed several people after his death. When the body was exhumed, it was undecomposed, the hair and beard were grown, there was new skin and nail, and blood could be seen in the mouth. When people grew outraged and staked his body through the heart, a completely fresh amount of blood flowed through the ears and moth of the corpse. Finally, the body was burned. The wind is veering round the mansion in an easterly direction, but it is still very slight. As far as the eye can reach, there is a shadow. The butler was staring out up the stairs with an expression in which horror, surprise, something approaching to fear were contending for the mastery. In spite of the cold, great drops of perspiration were coursing down his forehead and he was evidently fearfully exited. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
His limbs twitched like those of a man upon the verge of an epileptic fit, and the lines about his mother were drawn hard. “Look!” he grasped, seizing me by the seizing me by the wrist, but still keeping eyes upon the window, and moving his head in a horizontal direction, as if following some object which was moving across the field of vision. “Look! There, man, there! Between the palm trees! Now coming out from behind the far one! You see her, you must see her! There still! Flying from me, by God, flying from me—and gone!” His face was so livid that I expected him to become unconscious, so lost no time leading him down the stairs, and stretching him out upon one of the sofas in the parlour. I then poured him out some brandy which I held to his lips, and which had a wonderful effect upon him, bringing the blood back into his white face and steading his poor shaking limbs. He raised himself up upon his elbow, and looking round to see that we were alone, be beckoned me to come and sit beside him. “You are it, did you not?” he asked, still in the same subdued awesome tone so foreign to the nature of the man. “No, I saw nothing.” They have made up their minds that there is a curse upon the mansion, and nothing will ever persuade them to the contrary. The next night, there was a glorious sunset, which made the great fields look like a lake of blood. I have never seen a finer and at the same time more ghastly effect. Wind is veering round. There was a cry, sharp and shrill, upon the silent air of the night, beginning, as it seemed to me, at a note as such a prima donna never reached, and mounting from that ever higher and higher until it culminated in a long wail of agony, which might have been the last cry of a lost soul. The ghastly scream is still ringing in my ears. Grief, unutterable grief, seemed to be expressed in it and a great longing, and yet through it all there was an occasional wild not of exultation. It seemed to come from close beside me, and yet as I glared into the darkness, I could make out nothing. I waited some little time, but without hearing any repetition of the sound, so I came below, more shaken that I have ever been in my life before. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
Odd things have happened here. Four kids in three years, from 1887-1890, vanished without a trace. Other people see things. No one will talk about. The butler was certain that something had come up through the “door to nowhere” five years ago, and was about to again. Some kind of hellspawn. The Devil may impudently impose his communion upon some that care not for his company. However, if the communion on the person’s part be proved, then the business be done. Specter evidence may be grounds for investigation, and may strength other presumptions, but it is not evidence on which to convict. The mansion could be a dangerous place, even at its best—a treacherous, dangerous place. The butler was staring at something. By the sudden intensity of his attitude, I felt that he saw some. I crept up behind him. He certainly was looking at something with an eager questioning gaze, at what seemed to be a wreath of smoke. It was a dim nebulous body devoid of shape, sometimes more, sometimes less apparent, as the light fell on it. The moon was dimmed in its brilliancy at the moment by a canopy of thinnest cloud, like the coating of an anemone. He held out his hand as if to clasp it, and so ran into the darkness with outstretched arms. That came from somewhere. Was it a demon? It took the shape of a man, and eventually of the man of whom we were in search of. He was lying face downwards upon the floor, frozen. Many little crystals of ice and feathers of snow had drifted on to him as he lay, and sparkled upon his dark seaman’s jacket. As we came up some wandering puff of wind caught these tiny flakes in its vortex, and they whirled up into the air, partially descended again, and then, caught once more in the current, sped rapidly away in the direction of the east wing. To my eyes it seemed but a snow-drift, but the butler averred that it started up in the shape of a woman, stooped over the corpse and kissed it, and then hurried away across the floor. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
It was the former cook Bill Thompson, who has gone missing in 1886. Sure he had met with no painful end, for there was a bright smile upon his blue pinched features, and his hands were still outstretched as though grasping at the strange visitor which had summoned him away into the dim World that lies beyond the grave. Surely this same apparition would also lead the butler into the eternal darkness. The smoke went into his mouth and he started to jerk, and speaking in tongues. That awful hellspawn had possessed him, and with his body dying and something inside of him, the butler staggered over to the sulfur stinking wall, sat down and died. Then he faded away and was gone. There he shall lie, with his secret and his sorrows and his mysteries all still buried in his breast, until that great day when the Winchester Mansion shall give up its dead, and Clarence Earl Gideon, known as “the butler,” come out from among the shadows with a smile upon his face, and his stiffened arms outstretched in greeting. I pray that his lot may be a happier one in that life than it has been in this. As for my son, I have not seen him in several years. In 1904, at the palace late at night, men who were pure of spirit, had thought they say a strange demoniac form taking the place of my son, John Wesley Thompson Faulkner. One man said that Mrs. Winchester suddenly rose from her throne and walked about, and immediately John’s head vanished, while the rest of hos body seemed to ebb and flow: whereat the beholder stood aghast and fearful, wondering if his eyes were deceiving him. However, he perceived the vanishing head filling out and joining the body again as strangely as it has left it. Another said he stood beside Mrs. Winchester as she sat, and all of the sudden the face changed into a shapeless mass of flesh, with neither eyebrows nor eyes in their proper places, nor any other distinguishing feature; and after a time the natural appearance of his countenance returned. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
I write these instances not as one who saw many of them myself, but heard them from people who were sure they had seen these strange occurrences at the time. They also say that the cook, Bill Thompson, very dear to God, at the instance of dinner time, went to beg forgiveness that some of the guess had been offended beyond endurance by a dish he made. And when he arrived at the dining room, he forthwith secured an audience with Mrs. Winchester; but just as he was about to enter his apartment, he stopped short as his feet were on the threshold, and suddenly stepped backward. Whereupon the maid who escorted him, and others who were present, importuned him to go ahead. However, he answered not a word; and like a man who has had a stroke staggered back to his lodging. And when some followed to ask why he acted thus, they say he distinctly declared he saw the King of the Devils sitting on the throne in the palace, and he did not care to meet or ask any favour of him. I shall not continue my journal. Our road home lies plain and clear before us, and the great Winchester palace will soon be but a remembrance of the past to me. It will be some time before I get over the shock produced by recent events. When I began this record of my visit, I little thought of how I should be compelled to finish it. I am writing these final words in the lonely chamber, still starting at times and fancying I hear the quick nervous step of the dead man upon the floor above me. I entered his chambers tonight as was my duty, to make a list of his effects in order that they might be entered in the official log. All was as it has been upon my previous visit, save that the picture which I have described as having hung at the end of his bed had been cut out of its frame, as with a knife, and was gone. With this last link in a strange chain of evidence I close my diary of the Winchester mansion. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
Note by William Clark Falkner, Col. CSA: “I have read over the strange evens connected with the mystery, as narrated in the journal of my son. That everything occurred exactly as he describes it I have the fullest confidence, and, indeed, the most absolute certainty, for I know him to be a strong-nerved and unimaginative man, with the strictest regard for veracity. Still, the story is, on the face of it, so vague and so improbable, that I was long opposed to its publication. Within the last few days, however, I have had independent testimony upon the subject which throws a new light upon it. I had run down to Edinburgh to attend a meeting of the British Medical Association, when I came across Aleister Crowley, an old college chum of my son’s, now involved with the esoteric Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where he was trained in ceremonial magic by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and Allan Bennet. Aleister told me that he had been contacted by a supernatural entity named Aiwass, who confirmed that that Witch Trials were started by people who wanted to break up convents and get their magic potions, spells, talismans, and secrets, while also getting the church in an uproar. Upon my telling him of this experience of my son’s, he declared to me that he was familiar with the man, and proceeded, to my no small surprise, to give me a description of him, which tallied remarkably well with that given in the journal, expect that he depicted him as a younger man. According to his account, the cook and butler and my son had all been in love with the same woman. However, the cook was engaged to the young lady of singular beauty residing upon Sierra. During their absence at the Winchester mansion, his betrothed had died under circumstances of peculiar horror. She became a Chenoo, a winter spirit with a heart of ice, created from a human, which wants to kill those it loves. In the period of transformation, the person who is becoming a Chenoo eats snow and refuses other food. One will be ill-tempered and angry. After the transformation, the Chenoo will attack and kill other members of the tribe.” There are many mysteries surrounding the Winchester Mansion. Have a visit and tell me a little story. Winchester Mystery House–a 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
In the 1800s, so many deer and cattle within the mansion’s proximity were found dead that staff members were accused of being werewolves. Today, staff and visitors have reported banging sounds, footprints, seeing white mists, and feeling someone breathe on them. They also report tormented ghosts wandering through the mansion at night. Even if you do not believe ghost stories, you might still get goosebumps passing by, do not chalk those taps on your shoulder and whispers in your ear as all up to imagination.
During mansion renovations in the early 1900s, workmen found a secret dungeon in the Bloody Tower with so many human skeletons, they filled three cartloads when hauled away. The basement was designed so that prisoners would fall through a trap door. These hallways won’t wander themselves 😳 Give you and your friends a fright this weekend on the Lost in The House Tour during All Hallows’ Eve at the Winchester Mystery House!
All Hallows’ Eve value night tickets are still available!
🎟️ Link in bio. winchestermysteryhouse.com
A Word is a Sign for a Unique Experience!
Many people look at these beautiful homes, and want to one day live in a home just like that. However, their desires and reality do not always seem to match up. It may even see impossible to some that they will achieve the American Dream of home ownership. Therefore it is important to speak the words of faith and realize God did not bring this far to tour this model home, just to be let down. Keep on believing and know that with God, the impossible is possible. See yourself living in that enchanting home, even while you are living in your current situation. Through hard work, perseverance and determination and by having faith in God and continuing to reach for the stars, you will achieve your vision. God wants you time on this Earth to be the best time of your life. To receive the favour of God, one must draw closer to God. Start by studying the Ten Commandments in the Christian Bible and try to become a better person. Repent of your sins and practice forgiveness. Then you can expect more than the grace of God, you can expect His blessings. You must know in your heart and mind that whatever you want will come true, but you must follow the steps to make your dream a reality. Let go of old, defeated, negative, limiting thoughts. Have the courage to step out of your shell and become a new, more confident, and successful person. Do not think discrimination is going to hold you back. Know that you are the best in your field and God will place someone in your path to open the doors for you. You cannot be if your attitude is one of defeat and hatred and envy, America’s Next Top Model. God is ready for you to become more loving, for you to have harmony in your home, for your medical report to say you are in tip top shape. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
It pleases God to help you advance n live. The Lord wants to give you abundance. Father, I believe in You at this moment and forever. I know that you have my best interest at heart and are protecting me from things that I cannot see. However, Father, I am ready to enjoy this life and for things to come to me easily, without let down or hardship. I will walk by faith and not by sight, and please fill my heart with joy and gratitude as I try to become more like Jesus Christ. Take flight, my Soul, and circle creation until you find a perch. Not just any perch. Certainly not one with a view. A place for a rest is what I need. A perch with the Lord would be best. That is where the Saints are pillowed, or so I have been given to understand. To that end I have composed these little prayers with big faith. Please grant me, Sweet Jesus, Loving Friend, rest, not in the rest of creation, but in You. That is to say, not in beatitude or pulchritude, glory or honour, science or subtlety, richness or artistry, jig or dance, fame or praise, consecration or consolation, hope or promise, merit or desire, beneficence or munificence, joy or jubilation, Angels or Archangels or any other Heavenly Militia, or indeed any of the other Visibles or Invisibles. That is simply to say, please grant me rest only in Your company. I welcome you into my home and heart and into my family for eternity. Without God, other goods are nothing. I would rather have Jesus than silver and gold. No fame or fortune, no riches untold, I would rather have Jesus than silver and God. More than once over the eons, my Timeless if Timely Lord and God, You have been pronounced overall best of show. The tallest and strongest, the most beautiful of all. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
Lord, You are the most self-sufficient and best equipped. The smoothest-cheeked and cheeriest of cheeks. The handsomest and friendliest. The noblest and brightest. All these have been true in the past and no doubt will continue to be true in the future. From these superlatives, however, there flows one horrific inexorable. Yet first, whatever You may give me by way of gift or revelation or promise, will, of course, always be welcomed. Now if that gift or revelation or promise has nothing of Yourself in it, it will always be regarded by me as one brick short of a load; that is to say, it is something less than perfection. All of which is another way of saying, I look forward to the time when I will see You in person and grasp Your Holy Hands. As the Great Augustine prayed in his Confessions (1.1), my heart can neither truly rest nor totally relax until it rests—no, not in all Your creatures or all Your creations—only in Your Yourself. When I told my friends that one day I would own a Cresleigh Home, they replied, “You’re crazy!” The word crazy is typical for defining that which is unthinkable. Most people call certain ideas “crazy” because “sane” is only that which is within the frame of reference of conventional thought. Some people are not on your level. Their thoughts and expectations in life might be lower than the standards you hold yourself to. That which transcends the conventional is crazy in the view of the average person. The scientist can stand his uncertainty precisely because of one’s faith in human reason. What matters to one is not to arrive at a conclusion but to reduce the degree of illusion, to penetrate deeper to the roots. The scientist is not even afraid of being wrong; one knows that the history of science is a history of erroneous but productive, pregnant statements from which new insights are born that overcome the relative wrongness of the older statement and lead to new insights. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
If scientists were obsessed by the wish not to be wrong, they would never have arrived at the insights which are relatively right. Of course if the social scientist has only trivial questions and does not turn one’s attention to fundamental problems, one’s “scientific method” achieves results sufficient for the endless papers which one needs to write in order to promote one’s academic career. The combination or wide-ranging imagination and objectivity is seldom reached and this is probably the reason why great scientists, who would have to fulfill both conditions, are rare. High intelligence is necessary but is not by itself sufficient for becoming a creative scientist. In fact a condition of complete objectivity can hardly ever be fully achieved. In the first place the scientist, as we have discussed, always is influenced by the common sense of one’s time, and furthermore only extraordinary persons of great gift are immune from narcissism. Yet altogether the discipline of scientific thinking has produced a degree of objectivity and what one might call scientific conscience that is hardly matched in other areas of cultural life. Indeed the fact that the great scientists more than anybody else have seen the dangers threatening humankind today and warned of them is the expression of their capacity to be objective and unswayed by he clamour of misguided public opinion. The living person can be understood only as a whole and in one’s aliveness, in the constant process of change. Since every individual is different from any other, even the possibility of generalization and the formulation of laws is limited, through the scientific observer will always try to find some general principles and laws in the manifoldness of individuals. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
There is another difficulty in the scientific approach to the understand of the human. The data which we obtain from a person are unlike the data we obtain in other scientific endeavours. One has to understand a human in one’s full subjectivity to understand one at all. A word is not “a” word because a word is that which it means to a certain person who uses it. The dictionary meaning of the word is only an abstraction compared to the real meaning which a word has for the person who pronounces it. That of course is irrelevant for words for physical objects, although not entirely, but it is relevant for words referring to emotional or intellectual experiences. A four-page love letter from the beginning of the century sounds to us sentimental, contrived, and kind of silly. A four-page love letter from our tine which wanted to convey the same sentiments would have appeared to people living one hundred years ago as cold and feelingless. The words love, faith, courage, hate have an entirely subjective meaning for every individual and it is no exaggeration to say that it is never the same meaning for two people because there are no two people who are identical. It may not have even the same meaning for one person that it had ten years earlier because of the changes that one has undergone. The same holds true of course for dreams. Two dreams which are identical in their content may still have two very different meanings for two different dreamers. We should not take a word a person uttered for granted, but raise the question of what this particular word at this particular moment in this particular context meant for this particular person. This subjectivity in fact enhances the objectivity of one’s scientific method considerably. Any psychologist who is naïve enough to think “a word is a word is a word” will communicate with another person only on a highly abstract and fictitious level. A word is a sign for a unique experience. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
O Jesus Christ, Sweetest Friend of My Friendless Soul, how can You lord over the whole Universe and yet at the same time grant me license to fly anywhere in creation? And here I am reminded of the Psalmist’s dove who flew the cote and set sail for the wilderness where You reside. Please fill me with courage so that I can empty my soul. Flood my soul with Your love so that I can drain the soil of self-love. Just You, O Lord. No sensibilities. No methodologies. No intellectual monkey business of any kind. Just You alone and in a manner as yet unknown. However, that will be then, and this is now. At my Earthly unhappiness I frequently groan to myself, but at the same time I make a great show of my pain. It is to be expected, I suppose, what with the many evils that take place in this value of misery. However, in quick succession I become annoyed, morose, confused. More often than not, these evils impede, then distract, unfold, then fold up. Thought multifarious, the one purpose they have in common is to obstruct my access to You. I know the Blessed Spirits must be enjoying Your manly hugs, but somehow I am prevented from joining them in that jolly exercise. All of which is another way of saying, may my snortings and snottings about the many distractions and desolations I encounter on Earth move you to Help. The first suburban communities had a goal of making them accessible to public transportation, but also they were designed to emphasize the open public green areas and rural ambience of earlier romantic Victorian suburbs. In practice as well as philosophy, they were not outlying bucolic communities, but true suburbs. Physically and socially, they were more closely tied to the city. Roland Park, for example, reflected more urban than rural traditions. Roland Park was clearly oriented toward downtown Baltimore. Roland Park, Forrest Hills, and Shaker Heights each would come over time to represent the affluent inner-ring urban-oriented suburbs of the pre-World War II era. To many they would become the quintessential American suburbs. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
All three suburbs shared features such as strictly enforced building codes, including houses-setback regulations, but they different in the degree of developer control. Forrest Hills was designed by its backer, the Russell Sage Foundation, to be totally planned. This can be seen today in the community’s buildings, with their solid masonry construction and red tiled roofs. The Van Sweringens brothers, who founded Shaker Heights, compulsively oversaw the building of all the homes, mandating not only acceptable architectural plans but even what materials and colour schemes could be used. All homes in Shaker Heights had to be designed by an architect whose plans were approved by the brothers. They advertised their control over the community as one of its major advantages. The brothers sought “tasteful” designs and banned any too original designs as undermining the aesthetic, and financial, stability of Shaker Heights. In Roland Heights, on the contrary, house styles were not mandated. You could build your home in Dutch colonial, English Tudor, or any other style of your choice as long as you met the other community standards. Roland Park soon became incorporated into Baltimore, but it was never lost its reputation as a somewhat reclusive upper-middle class WASP enclave. Roland Park represented not just an area, but also a WASP way of life. The novelist Ann Rice and Ann Tylor, in the respective novels, Merrick (Rice)and The Accidental Tourist and Searching for Calib (Taylor) makes the Character of Roland Park itself an essential ingredient of the novels. While Mrs. Rice talks about the decadence of design, amongst other things. Mrs. Tylor portrays Roland Park residents as living very much self-satisfied and self-restricted lives; they have little interest in going out of the neighbourhood or matter beyond Roland Park. This view of the culturally restricted nature of the upper-middle-class suburban life may or may not be an accurate reflection of reality, but it has been the basis of many good novels. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
Planned communities have a long, if not always successful, lineage in American urban life. They share with the romantic suburbs the belief that humans can be made over by proper surroundings. Many of he nineteenth-century new town examples, such as New Harmony, Indiana or Salt Lake City, were founded with an ideological-religious emphasis. Other new communities began as company towns—but company towns that also had a visionary or social component. Lowell, Massachusetts, began in the early nineteenth century as an idealistic community with a paternalistic interest in its workers, but by midcentury it was just another New England mill town. The classic American attempt to create a totally paternalist suburban community was Pullman, Illinois, which was at the southern extremity of Chicago urban area. Pullman, founded in the 1880s, was designed with solid urban planning to be a complete community with well-managed services. George Pullman, of Pullman car fame, was the founder and sole landlord. His goal was to provide a community of solid housing and few temptations (saloons were barred) so that workers would remain productive. He stated that, “With such surroundings and such human regard for the needs of the body as well as the soul the disturbing conditions of strikes and other troubles that periodically convulse the World of labour would no be found here.” He was a poor prophet, for Pullman is best known today for the famous biter and violent strike that occurred there in 1894. The strike was only crushed when National Guardsmen were brought in as strike breakers. Today pullman is part of Chicago. Nineteenth-century planned utopian communities, such as John Noyes’s Oneida, New York, with is system of group marriage, or political-philosophical communities such as New Harmony, Indiana, generally had difficulty maintaining themselves. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
In addition to having ideological disputes, the communities were always undercapitalized. Alice Austin’s early-twentieth-century attempt to create the feminist planned “Socialist City” of Llano Del Rio in southern California suffered this fate. After struggling for many years, the community went bankrupt in 1917. As noted earlier, a unique feature of Llano del Rio was the building of homes without kitchens. Rather than having individual kitchens, the homes backed into a communal eating area. This was to save housewives from the drudgery of cooking. At the close of the nineteenth century, revulsion against the evils of the city and reaction to the isolation of the suburbs led to attempts to build entirely new communities in which the benefits of both types of living could be realized. The resulting communities thus grew out of a much different orientation then had led to the building of the earlier upper-status romantic suburbs. These communities had much more of a reformist and middle-or working-class orientation. Our suburbs of today are a melding of the two traditions. The turn of the century new towns were planned to be communities with fully developed commercial, residential, and industrial sectors. Much of the concern with new owns was because of the visionary efforts of Ebenezer Howard in England. His new towns, which were called “garden cities,” were to be self-contained communities of 30,000 residents. There were to be totally planned communities surrounded by a “green belt” of open land. Mr. Howard was going to solve the problem of the cities by abandoning them for a fresh environment of self-sufficient garden cities. Mr. Howard and his Garden City Association stared the first new town a Letchworth, some thirty miles by train from London, in 1902. After many financial troubles, Mr. Howard launched the second town, Welwyn Garden City, in 1920. Today it is a pleasant small city. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
Following World II, in 1946, Britain passed the New Town Act, which made the building of new towns an official government policy in Great Britain. Since that time some fifty-six new towns have been constructed. During the 1920s some of the leading planners in the United States of America organized into the Regional Planning Association of America in order to promote comprehensive planning and new towns. The most famous new town which members were associated was Radburn, New Jersey, started in 1928 outside New York by City Housing Corporation. Radburn is often considered the first of the American new towns. Designed by Clarence Stein and Henry Wright, the houses were arranged in superblocks that fronted on open parkland while automobiles were restricted to peripheral areas. The superblocks were to be free of traffic and congestion. Radburn was thus the first community specifically planned for controlling the problems of the “motor age.” An extensive pathway system, for example, was designed to separate pedestrians from automobiles. For financial reasons, it was not possible to build the external protecting green belt, and there was no provision for industry. Then English new town model of communal ownership and property leaseholds also was not followed, since it would not be accepted in the American environment. From the first, Radburn, the first homeowners moved into the community in May 1929, and the stock market collapsed half a year later. The community was begun stillborn. Now largely forgotten except by urbanists, three government-sponsored new towns were built over half a century ago by the United States of America’s government. They were built essentially as experimental or demonstration projects during the great Depression of the 1930s. The new towns were authorized with the three goals of demonstrating the advantages of community planning, providing good housing at reasonable rents, and giving jobs to thousands of unemployed workers. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
The three towns constructed were Greenbelt, Maryland, outside of Washington D.C.; Greendale, Wisconsin, southwest of Milwaukee; and Green Hills, Ohio, near Cincinnati. Although they lacked their own industries, all three were successful. However, Congress, responding to claims by the real estate industry that having government-built housing was socialists and a danger to the free-enterprise system, the surrounding green belt be sold. Since then, all new town developers have built their communities in the expectation of making money. They have not always achieved this expectation. Given this flowering of a multiplicity of family forms, it is too early to tell which will emerge as significant style in a Third Wave civilization. Will our children live alone for many years, perhaps decades? Will they go childless? Will we retire into old-age communes? What about more exotic possibilities? Families with several husbands and one wife? (If genetic tinkering lets us preselect the gender of our children, that could happen.) What about homosexual families raising children? The courts are already debating this issue. What about the potential impact of cloning? If each of us moves through a trajectory of family experiences in our lives, what will the phases be? A trial marriage, followed by a dual-career marriage with no children, then a homosexual marriage with children? The possible permutations are endless. Nor, despite the cries of outage, should any of these be regarded as unthinkable. As Jessie Bernard has put it, “There is literally nothing about marriage that anyone can imagine that has not in fact taken place…All these variations seemed quite natural to those who lived with them.” Which specific family forms vanished and which ones proliferate will depend less on pulpit-pounding about the “sanctity of the family” than on the decisions we make with respect to technology and work. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
While many forces influence family structure—communication patterns, values, demographic changes, religious movements, even ecological shifts—the linkage between family form and work arrangements is particularly strong. Thus, just as the nuclear family was promoted by the rise of the factory and office work, any shift away from the factory and office would also exert a heavy influence on the family. It is impossible, in the space of a single essay, to spell out all the ways in which the coming changes in the labour force and in the nature of work will alter the family life. However, one change is so potentially revolutionary, and so alien to our experience, it needs far more attention than it has received so far. This is, of course, the shift of work out of the office and factory and back to the home. Assume for a moment that twenty-five years from now 45 percent of the work force is employed part- or full-time in the home. How would working at home change the quality of our personal relationships or the meaning of love? What would life be like in the electronic cottage? Whether the work-at-home task is programming a computer, writing a pamphlet, monitoring distant manufacturing processes, designing a building, or typing electronic correspondence, one immediate change is clear. Relocating work into the home means that many spouses who now see each other only a limited number of hours each day would be thrown together more intimately. Some, no doubt, would find their marriages saved and their relationships much enriched through shared experience. Let us visit several electronic cottages to see how people might adapt to fundamental a change in society. Such a tour would no doubt reveal a wide diversity of living and working arrangements. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
In some houses, perhaps the majority, we might well find couples dividing things up more or less conventionally, with one person doing the “job-work” while the other keeps the house—he, perhaps, writing programs while she looks after the kids. They very presence of work in the home, however, would probably encourage a sharing of both job-work and housekeeping. We would find many homes, therefore, in which man and wife split a single full-time job. For example, we might find both husband and wife taking turns at monitoring a complex manufacturing process on the console screen in the den, four hours on, for hours off. Down the street, by contrast, we would likely discover a couple holding not one, but two quite different jobs, with each spouse working separately. A cellular physiologist and a CPA might each work at one’s craft. Even here, however, with the jobs differing sharply in character, there is still likely to be some sharing of problems, some learning of each other’s work vocabulary, some common concerns and conversation relating to work. It is almost impossible under such conditions for the work life of an individual to be strictly segregated from personal life. By the same token, it is next to impossible to freeze one’s mate out of a whole dimension of one’s existence. Right next door (continuing our survey) we could well come upon a couple holding two different jobs but sharing both, the husband working as a part-time insurance planner and part-time as an architect’s assistant, with the wife doing the same work on alternating shifts. This arrangement would provide more varied, and therefore more interesting, work for both. In such homes, whether one or several jobs are shared, each partner necessarily learns from the other, participate in the problem-solving, engages in complex give-and-take, all of which cannot but deepen intimacy. Forced proximity, it goes without saying, does no guarantee happiness. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
The extended family units of the First Wave era, which were also economic production units, were hardly models of interpersonal sensitivity and mutual psychological support. Such families had their own problems and stresses. However, there were few uncommitted or “cooled out” relationships. Working together assured, if nothing else, tight, complex, “hot” personal relationships—a committedness many people envy today. In short, the spread of work-at-home on a large scale could not only affect family structure but transform relationships within the family. It could, to put it simply, provide a common set of experiences and get marriage partners talking to one another again. It could shift their relationships along the spectrum from “cool” to “hot.” It could also redefine love itself and bring with it the concept of Love Plus. The Christian Bible does warn us against self-righteous pride—pride that alienates us from God and leads us to disdain one another. Such pride is at the heart of racism, sexism, agism, and all the other deadly sins that lead one group of people to see themselves as more moral, deserving, or able than another. The opposite side of being proud of our individual and group achievements, and of taking credit for them, is blaming the poor for their poverty and the oppressed for their oppression. Self-control is worth ten times as much as self-esteem. And so for centuries pride had been considered the fundamental sin, the original sin, the deadliest of the seven deadly sins. Vain self-love corrodes human community and erodes our sense of dependence on one another and on God. If we seem confident about the pervasiveness and potency of pride, it is not because we have invented a new idea, but rather because the new findings reaffirm a very old idea. There is indeed tremendous relief in confessing our limits and our pride and in being known as we truly are. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
Having been forgiven and accepted, we gain release, a feeling of being given what formerly we were struggling to get: security, peace, love. Having cut the pretensions and encountered divine grace, we feel more—not less—value as persons, for our self-acceptance no longer depends exclusively upon our own virtue and achievement or upon others’ approval. The feelings one can have in this encounter with God are like those we enjoy in a relationship with someone who, even after knowing our inmost thoughts, accepts us unconditionally. This is the delicious experience we no longer feel the need to justify and explain ourselves to be on guard, in which we are free to be spontaneous without fear losing the other’s esteem. Such was the psalmist’s experience: “Lord, I have given up my pride and turned away from my arrogance…I am content and at peace.” And it was St. Paul’s experience: “By the grace of God I am what I am.” Beware, for fiends in triumph laugh over one who learns the truth by half! Beware; for God will not endure for humans to make their hope more pure than His good promise, or require another than the five-stringed lyre which He has vowed again to the hands Devout of one who understands to tune it justly here! In the earliest days of Christianity an “apostle” was first and foremost a human who claimed to be an eye-witness of the Resurrection. Only a few days after the Crucifixion when two candidates were nominated for the vacancy created by the treachery of Judas, their qualification was that they had known Jesus personally both before and after His death and could offer first-hand evidence of the Resurrection in addressing the outer World (Acts i. 22). A few days later St. Peter, preaching the first Christian sermon, makes the same claim—“God raised Jesus, of which we all (we Christians) are witness” (Acts ii. 32). In the first Letter to the Corinthians St. Paul bases his claim to apostleship on the same ground—“Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen the Lord Jesus?” (i.9). #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
As this qualification suggests, to preach Christianity meant primarily to preach the Resurrection. Thus people who had heard only fragments of St. Paul’s teaching at Athens got the impression that he was talking about two new gods, Jesus and Anastasis (id est Resurrection) (Acts xvii. 18). The Resurrection is the central theme in every Christian sermon reported in the Acts. The Resurrection, and its consequences, were the “gospel” or good news which the Christians brought: what we call the “gospels,” the narratives of Our Lord’s life and death, were composed later for the benefit of those who had already accepted the gospel. They were in no sense the basis of Christianity: they were written for those already concerted. The miracle of the Resurrection, and the theology of that miracle, comes first: the biography comes later as a comment on it. Nothing could be more unhistorical than to pick out selected sayings of Christ from the gospels and to regard those as the datum and the rest of the New Testament as construction upon it. The first in the history of Christendom is a number of people who say they have seen the Resurrection. They had died without making anyone else believe the “gospel” no gospel would ever have been written. Water. Lakes and rivers. Oceans and streams. Spring, pools, and gullies. Arroyos, creek, watersheds. Pacific. Atlantic. Mediterranean. Indian. Caribbean. China Sea. (Lying. Dreaming on shallow shores.) Arctic. Antarctic. Baltic. Mississippi. Amazon. Columbia. Nile. Thames. Sacramento. Snake. (Undulant woman river.) Seine. Rio Grande. Willamette. McKenzie. Ohio. Hudson. Po. Rhine. Rhone. Rain. After a lifetime of drought. That finally cleanses the air. The soot from our eyes. The dingy windows of our western home. The rooftops and branches. The wings of birds. The new light on a slant. Pouring. Making everything new. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
Francis Schlatter replied to a query as to the secret of his successful healings: “I am nothing, but the Father is everything. Have in the Father and all will be well. The Father can grow a pair of lungs just as easily as He can cure a cold.” The secret exercising spiritual power is to turn toward the other and high being which is the soul. The price of exercising it is self-abandonment. This is as true of spiritual healing as it is of spiritual initiation. An hones healer can say only that one’s healing depends on two conditions being fulfilled: the faith of the patient and the permission of the higher powers. A self-actualized who attained great renown and reputation in Rumania for one’s selfless character, inspired preaching, and miraculous healing said that he asked all patients to make a confession privately to him of their wrong attitudes and wrong-doing before the work of healing could begin, as this opened the door. This healing quality in his highly developed being passes into others, although only into those who can absorb it through devotion or receive it through faith. It is risky for one to forget what one primarily still is—layperson, not medical person. One ought not attempt to occupy position which does not belong to one. O Lord and Redeemer, beside Thee there is none to save. Thou art mighty and redeemest. I was brought low, but Thou didst save me. O God of salvation who deliverest and savest, save Thy supplicants, save them that hope in Thee. Sustain Thy lambs; increase the Earth’s riches. Cause to flourish and save each shrub, and condemn not the Earth to infertility, but sweeten and save is fruit. Urge on the rain-mists that they discharge their showers, and hold not back the clouds. Thou who openest Thine hand to sustain Thy creatures, please satisfy the thirsty with water. Please save them that call on Thee, Thou who art mighty to save. Save them that seek Thee at morn, yes, do Thou save them. Please save Thy whole-hearted servants, yea save them, we beseech Thee. O Eternal, we beseech Thee, please save us now. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
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The Door to Nowhere—The Curse of Evil Has Come into His Body!
