Lord, what Fools these Mortals be!

The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people’s reality, and eventually in one’s own. We ought to read books that set the tone of our lives. Most of what we read does not have that power. It either falls within the province of our special field, or it has no meaning for us at all. However, every one of us should ask ourselves: If there one book, are there two or three books that have been absolutely central to your entire development? I read not to learn, but to live. Seen by that standard, there are not many books that are truly influential for us. Any halfway decent book will, of course, have some effect on us. No book leaves us completely untouched, any more than a serious conversation or meeting with another person does. If two people speak seriously together, they will both experience something, or—as I prefer to put it—they will both undergo a change. The change will often be so minute that we cannot detect it. However, this line of thought takes back to this point: If two people talk together and both of them remain the same people they were before, then they have not really talked at all. They have simply engaged in an exchange of words. The Old Testament in the Christian Bible made a powerful and lasting impression on me. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23

As a boy I was particularly drawn to the vision of universal peace, to the vision of the lamb lying down together, and at a young age it made me believe there was a chance for World peace. In the Old Testament, one can distinguish between the psalms that reflect some inner movement, a shift from sadness to joy, and those quite different ones that maintain the same mood and that are in a certain sense, though not always, somewhat self-righteous. At the very least there is no inner conflict in them, n inner movement. There are psalms that can be understood only if we notice that the speaker begins in a state of despair. Then he overcomes his despair, but it comes back. And he overcomes it again. And only when he hits rock bottom, when his despair is most intense, does a sudden, miraculous change come about, a change accompanied by a jubilant, religious, hopeful mood. Psalm 22, which begins with the words, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” is a good example. An interesting point is that people have often wondered why Jesus spoke these words of despair at his death. That question puzzled me when I was still a child. His words do not seem in keeping with his voluntary death and with his faith. However, there really is no contradiction here, because the psalms are cited differently in the Jewish tradition and in the Christian. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

Where the Christian tradition cites a psalm by number, the Jewish tradition evokes the entire psalm by quoting the first sentence of the first few words. So what the Bible is telling us in this passage is that Jesus recited all of Psalm 22. And if you read this psalm, you will see that it begins in despair but ends as a hymn of hope. Perhaps more than any other psalm it expresses the universalistic, messianic message of early Christianity. If we fail to see the shift that takes place in that psalm, and if we think Jesus spoke only the first sentence of it, then we overlook the message. This sentence was even changed in the Gospel later because it caused misunderstandings. Well, we are getting a bit far afield here. However, then it is nice that we are not bound by a program or schedule. So that is one of the major influences in my life, and when I read the prophets today they are as fresh and alive for me as they were when I was a child, perhaps even fresher and more alive. Youth is not chronological age but the state of growing, learning, and changing. All people must be helped to regain the conditions of youth. The matriarchal position—to state the case briefly—stands for the principle of unconditional human love. A mother loves her children without any regard for their merits. She loves them because they are her children. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23

And if a mother loved her baby only when it smiled sweetly and was well behaved, then many a child would starve to death. A father loves his children because they obey him, because they are like him. Now I am not speaking here about every mother or every father but rather about types or categories, about the classic types we see exemplified throughout the history of paternal and maternal love. Taken individually, people are so mixed that we find many maternal fathers and many paternal mothers. The difference has to do with the social order, with whether it is patriarchal or matriarchal. The conflict between the two is nowhere more beautifully articulated then in Sophocles’’ Antigone. Antigone embodies the matriarchal principle: “I am here not to hate but to love,” while Creon embodies the patriarchal one, the principle that makes the state supreme over all other human values (and a principle that we would call fascist today). Many human beings experience a longing for some extraordinary figure like a god of goddess, who will relieve one of one’s responsibilities, eliminate the risks of life, indeed, even relieve us of our fear of death, and shelter us in a kind of paradise. For that protection, we pay the price of dependence on religion and God. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

Unlike God, we do not start with nothing and make something of it. We start with ourselves as nothing and makes something of the nothing with the things at hand. The relationship of one human being to another and to the specifically human emotions that are rooted not in instinct but rather in human’s existences, are what make us come alive. Deep in the hearts of almost all people, they want more peace than war, more life than death, more light than darkness. However, some people are sadomasochist, they are people with an unlimited passion for exerting power and control over others but also for subjection of the self. We see this more during the COVID-19 crisis with the restrictions on businesses and people, but the dependence on the federal government and people shaming others for not wearing masks. Now, in the light of more extensive study and better insight, I have come to consider another factor even more important. This factor is called necrophilia. Ordinarily that term is applied only to a sexual perversion, but in using it as I do, I am following the example of the great Spanish philosopher Unamuno, who said in a speech he gave in Salamanca in 1936 that the Falangist motto “Long live death: was a necrophiliac moto. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

What I mean by necrophilia in a nonsexual and nonphysical sense is a fascination with everything that is dead, lifeless, with everything having to do with dismemberment, with the destruction of living relationships. The necrophiliac is motivated not by a love for the living but by an attraction to the purely mechanical. Necrophilia means love for what is dead. Nekros means corpse. Necrophilia is not a love of death but a love of dead things, of everything that is not alive. Its opposite is a love of the living, a love for everything that grows, that has structure, that forms a unity, that is not dismembered. Many necrophiliacs have a characteristic facial expression. They look as if they smell something rotten, but there is no bad odor present. What this indicates is that these people regard living things, not dead ones, as filth, and they consequently relate to them in this archaic way—by smelling and sniffing. There are some individuals who enjoy smelling foul odors. They are attracted to bad smalls or to excrement and carrion. This perversion is visible in their facial expressions. With necrophiliac types you will find that the face remains immobile. They do not react; they are frozen. With biophilic people, the face shows a great variety of expressions, and it lights up in the presence of whatever is alive. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23

Another way we can express this is to say that the necrophiliac is hopelessly boring. A biophile is never boring. It does not matter what one talks about. The subject can be quite insignificant, but whatever one says is always marked by vitality. A necrophiliac may say something intelligent, but it does not come alive. We have all had the experience of hearing an intellectual say something terribly clever, yet we are bored by it. Conversely, a much less brilliant person can say something quite simple (this is bringing us back to our starting point this evening, the subject of conversation), and we are not bored at all. On the contrary, we are stimulated, because it is life that is speaking to us. We are always drawn to what is alive. It is vitality that makes people attractive. These says people seem to think—we humans talk this way, and the cosmetic industry tries to convince women that it is true—we seem to think people can make themselves attractive and lovable if they paint their faces this way or that way or adopt a certain expression that is supposed to be modern and irresistible. A lot of people fall for that kind of thing, usually people who do not have much of a self. There is only one thing that really attracts us, and that is vitality. We can observe that in people who are falling in love. In their desire to please and attract the other, they in fact become livelier than they usually are. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

The only problem with people becoming livelier than they usually are is once they have achieved their goal and “have” each other, their desire to be more alive is much reduced. Then they suddenly become quite different, and after a while they do not love each other anymore. They do not even know why they fell in live in the first place. Their partners are changed. They are no longer beautiful, because they no longer have the beauty that vitality brings to the face. There are two basic tendencies in people and they are a propensity for life and a propensity for death and destruction. Eros, the vital force or the force of love, strives for the integration of the whole, for union, while the goal of the death wish is disintegration or, dismemberment, dissection. Necrophilia and biophilia are two forces of equal strength. The desire to destroy is as strong in people as is their joy of life. That could be why there is so much crime and the population keeps growing so rapidly. As a result of increase competition, scarcity of resources, population growth, and crime, a lot of people have no chance to be free and to develop their own powers, people are hemmed in, and live in a class or in a society in which everything functions in a mechanical, lifeless way and people are losing their capacity for spontaneity. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

This link between thwarted vitality and necrophilia is evident in individuals. It is by no means rare to find people whose families were so “dead” that the children never experience even bureaucratized, routine, subject rules. Life consisted solely of possessing things, owning things. The parents regarded any sign of spontaneity in their children as inherently bad. It is clear beyond any doubt that children are naturally very lively and active, a fact proved by recent neurophysiological and psychological studies. The child becomes more and more discouraged and then takes another direction a direction in which the nonliving becomes central. In the final analysis we can say that a person who finds no joy in living will try to avenge oneself and will prefer to destroy life rather than feel that one can make no sense of one’s life at all. One may still be alive physiologically, but psychologically one is dead. That is what gives rise to the active desire to destroy and to the passionate need to destroy everyone, including oneself, rather than confess that one has been born yet has failed to become a living human being. That is a bitter feeling for those who experience it, and we are not indulging in mere speculation if we assume that the wish to destroy follows on this feeling as an almost inevitable reaction. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

I am afraid that our preoccupation with everything mechanical encourages necrophilia to increase. And COVID-19, social distancing, and masks are making it even harder to connection with people, read their emotions and enjoy life, especially with nearly 30,000,000 people and approximately 1,000,000 dead globally. We are running away from life. It is difficult to explain in any concise way why it is that things are taking the place of human beings in our cybernetic society and culture, pushing human beings aside, but perhaps in is due to the World being overpopulated ad evolution. People are becoming increasingly uncertain about their own being. When I speak of “being” here I am using a term of great importance in the history of philosophy. What is being? I am less interested in its philosophical meaning here than I am in its experiential aspect. Let me give a simple example. A woman might come to an analyst and begin describing herself something like this: Well, Doctor, I “have” a problem. I “have” a happy marriage, and I “have” two children, too, but I am “having” so many difficulties. Every sentence she produces uses the verb “to have.” The entire World is represented as an object of having. In earlier time (and I know this from my own experience in both English and German) she would have said: I feel miserable, I am satisfied, I am worried, I love my husband, or perhaps I do not love him or I doubt that I love him. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23

In any language like that, people speak about what they are, about their own activity, about the feelings they experience, not about objects or possessions. People are more and more inclined to express their being with nouns followed by some form of the verb “to have.” I have everything, but I am nothing. Some people are convinced that they must “have” things and “get” people in order to live because they do not see a future for themselves in the name of the nation or of the law or of the party or of necessity or of God or of any other authorities they may come up with. So their life has to “have” conditions in which they can “get” people and flourish. Lies can tie us to a political part, but ultimately it is only the truth that can lead to the liberation of humans. However, too many people are afraid of freedom and prefer illusions to it. They do not want to believe in God, they are to believe they are god. Because people take a party line. Party politics can put blinders on us. We could say, in a certain sense, that party politics can makes us apolitical. I do not mean that as an attack on political parties, nor do I deny their necessity, but I do feel that when our political life is dominated by party politics, we run the danger of becoming unpolitical. We need more independent people. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

It is essential to your political lives that there be politically active people who, from their own perspectives come right out and say what they think, what they know. Private and public life cannot be separated. We cannot split off our knowledge of ourselves from our knowledge of society. Both belong together. The truth is indivisible. We cannot see reality here and remain closed to it there. That dulls our cutting edge and makes our search for the truth ineffectual. And we can see ourselves rightly only if we can see others rightly, only if we can see them in the context of their social circumstances, which is to say, only if we look sharply and critically at all that is going on around us in the World. This is what love demands of us, too. And if we love our fellow humans, we cannot limit our insight and our love only to others as individuals. That will inevitably lead to mistakes. We have to be political people, I would even say passionately involved political people, each of us in the way that best suits our own temperaments, our working lives, and our own capabilities. The intellectual has one prime task to fulfill, first, last, and always. It is one’s job to search out the truth as best one can and to speak that truth. It is not the intellectual’s primary calling, it is not one’s primary function, to draft political platforms. And to say this does not contradict what I have just been saying about political activity. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

However, it is the intellectual’s special task—and this is what defines one’s role or should define it—to purse the truth without compromise and without regard for one’s own or anyone else’s interests. If intellectuals restrict their function of finding and speaking the whole truth in the service of any party program or any political goals, no matter how praiseworthy the program or the goals may be, then those intellectuals are failing in their own unique task and, ultimately, in the most important political task they have. For political progress depends on how much of the truth we know, how clearly and boldly we speak it, and how great an impression it makes on other people. “And when even was come, there came a rich person from Arimathea, named Joseph, who also himself was Jesus’ disciple: This man went to Pilate, and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate, and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded it to be given up. And Joseph took the body, and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock: and he rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb, and departed. And Mary Magdalene was there, and the other Mary, sitting over against the sepulchre. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

“Now on the morrow, which is the day after the Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees were gathered together unto Pilate, saying, Sir, we remember that the deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I raise again. Command therefore that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest haply his disciples come and steal one away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: and the last error will be worse than the first. Pilate said unto them, Ye have a guard: go your way, make it as sure as ye can. So they went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, the guard being with them,” reports Matthew 27.57-66. In the Nuremburg War-Crime Trials a witness appeared who had lived for a time in a grave in a Jewish grave-yard, in Wilna, Poland. It was the only place he—and many others—could live, when in hiding after they had escaped the gas chamber. During this time he wrote poetry, and one of the poems was a description of a birth. In a grave nearby a young woman gave birth to a boy. The eighty-year-old gravedigger, wrapped in a linen shroud, assisted. When the newborn child uttered his first cry, the old man prayed: “Great God, hast Thu finally sent the Messiah to us? For who else than the Messiah Himself can be born in a grave?” However, after three says the poet saw the child sucking his mother’s tears because she had no milk for him. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

This story, which surpasses anything the human imagination could have invented, has not only incomparable emotional value, but also tremendous symbolic power. When I first read it, it occurred to me more forcefully than ever before that our Christian symbols, take from the gospel stories, have lost a great deal of their power because too often repeated and too superficially used. It has been forgotten that the manger of Christmas was the expression of utter poverty and distress before it became the place where the angels appeared and to which the star pointed. And it has been forgotten that the tomb of Jesus was the end of His life and of His work before it became the place of His final triumph. We have become insensitive to the infinite tension which implied in words of the Apostles’ Creed: “suffered…was crucified, dead, and buried…rose again from the dead.” We already know, when we hear the first words, what the ending will be: “rose again;” and for many people it is no more than the inevitable “happy ending.” The old Jewish grave-digger knew better. For him, the immeasurable tension implicit in the expectation of the Messiah was a reality, appearing in the infinite contrast between the things he saw and the hope he maintained. The depth of this tension is emphasized by the last part of the story. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

After three days the child was not elevated to glory; he drank his mother’s tears, having nothing else to drink. Probably he died and the hope of the old Jew was frustrated once more, as it had been frustrated innumerable times before. No consolation can be derived from this story; there cannot be a happy ending—and precisely this is the truth about our lives. In a remarkable passage of his book, Credo, Karl Barth writes about the word “buried” in the Creed: “By a person’s being buried it is evidently confirmed and sealed—seemingly in his presence, actually already in his absence—that he has no longer a present, any more than a future. He has become pure past. He is accessible only to memory, and even that only so long as those who are able and willing to remember him are not themselves buried. And the future toward which all human present is running is just this: to be buried.” These words describe exactly the situation in which the pious old Jew payed: “Great God, hast Thou finally sent the Messiah to us?” We often hide the seriousness of the “buried” in the Creed, not only for the Christ, but also for ourselves, but imagining that not we shall be buried, but only a comparatively unimportant part of us the physical body. That is not what the Creed implies. It is the same subject, Jesus Christ, of Whom it is said that He suffered and that He was buried and that He was resurrected. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

Jesus Christ was buried, He—His whole personality—was removed from the Earth. The same is true of us. We shall die, we—our personality, from which we cannot separate our body as an accidental part—shall be buried. Only if we take the “buried” in the gospel stories as seriously as this, can we evaluate the Easter stories and can we evaluate the words of the grave-digger, “Who else than the Messiah can be born a grave?” His question has two aspects. Only the messiah can bring birth out of death. It is not a natural event. It does not happen every day, but it happens on the day of the Messiah. It is the most surprising, the most profound, and the most paradoxical mystery of existence. Arguments for the immortality of an assumedly better part of us cannot bring life out of the grave. Eternal life is brought about only with the coming of the “new reality,” the eon of the Messiah, which, according to our faith, has already appeared in Jesus as the Christ. However, there is another side to the assertation that nobody other than the Messiah Himself can be born in a grace, a side, which, perhaps, was less conscious to the pious Jew. The Christ must be buried in order to be the “Christ,” namely, He Who has conquered death. The gospel story we have heard assures us of the real and irrevocable death and burial of Jesus. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

The women, the high priests, the soldiers, the sealed stone—they are all called by the gospel to witness to the reality of the end. We ought to listen more carefully to these witnesses, to the ones who tell us with triumph or cynicism that Jesus has been buried, that He is removed forever from the Earth, that no real traces of Him are left in our World. And we ought also to listen to the others who say, in doubt and despair, “But we trusted that it had been He Who should have redeemed Israel.” It is not hard to hear both these voices today, in a World where there are so many places like the Jewish cemetery in Wilna. It is even possible to hear them in ourselves, for each of us to hear them in oneself. And, if we hear them, what can we answer? Let us be clear abut this. The answer of Easter is not a necessity. In reality, there is no inevitable happy ending as there is in perverted and perverting cinemas. However, the answer of Easter has become possible precisely because the Christ has been buried. If it did not come from the complete end of the old life, the new life would not really be new life. Otherwise, it would have to be buried again. However, if the new life has come out of the grave, then he Messiah Himself has appeared. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

“And now it came to pass that, as soon as Amalickiah had obtained the kingdom he began to inspire the hearts of the Lamanites against the people of Nephi; yea, he did appoint men to speak unto the Lamanites from towers, against the Nephites. And thus he did inspire their hearts against the Nephites, insomuch that in the latter end of the nineteenth years of the reign of the judges, he having accomplished his designs thus far, yea, having been made king over the Lamanites, he sought also to reign over all the land, yea, and all the people who were in the land, the Nephites as well as the Lamanites. Therefore he had accomplished his design, for he had hardened the hearts of the Lamanites and blinded their minds, and stirred them up to anger, insomuch that he had gathered together a numerous host to go to battle against the Nephites. For he was determined, because of the greatness of the number of his people, to overpower the Nephites and to bring them into bondage. And thus he did appoint chief captains of the Zoramites, they being the most acquainted with the strength of the Nephites, and their places of resort, and the weakest parts of their cities; therefore he appointed them to be chief captains over his armies. And it came to pass that they took up their camp, and moved forth toward the land of Zarahemla in the wilderness. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23

“Now it came to pass that while Amalickiah had thus been obtaining power by fraud and deceit, Moroni, on the other hand, had been preparing the minds of the people to be faithful unto the Lord their God. Yea, he had been strengthening the armies of the Nephite, and erecting small forts, or places round about to enclose his armies, and also building walls of stone to encircle them about, round about their cities and the borders of their lands; yes, all round about the land. And in their weakest fortifications he did place the greater number of humans; and this he did fortify and strengthen the land which was possessed by the Nephites. And thus he was preparing to support their liberty, their lands, their wives, and their children, and their peace, and that they might live unto the Lord their God, and that they might maintain that which was called by their enemies the cause of Christians. And Moroni was a strong and a might man; he was a man of a perfect understanding; yea, a man that did not delight in bloodshed; a man whose would did joy in the liberty, and his brethren from bondage and slavery. Yea, a man whose heart did swell with thanksgiving to his God, for the many privileges and blessings which he bestowed upon his people; a man who did labour exceedingly for the welfare and safety of the people. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

“Yea, and he was a man who was firm in the faith of Christ, and he had sworn with an oath to defend his people, his rights, and his country, and his religion, even to the loss of his blood. Now, if it were necessary, the Nephites were taught to defend themselves against their enemies, even to the shedding of blood; yea, and they were also taught never to give an offense, yea, never to raise the sword except it were to preserve their lives. And his was their faith, that by so doing God would prosper them in the land, or other words, if they were faithful in keeping the commandments of God that he would prosper them in the land; yea, warn them to flee, or to prepare for war, according to their danger; and also, that God would make it known unto them wither they should go to defend themselves against their enemies, and by so doing, the Lord would deliver them; and this was the faith of Moroni, and his heart did glory in it; not in the shedding of blood but in doing good, in preserving his people, yea, in keeping the commandments of God, yea, and resisting iniquity. Yes, verily, verily I say unto you, if all humans had been, and were, and ever would be, like unto Moroni, behold, the very powers of hell would have been shaken forever; yea, the devil would never have power over the hearts of the children of humans. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

“Behold, he was a man like unto Ammon, the son of Mosiah, yea, and even the other sons of Mosiah, yea, and also Alma and his sons, for they were all humans of God. Now behold, Helaman and his brethren were no less serviceable unto the people than was Moroni; for they did preach the word of God, and they did baptize unto repentance all humans whosoever would hearken unto their words. And thus they went forth, and the people did humble themselves because of their words, insomuch that they were highly favoured of the Lord, and thus they were free from wars and contentions among themselves, yea, even for the space of four years. However, as I have said, in the latter end of the nineteenth year, yea, notwithstanding their peace amongst themselves, they were compelled reluctantly to contend with their brethren, the Lamanites. Yea, and in fine, their wars never did cease for the space of many years with the Lamanites, notwithstanding their much reluctance. Now, they were sorry to take up arms against the Lamanites, because they did not delight in the shedding of blood; yea, and this was not all—they were sorry to be the means of sending so many of their brethren out of the World into an eternal World, unprepared to meet their God. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23

“Nevertheless, they could not suffer to lay down their lives, that their wives and their children should be massacred by the barbarous cruelty of those who were once their brethren, yea, and had dissented from their church, and had let them and had gone to destroy them by joining the Lamanites. Yea, they could not bear that their brethren should rejoice over the blood of the Nephites, so long as there were any who should keep the commandments of God, for the promise of the Lord was, if they should keep his commandments they should prosper in the land,” reports Alma 48.1-25. God of the In-between, you I praise, you who sit at ease in the midst of chaos, you who sit at ease on the edge of a sword. Can anyone attain the mastery you should as you hold your place between life and death? Can anyone rival the poise your presence radiates as you sit in the gateway between past and future? Can anyone sit so still, but be ready to move at the exact time the moment requires? Lord who holds death and life equally in your hands, I stand in your presence today and give you my praise. Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness; revere Him all that inhabit the Earth. The Lord reigneth. Let the Heavens be glad and the Earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all within it give praise. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23

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September 14, 2020 1:06 am

From the Gold Bar of Heaven No Person is Justified in Doing Evil on the Ground of Expediency

Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your own work. Note just what it is about your work that the critics do not like—then cultivate it. That is the only part of your work that is individual and worth keeping. I tend to learn the most from small, intense experiences which illuminate for me different aspects of what I am doing. They also illustrate in a vivid fashion some of the more abstract concepts of a person-centered approach. Frequently I write them down in order to store them as memories or to provide them for the use of the people involved. We must look still more closely at feeling. “Feeling” encompasses a range of things that are “felt”: specifically, sensations, desires, and emotions. We feel warm, hungry, an itch, or fearful. “Feelings” include dizziness and thirst, sleepiness and weariness, pleasures of the flesh and desire, pain and pleasure, loneliness and homesickness, anger and jealousy; but also comfort and satisfaction, a sense of power and accomplishment, curiosity and intellectual gratifications, compassion for others and the enjoyment of beauty, sense of honour, and delight in God. Aesthetic experiences (of art and beauty), personal relations, and actions all involve feeling and, moreover, require that the feeling be somehow “right.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 26

There is no complete list of human feelings, and it would be a formidable task to define what feeling is. We have not attempted that here and need not concern ourselves with it. A familiar range of feelings frame our day-to-day existence, and we know a lot about these feelings and how important they are to our lives and to how we act and relate to one another. We know, for example, that feelings move us, and that we enjoy being moved. They give us a sense of being alive. Without feeling we have no interest in things, no inclination to action. To “lose interest in life” means we have to carry on by mere exertions of will or by waiting for things to happen. That is a condition to be dreaded, and it cannot be sustained for long. That is why so many people become dependent upon “substances” and activities that give them feeling, even if the dependence badly harms them and those near them. Such a condition is also the frequent background of suicide. A beautiful young woman, an artist, committed suicide after the death of her old, unprepossessing father. It was her last wish to be buried with him. The question this woman’s death posed continued to gnaw at those who loved her. How could she have loved her father so much that she chose death with him over the joys of life, joys that were accessible and familiar to her? #RandolphHarris 2 of 26

Feeling is essential to life. We must accept this and work with it. And you can be sure that harmful feeling, feeling associated with evil—arising from it or producing it—will eventually be take by a human being as better than no feeling at all. Healthy feelings, properly ordered among themselves are essential to a good life. So if we are to be formed in Christlikeness, we must take good care of our feelings and not just let them “happen.” The one known as the Good Samaritan, in the story by Jesus (Luke 10.30-37) was distinguished from the priest and the Levite by the fact that “when he saw him [the wounded man], he felt compassion” (verse 33). This feeling of compassion is what led him to help them man and “be a neighbour to” him (verses 36-37). Did the priest and the Levite then have no feelings? Of course not. They had feelings alright: feelings of disdain, perhaps, or of fear for the harm that might come to them if they became involved, or a feeling of urgency as they remembered the business awaiting them at the end of their journey, which, being their own business, moved them more than did the need of this unfortunate man to be helped out of his mortally dangerous situation. #RandolphHarris 3 of 26

They had feelings that motivated them to selfish actions, and they hardened their hearts to any other feelings of sympathy and concern for the half-dead man that might have competed for their attention. My sense of the World is not that of a modern human but of a premodern one; and that attitude is reinforced by studying the Talmud, reading the Bible a lot, and hearing a lot of stories about my ancestors, who had all lived in a World that predated the bourgeois World. Let me tell you a story to illustrate what I mean. One of my great-grandfathers was a great Talmudist, but he was not a rabbi. He has a small shop in Bavaria, and he earn very little money. Then one day he was offered a chance to earn more money if he would do a little traveling. He had a lot of children, and that did not make his lot any easier. His wife said to him: “Maybe you should think about taking this opportunity. You would be gone only three days a month, and we would have a little more money.” And he said: “Do you think I should do that and lose more than three days of study a month?” She replied: “For God’s sake, of course not!” And that was the end of that. So my great-grandfather sat in his shop and studied the Talmud. Whenever a customer came in, he would look up and snap at him: “Is there not some other shop you can go to?” That was the World that was so real to me. I found the modern World strange. #RandolphHarris 4 of 26

I recall that when I was ten or twelve whenever someone told me he was a salesman or businessman I always felt a little embarrassed. I would think to myself: God, he must feel awful having to admit that he is not doing anything else with life except earning money. Imagine, having nothing else to do! In the meantime I have learned that that is quite normal. What eventually attracted me to the modern World was that in capitalism, there was a synthesis between the things of the past that were still alive for me and the things of the modern World that I loved. The aspects of the modern World that had their roots in the old and felt close to me, and that is why I experienced no contradiction between those two Worlds. Such was the World I was familiar with, the World I enjoyed, and so I became an eager student of everything that created this link between the old and the new. Many of the feelings that animate us are destructive of others and ourselves. Jesus’s younger brother, James, pointedly asked, “What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. And you are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel,” reports James 4.1-2. And elsewhere he points out that “where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing,” reports James 3.16. #RandolphHarris 5 of 26

This goes far to explain what happens in many homes, churches, and other social groups. However, the need is to remove the cause (the underlying feelings) and not just the effect (the conflict), which, if denied or suppressed without removal of the feelings, will only break out again. The Old Testament book of Proverbs is full of wise sayings about the good and evil of feelings in human life. As we have already seen, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom,” reports Proverbs 9.10. Moreover, “Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all transgressions, reports Proverbs 10.12. “When pride comes, then comes dishonour,” reports Proverbs 11.2. “Anxiety in the heart of humans weighs it down,” reports Proverbs 12.25. “A cheerful heart has a continual feast,” reports Proverbs 15.15. “A joyful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones,” reports Proverbs 17.22. “One who loves pleasure will become a poor human; one who loves wine and oil will not become rich,” reports Proverbs 21.17. “The reward of humility and the fear of the LORD are riches, honour and life,” reports Proverbs 22.4. “They heavy drinker and the glutton will come to poverty, and drowsiness will clothe a man with rags,” reports Proverbs 23.21. “The fear of humans brings a snare, but one who trusts in the LORD will be exalted,” reports Proverbs 29.25. #RandolphHarris 6 of 26

