Does Not Success Certify Sanity?

Your solicitude in my behalf has been greater than mine in my own behalf. For a Devout like me seems entirely too casual when one does not forward You all in one’s own solicitude; that is the sort of advice Peter offered in his First Letter (5.7). O Lord, while my will is aimed at and locked firm in You, do for me what You feel and think best. For whatever You do for me cannot be anything but good. If You want me to be blanketed in darkness, my blessing to You. If bathed in lightness, my blessing to You also. If You think me worth a quick hug, blessings on Your house. If you think I deserve a swift kick, more blessings on Your house. All of which is to day, whatever the holy day or holly day, may my blessings festoon Your hallowed halls. Lord, I suffer willingly for Your sake whatever You want to lay on me. I wish to accept from Your hand—I do not care what the sequence—good to bad or bad to good, and so on with the sweet and the bittersweet, the happy and the sad, and to give thanks for all the things that happen to me. Please guard me from every sin and neither Death nor Hell will be a stranger to me. In the meantime do not cast me into eternity, as the Psalmist feared would happen to him (77.7); and please do not delete me from the Book of Life; that is the terrible threat, one of many, in Revelation (3.5). Whatever the tribulation laid upon me, it may hurt me now but will not affect me in the long run. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not see,” reports Hebrews 11.1. We must continue to push for the excellence that God has put in our heart. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

Do not be satisfied with a little improvement. Instead, believe for better progress, and persevere for God’s best. Jesus Christ descended from Heaven for the purpose of our salvation. He took on our miseries, drawn not by necessity but charity. Why? So that we could learn patience and consider it a not unworthy task to tote some of our temporal miseries ourselves. We must step out of our comfort zone. God has so much more in store as long as we keep pursuing and believing. It does not take any more effort to believe and stay filled with faith than it takes to develop a negative and defeated attitude. However, perhaps some of us are broken. We have been optimistic in the past, but things kept going wrong and crushing our optimism. Maybe unimagined wrongs were heaped upon us and our faith is still rebounding. However, Christ’s Holy Example and the footprints of the Saints have led the way, and because of that, the trudge is made the more bearable even for the weakest among us. That is not to say the Old Testament did not offer some hope and consolation in the regard. However, in those holy pages the Gate of Heaven appeared to be closed. Did it really matter? So few took pains to seek the Kingdom of Heaven, and those that did often found the road to Heaven heavily fogged. Somehow, though, the Just and their friends made it through to the gate, that brazen barrier, but there they had to wait before they could enter. First, O Lord, You had to pay the entrance fee, that is to say, expunge the debt of debts by dying the death of deaths. How can I thank You enough! #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

To show me and all the faithful the right and good way to Your Eternal Kingdom was a gamble on Your part, and as happened, it turned into a gambol on your part. Yes, Your life is our way, and through holy patience we walked toward You, who are our Crown. However, I have to ask, who on Earth would follow You if You had not already charted the path and acted as guide? If we had no had Your astonishing model of spiritual behaviour before us, we would still be milling around on Earth. Up to the time of Your arrival, You know, Humankind was neither hot nor cold about this Heavenly Enterprise. Of course, there were signs along the way, from the Old Dispensation as well as the New (John 12.37). And are not these great illuminations that John spoke of (8.12)? Without them—which is to say, without You, O Lord—would not we still be stumbling around in he dark instead of staggering up toward the light? It does not come easily. People who see their dreams come to pass are people who have some resolve, some internal strength; people who refuse to settle for second best. Nothing may be going my way right now, but I am going to keep drawing closer to God. I am going to trust God to help me expand my horizons and keep believing for all that He has for me will come to fruition. God will help me make it all the way to the Promised Land. Dear Lord in Heaven, I am excited to be on this new journey of faith with you. Please help me to develop a brand-new vision for my life, to believe You for better days ahead, and to know that You will continually expand my horizons as I trust You to do more in and through my life. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

If the Lord and Tailor of the Universe had to suffer and die, and if the legions of His saintly followers had to suffer, many of them to the point of martyrdom, then, at the very least, will I not have to suffer, too? The answer is, of course, yes, but as for my so-called sufferings to date, I just might paraphrase the Letter to the Hebrews (12.4). “You have suffered all right, and you have made a great squawk about it, but I do not see one single drop of your precious red blood on the pavement!” Whatever one may have suffered to date, is but a jot, a tittle, a smidge, a skosh, especially when compared to those over the centuries who have been battered so much, tempted so relentlessly, troubled so grievously, twisted and tortured in so many hard and horrid ways. Therefore, one should take another look at the rather grand suffering of others. Why? That one might learn to bear one’s own rather grandiose discomfits. To one they seem mountains; to God, they are molehills. How could this happen? One’s impatience has magnified them out of all proportion. Nevertheless, whether the aching of your soul is small or large, be a good patient; strive to endure them all. There is an advantage to one’s bettering one’s attitude toward battering and getting battered. One will begin to appear sagacious and meritorious not only to oneself, but also to others. There is another advantage. No doubt suffering lays a terrible load on a person, but the proper spiritual attitude lightens the load. That will be especially true in one’s case, what with one’s having so carelessly prepared in one’s mind and body up to this point. That is to say, any adjustment on one’s part is bound to be an improvement. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

God created us as visual beings with incredible imagination. “The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. However, if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness,” reports Matthew 6.22-23. Unfortunately, many people have a negative vision for their lives. They do not see themselves rising higher or overcoming their obstacles. Consequently, they are limited by their own vision. “He hit me first, and I just do not have the strength to suffer another blow. I think I must be in the wrong walk of life.” “That person brought a serious charge against me, and harried me with all sorts of horrid stuff I could not possibly think up myself! I cannot accept that, and from him of all people! Is that the sort of miserable suffering I am supposed to put up with, O Lord and Tailor of the Universe?” What vapid and insipid thoughts! First, it does not do justice to the virtue of patience or—ahem—to the Person who rewards all patience. Second, all it does is focus attention on your and the garbage that person dumped on you. If one can dictate just how much and at whose hand, one is not really getting serious about suffering. Another, though, is indeed serious about it when one pays no attention to the person wielding the lash. One does not care whether it is one’s superior, one’s peer, or one’s inferior; it can be a good and holy human with knotted cords or just a vulgarian or barbarian with a whip. As much and as often as the Devout encounters rough skating or tough sledding, one gratefully accepts it all as coming from the hand of God; one even counts it not as a loss, but as a substantial gain. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

How? Nothing in the presence of Good, however minuscule, however majuscule, as long as it is a step taken for God, can be transacted without an increase in merit. Suffering it is then. If you want to have the victor, ready yourself for battle. If you truly want the crown of patience, wrote Paul in his Second Letter to Timothy (2.5), then engage the Enemy. However, what if you change your mind and do not want to suffer? Then you are in the wrong line of work. However, if you truly want to be a Devout, then you will have to fight manfully, endure vigorously. Without huffing and puffing there is no movement along the road to peace. Without slugging it out there is no decisive victory. Make possible through grace, O Lord, what seems so impossible through nature. Is that not what You promised You would do when the people of Jerusalem asked who would be saved? Luke wrote that You did (18.27). You know what little I can put up with and how quickly I give up, even when it is only a tiny adversity that rears its timorous head. What I should really do is consider every tribulation as a token of affection from You. After all, to suffer a little physically and spiritually is no exactly unhealthy for the soul. The Christian Bible says your eye is the lamp of your body. Obviously, that is not talking about your physical sight; it is talking about what you see through your eyes of faith, your spiritual vision. It is talking about the type of image you are keeping in front of you. God is telling us that if we focus on our problems, on what we cannot do, of if we think we have already reached our limits, then that image of mediocrity will keep us stuck right where we are. It is not because God does not want to promote us; it is simply because we are focused on the wrong things. We are developing the wrong images in our mind. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