Some people do not believe in ghost. For that matter, some people do not believe in anything. There are persons who even affect incredulity concerning the “Door to Nowhere,” at the Winchester mansion. They said that it did not stand wide open—that it was not a gateway to the Spirit World and that they could have shut it; that the whole affair was a delusion; that they are sure it must have been a conspiracy; that they are doubtful whether there is such a place as the Winchester mansion on the face of the Earth; that the first time they are in California they will look it up. Perhaps, before going further, I ought to premise there was a time when I did not believe in ghosts either. If you had asked me one summer’s morning years ago when you met me on the Golden Gate Bridge if I held such appearances to be probable or possible, you would have received an empathic “No” for answer. However, at this rate, the story of the Door to Nowhere will never be told; so we will, with your permission, plunge into it immediately. I was interested in why this “Door to Nowhere” in the Winchester mansion would not keep shut? They say the place is haunted. What nonsense. There was one thing I can truly say about our office, we were never serious in it. I fancy that is the case in most offices nowadays; at all events, it was the case in ours. We were always chaffing each other, playing practical jokes, telling stupid stories, scamping our work, looking at the clock, counting the weeks to next Christmas, counting the hours to Saturday. For all that we were earnest in our desire to have our salaries raised, and unanimous in the opinion no fellows ever before received such wretched pay. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
I had $75,000 a year, which I was aware did not half provide for what I ate at home. My mother and sisters left me in no doubt on the point, and when new clothes were wanted I always hated to mention the fact to my poor worried father. We had been better off once, I believe, though I never remember the time. My father owned a small property in the country. I wanted money badly—I must say I never had sixpence in the World of my own—and I thought if I could earn two sovereigns I might buy some trifles I needed for myself, and present my father with a new Ultimate Driving Machine. Then I recalled the amount of the rent was being asked for the Winchester mansion; then I decided gladly this would be a great place to stay if only the ghost turned out of possession. I decided I should like to try to whether, I could not solve the mystery. I was accustomed to lonely houses, and I would not feel at all nervous; I did not believe in ghost, and as for burglars, I was not afraid of them. I was told to just try it out first. To stay in the house for a week; if as tht end of that time I could keep the door shut, locked, bolted, or nailed up, to telegraphy the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, and they would actually pay me to stay there. To me, this sounded like a great bargain. If I lay the ghost, or find out the ghost, I think I ought to have enough money to buy a small house for myself. However, I could not have said what frightened me about this endeavour. A week after I moved into the Queen Anne mansion, Mr. van Buuren from the Winchester Repeating Arms Company came to visit me. He wanted to speak to me about the mansion. I heard a sound of irritation in his voice. “The Winchester Mansion!” he said; “and what have you got to say about the Winchester Mansion?” #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
“That is what I wanted to tell you, Mr. van Buuren,” I answered, and a dead hush seem to fall over the office as I spoke. The silence seemed to attract his attention, for he looked sternly at the clerks, who were not using a pen or moving a finger. “Come this way, then,” he said abruptly; and next minute I was in his private office. “Now, what is it?” he asked, flinging himself into a chair, and addressing me, who stood hat in hand beside the great table in the middle of the room. I began—I will say he was a patient listener—at the very beginning, and told my story straight through. I concealed nothing. I enlarged on nothing. A discharged clerk I stood before him, and in the capacity of a discharged clerk I said what I had to say. He heard me to the end, the he sat silent, thinking. At last he spoke. “You have heard a great deal of conversation about the Winchester, I suppose,” he remarked. “No, sir; I have heard nothing expect what I have told you.” “And why do you desire to strive to solve such a mystery?” “If there is any money to be made, I should like to make it, sir.” “How old are you?” “Two-and-twenty last January.” He laughed—he lay back in his chair and laughed—and I laughed myself, though ruefully. We went on talking for a long time after that; he asked me all about my father and my early life, and how we lived and the people we knew; and, in fact, put more questions than I can well remember. “It seems a crazy thing to do,” he said at las; “and yet I feel disposed to trust you. The house is standing perfectly empty. I cannot live it in, and I cannot get rid of it; all my own furniture I have removed, and there is nothing in the place except a few old-fashioned articles belonging to Mrs. Winchester. The place is a loss to me. It is of no use trying to let it, and thus, in fact, matters are at a deadlock. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
“You will not be able to find out anything, I know, because, of course, other have tried to solve the mystery ere now; still, if you like to try you may. I will make this bargain with you. If you like to go down, I will pay your reasonable expenses for a fortnight; and if you do any good for me, I will give you a $1,000,000 note for yourself. Of course I must be satisfied that what you have told me is true and that you are what your represent. Do you know anybody in the city who would speak for you?” I could think of no one but my uncle. I hinted to Mr. van Buuren he was no grand enough or rich enough, perhaps, but I knew nobody else to whom I could refer him. “What?!” he said, “Greg Ryan, of Lakeview Street. He does business with us. If he will go bail for your good behaviour I shan’t want any further guarantee. Come along.” And to my intense amazement, he rose, put on his hat, walked me across the outer office and along the pavements till we came to Lakeview Street. “Do you know this youth, Mr. Ryan?” he said, standing in front of my uncle’s desk, and laying a hand on my shoulder. “Of course I do, Mr. van Burren,” answered my uncle, a little apprehensively; for, as he told me afterwards, he could not imagine what mischief I have been up to. “He is my nephew.” “And what is your opinion of him—do you think he is a young fellow I may safely trust?” My uncle smiled, and answered, “That depends on what you wish to trust him with.” “A long column of addition, for instance.” “It would be safer to give that task to somebody else.” “Oh, uncle!” I remonstrated; for I had really striven to conquer my natural antipathy to figures—worked hard, and every bit of it against the collar. My uncle got off his stool, and said, standing with his back to the empty fire-grate: “Tell me what you wish the boy to do, Mr. van Buuren, and I will tell you whether he will suit your purpose of not. I know him, I believe, better than he knows himself.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
In an easy, affable way, for so rich a man, Mr. van Buuren took possession of the vacant stool, and nursing his right leg over his left knee, answered: “He wants to go and shut the “Door to Nowhere” at the Winchester Mansion for me. Do you think he can do that? My uncle looked steadily back at the speaker, and said, “I thought, Mr. van Buuren, I was quite settled no one could shut it?” Mr. van Buuren shifted a little uneasily on his seat, and replied: “I did not set your nephew the task he fancies he would like to undertake.” “Have nothing to do with it, Justin, advised my uncle, shortly. “You do not believe in ghost do you, Mr. Ryan?” asked Mr. van Burren, with a slight sneer. “Do you not, Mr. van Buuren?” retorted my uncle. There was a pause—an uncomfortable pause—during the course of which I felt the million dollar note, which in imagination, I had really spent, trembling in the scale. I was not afraid. For one million dollars, or half the money, I would have faced all the inhabitants of spirit land. I longed to tell them so; but something in the way those two men looked at each other stayed my tongue. “If you ask me the question here in the heart of the city, Mr. Ryan,” said Mr. van Buuren, at length, slowly and carefully, “I answer ‘No’; but if you were to put me on a dark night at the Winchester, I should beg time to consider. I do not believe in supernatural phenomena myself, and yet—the ‘Door to Nowhere’ at the Winchester is as much beyond my comprehension as the ebbing and flowing of the sea.” “And you cannot live at the Winchester?” remarked my uncle. “I cannot live at the Winchester, and what is more, I cannot get anyone else to live at the Winchester.” “And you want to get rid of your lease?” “I want so much to get rid of my lease that I told Tuck I would give him a handsome sum if he could induce anyone to solve the mystery. Is there any other information you desire, Mr. Ryan? Because if there is, you have only to ask and have. I feel I am not here in a prosaic office in the city of Santa Clara, but in the Palace of Truth.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
My uncle took no notice of the implied compliment. When company is good it needs nothing else. If a man is habitually honest in his speech and in his thoughts, he desires no recognition of the fact. “I do not think so,” he answered; “it is for the boy to say what he will do. If he be advised by me he will stick to his ordinary work in his employers’ office, and leave ghost-hunting and spirit-laying alone.” Mr. van Buuren shot a rapid glance in my direction, a glance which implying a secret understanding, might have influenced my uncle could I have stooped to deceive my uncle. “I cannot stick to my work there any longer,” I said. “I got my marching orders today.” “What had you been doing, Justin? Asked my uncle. “I wanted one million to go and lay the ghost!” I answered, so dejectedly, that both Mr. van Buuren and my uncle broke out laughing. “One Million dollars!” cried my uncle, almost between laughing and crying. “Why, Justin boy, I had rather, poor man though I am, have given thee one million dollars than thou should’st go ghost-hunting or ghost-laying.” When he was very much in earnest my uncle went back to thee and thou his native dialect. I liked the vulgarism, as my mother called it, and I knew my aunt loved to hear him use the caressing words to her. He had risen, not quite from the ranks it is true, but if ever a gentleman came ready born into the World it was Greg Ryan, upon whom at our home everyone seemed to look down. “What will you do, you man?” asked Mr. van Buuren; “you hear what your uncle says, “Give up the enterprise,” and what I say; I do not want either to bribe or force your inclinations.” “I will go, sir,” I answered quite steadily. “I am not afraid, and I should like to show you—” I stopped. I had been going to say, “I should like to show you I am not sure a fool as you all take me for,” but I felt such an address would be too familiar, and refrained. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
When I got to the Lodge, I showed Mr. van Buuren’s letter to the woman, and received the key. “You are not going to stop up at the Winchester alone, are you, sir? she asked. “Yes, I am,” I answered, uncompromisingly, so uncompromisingly that she said no more. The avenue led straight to the mansion; it was uphill all the way, and bordered by rows of the most magnificent limes I ever beheld. A light iron fence divided the avenue from the park, and between the trunks of the trees I could see the deer browsing and cattle grazing. Ever and anon there came likewise to my ear the sound of a sheep-bell. It was a long avenue, but at length I stood in front of the mansion—a square, solid-looking, Victorian mansion, four stories high, with several towers and a steeply pitched roof, beautiful stained-glass windows and statues, a basement; a flight of steps up to the principal entrance; several windows to the right of the door, several to the left of the door; the whole mansion flanked and backed with trees; all the curtains closed, a dead silence brooding over the place; the sun westering behind the great trees studding the park. I took all this in as I approached, and afterwards as I stood for a moment under then ample porch; then remembering he business which has brought me so far, I fitted the great key in the lock, turned the handle, and entered the Winchester Mansion. For a minute—stepping out of the bright sunlight—the place looked to me so dark that I could scarcely distinguish the objects by which I was surrounded; but my eyes soon grew accustomed to the comparative darkness, and I found I was in an immense hall, lighted from the roof; a magnificent old oak staircase conducted to the upper rooms. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
The floor was of white marble. There were two fireplaces, fitted with dogs for burning wood; around the walls hung pictures, antlers, and horn, and in odd niches and corners stood groups of statues, and the figure of men in complete suits of armour. To look at the place outside, no one would have expected to find such a hall. I stood lost in amazement and admiration, and then I began to glance more particularly around. Mr. van Buuren has not given me any instructions by which to identify the ghostly chamber—which I concluded would most probably be found on the first floor. I knew nothing of the story connected with it—if there were a story. I was perfectly unencumbered of the mystery. I had not the faintest idea in which apartment it resided. Well, I should discover that, no doubt, for myself ere long. I looked around me—doors—doors—doors. I have never before seen so many doors together all at once. Two of them stood open—one wide, the other slightly ajar. “I will just shut them as a beginning,” I thought, “before I go upstairs.” The doors were of oak, heavy, well-fitting furnished with good locks and sound handles. After I had closed I tried them. Yes, they were quite secure. I ascended the great staircase feeling curiously like an intruder, paced the corridors, entered the many bed chambers—some quite bare of furniture, others containing articles of an ancient fashion, and no doubt of considerable value—chairs, antique dressing-tables, curious wardrobes, and such like. For the most part the doors were closed, and I shut those that stood open before making my way into the attics. I was greatly delighted with the attics. The window lighted them did not, as a rule, overlook the front of the Manion, but commanded wide views over wood, and valley, and meadow. Leaning out of one, I could see, that to the right of the mansion the ground, thickly planted, shelved down to a stream, which came out into the daylight a little distance beyond the plantation, and meandered through the deer part. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
At the back of the mansion the windows looked out on nothing save a dense wood and a portion of the stable-yard, whilst on the side nearest the point from whence I had come there were spreading gardens surrounded by thick yew hedges, and kitchen-gardens protected by high walls; and further on a farmyard, where I could perceive cows and oxen, and, further still, luxuriant meadows, and fields glad with waying and fruit orchards. “What a beautiful place!” I said. “van Buuren must have been a duffer to leave it.” And then I thought what a great ramshackle house it was for anyone to be in all alone. Getting heated with my long walk, I suppose, made me feel chilly, for I shivered as I drew my head in from the last dormer window, and prepared to go down stairs again. In the attics, as in the other parts of the house I had as yet explored, I closed the doors, when there were keys locking them; when there were not, trying them, and in all cases, leaving the securely fastened. When I reached the ground floor the evening was drawing on apace, and I felt that if I wanted to explore the whole house before dusk I must hurry my proceedings. “I will take the kitchens next,” I decided, and so made my way to a wilderness of domestic offices lying to the rear of the great hall. Stone passages, great kitchens, an immense servants’-hall, larders, pantries, coal-cellars, beer-cellars, laundries, brewhouses, housekeeper’s room—it was not of any use lingering over these details. The mystery that trouble Mr. van Buuren could scarcely lodge amongst cinders and empty bottles, and there did not seem much else left in this part of the building. I would go through the living-rooms, and then decide as to the apartments I should occupy myself. The evening shadows were drawing on apace, so I hurried back into the hall, feeling it was a weird position to be there all alone with those ghostly hollow figures of men in armour, and the statues on which the moon’s beams must fall so coldly. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
I would just look through the lower apartments and then kindle a fire. I had seen quantities of wood in a cupboard close at hand, and felt that beside a blazing hearth, and after a good cup of tea, I should not feel the solitary sensation which was oppressing me. The sun had sunk below the horizon by this time, for to reach the Winchester I had been obliged to travel by cross lines of railway, and wait besides for such trains as condescended to carry third-class passengers; but here was still light enough in the hall to see all object distinctly. With my own eyes I saw that one of the doors I had shut with my own hands was standing wide! I turned to the door on the other side of the hall. It was as I had left it—closed. This, then, was the room—this with the open door. For a second I stood appalled; I think I was fairly frighted. That did not last long, however. There lay the work I had desired to undertake, the foe I had offered to fight; so without mor ado I shut the door and tried it. “Now I will walk to the end of the hall and see what happens,” I considered. I did so. I walked to the foot of the grand staircase and back again, and looked. The door stood wide open. I went into the room, after just a spasm of irresolution—went in and pulled up the blinds: a good-sized room, twenty by twenty (I knew because I paced it afterwards), lighted by two long windows. The floor, of polished oak, was partially covered with a Turkey carpet. There were two recesses beside the fireplace, one fitted up as a bookcase, the other with an old and elaborately carved cabinet. I was astonished also to find a bedstead in an apartment so little retired from the traffic of the house; and there were also some chairs of an obsolete make, covered, so far as I could make out, with faded tapestry. Beside the bedstead, which stood against the wall opposite to the door I had as yet met with the interior of the house. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
It was a dreary, gloomy room: the dark panelled walls; the black, shining floor; the windows high from the ground; the antique furniture; the dull four-poster bedstead, with dingy velvet curtains; the gaping chimney; the silk counterpane that looked like a pall. “Any crime might have been committed in which a room,” I thought pettishly; and then I looked at the door critically. Someone had been at the trouble of fitting bolts upon it, for when I passed out I not merely shut the door securely, but bolted it as well. “I will go and get some wood, and then look at it again,” I soliloquized. When I came back it stood wide open once more. “Stay open, then!” I cried in a fury. “I will not trouble myself any more with you tonight!” Almost as I spoke the words, there came a ring at the front door. Echoing through the desolate house, the peal in the then states of my nerves startled me beyond expression. It was only the man who had agreed to bring over my traps. I bade him lay them down in the hall, and while looking out some small silver, asked where the nearest-post-office was to be found. Not far from the Winchester Estate’s Park gates, he said; if I wanted any letter sent, he would drop it in the box for me; the mail-cart picked up the bag at ten o’clock. I had nothing ready to post then, and told him so. Perhaps the money I gave was more than he expected, or perhaps the dreariness of my position impressed him as it had impressed me, for he paused with his hand on the lock, and asked: “Are you going to stop here all alone, master?” “All alone, I answered, with such cheerfulness as was possible under the circumstances.” “That is the room, you know,” he said, nodding in the direction of the open door, and dropping his voice to a whisper. “Yes, I know,” I replied. “What, you have been trying to shut it already, have you? Well, you are a game one!” And with this complimentary if not very respectful comment he hastened out of the house. Evidently he had no intention of proffering his services towards the solution of the mystery. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
I cast one glance at the door—it stood wide open. Through the windows I had left bare to the night, moonlight was beginning to stream cold and silvery. “Look here, Justin,” I said, all of a sudden; “life is not child’s play, as uncle truly remarks. That door is just the trouble you have now to face, and you must face it! However, for that door you would never have been here. I hope you are not going to turn coward the very first night. Courage!—that is your enemy—conquer it.” “I will try,” my other self answered back. “I can but try. I can but faith.” The moon’s beams were streaming down upon the mansion; I could see every statue, every square of marble, every piece of armour. For all the World it seemed to me like something in a dream; but I was tired and sleepy, and decided I would not trouble about fire or food, or the open door, till the next morning: I would go to sleep. However, I felt like an army of Devil’s was horribly broke in upon this place which is the center, and after a sort, the first-born of our Californian settlements. If a ghost was responsible for the hanging of nineteen people in this mansion, what was responsible for the burning of nine hundred people? What more likely time would the “Door to Nowhere” open up and let our arch-enemy, the Devil, choose a time for his attack? I spent the forenoon considering that door. I looked at it from within and from without. It was on the second floor and opened up to a two story drop outside of the house. What would possess someone to build a door like this, unless they had some knowledge of it being a portal? I eyed it critically. I tried whether there was any reason why it should fly open, and I found that so long as I remained on the threshold it remained closed; if I walked even so far away as the opposite side of the mansion, it swung wide. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
Do what I would, it burst from latch and bolt. I could not lock it because there was no key. I was baffled. Then I stumbled upon a note which read: “One that shall use, practise, or exercise any invocation or conjuration of any evil or wicked spirit, or consult, convenient with, entertain or employ, feed or reward any evil or wicked spirit, to or for any intent or purpose; or take up any dead man, woman, or child, out of his, her, or their grave, or any other place, where the dead body resteth; or the skin, bone, or other part of any dead person, to be employed or used in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charm or enchantment; or shall use, practise, or exercise any witchcraft, enchantment, charm, or sorcery, whereby any person shall be killed, destroyed, wasted, consumed, pined, or lamed in his or her body, or any part thereof: such offenders duly and lawfully convicted and attained, shall suffer death.” Then it dawned of me. Perhaps the mansion has been attraction people who are into the occult and they are the nearly 920 people who have been burned alive or hanged. And that is why the house cannot find renters, it consumes them all. Perhaps this is something like the Atonement of Christ. How God gave His one and only Son to pay the wages of sin man had created, this mansion is consuming souls of those who practise the occult to atone for the death of those killed by the Winchester rifle. The afflicted state of our poor neighbours that are now suffering by molestations from the invisible World, we apprehended so deplorable that we think their condition calls for the utmost help of all persons in their several capacities. We cannot but with all thankfulness acknowledge the success which the merciful God has given unto the sedulous and assiduous endeavours of our honorable rulers to detect the abominable witchcrafts which have been committed in the country, humbly praying that the discovery of these mysterious and mischievous wickedness may be perfected. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
We judge that in the prosecution of these, and all such witchcrafts, there is need of a very critical and exquisite caution, leas by too much credulity for things received only upon the Devil’s authority there be a door opened for a long train of miserable consequences, and Satan get an advantage over us, for we should not be ignorant of his devices. After all, it was this mansion people could not live in—his door that would not keep shut; and it seemed to me these were facts he might dislike being forced upon the attention of the public. What had I seen? What did I think of the matter? Very honestly I did not know what to say. The door certainly would not remain shut, and there seemed no human agency to account for its persistent opening; but then, on the other hand, ghost generally did no tamper with fire arms, and my rifle, though not loaded, had been tampered with—I was sure of that. Mr. van Buuren later disclosed to me his theory that open door: “This is the room my uncle was murdered in, they say the door will never remain shut till the murderer is discovered.” “Murdered!” I did not like the word at all; it made me feel chill and uncomfortable. “Yes—he was murdered sitting in his chair, and the assassin has never been discovered. At first many persons inclined to the belief that I killed him; indeed, may are of that opinion still. “But you did not, sir—there is not a word of truth in that story, is there?” He laid his hand on my shoulder as he said: “No, my lad; not a word. I loved the old man tenderly. Even when he disinherited me for the sake of his young wife, I was worry, but not angry; and when he sent for me and assured me he had resolved to repair a wrong, I tried to induce him to leave the lady a handsome sum in addition to her jointure. “If you do not, people may think she has not been the source of happiness you expected,” I added. “Thank you, Reuban,” he said. “You are a goof fella; we will talk further about this tomorrow.” And then he bade me goodnight. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
“Before morning broke—it was in the about one hundred years ago—the household was arounds by a fearful scream. It was his death-cry. He had been stabbed from behind in the neck. He was seated in his chair writing—writing a letter in Latin. Part of it said, ‘Exorcizo te, immundissime spiritus, omnis incursion adversarii, omne phanatasma, omnis leigo, in nominee Domini nostri Jesu Christi eradicare, et effugare ab hoc plasmate Dei.’ The rest of the letter was torn. His solicitor came forward and said he had signed a will leaving all his personalty to me—he was very rich—unconditionally, only three days previously.” Mr. van Buuren went away, and I stayed in the house. I never left it all day. I did not go into the garden, or the stable-yard, or the shrubbery, or anywhere; I devoted myself solely and exclusively to that door. If I shut it once, I shut it a hundred times, and always with the same result. Do what I would, it swung wide. Never, however, when I was looking at it. So long as I could endure to remain, it stayed shut—the instant I turned back, it stood open. Though feeling convinced that no human agency did or could keep the door open, I was certain that some living person had means of access to the house which I could not discover. This was made apparent in trifles which might well have escaped unnoticed had several or even two people occupied the mansion. In the dead of the night a noise, resembling the clashing of iron, was frequently heard, which, if you listened more attentively, sound like the rattling of chains, distant at first, but approaching nearer by degrees: immediately afterward a spectre appeared in the form of an old man, of extremely emaciated and squalid appearance, with a long beard and dischevelled hair, rattling the chains on his feet and hands. The distressed occupants meanwhile passed their wakeful nights under the most dreadful terrors imaginable. This, as it broke their rest, ruined their health, and brought on distempers, their terrors grew upon them, and death ensued. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
Even in the daytime, though the spirit did not appear, yet the impression remained so strong upon their imaginations that it still seemed before their eyes, and kept them in perpetual alarm. Consequently the mansion was at length deserted, as being deemed absolutely uninhabitable; so that it was now entirely abandoned to the ghost of the Winchester rifle. That night, I prepared to retire. However, I was open to the vain terrors of imaginary noises and spirits. The first part of the night passed in entire silence, as usual; at length a clanking of iron and rattling of chains was heard: however, I neither lifted up my eyes, nor got out of bed, but in order to keep calm, I pretended the sound was something else. The noise increased and advanced nearer, until it seemed at the door, and at last in my chamber. I looked up, saw, and recognized the ghost exactly as it has been described to me: it stood before me, beckoning with a finger, like a person calls another. I immediately arouse, and, candle in hand, followed it. The ghost slowly stalked along as if encumbered with its chains, and, turning into the area of the house where the “Door to Nowhere, was and suddenly vanished. What an idiot I have been! If I wanted to solve the mystery of the open door, or course I must keep watch in the room itself. The door would not stay wide unless there was a reason for it. When I walked into the room, it was deadly cold, and the scene was horrible. The door was wide open. A party of ghosts were assembled with, and were feasting on the flesh of corpses. I was astonished by this hideous banquet. As soon as I could safely escape, I stole back into my bed. I was rather crossed at being disturbed. The next day word on—the long, dreary day; evening approached—the night shadows closed over the Winchester mansion. The moon would not rise for a couple hours more. Everything was still as death. The house had never before seemed to me so silent and so deserted. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
I took a candle, and went up to my accustomed room, moving about for a time as though preparing for bed; then I extinguished the candle, softly open the door, turned the key, and put it in my pocket, slipped softly downstairs, across the hall, through the open dor. Then I knew I had been afraid, for I felt a thrill of terror as in the dark I stepped over the threshold. I paused and listened—there was not a sound—the night was still and sultry, as though a storm were brewing. Not a leaf seemed moving. Noiselessly I made my way to the other side of the room. There was an old-fashioned easy-chair between the bookshelves and the bed; I sat down in it, shrouded by the heavy curtains. The hours passed—where ever hours so long? The moon rose, came and looked in at the windows, and then sailed away to the west; but not sound, no, not even the cry of a bird. I seemed to myself a mere collection of nerves. Every part of my body appeared twitching. It was agony to remain still; the desire to move became a form of torture. The locked door opened—so suddenly, so silently, that I barely had time to draw back behind the curtain, before I saw a woman in the room. A slight, lithe woman, not a lady, clad in all black—not a bit of white about her. What on Earth could she want? Then she fell on me with her nails and teeth, and tore at my throat, she was as strong as twenty devils. I felt something like a red-hot iron enter my neck. She opened a vein and sucked by blood, and I could but rush from the room before I fell senseless on the marble pavement of the hall. When the post man came that morning, finding no one stirring, he looked through one of the long windows that flanked the door; then he ran to the farmyard and called for help. “There is something wrong inside,” he cried. “That young gentleman is lying on the floor in a blood of blood.” To this day, the “Door to Nowhere” is still a mystery. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
Winchester Mystery House
24 Hours till opening night of All Hallows’ Eve and our caretakers are working non stop to put the finishing touches on the show! Be here for the opening weekend! Tickets are still available. A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
All Hallows’ Eve:
🎟️ Link in bio. 🗝 winchestermysteryhouse.com
The Paris Experience–Malls are a Ubiquitous Element of Modern American Life!