And so forth. It is part of divine and human wisdom to realize that feelings are central to our existence and to make sure they are good feelings. And indeed they can be strong, healthy ones. We do not have to be victimized by destructive feelings. Even the feelings that harm us are, for the most part, not bad in themselves, but are somehow not properly limited or subordinated. They are not of order feelings are, with a few exceptions, good servants. However, they are disastrous masters. Denial and repression of the feeling are not the answer. Now, if we have destructive feelings, and everyone does sometimes, we should not deny that we have them nor try to repress them—though we also should not, normally, dump them on others by acting them out. In any case, let it be very clear that we are not in favour of denying feelings or repressing them. That is not the answer to our problem. The proper course of action is to replace destructive feelings with others that are good, or to subordinate them—anger and pleasures of the flesh, for example—in a way that makes them constructive and transforms their effects. The process of spiritual formation in Christ will do this by grace—effectively and intelligently received, and put into constant practice. #RandolphHarris 7 of 26

Several other points about feelings must be considered before we come to deal with particular feelings (emotions, sensations, desires) and what can be done for their transformation into Christlikeness. If therapy is successful the individual will inevitably have taken care of the tag ends of one’s past unsolved problems, because these tag ends are bound to cause trouble in the present, and so they are bund to come up in the course of the therapeutic session, disguised in any number of different ways—disassociations, nervous habits, fantasies, et cetera. However, these tags ends of the past are also current problems which inhibit the individual’s participation in the present. The neurotic is, by accepted definition, a person whose difficulties make one’s present life unsuccessful. In addition, by our definition, one is a person who chronically engages in self-interruption, who has an inadequate sense of identity (and thus cannot distinguish properly between oneself and the rest of the World), who has inadequate means of self-support, whose psychological homeostasis is out of order, and whose behaviour arises from misguided efforts in the direction of achieving balance. Within this general framework, we can see what must be done. #RandolphHarris 8 of 26

The neurotic finds it difficult to participate fully in this present—one’s past unfinished business gets in one’s way. One’s problems exist in the here and now—and yet too often only part of one is here to cope with them. Through therapy, one must learn to live in the present, and one’s therapeutic sessions must be one’s first practice at this hitherto unaccomplished task. Gestalt therapy is therefore a “here and now” therapy, in which we ask the patient during the session to turn all one’s attention to what one is doing at the present, during the course of the session—right here and now. Gestalt therapy is an experiential therapy, rather than a verbal or an interpretive therapy. We ask our patients not to talk about their traumas and their problems in the removed area of the past tense and memory, but to re-experience their problems and their traumas—which are their unfinished situations in the present—in the here and now. If the patient is finally to close the book on one’s past problems, one must close it in the present. For one must realize that if one’s past problems were really past, they would no longer be problems—and the certainly would not be present. In addition, as an experiential therapy, the Gestalt technique demands of the patient that one experiences oneself as fully as one can here and now. #RandolphHarris 9 of 26

We ask the individual to become aware of one’s gestures, of one’s breathing, of one’s emotions, of one’s voice, and of one’s facial expressions as much as of one’s pressing thoughts. We know that the more one becomes aware of oneself, the more one will learn about what one’s self is. As one experiences the ways in which one prevents oneself from “being” now—the ways in which one interrupts oneself—one will also begin to experience the self one has interrupted. In this process, the therapist is guided by what one observes about the individual. Here lit it suffice to say that the therapist should be sensitive to the surface the patient presents so that the therapist’s broader awareness can become the means by which the patient is enabled to increase one’s own. The basic sentence with which we ask our patients to begin therapy, and which we retain throughout its course—not only in words, but in spirit—is the simple phrase: “Now I am aware.” The now keeps us in the present and brings home the fac that no experience is ever possible except in the present. And the present, itself, is of course an ever changing experience. Once the now is used, that patient will easily use the present tense throughout, work on the phenomenological basis and, provide the material for the past experience which is required to close the gestalt, to assimilate a memory, to right the organismic balance. #RandolphHarris 10 of 26

The “I” is used as an antidote to the “it” and develops the individual’s sense of responsibility for one’s feelings, thoughts and symptoms. The “am” is one’s existential symbol. It brings home whatever one experiences as part of one’s being, and, together with one’s now, of one’s becoming. One quickly learns that each new “now” is different from the previous one. The “aware” provides the individual with the sense of one’s own capacities, and abilities, one’s own sensoric and motor and intellectual equipment. It is not the conscious—for that is purely mental—it is the experience sifted, as it were, only through the mind and through words. The “aware” provides something in addition to the conscious. Workings, as we do, with what the individual has, one’s present means of manipulation, rather than with what one has not developed or what one has lost, the “aware” gives both therapist and patient the best picture of the patient’s present resources. For awareness always takes place in the present. It opens up possibilities for action. Routine and habits are established functions, and any need to change them requires that they should be brought into the focus of awareness afresh. The mere idea of changing them presupposes the possibility of alternative ways of thinking and acting. #RandolphHarris 11 of 26

Without awareness, there is no cognition of choice. Awareness, contact, and present are merely different aspects of one and the same process—self-realization. It is here and now that we become aware of all our choices, from small pathological decisions (is this pencil lying straight enough?) to the existential choice of devotion to a cause or avocation. How does this “now I am aware,” this here and now therapy work in action? Let us take the example of a neurotic whose unfinished business is the unfinished labour of mourning a dead parent. Aware or unaware, such a patient fantasizes that one’s guiding parent is still around; one acts as if the parent were still alive and conducts one’s life by outdated directions. To become self-supportive and to participate fully in the present as it is, one has to give up this guidance; one has to part, to say a final good-bye to one’s progenitor. And to do this successfully, one has to go to the deathbed and face the departure. One has to transform one’s thoughts about the past into actions in the present which one experiences as if the now were the then. One cannot do it merely by re-recounting the scene, one must re-live it. One must go through and assimilate the interrupted feelings which are mostly of intense grief, but which may have in them elements of triumph or guilt or any number of things. #RandolphHarris 12 of 26

It is insufficient merely to recall a past incident, one has to psychodramatically return to it. Just as talking about oneself is a resistance against experiencing oneself, so the memory of an experience—simply talking about it—leaves it isolated as a deposit of the past—as lacking in life as the ruins of Pompei. You are left with the opportunity to make some clever reconstructions, but you do not bring them back alive. The neurotic’s memory is more than simply a hunting ground for the archeologists of human’s behaviour we call psychoanalysts. It is the uncompleted event, which is still alive and interrupted, waiting to be assimilated and integrated. It is here and now, in the present, that this assimilation must take place. The psychoanalysts, out of the vast stores of one’s theoretical knowledge, might explain to the patient: “You are still tied to your mother because you feel guilty about her death. It was something you wished for in childhood and repressed, and when your wish came true, you felt like a murderer.” And there may be elements of truth in what one says. However, this kind of symbolic or intellectual explanation does not affect the individual’s feelings, for these are the result not of one’s sense of guilt, but of one’s interruption of it when one’s mother died. If one has permitted oneself fully to experience one’s guilt then, one would not feel distressed now. #RandolphHarris 13 of 26

In Gestalt therapy we therefore required that the individual psychodramatically talk to one’s dead mother. Because the neurotic finds it difficult to live and experience oneself in the present, one will find it difficult to stick to the here and now technique. One will interrupt one’s present participation with memories of the past, and one will persist in talking about them as if they were indeed past. One finds it less difficult to associate tan to concentrate and, in concentrating, to experience oneself. Whether concentrating on one’s body sensations or one’s fantasies—although at first one will find this a miserable task—one’s unfinished business makes concentration a major project for one. One no longer has a clear sense of the order of one’s needs—one tends to give them all equal value. One is like the young man Stephen Leacock once spoke about who hot on his horse and galloped off madly in all directions. It is not a desire to make one’s life miserable that lies behind our request to make one capable of concentrations. If one is to move towards full participation in the present, to take the first step towards productive living, one must learn to direct one’s energies—that is, to concentrate. One will be able to move from “now I need this” to “now I need that,” only if one truly experiences each now and each need. #RandolphHarris 14 of 26

In addition, the concentration technique (focal awareness) provides us with a tool for therapy in depth, rather than in breadth. By concentrating on each symptom, each area of awareness, the individual learns several things about oneself and one’s neurosis. One learns what one is actually experiencing. One learns how one experiences it. And one learns how one’s feelings and behaviour in one area are related to one’s feelings and behaviour in other areas. We often use mercy and grace, as referred to God, interchangeably as synonyms, and some Bible commentators understand their use that way. Though the two words are very close in their meaning, they are usually distinguished as follows: “God’s goodness, exercised toward the unworthy, is called grace; toward the suffering, it is called pity, or mercy.” It may be defined as the goodness or love of God shown to those who are in misery or distress, irrespective of their deserts. Then, I understand the term grace in Hebrews 4.16 to mean that particular expression of grace we have been considering: divine enabling thought the Help of the Holy Spirit. Thus, we approach the throne of grace needing first mercy, because we come as ones in misery of distress. God in His mercy then gives us grace—that is, divine enabling through His Spirit—to help us in our time of need. We are thus enabled to cope with whatever adversity, trial, or dilemma we face in a Godly manner. #RandolphHarris 15 of 26

I have analyzed Hebrews 4.15-16 rather extensively because we need to understand how to appropriate the grace of God through prayer. I believe all of us need to grasp more fully what it means to come to the throne of grace. We need to grasp in the depth of our souls what it means that we do have a High Priest, Jesus, who is able and disposed to sympathize with out weaknesses. Above all, we simply need to go to the throne of grace to find the grace to help in time of need. That is what I did in the incident I recounted at the beginning of this essay. I went to the throne of grace and told God I did not have the ability to respond to what I thought was His will for me at the time. I asked Him for the spiritual strength to say yes to Him. The disciples went to the throne of grace when Peter and John had been commanded by the Jewish rulers not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. They prayed, “Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your words with great boldness,” reports Acts 4.29. They went to God’s throne of grace, and they asked for grace, specifically the grace to speak boldly for Christ in the face of tremendous opposition. September 11, 2001 was a crucial event in the development of many people. People were in grips of fear when what seemed like a war broke out on American soil. #RandolphHarris 16 of 26

Many youths did not understand what was going on. However, it was not long before they began to see through all the supposed justifications for it, and so they started to puzzle over a question that has pursued them for the rest of their lives. How it is possible that millions of people can kill millions of other people, that they let themselves be killed, that it can take years before an end can be called to this inhuman situation? And all that for goals that are in part quite obviously irrational and for political notions that no one would sacrifice one’s life for if one could only see them for what they are. How is war politically possible, and how is war psychologically possible? These have become burning questions that have influenced the thinking of many more than any others right up to the present day. And 19 years later, we are now faced with another crisis. COVID-19 is sweeping the World and leveling millions of people physically and financially, and when they need help, no one is there for them because our lawmakers are taking their $10,000.00 a month in salary and other endorsements they may receive and living comfortably, while people struggle, lose their homes, go hungry, suffer and die. Remember us this day, O Lord our God, for our good, and be mindful of us for a life of blessing. #RandolphHarris 17 of 26

With Thy promise of salvation and mercy, please deliver us and be gracious unto us; have compassion upon us and save us. Unto Thee do we lift our eyes for Thou art a gracious and merciful God and King. O Lord our God, please bestow upon us the blessings of Thy festivals for life and peace, for joy and gladness, even as Thou hast graciously promised to bless us. [Our God and God of our fathers, accept our rest.] Sanctify us through Thy commandments, and grant our portion in Thy Torah; please give us abundantly of Thy goodness and make us rejoice in Thy salvation. Purify our hearts to serve Thee in truth. In Thy living favour, O Lord our God, let us inherit with joy and gladness Thy holy [Sabbath and] festivals; and may Israel who sanctifies Thy name, rejoice in Thee. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who hallowest [the Sabbath and] Israel and the festivals. “Now we will return in our record to Amalickiah and those who had fled with him into the wilderness; for, behold, he had taken those who went with him, and went up in the land of Nephi among the Lamanites, and did stir up the Lamanites to anger against the people of Nephi, insomuch that the kind of the Lamanites sent a proclamation throughout all his land, among all his people, that they should gather themselves together again to go to battle against the Nephites. #RandolphHarris 18 of 26

“And it came to pass that when the proclamation had gone forth among them they were exceedingly afraid; yea, they feared to displease the proclamation had gone forth among them they were exceedingly afraid; yea, they feared to go to battle against the Nephites lest they should lose their lives. And it came to pass that they would not, or the more part of them would not, obey the commandments of the king. And now it came to pass that when the proclamation had gone forth among them they were exceedingly afraid; yea, they feared to displease the king, and they also feared to go to battle against the Nephites lest they should lose their lives. And it came to pass that they would not, or the more part of them would not, obey the commandments of the king. And now it came to pass that the king was wroth because of their disobedience; therefore he gave Amalickiah the command of that part of his army which was obedient unto his commands, and command him that he should go forth and compel them to arms. Now behold, this was the desire of Amalickiah; for he being a very subtle man to do evil therefore he laid the plan in his heart to dethrone the king of the Lamanites. And now he had got the command of those parts of the Lamanites who were in favour of the king. #RandolphHarris 19 of 26

“And he sought to gain favour of those who were not obedient; therefore he went forward to the place which was called Onidah, for thither had all the Lamanites fled; for they discovered the army coming, and supposing that they were coming to destroy them, therefore they fled to Onidah, to the place of arms. And they had appointed a man to be king and a leader over them, being fixed in their minds with a determined resolution that they would not be subjected to go against the Nephites. And it came to pass that they had gathered themselves together upon the top of the mount which was called Antipas, in preparation to battle. Now it was not Amalickiah’s intention to give then battle according to the commandments of the king; but behold, it was one’s intention to gain favour with the armies of Lamanites, that he might place himself at their head and dethrone the king and take possession of the kingdom. And behold, it came to pass that he caused his army to pitch their tents in the valley which was near the mount Antipas. And it came to pass that when it was night he sent a secret embassy into the mount Antipas, desiring that the leaders of those who were upon the mount, whose name was Lehonti, that he should come down to the foot of the mount, for he desired to speak with him. #RandolphHarris 20 of 26

“And it came to pass that when Lehonti received the message he durst not go down to the foot of the mount. And it came to pass that Amalickiah sent again the second time, desiring him to come down. And it came to pass that Lehonti would not; and he sent again the third time. And it came to pass that when Amalickiah found that he could not get Lehonti to come down off from the mount, he went up into the munt, nearly to Lehonti’s camp; and he sent again the fourth time his message unto Lehonti, desiring that he would bring his guards with him. And it came to pass that when Lehonti had come down with his guards to Amalickiah, that Amalickiah desired him to come down with his army in the night-time, and surround those men in their camps over whom the king had given him command, and that he would deliver them up into Lehonti’s hands, if he would make him (Amalickiah) a second leader over the whole army. And it came to pass that Lehonti came down with his men and surrounded the men of Amalickiah, so that before they awoke at the dawn of the day they were surrounded by the armies of Lehonti. And it came to pass that when they saw that they were surrounded, they pled with Amalickiah that he would suffer them to fall in with their brethren, that they might not be destroyed. Now this was the very thing which Amalickiah desired. #RandolphHarris 21 of 26

“And it came to pass that he delivered his men, contrary to the commands of the king. Now this was the thing that Amalickiah desired, that he might accomplish his designs in dethroning the kind. Now it was the custom among the Lamanites, if their chief leader was killed, to appoint the second leader to be their chief leader. And it came to pass that Amalickiah caused that one of his servants should administer poison by degrees to Lehonti, that he died. Now, when Lehonti was dead, the Lamanites appointed Amalickiah to be their leader and their chief commander. And it came to pass that Amalickiah marched with his armies (for he had gained his desires) to the land of Nephi, to the city of Nephi, which was the chief city. And the king came out to meet him with his guards, for he supposed that Amalickiah had fulfilled his commands, and that Amalickiah had gathered together so great an army to go against the Nephites to battle. However, behold, as the king came out to meet him Amalickiah caused that his servants should go forth to meet the king. And they went and bowed themselves before the king, as if to reverence him because of his greatness. #RandolphHarris 22 of 26

“And it came to pass that the king put forth his hand to raise them, as was the custom with the Lamanites, as a token of peace, which custom they had taken from the Nephites. And it came to pass that when he had raised the first from the ground, behold he stabbed the king to the heart; and he fell to the Earth. Now the servants of Amalickiah raised a cry, saying: Behold, the servants of the kind have stabbed him to the heart, and he has fallen and they have fled; behold, come and see. And it came to pass that Amalickiah commanded that his armies should march forth and see what had happened o the king; and when they had come to the spot, and found the king lying in his gore, Amalickiah pretended to be wroth, and said: Whosoever loved the king, let him go forth, and pursue his servants that they may be slain. And it came to pass that all they who loved the king, when they heard these words, came forth and pursued after servants of the king. Now when the servants of the king saw an army pursuing after them, they were frightened again, and fled into the wilderness, and came over into the land of Zarahemla and joined the people of Ammon. And the army which pursued after them returned, having pursued after them in vain; and thus Amalickiah, by his fraud, gained the hearts of the people. #RandolphHarris 23 of 26

“And it came to pass on the morrow he entered the city of Nephi with his armies, and took possession of the city. And now it came to pass that the queen, when she had heard that the king was slain-for Amalickiah had sent an embassy to the queen informing her that the king had been slain by his servant, that he had pursued them with his army, but it was in vain, and they had made their escape—therefore, when the queen had received this message she sent unto Amalickiah, desiring him that he would spare the people of the city; and she also desired him that he should come in unto her; and she also desired him that he should bring witnesses with him to testify concerning the death of the king. And it came to pass that Amalickiah took the same servant that slew the king, and all them who were with him, and went in unto the queen, unto the place where she sat; and they all testified unto her that the king was slain by his own servants; and they said also: They have fled; does not this testify against them? And thus they satisfied the queen concerning the death of the king. And it came to pass that Amalickiah sought the favour of the queen, and took her unto him to wife; and thus by his fraud, and by the assistance of his cunning servants, he obtained the kingdom. #RandolphHarris 24 of 26

“Yea, he was acknowledged king throughout all the land, among all the people of the Lamanites, who were composed of the Lamanites and the Lemuelites and the Ishmaelites, and all the dissenters of the Nephites, from the reign of Nephi down to the present time. Now these dissenters, having the same instruction and the same information of the Nephites, yea, having been instructed in the same knowledge of the Lord, nevertheless, it is strange to relate, not long after their dissensions they became more hardened and impenitent, and more wild, wicked and ferocious than the Lamanites—drinking in with traditions of the Lamanites; giving way to indolence, and all manner of lasciviousness; yea, entirely forgetting the Lord their God,” reports Alma 47.1-36. I think now of the ancient times, when your worship first was established. It has been a long time now since your worship was celebrated as it should be, with processions in the marketplaces, with games to unite the scattered tribes, with hospitality granted to strangers in your name. Throughout the lonely times, you have waited patiently, in the sure foreknowledge that the night would end. See now, on the horizon; the light of dawn begins to creep over the edge of the World! #RandolphHarris 25 of 26

We need not wait much longer before the Sun will rise again and shine down once more on a World in which your worship is no longer neglected. Through the long night, we have kept your faith; in secret or in disguise we have performed the sacred acts. Sometimes, even unbeknownst to us, we have kept ancient lore alive. Now we hope to return to the light, to practice your ways openly and without fear, drawing the thoughts of other to you. In the backs of our people’s minds, they have remembered you, God. God, we pray to you! We who has been faithful, pray to you! Repository of all wisdom, out of which all others have only a share: it is to you we look when we need advice. The words you speak drop like late Summer rains, refreshing after a drought, awakening the dormant grass. Again and again I call to you, again and again you answer me. Old Wise One, it is you whom I worship. My love pours out, even as your bounty pours out. What I do here is only an image of your greater generosity. I pour out my love to the ancient High One, I make my offerings to One who should be worshipped. The Lord reigneth; He is robed in majesty; the Lord if robed, He hath girded Himself with strength. Now is the Earth firmly established; it shall not be moved. #RandolphHarris 26 of 26

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September 12, 2020 12:06 am

They Day of Glory Has Arrived–The Strongest Force in Our Universe is Not Overriding Power, but Love!

The entire movement to acquire antiques was born out of sheer respect for things that lasted longer than fifteen minutes. We are part of an incredible paradox. On the one hand, we want self-sufficiency, independence, privacy. Each person, even each family member, wants and “needs” an Ultimate Driving Machine, so that one person never has to adjust to the schedule or the wants of another. The family home comes with a dishwasher, so that family members need not cooperate in washing the dishes. If not an absolute “must,” a separate room for each members of the family is always the goal, and these days many kids have their own bedrooms and a play room, and each parent usually has more than one room as well, the den is usually reserved for the father and the mother has an office. When we commute by train or bus, we bury our respective noses in our own newspapers or books or laptop or tablet so that we can avoid communicating with the person next to us. It is very clear that the utmost in privacy is none too private. Our slogan could well be that of Greta Garbo: “I vant to be alone.” We pursue privacy and self-sufficiency in almost every possible way. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25

Many of us abhor superficial communication—chitchat, long conversations on trivial topics, cocktail-party burbling, lengthy arguments over everything from politics to baseball. So, to avoid such “a waste of time,” we remove ourselves from situations in which such superficiality is the expected level of communication. We in the West seem to have made a fetish out of complete individual self-sufficiency, of not needing help, of being completely private except in a very few selected relationships. This way of living would have been completely impossible during the most of history, but modern technology makes this goal achievable. With my private room, private Ultimate Driving Machine, private office, private (and preferably unlisted) telephone, with food and clothing purchased in large impersonal stores, with my own stove, refrigerator, dishwasher, washer-dryer, I can be practically immune from intimate contact with any other person. What with social media and dating applications, and singles bars, even intimate moments can be satisfied without personal intimacy. The utmost in privacy of personal life can be—and often is—achieved. We have reached our goal. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25

However, we pay a price. From our alienated young people come our criminals, capable of senseless violence. From our private middle years, we “progress” to be a very lonely “senior citizen” status. Both the young and the old are almost completely useless in our modern society, and are made keenly aware of that uselessness. They have no place. They are private, isolated—and hopeless. Our economy is based on spending billions to persuade people that happiness is buying things, and then insisting that the only way to have a viable economy is to make things for people to buy so they will have jobs and get enough money to buy things. We must realize that the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of separateness. Humanity has to rediscover that we prize deep intimacy, that it helps us grow, that it empowers us to act in our society. We are to be sad with one another, and we are to rejoice with one another. We have to be quite willing to put up with discomfort in order to be together. We have to relearn to enjoy nourishing one another. When we find our private selves lost in the larger endeavour of forming a community, we will discover that this gives us a deeper and more solid sense of self. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25

Perhaps the most dramatic and far-reaching future significance of our work is simply our way of being and acting as humans. To create a climate where power is shared, where individuals are empowered, where groups are dealt with as being trustworthy and competent to face problems—this is unheard of in ordinary life. Our schools, our government, our businesses and corporations are permeated with the view that neither the individual nor the group is trustworthy. There must be power over, power to control. The hierarchical system is inherent in our whole culture. Even in many of our religions, persons are regarded as basically sinful, and hence, in need of discipline and guidance. In the psychological sphere, psychoanalysis takes a similar view—that at the core, individuals are full of unconscious impulses which, if uncontrolled, would wreak havoc upon society. The paradigm of Western culture is that the essence of persons is dangerous; thus, they must be taught, guided, and controlled by those with superior authority. Yet out experience, and that of an increasing number of humanistic psychologists, has shown that another paradigm is far more effective and constructive for the individual and for society. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25

It is that, given a suitable psychological climate, humankind is trustworthy, creative, self-motivated, powerful, and constructive—capable of releasing undreamed-of potentialities. The first paradigm of controlling the evil in human nature has brought civilization to the brink of disaster. Can society come to see the effectiveness of the second paradigm? It appears to be the only hope for survival. Our goal as a nation and World is to create a harmonious unity out of citizens. Imagine reaching the point where people can truly hear and understand and respect one another, where humanness had a higher priority than power. The results could have the most profound significance. I do not mean all the problems will be resolved. Not all. However, even the most difficult tensions and demands will become more soluble in a human climate of understanding and mutual respect. If a group of individuals, no matter how antagonistic or hostile its members, are willing to gather in the same room together, we know the attitudes and skills that can move it in the direction of a communicative mutual respect, and eventually toward becoming a community. If we utilize the knowledge we have today, the impact on education in the future would be phenomenal. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25

The knowledge we have today could make future education a climate of trust in which curiosity, the natural desire to learn, could be nourished and enhanced. It could free students, faculty, and administrators alike to engage in a participatory mode of decision-making about all aspects of learning. It could develop a sense of community in which the destructive competition of today would be replaced by cooperation, respect for others, and mutual helpfulness. It could be a place where students would come to prize themselves, would develop self-confidence and self-esteem. It could be a situation in which both students and faculty would increasingly discover that source of values in themselves, coming to an awareness that the good life is within, not dependent on outside sources. In such an educational community, students could find an excitement in intellectual and emotional discovery which would lead them to become lifelong learners. These are not “pie-in-the-sky” statements. These goals are realistic and achievable, but we have to stop doubting peace is a reality. Much like how recently President Donald J. Trump secured a historic deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates to advance peace and prosperity in the region. What does this signify for the future? #RandolphHarris 6 of 25

In any new development, a subterranean current in the popular mind and feeling, which grows stronger and stronger until, with a seeming suddenness, it breaks forth into clearly articulated forms in various places and countries. This is why President Trump is advocating law and order. Law and order weeds out corruption and discrimination and makes it so people can live in peace and prosper. In this sense I believe there is, alongside the obviously destructive forces on our planet, a growing current that will lead to a new level of human awareness. There is the strong interest in holistic healing; the recognition of undeveloped psychic powers within each individual; the mysterious, unspoken communication that is so evident in our groups; a dimly sensed recognition that the strongest force in our Universe is not overriding power, but love. I know with certain that the problem is not that people cannot love. The problem is with their receptors for love. If one has dysfunction of one’s receptors of God’s love, one can lose one’s way and succumb to dangers, such as hopelessness, helplessness, and loneliness. When a person’s receptors for God’s love is dysfunctional, God’s influence in one’s life is minimized. The ability to sense Heavenly Father and His Son’s love and caring is lost. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25

Without Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and Their influence in our lives, we have no shepherd. Without Them, there is no sail—meaning there is no power. Without Them, there is no anchor—meaning there is no stability, especially in times of storm. Without Them, there is nothing which to steer—meaning there is no direction. No power, no stability, and no direction are all consequences of dysfunctional receptors for Their love. Receptor dysfunction for God’s love does not happen all at one—but slowly and imperceptibly over time. An inability to sense God’s love can also stem from sin or not pressing forward on the covenant path. Such inability can also be due to physical or mental illness that may require professional help. When indicated, God expects us to seek professional help. The first step is to repent. Repentance is a joyful process. If you stole Leo’s lunch and keep stealing it, then repent and never do it again and ask God for forgiveness. Remember that God does not really care who you were and what you did. God cares who you are, what you are doing, and who you are becoming. When, or whether, this cluster of new ways of seeing human beings in relation to the Universe will emerge fully into the open, I cannot predict. I simply point to the fact that the harmonious sense of community that occurs in our workshops enhances all the separate springs of this flowing subterrane current. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25

To further highlight this illustration, the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica covers 74,000 square miles—the size of the US State of Florida or Great Britain—and it is particularly susceptible to climate and ocean changes. Over the past 30 years, the overall rate of ice loss from Thwaites and its neighbouring glaciers has increased more than 5-fold. It was recently discovered that deep seabed channels beneath Thwaites Glacier is the pathway for warm ocean water and causing the ice to melt faster. So, if we are creating peaceful subterranean of love, peace, law and order, we could dissolve hate before people realize what is happening, at much faster rate than people believed possible. Our workshop experiences, along with the many other manifestations of this current, mean to me that humankind may be moving into a far different type of consciousness than exists today. We all must wait upon the social will. If the time comes when our culture tires of the endless fleecing of our economy, looting, rioting, vandalisms, homicidal feuds, despairs of the use of force and war as a means of bringing peace, becomes discontent with the half-lives that its members are living—only then will our culture seriously look for alternatives. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25