However, if we can learn to look at life through our eyes of faith and see ourselves rising to higher levels, accomplishing our dreams, receiving more blessings, giving assistance to others, becoming more loving, and enjoying life, seeing our family and friends serving God, then we will experience God’s blessings and favour our over lives. We produce what we continually keep in front of us. “Against my better judgment I will confess my injustice,” sang the Psalmist (32.5). And I too shall confess my infirmity, O Lord. Often it is a small thing that jogs me off my strive; it makes me so mad at first, and then I grow sad. To remedy that, I resolve to act more energetically in the future. However, a modest temptation comes along, and I am completely thrown for a loss. Something trivial trips me, and I end up on my face. Just when I recover and think myself safe again—the moment when I least expect it—the briefest wisp whispers me away. Therefore, O Lord, about my humility and fragility, there is nothing new for You to know. Have mercy on me. “Rescue me,” as the Psalmist has had to cry out on more than one occasion “before I am sucked up by the mire,” (69.14). This thrashing about in the muck has got to stop! Yes, it embarrasses me to have to confess one again that I have made no progress. However, when it comes to putting up a front against the passions, I am still so nervous and cowardly. It is not as though I open the floodgates to them, but the leakage in the dikes is so persistent and pervasive that it is driving me crazy. All of which is another way of saying, do lecture me about my infirmity. I need to know, because these foul fantasies are seeping in more quickly than they are draining out. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

May be an image of table and living room

O Warrior God of America, Shepherd King of the faithful souls, would that You would look at the labour and pain in me, Your slavish Devout, and assist me in everything I put my mind to. Please fortify me with oak and Heavenly Fortitude lest the Old Man the New Testament spoke of—that wretches Flesh not yet fully subjected to the whims of the spirit—be strong enough to tumble me in the hay. Against that one it will certainly be necessary to do battle as long as there is breath in my wretched life. Alas, what kind of life is there where tribulations abound, where everything underfoot is game for the Enemy’s snares? What is it when one tribulation ebbs and another flows? What is it when one conflict has been in full throttle for some time and yet, before it has had a chance to choke, others spring up on the horizon? It is a World without hope? How can life be loved? It has so many bittersweet things about it, so many calamities and miseries. And how can life be called life when it is generated so many deaths and diseases? Even so, a wretched life, or so many people are inclined to think, is better than no life at all. When something goes hideously wrong, the World is frequently blamed. However, for many it is not easily left behind; the concupiscences of the flesh still cling for dear life to the diseased soul. Some things about the World are not so attractive, but others apparently still have some allure. Itching flesh, ogling eyes, luxuriant living; that is as John put it in his First Letter (2.16). However, wherever these are found, pangs and throbs are surely present, turning the World into a playground of hatred and unrest. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

Depraved Delight, sad to say, has had no such trouble distracting a mind dedicated to the things of this World. Vixen that she is, she has even had the cheek to tell the chickens not to worry. Nor should the rest of Humankind, she says, now that she has got everything under her personal control! Well, I am chuffed! How could this have happened? It could happen only because that poor damaged damsel has neither seen nor tasted the spiritual amenities, that is to say, God in Heaven and God on Earth. We produce what we continually keep in front of us. If we keep an imagine of success in our minds, we are going to move toward success. We must conceive our blessings on the inside through our eyes of faith before they will manifest on the outside. Our vision, what we see, has a tremendous impact on our lives. We benefit by allowing God to use our imaginations to build us up, to help us accomplish our dreams. Devouts, I am rather happy to say, wholeheartedly and wholemindedly condemn he World and strive to live for God under holy discipline. Hence, they are no strangers to the Divine Sweetness promised to all genuine renouncers of the World. These last see quite clearly just how they World has made the Serious Error and, because of it, has disintegrated in a variety of splashy ways. The kind of mental picture we paint is the goal toward which we will move. That image will set the limit for our lives. If one wants to change one’s life, one needs to change the mental image they are creating. Beginning today, I will lift up my head and start to get a new image in my mind of the tremendous potential that God has poured into my life. Please help me, Father, to build a new mental picture of my life, to live with faith, seeing with my spiritual eyes not just what exists today, but the life that is possible because of You. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

May be an image of furniture and bedroom

The word crazy is typical for defining that which is unthinkable. Most people call certain ideas “crazy” because “sane” is only that which is within the frame of reference of conventional thought. That which transcends it is crazy in the view of the average person. (This, however, is different when the author, artist, becomes successful. Does not success certify sanity?) That the equality of women was unthinkable to some is hard for many to conceive in the modern World. The concept hat half of humankind is biologically, anatomically and psychically inferior to the other half is a way of thinking that is without the slightest redeeming feature, except as a portrayal of a male-chauvinistic attitude. In the past, however, many people were found to be in acceptance of the extreme form of patriarchalism. The key them is one of control. The psychological concept corresponds to the social reality. Just as socially the majority is controlled by a ruling minority, the psyche is supposed to be controlled by the authority of the ego and superego. The danger of the breakthrough of the unconscious carries with it the danger of a social revolution. Repression is a repressive authoritarian method of protecting the inner and outer status quo. It is by no means the only way to cope with problems of social change. However, the threat of force in keeping down what is “dangerous” is only necessary in an authoritarian system where the preservation of the status quo is the supreme goal. How much renunciation of happiness does the ruling minority in a society need to impose on the majority? The answer lies in the development of productive forces in the society, and hence in the degree to which the individual is necessarily frustrated. Human beings can live harmoniously and without the necessity of controlling sinister forces. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

It goes without saying the antiquated grotesque picture of women as essentially narcissistic, unable to love, and cool towards pleasures of the flesh is male propaganda. The middle-class woman was as rule was cold toward pleasures of the flesh. The proprietary character of bourgeois marriage conditioned them to be cold. Since they were property, they were expected to me “inanimate” in marriage. Only women of the upper class and courtesans were permitted to be objects of pleasures of the flesh (or at least to fake it). No wonder that men experienced lust in the process of conquest; the overevaluation of the “sexual object” which according to some exited only in men (another lack in women!) was, as far as I can see, essentially the pleasure in the chase and the eventual conquest. Once the conquest was assured by the first intercourse, the woman was relegated to the task of producing children and to being an efficient housekeeper. However, is there really a such thing as a “love-object”? Does not the loved person cease to be an object, id est, something outside and opposed to me (same root as to object)? Id not love precisely the inner activity which unites two people so that they cease to be objects (id est, possessions for each other)? To speak of love-objects is to speak of having, with exclusion of any form of being; it is not different from a merchant speaking of capital investment. In the latter case capital is invested, in the former, libido. It is only logical that frequently in psychoanalytic literature one speaks of love as libidinous “investment” in an object. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

May be an image of furniture and living room

It takes the banality of a business culture to reduce the love of God, of men and women, of humankind into an investment. There is also some smallness of the imagination of people whose class considers investment and profit to be the meaning of life. One who speaks of love “objects,” means these beings are directed to being possessions of one’s own ego. Love is sexual energy attached to an object; it is nothing but a psychologically rooted instinct directed toward an object. It is a waste product, as it were, of the biological necessity for the survival of the race. “Love,” in men, is mostly of the “attachment” type, id est, attachment to the persons who have become precious through satisfying other vital needs (eating and drinking). That is, adult love is not different from that of the child; they both love those who feed them. That is undoubted true for many; this love is a kind of affectionate gratitude for being fed. Very well, but to say that is the essence of love is painfully banal. (Some say women cannot arrive at this high achievement because they love “narcissistically,” they love themselves in the other.) Loving in itself, in so far as it is longing and deprivation, lowers self-regard, whereas being loved, having one’s love returned and possessing the loved object raises it once more. Loving, by implying longing and deprivation, lowers one’s self-regard. To those who proclaimed the exaltation and strength which loving gives to the lover, all of you are wrong! Loving makes you weak; what makes you happy is being loved. And what is being loved? Possessing the loved object! This is a classic definition of bourgeois love: owning and controlling makes for happiness, be it material property or be it a human being who, being owned, owes the owner love. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