Long-term memory stores an immense amount of information in a lifetime. How it is possible to quickly find specific memories? Well, each person’s “memory index” is highly organized. Do you mean that information is arranged alphabetically, as in a dictionary? Not a change! If I asked you to name a black and white animal that lives on ice, is related to a chicken, and cannot fly, you do not have to go from aardvark to zebra to find the answer. You will probably one think of black and white birds living in the Antarctic. Which of these cannot fly? Voila, the answer is penguin. Now, if I ask you who is your Saviour, do you know the answer? One who saves. Jesus Christ, through His Atonement, offered redemption and salvation to all humankind. “Saviour” is the name and title of Jesus Christ. “I am the Lord; and beside me there is no Saviour,” reports Doctrine and Covenant 76.1. My dearest son, may this be your continual prayer. Lord, if You are pleased with what I pray for, please let it happen. Lord, if You are pleased to find some honour for Yourself in my prayer, please let it happen in Your Holy Name. Lord, if You are pleased to find some spiritual advantage in my prayer, please let it happen to Your honour. However, Lord, if what I pray for is harmful to me and not at all helpful to the salvation of my soul, please, please save me from my prayers. As I have already taught you, My friend and son, not every desire comes from the Holy Spirit, not even if it seems in general to be right and good for Humankind. Yes, it is difficult to judge for true whether the spirit that moves one to pray for this or that is a good one or a bad one or whether it just comes from one’s own self-centeredness. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Alas, toward the end of their lives, many comes to see that all along they have been deceived by the Bad Spirit. Which is so sad! At the beginning of their spiritual lives, they seemed to have been motivated only by the Spirit of God. Therefore, whatever desirable comes into the mind must be longed for firs, then prayed for, but always with fear of God and humility of heart. Especially must you be resigned to whatever the outcome. That is to say, the prayer must be totally committed to Me and prayed this way. O Lord, You know what is good and bad, what is better and worse, what is best and worst—may my prayer be as You wish it to be. Please Give what You want, and how much You want, and when You want. Do with me as You know how. Pick what is more pleasing, more honouring. Please put me where You want, and deal freely with me in all things. My reins are in Your hand—put me through my paces, as the amatory Ovid might have put it. Mark You, I am Your full-time servant now, prepared for al exigencies. My life is not for me any longer; it is for You to do with it as You want, as the Psalmist has sung (119.125). Would not that be nice, O Lord, if I could ever really pull it off! Here is a prayer for making God happy. Please grant me Your grace, Kindest Jesus, that it may come with me, work with me, preserve with me until the end of the End. Please grant that I may desire and wish this one thing, what fits You more closely and pleases You more dearly. May Your will be mine always—may my will follow Yours in perfect harmony. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
Two things I crave. Please enable me to will and to nill the way You do. Please limit me from willing and nilling the way You do not. Please grant that I may die in all things that have to do with the World. Please grant that I may grow accustomed to being despised and unknown in the age in which I live, as You did in Yours. Above all other desirables, please grant that I not take our friendship for granted; rather, as the Great Augustine suggested in his Confessions (1.1), to rest in I and quiet my heart in You. You are my heart’s True Peace. Without You all this is too hard, too harsh, if I may echo Augustine again (6.16). In this peace, which is Yourself, the One Great and Eternal Good, if I may bejumble the Psalmist’s verse (4.8), I sleep and take my rest. Amen. In life, there is a fundamental and unavoidable contradiction: on the one hand people have something new to say, something that has not thought or said before. However, in speaking of “newness” one places it only into a descriptive category which does not do justice to what is essential in the creative thought. The creative thought is always critical thought because it does away with certain illusion and gets closer to the awareness of reality. It enlarges the realm of humans’ awareness and strengthens the power of one’s reason. The critical and hence creative though always has a liberating function by its negation of illusory thought. One the other hand the thinker has to express one’s new thought in the spirit of one’s time. Different societies have different kinds of “common sense,” different categories of thinking, different systems of logic; every society has its own “social filter” through which only certain ideas and concepts and experiences can pass; those that need not necessarily remain unconscious can become conscious when by fundamental changes in the social structure the “social filer” changes accordingly. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Thoughts that cannot pass through the social filter of a certain society at a certain time are “unthinkable,” and of course also “unspeakable.” For the average person the thought patterns of one’s society appear to be simply logical. The thought patterns of fundamentally different societies are looked upon each by the others as illogical or plainly nonsensical. However, not only “logic” is determined by the “social filter,” and in the last analysis by the practice of life of any given society, but also certain thought contents. Take for instance the conventional notion that exploitation among human beings is a “normal,” natural and unavoidable phenomenon. For a member of the Neolithic society in which each human lived from one’s work, individually or in groups, such a proposition would have been unthinkable. Considering their whole social organization, exploitation of human beings by others would have been a “crazy” idea, because there was not yet a surplus to make it sensible to employ others. (If one person had forced another to work for one it would not have meant that amount of goods would have increased, only that the “employer” would have been forced to idleness and boredom.) Another example: the many societies that knew no private property in the modern sense but only “functional property,” like a tool, which “belonged” to a single person inasmuch as he used it but was readily shared with others when needed. What is unthinkable is also unspeakable and the language has no word for it. Many languages do not have a word for to have but must express the concept of possession in other words, for instance by the construction it is to me, which expressed the concept of functional but not of private property (“private” in e sense of the Latin privare, to deprive—that is to say, property the use of which everybody else is deprived of except the owner). #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Many languages started out without a word for to have but in the development and, one may assume, with the emergence of private property, they acquired a word for it (see Benveniste, 1966). Another example: in the tenth or eleventh century in Europe the concept of the World without reference to God was unthinkable and hence a word like atheism could no exist. Language itself is influenced by the social repression of certain experiences which do not fit into the structure of a given society; languages differ inasmuch as different experiences are repressed, and hence inexpressible. (I leave aside here quite a different problem, that of the possibility of expressing subtle and complex feelings experiences through language, which can be attempted only in poetry.) It follows that the creative thinker must think in the terms of the logic, the thought patterns, the expressible concepts of one’s culture. That means one has not yet the proper words to express the creative, the new, the liberating idea. One is forced to solve an insoluble problem: to express the new thoughts have been generally accepted.) The consequence is that the new though as one formulated it is a blend of what is truly new and the conventional thought which it transcends. The thinker, however, is not conscious of this contradiction. The conventional thoughts of one’s culture are unquestionably true for one and hence one oneself is little away of the difference between what is creative in one’s thought and what is purely conventional. Only in the historical process, when social changes are reflected in the changes of thought patterns, does it become evident what in the thought of a creative thinker was truly new to what extent one’s system is only a reflection of conventional thinking. It is up to one’s followers living in a different frame of ideas to interpret the “master” by distinguishing one’s “original” thoughts from one’s conventional thoughts, and by analyzing the contradictions between the new and the old, rather than by trying to harmonize the immanent contradictions of one’s system by all kinds of subterfuge. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
The process of revision of an individual, which distinguishes the essential and new from the contingent, time-conditioned elements, is in itself also the product of a certain historical period that influences the interpretation. In this creative interpretation, again creative and valid elements are mixed with time-bound and accidental ones. The revision is not simply true as the original was not simply false. Some elements of the revision remain true, namely where it liberates the theory from the shackles of a previous conventional thinking. In the process of the critical elimination of previous theories we find an approximation to truth but we do not find the truth, and we cannot find the truth as long as social contradictions and force require ideological falsification, as humans’ reason is damaged by irrational passions which have their root in the disharmony and irrationality of social life. Only in a society in which there is no exploitation, hence which does not need irrational assumptions in order to cover up or justify exploitation, in a society in which the basic contradictions have been solved and in which social reality can be recognized without distortion, can humans make full use of one’s reason, and at that point one can recognize reality in an undistorted form—that is to say, the truth. To put it differently, the truth is historically conditioned: it is dependent on the degree of rationality and the absence of contradictions within the society. Humans can grasp truth only when one can regulate one’s social life in a human, dignified and rational way, without fear and hence without greed. To use a politico-religious expression, only in the Messianic Time can the truth be recognized insofar as it is recognizable. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
There is a general agreement that contemporary urban decentralization has developed beyond the traditional urban-suburban dichotomy. The old idea of the urban core surrounded by a ring of suburbs no longer neatly fits what we see when we travel to, or through, America’s metropolitan areas. Today’s multinucleated outer cities tear up the old definitions as to what is urban and what is suburban. The suburbs have become as to what is urban and what is suburban. The suburbs have become urban. Places that once were bedroom suburbs now attract commuters. The suburbs’ share of the employment pie had been dramatically increasing. Jobs as well as people have suburbanized. Moveover, most of those still working in the city do not live there. Seven in ten people who work in the District do not live there. The most common commuter trip today is not from suburb to city but within the suburbs. Commuting from a suburban home to a suburban job is more common than commuting from suburb to city. There is no longer a metropolitan area composed of a central city hub and its outlying residential areas spears along the spokes. The metropolitan area no longer has once core hub; it has become multinucleated. Among other things this means that road and rapid transit systems designed to move workers from the suburbs to the central city are becoming outdated. Population and job growth are occurring in areas where transportation facilities often are least developed. Although it stretches the language a bit, it is reasonable to hypothesize that the periphery is the new urban core. Places such as Irving, California; South Sacramento, California; Oceanside, California; Rancho Cordova, California; and Scottsdale, Arizona are no longer bedroom suburbs, but real cities in heir own right. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Such increasing economically and politically powerful outer cities can be found sandwiched between somewhat declining central cities and rural areas, both of which are losing their political and economic clout. Economically, the suburban economy is increasingly a service-based economy. Moreover, the marketplace patterns that dominate local economics are largely determined at the national or international rather then the local levels. Outer cities or suburban municipalities sometimes are difficult to define since they do not look like how we think cities should look; not do they behave as we expect cities to behave. They may not even appear on some maps. They are “cities” not subject to their own municipal legislation, codes, or regulations. Shopping malls, business parks, single-family subdivisions, and garden apartment complexes all are placed in a strategic order to make a harmonious community that is visually appealing. Not being legal municipalities, these outer cities also have another unusual characteristic for a city—they have no distinct elected government. Within these edge cities there thus seems to be no real civic order. They appear to be public places, but in reality, they are private. What really makes these new suburban communities break with the past is not only that hey are newer, shiner, or have more glass, and marble, but what really makes them different is that they are private domains rather than incorporated legally defined areas. The old city downtowns, whether planned or unplanned, were public spaces. City downtowns were open to all. The rules governing public dress and behaviour were the laws and ordinances passed by those public officials elected by citizens of the jurisdiction. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
The outer-city malls, for all their open courtyards, fountains, benches, and play spaces, are fundamentally different. They are private property. They are not governed by elected representatives, but by executives appointed by corporate boards. They are governed not by public laws, but by corporate regulations. Fundamental questions, such as who can be in a mall and what they can or cannot do while they are there, are determined by corporate policy rather than ordinances passed by elected representatives. Thus, a mall can exclude those soliciting funds for cancer research, those proselytizing for a religious belief, those handing out literature for a political candidate, or those not meeting a required dress code (exempli gratia, those not wearing shoes or street people with foul odors or wearing dirty clothes). What applies to the malls of the outer cities or edge cities is even more the case for the business parks filled with state-of-the-art offices and facilities. The new outer cities are cities administered by decree. They are not controlled by citizens, not even nominally. Such may be safe, but they are not democratic. In many ways, the edge cities’ privatization of public spaces and activities represents a shift back to the medieval and Renaissance concept of a city as a collection of essentially privately managed places controlled by an oligarchy. The malls are, in effect, separate city-state controlled and administered by the decree of private boards. What is perhaps even more remarkable is that this shift from public to private control has occurred almost completely without public notice. It has certainly occurred without public discussion or debate. The once-public city has been privatized. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
If you had to pick one symbol that would represent contemporary suburban life, that symbol would very likely be the shopping mall. Malls have become a ubiquitous element of modern American life. You may love the malls or believe they are sterile and without a soul, but it is impossible to discuss suburbia today without noting the importance of the malls not only for retail purchasing but also for social life. As the old downtowns decline, the malls have become the primary site where people greet other citizens. Shopping centers dispense everything from lottery tickets, sports demonstrations, public relations programs to clothes, cars, housing, and even provide an off-campus site for college courses. Some shopping malls offer community activities such as bingo games once a week, periodic health services such as blood tests, and occasional entertainment such as Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving shows. The malls, with their shops selling mass-produced standardized goods, may also be the site for “Arts and Crafts” shows that sell expensive handmade one-of-a-kind heirloom-quality items. Malls also serve a social function, particularly for adolescents and the elderly. Being a teenage “mall socialite” is part of growing up in many parts of the country. Young ladies like to go to the mall with their parents’ credit cards, pretending like they are Paris Hilton, charge up a bunch of items, and walk out of the store smiling and carrying bags full of clothes and jewelry and perfumes and body washes and lotions. It is called “The Paris Experience.” The malls have also become the place where seniors go to ward off loneliness, a phenomenon that has produced a new variation (and spelling) of an old term, “malingering.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
However, enclosed malls with two to four anchor department stores, scores of specialty shops, fountains, food courts, and multiplex movie theaters have not always been synonymous with suburbia. Actually, they are a recent and relatively new innovation. The first modern shopping mall did not occur until Northgate, in 1950, on the edge of Seattle. It had an open pedestrian mall lined with shops and an anchor department store. Northgate, like malls to follow, was near a highway and had some 4,000 parking places. The first enclosed shopping mall was not opened until 1956—Southdale Center outside Minneapolis, designed by the architect Victor Gruen. Not until the early 1970s, did the Rouse Company introduce the idea of the now ubiquitous food courts. J.C. Nichols’s Country Club Plaza shopping centers, like his homes, was state of the art for the 1920s. It was the first mall designed specifically for the automobile, with off-street parking. Following the ideas of the British garden cities as earlier proposed by Ebenezer Howard, Country Club Plaza was to be the town center, not merely a collection of stores. Nichola set the pattern for the luxury malls of today by lavishingly landscaping Country Club Plaza and providing fountains, flowers, and walks with benches. The whole complex was done in elaborate Spanish-Moorish-Hollywood style using Spanish plaster and red tile roofs. The style was immensely popular during the 1920s. Nichols’s Country Club District tightly controlled what sort of businesses would be allowed into the plaza and where they would be placed. Most buildings were two-story, with the walking level occupied by shops and the second floor largely by the professional offices of dentist, doctors, and lawyers. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
From the first, Country Club Plaza was an economic and social success. It not only made a great deal of money, it also became an alternate to the downtown as a location for cultural as well as business activities. As such it was a harbinger of contemporary suburban malls. Country Club Plaza was designed from the first to provide an emotional, cultural, and socializing center for the community. It was to become the suburban version of the village center. Planners saw the separation of pedestrian from automotive and truck traffic as providing far more than convenience and efficiency. Landscaped grassy areas, winding walkways, and play areas for small children were all to contribute to better civic life. Shopping centers were also to encourage civic pride through physical design. Planners saw them contributing to the development of a more orderly, harmonious, and artistic environment—an environment that was being at least implicitly contrasted to the chaos, disorder, and confusion many planners saw in the central city. Planned shopping centers dovetailed with planned recreational facilities and planned neighbourhoods. Similarly, the advantage of the mall having its own free parking was recognized as providing mall retailers a significant edge. At the end of World War II, there were only eight shopping centers in all of North America. As of 2020, there are approximately 120 shopping malls spread across the United States of America. Back in 1970, here were only 30,000 shopping malls in the United States of America. Malls as great as they are, tend to put small locally owned stores out of business. In fact 87 percent of malls are strip malls. Economically, as a result, the mass market malls also are putting heavy pressure on the generally more expensive regional malls that have the overhead of higher levels of service and concern for ambience. Further squeezing the big malls are off-price shopping centers, discount warehouses, and online shopping. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Where earlier strip malls had followed the population, the new enclosed malls became magnets attracting people, housing, and commercial activity. The malls became a catalyst leading the development of a new suburban area. The fact of a comfortable middle-class suburb naming itself after a shopping mall is one of the small acts that signify a sea of change in attitudes toward suburbia. The defining characteristic of an area was a combination of the homes, the neighbourhood, and the size and quality of the shopping mall. Some malls like Huston’s Galleria, has an Olympic-sized skating rink, two hotels and nightclubs. In addition to its glitz and shopping, the mall has become a regional tourist attraction. It was the belief of philosophers of urban planning such as Victor Gruen that shopping centers would lead to the enhancement of social and civic life. Shopping malls were to be suburban agoras. They were to serve as new climate-controlled downtowns offering a full range of social, cultural, and even artistic activities. As expressed by Mr. Gruen, “By affording opportunities for social life and recreation in protected pedestrian environment, by incorporating civic and educational facilities, shopping centers can fill an existing void. The idea that the malls would bring vibrancy and vitality to suburban life is now widely accepted. Malls have promoted high culture, and even have provided a sense of community and a place for lively amusements. Not every downtown has the potential to attract tourist, or even residents. However, high class suburban shopping malls do just that. Meeting the need of less affluent or poor city residents is not the purpose for which they were created. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
It is a basic tenet of any successful mall that it must exude an image of security and safety. For a mall to be successful, it must give those within a feeling of comfort, and that means providing safety and security. This is provided by physically excluding activities or people that might prove disruptive or disturbing. The city downtown may be famous for producing a sense of surprise and excitement, of not knowing what is around the next corner. This is not the goal of the mall. Shopping malls studiously avoid and ban the unpredictable. What the downtown offers is excitement, what the mall seeks is clean family friendly fun and predictability. Mall publicity and advertisements may speak of excitement, but it is an excitement that is totally managed and predictable. All activities are controlled and programmed. The malls, for all their open courtyards, fountains, benches, and play spaces, are private property. As previously noted, they are governed not by public bodies, but by private boards. Malls are ruled by regulations rather than laws. Unpredictability in any form is banned from malls. If it might offend some shoppers, it will not be found at a regional mall. Walking through a mall one will not encounter flashers, loud music, threatening crows, or even a Jehovah’s Witness passing out The Watchtower. Malls are very Wonder Bread places—no politicians, no checking immigration status (all money is welcomed), no political parties, no street people, no dirt, no clutter, no art that in any way might disturb of offend, no live or recorded music that is not preapproved, no decorations that is not preapproved, and no charitable solicitations or sidewalk merchants of any sort that have no been preapproved. Volunteers cannot simply collect for cancer, heart, disease, or any relief. Most malls even ban the Salvation Army from ringing its bells and collecting food and clothing for the poor at Christmas time. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
All the restrictions are not so much out of any sense of mean-spiritedness, but because mall patrons have been taught to expect predictability and no hassles. State courts generally have supported the malls’ contention that they can control, limit, or exclude activities within their confines. The major exception is California; there the state constitution grants extensive public-access rights within malls. The 1972 Untied States of America Supreme Court ruling of Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner held that banning political leaflets did no interfere with First Amendment free-speech rights. Currently, the issue is in flux; but most mall managements tend to go with the most conservative interpretations. Generally, managements are not opposed to charity, community, or even political activities so long as these activities do not cost them shoppers or profits. What the malls seek to portray is an image of a secure environment into which the problems of the outside World do not intrude. Malls attempt to radiate an aura of safety. As private entities, malls can ban those activities and persons that are thought to be disruptive, distracting, or dangerous. Mall consciously promote the idea that they are safe places. To that end strangers are excluded. There are no street people or bag ladies in the malls because those loitering or improperly dressed are excluded. Similarly, teenagers or even senior citizens who are unduly loud or abusive may find themselves directed to the exits and told not to return. One can even be asked to leave for not being suitably dressed. This can be done because the mall is private rather than public space. No one has a right to walk unhindered back and forth through a mall simply because he or she feels like walking. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Enforcing these regulations are the mall police. In terms of uniform, badges, weapons, and demeanor, the mall police look and act like a police force. However, they rarely are they police officers. Rather, they are private security guards done up to look like police officers. Some malls have as many as fifty-two security officers who wear policelike uniforms and have authority to make arrests. This blurring of the distinction between police and security personnel is deliberate. Security guards in most states lack formal police powers. This means that in most states guards cannot stop and search purse snatchers or shoplifters. Often they cannot go into stores, but they merely patrol common areas. Their only arrest power in most states is that of a citizen’s arrest. Basically, the security guards notify the real police and try to hold the suspect until they arrive. So if a security guard is bothering you, it is best to leave before the situation escalates to a problem and you find yourself being detained and arrested. The major function of the security guards is public relations. They try to look like the police officer on the beat, help find lost children, and try to deter crime by looking official. However, you never know when they may actually be an off duty or undercover police officer or FBI agent. Therefore, it is best to be polite and respectful, you never know who you are dealing with, and do not want to be caught in the system over a misunderstanding. Seven out of ten mal crimes are shoplifting, while another 24 percent are auto break-ins and thefts. To increase safety, malls are designed to avoid dark corners, and elevators are invariably glass-sided (and even if you do not see them, almost all elevators have cameras). In terms of personal safety, by far the most dangerous area in a shopping mall is he parking area of deck. For this reason, parking areas are well lit. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Large malls have highly visible official-looking security vehicles with revolving flashing lights on the roof cruising the parking areas. This is to deter crime, but even more to reassure customers that the “police” are on patrol. While car theft is the most common problem to affect a shopper, robberies, assaults, rapes, and even murders and suicides do occur. Managements tend to do everything possible to keep problems with crimes of violence away from the public notice. Unless major public violence occurs, there is likely to be no comment on the evening news or in the local paper. Malls and their stores are major advertisers. When a series of robberies and rapes occurred at the major mall nearest someone’s expensive home, no notice of the crimes ever appeared in the local newspaper or on local news shows. Nor were warning posters placed on mall entrance doors. The image of safety and freedom from aggressive strangers is though essential for a successful mall. Crime is bad for business and is something that happens in central cities. To acknowledge publicly that malls have violent crimes would do damage to the illusion that both mall operators and patrons seek to maintain. Malls, however, have begun to indirectly deal with the subject by publicizing that they have security forces. Some regional megamalls have become major tourist attractions. South Coast Plaza, in Orange County, California, south Los Angeles, is the country’s third-largest tourist attraction. That achievement is put into perspective when it is noted that the first and second attractions are Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
The West Edmonton Mall is a goliath of shopping mall. It is the size of 115 football fields, and have parking for 20,000 cars. This mall has 800 shops, 110 restaurants, 19 movie theaters, and a Caesar’s Palace Bingo Parlor. It also has the World’s largest indoor amusement park with 24 rides and two 13-story-high roller coasters. It boasts a 5-acre lagoon with the World’s largest wave machine, and 22 water slides. If you would prefer other amusements, there is an 18-hole miniature golf course, an NHL-size ice-skating rink, and the opportunity to cruise the bottom of the 2-foot-deep lake in one of 25-person submarines. Reston, Virginia, is one of American’s first planned new towns. Reston Town Center is not the typical suburban shopping center. Rather, it is trying to be a real downtown, with a grid street system, two 11-story office towers, streets with wide brick sidewalks, a 514-room hotel, some forty or so retail stores, eight restaurants, and a movie theater. Also, Reston’s downtown is not only new and clean, it is remarkable affluent. Reston was not designed for poor inner-city residents. Unlike real cities, there are no big stores or discount stores offering cheap goods. There are no panhandlers or street people. Reston is one of Virginia’s more affluent communities, and the Town Center reflects the interests and incomes of its residents; it has a clearly upscale image. Reston Town Center, in this respect, may have the combination of characteristics most Americans seeks in a city center. It has more real life and vitality than a mall, but more security, safety, and parking than the old downtowns. We do not yet know whether Reston Town Center will become a prototype for the new century or an interesting, but one-of-a-kind experiment. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Ancient sun, eternally young, giver of life and source of energy, in coal and oil, in plant and wind and tide, in spiritual light and human embrace, you kindle the Heavens, you shine within us (for we are suns with hearts afire—we light the World as you light the sky and find clouds within whose shadows are dark); we give thanks for your rays, and clouds your rays draw up, for the sky route your travel faithfully as we traverse this globe, for our journeys of Earth which draw us together, for our journeys od dream which sustain us when apar. Ancient of Days, you rule the nations, our birth and death: our journeys you have wrought. Loam we become for your fertile spirit. Your cosmic light penetrates our depths; in your majesty we are bound to one another. We gather this morning as did people of old with joys and woes, varied gifts and diverse needs. We offer you these in thanksgiving for life and share them through your generations on Earth. Save now this nation, once firm as a rampart and clear as the sun; she is exiled, a wandering one. Likened of yore to a palm-tree, today she is borne to the stake, today she is slain for Thy sake. Scattered amid her oppressors, she flyeth to Thee from their stroke, she bends to the love of Thy yoke. One to proclaim Thou art One, crushed by the far and the near, she awaits, she is learning Thy fear. Giving the cheek to the smiters, Thy burden of sorrow she bears, tossed in the storm of the years. Moses delivered her once;–the sanctified sheep of his fold were Jacob’s assembly of old, marked by Thy name:–O save! They are falling, they grasp thee, they crave. They are calling, beseeching Thee, “Save!” One loses one’s ego in the calm serenity of the Overself, yet at the same time it is, mysteriously, still with one. With this displacement of ego, one enters into the very presence of divinity. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
Cresleigh Homes
The outside looks cozy, but the interior will exceed all your expectations! The thoughtful layout of this single story home allows maximum space with ultimate convenience. We know you’ll love our Residence 3 model as much as we do!