When people are ready to solve the ills of society, they will not find a void. They will discover that there are means for facilitating the resolutions of feuds. They will find that there are ways of building community without sacrificing the potential and creativity of the person. They will realize that there are ways, already tried out on a small scale, of enhancing learning, of moving toward new values, of raising consciousness to unexpected levels. They will find that there are ways of being that do not involve power over persons or groups. They will discover that harmonious community can be built on a basis of mutual respect and enhanced personal growth. That, to my mind, is our basic contribution as humanistic psychologist with a person-centered philosophy—we have created working models on a small scale which our culture can use when it is ready. Many of these small-scale models are seen in the suburbs in communities like Cresleigh Ranch and Plumas Ranch by Cresleigh Homes. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in out time of need,” reports Hebrews 4.15-16. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25

God’s power enables us to respond to the various circumstances and challenges hat constantly come to us. Perhaps the idea of appropriating the grace of God is a new thought to you, and you are not quite sure what I mean. The basic meaning of the word if “to take possession of,” and that is what we do when we appropriate God’s grace. We take possession of the divine strength He has made available to us in Christ. To use an analogy, we draw on an inexhaustible bank account, the account of God’s grace. Now there are times when the Holy Spirit works in a sovereign way in our lives, apart from any appropriating activity on our part, but more often God expects us to acts to appropriate His grace. To this end, God has provided four principal means of doing so: prayer, His word, submission to His providential workings in our lives, and the ministry of others. The first avenue of appropriating God’s grace is simply to ask for it in prayer. When we realize that we have reached the limits of our commitment, sometimes we may consider ceasing to ask God for guidance and begin to ask for the grace—that is, the spiritual ability—to say yes to what we think is His will. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25

The throne of grace is a figurative expression for God seated on His throne as the God of all grace. It is obviously not the throne itself but God on the throne who will give us His grace in time of need. In Revelation 6.16-17, God is portrayed sitting on His throne as the God of wrath and judgment. The people who see Him in that setting will call for mountains and rocks to fall on them to hide from His face and His wrath. The prophet Isaiah saw God seated on His throne as the God of infinite majesty and holiness. Isaiah was awestruck and cried out, “Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I love among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty” (6.5). However, in Hebrew 4.16, we see, not a throne of wrath, nor even a throne of infinite majesty and holiness, but a throne of grace. We are encouraged to come to this throne, not with terror because of His wrath, nor with awed fear because of His holiness, but with confidence because of His grace. God is indeed the infinitely holy God, high and exalted as Isaiah saw Him, and He will one day manifest Himself as the God of wrath to those who have spurned Him. However to us who are His children, He is the God of grace seated on His throne of grace. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25

We need to remember that it was God Himself who presented Jesus as the atonement for our sins, and the One who satisfied the justice of God and by that satisfaction turned aside God’s wrath from us. And because of Jesus’ atoning sacrifice, God’s throne is no longer a throne of judgment and wrath for us but it is now a throne of grace. God, whom Paul described as living in “unapproachable light” (1 Timothy 6.16), now encourages us to enter “the Most Holy Place,” His very throne room, and “draw near to God.” (Hebrews 10.19-22). This invitation is a striking contrast to the restrictions that existed under the Mosaic dispensation of the Old Testament. Under that system, only the high priest was allowed to enter the most holy place of the Temple, and then only once a year and never without the blood of the atonement (Hebrews 9.7). Now all believers may enter the Most Holy Place in Heaven, at all times, through the blood of Jesus, which was shed once for all (Hebrews 10.19). Not only may we enter, we are encouraged to enter, to come into the very presence of God, and to come with confidence because we come by the blood of Jesus. When we come to God’s throne, we need to remember He is indeed the God of all grace. He is the landowner who graciously gave a full day’s pay to the workers who had worked only one hour in the vineyard. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25

God is the God who said of the sinful nation of Israel even while they were in captivity, “I will rejoice in doing them good,” reports Jeremiah 32.41. He is the God who remained faithful to Peter through all his failures and sins and made him into a mighty apostle. He is the God who, over and over again, has promised to never lead us, nor forsake us (id est Deuteronomy 31.6,8; Psalm 94.14; Isaiah 42.16; Hebrews 13.5). He is the God who “longs to be gracious to you,” reports Isaiah 30.18, and He is the God who is for you, not against you (Romans 8.31). All this, and more, is summed up in that one statement, the God of all grace. As we approach the throne of grace, we find that Jesus, our Great High Priest, has gone before us and is, even as we come, already interceding for us. “But this man, because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood. Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost the come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them,” reports Hebrews 7.24-25. Jesus is described by the writer of Hebrews as being able to sympathize with out weakness. The double negative, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness” (4.15), is equivalent to a very strong absolute assertion: “We do have a high priest who can sympathize with us. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25

The truth is, He not only can be touched [with our weaknesses], but cannot but be touched. The assertion is not, It is possible that He may sympathize; but, It is impossible that He should not. Jesus can sympathize with our weakness because He has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. The word translated as sympathize means far more than the popular meaning, to feel sorry for. It is the capacity for sharing or understanding the feelings of another person. This feeling can be felt only by a person who has experienced the same or similar trials and who, consequently, understands what the other person is going through and has a desire to relieve the other’s distress. It is pity; but it is something more than pity: it is the pity which a human of kind affections feels towards those who are suffering what he himself has suffered. The Son of God, had He never become incarnate, might have pitied, but He could not have sympathized with His people. To render Him capable of sympathy, it was necessary that He should become a man that He might be susceptible of suffering, and that He should actually be a sufferer that He might be susceptible of sympathy. I suspect, however, that many of us, especially when we are experiencing physical or emotional pain, question whether or not Jesus suffered in the same way we are suffering. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25

After all, Jesus never experienced prolonged unemployment, Jesus never had to deal with lawmakers who refuse to help the people they serve, was not faced with the risk of contracting COVID-19, never had a child die in an plane crash, or endured the debilitating effects of a physical disability, or watched a spouse die slowly and painfully from cancer. The biblical text does not assert that Jesus suffered in all these ways. It says, “We have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin” (4.15). That is, Jesus was tempted, or tried, in all the various ways human nature is afflicted. He was born into poverty and experienced rejection from His own family, reproach by the leaders of His day, desertion by His friends, and excruciating physical pain on the cross. And the absence in Scripture of any reference to Joseph or Luke 2 leads to a reasonable inference that Jesus lost his Legal, Earthy father before He was thirty. Above all, He suffered the ultimate trial, which you and I will never have to experience: being forsaken by His Heavenly Father (Mathew 27.46). Sometimes you and I feel forsaken in the midst of trial (David felt that way in Psalm 13.1), and that sense of divine abandonment is the hardest part of the trial. However, Jesus actually was forsaken by God and knew it. He was “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief,” reports Isaiah 53.3. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25

So Jesus does fully understand and sympathize with us in our times of trials. We can be sure, whatever the nature of our hurts, they are not new to Him. Because Jesus can enter into our hurts and does sympathize with us, we can approach God’s throne with confidence, without being ashamed to lay our weakness before Him. He understands and He cares. We are encouraged to come to the throne of grace where we have a sympathetic High Priest already interceding for us, “so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need,” reports Hebrew 4.16. “And it came to pass that as many would not hearken to the words of Helaman and his brethren were gathered together against their brethren. And now behold, they were exceedingly wroth, insomuch that they were determined to slay them. Now the leader of those who were worth against their brethren was a large and a strong man; and his name was Amalickiah. And Amalickiah was desirous to be a king; and those people who were wroth were also desirous that he should be their king; and they were the greater part of them the lower judges of the land, and they were seeking for power. And they had been led by the flatteries of Amalickiah, that is they would support him and establish him to be their king that he would make them rulers over the people. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25

“Thus they were led away by Amalickiah to dissension, notwithstanding the preaching of Helaman and his brethren, yea, notwithstanding their exceedingly great care over the church, for they were high priests over the church. And there were many in the church who believed in the flattering words of Amalickiah, therefore they dissented eve from the church; and thus were the affairs of the people of Nephi exceedingly precarious and dangerous, notwithstanding their great victory which they had over the Lamanites, and their great rejoicing which they had had because of their deliverance by the hand of the Lord. Thus we see how quick the children of humans do forget the Lord their God, yea, how quick to do iniquity, and to be led away by the evil one. Yea, and we also see the great wickedness one very wicked man can cause to take place among the children of humans. Yea, we see that Amalickiah, because he was a man of cunning device and a man of many flattering words, that he led away the hearts of many people to do wickedly; yea, and to seek to destroy the church of God, and to destroy the foundation of liberty which God had granted unto them, or which blessing God had sent upon the face of the land for the righteous’ sake. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25

“And now it came to pass that when Moroni, who was chief commander of the armies of the Nephites, had heard of these dissensions, he was angry with Amalickiah. And it came to pass the he rent his coast; and he took a piece thereof, and wrote upon it—In memory of our God, our religion, and freedom, and our peace, our wives, and our children—and he fastened it upon the end of a pole. And he fastened on his headplate, and his breastplate, and his shields, and girded on his armour, about hi loins; and he took the pole, which had on the end thereof his rent coast, (and he called it the title of liberty) and he bowed himself to the Earth, and he prayed mightily unto his God for the blessings of liberty to rest upon his brethren, so long as there should a band of Christians remain to possess the land—for thus were all the true believers of Christ, who belonged to the church of God, called by those who did not belong to the church. And those who did belong to the church were faithful; yea, all those who were true believers in Christ took upon them, gladly, the name of Christ, or Christians as they were called, because of their belief in Christ who should come. And therefore, at this time, Moroni prayed that the cause of the Christians, and the freedom of the land might be favoured. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25

“And it came to pass that when he had poured out his soul to God, he named all the land which was south of the land of Desolation, yea, and in fine, all the land, both on the north and on the south—A chosen land, and the land of liberty. And he said: Surely God shall not suffer that we, who are despised because we take upon us the name of Christ, shall be trodden down and destroyed, until we bring it upon us by our own transgressions. And when Moroni had said these words, he went forth among the people, waving the rent part of his garment in the air, that all might see the writing which he had written upon the rent part, and crying with a loud voice, saying: Behold, whosoever will maintain this title upon the land, let them come forth in the strength of the Lord, and enter into a covenant that they will maintain their rights, and their religion, that the Lord God may bless them. And it came to pass that when Moroni had proclaimed these words, behold, the people came running together with their armour girded about their loins, rendering their garments in token, or as a covenant, that they would not forsake the Lord their God; or, in other words, if they should transgress the commandments of God, or fall into transgression, and be ashamed to take upon them the name of Christ, the Lord should rend them even as they have rent their garments. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25

“Now this was the covenant which they made, and they cast their garments at the feet of Moroni, saying: We covenant with our God, that we shall be destroyed, even as our brethren in the land northward, if we shall fall into transgression; yea, he may cast us at the feet of our enemies, even as we have cast our garments at thy feet to be trodden under foot, if we shall fall into transgression. Moroni said unto them: Behold, we are a remnant of the seed of Jacob; yea, we are a remnant of the seed of Joseph, whose coast was rent by his brethren into many pieces; yea, and now behold, let us remember to keep the commandments of God, or garments shall be rent by our brethren, and we be cast into prison, or be sold, or be slain. Yea, let us preserve our liberty as a remnant of Joseph; yea, let us remember the words of Jacob, before his death, for behold, he saw that part of the remnant of the coat of Joseph was preserved and had not decayed. And he said—Even as this remnant of garment of my son hath been preserved, so shall a remnant of the seed of my son be preserved by the hand of God, and be taken unto himself, while the remainder of the seed of Joseph shall perish, even as the remnant of this garment. Now behold, this giveth my soul sorrow; nevertheless, my soul hath joy in my son, because of that part of his seed which shall be taken unto God. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25

“Now behold, this was the language of Jacob. And now who knoweth but what the remnant of the seed of Joseph, which shall perish as his garment, are those who have dissented from us? Yea, and even it shall be ourselves if we do not stand fast in the faith of Christ. And now it came to pass that when Moroni has said these words he went forth, and also sent forth in all parts of the land where there were dissensions, and gathered together all the people who were desirous to maintain their liberty, to stand against Amalickiah and those who had dissented, who were called Amalickiahites. And it came to pass that when Amalickiah saw that the people of Moroni were more numerous than the Amalickiahites—and he also saw that his people were doubtful concerning the justice of the cause in which they had undertaken—therefore, fearing that he should not gain the point, he took those of his people who would and departed into the land of Nephi. Now Moroni thought it was not expedient that the Lamanites should have any more strength; therefore he thought to cut off the people of Amalickiah, or to take them and bring them back, and put Amalickiah to death; yea, for he knew that he would stir up the Lamanites to anger against them, and cause them to come to battle against them; and this he knew that Amalickiah would do that he might obtain his purpose. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25

“Therefore Moroni thought it was expedient that he should take his armies, who has gathered themselves together, and armed themselves, and entered into a covenant to keep the peace—and it came t pass that he took his army and marched out with his tens into the wilderness, to cut off the course of Amalickiah in the wilderness. And it came to pass that he did according to his desires, and marched forth into the wilderness, and headed the armies of Amalickiah. And it came to pass that Amalickiah fled with a small number of his men, and the remainder were delivered up to the hands of Moroni and were taken back into the land of Zarahemla. Now, Moroni being a man who was appointed by the chief judges and the voice of the people, therefore he had power according to his will with the armies of the Nephities, to establish and to exercise authority over them. And it came to pass that whomsoever of the Amalickiahites that would not enter into a covenant to support the cause of freedom, that they might maintain a free government, he caused to be put to death; and there were but few who denied the covenant of freedom. And it came to pass also, that he caused the title of liberty to be hoisted upon every tower which was in all the land, which was possessed by the Nephites; and thus Moroni planted the standard of liberty among the Nephites. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25

“And the began to have peace again in the land; and thus they did maintain peace in the land until nearly the end of the nineteenth years of reign of the judges. And Helaman and the high priests did also maintain order in the church; yea, even for he space of four years did they have much peace and rejoicing in the church. And it came to pass that there were many who died, firmly believing that their souls were redeemed by the Lord Jesus Christ; thus they went out of the World rejoicing. And there were some who died with fevers, which at some seasons of the year were very frequent in the land—but not so much with fevers, because of the excellent qualities of the many plants and roots which God had prepared to remove the causes of diseases, to which humans were subject by the nature of the climate—but there were many who died with old age; and those who died in the faith of Christ are happy in him, as we must needs suppose,” reports Alma 46.1-41. How shall I find words that can capture the truth? I am far too bold even to try. For how many before me have dared this, to praise you, searching themselves for new ways of speaking? If I could find only one phrase that expressed a Sunset, or a word for birds’ wings, or a sound for clouds, I would be content. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25

However, so many are your wonders and so inadequate my small attempts that I can only hope to have reflected some of what you are. Or perhaps I serve you best when I fall silent in your presence, God. What is done in the night, you see it. What is done in the day, you see it. Who can hide from you, who are found in all things? Where would we hide from you, who are fund in all things? Why would we hide from you, whose love pours out on all things? We thankfully acknowledge that Thou art the Lord our God and God of our fathers, the God of all that lives, our Creator and Creator of the Universe. We offer blessings and thanksgiving to Thy great and holy name because Thou hast kept us in life and sustained us; so mayest Thou continue to keep us in life and sustain us. O gather our exiles into the courts of Thy holy sanctuary to observe Thy statutes, to do Thy will, and to serve Thee with a perfect heart. We give thanks unto Thee. Blessed be God to whom we are every grateful. O Lord, our God, please be gracious unto Thy people and accept their prayer. Please restore the worship to Thy sanctuary and receive in love the supplications of your children; and may the worship of Thy people be ever acceptable unto Thee. O may our eyes witness Thy return to Zion. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who restorest Thy divine present unto the land. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25

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September 11, 2020 1:04 am

Waiting for the Angel to Stir the Water, I Realized I am Almost a God the Creator—The World I See is My World!

The faces of the past are like leaves that settle to the ground, they may the Earth rich and thick, so that new fruit will come forth every Summer. Radio and television have contributed greatly to the demise of the art of conversation. Scientist have attempted to pin down the difference between the effects of radio and television and have not as yet been able to turn up any solid results. It seems to me that neither radio nor television is an agent of dialogue. They work indirectly. In both of them there is someone on the giving end and someone on the receiving end. There can be no contradictions, no back talk. When the radio or TV is turned on, conversation stops. Radio and TV can create the impression of conversation, but they cannot really make it come about. That, I think, is a privilege reserved for living human beings. The crucial issue is whether radio and television invite us, stimulate us, challenge us to converse or whether they are inimical to the conditions that make conversation possible. However, in that regard radio seems less harmful to me than television. Television encourages passivity, a comfortable consumer mentality, more than any other medium. It is the most successful means we have ever developed to help us “pass time.” However, real conversation demands time. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23

If we pass our time and kill our time, conversation cannot flourish. Radio, if I am seeing things rig, does not exert so strong an attraction. It promotes and demands more alertness, more imagination. It could be, if it wanted to be, an inexhaustible source of material for conversation. It cannot offer conversation itself, but it can offer the stuff of conversation. It can point us toward other, more basic and direct means of communication, calling our attention, say, to the uniqueness and delight of face-to-face conversation. In many cases, when people turn on the radio, they are still free. However, when an individual turns on the TV and there is a program that interests them, they become addicted to them and do not want to move from in front of the screen. With the assistance of radio technology, one can listen to a conversation somewhat in the same way that they listen to someone else speaking on the telephone, and to be honest, it can be much better than the gibberish and chatter coming out of most people’s mouths because there is a topic that is meant to keep people interested. What we hear on the radio is not, of course, as personal as a telephone conversation, but we take both the telephone and radio in stride. We are not fascinated by them, and so I can truly say that we are free either to listen to the radio or not listen to it. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

My reaction to television is quite different. With television I lose a bit of my freedom. The minute the set is turned on and I see the picture on it, I experience what I would hesitate to call a compulsion but what is certainly a strong impulse or inclination to watch, even if I know intellectually that the program is utter drivel. I do not means to say that everything on television is drivel, some of it is very fascinating and highlights lifestyles we may be interested in, or inform of about myths we what to know about, some people even use television shows like a book club and discuss them so they forego sin by gossiping about real life people. People feel drawn to watch TV because it transports them to other realities they want to explore. Television holds a fascination far greater than that of radio. It exerts a kind of psychological spell that cannot be explained in terms of the content of any particular program. I have often asked myself what this fascination is, and I think it is rooted in some very profound level of our nature: By merely pressing a button, we can summon another World into our living rooms. That appeals to profound magical instincts. With television I become a kind of god. I can get rid of the reality I actually live with, and in its place I can create a new reality that appears when I press the button. #RandolpHarris 3 of 23

I am almost God the Creator. The World I see is my World. That reminds me of a story that not only illustrates this point vividly but also has the advantage of being true. A father and his six-year-old son were riding in the family car on a rainy, stormy day. They had a flat tire and had to stop to change it. Given the weather, that was a thoroughly unpleasant task, and the boy said to his father, “Daddy, can we not change to a different channel?” that is the way the child saw the World. If this one does not suit me, I will switch to another one. My wife recently read a novel by a Polish author and then told me a story, which I found utterly intriguing. The novel tells about the son of a very wealthy and eccentric man. The body grows up in his parental house but in total isolation. All he has available to him is a television set. He leaves it on all day, and he thinks that what he sees on it is reality (acute television intoxication). The young man never says a word, cannot say a word, because he knows nothing. All he can do is watch, because for him the World is nothing but a television show. However, precisely because he says nothing and because he eventually winds up in the house of one of the most powerful men in America, people think he must be terribly important. Pretty soon everyone knows his name, and in the end he is nominated for president because he never says anything and has not any opinions at all. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

This story illustrates just what I have been talking about. Reality and what we see in television have become one, and I think that this experience of being able to press a button and makes another World become a reality is—as you have said—a profound, atavistic experience and one that we find incredibly seductive. That is why television has no need, as it were, to offer anything “good.” Its appeal lies in the very nature of the medium. People are drawn to it the way they are to shooting star or to any other exciting spectacle—where they can remain spectators and are in no way prepared to take any action themselves. The flip side of this illusion of power (that can be had by pressing a button) is, then, total passivity. With radio, the possibility still remains that listening can be a kind of response, a predisposition to activity that should not be confused with merely waiting for enlightenment. Television has brought about drastic changes in our listening habits. Now that television has gotten people of the habit of attending to anything fully and closely, we can no longer assume that we have our listeners’ attention. Television has reduced radio to a more modest role. Indeed, radio hardly qualifies as a mass medium any more—a situation for which we should perhaps be grateful. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

Should not radio therefore be defining new tasks for itself that will take into account these differences we have been discussing here? I know that South German Radio has offered an extensive series of programs covering subjects ordinarily treated in university courses. The language has been somewhat simpler perhaps, but that is all to the good. (If instructors used simpler language to convey more content, it would be an improvement in our university courses.) This, it seems to me, is an admirable task for radio and one in which it can fill a significant educational role. It is remarkable with how little concentration people think, live, and work these days. Work is so fragmented and shattered that concentration is usually only mechanical and partial. We rarely encounter that full concentration that involves the whole person. A worker on an assembly line who has to tighten the same screw over and over again needs a certain kind of concentration is usually only mechanical and partial. We rarely encounter that full concentration that involves the whole person. A worker on an assembly line who has to tighten the same screw over and over again needs a certain kind of concentration to keep up one’s pace, but this type of concentration is capable of listening without one’s thoughts wandering off; one will not try to do five things at once because one cannot find any one thing that really satisfies one. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23

And, of course, without concentration we cannot accomplish anything. Everything we do without concentration will have little value. If concentration is lacking, our activities will not provide us or anyone else with satisfaction. That holds true for all of us, not just for great artist or scientist. I now turn to the notion of reflective equilibrium. The need for this idea arises as follows. According to the provisional aim of mortal philosophy, one might says that justice as fairness is the hypothesis that the principles which would be chosen in the original position are identical with those that match our considered judgments and so these principles describe our sense of justice. However, this interpretation is clearly oversimplified. In describing our sense of justice an allowance must be made for the likelihood that considered judgments are no doubt subject to certain irregularities and distortions despite the fact that they are rendered under favourable circumstances. When a person is presented with an intuitively appealing account of one’s sense of justice (one, say, which embodies various reasonable and natural presumptions), one may well revise one’s judgments to conform to its principles even though the theory does not fit one’s existing judgments exactly. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

One is especially likely to do this if one can find an explanation for the deviations which undermines one’s confidence in one’s original judgments and if the conception presented yields a judgment which one finds one can now accept. From the standpoint of moral philosophy, the best account of a person’s sense of justice is not the one which fits one’s judgments prior to one’s examining any conception of justice, but rather the one which matches one’s judgments in reflective equilibrium. As we have seen, this state is one reached after a person has weighed various proposed conceptions and one has either revised one’s judgments to accord with one of them or held fast to one’s initial convictions (and the corresponding conception). The notion of reflective equilibrium introduces some complications that call for comment. For one thing, it is a notion characteristic of the study of principles which govern actions shaped by self-examination. Moral philosophy is Socratic: we may wan to change our present considered judgments once their regulative principles are brought to light. And we may want to do this even though these principles are a perfect fit. A knowledge of these principles may suggest further reflections that lead us to revise our judgments. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

This feature is not peculiar though to moral philosophy, or to the study of other philosophical principles such as those of induction and scientific method. For example, while we may not expect a substantial revision of our sense of correct grammar in view of a linguistic theory the principles of which seem especially natural to us, such as change is not inconceivable, and no doubt our sense of grammaticalness may be affected to some degree anyway by this knowledge. However, these is a contrast, say, with physics. To take an extreme case, if we have an accurate account of motions of the Heavenly bodies that we do not find appealing, we cannot alter these motions to conform to a more attractive theory. It is simply good fortune that the principles of celestial mechanics have their intellectual beauty. There are, however, several interpretations of reflective equilibrium. For the nation varies depending upon whether one is to be presented with only those descriptions which more or less match one’s existing judgments except for minor discrepancies, or whether one is to be presented with all possible descriptions to which one might plausibly conform one’s judgements together with all relevant philosophical arguments for them. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

In the first case we would be describing a person’s sense of justice more or less as it is although allowing for the smoothing out of certain irregularities; in the second case a person’s sense of justice may or may not undergo a radical shift. Clearly it is the second kind of reflective equilibrium that one is concerned with in moral philosophy. To be sure, it is doubtful where one can ever reach this state. For even if the idea of all possible descriptions and of all philosophically relevant arguments is well-defined (which is a questionable one), we cannot examine each of them. The most we can do is to study the conceptions of justice known to us through the tradition of moral philosophy and any further ones that occur to us, and then to consider these. This is pretty much what I shall do, since in presenting justice as fairness I shall compare its principles and arguments with a few other familiar views. In light of these remarks, justice as fairness can be understood as saying that the two principles previously mentioned would be chosen in the original position in preference to other traditional conceptions of justice, for example, those of utility and perfection; and that these principles give a better match with our considered judgments on reflection than these recognized alternatives. Thus justice as fairness moves us closer to the philosophical ideal; it does not, of course, achieve it. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23

This explanation of reflective equilibrium suggests straightway a number of further questions. For example, does a reflective equilibrium (in the sense of the philosophical ideal) exist? If s, is it unique? Even if it is unique, can it be reached? Perhaps the judgments from which we begin, or the course of reflection itself (or both), affect the resting point, if any, that we eventually achieve. It would be useless, however, to speculate about these matters here. They are far beyond our reach. I shall not even ask whether the principles that characterize one person’s considered judgments are the same as those that characterize another’s. I shall take for granted that these principles are either approximately the same for persons whose judgments are in reflective equilibrium, or if not, that their judgments divide along a few lines represented by the family of traditional doctrines that I shall discuss. (Indeed, one person may find oneself torn between opposing conceptions at the same time.) If human’s conceptions of justice finally turn out to differ, the ways in which they do is a matter of first importance. Of course we cannot know how these conceptions vary, or even whether they do, until we have a better account of their structure. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

And this we now lack, even in the case of one human, or homogeneous group of humans. Here too there is likely to be a similarity with linguistics: if we can describe one person’s sense of grammar we shall surely know many things about the general structure of language. Similarly, if we should be able to characterize one (educated) person’s sense of justice, we would have a good beginning toward a theory of justice. We may suppose that everyone has in oneself the whole form of a moral conception. So for the purposes of this essay, the views of the reader and the author are the only ones that count. The opinions of others are useful only to clear our own heads. I wish to stress that a theory of justice is precisely that, namely, theory. It is a theory of the moral sentiments (to recall an eighteenth-century title) setting out the principles governing our moral powers, or, more specifically, our sense of justice. These is a definite if limited class of facts against which conjectured principles can be checked, namely, our considered judgments in reflective equilibrium. A theory of justice is subject to the same rules of method as other theories. Definitions and analyses of meaning do not have a special place: definition is but one device used in setting up the general structure of theory. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

Once the whole framework is worked out, definitions have no distinct status and stand or fall with the theory itself. In any case, it is obviously impossible to develop a substantive theory of justice founded solely on truths of logic and definition. The analysis of moral concepts and the a priori, however traditionally understood, is too slender a basis. Moral philosophy must be free to use contingent assumptions and general facts as it pleases. There is no other way to give an account of our considered judgments in reflective equilibrium. This is the conception of the subject adopted by most classical British writers through Sidgwick. I see no reason to depart from it. I believe that his view goes back in its essentials to Aristotle’s procedure in the Nicomachean Ethics. And Sidgwick thought of the history of moral philosophy as a series of attempts to state in full breadth and clearness those primary intuitions of Reason, by the scientific application of which the common moral thought of humankind may be at once systematized and corrected. He takes for granted that philosophical reflection will lead to revisions in our considered judgments, and although there are elements of epistemological intuitionism in his doctrine, these are not given much weight when unsupported by systematic considerations. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