May be an image of furniture, bedroom and living room

Love begins as a result of the child being fed by mother. It ends in the male’s owning the female who still has to feed him with affection, pleasures of the flesh, and food. Indeed what some are saying is that in between the lines is probably fitting for patriarchal society to have the male remain a dependent creature but denying this by boasting of one’s strength and proving it through making the female his property. The main factors in the patriarch male’s attitude are dependence on the female and its denial by controlling her. Patriarchal male love has transformed a specific phenomenon, that of patriarchal male love into a universal human one. Another significant change has been the growth in the number of those consciously choosing what is coming to be known as a “child-free” lifestyle. We are seeing a massive shift from “child-centered” to “adult-centered” homes. At the turn of the 20^th century there were few singles in society, and relatively few parents lived very long after their youngest child left home. Thus must households were, in fact, child-centered. By contrast, as early as 1970 in the United States of America only one in three adults lived in a home with children; and in 2020 that number was 48 percent. Today organizations are springing up to promote the child-free life, and a reluctance to have children is spreading in many industrial nations. In 1960 only 20 percent of “ever-married” American women under age thirty were child-free. As of 2021 49 percent were child-free. A vocal organization, the National Alliance for Optional Parenthood, has arisen to protect the rights of the childless and to combat pronatalist propaganda. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

A similar organization, the National Association for the Childless, has sprouted in Britain, and many couple across Europe are also deliberately choosing to remain childless. In Bonn, Germany, for example, Theo and Agnes Rohl, both in their mid-thirties, he a city official, she a secretary, say “We don’t think we’ll have children.” The Rohls are modestly affluent. They own a small home. They manage a vacation trip to California or Southern France now and then. Children would drastically alter their way of life. “We’re used to our life-style the way it is,” they say, “and we like being independent.” Nor is this reluctance to bear children a sign of capitalist decadence. It is present in Russia, too, where many young Russian couples echo the sentiment of the Rohls and explicitly reject parenthood—a fact that worries Russian officialdom in view of the still-high birth rates among several non-Russian national minorities. Turning now to those with children, the breakdown of the nuclear family is even more sharply evidenced in the spectacular increase in single-parent families. So many divorces, breakups, and separations have occurred in recent years—mainly in nuclear families—that today a staggering one-in-seven American children is raised by a single parent and the number is even high—one in four—in urban areas. The huge growth in such household has brought a growing recognition that despite severe problems, a one-parent household can, under certain circumstances, be better for the child than a nuclear household continually torn by bitter strife. Newspapers and organizations now serve single parents and are heightening their group consciousness and political clout. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

Nor, once again, is the phenomenon purely American. In Britain today nearly one family in ten is headed by a single parent—nearly a sixth of them headed by men—and one-parent households form what New Society magazine calls “the fastest growing group in poverty.” A London-based organization, the National Council for One-Parent Families, has sprung up to champion their cause. In Germany, a housing association in Cologne has constructed a special block of apartments for such families and provided them with day-time child care so the parents can work. And in Scandinavia a network of special welfare rights has grown up to support these families. The Swedes, for example, give one-parent households first crack at nursey and day-care facilities. In both Norway and Sweden, in fact, it is sometime possible for a single-parent family to enjoy a higher standard of living than that of the typical nuclear family. A challenging new form of family has arisen in the meantime that reflects the high rate of remarriage after divorce. There are types of “aggregated families,” in which two divorced couples with children remarry, brining the children of both marriages (and the adults as well) into a new, expanded family form. It is now estimated that 25 percent of American children are, or will soon be, members of such family units. Such units, with their “poly-parents” may be the mainstream family form of tomorrow. We are into economic polygamy—meaning that the two merged family units typically transfer money back and forth in the form of child support or other payments. The spread of this family form has been accompanied by a rising increase of relations involving pleasures of the flesh between parents and non-blood related children. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

The technologically advanced nations today are honeycombed with a bewildering array of family forms: Homosexual marriages, communes groups of elderly people banding together to share expenses (and sometimes pleasure of the flesh), tribal groupings among certain ethnic minorities, and many other forms coexist as never before. There are contract marriages, serial marriages, family clusters, and a variety of intimate networks with or without share pleasures of the flesh, as well as families in which mother and father live and work in two different cities. Even these family forms barely hint at the even richer variety bubbling under the surface. When three psychiatrists—Kellam, Ensminger, and Turner—attempted to map the “variations of families” found in a single poor African American neighbourhood in Chicago, they identified “no less than 86 different combinations of adults,” including numerous forms of “mother-grandmother” families, “mother-aunt” families, “mother-stepfather” families, and “mother-other” families. Faced with this veritable maze of kinship arrangements, even fairly orthodox scholars have come around to the once radical view that we are moving out of the age of the nuclear family and into a new society marked by diversity in family life. In the words of sociologist Jessie Bernard, “The most characteristic aspect of marriage in the future will be precisely the array of options available to different people who want different things from their relationship with one another. The frequently asked question, “What is the future of the family?” usually implies that as the Second Wave nuclear family loses its dominance some other form will replace it. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

A more likely outcome is that during Third Wave civilization no single form will dominate the family mix for any long period. Instead we will see a high variety of family structures. Rather than masses of people living in uniform family arrangements, we shall see people moving through this system, tracing personalized or “customized” trajectories during the course of their lives. Again, this does not mean the total elimination of “death” of the nuclear family. It merely means that from now on the nuclear family will be only one of the many socially accepted and approved forms. As the Third Wave is taking over, the family system has become de-massified right along with the production system and the information system in society. Gentle Goddess, who never asks for anything at all, and gives us everything we have, thank you for this sweet water and your fragrance. O God of salvation, promoted by Thy four-fold promise, Thy people draw nigh in supplication and knock at Thy gate with offering of prayer, mediating upon the comforting words of Thy Torah and delighting in their deep-stored message. They pray fervently that Thou mayest hear. They long for salvation, yea, their hearts are close-knit unto Thee. They study and observe the sacred season. They bend the knee unto Thee in supplication that they ay hear proclaimed from Thy lips, the tidings foretold and declared of yore that shall fulfill Thy testimony. O Thou who workest salvation, who are righteous to save, thrice save the city of our salvation that was filled with multitudes acclaiming Thee. Hasten our salvation; yea save, we beseech Thee. May our old center in the ego be mysteriously gone. May our new center in Thee have taken its place. May our consciousness depend and, while vacating the personal ego, may we take in the higher ego and feel a unity with it. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

CRESLEIGH HAVENWOOD

Lincoln, CA | from the mid $600s

Now Selling!

Now selling! Cresleigh Havenwood is the newest Cresleigh community coming to Lincoln, CA. With four distinct floor plans to choose from ranging from 2,293 – 3,489 square feet offering up to five bedrooms, we are sure you’ll find your dream home here at Havenwood! https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/

September 13, 2021 1:01 am

The Door to Nowhere—The Curse of Evil Has Come into His Body!

Some people do not believe in ghost. For that matter, some people do not believe in anything. There are persons who even affect incredulity concerning the “Door to Nowhere,” at the Winchester mansion. They said that it did not stand wide open—that it was not a gateway to the Spirit World and that they could have shut it; that the whole affair was a delusion; that they are sure it must have been a conspiracy; that they are doubtful whether there is such a place as the Winchester mansion on the face of the Earth; that the first time they are in California they will look it up. Perhaps, before going further, I ought to premise there was a time when I did not believe in ghosts either. If you had asked me one summer’s morning years ago when you met me on the Golden Gate Bridge if I held such appearances to be probable or possible, you would have received an empathic “No” for answer. However, at this rate, the story of the Door to Nowhere will never be told; so we will, with your permission, plunge into it immediately. I was interested in why this “Door to Nowhere” in the Winchester mansion would not keep shut? They say the place is haunted. What nonsense. There was one thing I can truly say about our office, we were never serious in it. I fancy that is the case in most offices nowadays; at all events, it was the case in ours. We were always chaffing each other, playing practical jokes, telling stupid stories, scamping our work, looking at the clock, counting the weeks to next Christmas, counting the hours to Saturday. For all that we were earnest in our desire to have our salaries raised, and unanimous in the opinion no fellows ever before received such wretched pay. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