Residence Three is the largest of the single story homes offered in Cresleigh Havenwood. At 2,827 square feet you’ll be hard pressed to a contemporary floorplan that offers this much space. There are four bedrooms, two and one half bathrooms, and a three car garage. Utilize the den as your own private study or convert into an optional fifth bedroom if needed. The Dining Room and Kitchen are well situated to make entertaining a breeze.
The location of the Owner’s Suite makes it feel like a separate wing from the rest of the home allowing for maximum privacy and retreat. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/residence-three/
When the Dead are Raised, it is a Miracle of Reversal!
When you are driving, your behaviour at intersections is controlled by the red or green light. In a similar fashion, many of the stimuli we encounter each day act like stop or go signals that guide behaviour. To state the idea more formally, stimuli that consistently precede a rewarded response tend to influence when and where the response will occur. This effect is called stimulus control. A discriminative stimulus that most drivers are familiar with is a police car on the freeway. This stimulus is a clear signal that a specific set of reinforcement contingencies applies. As you have probably observed, the presence of a police car brings about rapid reductions in driving speed, lane changes, tailgating, and in Los Angeles, California, gun battles. Another familiar example is the beep on telephone answering machines. The beep is a signal that speaking will pay off (your message will be recorded). Most of us are well conditioned to “wait for the beep” before talking. One cannot express the principle more adequately than through the sentence of the Gospels “And the truth shall make you free,” reports John 8.32. Indeed, the idea that the truth saves and heals is an old insight which the great Masters of Living have proclaimed—nobody perhaps with such radicalism and clarity as Jesus Christ. If one does not want to remain in a state of craving which necessarily causing suffer, illusion (ignorance) is, together with hate and greed, one of the evils of which humans must rid themselves. The greedy person cannot be a free person and cannot be a happy human. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
Greed humans are slaves of things which rule them. The process of waking up from illusions is the condition of freedom and of liberation from suffering which greed necessarily produces. Disillusion (Ent-tauschung) is a condition for leading a life which comes closet to the fully development of humans, to the model of human nature. The human being who is carried away by irrational drives (“passive affects”) is necessarily one who has inadequate idea about oneself and the World—that is to say, one who lives with illusions. Those who are guided by reason are the ones who have ceased to be seduced by their senses and follow the two “active affects,” reason and courage. Those who have faith in Jesus Christ are those whom truth is the condition for salvation. The works of Christ was not primarily that of showing a picture of how the good society would look, but was relentless gospel of showing humans how to build a good society. One must love God in order to change circumstances which require sin. Truth refers not only to what one believes to be the truth, but the way to the truth les in insight into one’s own mental structure and thereby in “de-repression.” We are all so blinded and upset by self-love that everyone imagines one has a just right to exalt oneself, and to undervalue all others in comparison to self. If God has bestowed on us any excellent gift, we imagine it to be our own achievement, and we swell and even burst with pride. It is widely believed that most of us suffer the “I am not OK—you are OK” problem of low self-esteem, the problem that the comedian Groucho Marx had in mind when he declared, “I would not want to belong to any club that would accept me as a member.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
The humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers asserted this low self-image problem when objecting to the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr’s idea that original sin is self-love, pretension, and pride. No, said Dr. Rogers: people’s problems arise because “they despise themselves, regard themselves as worthless and unlovable.” A half century after the Niebuhr-Rogers exchange, the self-image issues remains alive. Ironically, many Christian preachers and writers are echoing the teachings of humanistic psychology by telling us that the fundamental human problem is low self-esteem. Meanwhile, research psychologists have been amassing new findings concerning the pervasiveness of pride. Indeed, it is the older theologians such as Niebuhr, not the humanistic psychologists and their Christian popularizers, who seem best to have anticipated a phenomenon uncovered by recent research. As the writer William Saroyan put it, “Every human is a good human in a bad World—as one oneself knows.” Researchers debate the sources of this self-serving bias phenomenon but agree that various streams of data merge to confirm its pervasiveness. Consider: Accepting more responsibility for success than failure, for good deeds than bad. Time and again, experimenters have found that people readily accept credit when told they have succeeded (attributing the success to their ability and effort), yet they attribute failure to external factors such as bad luck or the problem’s inherent “impossibility.” These self-serving attributions have been observed not only in laboratory situations, but also with athletes (after victory or defeat), students (after high or low exam grades), drivers (after accidents), and married people (among whom conflict often derives from perceiving oneself as contributing more and benefitting less than is fair). The self-concept research Anthony Greenwald summarizes: “People experience life through a self-centered filter.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
Favourable biased self-ratings: Can we all be better than average? In virtually any area that is both subjective and socially desirable, most people see themselves as beer than average. Most businesspeople see themselves as more ethical than the average business person. Most community residents see themselves as less prejudiced than their neigbhours. Most people see themselves as more intelligent and as healthier than most other person. When the College Board asked high school seniors to compare themselves with others their own ages, 60 percent reported themselves better than average in athletic ability, and only 6 percent below average. In leadership ability, 70 percent rated themselves above average, 2 percent below average. In ability to get along with others, zero percent of the 829,000 students who responded rated themselves below average, while 60 percent saw themselves in the top 10 percent and 25 percent put themselves in the top 1 percent. If Elizabeth Barrett Browning were still writing she would perhaps rhapsodize, “How do I love me? Let me count the ways.” The Barnum Effect. “There is a sucker born every minute,” said the showman P.T. Barnum. A number of experiments have given us a psychological version of the maxim. The procedure is simple: people are shown statements such as those in horoscope books (“You have a strong need for other people to like you and for them to admire you…While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them….At times you are extroverted, affable, sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved”). If told that the description is designed specifically for them on the basis of their psychological tests or astrological data, people usually say the description is remarkably accurate, especially when it is favourable. Negative assessments are judged less valid than flattering ones. “The Arch-Flatterer,” noted Plutarch, “is a man’s self.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
A turn at last, my Long-winded if Lofty-minded Friend. I go lost somewhere in Your rhetoric. Now tell me if I have You right. Roll Your thunderous judgments over me, O Lord! Shiver my timbers with fear and trembling! Scarify my soul! I stand astounded, as the words of Job come tumbling into my mind. “The Heavens are no clean in Your sight” (15.15). Bu “if You found depravity among the Angels” (4.18) and You did not spare them, what will become of me? “They have fallen like the stars from the Heavens,” wrote John in Revelations (6.13). I have read all those passages in Second Peer (2.4), Job (4.18), Revelation (6.13), Psalm (78.25), and Luke (15.16). In them the Angels, some of the best and brightest who lauded You to the highest, fell to the lowest. And so it is, then that some of the Notables of our land who used to receive the Bread of Angels have fallen afoul of You, O Lord. Now they delight in the swill of he swell-fed, if forbidden, pig. If that is what happened to them, what do I, a simple man of dust, a collector of garbage, have to look forward to? No sanctity, O Lord, if You withdraw Your hand. No wisdom, O Lord, if you stop governing the Universe. No fortitude, O Lord, if You stop conserving. No chastity, O Lord, if You do not protect it. No self-control, O Lord, if Your sacred vigilance is absent; the Psalmist knew that the Lord guarded the city, not the sentinels (127.1). “Leave us behind, O Lord, and we will be swamped and die”—the Disciples shouted that to You when the storm rose, or so Matthew report (8.25). Stay with us, and we rise to he surface and live. We are up and down, but we are confirmed through You. Hot, we grow cool. Cold, we grow warm. Yes, You are our fuel, our fervour, forever. Here are a few somethings about nothings; that is to say, a few thoughts of my own. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
Toad I must be, O Lord, and toad I must remain. Why? Because I toed the mark and failed. Of course, I could have toadied up to You, Lord God of all amphibians, but even in this I failed. Think it nothing when something good is associated with my name! O Lord, I cannot sound the depths of Your profoundest judgments, as the Psalmist called them (36.6). Lured by the deep, I dove. All I could see was nothing, and worse than nothing, and worse than nothing. My God, You are the Inconsiderable Consideration, the Impassable Archipelago! In traversing Your vastness, I leave not a trace or wake! What can I do to prevent my pride from being discovered? Where can I discover the confidence I thought I had? Your judgments have sopped up all this idiotic gloriation of mine, leaving not a stain behind. What does all the Flesh in the World amount to in Your sigh, O Lord? That is the sort of question the Great Paul asked the First Corinthians (1.29). Not a great deal, I should think. As the Prophet Isaiah asked it, “Can the pot glory more than the potter who made it?” (29.16). I think not, but what precisely does this mean? I think I can give some examples of the pot and the potter from my own monastic experience. A Devout wants to be one’s own chief praiser and appraiser, but why, when one’s heart has already been verified by God? A devout is toasted by the whole World for all of one’s wonderful qualities, but why, when one has already been credentialed by Truth herself? A Devout is moved to tears by a choir of voices chanting one’s praises, but why, when one is already confirmed one’s hope in God? These silly Devouts who speak such nonsense, take a close look at them; they are nothing to write home about. Their verbiage fails even as their voices fade. However, “the truth of the Lord,” as the Psalmist has sung, “remains in tune for ever and ever” (117.2). #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
Whether one thinks that one has strayed by chance into this starry World or believes that God’s grace has fallen upon one, one feels its beauty and peace. The encounter with Overself may be hushed and gentle or thrilling and dramatic. However, it will certainly be absorbing. In that beautiful mood, one is wafted upward because one’s mind turns away from the Earth, is interests and desires which ordinarily hold one down. The glimpse is unquestionably a sort of spell put upon the mind encircling the self, benign and healing and protective. It imparts a feeling of well-being. How inadequate are constructed sentences to tell anyone the total wonder of a glimpse, of the I’s department and the Overself’s arrival! The peace descends, the cares are gone, the fears are shed, the avid desires enfeebled. The experience of liberation yields a peace which lifts one into a detachment from the World never felt before, untouched by sights, persons, incidents, which hitherto produced repulsions, irritations, or rage. Joy glows quietly on the face of one who is experiencing a glimpse. The experience will flood one’s whole day with sun. One will experience a profound sense of release, a joyous exaltation of feeling, and a lofty soaring of thought. It would not be wrong o use a word from gustatory experience and describe these moments as delicious. It is almost entirely an intense and internal experience. The glimpse carries either a quiet intellectual rapture with it or a seething emotional one. In such a benignant mood, it is easy to forgive one’s enemies their vile conduct or to look at faithless friend n a kindlier light. It lifts the egoistic out of their egoism for a while, the fearful out of their fears. When we turn inwards, we turn in the direction of complete composure. It is the first streak of sunrise on one’s inner life. The discovery of the soul’s truth carries with it an excitement which only those who spend their lives seeking it know. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
The glimpses have various qualities—religious, aesthetic, perceptive, and so on. In such moments of intimacy with the Overself, as we let go of our pettiness, we feel enlarged. It gives one, for short while, an equanimity which one does not have at other times. One’s heart is filled with the sense of this Presence and, for the few or many minutes this lasts, one is a changed person. Some persons get their first glimpse by surprise, quite unexpectedly, and from then begins their quest. However, others get it during the onward course of their quest, while searching or waiting for it, and hopefully expectant of it. When the mind moves inward from everyday consciousness to mystical being, the benedictory change is both ennobling and sublime. During these short glimpses no anxiety and uncertainty can affect one. It is but a pause in the constant oscillation of life, a stilling of the ego’s pursuits. However, first a hush of peace, a soundless calm descends; the struggle of distress and fierce impatience ends; mute music soothes my breast—unuttered harmony that I could never dream till Earth was lost to me. Then dawns the invisible, the Unseen its truth reveals; my outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels—its wings are almost free, its home, its harbour found; measuring the gulf it stoops and dares the final bound! In these hushed moments a happiness steals over one, a glory is felt all around him. This is one’s real being. One sought for it, prayed to it, and communed with it in the past as if it were something other than, and apart from, oneself. Now one knows that it was oneself, that there is no need for one to do any of these things. All one needs is to recognize what one is and to realize it at every moment. The miracles of Healing, to which we turn next, are now in a peculiar position. Humans are ready to admit that many of them happened, but are inclined to deny that they were miraculous. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
The symptoms of very many diseases can be aped by hysteria, and hysteria can often be cured by “suggestion.” It could, no doubt, be argued that such suggestion is a spiritual power, and therefore (if you like) a supernatural power, and that all instances of “faith healing” are therefore miracles. However, in our terminology they would be miraculous only in the same sense in which every instance of human reason is miraculous: and what we are now looking for is miracles other than that. My own view is that it would be unreasonable to ask a person who has not yet embraced Christianity in its entirety to allow that all the healings mentioned in the Gospels were miracles—that is, that they go beyond the possibilities of human “suggestion.” It is for the doctors to decide as regards each particular case—supposing that the narratives are sufficiently detailed to allow even probable diagnosis. We have here a good example to what was said in the past. So far from belief in miracles depending upon ignorance of natural law, we are here finding for ourselves that ignorance of law makes miracle unascertainable. Without deciding in detail which of the healings must (apart from acceptance of the Christian faith) be regarded as miraculous, we can however indicate the kind of miracle involved. Its character can easily be obscured by the somewhat magical view which many people still take of ordinary and medical healing. There is a sense in which no doctor ever heals. The doctors themselves would be the first to admit this. The magic is not in the medicine but in the patient’s body—in the vis medicatrix naturae, the recuperative or self-corrective energy of Nature. What the treatment does is to simulate Natural functions or to remove what hinders them. We speak for convenience of the doctor, or the dressing, healing a cut. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
However, in another sense every cut heals itself: no cut can be healed in a corpse. That same mysterious force which we call gravitational when it steers the planets and biochemical when it heals a live body, is the efficient cause of all recoveries. And that energy proceeds from God in the first instance. All who are cured are cured by Him, not merely in the sense that His providence provides them with medical assistance and wholesome environments, but also in the sense that their very tissues are repaired by the far-descended energy which following from Him, energizes the whole system of Nature. However, one He did it visibly to the sick in Palestine, a Man meeting with men. What in its general operations we refer to laws of Nature or once referred to Apollo or Aesculapius thus reveals itself. The Power that always was behind all healings puts on a face and hands. Hence, of course, the apparent chanciness of the miracles. It is idle to complain that He heals those whom He happens to meet, not those whom He does not. To be a man means to be in one place and not in another. The World which would now know Him as present everywhere was saved by His becoming local. Christ’s single miracle of Destruction, the withering of the fig-tree, has proved troublesome to some people, but we think its significance is plain enough. The miracle is an acted parable, a symbol of God’s sentence on all that is “fruitless” and specially, no doubt, on the official Judaism of that age. That is its moral significance. As a miracle, it again does in focus, repeats small and close, what God does constantly and throughout Nature. We have seen in the past how God, twisting Satan’s weapon out of his hand, had become, since the Fall, the God even of human death. However, much more, and perhaps ever since the creation, He has been the God of the death of organisms. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
In both cases, though in somewhat different ways, He is the God of death because He is the God of Life: the God of human death because through it increase of life now comes—the God of merely organic death because death is part of the very mode by which organic life spreads itself out in Time and yet remains new. A forest a thousand years deep is still collectively alive because some trees are dying and others are growing up. His human face, turned with negation in its eyes upon that one fig-tree, did once what His unincarnate action does to all trees. No tree died that year in Palestine, or any year anywhere, except because God did—or rather ceased to do—something to it. All the Miracles which we have considered so far are Miracles of the Old Creation. In all of them we see the Divine Man focusing for us what the God of Nature has already done on a larger scale. In our next class, the Miracles of Dominion over the Inorganic, we find some that are of the Old Creation and some that are of the New. When Christ stills the storm, He does what God has done before. God made Nature such that here would be both storms and calms: in that way all storms (except those that are still going on at this moment) have been stilled by God. If you have once accepted the Grand Miracle, it is unphilosophical to reject the stilling of the storm. There is really no difficulty about adapting the weather conditions of the rest of the World to this one miraculous calm. I myself can still a storm in a room by shutting the window. Nature must make the best she can of it. And to do her justice she makes no trouble at all. The whole system, far from being thrown out gear (which is what some nervous people seem to think a miracle would do) digests the new situation as easily as an elephant digest a drop of water. She is, said before, an accomplished hostess. However, when Christs walks on the water, we have a miracle of the New Creation. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
God had not made the Old Nature, the World before the Incarnation, of such a kind that water would support a human body. This miracle is the foretaste of a Nature that is sill in the future. The New Creation is just breaking in. For a moment, it looks as if it were going to spread. For a moment, two men are living in that new World. St. Peter also walks on the water—a pace of two: then his trust fails him and he sinks. He is back in Old Nature. That momentary glimpse was a snowdrop of a miracle. The snowdrops show that we have turned the corner of the year. Summer is coming. However, it is a long way off and the snowdrops do not last long. The Miracles of Reversal all belong to the New Creation. When the dead are raised, it is a Miracle of Reversal. Old Nature knows nothing of this process: it involves playing backward a film that we have always seen played forwards. The one or two instances of it in the Gospels are early flowers—what we call spring flowers, because hey are prophetic although they really bloom while it is still winter. And the Miracles of Perfecting Glory, the Transfiguration, the Resurrection, and the Ascension, are even more emphatically of the New Creation. These are the true spring, or even summer, of the World’s new year. The Captain, the forerunner, is already in May or June, though His followers on Earth are still living in the forests and east winds of Old Nature—for “spring comes slowly up this way.” None of the Miracles of the New Creation can be considered apart from the Resurrection and Ascension: and that will require another essay. The healing of disease was well identified with Jesus’ work, with Aesculapian Greek sanctuaries, with Egyptian exorcism, with many a mystic throughout the Orient, and even with a number in the modern World, Eastern and Western. How, then, with such a religious background, can it be fair to deny divine inspiration to the Man who performs healing, while allowing such inspiration to the Man who only preaches? #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
Vedantic thought usually regards the siddhis—occult powers—as obstacles to attaining truth. Among them the healing of the body’s sicknesses and the mind’s disorders is included. That some persons are usually in being born with the gift of healing the sick is a historic fact. Why reject the talent or power as being unworthy of a true sage or of those who seek to become such a one? In what way is this form of serving humanity unethical, unsafe, inconsistent with the highest? Remember that Jesus started His work by an act of healing a sick person. The results of their use of healing powers cannot ordinarily be predicted, much less guaranteed, but must be left to the Higher Power. Spiritual healing is drawing much attention but the subject is involved in much confusion. Even the healers themselves hold contradictory theories about it. Some use prayer to get their cures; others deny that prayer is of any avail. Some practice mediation alone; others combine meditation with the laying-on of hands. Some deny that there is anything more than the power of suggestion behind the healings; others find in them evidence of God’s presence. Are there any spiritual laws which will scientifically explain the healings? Is the Hindu wisdom always wise? There is the warning of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras against the occult powers that might be acquired by yoga: they are to be shunned because they obstruct further advance towards the high plane. Healing is one of these listed powers. Must we accept such an attitude and reject the gift of healing, if it comes? Is good health so great an evil that disease is to be accepted dutifully? On this point a Westerner might rebel. In ancient and orthodox Hinduism, the profession of healer was regarded unfavourably, for the strange reason that it brought the healer and the sick together! #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
Sarah Pardee Winchester was known in France as a poetess. Quite late in life she became aware of certain radiations and found herself capable of healing sick people by using these radiations. Out of these experiences with people, she wrote a booklet entitled La Survie du Tuberculosis (Victory over Tuberculosis) in 1897, but it is no longer in print and has never been translated and this booklet is now one of two of the most rare and sought-after pieces of all Winchester literature. Devoted to healing work until she gave it up, saying that is exhausted her too much, she passed away in her sleep 5 September 1922. What she regarded as her major contribution to the healing art was the discovery from this experience of hers that tuberculosis has its seat “in the pithy tissues of the lungs” no matter where the infection is. She could not find a publisher for this book in France, but it was published here in Switzerland and will not, it is said, be reprinted now that she has passed. In fact, she was her own publisher. At the time of her retirement, she explained that vital energy would pass from her to the patient. It is known that some of her cures were spectacular, and even in most cases where she failed to save the life of the patient, she brought about passing without suffering. The confusion of thought concerning spiritual healing is tremendous. William Wirt Winchester asserts that the practice of falling into spiritual trance aggravated the tuberculosis which finally killed him. Yet this is the very method and practice used by some healers to heal their patients, because, they believed, it releases divine energies. What the healer does is to release, stimulate, or add energy to the sufferer’s own natural recuperative forces. The difference between healers are differences of techniques, personal fitness, and spiritual degree. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
The power to heal the sick is a latent gift deliberately brought out by development or spontaneously released by illumination. Spiritual healing is a gift which is innate in certain individuals and very difficult to acquire by others. It may, however, exist latently, and could show itself only after a certain degree of spiritual development has been attained. Bernard of Clairvaux cured hundreds of the blind, deaf, and paralyzed during the twelfth century simply by making the sign of the cross over the affected body part. Olcott in Ceylon, eight centuries later cured dozens of cases of scorpion bite and even snake bite by making the sign of the pentagram over the part. Does this not show that the healing power may lay in the healer oneself, even more than in one’s method? There are many puzzling cases of healers, like Saint Paul in ancient times, Saint Catherine of Siena in medieval ties, and Father Matthew of Ireland in modern times, who cured the ills of many people but did not or could not cure their own. This is a paradox that is hard to resolve. All healers lose their power after a time. This is to lead them to a higher level. Doctors who can keep us well, long-lived, and capable of functioning properly are more needed than those who cure our diseases. If words have any meaning at all, Christ’s words have meant that personal sacrifice is the cost of spiritual growth. For eighteen hundred years, humans of every kind—scholars, mystics, priests, laymen, ascetics, and saints—agreed on that. Then arose a new group of cults—faith-healers—which not only gave a new meaning to those words but a directly opposite meaning. Success and prosperity, they tried to use spiritual forces solely for their own personal purposes and material benefits, instead of trying to surrender to those forces and submit to higher purposes. The denied—contrary to the experience of all religious history—that material loss and personal failure could ever be the working of such purposes. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
Healing exists on all these different levels, which means its power comes from difference sources. However, it is believed that all healers should know their limits, their limitations, and it is feared that many of them do not simply because they are carried away by their enthusiasm. Secondly, I believe that all healers would not only be none the worse for some knowledge of anatomy and physiology and the commoner maladies, but they should even attempt to acquire some of this knowledge. Otherwise many errors, many false or exaggerated claims, are made by the healers. We are not questioning their honesty; we believe most of them are honest. However, we are questioning their lack of knowledge and fuller knowledge. On the other hand, we criticize the medical profession for failing to enter into dialogue with the healers; for if they adopted a humbler attitude towards the unorthodox healers, they would learn much to their own profit and to the improvement of their professional help. Before the healing process can come into operation, the patient must be brought into a receptive state; otherwise one will unconsciously obstruct them. Faith is the first requisite. By working a muscle group against resistance, one will build up willpower as well as muscle power. Holding the spine properly allows the flow currents of this Spirit Energy to circulate properly. The benefit of a specific exercise is to be measured by the warmth, or kundalini, it creates—not by the time it takes. Those who have seldom or never done bodily exercises may find it hard to start or, if started, to finish the complete daily period. If they gave up before sufficient time had passed to feel the benefits of the work, it would be a pity. Merely to lie down reduces the heartbeats by no less than ten each minute, thus saving this ever-working organ some of its heavy labour. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
The simple exercise of stretching helps to counter the congestions, compressions, and adhesions which obstruct the flow of the vital force through the spina column with its sixty-two branching nerves and thus to regain energy. This truth of the need of spine-loosening movement is instinctively known by every dog and car, every lion and tiger, for they apply it immediately after awakening from sleep. The back, the legs, and even paws are bent and stretched and even rolled by them in this natural exercise. To make the spinal column flexible and serviceable for these purposes, it must be both loosened and stretched. The day we die, the wind comes down to take away our footprints. The wind makes dust to cover up the marks we left while walking. For otherwise, the things would seem as if we were still living. Therefore the wind is he who comes to blow away our footprints. I will make my supplication in this, my house of prayer. On the Fast Day I revealed my transgression. Thereon I besought Thee to save me. Hearken to the voice of my cry; arise and save me. Remember and have compassion, my Redeemer. Comfort me with Thy solaces, O living God. O Thou good God, heed my prayer. Hasten the coming of my redeemer and destroy my evil desires so that Thou condemn me not again. Hasten, O God of my salvation, to save me for eternity. Forgive the stain of my wickedness and pass by mine iniquities, and turn, I pray Thee, to save me. O my Rock, my righteous Redeemer, accept my supplication; grant me my deliverance. Almighty, my Redeemer, save me now. Shine forth to save, yea, save, I beseech Thee. One enters into a sate which is certainly not a disappearance of the ego, but rather a kind of divine fellowship of the ego with its source. There is still a center of consciousness in one, still a voice which can utter the words or hold that thought “I am I.” The ego is lost in an ocean of being, but the ego’s link with God, the Overself, still remains. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
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Egos are Breaking Like Eggshells Against the Walls!