Moreover, if we can find an accurate account of our moral conceptions, then questions of meaning and justification may prove much easier to answer. Indeed some of them may no longer be real questions at all. Note, for example, the extraordinary deepening of our understanding of the meaning and justification of statements in logical and mathematics made possible by developments since Frege and Cantor. A knowledge of the fundamental structures of logic ad set theory and their relation to mathematics has transformed the philosophy of these subjects in a way that conceptual analysis and linguistic investigations never could. One has only to observe the effect of the division of theories into those which are decidable and complete, undecidable yet complete, and neither complete no decidable. The problem of meaning and truth in logic and mathematics is profoundly altered by the discovery of logical systems illustrating these concepts. Once the substantive content of moral conceptions is better understood, a similar transformation may occur. It is possible that convincing answers to questions of the meaning of justification or moral judgments can be found in no other way. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

I wish, then, to stress the central place of the study of out substantive moral conceptions. However, the corollary to recognizing their complexity is accepting the fact that our present theories are primitive and have great defect. We need to be tolerant of simplifications if they reveal and approximate the general outlines of our judgments. Objections by way of counterexamples are to be made with care, since these may tell us only what we know already, namely that our theory is wrong somewhere. The important thing is to find out how often and how far it is wrong. All theories are presumably mistaken in places. The real question at any given time is which of the views already proposed is the best approximation overall. To ascertain this some grasp of the structure of rival theories is surely necessary. It is for this reason that I have tried to classify and to discuss conceptions of justice by reference to their basic intuitive ideas, since these disclose the main difference between them. In presenting justice as fairness I shall contrast it with utilitarianism. I do this for various reasons, partly as an expository device, partly because the several variants of the utilitarian view have long dominated our philosophical tradition and continue to do so. And this dominance has been maintained despite the persistent misgivings that utilitarianism so easily arouses. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

The explanation for this peculiar state of affairs lies, I believe, in the fact that no constructive alternative theory has been advanced which has the comparable virtues of clarity and system and which at the same time allays these doubts. Intuitionism is not constructive, perfectionism is unacceptable. My conjecture is that the contract doctrine properly worked out can fill this gap. I think justice as fairness an endeavor in this direction. Of course the contract theory as I shall present it is subject to the strictures that we have just noted. It is no exception to the primitiveness that marks existing moral theories. It is disheartening, for example, how little can now be said about priority rules; and while a lexical ordering may serve fairly well for some important cases, I assume that it will not be completely satisfactory. Nevertheless, we are free to use simplifying devices, and this I have often done. We should view a theory of justice as a guiding framework designed to focus our moral sensibilities and to put before our intuitive capacities more limited and manageable questions for judgment. The principles of justice identify certain considerations as morally relevant and the priority rules indicate the appropriate precedence when these conflict, while the conception of the original position defines the underlying idea which is to inform our deliberations. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

If the scheme as a whole seems on reflection to clarify and to order our thoughts, and if it tends t reduce disagreements and to bring divergent convictions more in line, then it has done all that one may reasonably ask. Understood as parts of a framework that does indeed seem to help, the numerous simplifications may be regarded as provisionally justified. However, achieving this new vision of oneself—of who one would be—must not be presumed to be a mere snap of the fingers. It will require genuine openness to radical change in oneself, careful and creative instruction, and abundant supplies of divine grace. For most people all of this only comes to them after they reach the lowest level of their lives or the worst point of a decline, and discover the total hopelessness of being who they are. Most people cannot envision who they would be without the fears, angers, lusts, power ploys, and woundedness with which they have lived so long. They identify with their habit-worn feelings. When Jesus said to the man by the pool of Bethesda, waiting for the angel to stir the waters, “Wilt thou be made whole?” he was not just passing the time of day (John 5.6). #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

We are not told how old he was, but this man had been in his impotent condition for thirty-eight years! If made whole, he would have to deal with a career change of immense proportions. To all his relatives and acquaintances he would no longer be “the one whom we take to the pool every day to wait for the angel.” He would now be…What? Who? How would he identify himself? How would be now relate to others and they to him? He might even have to get a job. Doing what? However, really, this man’s problems was nothing compared to an individual undergoing the transformation of his feelings (emotions, sensations, desires) from those he learned in the home, school, and playground as he grew up to those that characterize the inner beings of Jesus Christ. He is not no to be one who will spend hours watching TV, listening to the radio, fantasizing sensual indulgence or revenge, or who will try to dominate or injure others in attitude, word, or deed. He will no repay evil for evil—push for push, blow for blow, taunt for taunt, hatred for hatred, contempt for contempt. He will not be always on the hunt to satisfy his lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride of life (1 John 2.16). #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

No wonder he has no real ideal who he will be; and he must content himself with the mere identity: “apprentice of Jesus.” That is the starting point from which his new identity will emerge, and it is in fact powerful enough to bear the load. “Behold, now it came to pass that the people of Nephi were exceedingly rejoiced, because the Lord had again delivered them out of the hands of their enemies; therefore they gave thanks unto the Lord their God; yea, and they did fast much and pray much, and they did worship God; yea, and they did fast much and pray much, and they did worship God with exceedingly great joy. And it came to pass in the nineteenth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi, that Alma came unto his son Helaman and said unto him: Believest thou the words which I spake unto thee concerning those records which have been kept? And Helaman said unto him: Yea, I believe. And Alma said again: Believest thou in Jesus Christ, who shall come? And he said: Yea, I believe all the words which thou has spoken. And Alma said unto him again: Will ye keep my commandments? And he said: Yea, I will keep thy commandments with all my heart. Then Alma said unto him: Blessed art thou; and the Lord shall prosper thee in this land. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23

“However, behold, I have somewhat to prophesy unto thee; but what I prophesy unto thee ye shall not make known; yea, what I prophesy unto thee shall not be made known, even until the prophecy is fulfilled; therefore write the words which I shall say. And these are the words: Behold, I perceive that this very people, the Nephites, according to the spirit of revelation which is in me four hundred years from the time that Jesus Christ shall manifest himself unto them, shall dwindle in unbelief. Yea, and then shall they see wars and pestilences, yea, famines and bloodshed, even until the people of Nephi shall become extinct—yea, and this because they shall dwindle in unbelief and fall into the works of darkness, and lasciviousness, and all manner of iniquities; yea, I say unto you, that because they shall sin against so great light and knowledge, yea, I say unto you, that from that day, even the fourth generation shall not pass away before this great iniquity shall come. And when that great day cometh, behold, the time very soon cometh that those who are now, or the seed of those who are no numbered among the people of Nephi, shall no more be numbered among the people of Nephi. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

“However, whosoever remaineth, and is not destroyed in that great and dreadful say, shall be numbered among the Lamanites, and shall become like unto them, all, save it be a few who shall be called the disciples of the Lord; and them shall the Lamanites pursue even until they shall become extinct. And now, because of iniquity, this prophecy shall be fulfilled. And now it came to pass that after Alma had said these things to Helaman, he blessed him, and also his other sons; and he also blessed the Earth for the righteous sake. And he said: Thus saith the Lord God—Cursed shall be the land, yea, this land, unto every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, unto destruction, which do wickedly, when they are fully ripe; and as I have said so shall it be; for this is the cursing and the blessing of God upon the land, for the Lord cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance. And now, when Alma has said these words he blessed the church, yea, all those who should stand fast in the faith from that time henceforth. And when Alma had done this he departed out of the land of Zarahemla, as if to go into the land of Melek. And it came to pass that he was never heard of more; as to his death or burial we know not of. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

“Behold, this we know, that he was a righteous man; and the saying when abroad in the church that he was taken up by the Spirit, or buried by the hand of the Lord, even as Moses. However, behold, the scripture saith the Lord took Moses unto himself; and we suppose that he has also received Alma in the spirit, unto himself; therefore, for this cause we know nothing concerning his death and burial. And now it came to pass in the commencement of the nineteenth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi, that Helaman went forth among the people to declare the word unto them. For behold, because of their wars with the Lamanites and the many little dissensions and disturbances which had been among the people, it became expedient that the word of God should be declared among them, yea, and that a regulation should be made throughout the church. Therefore, Helaman and his brethren went forth to establish the church again in all the land, yea, in every city throughout all the land which was possessed by the people of Nephi. And it came to pass that they did appoint priests and teachers throughout all the land, over all the churches. And now it came to pass that after Helaman and his brethren had appointed priests and teachers over the churches that there arose a dissension among them, and they would not give heed to the words of Helaman and his brethren. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23

“However, they grew proud, being lifted up in their hearts, because of their exceedingly great riches; therefore they grew rich in their own eyes, and would not give heed to their words, to walk uprightly before God,” reports Alma 45.1-24. Most High, from all directions about me, the spirits are praying. The spirits of east and south are praying. The spirits of west and north are praying. The spirits below and above are praying. The spirits are praying with me. We all together are praying to you, Ancient one. Please open Heaven’s door. Looking out at my yard, I see a leaf falling from a tree, and I raise a prayer of awe for God who caused such a marvel to me. This is a sign of the necessity of Grace, the Fatherly tenderness of God, the might of the all-prevailing Name; which are never weak, never diluted, never drawling, never ill-arranged, never provocation to listlessness; which exhibit an exquisite skill of antithesis and a rhythmical harmony which he ear is loth to lose. With a marvellous flexibility, my Lord, thank you for accepting all of your children with all of the different conditions of the human spirit. This is an example of a rich variety of construction, subject to a general law of threefold division. We give glory to God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23

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September 10, 2020 12:37 am

Creative Minds Always Have Been Known to Survive Any Kind of Bad Training!

If it were possible, every human would be like God; some few find it difficult to admit the impossibility. The good news is we are not alone. We all face hard times. I have encountered more than one trying circumstance in my own life. These are the days when prophecies are being fulfilled. We live in the dispensation of the fulness of times, which is the time to prepare for the Saviour’s return. It is also the time to work out our own salvation. We must know what we know. We must stand spiritually and temporarily independent of all Worldly creatures. This begins by understanding that God the Father is the Father of our spirits and that He loves us, that Jesus Christ is our Redeemer and Saviour, and that the Holy Ghost can communicate with our minds and our hearts. This is how we receive inspiration. We need to learn how to recognize and apply these promptings. We need to be acquainted with the promptings of the Holy Ghost, and we need to practice and apply the gospel teachings until they become natural and automatic. These promptings become the foundation of our testimonies. Then our testimonies will keep us happy and safe in troubled times. Effective Christian ministry, whether it is to one person or thousands, inevitably involves sacrifice. The Greek word we use to designate a minister is also the word used for servant. #RandolphHarris 1 of 26

Thus a minister of the gospel is a servant, not only of God, but of those to whom one ministers. That is why Paul could very naturally say, “For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake,” reports 2 Corinthians 4.5. To minister effectively, we need not only the strength and ability to minister but also the heart and disposition of a servant. We must have the sacrificial attitude Paul had when he said, “We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us,” reports 1 Thessalonians 2.8. A testimony of the gospel is a personal witness borne to our souls by the Holy Ghost that certain facts of eternal significance are true and that we know them to be true. Testimony is to know and to feel, conversion is to be become. We can learn how answers come through inspiration. They come as thoughts and feelings to our minds and hearts. Occasionally answers may come as a burning in the chest. Watch for answers by paying attention to the thoughts and feelings that come into our minds. Over time we will learn to recognize these as promptings. A person may profit by noticing the first intimation of the spirit of revelation; for instance, when you feel pure intelligence flowing into you, it may give you sudden strokes of ideas. #RandolphHarris 2 of 26

This inspiration of ideas may allow you to achieve your goals sooner than you realize, maybe even in that day. Those things that were presented unto your minds by the Spirit of God, will come to pass; and thus by learning the Spirit of God and understanding it, you may grow into the principle of revelation, until you become perfect in Christ Jesus. Asking for a testimony of truth opens the window of inspiration. Prayer is the most common and powerful way to invite inspiration. Merely asking a question, even in our minds, will start to open the window. The scriptures teach, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” God’s grace will work in unusual ways in your life. Grace is the workings of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers. The sense is not that God’s unmerited favour considered as the source of blessing, but rather the working of His Spirit as a concrete expression of that favour. The freest and most spontaneous acts of humans, their inward states and the outward manifestations of those states, when good, are due to the secret influence of the Spirit of God, which eludes our consciousness. #RandolphHarris 3 of 26

So it is God’s grace operating in them through the Holy Spirit, not the superiority of their own character, that caused such an abundant outpouring of generosity. God does not leave people to the resources of their own human nature—which is not naturally generous—but intervenes in their hearts by the power of His Spirit to create this amazing generosity. There is no question of human resources, but only of divine grace; and that same grace is available to everyone. That same grace is available to you and me to enable us to be generous in giving ourselves, which is after all the concrete expression of a sacrificial spirit. We need to be encouraged to realize that God’s grace is both sufficient and effect. We can, by His grace, fulfill whatever ministry He has given us to do in the body of Christ. We are unworthy to minister, but God considers us worthy through Christ. We are inadequate to minister, but God makes us adequate through the powerful workings of His Holy Spirit. We are not naturally given to self-sacrifice, but God gives us that spirit by His grace. All is of grace. No human worthiness or adequacy is required or accepted. Such a strong, but I believe biblical, emphasis on God’s grace apart from human worthy or adequacy does lead to the question of the relationship of grace and rewards. Does not God promise rewards to His faithful servants? #RandolphHarris 4 of 26

Did not Paul himself teacher that we must appear before the judgement seat of Christ to receive what is due us? If all our efforts are the results of God’s grace, what room is left for “faithful service”? God does not promise rewards, and what must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. “After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. The man who had received the five talents brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you have entrusted me with five talents. See, I have gained five more.’ His master replied, ‘Well done, good faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’” (Matthew 25.21). “I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the people of this World who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this World,” reports 1 Corinthians 5.10. However, these rewards are rewards of grace, not of merit. We never by our hard work or sacrificial service obligate God to reward us, for as Paul said in Romans 11.35, “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay one?” If all our service to God is made possible by His undeserved favour and made effective by the power of His Spirit, then we have really brought nothing to Him that we did not first receive from Him. #RandolphHarris 5 of 26

If there was anything of human’s bringing, which was not of God’s bestowing, though it were never so small, it would overturn the nature of grace, and make that of works which is of grace. However, it is all of God’s bestowing. Every thought, word, or deed emanating from us that is in any way pleasing to God and glorifying to Him has its ultimate origin in God, because apart from Him, there is nothing good in us. “But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out,” reports Romans 7.8 and 18. Even the good works we bring to God are in themselves defective, both in motive and performance. It is virtually impossible to purge our motives completely of pride and self-gratification. And we can never perfectly perform those good works. The best we can do falls short of what God requires, but the truth is, we never actually do the best we can, let alone what would meet God’s perfect standard. That is why Peter spoke of our “offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ,” reports 1 Peter 2.5. Our best works are acceptable to God only because they are made acceptable by the merit of Jesus Christ. #RandolphHarris 6 of 26

However, God does accept our merits through Christ; God accepts them on the basis of His grace. We do not do all that is commanded but come short of our duty, and that which we do is imperfect and defective in respect of manner and measures; and therefore in justice deserves punishment, rather than reward: and consequently the reward, when it is given, is to be ascribed to God’s undeserved mercy and not to our merit. Remember the parable of the workers in the vineyard. You will remember that, in the verses immediately preceding the parable, Jesus promised a reward “a hundred times as much,” ore ten thousand percent. God’s rewards to us will not only be of grace, but will indeed be gracious—that is, generous beyond all measure. So the grace of God in our service to Him does not negate rewards but rather makes them possible. However, the blessing Christ promised, the blessing of great reward, is a reward of grace. The blessing is promised even though it is not earned. Our rewards in Heaven are a result of God’s crowing His own gifts. This is the amazing story of God’s grace. God saves us by His grace and transforms us more and more into the likeness of His Son by His grace. In all our trials and afflictions, He sustains and strengthens us by His grace. #RandolphHarris 7 of 26

By the power of the Holy Ghost we may know the truth of all things which are right and expedient for us. We will receive strength, comfort and help to make good decisions and act with confidence in troubled times. God calls us by grace to perform our own unique functions within the Body of Christ. Then, again by grace, He gives to each of us the spiritual gifts necessary to fulfill our calling. As we serve God, He makes that service acceptable to Himself by grace, and then rewards us a hundredfold by grace. In Romans 1.17, Paul spoke of the gospel as revealing “a righteousness that is by faith from first to last”—that is, from beginning to end. That is also an appropriate term for grace, for faith is no more than the response to and appropriation of the grace of God. So the entire Christian life is a life lived under grace from first to last, from beginning to end, all “to praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves,” reports Ephesians 1.6. The Scriptural/Christian doctrine of work has an exalted origin because it is closely related to the doctrines of the creative energy of God and the image of God in humans. We meet God the Creator as a worker in Genesis 1.1-2.2. In fact, that entire section is a log of God’s work, ending with the statement that upon completion “He rested from all the work of creating that he had done,” reports Genesis 2.2. #RandolphHarris 8 of 26

As Milton expressed it: The planets in their stations listening stood, while the bring pomp ascended jubilant. “Open, ye everlasting gates,” they sung; “Open, ye Heavens, you living doors; let the great Creator, from his work return’d magnificent, his six days’ work, a World. (Paradise Lost, VII.563). God’s being a worker endows all legitimate work with an intrinsic dignity. The additional teaching of Genesis 1 is that “God created humans in his own image” (1.27). We are compelled to understand from this that the image of God in humans means humans are to be workers. The way we work will reveal how much we have allowed the image of God to develop in us. There is immense dignity in work and in being workers. Humans, you mist set this on your hearts: Your work matters to God! A further observation of great importance is that work was given to humans before the Fall, before sin, before imperfection: “Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden” (Genesis 2.8); “The Lord God took the human and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it” (2.15). From this we come to the inescapable conclusion that work is good, despite the modern thinking that it is evil and dehumanizing. Having the power to receive personal inspiration will be necessary in the coming days. #Randolphharris 9 of 26

We do not consider manual work as a curse, or a biter necessity, not even as a means of making a living. We consider it as a high human function. As a basis of human life. The most dignified thing in the life of a human being and which ought to be free, creative. Humans ought to be proud of it. If we look at this from the viewpoint of one still at an early stage of spiritual formation, it is a major step forward just to sincerely desire, not to not sin, but to have different feelings—feelings that lead away from sin. At that early stage, one has to strongly want to not want what one now wants, and to want to want what does not now want. One has to feel strong revulsion toward the wrong feeling one now has or is likely to have and at the same time strong attraction to good feeling that one does not now feel. This proves to be absolutely necessary in order to “put off the old person” (involving the wrong feeling) and “put on the new person” (involving the good feeling). So, for example, one does not merely want to not assault others verbally, or to not fall into fornication, but one really wants to not have the feelings that lead to it and takes steps to avoid those feelings. If a strong and compelling vision of myself as one who is simply free from intense vanity or desire for wealth or for indulgence in pleasures of the flesh can possess me, then I am in a position to desire to not have the desires I now have. #RandolphHarris 10 of 26

If I want to purge myself of Worldly desires, those means ca be effectively sought to that end. The Vision Intent Mission (VIM) pattern of change will work here as elsewhere. This is a great time to be alive! He Lord needs each of us. This is our day; it is our time! And now let us look down into ourselves to discover there the struggle between separation and reunion, between sin and grace, in our relation to others, in our relation to ourselves, and in our relation to the Ground and aim of our being. If your soul responds to the description that I intend to give, words like “sin” and “separation”, “grace” and “reunion”, may have a new meaning for us. However, the words themselves are not important. It is the response of the deepest levels of our being that is important. If such a response were to occur among us this moment, we could say that we have known grace. Who has not, at some time, been lonely in the midst of a social event? The feeling of our separation from the rest of life is most acute when we are surrounded by it in noise and talk. We realize then much more than in moments of solitude how strange we are to each other, how estranged life is from life. Each one of us draws back into oneself. We cannot penetrate the hidden center of another individual; nor can that individual pass beyond the shroud that covers our own being. #RandolphHarris 11 of 26

Even the greatest love cannot break through the walls of the self. Who has not experienced that disillusionment of all great love? If one were to hurl away one’s self in complete self-surrender, one would become a nothing, without form or strength, a self without self, merely an object of contempt and abuse. Our generation knows more than the generation of our fathers about the hidden hostility in the ground of our souls. Today we know much about the profusive aggressiveness in every being. Today we can confirm what Immanuel Kant, the prophet of human reason and dignity, was honest enough to say: there is something in the misfortune of our best friends which does not displease us. Who amongst us is dishonest enough to deny that this is true also of one? Are we not almost always ready to abuse everybody and everything, although often in a very refined way, for the pleasure of self-elevation, for an occasion for boasting, for a moment of lust? To know that we are ready is to know the meaning of the separation of life from life, and of “sin abounding”. The most irrevocable expression of the separation of life today is the attitude of social groups within nations toward each other, and the attitude of nations themselves towards other nations. The walks of distance, in time and space, have been removed by technical progress; but the walks of estrangement between heat and heat have been incredibly strengthened. #RandolphHarris 12 of 26

The madness being seen in American streets provides too easy an excuse for us to turn our thoughts from our own selves. However, let us just consider ourselves and what we feel, when we read, this morning and tonight, that in the entire World nearly 1 million people have died from COVID-19, and the millions are freezing, burning up, being flooded out of their homes, are sick and dying, and starving to death. The strangeness of life to life is evident in the strange fact that we can know all this, and yet can live today, this morning, tonight, as though we were completely ignorant. And I refer to the most sensitive people amongst us. In both humankind and nature, life is separated from life. Estrangement prevails among all things that live. Sin abounds. It is important to remember that we are not merely separated from each other. For we are also separated from ourselves. Humans Against Themselves is not merely an abstract idea, but rather also indicates the rediscovery of an age-old insight. Humans are split within themselves. Life moves against itself through aggression, hate, and despair. We are wont to condemn self-love; but what we really mean to condemn is contrary to self-live. It is that mixture of selfishness and self-hate that permanently pursues us, that prevents us from loving others, and that prohibits us from losing ourselves in the love with which we are loved eternally. #RandolphHarris 13 of 26

One who is able to love oneself is able to love others also; one who has learned to overcome self-contempt has overcome one’s contempt for others. However, the depth of our separation lies in just the fact that we are not capable of a great and merciful divine love towards ourselves. On the contrary, in each of us there is an instinct of self-destruction, which is as strong as our instinct of self-preservation. In our tendency to abuse and destroy others, there is an open or hidden tendency to abuse and to destroy ourselves. Cruelty towards others is always also cruelty towards ourselves. Nothing is more obvious than the split in both our unconscious life and conscious personality. Without the help of modern psychology, Paul expressed that fact in his famous words, “For I do not do the good I desire, but rather the evil that I do not desire.” And then he continued in words that might well be the motto of all depth psychology: “Now if I should do what I do not wish to do, it is not I that do it, but rather sin which dwells within me.” The apostle sensed a split between one’s conscious will and one’s real will, between oneself and something strange within and alien to one. One was estranged from oneself; and that estrangement one called “sin”. One also called it a strange “law in one’s limbs,”, an irresistible compulsion. #RandolphHarris 14 of 26

How often we commit certain acts in perfect consciousness, yet with the shocking sense that we are being controlled by an alien power! That is the experience of the separation of ourselves from ourselves, which is to day sin,” whether or not we like to use that word. Thus, the state of our whole life is estrangement from others and ourselves, because we are estranged from the Ground of our being, because we are estranged from the origin and aim of our life. And we do not know where we have come from, or where we are going. We are separated from the mystery, the depth, and the greatness of our existence. We hear the voice of that depth; but our ears are closed. We feel that something radical, total, and unconditioned is demanded of us; but we rebel against it, try to escape its urgency, and will not accept its promise. We cannot escape, however. If that something is the Ground of our being, we are bound to it for all eternity, just as we are bound to ourselves and to all other life. We always remain in the power of that from which we are estranged. That fact brings us to the ultimate depth of sin: separated and yet bound, estranged and yet belonging, destroyed and yet preserved, the state which is called despair. Despair means that there is no escape. Despair is “the sickness unto death.” However, the terrible thing about the sickness of despair is that we cannot be released, not even through open or hidden suicide. #RandolphHarris 15 of 26

For we all know that we are bound eternally and inescapably o the Ground of our being. The abyss of separation is not always visible. However, it has become more visible to our generation than to the preceding generations, because of our feeling of meaninglessness, emptiness, doubt, and cynicism—all expressions of despair, of our separation from the roots and the meaning of our life. Sin in its most profound sense, sin, as despair, abounds amongst us. “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound”, says Paul in the same letter in which he describes the unimaginable power of separation and self-destruction within society and the individual soul. He does not say these words because sentimental interests demand a happy ending for everything tragic. He says them because they describe the most overwhelming and determining experience of his life. In the pictures of Jesus as the Christ, which appeared to him at the moment of his greatest separation from other humans, from oneself and God, he found himself accepted in spite of his being rejected. And when found that he was accepted, he was able to accept himself and to be reconciled to others. The moment in which grace struck him and overwhelmed him, he was reunited with that to which he belonged, and from which we was estranged in utter strangeness. #RandolphHarris 16 of 26

Do we know what it means to be struck by grace? It dies not mean that we suddenly believe that God exists, or that Jesus is the Saviour, or that the Bible contains the truth. To believe that something is, is almost contrary to the meaning of grace. Furthermore, grace does not mean simply that we are making progress in our moral self-control, in our fight against special faults, and in our relationships to human and to society. Moral progress may be a fruit of grace; but it is not grace itself, and it can even prevent us from receiving grace. For there is too often a graceless acceptance of Christian doctrines and a graceless battle against the structures of evil in our personalities. Such a graceless relation to God may lead us by necessity either to arrogance or to despair. It would be better to refuse God and the Christ and the Bible than to accept Them without grace. For if we accept without grace, we do so in the state of separation, and can only succeed in deepening the separation. We cannot transform our lives, unless we allow them to be transformed by that stoke of grace. It happens; or it does not happen. And if we try to force it upon ourselves, just as it shall not happen so long as we think, in our self-complacency, that we have no need of it, certainly it does not happen. #RandolphHarris 17 of 26

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life, a life which we loved, or from which we were estranged. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsion reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: “You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!” If that happens to us, we experience grace. After such an experience we may not be better than before, and we may not believe more than before. However, everything is transformed. #RandolphHarris 18 of 26

In that moment, grace conquers sin, and reconciliation bridges the gulf of estrangement. And nothing is demanded of this experience, no religious or moral or intellectual presupposition, nothing but acceptance. In the light of this grace we perceive the power of grace in our relation to others and to ourselves. We experience the grace of being able to look frankly into the eyes of another, the miraculous grace of reunion of life with life. We experience the grace of understanding each other’s words. We understand not merely the literal meaning of the words, but also that which lies behind them, even when they are harsh or angry. For even then there is a longing to break through the walls of separation. We experience the grace of being able to accept the life of another, even if it be hostile and harmful to us, for, through grace, we know that it belongs to the same Ground to which we belong, and by which we have been accepted. We experience the grace which is able to overcome the tragic separation of the genders, of the generations, of the nations, of the races, of the cultures, and even the utter strangeness between humans and nature. Sometimes grace appears in all these separations to reunite us with those to whom we belong. For life belongs to life. #RandolphHarris 19 of 26

And in the light of this grace we perceive the power of grace in our relation to ourselves. We experience moments in which we accept ourselves, because we feel that we have been accepted by that which is greater than we. If only more such moments were given to us! For it is such moments that make us love our life, that makes us accept ourselves, not in our goodness and self-complacency, but in our certainty of the eternal meaning of our life. We cannot force ourselves to accept ourselves. We cannot compel anyone to accept oneself. However, sometimes it happens that we receive the power to say “yes” to ourselves, that peace enters into us and makes us whole, that self-hate and self-contempt disappear, and that our self is reunited with itself. Then we can say that grace has come upon us. “Sin” and “grace” are strange words; but they are not strange things. We can find them whenever we look into ourselves with searching eyes and longing hearts. They determine our life. They abound within us and in all of life. May grace more abound within us! Thus, according to these principles, every thing is full of God. Nothing exists but by His will. Nothing possesses any power but by His concession. It may seem that these principles rob nature, and all created beings, of every power, in order to render our dependency on the Deity still more sensible and immediate. #RandolphHarris 20 of 26