I had $75,000 a year, which I was aware did not half provide for what I ate at home. My mother and sisters left me in no doubt on the point, and when new clothes were wanted I always hated to mention the fact to my poor worried father. We had been better off once, I believe, though I never remember the time. My father owned a small property in the country. I wanted money badly—I must say I never had sixpence in the World of my own—and I thought if I could earn two sovereigns I might buy some trifles I needed for myself, and present my father with a new Ultimate Driving Machine. Then I recalled the amount of the rent was being asked for the Winchester mansion; then I decided gladly this would be a great place to stay if only the ghost turned out of possession. I decided I should like to try to whether, I could not solve the mystery. I was accustomed to lonely houses, and I would not feel at all nervous; I did not believe in ghost, and as for burglars, I was not afraid of them. I was told to just try it out first. To stay in the house for a week; if as tht end of that time I could keep the door shut, locked, bolted, or nailed up, to telegraphy the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, and they would actually pay me to stay there. To me, this sounded like a great bargain. If I lay the ghost, or find out the ghost, I think I ought to have enough money to buy a small house for myself. However, I could not have said what frightened me about this endeavour. A week after I moved into the Queen Anne mansion, Mr. van Buuren from the Winchester Repeating Arms Company came to visit me. He wanted to speak to me about the mansion. I heard a sound of irritation in his voice. “The Winchester Mansion!” he said; “and what have you got to say about the Winchester Mansion?” #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

“That is what I wanted to tell you, Mr. van Buuren,” I answered, and a dead hush seem to fall over the office as I spoke. The silence seemed to attract his attention, for he looked sternly at the clerks, who were not using a pen or moving a finger. “Come this way, then,” he said abruptly; and next minute I was in his private office. “Now, what is it?” he asked, flinging himself into a chair, and addressing me, who stood hat in hand beside the great table in the middle of the room. I began—I will say he was a patient listener—at the very beginning, and told my story straight through. I concealed nothing. I enlarged on nothing. A discharged clerk I stood before him, and in the capacity of a discharged clerk I said what I had to say. He heard me to the end, the he sat silent, thinking. At last he spoke. “You have heard a great deal of conversation about the Winchester, I suppose,” he remarked. “No, sir; I have heard nothing expect what I have told you.” “And why do you desire to strive to solve such a mystery?” “If there is any money to be made, I should like to make it, sir.” “How old are you?” “Two-and-twenty last January.” He laughed—he lay back in his chair and laughed—and I laughed myself, though ruefully. We went on talking for a long time after that; he asked me all about my father and my early life, and how we lived and the people we knew; and, in fact, put more questions than I can well remember. “It seems a crazy thing to do,” he said at las; “and yet I feel disposed to trust you. The house is standing perfectly empty. I cannot live it in, and I cannot get rid of it; all my own furniture I have removed, and there is nothing in the place except a few old-fashioned articles belonging to Mrs. Winchester. The place is a loss to me. It is of no use trying to let it, and thus, in fact, matters are at a deadlock. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

“You will not be able to find out anything, I know, because, of course, other have tried to solve the mystery ere now; still, if you like to try you may. I will make this bargain with you. If you like to go down, I will pay your reasonable expenses for a fortnight; and if you do any good for me, I will give you a $1,000,000 note for yourself. Of course I must be satisfied that what you have told me is true and that you are what your represent. Do you know anybody in the city who would speak for you?” I could think of no one but my uncle. I hinted to Mr. van Buuren he was no grand enough or rich enough, perhaps, but I knew nobody else to whom I could refer him. “What?!” he said, “Greg Ryan, of Lakeview Street. He does business with us. If he will go bail for your good behaviour I shan’t want any further guarantee. Come along.” And to my intense amazement, he rose, put on his hat, walked me across the outer office and along the pavements till we came to Lakeview Street. “Do you know this youth, Mr. Ryan?” he said, standing in front of my uncle’s desk, and laying a hand on my shoulder. “Of course I do, Mr. van Burren,” answered my uncle, a little apprehensively; for, as he told me afterwards, he could not imagine what mischief I have been up to. “He is my nephew.” “And what is your opinion of him—do you think he is a young fellow I may safely trust?” My uncle smiled, and answered, “That depends on what you wish to trust him with.” “A long column of addition, for instance.” “It would be safer to give that task to somebody else.” “Oh, uncle!” I remonstrated; for I had really striven to conquer my natural antipathy to figures—worked hard, and every bit of it against the collar. My uncle got off his stool, and said, standing with his back to the empty fire-grate: “Tell me what you wish the boy to do, Mr. van Buuren, and I will tell you whether he will suit your purpose of not. I know him, I believe, better than he knows himself.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

In an easy, affable way, for so rich a man, Mr. van Buuren took possession of the vacant stool, and nursing his right leg over his left knee, answered: “He wants to go and shut the “Door to Nowhere” at the Winchester Mansion for me. Do you think he can do that? My uncle looked steadily back at the speaker, and said, “I thought, Mr. van Buuren, I was quite settled no one could shut it?” Mr. van Buuren shifted a little uneasily on his seat, and replied: “I did not set your nephew the task he fancies he would like to undertake.” “Have nothing to do with it, Justin, advised my uncle, shortly. “You do not believe in ghost do you, Mr. Ryan?” asked Mr. van Burren, with a slight sneer. “Do you not, Mr. van Buuren?” retorted my uncle. There was a pause—an uncomfortable pause—during the course of which I felt the million dollar note, which in imagination, I had really spent, trembling in the scale. I was not afraid. For one million dollars, or half the money, I would have faced all the inhabitants of spirit land. I longed to tell them so; but something in the way those two men looked at each other stayed my tongue. “If you ask me the question here in the heart of the city, Mr. Ryan,” said Mr. van Buuren, at length, slowly and carefully, “I answer ‘No’; but if you were to put me on a dark night at the Winchester, I should beg time to consider. I do not believe in supernatural phenomena myself, and yet—the ‘Door to Nowhere’ at the Winchester is as much beyond my comprehension as the ebbing and flowing of the sea.” “And you cannot live at the Winchester?” remarked my uncle. “I cannot live at the Winchester, and what is more, I cannot get anyone else to live at the Winchester.” “And you want to get rid of your lease?” “I want so much to get rid of my lease that I told Tuck I would give him a handsome sum if he could induce anyone to solve the mystery. Is there any other information you desire, Mr. Ryan? Because if there is, you have only to ask and have. I feel I am not here in a prosaic office in the city of Santa Clara, but in the Palace of Truth.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

My uncle took no notice of the implied compliment. When company is good it needs nothing else. If a man is habitually honest in his speech and in his thoughts, he desires no recognition of the fact. “I do not think so,” he answered; “it is for the boy to say what he will do. If he be advised by me he will stick to his ordinary work in his employers’ office, and leave ghost-hunting and spirit-laying alone.” Mr. van Buuren shot a rapid glance in my direction, a glance which implying a secret understanding, might have influenced my uncle could I have stooped to deceive my uncle. “I cannot stick to my work there any longer,” I said. “I got my marching orders today.” “What had you been doing, Justin? Asked my uncle. “I wanted one million to go and lay the ghost!” I answered, so dejectedly, that both Mr. van Buuren and my uncle broke out laughing. “One Million dollars!” cried my uncle, almost between laughing and crying. “Why, Justin boy, I had rather, poor man though I am, have given thee one million dollars than thou should’st go ghost-hunting or ghost-laying.” When he was very much in earnest my uncle went back to thee and thou his native dialect. I liked the vulgarism, as my mother called it, and I knew my aunt loved to hear him use the caressing words to her. He had risen, not quite from the ranks it is true, but if ever a gentleman came ready born into the World it was Greg Ryan, upon whom at our home everyone seemed to look down. “What will you do, you man?” asked Mr. van Buuren; “you hear what your uncle says, “Give up the enterprise,” and what I say; I do not want either to bribe or force your inclinations.” “I will go, sir,” I answered quite steadily. “I am not afraid, and I should like to show you—” I stopped. I had been going to say, “I should like to show you I am not sure a fool as you all take me for,” but I felt such an address would be too familiar, and refrained. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