We all possess the God-given gift of moral agency—the right to make choices and the obligation to account for those choices. “That every human may act in doctrine and principle pertaining to futurity, according to the moral agency which I have given unto one, that every human may be accountable for one’s own sins in the day of judgement,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 101.78. However, there are times when punishment may be necessary to manage the behaviour of an animal, child, or even another adult. If you feel that you must punish, here are some tips to keep in mind. If you can discourage misbehaviour in other ways, do not use punishment. Make liberal use of positive reinforcement, especially praise, to encourage good behaviour. Also, try extinction first: See what happens if you ignore a problem behaviour; or shift attention to a desirable activity and then reinforce it with praise. Moral discipline is the consistent exercise of agency to choose the right because it is correct, even when it is hard. It rejects the self-absorbed life in favour of developing character worthy of respect and true greatness through Christlike service. Apply punishment during, or immediately after, misbehaviour. Of course, immediate punishment is not always possible. With older children and adults, you can bridge the delay by clearly stating what act you are punishing. If you cannot punish an animal immediately, wait for the next instance of misbehaviour. The root of the word discipline is shared by the word disciple, suggesting to the mind the fact that conformity to the example and teachings of Jesus Christ is the ideal discipline that, couple with His grace, forms a virtuous and morally excellent person. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Use the minimum punishment necessary to suppress misbehaviour. Often, a verbal rebuke or a scolding is enough. Avoid harsh physical punishment. (Never slap a child’s face, for instance.) Taking away privileges or other positive reinforcers (response cost) is usually best for older children and adults. Frequent punishment may lose its effectiveness, and harsh or excessive punishment has serious negative side effects. Jesus’s own moral discipline was rooted in His discipleship to the Father. To His disciples He explained, “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work,” reports John 4.34. By this same pattern, our moral discipline is rooted in loyalty and devotion to the Father and the Son. It is the gospel of Jesus Christ that provides the moral certainty upon which moral discipline rests. Be consistent. Be very clear about what you regard as misbehaviour. Punish every time the misbehaviour occurs. Do not punish for something one day and ignore it the next. If you are usually willing to give a child three chances, do not change the rule and explode without warning after a first offense. The societies in which many of us live have for more than a generation failed to foster moral discipline. They have taught that truth is relative and that everyone decides for oneself what is right. Concepts such as sin and wrong have been condemned as “value judgments.” As the Lord describes I, “Every human walketh in one’s own way, and after the image of one’s own good,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 1.16. As a consequence, self-discipline has eroded and societies are left to try to maintain order and civility by compulsion. #RandolphHarrs 2 of 19
The lack of internal control by individuals breeds external control by governments. In the World, we have been experiencing an extended and devastating economic recession. It was brought on by multiple causes, but one of the major causes was widespread dishonest and unethical conduct, particularly in the U.S. housing and financial markets. Reactions have focused on enacting more and stronger regulation. Perhaps that may dissuade some from unprincipled conduct, but others will simply get more creative in the circumvention. Therefore, expect anger from a punished person. Briefly acknowledge this anger, but be careful not to reinforce it. If you wrongfully punish someone or if you punished too severely, be willing to admit your mistake. There could never be enough rules so finely crafted as to anticipate and cover every situation, and even if there were, enforcement would be impossibly expensive and burdensome. This approach leads to diminished freedom for everyone. Punish with kindness and respect. Allow the punished person to retain self-respect. For instance, if possible, do not punish a person in front of others. A strong, trusting relationship tends to minimize behaviour problems. Ideally, others should want to behave well to get your praise, not because they fear punishment. In the end, it is only an internal moral compass in each individual that can effectively deal with the root causes as well as the symptoms of societal decay. Be sure to reinforce positive behaviours. Remember, it is much more effective to strengthen and encourage desirable behaviours than it is to punish unwanted behaviours. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Societies will struggle in vain to establish the common good until sin is denounced as sin and moral principle takes its place in the pantheon of civic virtues. Some torment themselves in order to acclimate the savages of various countries to their lifestyle, they have not yet been able to win over a single one of them, not even by means of Christianity; for our missionaries sometimes turn them into Christians, but never into civilized human beings. Nothing can overcome the invincible repugnance they have against appropriating our mores and living in our way. If these poor savages are as unhappy as is alleged, by what inconceivable depravity of judgment do they constantly refuse to civilize themselves in imitation of us, or learn to live happily among us. Some have frequently tried to cultivate savages; people have been eager to display our luxury, our wealth, and all our most useful and curious arts. None of this has ever excited in them anything but a stupid admiration, without the least stirring of covetousness. Economy or Oeconomy, (Moral and Political) is a word that means house and law and originally signified merely the wise and legitimate government of the household for the common good of the entire family. The meaning of this term was later extended to the government of the large family which is the state. To distinguish these two usages, in the latter case it is called general or political economy, and in the former case it is called domestic or private economy. Even if there were as much similarity between the state and the family as many authors would have us believe, it would not follow as a consequence that the rules of conduct proper to one of those societies would be suitable to the other. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
The family and the government differ too much in size to be capable of being administered in the same fashion. Moreover, there will always be an extreme difference between domestic government, where the father can see everything for himself, and civil government, where the leader sees hardly anything unless through someone else’s eyes. For things to become equal in this regard, the talents, force and all the faculties of the father would have to increase in proportion to the size of his family, that of an ordinary man, what the size of his empire is to that of the private individual’s patrimony. However, how could the government of the state be similar to that of the family, whose basis is so different? Wit the father being physically stronger than his children, paternal power is reasonably said to be established by nature for as long as his help is needed by them. In the large family all of whose members are naturally equal, political authority, purely arbitrary as far as its establishment is conceived, can be founded only upon conventions, and the magistrate can command others only by virtue of the laws. The duties of the father are dictated to him by natural feelings, and in a manner that seldom allows him to be disobedient. Leaders have no such similar rule and are not really bound to the people except in regard to what they have promised to do for them and which the people can rightfully demand they carry out. Another even more important difference is that, since everything children have they receive from their father, it is obvious that all property rights belong to or emanate from him. It is quite the contrary in the case of the large family, where the general administration is established merely to assure private property, which is antecedent to it. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
The chief purpose of the entire household’s labours is to maintain and increase the father’s patrimony, so that he can someday disperse it among his children without reducing them to poverty. On the other hand, the wealth of the public treasure is merely a means—often very much misunderstood—of maintaining private individuals in peace and prosperity. In a word, the small family is destined to die off and to be dissolved someday into many other families; on the other hand, the large family was made to last forever in the same condition, whereas not only is it enough that that large family maintains itself, it is easily proved that any increase does it more harm than good. For several reasons derived from the nature of things, in the family it is the father who should command. First, the authority of the father and mother ought not be equal; on the contrary, there must be a single government and when there are differences of opinion there must be a single dominant voice which decides. Second, however slight we regard the limitations that are peculiar to a wife, since they always occasion a period of inactivity for her, this is a sufficient reason for excluding her from this primacy. For when the balance is perfectly equal, a straw is enough to tip the scales. Moreover, a husband should oversee his wife’s conduct, for it is important to him to be assured that the children he is forced to recognize and nurture belong to no one but himself. The wife, who has nothing like this to fear, does not have the same right over her husband. Third, children ought to obey their father—initially out of necessity, later out of gratitude. After having their needs met by him for half their lives, they ought to devote the other half to seeing his needs. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Fourth, as far as domestic servants are concerned, they too owe him their services in exchange for the livelihood he provides them, unless they cancel their arrangement once it ceases to be to their advantage. I say nothing here of slavery, since it is contrary to nature and no right can authorize it. None of this is to be found in political society. Far from the leader’s having a natural interest in the happiness of private individuals, it is not uncommon for him to seek his own happiness in the misery of others. If the magistracy is hereditary, often it is a child that is in command of humans. If it is elective, a thousand insolvencies make themselves to be felt in the elections. In either case one loses all the advantages of paternity. Were you to have but one leader, you are at the discretion of a master who has no reason to love you. Were you to have several, you must endure both their tyranny and their disagreements. In short, abuses are inevitable and their consequences devastating in every society where the public interest and the laws have no natural force, and are constantly attacked by the personal interest and passions of the ruler and the members. Although the functions of the father of a family and those of a chief magistrate ought to tend toward the same goal, their paths are so different, their duty and rights so unlike, that one cannot confound them without forming false ideas about the fundamental laws of society and without falling into errors that are fatal to the human race. In effect, though nature’s voice is the best advice a good father could listen to in the fulfillment of his duty, for the magistrate it is merely a false guide which works constantly to divert him from his duties and which sooner or later leads to his downfall or to that of the state, unless he is restrained by the most sublime virtue. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
The only precaution necessary to the father of a family is that he protect himself from depravity and prevent his natural inclinations from becoming corrupt, whereas it is these very inclinations that corrupt the magistrate. To act properly, the former need only consult his heart; the latter becomes a traitor as soon as he listens to his. Even his own reason ought to be suspect to him, and the only rule he should follow is the public reason, which is the law. Thus nature has made a multitude of good fathers of families, but it doubtful that, since the beginning of the World, human wisdom has ever produced ten men capable of governing their peers. It follows from all I have just put forward that one has good reason to distinguish public from private economy and that, since the state has nothing in common with the family except the obligation their respective leaders bear to render each of the happy, the same rules of conduct could not be suitable to both. In discussing what is not occurring in the suburbs, it is necessary to occasionally take a glance back at the central city since comparisons between the two highlight the changes in later. As has been detailed previously, the downtowns of American urban areas came into their glory during the first half of the twentieth century as the retail trade and business locations of choice. Downtown was where all the major department stores were located. As of 1950, Chicago’s Loop contained not only the huge Marshal Field store but also, a block away, Carson, Pirie, Scott. In addition, there were other large department stores of Mandels, Sears, and The Fair. All of these department stores occupied multistoried buildings. Field alone occupied a fully city block, with an additional five-story Men’s Building annex across the street. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Additionally, the downtown was filled with scores of restaurants and coffee shops catering both to business people and housewives who dressed up to make an event out of shopping downtown. Certainly, if one were interested in serious shopping in Chicago—or New York, or Philadelphia, or Boston, or Washington, or Detroit, or Minneapolis, or Omaha, or Dallas, or Seattle, or San Francisco—one went downtown, usually by public transit. As we approach the turn of the century, the above description reads like something from another time and place. Across America, downtown and peripheral suburban areas have switched identities. The old pattern has been turned inside out. Concentrated and centralized cities have been supplanted by dispersed and polynucleated suburban malls and office parks. Downtowns that once were dominant in retail trade find themselves struggling not for dominance, but for survival. Numerous cities such as Baltimore, Detroit, Sacramento, and Omaha no longer even have a single downtown department store. The dispute as to the comparative economic strength of downtown or peripheral suburban locations as centers for the purchase of consumer goods is over. Downtowns lost the competition. Central business districts now account for less than half of all sales in personal and household items, and yearly this share decreases. Downtowns, with some exceptions, such as part of Manhattan and North Michigan Avenue in Chicago, are no longer prime locations for major new retailing activities. Some of us who love the old downtowns whish this were not so. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
Along with downtown Chambers of Commerce, some would like to see new retailers occupy the buildings abandoned by the large department stores. Unfortunately, this is not going to occur. Central-city festival marketplaces provide wonderful urban vitality and a means of attracting tourists, but they are not where someone goes to buy shoes, a business suit, or a DVD player. For the foreseeable future, large-scale retailing ventures will have suburban post offices. New office space is also most likely to be suburban. Deconcentration is the cotemporary reality. However, as growth has gone from city to outside the city, there is a belief that the general quality of suburban life is decreasing. While applauding increases in employment and greater shopping alternatives, suburbanites feel frustration over traffic congestion, environmental degradation, crime, and crowded schools. Often these problems are attributed to a too-rapid pace of community growth. The question of limiting, or even halting, growth is one that is being debated in high-growth areas, such as the west coast. The concern first arose in high growth areas, such as Orange Country, in Southern California; now, as Californians out-migrate to Oregon, Washington state, Texas, Nevada, Atlanta, Arizona, or New Mexico, the concern about too-rapid growth has become a political issue in these localities. Local concerns over rapid growth fly in the face of the long-standing American creed that bigger is better. City boosters, as a matter of course, bragged that their community was better than their neighbour’s because it was growing faster. Not to grow was somehow un-American. Now that is changing and there are increasing calls for growth controls. At one time, the governor of Hawaii stirred up considerable controversy when he called for Hawaii to slow its exploding population by banning in-migration. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Research indicates that suburban residents have strong concerns about current and future growth. Studying the response of citizens in Orange County, California, it was found that over half of the residents surveyed cited environmental reasons such as traffic congestion and environmental deterioration as reasons for limiting growth. Economic reasons, such as maintaining property values and avoiding government spending and taxes, were listed by approximately a third of the respondents. While there is documented widespread support for slow-growth or growth-limit policies, there is little public support for no-growth policies, except for in Malibu, California which eventually lost their request. Suburban residents desire local officials and policy makers to put limits on population and economic expansion rather than to halt development. Both no growth and unrestricted growth are opposed by most suburbanites. However, desiring controlled growth and accomplishing it are not the same things. Research indicates that municipal zoning and other techniques to control growth have only a modest effect. Organizations favouring growth limits, such as the Sierra Club, generally argue that uncontrolled growth will continue to destroy what remains our physical and cultural environment. Thus, the indiscriminate gobbling up of land by developers and industries has to be controlled. Opponents of such control, such as the National Association of Homebuilders, say that those already in an area have no right to infringe on what they see as the constitutional right to settle where one chooses. Other opponents, such as the National Association of the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), are less concerned with the developers’ right to build and make profits than they are with a “pull-up-the-gangplank” mentality. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
The NACCP fears that environmental policies such as setting minimum lot sizes and requiring municipal water and sewage hookups rather than allowing wells and septic systems will increase prices and thus exclude the less affluent. Zoning regulations allegedly have a history of being used for enforcing exclusion. The legal question of whether communities can impose growth controls was settled for the time being by the case of Petaluma, California. Located roughly 35 miles north of San Francisco and on a new freeway, the community was only 35,000 people at the time and felt it was being overwhelmed. Growth in Petaluma had reached 18 percent a year. Schools were in double session, water and sewage systems were at the maximum, and the community feared it was being swallowed by an unending number of new subdivisions. The city established a plan to limit building to 500 units a year, and developers and builder sued. By refusing to heart the case, the Supreme Court in 1976 rejected the builders’ argument that growth limits unconstitutionally restrict people’s right to live where they choose. The Supreme Court let stand the Court of Appeals ruling that the traditional local community responsibility for the public welfare was sufficiently broad to allow Petaluma to preserve its character and open spaces. Petaluma, California now has a population of 59,776. In practice the question of growth controls is moot for most suburban communities. Only a limited number of communities, almost all in environmentally attractive locations in the west and southwest, have tried to control growth. Many older suburban communities, with the exception of Old Land Park in Sacramento, California, are more likely to share the central-city problem of how to attract growth, rather than how to limit it. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Much more common among suburbs than growth limits is the requiring of builders to offer “proffers.” These are fees to cover some of the cost to the municipality of providing local road, school, sewer, and water services. The argument is that new residences should be assessed some of the costs associated with servicing them, and that the cost of providing services for newcomers should not be borne solely by existing taxpayers. Furthermore, it is impossible to discuss suburban issues without some discussion of crime. Obviously, one of the more common explanations one hears for the movement to the suburbs or the unwillingness to move back to the city is crime. The built-in assumption is that suburbs are relatively free of crime while cities clearly are not. Neither of these assumptions is fully accurate. Some city neighbourhoods have low crime, while some suburbs do not. However, overall suburban crime rates are only 28 percent of city rates. The popular perception also is accurate insofar as central-city crimes rates are rising faster than suburban rates. Major U.S. Central Cities are seeing crime rate increase by 40 percent from the previous year. By companions, the suburban rate was a far lower, which was an increase of 1.2 percent. No one knows for sure why urban violent crime rates accelerated so rapidly. However, the pandemic, depressed economic conditions for the poor, and shrinking job opportunities likely play a factor. Still others have suggested the increasing use of drugs, more use of more lethal weapons, family breakdown, and racial discrimination as reasons for the increase. Whatever the reason, the popular belief that cities, or at least some parts of cities, are increasingly dangerous places is, unfortunately, accurate. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Suburban crime rates are substantially lower than in cities, and it much less likely to be violent crime. The most frequently reported suburban crime is bicycle theft. This is a problem if your new expensive Diamondback Sync’R 29 Carbon Mountain Bike Black, XL that is stolen, but it is not equivalent to being mugged at gunpoint. By comparison, the ten richest suburbs have burglary rates only 33 percent those of the ten poorest suburbs. Affluent residential suburbs are able to restrict unwanted activities and limit undesirable and unemployed populations. Higher crime rates are also found in those suburbs that have facilities that attract criminals. An ever-decreasing minority of suburbanites actually commutes into the central city for employment or other purposes. City dwellers are increasingly likely to commute to suburbs for employment, shopping, or entertainment. Representatives who suddenly find themselves answerable to suburban voters have a tendency to move politically from being urban liberals toward being more suburban law-and-order candidates. Some think this will benefit the Republicans, but Deromcrats seeking election in the new districts have shown an ability to adjust their rhetoric to their new constituencies. Downtowns have been changing their economic function and their future is uncertain because of the pandemic and the increase of electronic cottages and business parks. However, looking at the new skyline does not suggest the image of immediate economic decline. People still head downtown for employment, but one cannot deny the clerical jobs, finance, legal services, advertising, management, medical centers, educational institutions, and government services are relocating to the suburbs. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
During the Great Depression of the 1930’s millions of people were thrown out of work. As factory doors clanged shut against them, many plunged into extremes of despair and guilt, their egos shattered by the pink layoff slip. Eventually unemployment came to be seen in a more sensible light—not as the result of individual laziness or moral failure but of giant forces outside the individual’s control. The maldistribution of wealth, myopic investment, runaway speculation, stupid trade policies, inept government—these, not the personal weakness of laid-off workers, caused unemployment. Feelings of guilt were, in most cases, naively inappropriate. Today, once more, egos are breaking like eggshells against the walls. Now, however, the guilt is associated with the fracture of the family and the pandemic, rather than the economy. As millions of people clamber out of strewn wreckage of their marriages, break out of government-imposed house detainment they, too, suffer agonis of self-blame. And once more, much of the guilt is misplaced. When a tiny minority is involved, the crack-up of their families may reflect individual failures. However, when divorce, separation, pandemic, and other forms of familial disaster overtake millions at once in many countries, it is absurd to think the causes are purely personal. The fracture of the family today is, in fact, part of the general crisis of the age of information—the crack-up of all the institutions spawned by the Third Wave. It is part of the ground-clearing for the new socio-sphere. And it is this traumatic process, reflected in our induvial lives, that is altering the family system beyond recognition. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Today we are told repeatedly that “the family” is falling apar or that “the family” is our Number One Problem. It is clear that the national government should have a pro-family policy. There can be no more urgent priority. Substitute preachers, prime minister, and the pious rhetoric comes out very much the same. When they speak of “the family,” however, they typically do not mean the family in all is luxuriant variety of possible forms, but one particular type of family: the Second Wave family. What they usually have in mind is a husband-breadwinner, a wife-housekeeper, and a number of small children. While many other family types exist, it was this particular family form—he nuclear family—that Second Wave civilization idealized, made dominant, and spread around the World. This type of family became the standard, socially approved model because its structure perfectly fitted the needs of a mass-production society with widely shared values and life-styles, hierarchical, bureaucratic power, and a clear separation of home life from work life in the marketplace. Today, when the authorities urge us to “restore” the family it is this Second Wave nuclear family they usually have in mind. By thinking so narrowly they not only misdiagnose the entire problem, they reveal a childish naivete about what steps would actually be required to restore the nuclear family to its former importance. Thus the authorities frantically blame the family crisis on everything from “smut peddlers” to rock music. Some tells us that opposing abortion or wiping out sex education or resisting feminism will glue the family back together again. Or they urge courses in “family education.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
The chief United States government statistician on family matters wants “more effective training” to teach people how to marry more wisely, or else a “scientifically tested and appealing system for selecting a marriage partner.” What we need, say others, are more marriage counselors or even more public relations to give the family a better image! Blind to the ways in which historical waves of change influence us, they come up with well-intentioned, often inane proposals that utterly miss the target. Some persons have wonderful healing gifts, but they will need to keep the ego out of their use of these gifts if their quest is not to be obstructed. Those who are born with healing skills, probably brough over from former births, function on different levels. The commonest is that which radiates life-force and energizes the cells of the sick person. This kind of healer must first put oneself into a passive mood and then, when one feels the vibratory force of the life-force active within one, let it pass, with or without touching the patient, into the latter. The vibrations of the lifeforce are universal; they are not the healer’s own personal property. One simply possesses a skill in letting oneself be used as a channel, and it is usually concentrated in one’s hands. A healer like Saswitha, who says he is merely drawing the therapeutic power from his patient and redirecting it or returning in back to the patient, forgets that if this is so the patient oneself gets it from the cosmic forces. It is not one’s own personal property. Jesus healed the sick, cured the diseased. Why decry the feat (when others do the same) as “merely” using an occult power, and as a deviation from the highest path of attainment, becoming an obstacle to it? For this is criticism by Advaitic Vedantins. This criticism is unfair. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
If it is right to cure one by physical means—medicine, for example—then it is right to cure one by mental means, and drawing on still deeper powers is in the same line of progression. The Advaitins grant that a physician may attain the highest truth. Is a physician like Paracelsus, using both physical and mental remedies, plus one’s own spiritual power, and therefore capable of helping more people more effectively, to be denied this possibility? The professional in other lines can often give a reasonable assurance of the efficacy of one’s own work, but the genuine spiritual healer cannot. For not only is one’s own gift involved but also both the patient’s self-made destiny and one’s evolutionary need. Apollonius tells us that Pythagoras regarded healing as “the most divine art.” Why should anyone reject the views of the Greek sage, not to speak of Jesus’ own confirmation by His works? Why should the Indian sages regard healing as a merely occult art, hence as to practice to be avoided? Why should it be right for a spiritual master to minister to diseased minds but wrong to minister to diseased bodies? To label one as white magic and the others as black magic, or to neglect and ignore the flesh in the interest of the whole-time devotion to the spirit, is unfair. Too many Indian, and a few Western, gurus and cults reject the development and use of healing power. It is, they argue, an obstruction in the spiritual path because it keeps its practitioner captive to the ego, which may even become stronger through conceit. There is the historic case of Ramakrishma. He went to his prayer shrine in his temple three times to request a healing for the throat cancer which troubled him, but each time failed to utter words. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
The merit of argument based on increased egotism and vanity, the danger of being sicktracked from seeking the highest goal, is admitted. However, is this enough ground to ban spiritual healing completely and always? Must it be denied to all people at all times, universally, because some healers may be obstructed spiritually by its practice? The answer of common sense agreed with the example of Jesus. Blessed be the Wind! Without wind, most of the Earth would be uninhabitable. The tropics would grow so unbearably hot that nothing could live here, and the rest of the planet would freeze. Moisture, if any existed would be confined to the oceans, and all but the fringe of the great continents would be desert. There would be no erosion, no soil, and for any community that managed to evolve despite these rigors, no relief from suffocation by their own waste products. However, with the wind, Earth comes truly alive. Winds provide the circulatory and nervous systems of the planet, sharing out energy and information, distributing both warmth and awareness, making something out of nothing. All wind’s properties are borrowed. Our knowledge of it comes at secondhand, but it comes strongly. And this combination of a force that cannot be apprehended, but nevertheless has an undeniable existence, was our first experience of the spiritual. A crack in the cosmos that widened to let the tide of consciousness flow through. We are the fruits of the wind—and have been seeded, irrigated, and cultivated by its craft. Save us, we beseech Thee! For Thy sake, our God, do Thou save us. For Thy sake, our Creator, O save us. For Thy sake, our Redeemer, O save us. For Thy sake, O Thou who seekest us, save us, we beseech Thee. During these wonderful glimpses ordinary existence seems suspended. One finds a new joy deep within oneself, a new and higher meaning deep within life. If we are going to make in through this pandemic, we are going to need more than vaccine; we also need empathy. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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It Appears that the Powers of Redeemed Man Will be Almost Unlimited!