This theory argues surely more power in the Deity to delegate a certain degree of power to inferior creatures. It argues more wisdom to contrive at first the fabric of the World with such perfect foresight, that, of itself, and by its proper operation, it may serve all the purposes of providence, than if the great Creator were obliged every moment to adjust its parts, and animate by His breath all the wheels of that stupendous machine. “And it came to pass that they did stop and withdrew a pace from them. And Moroni said unto Zerahemnah, that we do not desire to be humans of blood. Ye know that ye are in our hands, yet we do not desire to slay you. Behold, we have not come out to battle against you that we might shed your blood for power; neither do we desire to bring any one to the yoke of bondage. However, this is the very cause for which ye have come against us; yea, and ye are angry with us because of our religion. However, nor, ye behold that the Lord is with us; and ye behold that he has delivered you into our hands. And now I would that ye should understand that this is done unto us because of our religion and our faith in Christ. And now ye see that ye cannot destroy this our faith. #RandolphHarris 21 of 26

Now ye see that this is the true faith of God; yea, ye se that God will support, and keep, and preserve us, so long as we are faithful unto him, and unto our faith, and our religion; and never will the Lord suffer that we shall be destroyed except we should fall into transgression and deny our faith. And now, Zerahemnah, I command you, in the name of that all-powerful God, who has strengthened our arms that we have gained power over you, by our faith, by our religion, and by our rites of worship, and by our church, and by the sacred support which we owe to our wives and our children, by that liberty which binds us to our lands and our country; yea, and also by the maintenance of the sacred word of God, to which we owe all our happiness; and by all that is most dear unto us—yea, and this is not all; I command you by all the desires which ye have for life, that ye deliver up your weapons of wars unto us, and we will seek not your blood, but we will spare your lives, if ye will go your way and come not again to war against us. And now, if ye do not this, behold, ye are in our hands, and I will command my men that they shall fall upon you, and inflict the wounds of death in your bodies, that ye may become extinct; and then we will see who shall have power over this people; yea, we will see who shall be brought into bondage. #RandolphHarris 22 of 26

“And now it came to pass that when Zerahemnah had heard these sayings he came forth and delivered up his sword and his cimeter, and his bow into the hands of Moroni, and said unto him: Behold, here are our weapons of war; we will deliver them up unto you, but we will not suffer ourselves to take an oath unto you, which we know that we shall break, and also our children; but take our weapons of war, and suffer that we may depart into the wilderness; otherwise we will retain our swords, and we will perish or conquer. Behold, we are not of your faith; we do not believe that it is God that has delivered us into your hands; but we believe that it is your cunning that has preserved you from our swords. Behold, it is your breastplates and your shields that have preserved you. And now when Zerahemnah had made an end of speaking these words, Moroni returned the sword and the weapons of war, which he had received, into Zerahemnah, saying: Behold, we will end the conflict. Now I cannot recall the words which I have spoken, therefore as the Lord liveth, ye shall not depart except ye depart with an oath that ye will not return again against us to war. Now as ye are in our hands we will spill your blood upon the ground, or ye shall submit to the conditions which I have promised. #RandolphHarris 23 of 26

“And now when Moroni had said these words, Zerahemnah retained his sword, and he was angry with Moroni, and he rushed forward that he might slay Moroni; but as he raised his sword, behold, one of Moroni’s soldiers smote it even to the Earth, and it broke by the hilt; and he also smote Zerahemnah that he took off his scalp and it fell to the Earth. And Zerahemnah withdrew from before them into the midst of his soldiers. And it came to pass that the soldiers who stood by, who smote off the scalp of Zerahemnah, took up the scalp from off the ground by the hair, and laid it upon the point of his sword, and stretched it forth unto them, saying unto them with a loud voice: Even as this scalp has fallen to the Earth, which is the scalp of your chief, so shall ye fall to the Earth except ye will deliver up your weapons of war and depart with a covenant of peace. Now there were many, when they heard these words and saw the scalp which was upon the sword, that were struck with fear; and many came forth and threw down their weapons of war at the feet of Moroni, and entered into a covenant of peace. And as many as entered into a covenant they suffered to depart into the wilderness. Now it came to pass that Zerahemnah was exceedingly wroth, and he did stir up the remainder of his soldiers to anger, to contend more powerfully against the Nephites. #RandolphHarris 24 of 26

“And now Moroni was angry, because of the stubbornness of the Lamanites; therefore he commanded his people that they should fall upon them and slay them. And it came to pass that they began to slay them; yea, and the Lamanites did contend with their sword and their might. However, behold, their naked skins and their bare heads were exposed to the sharp swords of the Nephites; yea, behold they were pierced and smitten, yea, and did fall exceedingly fast before the swords of the Nephites; and they began to be swept down, even as the soldier of Moroni has prophesied. Now Zerahemnah, when he saw that they were all about to be destroyed, cried mightily unto Moroni, promising that he would covenant and also his people with them, if they would spare the remainder of their lives, that they never would come to war again against them. And it came to pass that Moroni caused that the work of death should cease again among the people. And he took the weapons of war from the Lamanites; and after they had entered into a covenant with him of peace they were suffered to depart into the wilderness. Now the number of their dead was not numbered because of the greatness of the number; yea, the number of their dead was exceedingly great, both on the Nephites and on the Lamanites. #RandolphHarris 25 of 26

“And it came to pass that they did cast their dead into the waters of Sidon, and they have gone forth and are buried in the depths of the sea. And the armies of the Nephites, or of Moroni, returned and came to their houses and their lands. And thus ended the eighteenth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And thus ended the record of Alma, which was written upon the plate of Nephi,” reports Alma 44.1-24. Surrounded by the forest’s trees I am surrounded by the spirits of the forest. I sit here, on the needles and leaves, and spread my arms in greeting. Come to me, if you wish; I hope for your coming. I wait here for you, hoping to see you. And if you do not come, I will still leave these gifts for you, for my hands are not closed. My hands are open in generosity towards you, God, they are extended in friendship towards you. Do you hear me, Lord? I am calling to you. Here I am, Lord: Please come to me. Here are gifts for you: Come and I will give them. I am calling you, Lord. Please come and talk to me. Riding the sound of the deep drumming, please come to me as I call to you. Please come to the rhythm of the heartfelt pounding, please come to me as I call you here. Dear Lord in Heaven, please come to me as I call you hear. #RandolphHarris 26 of 26

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September 8, 2020 10:41 pm

I Feared Dying, Not Because of Death, but Because it Would End My Career!

People talk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do. Every society faces not merely a succession of probable futures, but an array of possible futures, and a conflict over preferable futures. The pace of events is moving so fast that unless we can find some way to keep our sights on tomorrow, we cannot expect to be in touch with today. Millions of people regard their work as something they must bear, a living indignity. Their feelings are not without precedent. A dark could of dissatisfaction blankets today’s work force. For the overwhelming majority, work is dull and meaningless. This pervasive discontent has spawned the paradoxical problems of laziness on the one hand and overwork on the other. Twenty five percent of employees gives one’s best effort on the job, and about twenty percent of the average worker’s time is wasted, thus producing, in effect, a four-day work week. However, sloth is an epidemic, so is over overwork. Moonlighting is a way of life for a substantial part of our work force. When the workers at a rubber manufacturing plant in Akron, Ohio USA, were given six-hour workdays—and over half of them took on a second full- or part-time job—this was a classic illustration! #RandolphHarris 1 of 25

The managerial counterpart to workers’ moonlighting is the workaholism of those who sublimate everything—family, leisure, friends, church—to career. The depths to which careerism can go is chronicled and is extreme but not an uncommon expression when a man confessed he feared dying, not because of death, but because it would end his career. This mind-set has produced an unending list of shallow folk-religion epigrams which tout the requisite qualities of successful careers: discipline—creativity is two percent inspiration and ninety eight percent perspiration; goals—if you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time; savvy—success in life some not from holding a good hand, but from playing a poor hand well; perseverance—tough times never last, but tough people do; vision—some people dream dreams and ask, Why? I dream dreams and ask, Why not?; self-confidence—believe in God, and you are halfway there; believe in yourself, and you are three-quarters there. The careerists who espouse the hubris of these credos wrongly think themselves heirs of the Protestant work ethic, but they are anything but that, as we shall see. This delusion takes on personally tragic dimensions, because surveys have indicated that the work ethics of Christians and non-Christians are virtually identical. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25

At church they swear allegiance to values informed by creeds and Scriptures. However, at work they bow to idols of expedience and career success. Moral camouflage has become de rigueur (required by etiquette or current fashion) in the workplace. The plain truth is, many Christian humans miserably fail in their work ethics either because of sloth or overwork or, ironically, both. What we need is a work ethic which is informed by God’s Word and religiously lived out in the workplace and the Church. The reason this is so important is that most of us spend eight to twelve of our sixteen waking hours at work five or six days a week. So how we work not only reveals who we are, but determines what we are. The Christian discipline of work must be observed de rigueur wherever God has placed us. “Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. However, where in abounded, grace did much more abound,” reports Romans 5.20. Thee words of Paul summarize his apostolic experience, his religious message as a whole, and the Christian understanding of life. To discuss theses words, or to make them the text of even several sermons, has always seemed impossible to me. I have never dared to use them before. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25

However, something has driven me to consider these words during the past few months, a desire to give witness to the two facts which appeared to me, in hour of retrospection, as the all-determining facts of our life: the abounding sin and the greater abound of grace. There are few words more strange to most of us than “sin” and “grace.” They are strange, just because they are so well-known. During the centuries they have received distorting connotations, and have lost so much of their genuine power that we must seriously ask ourselves whether we should use them at all, or whether we should discard them as useless tools. However, there is a mysterious fact about the great words of our religious tradition: they cannot be replaced. All attempts to make substitutions, including those I have tried myself, have failed to convey the reality that was to be expressed; they have led to shallow and important talk. There are no substitutes for words like “sin” and “grace”. However, there is a way of rediscovering their meaning, the same way that leads us down into the depths of our human existence. In that depth these words were conceived; and there they gained power for all ages; there they must be found again by each generation, and by each of us for ourselves. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25

Let us therefore try to penetrate the deeper levels in our life, in order to see whether we can discover in them the realities of which our text speaks. It seems desirable at this point, in order to prevent misunderstanding to discuss briefly the nature of moral theory. I shall do this by explaining in more detail the concept of a considered judgment in reflective equilibrium and the reasons for introducing it. Let us assume that each person beyond a certain age and possessed of the requisite intellectual capacity develops a sense of justice under normal social circumstances. We acquire a skill in judging things to be just and unjust, and in supporting these judgments by reasons. Moreover, we ordinarily have some desire to act in accord with there pronouncements and expect a similar desire on the part of others. Clearly this moral capacity is extraordinarily complex. To see this suffices to note the potentially infinite number and variety of judgments that we are prepared to make. The fact that we often do not know what to day, and sometime find our minds unsettled, does not detract from the complexity of the capacity we have. Now one may think of moral philosophy at first (and I stress the provisional nature of the view) as the attempt to describe our moral capacity; or, in the present case, one may regard a theory of justice. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25

This enterprise is very difficult. For by such a description is not meant simply a list of the judgments on institutions and actions that we are prepared to render, accompanied with supporting reasons when these are offered. Rather, what is required is a formulation of a set of principle which, when conjoined to our beliefs and knowledge of the circumstances, would lead is to make these judgements with their supporting reasons were we to apply these principles conscientiously and intelligently. A conception of justice characterizes our moral sensibility when the everyday judgments we do make are in accordance with its principles. These principles can serve as part of the premises of an argument which arrives at the matching judgments. We do not understand our sense of justice until we know in some systematic way covering a wide range of cases what these principles are. Only a deceptive familiarity with our everyday judgments and our natural readiness to make them could conceal the fact that characterizing our moral capacities is an intricate task. The principles which describe them must be presumed to have a complex structure, and the concepts involved will require a serious study. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25

A useful comparison here is with the problem of describing the sense of grammaticalness that we have for the sentences of our native language. In this case the aim is to characterize the ability to recognize well-formed sentences by formulating clearly expressed principles which make the same discrimination as the native speaker. This is a difficult undertaking which, although still unfinished, is known to require theoretical constructions that far outrun the ad hoc precepts of our explicit grammatical knowledge. A similar situation presumably holds in moral philosophy. There is no reason to assume that our sense of justice can be adequately characterized by familiar common-sense precepts, or derived from the more obvious learning principles. A correct account of moral capacities will certainly involve principles and theoretical constructions which go much beyond the norms and standards cited in everyday life; it may eventually require fairly sophisticated mathematics as well. This is to be expected, since on the contract view theory of justice is part of the theory of rational choice. Thus the idea of the original position and of an agreement on principles there does not seem too complicated or unnecessary. Indeed, these notions are rather simple and can serve only as a beginning. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25

So far, though, I have not said anything about considered judgments. Now, as already suggested, they enter as those judgments in which our moral capacities are most likely to be displayed without distortion. Thys in deciding which of our judgement to take into account we may reasonably select some and exclude others. For example, we can discard those judgments made with hesitation, or in which we have little confidence. Similarly, those given when we are upset or frightened, or when we stand to gain one way or the other can be left aside. All these judgments are likely to be erroneous or to be influenced by an excessive attention to our own interests. Considered judgements are simply those rendered under conditions favourable to the exercise of the sense of justice, and therefore in circumstances where the more common excuses and explanations making a mistake do not obtain. The person making the judgment is presumed, then, to have the ability, the opportunity, and the desires to reach a correct decision (or at least, not the desire not to). Moreover, the criteria that identify these judgments are not arbitrary. They are, in fact, similar to those that single out considered judgments of any kind. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25

And once we regard the sense of justice as a mental capacity, as involving the exercise of thought, the relevant judgments are those given under conditions favourable for deliberating and judgment in general. Have the people of our time still a feeling of sin? Do they, and do we, still realize that sin does not mean an immoral act, that “sin” should never be used in the plural, and that not our sins, but rather our sin is the great, all-pervading problem of our life? Do we still know that it is arrogant and erroneous to divine humans by calling some “sinners” and others “righteous”? For by way of such a division, we can usually discover that we ourselves do not quite belong to the “sinners”, since we have avoided heavy sins, have made some progress in the control of this or that sin, and have been even humble enough not to all ourselves “righteous”. Are we still able to realize that this kind of thinking and feeling about sin is far removed from what the great religious tradition, both within and outside the Bible, has meant when it speaks of sin? I should like to suggest another word to you, not as a substitute for the word “sin”, but as a useful clue in the interpretation of the word “sin”: “separation”. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25

Separation is an aspect of the experience of everyone. Perhaps the word “sin” has the same root as the word “asunder”. In any case, sin is separation. To be in the state of sin is to be in the state of separation. And separation is threefold: there is separation among individual lives, separation of humans from oneself, and separation of all humans from the Ground Being. This three-fold separation constitutes the state of everything that exists; it is a universal fact; it is the fate of every life. And it is our human fate in a very special sense. For we as humans know that we are separated. We not only suffer with all other creatures because of the self-destructive consequences of our separation, but also know why we suffer. We know that we are estranged from something to which we really belong, and with which we should be united. We know that the fate of separation is not merely a natural event like a flash of sudden lightening, but that it is an experience in which we actively participate, in which our whole personality is involved, and that, as fate, it is also guilt. Separation which is fate and guilt constitutes the meaning of the word “sin”. It is this which is the state of our entire existence, from its very beginning to its very end. Such separation is prepared in the mother’s womb, and before that time, in every preceding generation. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25

Separation is manifest in the special actions of our conscious life. It reached beyond our graves into all succeeding generations. It is our existence itself. Existence is separation! Before sin is an act, it is a state. We can say the same thing about grace. For sin and grace are bound to each other. We do not even have a knowledge of sin unless we have already experienced the unity of life, which is grace. And conversely, we could not grasp the meaning of grace without having experienced the separation of life, which is sin. Grace is just as difficult to describe as sin. For some people, grace is the willingness of a divine king and a father to forgive over and again the foolishness and weakness of his subjects and children. We must reject such a concept of grace; for it is a merely childish destruction of a human dignity. For others, grace is a magic power in the dark places of the soul, but a power without any significance for practical life, a quickly vanishing and useless idea. For others, grace is the benevolence that we may find beside the cruelty and destructiveness in life. However, it does not mater whether we say “life goes on”, or whether we say “there is grace in life”; if grace means no more than this, the word should, and will, disappear. For other people, grace indicates the gifts that one has received from nature or society, and the power to do good things with the help of those gifts. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25

However, grace is more than gifts. In grace something is overcome; grace occurs “in spite of” something; grace occurs in spite of separation and estrangement. Grace is the reunion of life with life, the reconciliation of the self with itself. Grace is the acceptance of that which is rejected. Grace transforms fate into a meaningful destiny; it changes guilt into confidence and courage. There is something triumphant in the word “grace”: in spite of the abounding of sin grace abounds much more. Implicit in the emphasis of orthodox psychotherapy is the point of view that the neurotic is a person who once had a problem, and that the resolution of this past problem is the goal of psychotherapy. The whole approach to treatment through memory and the past indicates this assumption, which runs directly counter to everything we observe about neurosis and the neurotic. The neurotic is not merely a person who once had a problem, one is a person who has a continuing problem, here and now, in the present. Although it may well be that one is acting the way one is today “because” of things that happened to one in the past, one’s difficulties today are connected with the ways one is acting today. One cannot get along in the present, and unless one learns how to deal with problems as they arise, one will not be able to get along in the future. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25

The goal of therapy is to reunite the individual with one’s soul and give one the means with which one can solve one’s present problems and any that may arise tomorrow or next years. That tool is self-support, and this one achieves by dealing with oneself and one’s problems with all the means presently at one’s command, right now. If one can become truly aware at every instant of oneself and one’s actions on whatever level—fantasy, verbal or physical—one can see how one is producing one’s difficulties, one can see what one’s present difficulties are, and one can help oneself to solve them in the present, in the here and now. Each one the individual solves makes easier the solution for the next, for every solution increases one’s self-support. It is usual for humans, in such difficulties, to have resource to some invisible intelligent principle, as the immediate cause of that event, which surprises them, and which they think, cannot be accounted for from the common powers of nature. However, philosophers, who carry their scrutiny a little farther, immediately perceive, that, even in the most familiar events, the energy of the cause is as unintelligible as in the most unusual, and that we only learn by experience the frequent conjunctions of objects, without being ever able to comprehend any thing like connection between them. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25

Here then, many philosophers think themselves obliged by reason to have recourse, on all occasions, to the same principle, which the vulgar never appeal to but in cases, that appear miraculous and supernatural. They acknowledge mind and intelligence to be, not only the ultimate and original cause of all things, but the immediate and sole cause of every event, which appears in nature. They pretend, that those objects, which are commonly denominated causes, are in reality nothing but occasions; and that the true and direct principle of every effect is not any power or force in nature, but a volition of the Supreme Being, who wills, that such particular objects should, forever, be conjoined with each other. Instead of saying, that one billiard-ball moves another, by a force, which it has derived from the author of nature; it is the Deity oneself, they say, who, by particular volition, moves the second ball, being determined to this operation by the impulses of the first ball; in consequence of those general laws, which one has laid down to oneself in the government of the Universe. However, philosophers advancing still in their enquiries, discover, that, as we are totally ignorant of the power, on which depends the mutual operation of bodies, we are no less ignorant of that power, on which depends the operation of mind on body, or of body on mind. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25

Nor are we able, either from our senses or consciousness, to assign the ultimate principle in one cause, more than the other. The same ignorance, therefore, reduces them to the same conclusions. They assert, that the Deity is the immediate cause of the union between soul and body; and that they are not the organs of sense, which, being agitated by external objects, produce sensations in the mind; but that it is a particular volition of our omnipotent Maker, which excites such sensation, in consequence of such a motion in the organ. In like manner, it is not any energy in the will, that produces local motion in our members: It is God himself, who is pleased to second our will, in itself impotent, and to command that motion, which we erroneously attribute to our own power and efficacy. Nor do philosophers stop at this conclusion. They sometimes extend the same inference to the mind itself, in its internal operations. Our mental vision or conception of ideas is nothing but a revelation made to us by our Maker. When we voluntarily turn our thought to any object, and rise up its image in the fancy; it is not the will which crates the idea: It is the Universal Creator, who discover it to the mind, and renders it present to us. “And now it came to pass that the sons of Alma did go forth among the people, to declare the word unto them. And Alma, also, himself, could not rest, and he also went forth. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25

“Now we shall say no more concerning their preaching, except that they preached the word, and the truth, according to the spirit of prophecy and revelation; and they preached after the holy order of God by which they were called. And now I return to an account of the wars between the Nephites and the Lamanites, in the eighteenth year of the reign of the judges. For behold, it came to pass that the Zoramites became Lamanites; therefore, in the commencement of the eighteenth year the people of the Nephites saw that the Lamanites were coming upon them; therefore they made preparations for war; yea, they gathered together their armies in the land of Jershon. And it came to pass that the Lamanites came with their thousands; and they came into the land of Antionum, which is the land of the Zoramites; and a man by the name of Zerahemnah was their leader. And now, as the Amalekites were of a more wicked and murderous disposition than the Lamanites were, in and of themselves, therefore, Zerahemnah appointed chief captains over the Lamanites, and they were all Amalekites and Zoramites. Now this he did that he might preserve their hatred towards the Nephites, that he might bring them into subjection to the accomplishment of his designs. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25

“For behold, his designs were to stir up the Lamanites to anger against the Nephites; this he did that he might usurp great power over them, and also that he might gain power over the Nephites by bringing them into bondage. And now the design of the Nephites was to support their lands, and their houses, and their wives, and their children, that they might preserve them from the hands of their enemies; and also that they might preserve their rights and their privileges, yea, and also their liberty, that they might worship God according to their desires. For they knew that if they should fall into the hands of the Lamanites, that whosoever should worship God in spirit and in truth, the true and the living God, the Lamanites would destroy. Yes, and they also knew the extreme hatred of the Lamanites towards their brethren, who were the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi, who were called the people of Ammon—and they would not take up arms, yea, they had entered into a covenant and they would not break it—therefore, if they should fall into the hands of the Lamanites they would be destroyed. And the Nephites would not suffer that they should be destroyed; therefore they gave them lands for their inheritance. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25

“And the people of Ammon did give unto the Nephites a large portion of their substance to support their armies; and thus the Nephites were compelled, alone, to withstand against the Lamanites, who were a compound of Laman and Lemuel, and the sons of Ishmael, and all those who had dissented from the Nephites, who were Amalekites and Zoramites, and the descendants of the priests Noah. Now those descendants were as numerous, nearly, as were the Nephites; and this the Nephites were obliged to contend with their brethren, even unto bloodshed. And it came to pass as the armies of the Lamanites had gathered together in the land of Antionum, behold, the armies of the Nephites were prepared to meet them in the land of Jershon. Now, the leader of the Nephites, or the man who has been appointed to be the chief captain over the Nephites—now the chief captain took the command of all the armies of the Nephites—and his name was Moroni; and Moroni took all the command, and the government of their ways. And he was only twenty and five years old when he was appointed chief captain over the armies of the Nephites. And it came to pass that he met the Lamanites in the borders of Jershon, and his people were armed with swords, and with cimeters, and all manner of weapons of war. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25

“And when the armies of the Lamanites saw that the people of Nephi, or that Moroni, has prepared his people with breastplates and with arm-shields, yea, and also shields to defend their heads, and also they were dressed with thick clothing—now the army of Zerahemnah was not prepared with any such thing; they had only their swords and their cimeters, their bows and their arrows, their stones, and their slings; and they were naked, save it were a skin which was girded about their loins; yea, all were naked, save it were the Zoramites, and the Amalekites. However, they were not armed with breastplates, nor shields—therefore, they were exceedingly afraid of the armies of the Nephites because of their armour, notwithstanding their number being so much greater than Nephites. Behold, not it came to pass that they durst not come against the Nephites in the borders of Jerson; therefore they departed out of the land of Antionum into the wilderness, and took their journey around about in the wilderness, away by the head of the river Sidon, that they might come into the land of Manti and take possession of the land; for they did not suppose that the armies of Moroni would know whither they had gone. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25

“However, it came to pass, as soon as they had departed into the wilderness Moroni sent spies into the wilderness to watch their camp; and Moroni, also, knowing of the prophecies of Alma, sent certain humans unto him, desiring him that he should inquire of the Lord whither the armies of the Nephites should go to defend themselves against the Lamanites. And it came to pass that the word of the Lord came unto Alma, and Alma informed the messengers of Moroni, that the armies of the Lamanites were marching round about in the wilderness, that they might come over into the and of Manti, that they might commence an attack upon the weaker part of the people. And those messengers went and delivered the message unto Moroni. Now Moroni, leaving a part of his army in the land of Jershon, lest by any means a part of the Lamanites should come into that land and take possession of the city, took the remaining part of his army and marched over into the land of Manti. And he caused that all the people in that quarter of the land should gather themselves together to battle against the Lamanites, to defend their lands and their country, their rights and their liberties; therefore they were prepared against the time of the coming of the Lamanites. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25

“And it came to pass that Moroni caused this his army should be secret in the valley which was near the bank of the river Sidon, which was on the west of the river Sidon in the wilderness. And Moroni placed spies round about, that he might know when the camp of the Lamanites should come. And now, as Moroni knew the intention of the Lamanites, that it was their intention to destroy their brethren, or to subject them and bring them into bondage that they might establish a kingdom unto themselves over all the land; and he also knowing that it was the only desire of the Nephites to preserve their lands, and their liberty, and their church, therefore he thought it no sin that he should defend them by stratagem; therefore, he found by his spies which course the Lamanites were to take. Therefore, he divided his army and brought a part over into the valley, and concealed them on the east, and on the south of the hill Riplah; and the remainder he concealed in the west valley, in the west of the river Sidon, and so down into the borders of the land of Manti. And thus having placed his army according to his desire, he was prepared to meet them. And it came to pass that the Lamanites came upon the north of the hill, where a part of the army of Moroni was concealed. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25

“And as the Lamanites has passed the hill Riplah, and came into the valley, and began to cross the river Sidon, the army which was concealed on the south of the hill, which was led by a man whose name was Lehi, and he led his army forth and encircled the Lamanites about on the east in their rear. And it came to pass that the Lamanites, when they saw the Nephites coming upon them in their rear, turned them about and began to contend with the army of Lehi. And the work of death commenced on both sides, but it was more dreadful on the part f the Lamanites, for their nakedness was exposed to the heavy blows of the Nephites with their swords and their cimeters, which brought death almost at every stroke. While on the other hand, there was now and then a man fell among he Nephites, by their swords and the loss of blood, they being shielded for the more vital parts of the body, or the more vital part of the body being shielded from the strokes of the Lamanites, by their breastplates, and their armshields, and their head-plates; and thus the Nephites did carry on the work of death among the Lamanite. And it came to pass that the Lamanites became frightened, because of the great destruction among them, even until they began to flee towards the river Sidon. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25

“And they were pursued by Lehi and his men; and they were driven by Lehi into the waters of Sidon, and they crossed the waters of Sidon. And Lehi retained his armies upon the bank of the river Sidon that they should not cross. And it came to pass that Moroni and his army met the Lamanites in the valley, on the other side of the river Sidon, and began to fall upon them and to slay them. And the Lamanites did flee again before them, toward the land of Manti; and they were met again by the armies of Moroni. Now in this case the Lamanites did fight exceedingly; yea, never had the Lamanites been known to fight exceedingly; yea, never had the Lamanites been know to fight with such exceedingly great strength and courage, no, not even from the beginning. And they were inspired by the Zoramites and the Amalekites, who were their chief captains and leaders, and by Zerahemnah, who was their chief captain, or their chief leader and commander; yea, they did fight like dragons, and many of the Nephites were slain by their hands, yea, for they did smite in two many of their head-plates, and they did pierce man of the breastplates, and they did smite off many of their arms; and this the Lamanites did smite in their fierce anger. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25

“Nevertheless, the Nephites were inspired by a better cause, for they were not fighting for a monarchy nor power but they were fighting for their homes and their liberties, their wives and children, and their all, yes, for their rites of worship and their church. And they were doing that which they felt was the duty to which they owed to their God; for the Lord had said unto them, and also unto their fathers, that: Inasmuch as ye are not guilty of the first offense, neither the second, ye shall not suffer yourselves to be slain by the hands of your enemies. And again, the Lord has said that: Ye shall defend your families even unto bloodshed. Therefore for this cause were the Nephites contending with the Lamanites, to defend themselves, and their families, and their lands, their country, and their rights, and their religion. And it came to pass that when the humans of Moroni saw the fierceness and the anger of the Lamanites, they were about to shrink and flee from them. And Moroni, perceiving their intent, sent forth and inspired their hearts with these thoughts—yea, the thoughts of their lands, their liberty, yea, their freedom from bondage. And it came to pass that they turned upon the Lamanites, and they cried with one voice unto the Lord their God, for their liberty and their freedom from bondage. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25

“And they began to stand against the Lamanites with power; and in the selfsame hour that they cried unto the Lord for their freedom, the Lamanites began to flee before them; and they fled even to the waters of Sidon. Now, the Lamanites were more numerous, yea, by more than double the number of the Nephites; nevertheless, they were driven insomuch that they were gathered together in one body in the valley, upon the bank by the river Sidon. Therefore the armies of Moroni encircled them about, yes, even on both sides of the river, for behold, on the east were the humans of Lehi. Therefore when Zerahemnah saw the humans of Lehi on the east of the river Sidon, and the armies of Moroni on the west of the river Sidon, that they were encircled about by the Nephites, they were struck with terror. Now Moroni, when he saw their terror, commanded his humans that they should stop shedding their blood,” reports Alma 43.1-54. Within the tangle of bushes and wines, among the stones and under fallen trees, the spirit of God is in the forest waiting for me. I go to Him with gifts as a token friendship. Hidden from me in the forest around me within each tree, behind each rock, the Spirit of God is gathered, unseen by people who walk, heavy-footed, through the World. I will sit quietly and wait for you, leaving you these gifts. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25

Cresleigh Homes

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September 8, 2020 1:23 am

Life Somehow Finds a Way of Transcending Politics!