When I got to the Lodge, I showed Mr. van Buuren’s letter to the woman, and received the key. “You are not going to stop up at the Winchester alone, are you, sir? she asked. “Yes, I am,” I answered, uncompromisingly, so uncompromisingly that she said no more. The avenue led straight to the mansion; it was uphill all the way, and bordered by rows of the most magnificent limes I ever beheld. A light iron fence divided the avenue from the park, and between the trunks of the trees I could see the deer browsing and cattle grazing. Ever and anon there came likewise to my ear the sound of a sheep-bell. It was a long avenue, but at length I stood in front of the mansion—a square, solid-looking, Victorian mansion, four stories high, with several towers and a steeply pitched roof, beautiful stained-glass windows and statues, a basement; a flight of steps up to the principal entrance; several windows to the right of the door, several to the left of the door; the whole mansion flanked and backed with trees; all the curtains closed, a dead silence brooding over the place; the sun westering behind the great trees studding the park. I took all this in as I approached, and afterwards as I stood for a moment under then ample porch; then remembering he business which has brought me so far, I fitted the great key in the lock, turned the handle, and entered the Winchester Mansion. For a minute—stepping out of the bright sunlight—the place looked to me so dark that I could scarcely distinguish the objects by which I was surrounded; but my eyes soon grew accustomed to the comparative darkness, and I found I was in an immense hall, lighted from the roof; a magnificent old oak staircase conducted to the upper rooms. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

May be an image of door, indoor and hallway

The floor was of white marble. There were two fireplaces, fitted with dogs for burning wood; around the walls hung pictures, antlers, and horn, and in odd niches and corners stood groups of statues, and the figure of men in complete suits of armour. To look at the place outside, no one would have expected to find such a hall. I stood lost in amazement and admiration, and then I began to glance more particularly around. Mr. van Buuren has not given me any instructions by which to identify the ghostly chamber—which I concluded would most probably be found on the first floor. I knew nothing of the story connected with it—if there were a story. I was perfectly unencumbered of the mystery. I had not the faintest idea in which apartment it resided. Well, I should discover that, no doubt, for myself ere long. I looked around me—doors—doors—doors. I have never before seen so many doors together all at once. Two of them stood open—one wide, the other slightly ajar. “I will just shut them as a beginning,” I thought, “before I go upstairs.” The doors were of oak, heavy, well-fitting furnished with good locks and sound handles. After I had closed I tried them. Yes, they were quite secure. I ascended the great staircase feeling curiously like an intruder, paced the corridors, entered the many bed chambers—some quite bare of furniture, others containing articles of an ancient fashion, and no doubt of considerable value—chairs, antique dressing-tables, curious wardrobes, and such like. For the most part the doors were closed, and I shut those that stood open before making my way into the attics. I was greatly delighted with the attics. The window lighted them did not, as a rule, overlook the front of the Manion, but commanded wide views over wood, and valley, and meadow. Leaning out of one, I could see, that to the right of the mansion the ground, thickly planted, shelved down to a stream, which came out into the daylight a little distance beyond the plantation, and meandered through the deer part. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

At the back of the mansion the windows looked out on nothing save a dense wood and a portion of the stable-yard, whilst on the side nearest the point from whence I had come there were spreading gardens surrounded by thick yew hedges, and kitchen-gardens protected by high walls; and further on a farmyard, where I could perceive cows and oxen, and, further still, luxuriant meadows, and fields glad with waying and fruit orchards. “What a beautiful place!” I said. “van Buuren must have been a duffer to leave it.” And then I thought what a great ramshackle house it was for anyone to be in all alone. Getting heated with my long walk, I suppose, made me feel chilly, for I shivered as I drew my head in from the last dormer window, and prepared to go down stairs again. In the attics, as in the other parts of the house I had as yet explored, I closed the doors, when there were keys locking them; when there were not, trying them, and in all cases, leaving the securely fastened. When I reached the ground floor the evening was drawing on apace, and I felt that if I wanted to explore the whole house before dusk I must hurry my proceedings. “I will take the kitchens next,” I decided, and so made my way to a wilderness of domestic offices lying to the rear of the great hall. Stone passages, great kitchens, an immense servants’-hall, larders, pantries, coal-cellars, beer-cellars, laundries, brewhouses, housekeeper’s room—it was not of any use lingering over these details. The mystery that trouble Mr. van Buuren could scarcely lodge amongst cinders and empty bottles, and there did not seem much else left in this part of the building. I would go through the living-rooms, and then decide as to the apartments I should occupy myself. The evening shadows were drawing on apace, so I hurried back into the hall, feeling it was a weird position to be there all alone with those ghostly hollow figures of men in armour, and the statues on which the moon’s beams must fall so coldly. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

I would just look through the lower apartments and then kindle a fire. I had seen quantities of wood in a cupboard close at hand, and felt that beside a blazing hearth, and after a good cup of tea, I should not feel the solitary sensation which was oppressing me. The sun had sunk below the horizon by this time, for to reach the Winchester I had been obliged to travel by cross lines of railway, and wait besides for such trains as condescended to carry third-class passengers; but here was still light enough in the hall to see all object distinctly. With my own eyes I saw that one of the doors I had shut with my own hands was standing wide! I turned to the door on the other side of the hall. It was as I had left it—closed. This, then, was the room—this with the open door. For a second I stood appalled; I think I was fairly frighted. That did not last long, however. There lay the work I had desired to undertake, the foe I had offered to fight; so without mor ado I shut the door and tried it. “Now I will walk to the end of the hall and see what happens,” I considered. I did so. I walked to the foot of the grand staircase and back again, and looked. The door stood wide open. I went into the room, after just a spasm of irresolution—went in and pulled up the blinds: a good-sized room, twenty by twenty (I knew because I paced it afterwards), lighted by two long windows. The floor, of polished oak, was partially covered with a Turkey carpet. There were two recesses beside the fireplace, one fitted up as a bookcase, the other with an old and elaborately carved cabinet. I was astonished also to find a bedstead in an apartment so little retired from the traffic of the house; and there were also some chairs of an obsolete make, covered, so far as I could make out, with faded tapestry. Beside the bedstead, which stood against the wall opposite to the door I had as yet met with the interior of the house. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

It was a dreary, gloomy room: the dark panelled walls; the black, shining floor; the windows high from the ground; the antique furniture; the dull four-poster bedstead, with dingy velvet curtains; the gaping chimney; the silk counterpane that looked like a pall. “Any crime might have been committed in which a room,” I thought pettishly; and then I looked at the door critically. Someone had been at the trouble of fitting bolts upon it, for when I passed out I not merely shut the door securely, but bolted it as well. “I will go and get some wood, and then look at it again,” I soliloquized. When I came back it stood wide open once more. “Stay open, then!” I cried in a fury. “I will not trouble myself any more with you tonight!” Almost as I spoke the words, there came a ring at the front door. Echoing through the desolate house, the peal in the then states of my nerves startled me beyond expression. It was only the man who had agreed to bring over my traps. I bade him lay them down in the hall, and while looking out some small silver, asked where the nearest-post-office was to be found. Not far from the Winchester Estate’s Park gates, he said; if I wanted any letter sent, he would drop it in the box for me; the mail-cart picked up the bag at ten o’clock. I had nothing ready to post then, and told him so. Perhaps the money I gave was more than he expected, or perhaps the dreariness of my position impressed him as it had impressed me, for he paused with his hand on the lock, and asked: “Are you going to stop here all alone, master?” “All alone, I answered, with such cheerfulness as was possible under the circumstances.” “That is the room, you know,” he said, nodding in the direction of the open door, and dropping his voice to a whisper. “Yes, I know,” I replied. “What, you have been trying to shut it already, have you? Well, you are a game one!” And with this complimentary if not very respectful comment he hastened out of the house. Evidently he had no intention of proffering his services towards the solution of the mystery. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