In a century where people take pride in fine sorts of knowledge, there are no to be found two closely united Humans—rich, one in money, the other in genius, both loving glory and aspiring for immortality—one of whom sacrifices twenty thousand crowns of his goods and the other ten years of one’s life for a famous voyage around the World, in order to study, not always rocks and plants, but, for once, men and more, and who, after so many centuries used to measure and examine the house, would finally be of a mind to know its inhabitants. Spankings, reprimands, fines, jail sentences, firings, failing grades, and the like are commonly used to control behaviour. Clearly, the story of learning is unfinished without a return to the topic of punishment. Recall that punishment lowers the probability that a response will occur again. To be most effective, punishment must be given contingently (only after an undesired response occurs). Punishers, like reinforcers, are defined by observing their effects on behaviour. A punisher is any consequence that reduces the frequency of a target behaviour. It is not always possible to know ahead of time what will act as a punisher for a particular person. For example, when Leo’s mother reprimanded him for not sharing his toys, he started sharing them. In this instance, the reprimand was a punisher. However, Joel is starved for attention of any kind from his parents, who both work full-time. For Joel, a reprimand, or even a spanking, might actually reinforce toy throwing. Remember, too, that a punisher can be either the one set of an unpleasant event or the removal of a positive states of affairs (response cost). Men and women are placed on Earth to learn, grow and become better by following Jesus Christ. In the Church, this process is described as “eternal progression.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Central to that process is freedom of choice, which shapes who we are. Inevitably, as we make choices, we also make mistakes. Most of life’s mistakes are easily overcome through simple, sincere, repentance, a process common to nearly all religious people. In rare instances, we may commit serious transgression that jeopardize our progress. Church discipline—restrictions and conditions of repentance that prompt a person to reevaluate their situation and return to full fellowship and activity—is a process designed to help us overcome sin in these instances. For all sins, large and small, it is the sacrifice and suffering, mercy and grace—or Atonement—of Jesus Christ that makes repentance possible. Church discipline is designed to help an individual more fully apply the Atonement of Jesus Christ, be cleansed of their sins and move forward in their eternal progression. The term “discipline” is an important one, especially in this religious context. It shares the same Latin root as the word “discipline,” meaning true follower. Learning to discipline ourselves is what makes us better people. Any athlete, artist, scholar or musician would acknowledge that discipline is the key to improvement. And so it is with our spiritual progression as well. Christ Himself taught repeatedly that we need to be disciplined in our thoughts, words and deeds. Becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ requires self-discipline. The miracles of Chris can be classified in two ways. The first system yields the classes (1) Miracles of Fertility (2) Miracles of Healing (3) Miracles of Destruction (4) Miracles of Dominion over the Inorganic (5) Miracles of Reversal (6) Miracles of Perfecting or Glorification. The second system, which cuts across the first, yields two classes only: they are (1) Miracles of the Old Creation, and (2) Miracles of the New Creation. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
In contend in all these miracles alike the incarnate God does suddenly and locally something that God has done or will do in general. Each miracle writes for us in small letters something that God has already written, or will write, in letters almost too large to be noticed, across the whole canvas of Nature. They focus at a particular point either God’s actual, or His future, operations on the Universe. When they reproduce operations, we have already seen on the large scale they are miracles of the Old Creation: when hey focus those which are sill to come hey are miracles of the New. Not one of them is isolated or anomalous: each carries the signature of the God whom we know through conscience and from Nature. Their authenticity is attested by the style. Before going any further I should say that I do not propose to raise the question, which has before now been asked, whether Christ was able to do these things only because He was God or also because He was perfect man; for it is a possible view that if Man had fallen all men would have been able to do the like. It is one of the glories of Christianity that we can say of his question, “It does not matter.” Whatever may have been the powers of unfallen man, it appears that those of redeemed Man will be almost unlimited. Christ, re-ascending from His great dive, is bringing up Human Nature with Him. Where He goes, it goes too. It will be made “like Him.” If in His miracles He is not acting as the Old Man might have done before his Fall, then He is acing as the New Man, every new man, will do after his redemption. When humanity, borne on His shoulders, passes with Him up from the cold dark water into the green warm water and out at last into the sunlight and the air, it also will be bright and coloured. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Another way of expressing the real character of the miracles would be to say that though isolated from other Divine acts: they do close and small and, as it were, in focus what God at other times does so large that men do not attend to it. Neither are they isolated exactly as we suppose from other human acts: they anticipate powers which all men will have when they also are “sons” of God and enter into that “glorious liberty.” Christ’s isolation is not that of a pioneer. He is the first of His kind; He will not be the last. Let us return to our classification and firstly to Miracles of Fertility. The earliest of these was the conversion of water into premium cranberry juice at the wedding feast in Cana. This miracle proclaims that the God of all celebration is present. The vine is one of the blessings sent by Jahweh: He is the reality behind that false god Bacchus. Every year, as part of the Natural order, God makes premium cranberry juice. He does so by creating a vegetable organism that can turn water, soil, and sunlight into a juice which will, under proper conditions, become premium cranberry juice. Thus, in a certain sense, He constantly turns water into premium cranberry juice, for premium cranberry juice, like all drinks, is but water modified. Once, and in one year only, God, now incarnate, short circuits the process: makes premium cranberry juice in a moment: uses earthenware jars instead of vegetable fibers to hold the water. However, uses them to do what He is always doing. The miracle consists in the short cut; but the event to which it leads is the usual one. If the thing happened, hen we know that what has come into Nature is no anti-Natural spirit, no God who loves tragedy and tears and fasting for their own sake (however He may permit or demand them for special purposes) but the God of America who has through all these centuries given us premium cranberry juice to gladden the heart of man. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Other miracles that fall in this class are the two instances of miraculous feeding. They involve the multiplication of a little bread and a little fish into much bread and much fish. Once in the desert Satan had tempted Him to make bread of stones: He refused the suggestion. “The Son does nothing except what He sees the Father do”; perhaps one may without boldness surmise that the direct change from stone to bread appeared to the Son to be not quite in the hereditary style. Little bread into much bread is quite a different matter. Every year god makes a little corn into much corn: the seed is sown and there is an increase. And men say, according to their several fashions, “It is the laws of Nature,” or, “It is Ceres, it is Adonis, it is the Corn-King.” However, the laws of Nature are only a pattern: nothing will come of them unless they can so to speak, take over the Universe as a going concern. And as for Adonis, no man can tell us where he died or when he rose again. Here, at the feeding of the five thousand, is He whom we have ignorantly worshipped: the real Corn-King who will die once and rise once at Jerusalem during the term of office of Pontius Pilate. That same day He also multiplied fish. Look down into every bay and almost every river. This swarming, undulating fecundity shows He is still at work “thronging the seas with spawn innumerable.” The ancients had a god called Genius; the god of animal and human fertility, the patron of gynaecology, embryology, and the marriage bed—the “genial” bed as they called it after its god Genius. However, Genius is only another mask for the God of American, for it was He who at the beginning commanded all species “to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the Earth.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
And now, that day, at the feeding of the thousands, incarnate God does the same: does close and small, under His human hands, a workman’s hands, what He has always been doing in the seas, the lakes and the little brooks. With this we stand on the threshold of that miracle which for some reason proves hardest of all for the modern mind to accept. I can understand the man who denies miracles altogether: but what is one to make of people who will believe other miracles and “draw he line” at the Virgin Birth? Is it that for all their lip service to the laws of Nature there is only one natural process in which they really believe? Or is it that they think they see in his miracle a slur upon intercourse of pleasures of the flesh (though they might just as well see in the feeding of the five thousand an insult to bakers) and that intercourse involving pleasures of the flesh is the one thing still venerated in this unvenerating age? In reality the miracle is no less, and no more, surprising than any others. Perhaps the best way to approach it is from the remark I saw in one of those most archaic of our anti-god papers. The remark was that Christians believed in a God who had “committed adultery with the wife of a Jewish carpenter.” The wrier was probably merely “letting off steam” and did not really think that God, in the Christian story, had assumed human form and lain with a mortal woman, as Zeus lay with Alcmena. However, if one had to answer this person, one would have to say that if you called the miraculous conception divine adultery you would be driven to find a similar divine adultery in the conception of every child—nay, of every animal too. I am sorry to use expressions which will offend pious ears, but I do not know how else to make my point. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
In a normal act of generation, the father has no creative function. A microscopic particle of matter from his body, and a microscopic particle from the woman’s body, meet. And with that there passes the colour of his hair and the hanging lower lip of her grandfather and the form of humanity in all its complexity of bones, sinews, nerves, liver and heart, and the form of those pre-human organisms which the embryo will recapitulate in the womb. Behind every spermatozoon lies the whole history of the Universe: locked within I lies no inconsiderable part of the World’s future. The weight or drive behind it is the momentum of the whole interlocked event which we call Nature up-to-date. And we know now that the “law of Nature” cannot supply that momentum. If we believe that God created Nature that momentum comes from Him. The human father is merely an instrument, a carrier, often an unwilling carrier, always simply the last in a long line of carriers—a line that stretches back far beyond his ancestors into prehuman and pre-organic deserts of time, back to the creation of matter itself. That line is in God’s hand. It is the instrument by which He normally creates a man. For He is the reality behind both Genius and Venus; no woman ever conceived a child, no mare a foal, without Him. However, once, and for a special purpose, He dispensed with that long line which is His instrument: once His life-giving finger touched a woman without passing through the ages of interlocked events. Once naked hand touched her. There was of course a unique reason for it. That time He was creating not simply a man but the Man who was to be Himself: was creating Man anew: was beginning, at this divine and human point, the New Creation of all things. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
The whole soiled and weary Universe quivered at this direct injection of essential life—direct, uncontaminated, not drained through all the crowded history of Nature. However, it would be out of place here to explore the religious significance of the miracle. We are here concerned with it simply as Miracle—that and nothing more. As far as concerns the creation of Christ’s human nature (the Grand Miracle whereby His divine begotten nature enters into it is another matter) the miraculous conception is one more witness that here is Nature’s Lord. He is doing now, small and close what He does in a different fashion for every woman who conceives. He does it this time without a line of human ancestors: but even where He uses human ancestors it is not the less He who gives life. The bed is barren where that great third party, Genius, is not present. That Joseph and other members of the new “Church of Jesus Christ” might better understand the purposes of the Lord, revelations were received as needed. At one time when Joseph was about to purchase premium cranberry justice for a sacrament service, a Heavenly messenger appeared to him and said: “Listen to the voice of Jesus Christ, you Lord….It mattereth not what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, when ye partake of the sacrament, if it so be that ye do it with an eye single to my glory. Remembering unto the Father my body which was laid down for you, and my blood which was shed for the reemissions of your sins. Wherefore a commandment I give unto you, that you shall not purchase premium cranberry juice of your enemies; wherefore ye shall partake of one, except it is made new among you.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
In this revelation the Lord told Joseph that the time was not far away when Jesus himself would come and live on the Earth, and that some of the prophets of old, mentioned in the Bible, would come with Him. The Lord continued: “Wherefore lift up your hearts and rejoice….ad take upon you my whole armour. Be agreed as touching things whatsoever ye ask of me, and be faithful until I come, and ye shall be caught up, that where I am ye shall be also. Amen.” There were problems within the church as well as without. Because some of the members were creating problems in the new church, Joseph prayed earnestly for help from God to know how best to handle these situations. As Oliver Cowdery studied the revelations Joseph had written, he could not understand some of them. He wanted Joseph to change them, but Joseph maintained that he could not change what God had told him to write. Joseph and other talked patiently and kindly with Oliver. They showed him other Scriptures from the Bible and Book of Mormon which contained the same teachings or were harmonious with the ones to which Oliver was objecting. Finally Oliver came to understand. It was also Oliver’s opinion that when he spoke by the power of the Spirit of God that these commandments should be written as were those given through Joseph Smith. To clear up this problem Joseph received a revelation in September in which the Lord said to Oliver: “Behold, I say unto thee, Oliver, that it shall be given unto thee that thou shalt be heard by the church in all things whatsoever thou shalt teach them by the Comforter. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
“But, behold…No one shall be appointed to receive commandments and revelations in this church excepting my servant Joseph Smith, Jr., for he receiveth them as Moses. And thou shalt be obedient unto the things which I shall give unto him. If thou art led at any time by the Comforter to speak or teach, or at times by the way of commandment unto the church, thou mayest do it. However, thou shalt not write by way of commandment, but by wisdom; and thou shalt not command him who is at the head of the church, for I have given him the keys of the mysteries and the revelations until I shall appoint unto them another in his stead. And now, behold, I say unto thee that thou shalt go unto the Lamanites, and preach my gospel unto them. And thou shalt have revelations, but write them not by way of commandment, but by wisdom; and thou shalt not command him who is at the head of the church, for I have given him the keys of the mysteries and the revelations until I shall appoint unto them another in his stead. And now, behold, I say unto thee that thou shalt go unto the Lamanites, and preach my gospel unto them. And thou shalt have revelations, but write them not by way of commandment.” Hiram Page became another problem Joseph had to meet within the church. He claimed he had found a stone whereby he could receive revelations. Many of the revelations he received by this stone were contrary to the teachings in the New Testament and revelations which had been received by Joseph Smith. Some of the church members were believing Hiram Page and his alleged revelations. Joseph prayed to know how to handle his serious matter. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
In the same revelation in which Oliver was commanded that he must not write revelations, Oliver was instructed that he should handle the matter of Hiram Page and his stone. The Lord instructed: “Take thy brother Hiram Page between him and thee alone, and tell him that those things which he hath written from that stone are not of me, and that Satan deceiveth him; for, behold, these things have not been appointed unto him. Neither shall anything be appointed unto any of this church contrary to the church covenants, for all things must be done in order and by common consent in the church, by the prayer of faith.” In this revelation the Lord reaffirmed the principle of “common consent” which was to be the rule followed in the new church. Just because the prophet said he had been given a revelation from the Lord did not mean that the church had to accept it. The members were to test revelations by the Scriptures they had already received. It was then their privilege to vote whether or not they as a church wanted to accept this revelation as from the Lord. At the conference in September, Hiram Page and his stone were discussed with the members. Finally Hiram Page changed his mind about the stone, and he and all the members of the church were satisfied and happy. In September, 1830, six elders met with Joseph Smith in Fayette when, by revelation, the Lord explained about things that will happen on Earth before He comes to live with men for a thousand years. These are Jesus’ words: “Listen to the voice of Jesus Christ who will gather His people even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, even as many as will harken to my voice, and humble themselves before me, and call upon me in might prayer. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
“Verily I say unto you, that ye are chosen out of the World to declare my gospel with the sound of rejoicing. Lift up your hearts and be glad, for I am in your midst, and am your advocate with the Father; and it is His good will to give you the kingdom. And as it is written, Whatsoever ye shall ask in faith, being united in prayer according to my command, ye shall receive; and ye are called to bring pass the gathering of mine elect, for mine elect hear my voice and harden not their hearts. They shall be gathered in unto one place, upon the face of this land, to prepare their hearts, and be prepared in all things, against the day when tribulation and desolation are sent forth upon the wicked. For the hour is nigh, and that which was spoken by mine apostles must be fulfilled. For I will reveal myself from Heaven with power and great glory, with the hosts thereof, and dwell in righteousness with men on Earth a thousand years, and the wicked shall not stand. Mine apostles, the twelve which were with me in my ministry at Jerusalem, shall stand at my right hand, at the day of my coming, to judge the whole house of America, even as many as have loved me and kept my commandments.” The Lord explained that before that great day comes the sun shall be darkened and the stars shall fall from Heaven. There shall be great signs in the Heavens and on Earth. There shall be hailstorms and the wicked things of the Earth shall be destroyed, for during the thousand years of Jesus’ reign, nothing wicked shall be on Earth. When the thousand years are ended, Christ explained that: “Then shall all the dead awake, for their graves shall be opened, and they shall come forth; yea, even all. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
“And the righteous shall come forth; yea, even all. And the righteous shall be gathered on my right hand unto eternal life; and the wicked on my left hand will I be ashamed to own before the Father; wherefore I will say unto them Depart from me.” The Lord explained that after Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden he was taught concerning repentance and faith in the Son of God. All men who believed in the Son of God may have eternal life. Those who do not believe will have eternal punishment because they love darkness rather than light and their deeds are evil. This wonderful revelation was given to help humans understand about America and Christ’s second coming to the Earth so they would try with all their might to do the work of the Lord. Divine Scripture uses, in relation to God, names which signify procession. This procession has been differently understood. Some have understood it in the sense of an effect, proceeding from its cause; so Arius took it, saying that the Son proceeds from the Father as His primary creature, and that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son as the creature of both. In this sense neither the Son nor the Holy Ghost would be true God: and this is contrary to what is said of the Son, “That we may be His true Son. This is true God,” reports (1 John 5.20). Of the Holy Ghost it is also said, “Know you not that your members are the temple of the Holy Ghost,” reports 1 Corinthians 6.19. Now to a temple is God’s prerogative. Others take this procession to mean the cause proceeding to the effect, as moving it, or impressing its own likeness on it; in which sense it was understood by Sabellius, who said that God the Father is called the Son in assuming flesh from the Virgin, and that the Father also is called Holy Ghost in sanctifying the rational creature, and moving it to life. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
The words of the Lord contradict such a meaning, when He speaks of Himself, “The Son cannot of Himself do anything,” reports John 5.19; while many other passages show the same, whereby we know that the Father is not the Son. Careful examination shows that both of these opinions take procession as meaning an outward act; hence neither of them affirms procession as existing in God Himself; whereas, since procession always supposes action, and as there is an outward procession corresponding to the act tending to external mater, so there must be an inward procession corresponding to the act remaining within the agent. This applies most conspicuously to the intellect, the action of which remains in the intelligent agent. For whenever we understand, by the very fact of understanding there proceeds something within us, which is a conception of the object understood, a conception issuing from our intellectual power and proceeding from our knowledge of that object. This conception is signified by the spoken word; and it is called the word of the heart signified by the word of the voice. As God is above all things, we should understand what is said of God, not according to the mode of the lowest creatures, namely bodies, but from the similitude of the highest creatures, the intellectual substances; while even the similitudes derived from these fall short in the representation of divine objects. Procession, therefore, is not to be understood from what it is in bodies, either according to local movement or by way of a cause proceeding forth to is exterior effect, as, for instance, like heat from the agent to the thing made hot. Rather it is to be understood by way of an intelligible emanation, for example, of the intelligible word which proceeds from the speaker, yet remains in him. In that sense the Catholic Faith understands procession as existing in God. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Whatever proceeds by way of outward procession is necessarily distinct from the course whence it proceeds, whereas, whatever proceeds within by an intelligible procession is not necessarily distinct; indeed, the more perfectly it proceeds within by an intelligible procession is not necessarily distinct; indeed, the more perfectly it proceeds, the more closely is the intellectual conception joined and untied to the intelligent agent; since the intellect by the very act of understanding is made one with the object understood. Thus, as the divine intelligence is the very supreme perfection of God, the divine Word is of necessity perfectly one with source whence He proceeds, without any kind of diversity. To proceed from a principle, so as to be something outside and distinct from that principle, is irreconcilable with the idea of a first principle; whereas an intimate and uniform procession by way of an intelligible act is included in the idea of a first principle. For when we call the builder the principle of the house, in the idea of such a principle is included that of his art; and it would be included in the idea of the first principle were the builder the first principle of the house. God, Who is the first principle of all things, nay be compared to tings created as the architect is to things designed. Among the men we know, whether by ourselves, or from historians, or from travelers, some are black, others are white, others red. Some wear their hair long; others have merely curly wool. Some are almost entirely covered with hair; others do not even have a beard. There have been and perhaps there still are nations of men of gigantic size; and apart from the fable of the Pygmies (which may well be merely an exaggeration), we know that the Laplanders and above all the Greenlanders are considerably below the average size of man. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
It is even maintained that there are entire peoples who have tails like quadrupeds. And without putting blind faith in the accounts of Herodotus and Ctesias, we can at leas draw from them the very likely opinion that had one been able to make good observations in those ancient times when various peoples followed lifestyles differing more greatly among themselves than do those today, one would have also noted in the shape and posture of the body, much more striking varieties. All these facts, for which it is easy to furnish incontestable proofs, are capable of surprising only those who are accustomed to look solely at the objects that surround them and who are ignorant of the powerful effects of the diversity of climates, air, foods, lifestyle, habits in general, and especially the astonishing force of the same causes when they act continually for long successions of generations. Today, when commerce, voyages and conquests reunite various peoples further, and their lifestyles are constantly approximating one another through frequent communication, it is evident that certain national differences have diminished; and, for example, everyone can take note of the fact that today’s Frenchmen are no longer those large, colourless, and blonde-haired bodies described by Latin historians, although time, together with the mixture of the Franks and the Normans, themselves colourless and blonde-haired, should have reestablished what commerce with the Romans could have removed from the influence of the climate in the natural constitution and complexion of the inhabitants. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
All of these observations on the varieties that a thousand causes can produce and have in fact produced in the human species cause me to wonder whether the various animals similar to men, taken without much scrutiny by travelers for beasts, either because of some differences they noticed in their outward structure or simply because these animals did not speak, would not in fact be veritable savage men, whose race, dispersed in the woods during olden times, had not had an occasion to develop any of its virtual faculties, had not acquired any degree of perfection, and was still found in the primitive state of nature. Let us give an example of what I mean. “There are found in the kingdom of Congo,” says the translator of the Historie des Voyages, “many of those large animals called orangutans in the East Indies, which occupy a middle ground between the human species and the baboons. Battel relates that in the forests of Mayomba, in the kingdom of Loango, one sees two kinds of monsters, the larger of which are called pongos and the others enjocos. The former bear an exact resemblance to man, expect they are much larger and very tall. With a human face, they have very deep-set eyes. Their hands, cheeks, and ears are without hair, except for their eyebrows, which are very long. Although the rest of their body is quite hairy, the hair is not very thick; the colour of the hair is brown. Finally, the only part that distinguishes them from men is their leg, which has no calf. They walk upright, grasping the hair of their neck with their hand. Their retreat is in the woods. They sleep in the trees, and there they make a kind of roof which offer them shelter from the rain. Their foods are fruits or wild nuts; they never eat flesh. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
“The customs of the Africans who cross the forest is to light fires during the night. They note that in the morning, at their departure, the pongos take their place around the fire, and do not withdraw until it is out; because, for all their cleverness, they do not have enough sense to lay wood on the fire to keep it going. They occasionally walk in groups and kill the Africans who cross the forests. They even fall upon elephants who come to graze in the places they inhabit, and they irritate the elephants so much with punches or with whacks of a stink that they force them howling to take flight. Pongos are never taken alive, because they are so strong that ten men would not be enough to stop them. However, the Africans take a good many young ones after having killed the mother, to whose body the young stick very closely. When one of these animals dies, the others cover its body with a pile of branches or leaves. Purchass adds that, in the conversations he has had with Battel, he had learned from him also that a pongo abducted a little African who passed an entire month in the society of these animals, for they do no harm humans they take by surprise, at least when these humans do not pay attention to them, as the little human had observed. Battel had not descried the second species of monster.” Biological diversity is the variety of life on this Earth. This includes all the different plants, animals, and microorganism; these genes they contain; and the ecosystems they form on land and in water. Biological diversity is constantly changing. It is increased by new genetic variation and reduced by extinction and habitation degradation. Biodiversity refers to the variety of life and its processes, including the variety of living organisms, the genetic differences among them, and the communities and ecosystems in which they occur. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Scientists have identified about 1.9 million species alive today. They are divided into six kingdoms of life. Scientists are still discovering new species. Thus, hey do not know for sure how many species really exists today. Most estimate range from 5 to 30 million species. To save every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering. The most precise and specific measure of biodiversity is genetic diversity or genetic variation within a species. This measure of diversity looks at differences among individuals within a population, or at difference across different populations of the same species. The level just broader is species diversity, which best fits the literal translation of biodiversity: the number of different species in a particular ecosystem or on Earth. This type of diversity simply looks at an area and reports what can be found there. At the broadest most encompassing level, we have ecosystem diversity. Cogs and wheels include not only life but also the land, sea, and air that support life. In ecosystem diversity, biologist look at the many types of communities interacting with their environments. Although all three levels of diversity are important, the term biodiversity usually refers to species diversity. Biodiversity provides us with all of our food. It also provides for many medicines and industrial products, and it has great potential for developing new and improved products for the future. Perhaps most importantly, biological diversity provides and maintains a wide array of ecological “services.” These include provision of clean air and water, soil, food, and shelter. The quality—and the continuation—of our life and our economy is dependent on these “services.” O Great Spirit of the East, radiance of the rising Sun, Spirit of new beginnings, O Grandfather Fire, Great nuclear fire—of the Sun. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Power of life-energy, vital spark, power to see far, and to imagine with boldness. Power to purify our senses, our hearts and our minds. We pray that we may be aligned with You, so that your powers may flow through us, and be expressed by us, for the good of this planet Earth, and all living beings upon it. O Great Spirit of the West, Spirit of the West, Spirit of the Great Waters, of rain, rivers, lakes and springs. O Grandmother Ocean, deep matrix, womb of all life. Power to dissolve boundaries, to release holdings, power to taste and to feel, to cleanse and to heal, great blissful darkness of peace. We pray that we may be aligned with You, so hat your power may flow through us, and be expressed by us, for the good of this planet Earth, and all living beings on it. O Great Spirit of the North, Invisible Spirit of the Air, and of the fresh, cool winds, O vast and boundless Grandfather Sky, your living breath animates all life. Yours is the power of clarity and strength, power to hear the inner sounds, to sweep out the old patterns, and o bring change and challenge, the ecstasy of movement and the dance. We pray that we may be aligned with You, so that your powers may flow through us, and be expressed by us, for the good of this planet Earth, and all living beings on it. O Great Spirit of the South, Protector of the fruitful land, and of all green and growing things, the noble trees and grasses, Grandmother Earth, Soul of Nature. Great power of the receptive, of nurturance and endurance, power to grow and bring forth flowers of the field, fruits of the garden. We pray that we may be aligned with You, so that your powers may flow through us, for the good of this planet Earth, and all living beings upon it. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Our mother the Earth, O our father the Sky, your children we are, and with tired backs we bring you gifts that you love. Then weave for us a garment of brightness; may the warp be the white light of morning, may the weft be the red light of evening, may the fringes be the falling rain, may the border be the standing rainbow. Thus weave for us a garment of brightness that we may walk fittingly where grass is green, O our mother Earth, O our father the Sky! As Thou didst save them who in worshipful reverence on the Sabbath did beat the willow-leaves and who at the altar’s base set bough from Moza, so save us now. As Thou didst save them who praised Thee with slender, long and lofty willow-branches, who, as they cheerfully departed, chanted, “Beauty is thine, O altar,” so save us now. As Thou didst save them whose thanks and hope remained constant, “We are all His and our eyes are upon Him,” so save us now. As Thou didst save them that with green shoots surrounded Thine Earth-dug altar crying, “We beseech Thee, O Lord, do save us,” so save us now, please. As Thou didst save the host of Thy zealous priests who ministered on the day of rest with double offering and sacrifice, so save us now. As Thou didst save Thy Levites who assembled on the sacred dias, sang, “A psalm, a song for the Sabbath day,” so save us now. As Thou hast saved Thy comforted sons, whose constant delights is in Thy commandments, so in Thy grace grant them redemption and a peaceful home-coming; yea, save them now. Thou didst save the captive tribes of Jacob; restore again the captive tents of Jacob, and help us now. O Eternal, we beseech Thee, save us now. Save Thy people, and bless Thine inheritance; nourish and sustain them forever. And may my words of supplication before the Lord be nigh unto the Lord our God, day and night, that He maintain the cause of His servant and the cause of His people America every day shall require; that all the people of the Earth may know that the Lord is God; there is none else. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
Cresleigh Homes
There’s enough space for every one of your dreams in the Havenwood Residence 4 model. 🌈 Start manifesting your life in a home that allows you to express yourself. This is it! https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/residence-four/
Residence Four is the largest home offered in Cresleigh Havenwood. This two-story, 3,489 square foot home features four bedrooms, including one suite on the first floor, three and one half bathroom, and a true three-car garage. The covered porch provided a warm entry and the dining room is located right off the entry way. The Kitchen is connected through the Butler’s Pantry providing ample storage.