What the man in the street wants is not a big debate on fundamental issues; he wants a little medical care, a rug on the floor, a picture on the wall, a little music in the house, and a place to take Molly and the grandchildren when he retires. It is apparent that is members of a team must cooperate to maintain a given definition of the situation before their audience, they will hardly be in a position to maintain that particular impression before one another. Accomplices in the maintenance of a particular appearance of things, they are forced to define ne another as persons “in the know,” as persons before whom a particular front cannot be maintained. Teammates, then, in proportion to the frequency with which they act as a team and the number of matters that fall within impressional protectiveness, tend to be bound by rights of what might be called “familiarity.” Among teammates, the privilege of familiarity—which may constitute a kind of intimacy without warmth—need not be something of an organic kind, slowly developing with the passage of time spent together, but rather a formal relationship that is automatically extended and received as soon as the individual takes a place on the team. Although we are left to find and follow that path which will lead us back to our Father in Heaven, He did not send us here without guidance. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

Rather, God has given us the tools we need, and He will assist us as we seek His help. Like mountaineers exploring a new terrain, Heavenly Father has created a plan for His children to successfully summit even the hardest terrain and return to Him. His plan includes teamwork and allows all who are willing to work together and follow Him the opportunity for eternal life. A teammate is someone whose dramaturgical co-operation one is dependent upon in fostering a given definition of the situation; is such a person comes to be beyond the pale of informal sanctions and insists on giving the show away or forcing it to take a particular turn, one is none the less part of the team. In fact, it is just because one is part of the team that one can cause this kind of trouble. Thus the isolate in the factory who becomes a rate-buster is none the less part of the team, even if one’s productive activity embarrasses the impression the other workers are attempting to foster as to what constitutes a hard day’s work. As an object of friendship one may be studiously ignored, but as a threat to the team’s definition of the situation, one cannot be overlooked. Thus while teammates are often persons who agree informally to guide their efforts in a certain way as means of self-protection and by doing so constitute an informal group, this informal agreement is not a criterion for defining the concept of team. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

Following spiritual guides, personal preparation, and hard work are crucial to Heavenly Father’s plan. Most important is the Saviour, who willingly atoned for every person without seeking the glory for Himself. There is no greater expression of love than the heroic Atonement preformed by the Son of God. Only God who is really God can create the New Bring, not a half-god. It is the term homoousios, “of equal essence,” which expresses this idea. The Word was made flesh and is interpreted as meaning that the Second Person of the Trinity, True God though he be, assumed the human nature and became man. In the Christ two natures, divine and human, were untied in one divine Person. I became increasingly suspicion that many people employed the concept of Incarnation in a mythological and superstitious manner: it implies for them the transmutation or metamorphosis of a divine being into a human being, a polytheistic myth which we find in all paganism; and incompatible with the fundamental truth of the prophetic revelation. This, if it is found anywhere (which I am inclined to doubt), is a popular misconception of the Christian dogma. The Church has never said that “a” divine being became “a” human being. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

It says that “the Word was made flesh” (St. John) or that God the Son “was made man” (the Creed of Nicaea). In Jesus, God is God and man is only man. Thus Monophysitism in all its forms is eschewed, and, because the two natures are united in one divine Person, so is Nestorianism: God and man in Christ are not two, but one. Jesus the Christ, in St. Paul, is certainly not God himself, but a divine being. A divine being, either the Heavenly man, or the preexistent Christ, or the divine Logos, appears in the shape of a physical man or of a man in the flesh. A divine being with human characteristics, the spiritual of Heavenly man, or a moral being who chooses self-humiliation, or the creative reason and word, appears in time and space. A divine being who represents God and is able to reveal him in his fullness, manifests oneself in a form of existence which is in radical contradiction to one’s divine, spiritual and Heavenly form. The obvious question that comes to mind here is: What is a “divine being.” If it is not God? How can we maintain that the Incarnation is just that: the appearance of a “divine being” who, we are told, is not God? Many fall back on the myths: when it is said that Christ is a divine being, and believe it is meant symbolically. There is a mythological element here as in the Bible. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

Thanks to the mythological element, the doctrine of the Incarnation is understood as the self-manifestation of God in existence through a divine half-being, half-principle which belongs to God, and nevertheless shows some essentially human characteristics. The innocent audience is given the impression of a higher chemistry infinitely more confusing than the dogma of Chalcedon (a religious doctrine concerning the divine and human natures of Jesus Christ) which, at least, is couched in intelligible terms. The myth of the Incarnation of a “half-being, half-principle,” may be considered absurd. What does the Incarnation mean? The Incarnation is the manifestation of original and essential Godmanhood, within and under the conditions of existence. When the mythological, liturgical and numinous form of Christological statements is translated into a rational and theological form we obtain a simple enough scheme. Christianity has a complete concept of a human’s essential nature, as well as of existence and of the radical contrast between them. This essential nature appears in the picture of the Christ. In sharing its revelatory power we perceive the New Bing created by the Incarnation: it is above essential being because it is actual and not merely potential; and at the same time, it is above essential being because it brings being or essential Godmanhood into existence. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

The meaning of the Incarnation is, therefore, that in one biblical picture, the picture of the Christ, and at one historical moment, the Incarnation, the essence and the existence of humans were reconciled. Then human kind were given a New Being, the Being which belongs to it in its essential Godmanhood, and yet which cannot be experienced under the conditions of existence. The paradox is that in the Christ essential Godmanhood was existentially experienced. Essential Godmanhood has become historical Godmanhood in the man Jesus who is believed to be the Christ. The symbols of the Christ are symbols of an ontological victory, creating a New Being above the contradictions of essence and existence. Such is the meaning of the Incarnation. It offers a new approach to the interpretation of Jesus as the Christ. At a former period of development, the doctrine of the two nature can be meaningful now only if it was expressed in terms of history. Reinterpretation of the Doctrine of the Incarnation, both the Chalcedonian positing of the problem and its historical reinterpretation were replaced by an ontological reinterpretation. “I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope. My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning. Let Israel hope in the Lord: for with the Lord there is mercy, and with hi is plenteous redemption,” reports Psalm 130.5-7. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

“For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a human seeth, why doth one yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it,” reports Romans 8.24-25. Both the Old and the New Testaments describe our existence in relation to God as one of waiting. In the psalmist there is an anxious waiting; in the apostle there is a patient waiting. Waiting means not having and having at the same time. For we have not what we wait for; or, as the apostle says, if we hope for what we do not see, we then wait for it. The condition of human’s relation to God is first of all one of not having, not seeing, not knowing, and not grasping. A religion in which that is forgotten, no matter how ecstatic or active or reasonable, replaces God by its own creation of an image of God. Our religious life is characterized more by that kind of creation than anything else. I think of the theologian who does not wait for God, because one possesses Him, enclosed within a doctrine. I think of the Biblical student who does not wait for God, because one possesses Him, enclosed in a book. I think of the church person who does not wait for God, because one possesses Him, enclosed in an institution. I think of the believer who does not wait for God, because one possesses Him, enclosed within one’s own experience. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

It is not easy to endure this not having God, this waiting for God. It is not easy to preach Saturday after Saturday, or Sunday after Sunday without convincing ourselves and others that we have God and can dispose of Him. It is not easy to proclaim God to children and pagans, to sceptics and secularists, and at the same time to make clear to them that we ourselves do not possess God, that we too wait for Him. I am convinced that much of the rebellion against Christianity is due to the overt or veiled claim of the Christians to possess God, and therefore, also, to the loss of this element of waiting, so decisive for the prophets and the apostles. Let us not be deluded into thinking that, because they speak of waiting, they waited merely for the end, the judgment and fulfillment of all things, and not for God Who was to bring that end. They did not possess God; they wanted for Him. For how can God be possessed? Is God a thing that can be grasped and known among other things? Is God less than a human person? We always have to wait for a human being. Even in the most intimate communion among human beings, there is an element of not having and not knowing, and of waiting. Therefore, since God is infinitely hidden, free, and incalculable, we must wait for Him in the most absolute and radical way. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

He is God for us just in so far as we do not possess Him. The psalmist says that his whole being waits for the Lord, indicating that waiting for God is not merely a part of our relation to God, but rather the condition of that relation as a whole. We have God through not having Him. However, although waiting is not having, it is also having. The fact that we wait for something shows that in some way we already possess it. Waiting anticipates that which is not yet real. If we wait in hope and patience, the power of that for which we wait in hope and patience, the power of that which we wait is already effective within us. One who waits in an ultimate sense is not far from that for which one waits. One who waits in absolute seriousness is already grasped by that for which one waits. One who waits in patience has already received the power of that for which one wait. One who waits passionately is already an active power oneself, the greatest power of transformation in personal and historical life. We are stronger when we wait than when we possess. When we possess God, we reduce Him to that small thing we knew and grasped of Him; ad we make it an idol. Only in idol worship can one believe in the possession of God. There is much of this idolatry among Christians. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

However, if we know that we do not know God, and if we wait for Him to make Himself known to us, we then really know something of Him, we then are grasped and known and possessed by Him. It is then that we are believers in our unbelief, and that we are accepted by Him in spite of our separation from Him. Let us not forget, however, that waiting is a tremendous tension. It precludes all complacency about having nothing, indifferences or cynical contempt towards those who have something, and indulgence in doubt and despair. Let us not make our pride in possessing nothing a new possession. That is one of the great temptations of our time, for there are few things left which we can claim as possessions. And we surrender to the same temptation when we boast, in our attempt to possess God, that we do not possess Him. The divine answer to such an attempt is utter emptiness. Waiting is not despair. It is the acceptance of our not having, in the power of that which we already have. Our time is a time of waiting; waiting is its special destiny. And every time is a time of waiting, waiting for the breaking in of eternity. All time runs forward. All time, both in history and in personal life, is expectation. Time itself is waiting, waiting not for another time, but for that which is eternal. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

There are certain educational and therapeutic advantages in differentiating the realm (or level) or being from the realm (or level) of deficiencies, and in recognizing language differences at these levels. I have found it most useful for myself to differentiate between the realm of being (B-realm) and the realm of deficiencies (D-realm), that is, between the eternal and the “practical.” Simply as a matter of the strategy and tactics of living well and fully and of choosing one’s life instead of having it determined for us, this is a help. I have found this vocabulary useful also in teaching people to be more aware of values of being, of a language of being, of the ultimate facts of being, of the life of being, of unitive consciousness, et cetera. The vocabulary is certainly clumsy and sometimes grates on the sensibilities, but it does serve the purpose. Intrinsic conscience and intrinsic guilt are ultimately biologically rooted. There is an intrinsic conscience beyond the supergo, as well as intrinsic guilt which is a deserved self-punishment for betrayal of the intrinsic self. I believe that the biological rooting of metamotivation theory can clarify and solidify these concepts further. One’s personal biology is beyond question a sine qua non component of the Real Self. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

Being oneself, being natural or spontaneous, being authentic, expressing one’s identity, all these are also biological statements since they imply the acceptance of one’s constitutional, temperamental, anatomical, neurological, hormonal, and instinctioid-motivational nature. Such a statement is in both the Freudian line and in the Neo-Freudian line (not to mention Rogerian, Jungian, Sheldonian, Goldsteinian, and et alia). It is a cleansing and a correction of what Dr. Freud was groping toward and of necessity glimpsed only vaguely. I therefore consider it to be in the echt-Freudian or “epi-Freudian” tradition. I think Dr. Freud was trying to say something like this with his various instinct theories. I believe also that this statement is an acceptance of, plus an improvement upon, what Dr. Horney was trying to say with her concept of a Real Self. If my more biological interpretation of an intrinsic self is corroborated, then it would also support the differentiation of neurotic guilt from the intrinsic guilt which comes from defying one’s own nature and from trying to be what one is not. Many of the ultimate religious functions are fulfilled by their theoretical structure. From the point of view of the eternal and absolute that humankind always sought, it may be that the B-values could also, to some extent, serve this purpose. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

The B-values are per se, in their own right, not dependent upon human vagaries for their existence. They are perceived, not invented. They are trans-human and trans-individual. They exist beyond the life of the individual. They can be conceived to be a kind of perfection. They could conceivably satisfy the human longing for certainty. And yet they are also human in a specifiable sense. They are not only his, but him as well. The command adoration, reverence, celebration, sacrifice. They are worth living for and dying for. Contemplating them or fusing with them gives the greatest joy that a human being is capable of. And so for other functions that the organized religions have tried to fulfill. Apparently all, or almost all, the characteristically religious experiences that have ever been described in any of the traditional religions, in their own local phrasings, whether theist or non-theist, Eastern or Western, can be assimilated to this theoretical structure and can be expressed in an empirically meaningful way, id est, phrased in a testable way. “And now, my son, I perceive there is somewhat more which doth worry your mind, which ye cannot understand—which is concerning the justice of God in the punishment of the sinner; for ye do try to suppose that it is injustice that the sinner should be consigned to a state of misery. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

“Now behold, my son, I will explain this thing unto thee. For behold, after the Lord God sent our first parents forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground, from whence they were taken—yea, he drew out the man, and he placed at the east end of the garden of Eden, cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the tree of life—now, we see that the man had become as God, knowing good and evil; and lest he should put forth his hand, and take also the tree of life, and eat and live forever the Lord God placed cherubim and the flaming sword, that he should not partake of the fruit—and this we see, that there was a time granted unto humans to repent, yea, a probationary time, a time to repent and serve God. For behold, if Adam had put forth his and immediately, and partaken of the tree of life, he would have lived, forever, according to the word of God, having no space for repentance; yea, and also the word of God would have bee void, and the great plan of salvation would have been frustrated. However, behold, it was appointed unto humans to die—therefore, as they were cut off from the tree of life they should be cut off from the face of the Earth—and humans became lost forever, yea, they became fallen humans. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

“And now, ye see by this that our first parents were cut off both temporally and spiritually from the presence of the Lord; and thus we see they became subjects to follow after their own will. Now behold, it was not expedient that a human should be reclaimed from this temporal death, for that would destroy the great plan of happiness. Therefore, as the soul could never die, and the fall had brought upon al humankind a spiritual death as well as a temporal, that is, they were cut off from the presence of the Lord, it was expedient that humankind should be reclaimed from this spiritual death. Therefore, as they had become carnal, sensual, and devilish, by nature, this probationary state become a state for them to prepare; it became a preparatory state. And now remember, my son, if it were not for the plan of redemption, (laying it aside) as soon as they were dead their souls were miserable, being cut off from the presence of the Lord. And now, there was no means to reclaim humans from this fallen state, which humans had brought upon themselves because of their own disobedience; therefore, according to justice, the plan of redemption could not be brought about, only on conditions of repentance of humans in this probationary state, yea, this preparatory state; for except it were these conditions, mercy could not take effect expect it should destroy the work of justice. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

“Now the work of justice could not be destroyed; if so, God would cease to be God. And thus we see that all humankind were fallen, and they were in the grasp of justice; yea, the justice of God, which consigned them forever to be cut off from his presence. And now, the plan of mercy could not be brought about expect an atonement should be made; therefore God himself atoneth for the sins of the World, to bring about the plan of mercy, to appease the demands of justice, that God might be a perfect, just God, and a merciful God also. Now, repentance could not come unto humans expect there were a punishment, which was as eternal also as the life of the soul. Now, how could one repent except one should sin if there was no law? How could there be a law save there was a punishment? Now, there was a punishment affixed, and a just law given, which brought remorse of conscience unto humans. Now, if there was no law given—if a human murdered one should die—would one be afraid one would die if one should murder? And also, if there was no law given against sin humans would not be afraid of sin. And if there was no law given, if humans sinned what could justice do, or mercy either, for they would have no claim upon the creature? #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

“However, there is a law given, and a punishment affixed, and a repentance granted; which repentance, mercy claimeth; otherwise, justice claimeth the creature and executeth the law, and the law inflicteth the punishment; if not so, the works of justice would be destroyed, and God would cease to be God. However, God ceaseth not to be God, and mercy claimeth the penitent, and mercy cometh because of the atonement; and the atonement bringeth to pass the resurrection of the dead; and the resurrection of the dead bringeth back humans into the presence of God; and this they are restored into his presence, to be judged according to their works, according to the law and justice. For behold, justice exerciseth all his demands, and also mercy claimeth all which is her own; and thus, none but the truly penitent are saved. What, do ye suppose that mercy can rob justice? I say unto you, Nay; not one whit. If so, God would cease to be God. And thus God bringeth about his great and eternal purposes, which were prepared from the foundation of the World. And this cometh about the salvation and the redemption of humans, and also their destruction and misery. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

“Therefore, O my son, whosoever will come may come and partake of the waters of life freely; and whosoever will not come the same is not compelled to come; but in the last day it shall be restored unto one according to one’s deeds. If one has desired to do evil, and has not repented in one’s days, behold, evil shall be done unto one, according to the restoration of God. And now, my son, I desire that ye should let these things trouble you no more, and only let your sins trouble you, with that trouble which shall bring you down unto repentance. O my son, I desire that ye should deny the justice of God no more. Do not endeavour to excuse yourself in least point because of your sins, by denying the justice of God; but do you let the justice of God, and his mercy, and his long-suffering have full sway in your heart; and let it bring you down to the dust in humility. And now, O my son, ye are called of God to preach the word unto this people. And now, my son, go thy way, declare the word with truth and soberness, that thou mayest bring souls unto repentance, that great plan of mercy may have claim upon them. And may God grant unto you even according to my words. Amen,” reports Alma 42.1-31. Mighty Protector, God I praise you, friend of people, supporter of those who repent, grace to all humankind, we welcome you in our lives. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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September 6, 2020 10:49 pm

Lives Have Been Elevated and Lives Have Been Cast Down by Human Speech!

Life is an answered question, but let us believe in the dignity and importance of the question. All laws being founded on rewards and punishments, it is supposed as a fundamental principle, that these motives have a regular and uniform influence on the mind, and both produce the god and prevent the evil actions. We may give to this influence what name we please; but, as it is usually conjoined with the action, it must be esteemed a cause, and be looked upon as an instance of that necessity, which we would here establish. The only proper object of hatred or vengeance, is a person or creature, endowed with thought and consciousness; and when any criminal or injurious actions excite that passion, it is only by their relation to the person, or connexion with one. Actions are, by their very nature, temporary and perishing; and where they proceed not from some case in the character and disposition of the person who performed them, they can neither redound to one’s honour, if good; nor infamy, if evil. The actions themselves may be blameable; they may be contrary to all the rules of morality and religion: However, the person is not answerable for them; and as they proceeded from nothing in one, that is durable and constant, and leave nothing of that nature behind them, it is impossible one can, upon their account, become the object of punishment or vengeance. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

According to the principle, therefore, which denies necessity, and consequently causes, a human is as pure and untainted, after having committed the most horrid crime, as at the first moment of one’s birth, nor is one’s character any wise concerned in one’s actions; since they are not derived from it, and the wickedness of the one can never be used as a proof of the depravity of the other. Humans are not blamed for such actions, as they perform ignorantly and casually, whatever may be the consequences. Why? but because the principles of these actions are only momentary, and terminate in them alone. Humans are less blamed for such actions as they perform hastily and unpremeditatly, than for such as proceed from deliberation. For what reason? but because a hasty temper, though a constant cause of principle in the mind, operates only by intervals, and infects not the whole character. Again, repentance wipes off every crime, if attended with a reformation of life and manners. How is this to be accounted for? but by asserting, that actions render a person criminal, merely as they are proofs of criminal principles in the mind; and when, by an alteration of these principles, they cease to be just proofs, they likewise cease to be criminal. However, expect upon the doctrine of necessity, they never were just proofs, and consequently never were criminal. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

When any opinion leads to absurdities, it is certainly false; but it is not certain than an opinion is false, because it is of dangerous consequence. By liberty, then, we can only mean a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will; that is, if we choose to remain at rest, we may; if we choose to move, we also may. We believe that our actions are subject to our own will, on most occasions; and imagine we believe, that the will itself is subject to nothing, because, when by a denial of it we are provoked to try, we believe, that it moves easily every way, and produces an image of itself, even on that side, on which it did not settle. This image, or faint motion, we persuade ourselves, could, at that time, have been completed into the thing itself; because, should that be denied, we find, upon a second trial, that, at present, it can. We consider not, that the fantastical desire of showing liberty, is here the motive of our actions. And it seems certain, that, however we may imagine we feel a liberty within ourselves, a spectator can commonly infer our actions from our motives and character; and even where one cannot, one concludes in general, that one might, were one perfectly acquainted with every circumstance of our situation and temper, and the most secret springs of our complexion and disposition. Now this is the very essence of necessity, according to the foregoing doctrine. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

It seems a proposition, which will not admit of much dispute, that all our ideas are nothing but copies of our impressions, or, in other words, that it is impossible for us to think of anything, which we have not antecedently felt, either by our external or internal senses. I have endeavoured to explain and prove this proposition, and have expressed my hopes, that, by a proper application of it, humans many reach a greater clearness and precision in philosophical reasoning, than that they have hitherto been able to attain. Complex ideas may, perhaps, be well known by definition, which is nothing but an enumeration of those parts or simple ideas, that compose them. However, when we have pushed up definitions to the most simple ideas, and find still some ambiguity and obscurity; what resources are we then possessed of? By what invention can we throw light upon these ideas, and render them altogether precise and determinate to our intellectual view? Procedure the impressions or original, sentiments, from which these ideas are copied. These impressions are all strong and sensible. They admit not of ambiguity. They are not only places in a full light themselves, but many throws light on their correspondent ideas, which lie in obscurity. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

And by this means, we may, perhaps, attain a new microscope or species of optics, by which, in the moral sciences, the most minute, and most simple ideas may be so enlarged as to fall readily under our apprehension, and be equally known with the grossest and most sensible ideas, that can be the object of our enquiry. To be fully acquainted, therefore, with the idea of power of necessary connexion, let us examine its impression; and in order to find the impression with greater certainty, let us search for it in all the courses, from which it may possible be derived. It may be said, that we are every moment conscious of internal power; while we feel, that, by the simple command of our will, we can move the organs of our body, or direct the faculties of our mind. An act of volition produces motion in our limbs, or raises a new idea in our imagination. This influence of the will we know by consciousness. Hence we acquire the idea of power or energy; and are certain, that we ourselves and all other intelligent beings are possessed of power. This idea, then, is an idea of reflection, since it arises from reflecting on the operations of our own mind, and on the command which is exercised by will, both over the organs of the body and faculties of the soul. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

This influence, we may observe, is a fact, which, like all other natural events, can be known only by experience, and can never be foreseen from any apparent energy or power in the cause, which connects it with the effect, and renders the one an infallible consequence of the other. The motion f our body follows upon the command of our will. Of this we are every moment conscious. However, the means, by which this effected; the energy, by which the will performs so extraordinary an operation; of this we are so far from being immediately conscious, that it must for ever escape our most diligent enquiry. For first; is there any principle in all nature more mysterious than the union of soul with body; by which a supposed spiritual substance acquires such an influence over a material one, that the most refined thought is able to actuate the grossest matter? Were we empowered, by a secret wish, to remove mountains, or control the planets in their orbit; this extensive authority would not be more extraordinary, nor more beyond our comprehension. However, if by conscious we perceived any power or energy in the will, we must know the secret union of the soul and body, and the nature of both these substances; by which the one is able to operate, in so many instances, upon the other. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

However, consciousness never deceives. Consequently, we are ever conscious any power. We learn the influence of our will from experience alone. And experience only teaches us, how one event constantly follows another; without instructing us in the secret connexion, which binds them together, and renders them inseparable. Interest in the truth is at the heart of our conversation. Our word “conversation” derives from the same Latin root as “conversion” does, and the possibility of a conversation, of a “turning around,” is always inherent in any true conversation, for when we converse we take part in a game in which exchange, not victory, is the goal, an intellectual game in which no one stars and everyone wins. So much for the preliminaries. We are witnessing the quiet demise of the art of letter writing. Can we still rescue the art of conversation? I fear we cannot, and I find that—to put it mildly—a great pity. I would even go a step further and call it a dreadful shame, for it is symptomatic of a defect in our culture that is no only regrettable but may also prove lethal. Perhaps I can put what I mean this way: We find ourselves giving more and more of our time and energy to things that have a point, that produce results. And when all is said and done, what are those results? Money, perhaps, or fame or a promotion. We hardly ever consider doing something any more that has no purpose. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

We have forgotten that it is possible, even desirable and, above all, pleasurable to do something without a specific goal in mind. One of life’s greatest pleasures is to make use of our powers not to attain a goal but for the sake of an activity itself. Take love, for example. Love has no purpose, though many people might say: Of course it does! It is love, they say, that enables us to satisfy our pleasures of the flesh, marry, have children, and live a normal, middle-class or upper middle-class life. That is the purpose of love. And that is why love is so rare these days, love without goals, love in which the only thing of importance is that act of loving itself. In this kind of love it is being and not consuming that plays the key role. It is human self-expression, the full play of our human capacities. However, in a culture like ours, which is exclusively oriented to external goals like success, production, and consumption, we can easily lose sight of that kind of love. It fades so far into the distance that we can hardly even imagine it as a reality any more. Conversation has become either a commodity or a way of doing battle If the conversational battle takes place in the presence of a large audience, then it assumes the quality of a gladiatorial contest. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

The participants go for each other’s throats, and each one tries to destroy the other. Or they converse merely to show how clever or superior they are. Or they converse to prove to themselves that they are in the right once again. Conversation is a way of demonstrating to themselves that what they happen to think is indeed correct. They go into conversation determined not to admit any new thoughts into their minds. They have their opinion. Each knows what the other will say. Let me give you a little example of what I mean. Suppose two people are on their way home together, two colleagues of mine, two psychoanalysts, and one of them says, “I am kind of tired.” And the other replies, “Me, too.” Now that many sound like a rather banal exchange, but it is not necessarily, for if these two people do the same kind of work, then they know just what the other’s tiredness is like, and so they have engaged in genuine, human communication: “We are both tired, and we have each let the other know how tired we are.” That is much more of a conversation than when two intellectuals start throwing big words around in a discussion of the latest theory about this or that. They are simply holding two separate monologues and do not touch each other at all. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