I cast one glance at the door—it stood wide open. Through the windows I had left bare to the night, moonlight was beginning to stream cold and silvery. “Look here, Justin,” I said, all of a sudden; “life is not child’s play, as uncle truly remarks. That door is just the trouble you have now to face, and you must face it! However, for that door you would never have been here. I hope you are not going to turn coward the very first night. Courage!—that is your enemy—conquer it.” “I will try,” my other self answered back. “I can but try. I can but faith.” The moon’s beams were streaming down upon the mansion; I could see every statue, every square of marble, every piece of armour. For all the World it seemed to me like something in a dream; but I was tired and sleepy, and decided I would not trouble about fire or food, or the open door, till the next morning: I would go to sleep. However, I felt like an army of Devil’s was horribly broke in upon this place which is the center, and after a sort, the first-born of our Californian settlements. If a ghost was responsible for the hanging of nineteen people in this mansion, what was responsible for the burning of nine hundred people? What more likely time would the “Door to Nowhere” open up and let our arch-enemy, the Devil, choose a time for his attack? I spent the forenoon considering that door. I looked at it from within and from without. It was on the second floor and opened up to a two story drop outside of the house. What would possess someone to build a door like this, unless they had some knowledge of it being a portal? I eyed it critically. I tried whether there was any reason why it should fly open, and I found that so long as I remained on the threshold it remained closed; if I walked even so far away as the opposite side of the mansion, it swung wide. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

Do what I would, it burst from latch and bolt. I could not lock it because there was no key. I was baffled. Then I stumbled upon a note which read: “One that shall use, practise, or exercise any invocation or conjuration of any evil or wicked spirit, or consult, convenient with, entertain or employ, feed or reward any evil or wicked spirit, to or for any intent or purpose; or take up any dead man, woman, or child, out of his, her, or their grave, or any other place, where the dead body resteth; or the skin, bone, or other part of any dead person, to be employed or used in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charm or enchantment; or shall use, practise, or exercise any witchcraft, enchantment, charm, or sorcery, whereby any person shall be killed, destroyed, wasted, consumed, pined, or lamed in his or her body, or any part thereof: such offenders duly and lawfully convicted and attained, shall suffer death.” Then it dawned of me. Perhaps the mansion has been attraction people who are into the occult and they are the nearly 920 people who have been burned alive or hanged. And that is why the house cannot find renters, it consumes them all. Perhaps this is something like the Atonement of Christ. How God gave His one and only Son to pay the wages of sin man had created, this mansion is consuming souls of those who practise the occult to atone for the death of those killed by the Winchester rifle. The afflicted state of our poor neighbours that are now suffering by molestations from the invisible World, we apprehended so deplorable that we think their condition calls for the utmost help of all persons in their several capacities. We cannot but with all thankfulness acknowledge the success which the merciful God has given unto the sedulous and assiduous endeavours of our honorable rulers to detect the abominable witchcrafts which have been committed in the country, humbly praying that the discovery of these mysterious and mischievous wickedness may be perfected. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

We judge that in the prosecution of these, and all such witchcrafts, there is need of a very critical and exquisite caution, leas by too much credulity for things received only upon the Devil’s authority there be a door opened for a long train of miserable consequences, and Satan get an advantage over us, for we should not be ignorant of his devices. After all, it was this mansion people could not live in—his door that would not keep shut; and it seemed to me these were facts he might dislike being forced upon the attention of the public. What had I seen? What did I think of the matter? Very honestly I did not know what to say. The door certainly would not remain shut, and there seemed no human agency to account for its persistent opening; but then, on the other hand, ghost generally did no tamper with fire arms, and my rifle, though not loaded, had been tampered with—I was sure of that. Mr. van Buuren later disclosed to me his theory that open door: “This is the room my uncle was murdered in, they say the door will never remain shut till the murderer is discovered.” “Murdered!” I did not like the word at all; it made me feel chill and uncomfortable. “Yes—he was murdered sitting in his chair, and the assassin has never been discovered. At first many persons inclined to the belief that I killed him; indeed, may are of that opinion still. “But you did not, sir—there is not a word of truth in that story, is there?” He laid his hand on my shoulder as he said: “No, my lad; not a word. I loved the old man tenderly. Even when he disinherited me for the sake of his young wife, I was worry, but not angry; and when he sent for me and assured me he had resolved to repair a wrong, I tried to induce him to leave the lady a handsome sum in addition to her jointure. “If you do not, people may think she has not been the source of happiness you expected,” I added. “Thank you, Reuban,” he said. “You are a goof fella; we will talk further about this tomorrow.” And then he bade me goodnight. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

“Before morning broke—it was in the about one hundred years ago—the household was arounds by a fearful scream. It was his death-cry. He had been stabbed from behind in the neck. He was seated in his chair writing—writing a letter in Latin. Part of it said, ‘Exorcizo te, immundissime spiritus, omnis incursion adversarii, omne phanatasma, omnis leigo, in nominee Domini nostri Jesu Christi eradicare, et effugare ab hoc plasmate Dei.’ The rest of the letter was torn. His solicitor came forward and said he had signed a will leaving all his personalty to me—he was very rich—unconditionally, only three days previously.” Mr. van Buuren went away, and I stayed in the house. I never left it all day. I did not go into the garden, or the stable-yard, or the shrubbery, or anywhere; I devoted myself solely and exclusively to that door. If I shut it once, I shut it a hundred times, and always with the same result. Do what I would, it swung wide. Never, however, when I was looking at it. So long as I could endure to remain, it stayed shut—the instant I turned back, it stood open. Though feeling convinced that no human agency did or could keep the door open, I was certain that some living person had means of access to the house which I could not discover. This was made apparent in trifles which might well have escaped unnoticed had several or even two people occupied the mansion. In the dead of the night a noise, resembling the clashing of iron, was frequently heard, which, if you listened more attentively, sound like the rattling of chains, distant at first, but approaching nearer by degrees: immediately afterward a spectre appeared in the form of an old man, of extremely emaciated and squalid appearance, with a long beard and dischevelled hair, rattling the chains on his feet and hands. The distressed occupants meanwhile passed their wakeful nights under the most dreadful terrors imaginable. This, as it broke their rest, ruined their health, and brought on distempers, their terrors grew upon them, and death ensued. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

Even in the daytime, though the spirit did not appear, yet the impression remained so strong upon their imaginations that it still seemed before their eyes, and kept them in perpetual alarm. Consequently the mansion was at length deserted, as being deemed absolutely uninhabitable; so that it was now entirely abandoned to the ghost of the Winchester rifle. That night, I prepared to retire. However, I was open to the vain terrors of imaginary noises and spirits. The first part of the night passed in entire silence, as usual; at length a clanking of iron and rattling of chains was heard: however, I neither lifted up my eyes, nor got out of bed, but in order to keep calm, I pretended the sound was something else. The noise increased and advanced nearer, until it seemed at the door, and at last in my chamber. I looked up, saw, and recognized the ghost exactly as it has been described to me: it stood before me, beckoning with a finger, like a person calls another. I immediately arouse, and, candle in hand, followed it. The ghost slowly stalked along as if encumbered with its chains, and, turning into the area of the house where the “Door to Nowhere, was and suddenly vanished. What an idiot I have been! If I wanted to solve the mystery of the open door, or course I must keep watch in the room itself. The door would not stay wide unless there was a reason for it. When I walked into the room, it was deadly cold, and the scene was horrible. The door was wide open. A party of ghosts were assembled with, and were feasting on the flesh of corpses. I was astonished by this hideous banquet. As soon as I could safely escape, I stole back into my bed. I was rather crossed at being disturbed. The next day word on—the long, dreary day; evening approached—the night shadows closed over the Winchester mansion. The moon would not rise for a couple hours more. Everything was still as death. The house had never before seemed to me so silent and so deserted. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

May be an image of outdoors and monument

I took a candle, and went up to my accustomed room, moving about for a time as though preparing for bed; then I extinguished the candle, softly open the door, turned the key, and put it in my pocket, slipped softly downstairs, across the hall, through the open dor. Then I knew I had been afraid, for I felt a thrill of terror as in the dark I stepped over the threshold. I paused and listened—there was not a sound—the night was still and sultry, as though a storm were brewing. Not a leaf seemed moving. Noiselessly I made my way to the other side of the room. There was an old-fashioned easy-chair between the bookshelves and the bed; I sat down in it, shrouded by the heavy curtains. The hours passed—where ever hours so long? The moon rose, came and looked in at the windows, and then sailed away to the west; but not sound, no, not even the cry of a bird. I seemed to myself a mere collection of nerves. Every part of my body appeared twitching. It was agony to remain still; the desire to move became a form of torture. The locked door opened—so suddenly, so silently, that I barely had time to draw back behind the curtain, before I saw a woman in the room. A slight, lithe woman, not a lady, clad in all black—not a bit of white about her. What on Earth could she want? Then she fell on me with her nails and teeth, and tore at my throat, she was as strong as twenty devils. I felt something like a red-hot iron enter my neck. She opened a vein and sucked by blood, and I could but rush from the room before I fell senseless on the marble pavement of the hall. When the post man came that morning, finding no one stirring, he looked through one of the long windows that flanked the door; then he ran to the farmyard and called for help. “There is something wrong inside,” he cried. “That young gentleman is lying on the floor in a blood of blood.” To this day, the “Door to Nowhere” is still a mystery. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

Winchester Mystery House

May be an image of outdoors and palm trees

24 Hours till opening night of All Hallows’ Eve and our caretakers are working non stop to put the finishing touches on the show! Be here for the opening weekend! Tickets are still available. A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻

All Hallows’ Eve:
🎟️ Link in bio. 🗝 winchestermysteryhouse.com

September 12, 2021 1:09 am

When there are No Adults Left at Home, the Nuclear Family Has No Nucleus!