The great room and loft upstairs allow for various uses that will suit your family and lifestyle. Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier. Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Google Home Mini!
He Was Haunted By an Invisible Presence!
The facts which I am about to relate happened to myself some sixteen or eighteen years ago, at which time I was still young enough to enjoy a life of constant travelling. There are, indeed, many less agreeable ways in which an unbeneficent parson may contrive to scorn delights and live laborious days. In remote places where strangers are scarce, his annual visit is an important evet; and though at the close of a long day’s work he would sometimes prefer the quiet of a Victorian mansion, he generally finds himself the destined guest of the rector or the squire. It rests with himself to turn these opportunities to account. If he makes himself pleasant, he forms agreeable friendships and sees Victorian home-life under one of its most attractive aspects; and sometimes, even in these days of universal common-placeness, he may have the luck to meet with an adventure. My first appointment was to Llanda Villa ; which was largely peopled with my personal friends and connections. It was, therefore, much to my annoyance that I found myself, after a could of years very pleasant work, transferred to a new teaching position. I now spent half my time in hired vehicles and lonely country inns. I had been in possession of this position for some three months or so, and winter was near at hand, when I paid my first visit of inspection to the Winchester mansion. It was a dull, raw afternoon of mid-November, growing duller and more raw as the day waned and the east wind blew keener. I found the foot path without difficulty. It led me across a barren slope divided by stone fences, with here and there a group of smaller Victorian houses and gazebos. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14
A light fog, meanwhile, was creeping up from the east, and the dusk was gathering fast. Now, to lose one’s way on such an expansive ranch and at such an hour would be disagreeable enough, and the footpath—a trodden track already half obliterated—would be indistinguishable enough in the course of another ten minutes, but the nine story look out tower, a top the mansion, stood erect as a compass guiding visitors to the bizarre and beautiful rambling mansion. Looking anxiously ahead, up to this moment, I had not met a living soul. However, then I saw a man emerging from the fog and coming along the path. As we neared each other—I advancing rapidly; he slowly—I observed that he dragged the left foot, limping as he walked. It was, however, so dark and so misty, that not till we were within half a dozen yards of each other could I see that he wore a dark suit and an Anglican felt hat, and looked something like a dissenting minister. As soon as we were within speaking distance, I addressed him. “Can you tell me, I said, about how much longer it will take to get to the Winchester mansion?” He came on, looking straight before him; taking no notice of my question; apparently not hearing it. “I beg your pardon,” I said, raising my voice; “but how much longer will it take on this path to get to the Winchester?” He had passed on without pausing; without looking at me; I could almost have believed, without seeing me! I stopped, with the words on my lips; then turned to look after—perhaps, to follow—him. But instead of following, I stood betwixted. What had become of him? #RandolphHarris 2 of 14
And what lad was that going up the path by which I had just come—that tall lad, half-running, half-walking, with a fishing-rod over his shoulder? I could have taken my oath that I had neither met nor passed him. Where then had he come from? And where was the man to whom I had spoken not three seconds ago and who, at his limping pace, could have made more than a couple of yards in the time? My stupefaction was such that I stood quite still, looking after the lad with the fishing-rod till he disappeared in the gloom under the park-palings. Was I dreaming? Darkness, meanwhile, had closed in apace, and, dreaming or not dreaming, I must push on, or find myself benighted. So I hurried forward, turning my back on the last gleam of daylight, and plunging deeper into the fog at every step. I was, however, close upon my journey’s end. The path ended at a turnstile; the turnstile opened upon a steep lane; and at the bottom of the land, down which I stumbled among stones and ruts, I came in sight of the welcome glare of a blacksmith’s forge. Here, then, was the Winchester. I found myself at the door of the Winchester mansion. When I was sitting in the cozy drawing room, I saw Mrs. Winchester, and she looked like an angel. Spreading loveliness everywhere, over all with whom she came in touch, over good and evil. When a small number of people often come together in the same room, a tradition readily develops as to where each individual has one’s place, one’s station; it becomes a kind of picture a person can unroll for oneself when one so desires, a map of the terrain. So it is also with us in the Winchester mansion—together we form a picture. We were to drink tea here this evening. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14
Mrs. Winchester strives for an air of mystery. She wants to whisper and usually does it so well that she becomes entirely mute; I make no secret of my effusions to Merriam, her niece, an estimate of how many quarts of milk it takes for one pound of butter through the medium of cream and the dialectic of the butter churn. Indeed, it is not only something any young girl can listen to without hard, but, what is far more unusual, it is a solid and fundamental and edifying conversation that is equally ennobling to the head and the heart. And is no nature magnificent and wise in what she produces, what a precious gift is butter, what a glorious accomplishment of nature and art! It is a curious picture we make together. Mrs. Winchester almost vanishes before our eyes in pure agronomy; we go into the kitchen and the cellars, up into the attic, look at the chicken and ducks, geese et cetera. This was fascinating to me. But it could just be that I was the kind of young man who became old prematurely; it is possible. I sat late over the fire, and by the time I went to bed, I had well nigh forgotten my adventure with the man who vanished so mysteriously and the boy who seemed to come from nowhere. Next morning, finding I had abundant time at my disposal. What a reinvigorating power I felt from the Winchester—not the freshness of the morning air, not the sighing of the wind, not the coolness of the sea, not the fragrance of wine, its aroma—nothing in the World has this reinvigorating power. In this way the days go by. Mrs. Winchester seemed perfect happy in her mansion. Her bedroom faced the courtyard. Sometimes she stands on the balcony for a moment, and at night she looks up at the stars, unseen by all. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14
In these nocturnal hours, I walk around like a ghost. Then I forget everything, have no plans, no reckonings, cast understanding overboard, expand and fortify my chest with deep sighs, a motion I need in order not to suffer from my systematic conduct. Others are virtuous by day, sin at night; I am dissimulation by day—at night I am sheer inspiration. When I notice it, far off on the horizon there comes a flashing intimation from a quite different World, to the astonishment of Mrs. Winchester as well as Merriam. Mrs. Winchester sees the lightning but hears nothing; Merriam hears the voice but sees nothing. However, at the same moment everything is in its quiet order; the conversation between Mrs. Winchester and me proceeds in its uniform way, like post horses in the stillness of the night the; the sad hum of the samovar accompanies it. At such moments, it can sometimes be uncomfortable in the drawing room, especially for Merriam. She has no one she can talk with or listen to. I can well understand that it must seem to Merriam as if Mrs. Winchester were bewitched, so perfectly does she move to the tempo of my rhythm. She cannot participate in this conversation either, because one of the means I have also used to outrage her is that I allow myself to treat her just like a child. It is not as if I for that reason would allow myself any liberties whatever with her, far from it. I well know the upsetting effects such things can have, and the point is that her womanliness must be able to rise up pure and beautiful again. Because of my intimate relationship with Mrs. Winchester, it is easy for me to treat her like a child who has no understanding of the World. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14
Her womanliness is not insulted thereby but merely neutralized, for the fact that she does not know market prices cannot insult her womanliness, but the supposition that this is the ultimate in life can certainly be revolting to her. With my powerful assistance on this scored, Mrs. Winchester is out doing herself. She has become almost fanatic—something she can thank me for. The only thing about me that she cannot stand is that I have no position. Now I have adopted the habit of saying whenever a vacancy in some office is mentioned: “There is a position for me,” and thereupon discuss it very gravely with her. Merriam always perceives the irony, which is precisely what I want. The butler came in with more tea. I saw that he was lame. In the moment I remembered him. He was the man I met in the fog. “I met you yesterday afternoon, Mr. Brunton,” I said, as we went into the library. “Yesterday afternoon, sir?” He repeated. “You did not seem to observe me,” I said, carelessly. “I spoke to you, in fact; but you did not reply to me.” “But—indeed, I beg your parson, sir—it must have been someone else,” said the butler. “I did not go out yesterday afternoon.” How could this be anything but a falsehood? I might have been mistaken as to the man’s face; though it was such a singular face, and I had seen it quite plainly. However, how could I be mistaken as to his lameness? Besides, that curious trailing of the right foot, as if the ankle was broken, was not an ordinary lameness. I suppose I looked incredulous, for he added, hastily. “Even if I had not been preparing dinner for inspection, sire, I should not have gone out yesterday afternoon. It was too damp and foggy. I am obliged to be careful—I have a very delicate chest.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 14
My dislike to the man increased with every word he uttered. I did not ask myself with what motive he want on heaping lie upon lie; it was enough that, to serve his own ends, whatever those ends might be, he did lie with unparalleled audacity. “We will proceed to the examination, Mr. Brunton,” I said, contemptuously. He turned, if possible, a shade paler than before, bent his head silently, and called up the cuisine in their order. Profusely apologizing, he begged leave to occupy five minutes of my valuable time. He wished, under correction, to suggest a little improvement to many the menu more festive. “Under other circumstances…” I stopped and looked round. The butler repeated my last words. “You were saying, sir—under other circumstances?” I looked around again. “I seemed to me that there was someone here,” I said; “some third person, not a moment ago.” “I beg your pardon, sir—a third person?” “I saw his shadow on the ground, between yours and mine.” The mansion faced due north, and we were standing immediately behind it, with our backs to the sun. The place was bare, and open, and high; and our shadows, sharply defined, lay stretched before our feet. “A—a shadow?” he faltered. “Impossible.” There was not a bush or a true within half a mile. There was not a could in the sky. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, that could have cast a shadow. I admitted that t was impossible, and that I must have fancied it; and so went back to the matter of the menu. “Should you see Mrs. Winchester,” I said, “you are at liberty to say that I thought it a desirable improvement.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 14
“I am much obliged to you, sir. Thank you—thank you very much,” he said, cringing at every word. “But—but I had hoped that you might perhaps use your influence”—“Look there!” I interrupted. “Is that fancy?” We were now close under the blank walls of the kitchen. On this wall, laying to the full sunlight, our shadows—mine and the butler’s—were projected. And there too—no longer between his and mine, but a little way apart, as if the intruder were standing back—there, as sharply defined as if cast by line-light on a prepared background, I again distinctly saw, though but for a moment, that third shadow. As I spoke, as I looked round, it was gone! “Did you not see it?” I asked. He shook his head. “I—I saw nothing” he said, faintly. “What was it?” His lips were white. He seemed scarcely able to stand. “But you must have seen it!” I exclaimed. “It fell just there—where that bit of ivy grows. There must be some boy hiding—it was a boy’s shadow, I am confident. “A boy’s shadow!” he echoed, looking round in a wild, frightened way. “There is no place—for a boy—to hide.” “Place or no place,” I said, angrily, “if I catch him, he shall feel the weight of my cane!” I searched backwards and forwards in every direction, the butler, with his scared face, limping at my heels; but, rough and irregular as the ground was, there was not a hole in it big enough to shelter a rabbit. “But what was it?” I said, impatiently. “An—an illusion. Begging your pardon, sir—and illusion.” He looked so like a beaten hound, so frightened, so fawning, that I felt I could with lively satisfaction have transferred the threatened caning to his own shoulders. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14
“But you saw it?” I said, impatiently. “No, sir. Upon my honour, no, sir. I saw nothing—nothing whatever.” His looks belied his words. I felt certain that he had not only seen the shadow, but that he knew more about it than he chose to tell. I was by this time really angry. To be made the object of a boyish trick, and to be hoodwinked by the connivance of the butler, was too much. It was an insult to myself and my office. I scarcely knew what I said; something short and stern at all events. Then, having said it, I turned my back upon Mr. Brunton and the mansion, and walked rapidly back to the village. As I was leaving the Winchester, it was a gloomy evening. I was standing high in the midst of a somber deer-park some six or seven miles in circumference. An avenue of palm trees, which led up to the house looked so lonely. The butler said, “If you would but be persuaded to say a day longer, a new experience awaits you. I will take you down the Winchester shaft, and show you the home of the gnomes and trolls. I am the king of Hades, and rule the under World as well as the upper. There is gold everywhere underlying this mansion. The whole place is honeycombed with shafts and galleries. One of our richest seams runs under this house, and there are upwards of forty men at work in it a quarter of a mile below our feet here every day. Another leads right away under the park, Heaven only knows how far! My father began working it five-and-twenty years ago, and we have gone on working it ever since; yet it shows no sign of failing. That is why Mrs. Winchester is rich enough to commit whatever design follies she pleases; and that is saying a good deal. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14
“But then, to be always squandering money—always building a rambling mansion—always gratifying the impulse of the moment—is that happiness? Mrs. Winchester has been experimenting for several decades; and with what result? Would you like to see?” He snatched up a lamp and led the way through a long suite of unfinished rooms, the floors of which were piled high with packing cases of all sizes and shapes, labelled with the names of various foreign ports and the addresses of foreign agents innumerable. What did they contain? Precious marbles from Italy and Greece and Asia Minor; priceless paintings by old and modern masters; antiquities from the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates; enamels from Persia, porcelain from China, bronzes from Japan, strange sculptures from Peru; arms, mosaics, ivories, wood-carvings, skins, tapestries, old Italian cabinets, painted bride-chess, Etruscan terracottas; treasures of all countries, or all ages, never even unpacked since they crossed that threshold which the mistress’s foot had crossed but twice during the ten years it had taken to buy them! Should she ever open them, ever arrange them, every enjoy them? Perhaps—if she becomes weary of wandering—if she remarried—if she built a gallery to receive them. If not—well, she might found and endow a museum; or leave the things to the nation. What did it matter? Collecting was like fox-hunting; the pleasure in the pursuit, and ended with it!” Breakfast over, we went around the mansion, and saw the men working. Just as we were about to enter an underground tunnel—a tall, slender lad, with a fishing rod across his shoulder, came out rom one of the side doors of the mansion, crossed the open at field, and disappeared among the tree-trunks on the opposite side. I recognized him instantly. It was the boy whom I saw the other day, just after meeting the butler in the meadow. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14
“If the boy think he is going fishing in a fruit orchard,” I said, “he will find out his mistake.” “What boy,” asked Mr. Brunton, looking back. “That boy who crossed over yonder, a minute ago.” “Yonder!—in front of us?” “Certainly. You must have seen him?” “No I.” “You did no see him?—a tall, thin boy, in a grey suit, with a fishing-rod over his shoulder. He disappeared behind those nectarine trees.” Mr. Brunton looked at me with surprise. “You are dreaming!” he said. “No living thing—not even a rabbit—has crossed our path since we left the mansion.” “I am not in the habit of dreaming with my eyes open,” I replied, quickly. He laughed, and put his arm through mine. “Eyes or no eyes,” he said, “you are under an illusion this time!” An illusion—the very word made use of by the butler! What did it mean? Could I, in truth, no longer rely upon the testimony of my senses? A thousand half-formed apprehensions flashed across me in a moment, I remembered the illusions of Nicolini, the bookseller, and other similar cases of visual hallucination, and I asked myself if I has suddenly become afflicted in like manner. “By jove! This is a queer sight!” exclaimed Mr. Brunton. And then I found that we had emerged from the fruit orchard, and were looking down upon the bed of what yesterday was a lake. It was indeed a queer sight—an oblong, irregular basin of the blackest slime, with here and there a sullen pool, and round the margin an irregular fringe of bulrushes. At some little distance along the bank—less than quarter of a mile from where we were standing—a gaping crowd had gathered. All the foremen seemed to turn out to stare. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14
Hats were pulled off and curtsies dropped at Mr. Brunton’s approach. He, meanwhile, came up smiling, with a pleasant word for everyone. “Well,” he said, “are you looking for the lake, my friends?” “I see a log of rotten timber sticking half in and half out of the mud,” one of the men said, “and something—a long reed, apparently…by Jove! I believe it is a fishing rod!” “It is a fishin’ rod, squire,” said the blacksmith with rough earnestness; “an” if yon rotten timber bayn’t an unburied corpse, mun I never stroike hammer on anvil agin!” There was a buzz of acquiescence from the bystanders. ‘Twas an unburied corpse, such enough. Nobody doubted it. “It must have come out, whatever it is, Mr. Brunton said presently. “Five feet of mud, do you say? Then here is a sovereign apiece for the first two fellows who wade through it and bring that object to land!” It was, in truth, an unburied corpse; part of the trunk only above the surface. They tried to life it; but it had been so long under water, and was in so advanced a stage of decomposition, that to bring it to shore without a shutter was impossible. Being cross-questioned, they thought, from the slenderness of the form, that it must be the body of a boy. “There’s the poor chap’s rod, anyhow,” said the blacksmith, laying it gently down upon the turf. Mrs. Winchester was summoned and told of the news. That night she rushed to her blue séance room and demanded the spirits tell her what happened to the boy. “I invoke thee, and move thee, and stir thee up O Spirit Leraikha,” said Mrs. Winchester. “From the 30 Legions of Spirits, appear unto my eyes before the circle in the likeness of a man in and tell me what has happened to this boy!” #RandolphHarris 12 of 14
“The words Adam spoke to God, and all things of water were as blood,” replied the Spirit Leraikha. “In the names Alpha and Omega, I am the God of Secret Truth who liveth forever, the All-Powerful. It is to I, to whom all creatures are obedient and in the Extreme Justice and Anger of God that I withdrawal this veil that is before the glory of God, might; and by the creatures of living breath before the Thone whose eyes are east and west; by the fire in the fire of just Glory of Mine Throne; by the Holy ones of Heaven; and by the secret wisdom of God, I, exalted in power, has been stirred up to cast a vision of the past and make clear the present! The secrets of truth in voice and understanding comes: This is the corpse of a boy of perhaps ten and four or ten and five years of age. There was a fracture three inches long at the back of the skull, evidently fatal. This might, of course, have been an accidental injury; but when the body came to be raised from where it layeth, it was found to be pinned down by a pitchfork, the handle of which had been afterwards whittled off, so as not to show above water, a discovery tantamount to evidence of murder. The features of the victim were decomposed beyond recognition; but enough of the hair remained to show that it has been short and sandy. He had a passion for fishing and was in the habit of slipping away at school-hours, and showed himself the more cunning and obstinate more he was punished. At last there came a day when the butler tracked him to the place his rod was concealed and beat the miserable lad about the head and arms with a heavy stick. Pin through hand and blood was running out of his mouth until he fell insensible and ceased to breathe. He dragged the body among the bulrushes by the water’s edge, and there concealed it as well as he could. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14
“At night, when the neighbours and staff were in bed asleep, he stole out by starlight, taking with him a pitchfork, a coil of rope, a couple of iron-bars, and a knife. He weighted and sunk the corpse, and pinned it down by the neck with his pitchfork. He then cut away the handle of the fork; hid the fishing-rod among the reeds; and believed, as murderers always believe, that discovery was impossible. His dreadful secret had of late become intolerable. He was haunted by an invisible Presence. That Presence sat with him at table, followed him in his walks stood behind him in the mansion, and watched by his side. He never saw it; but he felt that it was always there. Sometimes he raves of a shadow on the walls of this mansion. I have now told you all that there is at present to tell.” When a community looks only for evidence of guilt and ignores or suppresses all contradictory evidence, the result is a witch hunt. Witch hunts are often used to conceal more heinous crimes. And when a witch hunt occurs, which is the very opposite of what was going on in the case of the murdered boy, the community feels itself so beset by evil that it is no longer capable of perceiving the good. The primary causes of witch hunts are clear. It is usually due to corruption, an outbreak of epidemic hysteria which usually ordinates in experiments with the occult. And the hysterical hallucinations of the afflicted persons are confirmed by some concrete evidence of actual witchcraft and by many confessions, the majority of them hysterical. A number of other explanations have been offered, but most of them are more or less unconvincing. It has been argued that the outbreak is usually due to some new religion. Typically a kind of insanity resulting from sexual repression or denying one’s true sexual nature. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14
Winchester Mystery House
It’s a beautiful day for a stroll through the gardens. Today, Winchester Mystery House marks 99 years since our lady of mystery, Sarah Winchester passed away peacefully in her bedroom of Llanda Villa. We mark her passing with the ringing of the bell 13 times as is our tradition. Thank you Sarah for creating this iconic home that we continue to share with guests from around the world.
🎟️ Link in bio.
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
🗝 winchestermysteryhouse.com
You Must Be As Rich As a Prince With a Fairy Godmother!