The art of conversation and joy in conversation (conversation in the sense of being open, being together, usually takes verbal form, but it can also take the form of movement in dancing; there are many ways to converse)—these things will become possible again only if major changes take place in our culture, that is, only if we can rid ourselves of our monomaniacal, goal-oriented way of life. We need to cultivate attitudes that recognize the expression and full realization of human potential as the only worthwhile goals in life. To put it in the simplest possible terms: What matters is being as opposed to having, to just using and consuming and getting ahead. We have much more free time than we used to have (in many cases, as a society people have more leisure time, but a minority of the people have no free time at all), and therefore more opportunity for conversation. However, the more the external circumstances of our lives encourage it, the less internal inclination toward it we seem to have. There is too much that interferes with that being together that keeps a community sane and healthy; there are too many gadgets and Facebook and machines that get in our way. It seems that a very specific and pervasive attitude prevents us from engaging in what we have been calling “conversation” here. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

And now with COVID-19, people are afraid to talk to each other, they will not hug each other nor shake hands, they are prohibited by law from going to church or the hair salon, and schools. Many people can no longer gather in large groups, even in their own homes, so society is becoming anti-social out of fear and the fear is being enforced by state and local governments in the forms of fines, jail time, and other penalties. However, even before COVID-19 was instilling fear in society, I think we could even say that many people (probably the great majority) are afraid of being left alone with each other without some plan of action, without a radio, or Smart TV, without a subject to discuss, without an agenda. They are afraid and feel totally lost. They have no idea what to say to each other. I do not know if this is holds true in Germany or Japan or China, but in the United States of America it is customary never to invite a single individual or just one other couple to your home. You always have to have more guests, because it can be embarrassing if you are only four. In a small company you have to work hard to keep things from being boring, unless you plan to play all your old Motown records. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

If you have a party of six, you still will not have any real conversation, but you will at least avoid painful lulls in the chatter. Somebody will always have something to say. When one person runs out of subjects, someone else can step in. It is a kind of double concert. The music never stops, but no real conversation takes. Place. Victorian times where different, houses were sectioned off into many rooms and often times had a front parlor, near the foyer, to great guest, and another parlor in the back of the house for family. People also had intimate and meaning conversations because traveling was more complicated and communication in general was. So the Victorians enjoyed their intimate gathers and their conversations were as deep as diary entries. In modern times, homes are built for entertainment. The many of the homes have an open concept, which allows for connection of the main living areas and there is even an upstairs lobby in many of the new homes where people can gather out in the open. Many of the new homes made by Cresleigh are designed for entertainment, multi-generational living, spaces where people can come together and communicate in groups. However, in modern times, I suspect a lot of people think that if a form of entertainment does not cost anything it cannot be very satisfying. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

Industry propaganda has trained us all to think that happiness comes from objects that we can buy, and very few of us are ready to believe any more that we can live and live very happily without all that stuff. That is a great change from the last, as we have discussed. One hundred and fifty years ago people bought very few things for their entertainment, even people with comfortable middle-class incomes. There was no radio, or Smart TV; there were no cars and no Facebook. However, there was conversation. People even built séance rooms to converse with “spirits.” Of course, if you look upon conversation as a means of “diversion,” hen your conversation will be mere twaddle. Real conversation does not “divert.” It requires concentration, a gather of our powers, not a scattering of them. If a person is not alive within oneself, then one’s conversation cannot be very lively either. However, if they were not afraid to step out of themselves, to show who they really are, to cast off the crutches they think they need to keep from tumbling down to nothingness, if they were not afraid to be alone with themselves and others, there are many people who could be much livelier. The power or energy by which this is effected, like that in other natural events, is unknown and inconceivable. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

We are conscious of a power or energy in our own minds, when, by an act or command of our will, we raise up a new idea, fix the mind to the contemplation of it, turn it on all sides, and at last dismiss I for some other idea, when we think that we have surveyed it with sufficient accuracy. When we know a power, we know that very circumstance in the cause, by which it is enabled to produce the effect: For these are supposed to be synonymous. We must, therefore, know both the cause and effect, and the relation between them. However, we do not pretend to be acquitted with the nature of the human soul and the nature of an idea, or the aptitude of the one to produce the other. This is a real creation; a production of something out of nothing; Which implies a power so great, that may seem, at first sight, beyond the reach of any being, less than infinite. At least it must be owned, that such a power is not felt, nor known, nor even conceivable by the mind. We only feel the event, namely, the existence of an idea, consequent to a command of the will: But the manner, in which this operation is performed; the power, by which it is produced; is entirely beyond our comprehension. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

The command of the mind over itself is limited, as well as its command over the body; and these limits are not known by reason, or any acquaintance with the nature of cause and effect; but only experience and observation, as in all other natural events and in the operation of external objects. Our authority over our sentiments and passions is much weaker than that over our ideas; and even the latter authority is circumscribed within very narrow boundaries. Will any one pretend to assign the ultimate reason of these boundaries, or show why the power is deficient in one case not in another. This self-command is very different at different ties. A human in health possesses more of it, than one languishing with sickness. We are more master of our thought in the morning than in the evening: Fasting, than after a full meal. Can we give any reason for these variations, except experience? Where then is the power, of which we pretend to be conscious? Is there not here, either in a spiritual or material substance, or both, some secret mechanism or structure of parts, upon which the effect depends, and which, being entirely unknown to us, renders the power or energy of the will equally unknown and incomprehensible? #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

Volition is surely an act of the mind, with which we are sufficiently acquainted. Reflect upon it. Consider it on all sides. Do you find anything in it like this creative power, by which it raises from nothing a new idea, and with a kind of FIAT, imitates the omnipotence of its Maker, if I may be allowed so to speak, who called forth into existence all the various scenes of nature? So far from being conscious of this energy in the will, it requires as certain experience, as that of which we are possessed, to convince us, that such extraordinary effects do ever result from a simple act of volition. The tongue, so tiny, is immensely powerful. Four reporters, good old body, having a few beers in a Denver bar in 1899, provided the specious spark that ignited the infamous Boxer Rebellion. The tongue is indeed mightier than generals and their armies. It can fuel our lives so they become fiery furnaces, or it can cool our lives with the soothing wind of the Spirit. It can be forged by Hell, or it can be a tool of Heaven. Offered to God on the altar, the tongue has awesome power for god. It can proclaim the life-changing message of salvation: “And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who good news!’” reports Romans 10.14-15. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

The tongue has power for sanctification as we share God’s Word: “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth,” reports John 17.17. It has power for healing: “For when we came into Macedonia, this body of ours had no rest, but we were harassed at every turn—conflict on the outside, fears within. However, God, who comforts the downcast, comforts us by the coming of Titus, and not only by his coming but also by the comfort you had given him. He told us about your longing for me, your deep sorrow, your ardent concern for me, so that my joy was greater than ever,” reports 2 Corinthians 7.5-7. The tongue has power for worship: “Though Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that confess his name,” reports Hebrews 13.15. Humans, it is up to us. No sweat, no sanctification! First, we must ask God t cauterize our lips, confessing as Isaiah did, “Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty” reports Isaiah 6.5. Then we need to submit to the cleansing touch: “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘who shall I send? And who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I. Send me,’” reports Isaiah 6.8. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

Isaiah’s outline as a spiritual exercise, performed with all one’s heart, will work wonders in our lives. Let us all do this today! In conjunction, there must also be an ongoing prayerfulness regarding the use of our tongues—regular, detailed prayer. This, coupled with the first step, will work a spiritual miracle. We must also resolve to discipline ourselves regarding the use of the tongue, making solemn resolutions such as the following: to perpetually and loving speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4.15). To refrain from being party to or a conduit for gossip (Proverbs 16.28; 17.9; 26.20). To refrain from insincere flatter (Proverbs 26.28). To refrain from running down another (James 4.11). To refrain from degrading humour (Ephesians 5.4). To refrain from sarcasm (Proverbs 26.24-25). To memorize Scriptures which teacher the proper use of the tongue (speech). Human, discipline your tongue for the purpose of Godliness! “Who keeps the tongue doth keep one’s soul.” A flaming spear out of the chaos Dear Lord in Heaven, come to your people and be a skillful hand against the chaos. God, please come to your people and be a mind keenly ordered amidst the chaos. God, please come to your people as a faithful protector through all the chaos. God, please come to your people as we are lost in the expanse of limitless space containing infinite numbers of stars but filled with emptiness. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

We cast ourselves into your measureless darkness, confident that you will come if only we wait. Though the night may be long, we will still wait for you, God, offering our patience in sacrifice to win your presence. “And now, my son, I have somewhat to say concerning the restoration of which has been spoken; for behold, some have wrestled the scriptures, and have gone far astray because of this thing. And I perceive that thy mind has been worried also concerning this thing. However, behold, I will explain it unto thee. I say unto thee, my son, that the plan of restoration is requisite with the justice of God; for it is requisite that all things should be restored to their proper order. Behold, it is requisite and just, according to the power and resurrection of Christ, that the soul of humans should be restored to its body, and that every part of the body should be restored to itself. And it is requisite with the justice of God that humans should be judged according to their works; and if their works were good in this life, and the desires of their hearts were good, that they should also, at the last day, be restored unto that which is good. And if their works are evil they shall be restored unto them for evil. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

Therefore, all things shall be restored to their proper order, every thing to its natural frame—mortality raised to immortality, corruption to incorruption—raised to endless happiness to inherit the kingdom of God, or to endless misery to inherit the kingdom of the devil, the one on one hand, the other on the other—the one raised to happiness according to one’s desires of happiness, or good according to one’s desires of good; and the other to evil according to one’s desires of evil; for as one has desired to do evil all the day long even so shall one have one’s reward of evil when the night cometh. And so it is on the other hand. If one hath repented of one’s sins, and desired righteousness until the end of one’s days, even so one shall be rewarded unto righteousness. These are they that are redeemed of the Lord; yea, these are they that are taken out, that are delivered from that endless night of darkness; and thus they stand or fall; for behold, they are their own judges, whether to do good or do evil. Now, the decrees of God are unalterable; therefore, the way is prepared that whosoever will may walk therein and be saved. And now behold, my son, do not risk one more offense against your God upon those points of doctrine, which ye have hitherto risked to commit sin. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

“Do not suppose, because it has been spoken concerning restoration, that ye shall be restored from sin to happiness. Behold, I say unto you, wickedness never was happiness. And now, my son, all humans that are, in a carnal state, are in he gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity; they are without God in the World, and they have gone contrary to the nature of God; therefore, they are in a state contrary to the nature of happiness. And now behold, is the meaning of the word restoration to take a thing of a natural state and place it in an unnatural state, or to place it in a state opposite to its nature? O, my son, this is not the case; but the meaning of the word restoration is to bring back again evil for evil, or carnal for carnal, or devilish for devilish—good for that which is righteous; just for that which is just; merciful for that which is merciful. Therefore, my son, see that you are merciful unto your brethren; deal justly, judge righteously, and do good continually; and if ye do all these things then shall ye receive your reward; yea, ye shall have mercy restored unto you again; ye shall have justice restored unto you again; ye shall have a righteous judgment restored unto you again; and you shall have good rewarded unto you again. For that which ye do send out shall return unto you again, and be restored; therefore, the word restoration more fully condemneth the sinner, and justifieth one not at all,” reports Alma 41.1-15. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

Cresleigh Homes

Time to explore more #CresleighHomes! Our blog today takes a look at #Bluffs, the cul-de-sac community located at #PlumasRanch! Click the link in our bio to give it a read. 👍 https://cresleigh.com/blog/

On the edge of sight I can see a wonder: The Lord in all His glory. If I send swift thoughts racing after Him, I cannot overtake Him; His careful steps keep ahead of my impetuous racing. I call out to God: “Father, for the sake of the one who loves you, I beg you to stop.” He comes to a halt and I can approach. God says, “If you had done that first, it would have been better.” I remember, and call to God in love, and wait for Him to stop for me. May God, who pressed out, is life, is power, may God whose roaring calls us to the ritual, to drink, may God, granting gifts, filling us with immortality, may God, King of the Universe, be praised in His prayer. May God, hear me, come to join me in this rite. May my words draw God hither.

September 5, 2020 12:52 am

Pills are the Cure All—If there is Nothing We can Swallow, then there is No Help!

Had I gone the way of the World and not gotten to know God or accepted Him as a part of my life, I think that I would have been a very belligerent individual, full of hate and bitterness. I reject the idea that pleasures of the flesh are the mainspring of all human behaviour. Humans are supposed to instead focus on God, salvation, and interpersonal relationships; what goes on among people, how they influence each other and react to each other, on the makeup of the field that is created when human beings live together. Interestingly enough, psychoanalysts have concentrated their attention on schizophrenia, which they do not basically regard as an illness in the usual sense of the word. They see it instead as the result of personal experience, of interpersonal relationships that have had clearly drastic consequences but essentially add up to no more than another psychological problem like any other psychological problem. The relationship of schizophrenia as an individual illness to the social situation has its roots not only in the family but also within the society. The claim that analysis has no healing effects whatsoever is, in my opinion, untenable. It is not substantiated by my own forty years of experience as an analyst or by the experience of many of my colleagues. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23

We should also keep in mind here that in many cases analysts are not as competent as they should be (no profession is immune to that) and that the selection of patients is often not fortunate. Attempts are often made to analyze patient for whom the method is not suitable. The truth is that analysis has cured many people of their symptoms, and it has helped many others achieve clarity about themselves for the first time, has helped them be more honest with themselves, to be somewhat freer, to live closer to reality. That is in itself an extremely worthwhile achievement and one that is often grossly undervalued. There are, of course, certain trends of the times that partially account for the turn against analysis. Many people believe that medicine is the only thing that is of real help. If there is nothing we can swallow, then there is no help. Pills are the cure all. Another prevailing view is that we ought to be able to cure everything overnight. Many people are unwilling to come terms with the fact that life is not simple, requires rational thought, and worst of all they do not deal with their own resistance. Misguided individuals “feel” everything should be made simple; everything should be made easy. That is the trend of the times. People “feel” we should be able just to swallow everything as easily as we can a pill. And if learning something requires effort, then it is not worth learning. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

There is a story that can illustrate what I mean here. A young and goes to an elegant new community called Cresleigh Ranch, tours and studies the model homes for a long time, and says to the sales representative, “I am sorry, but you do not have anything I like.” Then he gets up and leaves. Two weeks later he comes back, the sales representative asks—very politely, because this is a high-class community and an architectural marvel—why he could not find anything he liked last time. The young man replies, “Oh, I could have found something all right, but my analyst told me I should practice being assertive.” With that method we can learn to be more sure of ourselves, can learn how to appear more confident, how to lose our fear of sale associates, and so on. However, what we do not learn is why we are so insecure. We remain ignorant of the fact—and here we touch on the theme of transference again—that we tend to regard everyone else as an authority, as a father figure. Even if the method does yield some quick results in the housing development and we feel a little more self-confident, we still have not gotten to the root causes of our insecurity at all, and behind our new façade we remain the same insecure people we always were. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23

Indeed, our situation is even worse than it was, for we are no longer aware that we are insecure. And why are we insecure? Not because we are afraid of authority but because we are not fully developed human beings, because we lack the strength of our convictions, because we have remained small children who hope others will help us, because we have not grown up, because we are full of self-doubt, and so on. The methods of behaviouristic therapy cannot help in cases like that. All they do is sweep the dirt under the rug—ignore, deny or conceal from themselves and public view or knowledge something that is embarrassing, unappealing, or damaging to one’s reputation. For example, the senator has been accused of trying to sweep his former drug use under the rug. You need to stop sweeping your problems under the rug. However, not all criticism of psychoanalysis is unjustified. I would like to mention a few objections to it that I consider quite sound. Psychoanalysis can often degenerate into mere chatter. Dr. Freud’s idea of free association is in part responsible for this. In encouraging the patient to say anything that occurred to one, Dr. Freud assumed that the patient would say those things that came from one’s depths, things that were genuine and of real importance. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

However, in many analyses patients simply babble away and run down their husbands for the hundredth time or complain about everything their awful parents did to them. Nothing comes of that. They go over the same ground again and again. However—someone is listening. The patient feels tat the fact of someone listening helps somehow had that one’s situation will eventually improve. However, tat kind of talk along never changed anyone or anything. It is not what Dr. Freud had in mind. His method involved discovery and struggle against resistance. Dr. Freud never assumed that we could achieve anything, much less solve difficult psychic problems, without expending effort. Without effort we cannot attain any of our goals in life, no matter what the advertisements may claim to the contrary. Anyone who fears effort, anyone who backs off from frustration and possibly even pain will never get anywhere, especially not in analysis. Analysis is hard work, and analysts who gloss that over harm their own cause. Another failing in many analyses is emphasizing intellectualization over emotion. The patient theorizes endlessly about the significance of the time his grandmother hit him for saying he was too full for a slice of her old fashioned, gooey, buttery, supremely sweet chess pie or some other incident. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

And if one has an especially strong academic streak, one may develop highly complicated theories; one may construct theory upon theory; but one will feel nothing. One does not feel one’s inability to love, one’s isolation from others. One’s resistance makes all that inaccessible to one. And so analysis may fall in step with the times in giving precedence to cerebral humans, the purely rational human being. We expect intelligence to take care of everything; emotion is only useless ballast that we ignore as much as possible. And finally I would like to say that there are too many people who think they have to run to a psychoanalyst the minute they encounter the least little difficulty in their lives. They do not even try to cope with their problems themselves. Only if they find that their own best effort has still left them unable to understand and improve their situations themselves, then people should go to a psychoanalyst. Analysis remains the best therapy for a number of disorders having to do with excessive preoccupation with self or, in other words, with narcissism, which in turn results in an inability to relate to others. No other method is as effective and fruitful for treating flight into illusion, stalled psychic growth, symptoms like compulsive washing, and any number of other symptoms of an obsessive or compulsive nature. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23

Psychoanalysis also serves another function that is at least as important as its curative one. It can assist in promoting psychic growth and self-realization. I am sorry to say that only a small minority seem to be interested in psychic growth these days. Most people have an entirely different goal, which is to own more and consume more. When they reach twenty, they assume that their growth is complete, and from then on they direct all their energies to making the best possible use of this completed machine. As they see it, if they were to change it would work to their disadvantage; for if a person changes then one no longer fits the pattern that one and others expect one to fit. If one changes, how can one know whether one will still hold the same opinions ten years from now that one holds now? And how would a change like that affect one’s ability to get ahead? Most people do not want to grow and change, do not want to realize themselves. They want to hang onto the options they have, exploit them, “capitalize” on them. There are, of course, exceptions to that rule. There are counter-movements, particularly in the United States of America. Even if we own and enjoy all manner of things, we can still be unhappy, life can still be meaningless, we can remain depressed and anxious, and many people have come to realize that. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

The trouble with our age is all signpost and no destination. “What meaning can life have,” we ask ourselves, “if our only purpose in it is to buy a somewhat more expensive car the next time around?” People have seen how their parents or grandparents sacrificed their entire lives to the acquisition of the things they thought they wanted. With varying degree of clarity, this minority has rediscovered a piece of ancient wisdom: Humans do not live by bread alone; possessions and power do not guarantee happiness but tend instead to create anxiety and tension. These people want to pursue a different goal. They want to be more rather than have more. They want to be more rational, to rid themselves of illusions, and to change social conditions that can be maintained only with the assistances of illusion. That longing often takes rather Old World forms, such Eastern Religion, for yoga, for Zen Buddhism, and so on. However, many enthusiasts who approach them tend to be naïve. They are taken in by the advertising fakirs who pass themselves off as holy people and by all manner of groups that claim they know how to cultivate human sensitivity. Here, I feel, psychoanalysis has an important mission. It can help us understand ourselves, perceive our own reality, free ourselves from illusion, understand ourselves, too, from the grip of anxiety and green. It can make us capable of perceiving the World differently. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

Once we can forget the self as the prime focus of our interest and once we experience ourselves as acting, feeling, nonalienated human beings, then the World becomes the prime focus of our interest, our concern, our creative energies. We can practice those attitudes. And psychoanalysis can help us in this practice, because it is a method that helps us experience ourselves as we really are, helps us experience who we are, where we stand, where we are going. It is therefore advisable to work with a psychoanalyst who understand those connections and does not think the purpose of analysis is to help people adjust ad conform. However, that kind of analysis should not go on too long; overly extensive analysis often creates dependencies. Once a patient has learned enough to make use of the tools oneself, one should begin analyzing oneself. And that is a lifelong task that we carry on until the day we die. We can best practice self-analysis the first thing each morning, combining it with the kind of breathing and concentration exercises used in Buddhist meditation. The important thing is to step back from the bustle of life, to come to ourselves, to stop reacting constantly to stimuli, to make ourselves “empty” so that we can become active within ourselves. Anyone who attempts this will, I think, experience a deepening of one’s capacity to feel; one will experience “healing,” a recovery of health, not in the medical sense but in a profound, human sense. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

However, this process requires patience, and patience is certainly not a commodity we have in great abundance. To any and all who want to make the attempt, though, I wish the best of luck. In ordinary life, a course of action is ordered by authority, and unless it outrages us, we tend to obey the order, follow the rule. Although people may mutter, it appears that, in general, everyone accepts the regulation. All the complex reactions are hidden. However, in a workshop community, where persons feel a sense of their own worth and a freedom to express themselves, the complexities become evident. Sometimes life can be cumbersome, complicated, irritating, frustrating and arriving at a decision may be difficult. After all, does the wish of everyone have to be considered. And the silent answer of the group is that, yes every person is worthy, every person’s views and feelings have a right to be considered. When one observes this process at work, its awesome nature becomes increasingly apparent. The desires of every participant are taken into account, so that no one feels left out. Slowly, beautifully painstakingly, a decision is crafted to take care of each person. A solution is reached by a process that considers each individual’s contribution—respecting it, weighing it, and incorporating it into the final plan. The sagacity of the group is extraordinary. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23

The process seems slow, and participants complain about “the time we are wasting.” However, the larger wisdom of the group recognizes the value of the process, since it is continually knitting together a community in which every soft voice, every subtle feeling has its respected place. Another important characteristic of the community-forming process, as I have observed it, is its transcendence, or spirituality. These are words that, in earlier years, I would never have used. However, the overarching wisdom of the group, the presence of an almost telepathic communication, the sense of the existence of “something greater,” seems to all for such terms. As in other instances, a participant expressed, eloquently, these thoughts. She writes, some time after the completion of a workshop: “I found it to be a profound spiritual experience. I felt that oneness of spirit in the community. We breathed together, felt together, even spoke for one another. I felt the power of the “life force” that infuses each of us—whatever that is. I felt its presence without the usual barricades of “me-ness” or “you-ness”—it was like a meditative experience when I feel myself as a center of consciousness, very much a part of the broader, universal consciousness. And yet with that extraordinary sense of oneness, the separateness of each person present has never been more clearly preserved. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

When a person is drowning, it may be better for one to try to swim than to thrash around waiting for divine intervention. The vocabulary to describe motivations must be hierarchical, especially since metamotivations (growth-motivations) must be characterized differently from basic needs (deficiency-needs). This difference between intrinsic values and our attitudes toward these values also generates a hierarchical vocabulary for motives (using this word most generally and inclusively). In another place I have called attention to the levels of gratification, pleasures, or happiness corresponding to the hierarchy of needs to metaneeds. In addition to this, we must keep in mind that the concept of “gratification” itself is transcended at the level of metamotives or growth-motives, where satisfaction can be endless. So also for the concept of happiness which can also be altogether transcended at the highest levels. It may then easily become a kind of cosmic sadness or soberness or non-emotional contemplation. At the lowest basic need levels we can certainly talk of being driven and of desperately craving, striving, or needing, when, exempli gratia, cut off from oxygen or experiencing great pain. As we go on up the hierarchy of basic needs, words like desiring, wishing, or preferring, choosing, wanting become more appropriate. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

However, at the highest levels, id est, of metamotivation, all these words become subjectively inadequate, and such words as yearning for, devoted to, aspiring to, loving, adorning, admiring, worshipping, being drawn to or fascinated by, describe the metamotivated feelings more accurately. The B-values call to behavioural expression or “celebration” as well as inducing subjective states. Celebration is an act of expressing respect or reverence for that which one needs or honours. Its essence is to call attention to the sublime or solemn aspects of living. To celebrate is to share in a greater joy, to participate in an eternal drama. It is well to notice that the highest values are not only receptively enjoyed and contemplated, but that they often also lead to expressive and behavioral responses, which of course would be easier to investigate than subjective states. God’s grace is sufficient for our weakness. Christ’s worth does cover our unworthiness, and the Holy Spirit does make us effective in spite of our inadequacy. This is the glorious paradox of living by grace. When we discover we are weak in ourselves, we find we are strong in Christ. When we regard ourselves as less than the least of all God’s people, we are given some immense privilege of serving in the Kingdom. When we almost despair over our inadequacy, we find the Holy Spirit giving us unusual ability. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

We shake our heads in amazement and say with Isaiah, “Lord, all that we have accomplished you have done for us,” reports Isaiah 26.12. The contrast between human weakness and divine power is vividly illustrated in Isaiah 41.14-15. This particular passage is set in the context of a lengthy message of encouragement to the downtrodden nation of Israel. Verses 14-15 read: “Do not be afraid, O worm Jacob, O little Israel, for I myself will help you,” declares the LORD, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. “See, I will make you into a threshing sledge, new and sharp, with many teeth. You will thresh the mountains and crush them, and reduce the hills to chaff.” God addresses the nation as “O worm Jacob, O little Israel.” The designation worm is not used by God in a disparaging sense, but rather calls attention to the weakness and helplessness of the nation, as does the term “O little Israel.” The metaphor of a worm is well chosen to express their weakness, because few things are more helpless and exposed to being trodden under foot than a worm. However, the humbling designation as a worm and as little serves only to magnify the greatness of the encouragement of God gives the nation: “Do not be afraid,” “I myself will help you,” and “I will make you into a threshing sledge, new and sharp, with many teeth.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

The promise of the overall passage is that Israel, weak and down trodden though she may be, will in due time prevail over her enemies because the Lord Himself will help her. He will not only help her, He will make Israel herself into a threshing sledge that devours her enemies. The ancient threshing machine was a sledge of thick planks armed with iron or sharpened stones as teeth to thresh the grain. God promises that, just as the threshing sledge breaks up the heads of grain, so “worm” Jacob will devour her enemies. The imagery of the passage is a study in contrast between the weakness of Israel and the mighty acts she will perform with God’s help. The image presented [of the threshing sledge] is the strange but strong one of a down-trodden worm reducing hills to powder, the essential idea being that of a weak and helpless object overcoming the most disproportionate obstacles, by strength derived from another. That is a picture of God at work: a weak and helpless object overcoming disproportionate obstacles by strength derived from another. God makes us weak, or rather He allows us to become painfully conscious of our weakness, in order to make us strong with His strength. Some years ago when God opened up for me a wider Bible teaching and writing ministry, I felt drawn to Isaiah 41.14-15. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

Even though the promise was given to the nation of Israel, I sensed God was allowing me to make a personal application, that He would indeed make me into a threshing sledge, a harvesting instrument in His hand. However, I also sense that God required, as a condition of the promise, that I accept the description of “worm Jacob, little Israel,” not in a denigrating sense, but as a realization of my own personal weakness and helplessness. I go back to that condition and promise almost every time I teach the word of God or sit down to write. I do not do this in the sense of rubbing a good luck charm, but rather to acknowledge my own inability to accomplish anything for God and to lay hold of His promise to give me the power to minister for Him. God seems to keep saying to me, “As long as you are willing to acknowledge you are weak and helpless as a worm, I will make you strong and powerful like a threshing sledge, with new, sharp teeth.” The gracious paradox of divine strength working through human weakness as taught in Scripture has been recognized through the centuries by the great teachers of the church. The respected Puritan theologian John Owen, for example said, “Yet the duties God requires of us are not in proportion to the strength we possess in ourselves. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