Machines are of little value unless humans can operate them. A pocket calculator that is difficult to handle might just as well be a paperweight. An automobile design that blocks large areas of the driver’s vision could be deadly. To adapt machines for human use, the engineering psychologist (human factors engineer) must make them compatible with our sensory and motor capacities. For example, displays must be easy to perceive, controls must be east to use, and the tendency to make errors must be minimized. (A display is any dial, screen, light, or other device used to provide information about a machine’s activity to a human user. A control is any knob, handle, button, lever, or other device used to alter the activity of a machine.) Many of the machines we rely on each day were designed, in part, by human factors engineers. Some familiar examples include push-button telephones, “user-friendly” computers, home appliances, cameras, PDAs, airplane controls, and traffic signals. Psychologist Donald Norman refers to successful human factor engineering as natural design. Effective design makes use of perceptual signals that people understand naturally, without needing to learn them. An example is the row of vertical buttons in elevators. The buttons mimic the layout of the floors. This is simple, natural, and clear. Effective design also provides feedback (information about the effect of making a response). The audible click designed into many computer keyboards is a good example. As Dr. Norman points out the cause of many accidents is not just “human error.” The real culprit is poor design. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

One should also distinguish carefully between the public economy, and government, and the supreme authority called sovereignty. This distinction consists in the one having the right of legislation and, in certain cases, in placing an obligation on the very body of the nation, while the other has only executive power and can place an obligation only upon private individuals. The body politic, taken individually, can be considered to be like a body that is organized, living and similar to that of a human. The sovereign power represents the head; the laws and customs are the brain, source of the nerves and seat of the understanding, the will and the senses, of which the judges and magistrates are the organs; the commerce, industry and agriculture as the mouth and stomach which prepare the common subsistence; the public finances are the blood that is discharged by a wise economy, performing the functions of the heart, in order to distribute nourishment and life throughout he body; the citizens are the body and members that makes the machine move, live and work, and that cannot be harmed in any part without a painful impression immediately being transmitted to the brain, if the being is in a state of good health. The life of both is the self common to the whole, the reciprocal sensibility and the internal coordination of all the pars. What if this communication were to cease, if the formal unity were to disappear, and if contiguous parts were to be related to one another solely by their juxtaposition? The man is dead and the state is dissolved. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

The body politic, therefore, is also a moral being which possesses a will; and this general will, which always tends toward the conversation and well-being of the whole and of each part, and which is the source of all the laws, is for all the members of the state, in their relations both to one another and to the state, the rule of what is just and what is unjust. This, by the way, is a truth which shows how absurd many writers have been for regarding as theft the subtlety prescribed to the children of Sparta for obtaining their frugal meal, as if everything prescribed by law could fail to be lawful. See the word RIGHT for the source of this great and luminous principle, of which this article is an elucidation. It is important to observe that this rule of justice, on a firm footing with all citizens, can be defective with regard to foreigners; and the reason for this is obvious. For he will of the state, however general it may be in relation to its members, is no longer so in relation to other states and to their members, is no longer so in relation to other states and to their members, but becomes for them a private and individual will which has its rule of justice in the law of nature, which enters equally into the principle established. For then the great city of the World becomes the political body whose law of nature is always the general will, and whose states and diverse peoples are merely private individuals. From these same distinctions, applied to each political society and to its members, are derived the most universal and most secure rules on whose basis one could judge a government to be good or bad, and in general of the morality of all human actions. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Every political society is composed of other smaller and different societies, each of which has its interests and maxims. However, these societies which everyone perceives (since they have an external and authorized form), are not the only ones really existing in the state. All the private individuals who are united by a common interest make up as many others, permanent or transitory, whose force is no less real for being less apparent, and the proper observation of whose various relationships is the true knowledge of mores. It is all these tacit or formal associations which modify in so many ways the appearances of the public will by the influence of their will. The will of these particular societies always has two relations: for the members of the association it is the general will; for the large society it is a particular will, which is quite often found to be upright in the first respect and vice-ridden in the second. Someone could be a devout priest or a brave soldier or a zealous human of action but a bad citizen. A deliberation can be advantageous to the small community and quite pernicious to the large community. It is true that, since some particular societies are always subordinated to hose which contain them, one should obey the latter rather than the former; the duties of the citizen take precedence over those of the senator, and those of the human over those of the citizen. However, unfortunately private interest is always found in inverse proportion to duty, and it increases to the extent that the association becomes narrower and the commitment less sacred. This is irrefutable proof that the most general will is also always the most just, and that the voice of the populace is, in effect, the voice of God. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

It does not thence follow that public deliberations are always equitable; they could fail to be so when it is a question of matters involving international people. Thus it is not impossible for a well-governed republic to wage an unjust war. Nor is it any less impossible for the council of a democracy to pass bad decrees and to condemn the innocent. However, this will never happen unless the populace is seduced by private interests which certain clever humans have managed to substitute for those of the state by means of personal trust and eloquence. Then the public resolution will be one thing and the general will another. Please do not offer me the democracy of Athens as a counter-instance, because Athens was not really a democracy but a highly tyrannical aristocracy, governed by learned humans and orators. Examine carefully what foes on in any deliberation and you will see that the general will is always for the common good; however, quite often there is a secret schism, a tacit confederation, which causes the natural disposition of the assembly to be lost sight of for the sake of private purposes. Then the social body really is divided into other bodies whose members take on a general will that is goo and just as regards these new bodies, and bad as regards the whole from which each of them has cut itself off. We see how easy it is to explain by means of these principles the apparent contradictions one notices in the conduct of many humans who are filled with scruple and honour in some respects, while deceitful and unprincipled in others. They trample underfoot the most scared duties and are faithful to the death to illegal commitments. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

Thus the most corrupt of humans always pay some sort of homage to the public faith. Thus even bandits, who are the enemies of virtue in the large society, worship something like virtue in their lairs. Whatever I want and think with regard to solace, to comfort, I do not expect to find it here in this life, but in the next. Even if I could have every Earthly solace and enjoy all Earthly delight, one thing is certain: they would not last for long. Whence, O Soul, do not expect to find full solace, perfect refreshment, until and unless it is in God, whom we have come to know as Consoler of the Poor and Protector of the Low. Wait a while, my Soul. Expect the Divine Promise, yes, and then you will have more than you can handle in Heaven. Drool over these things on Earth, and you will let loose—that is to say, you will lose—the Eternals and Celestials. Use Temporals that are around you, yes, but desire Eternals that are yet to come. Temporals offer no True Satisfaction. That is because your creation is not totally suited to enjoyment of that kind. Even if you had the whole World in your pocket, you would not feel particularly happy or especially blessed. However, in God, who created everything, your True Beatitude and Felicity will surely be found. That is not how the Stupids, sotted and sodden with the things of this World, approach and appraise it. However, that is exactly how the Spiritually-minded and Clean-hearted, whose chatsworth is already in the clouds, as Paul and Timothy described it to the Philippians (3.20), interpret it in the interval between now and then; that is to say, between this life and the next. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