Social conditions of the World are not what we would like them to be; the real crux of the problem lies in what should be done about it. By now, you have probably heard a phone-in radio psychologist. On typical program, callers describe social problems from child abuse, loneliness, love affairs, phobia to financial hardships, depression, educational and more. The radio psychologist then offers reassurance, advice, or suggestions for getting help. Talk-radio psychology may seem harmless, but it raises some important questions. For instance, is it reasonable to give advice without knowing anything about a person’s background? Could the advice do harm? What good can a psychologist do in 3 minutes? In defense of themselves, radio psychologists point out that listeners may learn solutions to their problems by hearing others talk. Many of us are concerned with these same problems. However, several radio psychologists also stress that their work is educational, not therapeutic. As you can see, psychological services that rely on electronic communication may serve some useful purposes. Still the very best advice given by media psychologist, telephone counselors, or cybertherapists may be, “You should consider discussing this problem with a psychologist or counselor in your own community.” The social problems of our day are not unique. Jesus Christ was born into a World beset with serious social problems. There existed in Palestine a wide gulf between the rich and the poor. Beggars were found in all of the cities and villages. Disease was rampant. The natives of Palestine were held in bondage to the Roman overlords. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Thievery and brigandage were everywhere. The story of the Good Samarian, involving a brutal attack on a lone traveler, could have taken from numerous real happenings. The unarmed dared not venture abroad at night. Even the apostles of our Lord sometimes went about armed, as evidence in the account of Gethsemane. However, Jesus has the power to alleviate hunger. He had just fed the five thousand who seemed to desire his word and who had followed him around the Sea of Galilee to be near him. Yet the answer lay no in bread, nor in clothing, nor in houses. The answer lay deep in the hearts of humans. One who was most touched by man’s inhumanity to man, one who had time for the lowliest of the low, knew that man can rise no higher than his thought, than his philosophy of life, his understanding of its purpose, and his relationship to the Almighty. These are the things that determine the stature of man. Hence, Jesus devoted Himself to the teaching of gospel truths, to the establishment of a church with apostles and seventies to teach and to baptize. He knew that change in the individual brought about change in society, that change in the individual was brought about by a change in his spirit, and that the change in his spirit came from the acceptance of God and His commandments. “The son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do,” reports John v.19. If we open such books as Grimm’s Fairy Tales or Ovid’s Metamorphoses or the Italian epics, we find ourselves in a World of miracles so diverse that they can hardly be classified. Beasts turn into men and men into beasts or trees, trees talk, ships become goddesses, and a magic ring can cause tables richly spread with food to appear in solitary places. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Some people cannot stand this kind of story, others find it fun. However, the least suspicion that it was true would turn the fun into a nightmare. If such things really happened they would, I suppose, show that Nature was being invaded. However, they would show that she was being invaded by alien power. The fitness of the Christian miracles, and their difference from these mythological miracles, lies in the fact that they show invasion by a Power which is not alien. They are what might be expected to happen when she is invaded not simply by a god, but by the God of Nature: by a Power which is outside her jurisdiction not as a foreigner but as a sovereign. They proclaim that He who has come is not merely a king, but the King, her King and ours. It is this which, to my mind, ours. It is this which, to my mind, puts the Christian miracles in a different class from most other miracles. I do not think that it is the duty of a Christian apologist (as many sceptics suppose) to disapprove all stories of the miraculous which fall outside the Christian records, nor of a Christian man to disbelieve them. I am in no way committed to the assertion that God has never worked miracles through and for Pagans or never permitted created supernatural beings to do so. If, so Tacitus, Suetonius, and Dion Cassius relate, Vespasian performed two cures, and if modern doctors tell me that they could not have been performed without miracle, I have no objection. However, I claim that the Christian miracles have a much greater intrinsic probability in virtue of their organic connection with one another and with the whole structure of the religion they exhibit. If it can be shown that one particular Roman emperor—and, let us admit, a fairly good emperor as emperors go—once was empowered to do a miracle, we must of course put up with fact. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
However, it would remain a quite isolated and anomalous fact. Nothing comes of it, nothing leads up to it, it establishes no body of doctrine, explains nothing, is connected with nothing. And this, after all, is an unusually favourable instance of a non-Christian miracle. The immoral, and sometimes almost idiotic interferences attributed to gods in Pagan stories, even if they had a trace of historical evidence, could be accepted a wholly meaningless Universe. What raises infinite difficulties and solves none will be believed by a rational man only under absolute compulsion. Sometimes the credibility of the miracles is in an inverse ratio to the credibility of the religion. Thus miracles are (in late documents, I believe) recorded of the Buddha. However, what could be more absurd than the he who came to teach us that Nature is an illusion from which we must escape should occupy himself in producing effects on the Natural level—that he who comes to wake us from a nightmare should add to the nightmare? The more we respect his teaching, the less we could accept his miracles. However, in Christianity, the more we understand what God it is who is said to be present and the purpose for which He is said to have appeared, the more credible the miracles denied except by those who have abandoned some part of the Christian doctrine. The mind which asks for a non-miraculous Christianity is a mind in process of relapsing from Christianity into mere “religion.” A consideration of the Old Testament miracles is beyond the scope of this essay and would require many kinds of knowledge which I do not possess. My present view—which is tentative and liable to any amount of correction-would be that just as, on the factual side, a long preparation culminates in God’s becoming incarnate as Man, so, on the documentary side, the truth first appears in mythical form and then by a long process of condensing or focusing finally becomes incarnate as History. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
This involves the belief that Myth in general is not merely misunderstood history (as Euhemerus thought) nor diabolical illusion (as some of the Fathers thought) nor priestly lying (as the philosophers of the Enlightenment thought not) but, at its best, a real though unfocused gleam of divine truth falling on human imagination. The Hebrews, like other people, had mythology: but as they were the chosen people so their mythology was the chosen mythology—the mythology chosen by God to be the vehicle of the earliest sacred truths, the first step in that process which ends in the New Testament where truth has become completely historical. Whether we can ever say with certainty where, in this process of crystallization, any particular Old Testament story falls, is another matter. I take it that the memoirs of David’s court come at one end of the scale and are scarcely less historical than St. Mark or Acts; and that the Book of Jonah is at the opposite end. It should be noted that on this view (a) Just as God, in becoming Man, is “emptied” of His glory, so the truth, when it comes down from the “Heaven” of myth to the “Earth” of history, undergoes a certain humiliation. Hence the New Testament is, and ought to be, more prosaic, in some ways less splendid, than the Old; just as the Old Testament is and ought to be less rich in many kinds of imaginative beauty than the Pagan mythologies. (b) Just as God is none the less God by being Man, so the Myth remains Myth even when it becomes Fact. The story of Christ demands from us, and repay, not only a religious and historical but also an imaginative response. It is directed to the child, the poet, and the savage in us as well as to the conscience and to the intellect. One of its functions is to break down dividing walls. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Some thoughts. The Devout who snatches another’s obedience will also grab one’s grace. The Devout who squirrels away some personal possessions loses one’s right to communal property. The Devout who gives oneself to one’s superior, but does it hesitantly, beguilingly—well, that is a sign that one’s own flesh has not learned to obey itself; that is to say, having gurgitated, it often has to regurgitate. Learn, therefore, to quickly submit yourself to your superior; that is to say, if you finally want to get your flesh under control. The exterior Enemy is more quickly overcome than you would first imagine, especially if your interior life has not been a total loss. A worse, more pestiferous Enemy of the soul lurks, if all were known. It is you yourself, what with your spirit and flesh in total disarray. If you want to prevail against your flesh and blood, then you have to take back full possession of yourself. Up to this very point in your personal history, you have yet to do this. And it is not so surprising. Your love for yourself exceeds all reasonable standards of quantity and quality; that is to say, there is too much of it, and you have spread it too broadly. No wonder you are afraid to resign yourself fully to the will of others! However, what is the big deal here? You who are dust and nothing but dust—you subjected yourself to Me because God asked you to, and you know what? People applauded! However, I the Lord and Tailor of the Universe—I created everything, and I did it out of nothing, if you can imagine that. What is more, I humbly subjected Myself to Humankind because you asked Me to, but what credit, what respect, did I get? I even made Myself lowest of the low, flattest of the flat, and why would I do that? So that you could use My humility as a weapon against your own pride. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
The moral? It is from the Great Bernard’s homily for the Feast of the Annunciation (8): “Dustman, dust thyself! Refuse Collector, collect thyself? Proud Flesh, prostrate thyself under the feet of the passing crowd!” Some recommendations. Light a torch under yourself. Do not let pride eat away at you like a tumor. Be an obedient child, and accept the mud from the feet in front of you as your trudge with the adults on the highway of life. That would avoid the wrath of the Psalmist’s Lord (18.42)! Why do you wail about, you silly fool? That is a sentiment I plucked from the Letter of the Great James (2.20). What have you got to say, you sinful sot, against those who take you to task? You have offended God so many times, and so many times you have merited Hell. I speak with the voice of the Great Ezekiel when I say, “My eye has spared you” (20.17). I am echoing the Great Saul to the Great David in First Samuel when I say, “You soul is precious in my sight” (26.21). You should learn to recognize My love and be grateful for My little gifts. Give yourself always to True Subjection and Humility and patently bear up when the contempt you deserve is heaped upon you. Christian Science can deny the existence of ill health only at the cost of logically denying the existence of good health also. Both are differing conditions of the same thing—the body. Christian Science calls sickness a lie. Then it should likewise call its opposite a lie. However, not only does it not: it actually affirms that good health is a truth and a reality even while it denounces matter—the body—as a lie and an illusion! If, in spite of its deformed logic, Christian Science still gets healing done—as it does—this result must be attributed to the fact that infinite Life-Power does take cognizance of the body’s disease and does not deny its being there. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
It is not only fallacious to deny the existence of a disease but also, if the attempt s made to secure healing, insincere. The Christian Science attempt to deny existence to sickness as an error of moral mind is itself an error. It is more philosophic, first, to take it as an existent fact, but to understand that the body’s reality is only a limited and temporary one, and, second, to couple it with the other fact that there are healing forces and recuperative energies in the higher self of man which may dispel it. If right thinking alone could sustain life and support health irrespective of every other factor, then human beings could immure themselves where sunlight, air, water, and food could not reach them and still live actively. However, the only cases known to history are of few hibernating inactive self-actualized. Such theorizing is self-deceptive. Many people in the Old World, from the safe distance of the study, conveniently denied the existence of disease. Meanwhile the gods have smiled cynically as millions in the Old World have picked up cholera and passed to their doom. The mental peace obtained by denying facts like sickness may be welcome to the sufferer. However, it may also turn out to be a false peace. Although the theory of these cults is in part quite fallacious, the practice of them brings striking results at times. This is because the healing power really comes forth from the individual’s own higher self, to which the cults do—although somewhat unconsciously—direct one. One of the self-actualized paths is the creative use of imagination and thought for self-improvement, and so far as it embodies such a technique, Christian Science is a self-actualized path too. It instructs its disciples to see themselves as perfect, as the Universal Mind sees them, to concentrate on the concept of, and hold to the belief in, the divine man. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
These prayers and attitudes draw forth high resources, which may effect results where ordinary ones fail. This thinking runs somewhat as follows. The entire Universe is but an idea. Therefore the human body is also an idea. Therefore the human being, as the thinker of this idea, possesses complete power to alter, improve, and even change the body. Therefore one can abolish disease, annul sickness, restore health, and preform miraculous environmental betterments at will, provided one can suitably re-adjust and control one’s thoughts. All this sounds plausible and attractive, but there is a fallacy in it. And this is that the human being is the sole thinker of the World-Idea. One is not. One only participates in it along with the World Mind. One’s power over the body is a limited one. By one’s thoughts, one can influence its functioning and sometimes modify its mechanism. An avalanche of recent studies reveals that aerobic exercise not only promotes health and energy, but also is a remedy for mild depression and anxiety. Experiments that randomly assign some depressed or anxious people to exercise routines confirm this. So do surveys showing that Canadians and Americans are more self-confident, self-disciplined, and psychologically resilient if physically fit. Sound minds reside in sound bodies. Also, get REST—Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy. Happy people live active, vigorous lives, yet reserve time for renewing sleep and solitude. Americans suffer from a growing “national sleep debt,” with resulting fatigue, diminished alertness, and gloomy moods. Even a literal day of REST, or smaller, daily doses of solitude in meditation or prayer, can spiritually recharge. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
There are few better remedies for unhappiness than an intimate friendship with someone who cares deeply about you. Confiding is good for soul and body. “Woe to one who is alone and falls and does not have another to help,” observed the writer of Ecclesiastes. Research confirms that we humans have a deep “need to belong”—to connect with others in close, supportive, intimate relationships. Committed marriages, for example, are associated with health, happiness, and reduced poverty, and with better-educated, healthier, and more successful children. It was found that 40 percent of married adults but only 23 percent of those who never married (and end fewer of the divorced and separated) reported them selves “very happy.” New evidence indicates that marriage does no just ride along with social, psychological, and economic well-being; it contributes to it. So, if and when you marry, resolve to nurture your relationship, not to take your partner for granted, to display to your spouse the sort of kindness that you display to others, to affirm your partner, to play together and share together. To rejuvenate your affections, resolve in such ways to act lovingly. In study after study, actively religious people prove to be happier. In fact, 47 percent of those attending church or synagogue several times weekly said they were “very happy,” as did only 27 percent of those never attending. Those with an active faith also cope better with crises. Compared with religious inactive widows, recently widowed women who worship regularly report more joy. Among mothers of developmentally challenged children, those with a deep religious faith are less vulnerable to depression. People of faith also tend to retain or recover greater happiness after suffering divorce, unemployment, serious illness, or bereavement. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
For many people, faith provides, first, a support community. The fellowship of kindred spirits, the bearing of one another’s burdens, the ties of love that bind are intrinsic to Christian communities—of which there are some 400,000 in North America. Faith also provides many people with a sense of life’s meaning and purpose. Faith satisfies the most fundamental need of all. That is the need to know that somehow we matter, that our lives mean something, count as something more than jus a momentary blip in the Universe. Faith also offers feelings of ultimate acceptance (what Christians know as the “grace” experience), a reason to focus beyond self, and a timeless perspective on life’s woes. We are mindful of the reality of suffering and the terror of death, yet sustained by a hope that in the end, the very end, all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. If the electronic cottage were to spread, people working from home instead of at the office, a chain of consequences of great importance would flow through society. Many of these consequences would please the most ardent environmentalist or techno-rebel, while at the same time opening new options for business entrepreneurship. Community impact: Work at home involving any sizeable fraction of the population could mean greater community stability—a goal that now seems beyond our reach in many high-change regions. If employees can perform some or all of their work tasks at home, they do not have to move every time they change jobs, as many are compelled to do today. They can simply plug into a different computer. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
This implies less forced mobility, less stress on the individual, fewer transient human relationships, and greater participation in community life. Today when a family moves into a community, suspecting that it will be moving out again in a year or two, its members are markedly reluctant to join neighbourhood organizations, to make deep friendships, to engage in local politics, and to commit themselves to community life generally. The electronic cottage could help restore a sense of community belonging, and touch off a renaissance among voluntary organizations like churches, women’s groups, lodges, clubs, athletic and youth organizations. The electronic cottage could mean more of what sociologists, with their love of German jargon, call gemeinschaft. Environmental Impact: The transfer of work, or any part of it, into the home could not only reduce energy requirements, as suggested above, but could also lead to energy decentralization. In stead of requiring highly concentrated amounts of energy in a few high-rise offices or sprawling factory complexes, and therefore requiring highly centralized energy generation, the electronic cottage system would spread out energy demand and thus make it easier to use solar, wind, and other alternative energy technologies. Small-scale energy generation units in each home could substitute for at least some of the centralized energy now required. This implies a decline in pollution as well, for two reasons: first, the switch to renewable energy sources on a small-scale basis eliminates the need for high-polluting fuels, and second, it means smaller releases of highly concentrated pollutants that overload the environment at a few critical locations. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Economic Impact: Some businesses would shrink in such a system, and others proliferate or grow. Clearly, the electronics and computer and communications industries would flourish. By contrast, the oil companies, the auto industry, and commercial real estate developers would be hurt. A whole new group of small-scale computer stores and information services would spring up; the postal service, by contrast, would shrink. Papermakers would do less well; most service industries and white-collar industries would benefit. At a deeper level, if individuals came to own their own electronic terminals and equipment, purchased perhaps on credit, they would become, in effect, independent entrepreneurs rather than classical employees—meaning, as it were, increased ownership of the “means of production” by the worker. We might also se groups of home-workers organize themselves into smaller companies to contract for their service or, for that matter, unite in cooperatives that jointly own the machines. All sorts of new relationships and organizational forms become possible. Psychological Impact: The picture of a work World that is increasingly dependent upon abstract symbols conjures up an overcerebral work environment that is alien to us and, at one level, more impersonal than at present. However, at a different level, work at home suggests a deepening of face-to-face and emotional relationships in both the home and the neighbourhood. Rather than a World of purely vicarious human relationships, with an electric screen interposed between the individual and the rest of humanity, as imagined in many science fiction stories, one can postulate a World divided into two sets of human relationships—one real, the other vicarious—with different rules and roles in each. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
No doubt we will experiment with many variations and halfway measures. Many people will work at home part-time and outside the home as well. Dispersed work centers will no doubt proliferate. Some people will work at home for months or years, then switch to an outside job, and then perhaps switch back again. Patterns of leadership and management will have to change. Small firms would undoubtedly spring up to contract for white-collar tasks from larger firms and take on specialized responsibilities for organizing, training, and managing teams of homeworkers. To maintain adequate liaison among them, perhaps such small companies will organize parties, social occasions, and other joint holidays, so that the members of a team get to know one another face-to-face, not merely through the console or keyboard. Certainly not everyone can or will (or will want to) work at home. Certainly we face a conflict over pay scales and opportunity cost. What happens to the society when an increased amount of human interaction on the job is vicarious while face-to-face, emotion-to-emotion interaction intensifies in the home? What about cities? What happens to the unemployment figures? What, in fact, do we mean by the terms “employment” and “unemployment” in such a system? It would be naïve to dismiss such question and problems. However, if there are unanswered questions and possibly painful difficulties, there are also new possibilities. The leap to a new system of production is likely to render irrelevant many of the most intractable problems of the passing era. The misery of feudal toil, for example, could not be alleviated within the system of feudal agriculture. #RandolphHarrs 14 of 20
Feudal toil was not eliminated by peasant revolts, by altruistic nobles, or by religions utopians. Toil remained miserable until it was altered entirely by the arrival of the factory system, with its own strikingly different drawbacks. In turn, the character problems of industrial society—from unemployment to grinding monotony on the job to overspecialization, to the callous treatment of the individual, to low wages—may, despite the best intentions and promises of job enlargers, trade unions, benign employers, or revolutionary workers’ parities, be wholly unresolvable within the framework of the Second Wave production system. If such problems have remained for 300 years, under both capitalist and socialist arrangements, there is cause to think they may be inherent in the mode of production. The leap to a new production system in both manufacturing and the white-collar sector, and the possible breakthrough to the electronic cottage, promise to change all the existing terms of debate, making obsolete most of the issues over which men and women today argue, struggle, and sometimes die. We cannot today know if, in fact, the electronic cottage will become the norm of the future. Nevertheless, it is worth recognizing that if as few as 10 to 20 percent of the work force as presently defined were to make this historic transfer over the next 5 to 10 years our entire economy, our cities, our ecology, our family structure, our values, and even our politics would be altered almost beyond our recognition. It is a possibility—a plausibility, perhaps—to be pondered. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
It is now possible to see in relationship to one another a number of Third Wave changes usually examined in isolation. We see a transformation of our energy system and our energy base into a new techno-sphere. This is occurring at the same time that we are demassifying the mass media and building an intelligent environment, thus revolutionizing the info-sphere as well. In turn, these two giant currents flow together to change the deep structure of our production system, altering the nature of work in factory and office and, ultimately, carrying us toward the transfer of work back into the home. By themselves, such massive historical shifts would easily justify the claim that we are on the edge of a new civilization. However, we are simultaneously restructuring our social life as well, from our family ties and friendships to our schools and corporations. We are about to create, alongside the Third Wave techno-sphere and info-sphere, a Third Wave socio-sphere as well. It is somewhat ironic that the contemporary concern over the patriarchal nature of suburbia is the exact opposite of the major criticisms made by popular antisuburban literature of the post-World War II period. The accusation made by critics of suburbia following the war was not that suburbs fostered a patriarchal traditional family, but rather that the husbands’ absence from the suburban home during the day led to a suburban matriarchy. This matriarchy, it was charged, was leading to a child-dominated society. The suburban way of life was said to lead to excessive, overprotective “momism.” Suburban mothers were criticized for having excessive involvement in the raising of their sons, which was leading to the raising of a generation of what was perceived as male offspring who lacked resolution and that were weak and purposeless. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
These beliefs or the spineless male offspring were not fringe views. It is worth nothing that Philip Wylie’s, Generation of Vipers, which put the term “momism” into the language, had gone through twenty printings by the 1950s (Philip Wylie, Generation of Vipers, Ferrar and Rinehart, New York, 1942). Popular postwar criticism, as expressed by psychiatrists and others, was that suburban life, with its daytime absence of males, led to excessive independence and isolation of women. Female-oriented suburban life was, in turn, blamed for increases in adultery, alcoholism, mental illness, and divorce. Such pop-psychology myths received wide dissemination and acceptance as factual descriptions of reality. So maybe there will be some benefits to the electronic cottage. However, the 1963 publication of Betty Friedan’s landmark, The Feminine Mystique (1963) turned the argument completely around. Dr. Friedan gave voice to the widespread angst of housewives, and she noted that it came not from having too much suburban free time, but from powerlessness. She agreed that suburbs helped create a female culture, but it was not a culture of dominating momism, but rather one of essential exclusion from outside-the-hone decision making. There have been discussion going back over a century as to whether suburban life was better for males or females. Actual studies done in the 1960s and 1970s tended to show that suburbia and suburban life favoured males, with husbands being more pleased with suburban living than their wives. Gans, in his famous Levittown study, found, for example, that three out of ten thousand, but six our of ten wives, preferred to live in the city “if not for their children. College-educated women with young children particular felt the restrictions of being tied to the limited local community for intellectual stimulation. Studies generally found that husbands, because they left the community for work, had wider networks of friends and colleagues, while wives were more likely to be restricted to socializing with those in the neighbourhood. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
A major study of Toronto housing by William Michelson found that women living in urban residential areas had greater satisfaction with their neighbourhoods than those in more suburban locations. Women particularly liked the access to services and public transportation that urban areas afforded. In most writings, men were reported more likely to prefer suburbs since they provided escape from urban pressures and demands. A feminist’s review of literature on the effect of housing environments on women concluded that the burdens of isolated suburban life fell particularly heavily on women. However, times change. While one still hears references to women being isolated in suburbia without access to cars, culture, or community, this picture increasingly is a cliché of another era. In a time when two-and even three-car families are the norm, and when most women, including those with young children, are in the labour force, the image of this isolated suburban homemaker seems somewhat quaintly dated. The picture of the homemaker trapped all day in her suburban home and kitchen has more ties to the 1950s than to the realities of contemporary life. Today most women have careers or jobs outside the home. Yet, the post-World War II, “modern” kitchen showed the full effects of “scientific” domestic engineering and home economics, but was still quite clearly a woman’s domain. However, this is changing in modern architecture. Kitchens are becoming more larger and masculine. Also, the preference of women for the convenience of the city over the space of the suburbs no longer applies. The data are rather overwhelming in indicating that most American women wanted detached, single-family suburban homes. The federal government’s Annual Housing Survey indicated that women equally with men share a preference for suburban over urban housing. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Large majorities of both genders prefer single-family homes. Moreover, single women heading households, similarly to married-couple householders, expressed the greatest satisfaction with living in suburban housing. Christine Cook similarly found that female single-parent householders express greater satisfaction with suburban rather than city housing. Lower rates of crime, better school for their children, and the generally more peaceful environment were the most common reasons given for preferring the suburbs. For women householders, the traditional urban advantages of access to public transit and shopping now appear to be more than offset by concerns over crime and poor-quality schools. Gender differences are becoming less and less relevant in predicting housing preferences. The Annual Housing Survey indicates both men and women now give similar reason for moving to a particular area. Unlike the suburbanites of the 1950s and 1960s, the majority of young adults now living in suburbs have grown up in suburbs rather than in central cities. This, they are most comfortable with the suburban environment in which they were raised. Also, massive changes in shopping and employment patterns over the past decades have resulted in the majority of these activities now being located in suburbs. Living in the suburbs is now the middle-class norm; it is living elsewhere that requires a specific decision. Often critics of suburban housing and lifestyles appear to be viewing suburbs through a different prism than that used by actual suburban residents. Today’s suburbanites are more concern about matters such as commuting problems, and getting more open time than they are about being trapped in their suburban houses. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Having too much independent or leisure time with nothing to do is not a prime problem of women of the 21st century. Most suburbanites, male and female, would welcome having a few days alone at home. The small plot of ground on which you were born cannot be expected to stay forever the same. Earth changes, and homes becomes different places. You took flesh from clay, but the clay did not come from just one place. To feel alive, important, and safe, know your own waters and hills, but know more. You have stars in your bones and oceans in blood. You have opposing terrain in each eye. You belong to the land and sky of your first cry, you belong to infinity. As Thou didst save them who were sustained on the Sabbath by the prepared manna, the appearance of which altered not, and the fragrance thereof did not change, so save us now. As Thou didst save those whom from the Torah derived the laws concerning Sabbath-burdens, who in resting and reposing thereon observed its bounds and limits, so save us now. As Thou didst save them who at Sinai were instructed in the Fourth Commandment to “Remember” and “Observe” the holiness of the Sabbath, so save us now. As Thou didst save them that were commanded to encircle Jericho seven times, who besieged and attacked it until it fell on the Sabbath, so save us now. As Thou didst save Solomon and his people n the holy Temple, who sought Thy favour with a festival of twice seven days, so save us now. As Thou didst save the exiled throngs returning to redemption, who on this festival read from Thy Torah each say, so save us now. As Thou didst save Thy rejoicing hosts in the renewed glory of the second Temple, as on each of these seven days, they bore the palm-branch in the Sanctuary, so save us now. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 