“Rather, the duties are proportional to the resources available to us in Christ. We do not have the ability in ourselves to accomplish the least of God’s tasks. This is the law of grace. When we recognize it is impossible for us to perform a duty in our own strength, we will discover the secret of its accomplishment. However, alas, this is a secret we often fail to discover.” In the earlier stages of their relation, the disciple needs to attach oneself more and more closely to the Master. One is still learning what the quest is, still weak-willed, uncertain, and undeveloped. However, in the later stages one should release one’s hold on the master, discipline one’s feelings, and let go of what has become so dear to one. For now one should increasingly depend on making for oneself the direct contact with one’s higher Self. One should constantly look forward to the time when one will be independent enough to steer one’s own course. It is not meant that one should be left with nothing but one’s ignorance and weakness to guide one, nor that one should face all one’s perplexities by oneself, but that one should face many or most of them as one can and that one should carry to the teacher many occasionally intervene to help on one’s own initiative but only if and when one deems it desirable and necessary to do so. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

In this way the object will be fulfilled of leading the disciple to increasingly correct thinking and more careful behaviour. It is naturally strongly repugnant to a developed mind to allow another to have such great power over one’s own, whereas it is strongly attractive to an undeveloped one. Dear Lord in Heaven, may our prayers be the road on which You come from your celestial home. May our words be food for your shining Ultimate Driving Machine as it carries You to us. Please enter this space, guided by what we speak: Please come to those who are faithful to You, please come to those who do not neglect their duties to you, please come to those who are not stingy with offerings. God please come to us. “Now my son, here is somewhat more I would say unto thee; for I perceive that thy mind is worried concerning the resurrection of the dead. Behold, I say unto you, that there is no resurrection—or, I would say, in other words, that this mortal does not put on immortality, this corruption does not put on incorruption—until after the coming of Christ. Behold, he bringeth to pass the resurrection of the dead. However, behold, my son, the resurrection is not yet. Now, I unfold unto you a mystery; nevertheless, there are many mysteries which are kept, that no one knoweth them save God himself. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

“However, I show unto you one thing which I have inquired diligently of God that I might know—that is concerning the resurrection. Behold, there is a time appointed that all shall come forth from the dead. Now when this time cometh no one knows; but God knoweth the time which is appointed. Now, whether there shall be one time, or a second time, or a third time, that humans shall come forth from the dead, it mattereth not; for God knoweth all these things; and it sufficeth me to know that this is the case—that there is a time appointed that all shall rise from the dead. Now there must needs be a space betwixt the time of death and the time of the resurrection. And now I would inquire what becometh of the souls of humans from this time of death to the time appointed for the resurrection? Now whether there is more than one time appointed for human to rise it mattereth not; for all do not die at once, and this mattereth not; all is as one day with God, and time only is measures unto humans. Therefore, there is a time appointed unto humans that they shall rise from the dead; and there is a space between the time death and the resurrection. And now, concerning this space of time, what becometh of the souls of humans is the thing which I have inquired diligently of the Lord to know; and this is the thing of which I do know. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23

“And when the time cometh when all shall rise, then shall they know what God knoweth all the times which are appointed unto humans. Now, concerning the state of the soul between death and the resurrection—Behold, it has been made known unto me by an angel, that the spirits of all humans, as soon as they are departed from this mortal boy, yea, the spirits of all humans, whether they be good or evil, are taken home to that God who gave them life. And then shall it come to pass, that the spirits of those who are righteous are received into a state of happiness, which is called paradise, a state of rest, a state of peace, where they shall rest from all their redoubles and from all care, and sorrow. And then shall it come to pass, that the spirits of the wicked, yes, who are evil—for behold, they have no part nor portion of the Spirit of the Lord; for behold, they chose evil works rather than good; therefore the spirit of the devil did enter into them, and take possession of their house—and these shall be cast out into outer darkness; there shall be weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth, and this because of their own iniquity, being led captive by the will of the devil. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

“Now this is the state of the souls of the wicked, yea, in darkness, and a state of awful, fearful looking for the fiery indignation of the wrath of God upon them; thus they remain in this state, as well as the righteous in paradise, until the time of their resurrection. Now, there are some that have understood that this state of happiness and this state of misery of the soul, before the resurrection, was a first resurrection. Yes, I admit it may be termed a resurrection, the raising of the spirit or the soul and their consignation to happiness or misery, according to the words which have been spoken. And behold, again it hath been spoken, that there is a first resurrection, a resurrection of all those who have been, or who are, or who shall be, down to the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Now, we do not suppose that this first resurrection of the souls and their consignation to happiness or misery. Ye cannot suppose that this is what it meaneth. Behold, I say unto you, Nay; but it meaneth the reuniting of the soul with the body, of those from the days of Adam down to the resurrection of Christ. Now, whether the souls and the bodies of those whom has been spoken shall all be reunited at once, the wicked as well as the righteous, I do not say; let it suffice, that I say that they all come forth; or in order words, their resurrection cometh to pass before the resurrection of those who die after the resurrection of Christ. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

“Now, my son, I do not say that their resurrection cometh at the resurrection of Christ; but behold, I give it as my opinion, that the souls and the bodies are reunited, of the righteous, at the resurrection of Christ, and his ascension into Heaven. However, whether it be at his resurrection or after, I do not say; but this much I say, that there is a space between death and the resurrection of the body, and a state of the soul in happiness or in misery until the time which is appointed of God that the dead shall come forth, and be reunited, both soul and body, and be brought to stand before God, and be judged according to their works. Yea, this bringeth about the restoration of those things of which has been spoken by the mouths of the prophets. The soul shall be restored to the body, and the body to the soul; yea, and every limb and joint shall be restored to its body; yea, even a hair of the head shall not be lost; but all things shall be restored to their proper and perfect frame. And now, my son, this is the restoration of which has been spoken by the mouths of the prophets—and the shall the righteous shine forth in the kingdom of God. However, behold, an awful death cometh upon the wicked; for they die as to things pertaining to things of righteousness; for they are unclean, and no unclean thing can inherit the kingdom of God. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23

“However, they are cast out, and consigned to partake of the fruits of their labours or their works, which have been evil; and they drink the dregs of a bitter cup,” reports Alma 40.1-26. Egyptian monks proposed to themselves—namely, to preserve that vigilant and fortified attention of mind, which in prayer is very necessary, from being wasted or dulled through continuance, if their prayers were few or long; for which purpose both to solicit God more earnestly or frequent address, and to avoid temptations of Satan drawing them into lassitude and weariness—they resolved that their prayers should be many and brief, like darts cast forth with energy. I stand here on the summit of your high mountain, and think of you. Surrounded by the sky, lifted up into the sky itself, the awesome clarity of your focused vision comes closer to me and I am more aware, myself, of your law’s urgings. Dear Lord in Heaven, Lord of all that is right, of all that is just, of all that should be; God and king of the World, of all who live and all that is, God, please advise me; please make the right path open beneath my feet, please make my eyesight clear, that I may always see as far as I do from the top of this mountain of yours. Your outstretched enfolding arms offer cattle, pour out rich milk, that we might, like children, grow in prosperity. Leading cows you come to your worshippers, who, pouring golden butter, come to you. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23

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September 3, 2020 8:22 pm

All that Can be Said is, that Two People Happened to Hit on the Same Thought!

When the satisfaction or the security of another person becomes as significant to one as one’s own satisfaction or security, then the state of love exists. Under no other circumstances is a state of love present, regardless of the popular usage of the word. Now, when you think about the power of feeling, one thing quickly becomes clear. No one can succeed in mastering feeling in one’s life who tries to simply take them directly; without hesitation and resist or redirect them by “willpower” in the moment of choice. To adopt that strategy is to radically misunderstand how life and the human will work, or—more likely—it is to have actually decided, deep down, to lose the battle and give in. This is one of the major areas of self-deception in the human heart. The very “giving in” can be among the most exhilarating feelings know to humans, though it can also be one of complete despair and defeat. Those who continue to be mastered by their feelings—whether it is anger, fear, pleasures of the flesh, desire for food or “looking god,” the residues of woundedness, or whatever—are typically persons who in their heart of hearts believe that their feelings must be satisfied. They have long chosen the strategy of selectively resisting their feelings instead of that of not having them—of simply changing or replacing them. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

Of course this is just another way of describing the ruined person, the one who makes oneself “god” in one’s World. To such persons, the idea that they should not honour their feelings is an insult. “Their god is their belly,” it will be recalled. They are enslaved to their feelings—hence “human bondage”—and have no place to stand in dealing with them. Jesus was referring to this situation when he said that “everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin,” reports John 8.34. By contrast, the person who happily let God be God does have a place to stand in dealing with feelings—even in extreme cases such as despair over loved ones or excruciating pain or voluptuous pleasure. They have the resources to do what they do not want to do and do what they want. They know and deeply accept the fact that their feelings, of whatever kind, do not have to be fulfilled. They send little time grieving over non-fulfillment. And with respect to feelings that are inherently injurious and wrong, their strategy is not one of resisting them in the moment of choice but of living in such a way that they do not have such feelings at all, or at least do not have them in a degree that makes it hard to decide against the when appropriate. Those who let God be God get off the conveyer belt of emotion and desire when it starts to move toward the buzz saw of sin. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

As one lets God be God, one does not wait until the conveyer belt is moving so fast toward sin that they cannot get office of it. Their aim is not to avoid sin, but to avoid temptation—the inclination to sin. They plan their path accordingly. In the presence of the facilitative attitude created by staff and by many participants, individuals gradually begin to hear one another, and then slowly to understand and to respect. The atmosphere becomes a working atmosphere, both in the large and the small groups, as people begin to delve into themselves and their relationships. As this working process goes more deeply, it can bring great personal pain and distress. Nearly always, the pain has to do with insights into self, or with the fright caused by a change in the self-concept, or with distress over changing relationships. The same woman who ,at the end of the workshop, was able to write poetically of her growth, wrote this while involved in the process: “Clutching, crawling, frightened crying deeply now, my hurting, bleeding hands, are scaling down the walls of jagged, deadly fear, into some scary put, descending steeper, down in search of someone lost, whose life I value most, and plunging, need to save.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

Another passage, taken from a participant’s diary, reflect the gradual, painful discover of an understanding which relieves the tension. “I feel so torn. Part of me is proud for handling the situation this morning with Lillian and Billy in what I think was a good way, yet I am annoyed with myself for allowing it to tear me apart. I am scared, too, because it all seems so unfinished. My whole body aches with unbearable tension as tears stream down my face. I rush down the hall to the room where our group meeting is held. I barge in and tell the group why I am late, of emotional overload that I feel, of the exhaustion. ‘I am not even recuperated from yesterday and already today has been heavy. I can truly appreciate the toll it must take on you who do counseling full time!’ Then Dallas says, ‘You must learn to take care of your own needs, Jessica. A sense of peace floods over me as I hear his words. How gentle and healing. That is all I really need to hear at this time.” So there are, in the group, experiences of frustration, distrust, anger, envy and despair. In the individual there are the personal experiences of suffering though change, of being unable to cope with ambiguity, of fear, of loneliness, of self-depreciation. The pain of leaving those you grow to love is only the prelude to an understanding of yourself and others. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

However, both the group and the individual experience these sufferings as part of a process in which they are involved and in which they somehow trust—even if they could, at the moment, give no rational reason for doing so. As the workshop proceeds, there is a shift in the basis of value choices made by participants. Values that are based on authority, that derive from sources external to the person, end to be diminished. Values hat are experiences tend to be enhanced. What the person has experienced tend to be enhanced. What the person has been told is good and valuable, whether by parents, church, state, or political party, tends to be questioned. Those behaviours or ways of being that are experienced as satisfying and meaningful tend to be reinforced. The criteria for making value judgments come more and more to lie in the person, not in a book, a teacher, or a set of dogmas. The locus of evaluation is in the person, not outside. Thus, the individual comes to live increasingly by a set of standards that have an internal, personal basis. Because one is aware that these standards are based on ever changing experience, they are held more tentatively, less rigidly. They are not carved in stone, but written by the human heart. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

Life in today’s World can be at times so complicated and the challenges so overwhelming as to be beyond our individual capacity to resolve them. We all need help from the Lord. Yet there are many individuals who do not know how to receive their help. They feel their urgent pleas for help have often gone unattended. How can that be when He Himself has said, “Ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you”? reports Doctrines and Covenants 4.7. It is evident that the Lord intends that we do our part. However, what specifically, are we to do? No one would expect to receive a result from physical law without obeying it. Spiritual law is the same. As much as we want help, we must expect to follow the spiritual law that controls that help. Spiritual law is not mysterious. It is something that we can understand. The scriptures define it in significant detail. “Do ye not remember the things which the Lord hath said?—If ye will not harden your hearts, and ask me in faith, believing that ye shall receive, with diligence in keeping my commandments, surely these things shall be make know unto you,” reports 1 Nephi 15.11. The Lord has the power to bless us at any time. Yet we see that to count on His help, we must consistently obey His commandments. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

Our churches speak of Him day after day, Sunday after Sunday or Saturday after Saturday, some more in terms of the Heavenly king of glory. They call Him Jesus Christ, forgetting, and making us forget, what it means to say: Jesus is the Christ. The most incredible and humanly impossible event—a wandering Jewish Rabbi is the Christ—has become natural to us. Let us at least sometimes remind ourselves and our people that Jesus Christ means Jesus Who is said to be the Christ. Let us ask ourselves and others from time to time whether we can seriously agree with Peter’s ecstatic exclamation, whether we are likewise overwhelmed by the mystery of this Man. And if we cannot answer affirmatively should we not least be silent, in order to preserve the mystery of the words, instead of destroying their meaning by our common talk? And He proceeded to teach them that the Son of Humans must endure much suffering, must be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, must be killed, and after three days rise again. He spoke of this quite freely. The moment in which Peter called Him the Christ, Jesus prophesied His suffering and death. He began to reveal the mystery of His Messianic destiny. It was contrary to everything that the people expected, that the visionaries dreamt, and that the disciples hoped for. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

He was to be rejected by the political authorities of the nation, whose king the Christ was supposed to be. He was to be rejected by the religious authorities of selected people whose leader the Christ was supposed to become. He was supposed to be rejected by the cultural authorities of that tradition which was supposed to overcome all pagan tradition through the Christ. He was to suffer—He Who was expected to transform all suffering into blessedness. He was to die—He Who was supposed to appear in divine glory. Jesus did not deny His Messianic vocation. In the symbolic words concerning the “rising after three days,” He indicated that His rejection and His death would not be a defeat, but rather the necessary steps to His becoming the Christ. He was to be the Christ only as a suffering and dying Christ. Only such is He the Christ, or, as He called Himself more mysteriously, the Son of Humans. Peter took Him and began to reprove Him for His words. However, Jesus turned to him, ad looking at His disciples, rebuked Peter, saying, “Get behind me, you Satan. Your outlook is not God’s but human’s.” Nobody in Jesus’ time would have doubted the fact that God sent suffering and martyrdom even to the righteous. The Old Testament proved that on every page. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

Therefore, it was not that fact which has made the history of the Passion the most important part of the whole Gospel. It was not the value of suffering and the value of an heroic death, which have given the power to the picture of the Crucified. There have been many pictures of creative suffering and of heroic death in human history. However, none of them can be compared with the picture of Jesus’ death. Something unique happened in His suffering and death. It was, and is, a divine mystery, humanly unintelligible, divinely necessary. Therefore, when Peter, shocked and overwhelmed by sorrow and love, tried to prevent Him from going to Jerusalem, Jesus considered his pleading a satanic temptation. It would have destroyed His Messianic character. As the Christ, He would have to suffer and die. The real Christ was not in power and glory. The Christ had to suffer and die, because whenever the Divine appears in all Its depth, It cannot be endured by humans. It must be pushed away by the political powers, the religious authorities, and the bearers of cultural tradition. In the picture of the Crucified, we look at the rejection of the Divine by humanity. We see that, in this rejection, not the lowest, but the highest representatives of humankind are judged. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

Whenever the Divine appears, It is a radical attack on everything that is good in humans, and therefore humans must repel It, must push It away, must crucify It. Whenever the Divine manifests Itself as the new reality, It must be rejected by the representatives of the old reality. For the Divine does not complete the human; It revolts against the human. Because of that, the human must defend itself against It, must reject It, and must try to destroy It. Yet the Divine is rejected, It takes the rejection upon Itself. It accepts our crucifixion, our pushing away, the defence of ourselves against It. It accepts our refusal to accept, and thus conquers us. That is the center of the mystery of the Christ Who would not die, and Who would come in glory to impose upon us His power, His wisdom, His morality, and His piety. He would be able to break our resistance by His strength, by His wonderful government, by His infallible wisdom, and by His irresistible perfection. However, He would not be able to win our hearts. He would bring a new law, and would impose it upon us by His all-powerful and all-perfect Personality. His power would break our freedom; His glory would overwhelm us like a burning blinding Sun; our very humanity would be swallowed in His Divinity. One of Luther’s most profound insights was that God made Himself small for us in Christ. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

In becoming the Christ, He left us our freedom and our humanity. He showed us His Heart, so that our heats could be won. When we look at the misery of our World, its evil and its sin, especially in these days which see to mark the end of a World period, we long for divine interference, so that the World and its daemonic rulers might be overcome. We long for a king of peace within history, or for a king of glory above history. We long for a Christ of power. Yet if He were to come and transform us and our World, we should have to pay the one price which we could not pay: we would have to lose our freedom, our humanity, and our spiritual dignity. Perhaps we should be happier; but we should also be lower beings, our present misery, struggle, and despair notwithstanding. We should be more like blessed animals than humans made in the image of God. Those who dream of a better life and try to avoid the Cross as a way, and those who hope for a Christ and attempt to exclude the Crucified, have no knowledge of the mystery of God and of humans. They are the ones who must expect others with a greater power to transform the World, others with a greater wisdom to change our hearts. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

However, even the greatest in power and wisdom could not more fully reveal the Heart of God and the heart of humans than the Crucified has done already. Those things have been revealed once for all. “It is finished.” In the face of the Crucified all the “more” and all the “less,” all progress and all approximation, are meaningless. Therefore, we can say of Him alone: He is the new reality; He is the end; He is the Messiah. To the Crucified alone we can say: “Thou art the Christ.” The Saviour taught: “Remember that without faith you can do nothing; therefore ask in faith. Trifle not with these things; do not ask for that which you ought not,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 8.10. There is another reason why the mind warrants special emphasis. Of all the soul’s faculties, the mind is the one that ponders, contains, and judges truth and falsity. The mind places me in contact with the external World, and when functioning properly it conforms itself to the name of the object of thought itself. The ingrained habits of thought that are formed will conform to the order of the thing being studied. What we study determines what kind of habits are to be formed. That is why Paul urged us to center on things that are true, honourable, just, pure, lovely and gracious. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

To understand this, let us consider two features of the mind: intentionality and internal structure. The intentionality of the mind. Intentionality refers to the “of-ness” or “about-ness” of our mental states. We have a thought of God, a hope for a new Ultimate Driving Machine, a belief about the media. The mind points beyond itself to the objects we use our minds to contemplate Because of intentionality, thought puts us in contact with the external World. For example, if I am in Tokyo, Japan, I can be in direct contact with London by thinking about it. My mind is directed on London, and it makes contact with this object of thought. After all, I am not thinking about the word “London” (unless someone asks me to spell it) or something else; I am thinking about London itself. The internal structure of the mind—when we come to understand something, the mind develops a conceptualization of the thing so understood. If I come to understand the workings of an Ultimate Driving Machine, my mind will possess a conceptualization of those workings. If my understanding is accurate, the conceptualization in my mind will conform to the Ultimate Driving Machine itself. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

If my mind develops a conceptualization of morality, then there will be an order in my mind that locates the role of virtue and character in the overall moral life. If accurate, this conception of the role of virtue will conform to the nature of true morality that actually exists outside my mind. If my conceptualizations are false, I will fail to grasp the object as it really is. However, if my mind conforms to the nature of the object itself, I will not only grasp it truly but also gain a certain power that comes from a correct understanding of reality. Just as electricity was real but its power unavailable to us until Ben Franklin’s discovery opened our minds to grasp the true nature of electricity, so the power of the spiritual life is real but unavailable to us if we do not understand the true nature of prayer, fasting, and so forth. This is why truth is so powerful. It allows us to cooperate with reality, whether spiritual or physical, and tap into its power. As we learn to think correctly about God, specific scriptural teachings, the soul, or other important aspects of a Christian Worldview, we are placed in touch with God and those realities. And we thereby gain access to the power available to us to live in the kingdom of God. The blessing resolves those things which are beyond our own capacity to influence either personally or with the help of others. Yet we must do our part for the blessing to be realized. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

We must strive to be worthy and to exercise the requisite faith to do what we are able. Where it is intended that others help, we must use that hep also. It is through the combination of our doing what is within our power to accomplish and the power of the Lord that the blessing is realized. The B-values are not the same as our personal attitudes toward these values, nor our emotional reactions to them. The B-values induce in us a kind of “requiredness feeling” and also a feeling of unworthiness. The B-vales had better be differentiated from our human attitudes toward these B-values, at least to the extent that it is possible for so difficult a task. A listing of such attitudes toward ultimate values (or reality) included: love, awe, adoration, humility, reverence, unworthiness, wonder, amazement, marveling, exaltation, gratitude, fear, joy, et cetera. These are clearly emotional-cognitive reasons within a person witnessing something not the same as oneself, or at least verbally separable. Of course, the more the person fuses with the World in great peak or mystic experiences, the less of these intra-self reactions there would be and the more the self would be lost as a separable entity. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

Ideas are types existing in the Divine Mind. However, God has the proper types of all things that He knows; and therefore He has ideas of all things known by Him. As ideas are principles of the knowledge of things and of their generation, an idea has this twofold office, as it exists in the mind of God. So far as the idea is the principle of the making of things, it may be called an “exemplar,” and belongs to practical knowledge. However, so far as it is a principle of knowledge, it is properly called a “type,” and may belong to speculative knowledge also. As an exemplar, therefore, it has respect to everything made by God in any period of time; whereas as a principle of knowledge it has respect to all things known by God, even thought they never come to be in time; and to all things that He knowns according to their proper type, in so far as they are known by Him in a speculative manner. Evil is known by God not through its own type, but through a type of good. Evil, therefore, has no idea in God, either in so far as an idea is an “exemplar” nor as a “type.” God has no practical knowledge, except virtually, of things which neither are, nor will be, nor have been. Hence, with respect to these there is no idea in God in so far as idea signifies an “exemplar” but only in so far as it denotes “type.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

We hold matter to be created by God, though not apart from form, matter has its idea in God; but not apart from the idea of the composite; for matter in itself can neither exist nor be known. “And now, my son, I have somewhat more to say unto thee than what to said unto your brother; for behold, have ye not observed the steadiness of thy brother, his faithfulness, and his diligence in keeping the commandments of God? Behold, has he not set a good example for thee? For thou didst not give so much heed unto my words as did thy brother, among the people of Zoramites. Now this is what I have against thee; thou didst go on unto boasting in thy strength and thy wisdom. And this is not all, my son. Thou didst do that which was grievous unto me; for thou didst forsake the ministry, and did go over into the land of Siron among the borders of the Lamanites, after the harlot Isabel. Yes, she did steal away the hearts of many; but this was no excuse for thee, my son. Thou shouldest have tended to the ministry wherewith thou wast entrusted. Know ye not, my son, that these things are an abomination in the sight of the Lord; yea, most abominable above all sins save it be the shedding of innocent blood or denying the Holy Ghost. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

“For behold, if ye deny the Holy Ghost when it once has had place in you, and ye know that ye deny it, behold, this is a sin which is unpardonable; yea, and whosoever murdereth against the light and knowledge of God, it is not easy for one to obtain forgiveness; yea, I say unto you, my son, that it is not easy for one to obtain forgiveness. And now, my son, I would to God that ye had not been guilty of so great a crime. I would not dwell upon your crimes, to harrow up your soul, if it were not for your good. However, behold, ye cannot hide your crimes from God; and expect ye repent they will stand as a testimony against you at the last day. Now my son, I would that ye should repent and forsake your sins, and go no more after the lusts of your eyes, but cross yourself in all these things; for except ye do this ye can in nowise inherit the kingdom of God. Oh, remember, and take it upon you, and cross yourself in these things. And I command you to take it upon you to counsel with your elder brothers in your undertakings; for behold, thou art in thy youth, and ye stand in need to be nourished by your brothers. And give heed to their counsel. Suffer not yourself to be led away by any vain or foolish thing; suffer not the devil to lead away your heart again after those wicked harlots. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

“Behold, O my son, how great iniquity ye brought upon the Zoramites; for when they say your conduct they would not believe in my words. And now the Spirit of the Lord doth say unto me: Command thy children to do good, lest they lead away the hearts of many people to destruction; therefore I command you, my son, in the fear of God, that ye refrain from your iniquities; that ye turn to the Lord with all your mind, might, and strength, that ye lead away the hearts of no more to do wickedly; but rather return unto them, and acknowledge your faults and that wrong which ye have done. Seek not after riches nor the vain things of this World; for behold, you cannot carry them with you. And now, my son, I would say somewhat unto you concerning the coming of Christ. Behold, I say unto you, that it is he that surely shall come to take away the sins of the World; yea, he cometh to declare glad tidings of salvation unto his people. And now, my son, this was the ministry unto which ye were called, to declare these glad tidings unto this people, to prepare their minds; or rather that salvation might come unto them, that they may prepare the minds of their children to hear the word at the time of his coming. And now I will ease your mind somewhat on this subject. Behold, you marvel why these things should be know so long beforehand. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

“Behold, I say unto you, is not a soul at this time as precious unto God as a soul will be at the time of this coming? It is not as necessary that the plan of redemption should be made known unto this people as well as unto their children? It is not as easy at this time for the Lord to send his angel to declare these glad tidings unto us as unto our children, or as after the time of his coming,” reports Alma 39.1-19. If the Master had no patience with his disciples, he and they would soon part. If he had no belief in their eventual evolution, he and they would never join. If a human hitched the Ultimate Driving Machine of one’s spiritual effort to the star of a competent and worthy spiritual guide, it is nonsensical to object that one surrenders one’s freedom whenever one surrenders one’s own personal judgment to the guide’s or even whenever one obeys a command from the guide. For who chose the guide? One, oneself. By the exercise of what faculty did one make such a choice? By the exercise of free will. Therefore the initial act was a free choice. It was also the most important one because it was causal, all one’s other acts as a disciple being merely its effects, however long be the chain which extends from it. It is because one respects the larger wisdom of the guide and trusts one’s disinterestedness that the disciple follows one in thought and practice, not because one has become a puppet. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

The aspirant who believe that one can come to a master for a few days or works and glean the teaching will glean only a sample of it. It will take one all one’s life not only to receive what a master knows but to be adjured worthy of and ready for it. If one lacks this patience and humility, one will fall into self-deception. It requires long continued communication between pupil and teacher in joint purist of the object they are seeking to understand, and then suddenly, just as light flashes forth when a fire is kindled, this wisdom is born in the mind and henceforth nourishes itself. Two such individuals as Master and student are linked together by ancient ties. Much many remain to be done in the future as it was in the past. If, in a previous incarnation, the student attained a higher phase of development than at present, this must again be achieved before results can appear in consciousness. In such a case one should work especially hard to make progress. God, I speak your name, Emptier of cauldrons, your child calls you: into the past through the mists over the border between our Worlds my words go flying straight to you. God, I speak your name, Maker of borders, your child calls you: out of the past through the mists over the border between our Worlds travel the trackway, straight to me. God, hear my words and receive my gift. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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At #BrightonStation the possibilities are endless. We have Home Sites 47 & 88 available in this Residence 1 floor plan! Head to our website to learn more. Link in bio. https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/residence-2/

Lord, God of the Heavens, inhabiting spirit of good will, please bring joy to those who come together there. Please bind us together in the spirit of Godliness. You who fill your devotees with ecstasy pouring yourself unreservedly through their hearts, I ask you for your presence here today that our gathering might be properly blessed. #CresleighHomes

September 3, 2020 1:22 am

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