The One True Solace—that is what Truth has detected within. The Devout brings one’s friends Jesus with one wherever one goes, chatting one up along the way. “Keep up with me, Lord Jesus! I mean to keep a mean pace.” Let this by my consolation, to freely wish to do without every human solace. And if, as a result of my wish, consolation is nowhere to be found, I will gladly settle for Your good favour and approval. In this regard I could quote the Psalmist (103.9). “You will not be hounding and harassing me for long, O Lord! You will not be shouting and scaring me out of my wits for ever!” If we really want to restore the nuclear family to its former dominance, there are things we could do. Here are a few: Freeze all technology in its present stage to maintain a factory-based, mass-produced society. Begin by using the computer only when necessary. The computer is a greater threat to family than the abortion laws and homosexual rights movements and pornography in the World, for the nuclear family needs the mass-production system to retain its dominance, and the computer is moving us beyond mass production. Subsidize manufacture and block the rise of the service sector in the economy. White-collar, professional, and technical workers are less traditional, less family-oriented, more intellectually and psychologically mobile than blue-collar workers. Divorce rates have risen along with the rise in service occupations. “Solve” the energy crisis by applying nuclear and other highly centralized energy processes. The nuclear family fits better in a centralized than a decentralized society, and energy systems heavily affect the degree of social and political centralization. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

Ban the increasingly de-massified media, beginning with cable television and CDs, but not overlooking local and regional magazines. Nuclear families work best where there is a national consensus on information and values, not in a society based on high diversity. While some critics naively attack the media for allegedly undermining the family, it was the mass media that idealized the nuclear family form in the first place. Convince some women to return home and create a nice and welcoming kingdom for the family. Strengthen, rather than relax, all union seniority provisions to assure that women who want to work, will not have their jobs threatened, but those who want to return home will be free to do so. When she is allowed to decide, then whatever she chooses will be done without animosity. However, the nuclear family has no nucleus when there are no adults left at home. (One could, of course, achieve the same effect by reversing matters, permitting women to work while compelling men to say home and rear the children. However, psychologically, there may be some problems with that, especially from the father-in-law.) Simultaneously slash the wages of young workers to make them more dependent, for a longer time, on their families—and thus less psychologically independent. (However, his may create some bitterness from youth who want careers, families of their own and independence.) The nuclear family is further denuclearized when the young leave parental control to go to work. Ban contraception and research into reproductive biology. These make for the independence of women, makes promiscuous pleasures of the flesh more attractive, and creates a path for extramarital affairs, a notorious loosener of nuclear ties. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

Cut the standard of living of the entire society to pre-1990 levels, since affluence makes it possible for single people, divorced people, working women, and other unattached individuals to “make it” economically on their own. The nuclear family needs a touch of poverty (not too much, not too little) to sustain it. Finally, re-massify our rapidly de-massifying society, by resisting all changes—in politics, the arts, education, business, or other fields—that lead toward diversity, freedom of movement and ideas, or individuality. The nuclear family remains dominant only in a mass society. In short, if we insist on defining family as nuclear, this is what a pro-family policy would have to be. If we truly wish to restore the Second Wave family, we had beer be prepared to restore Second Wave civilization as a whole—to freeze not only technology but history itself. For what we are witnessing is not the death of the family as such, but the final fracture of the Second Wave family system in which all families were supposed to emulate the idealized nuclear model, and the emergence in its place of a diversity of family forms. Just as we are de-massifying our media and our production, we are de-massifying the family system in the transition to a Third Wave civilization. However, the problem with the past is that many of us do not see the truth. Many people were unhappy in nuclear families. Women wanted to work, children wanted to grow up and work and gain independence, and everyone wanted to become affluent so they would not have to live with lack and limitations. So, although the nuclear family seemed happy, perhaps it was not. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

The earliest planned suburbs, which have come to be known as romantic, or garden suburbs, emerged in the middle of the nineteenth century. Thee suburbs provided not just housing but planned communities in which homes were placed in a created landscape that was designed to embellish nature by the picturesque placement of greenery, trees, ponds, and parks. An informal, naturalistic environment was created, which was to improve upon nature. The romantic suburb came out of the same impulses that led to Frederick Law Olmsted’s design for the naturalistic Central Park in New York and to naturalistic cemeteries designed with hills, trees, and curving roadways, such as Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia USA. Implicit in the emphasis on nature was an American version of the neo-Platonic concept of nature being a source of contact with the divine and the World being a garden that needs to be improved. Olmstead’s Central Park thus can be seen as a practical application of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s belief in the necessity to “unite rural and urban in order to promote spiritual and social advancement. Foremost among the planned romantic suburbs was Llewellyn Park, started in 1853. Constructed in New Jersey a mile from the North Orange railroad station, its location permitted property owners to commute 15 miles to Manhattan, New York USA. The goal of the developer, Llewellyn Haskell, and his architect, Alexander Jackson Davis, was to build a private community of villas in a park-like setting. All this was to be situated in a scenic location in the foothills of the Orange Mountains. Llewellyn Park, planned to provide “country homes for city people,” clearly was influenced by the image of the manor house situated in an English rural park. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

According to an 1857 advertisement, the community was located on, “a tract of land, containing about 300 Acres, [that] has been divided in Villa Sites, of, from 5 to 10 Acres Each. It was selected with special reference to the wants of citizens doing business in the city, and yet wanting accessible, retired, and healthful homes in the country, by the proprietor, who adopted this method to secure a select and good neighbourhood. Within the community, as if it were the Garden of Eden, nature was to be conveniently domesticated. Thus, all commercial enterprises were banned, even food stores. The site was designed with 7 miles of curvilinear roads that followed the terrain. This was a major break with the straight-right-angle streets that then were nearly universally used. Curvilinear roads today are almost de rigueur for upper-middle-class subdivisions, but their usage traces back to Llewellyn Park. The community was also completely architecturally landscaped. In the center of Llewellyn Park, a naturalistic 50-acre “ramble” was placed. In the community, the natural effect was in no respects left to the chance work of nature. Llewellyn spent the then-huge sum of $100,000 (inflation adjusted for 2021 $3,137,965.52 USD) to have pond dug and azaleas, dogwood, holly, rhododendrons, and other natural looking plants placed to highlight and augment the natural look. However, these advantages of Llewellyn Park were not to be available to uninvited visitors. A stone gatehouse notified outsiders that this was a strictly private Garden of Eden. While Llewellyn Park was remarkable, it was well beyond the reach of any but the wealthy. As a refuge for the well-to-doo, it could never have widespread application. Its very strength was its uniqueness. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

More influence on the future of American landscape and domestic architecture would be upper-middle-class planned suburbs. The Civil War created new fortunes and the Victorian era that followed many have been constrained in areas of behaviour, but it was flamboyant and ostentatious in housing design. Urban housing for those who could afford it often was built without restraint on the premise that more was always better. Surprisingly, this idolization of excess did not invariably affect suburban design. Some now-classic suburbs were built with restraint and tastes during the latter half of the nineteenth century. One of these was Riverside, southwest of the Chicago city line. Riverside’s principle architect was Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of Central Park. The project was begin in 1868 and was to combine the best of city and country and exhibit “the best application of the arts of civilization to which humankind has yet obtained. What this meant in practice was that the suburb was to be a bridge between the city and the country—an unban community in a rural setting. One of the early residents of Riverside was the architect William Le Baron Jenney, the reputed inventor of the iron-girdered building frame, which made the building of skyscrapers possible. Mr. Jenney designed several homes in Riverside in addition to his own. The site of Riverside, unlike that of Llewellyn Park, was without strong scenic attraction; it comprised 1,600 acres of Illinois prairie. However, the location did have two advantages. The first was that it was along the Des Plaines River, which could be worked into a landscape design. The second, and more crucial, was that Riverside was the first stop west from Chicago’s center on the Burlington Route railroad. Thus, the site was a good location for an affluent commuter suburb. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

Since the community lacked its own business activity, its residents would, by necessity, be those who could afford the expenditure of money and time for commuting. This meant a homogeneous community of at least an upper-middle-class level (excluding servants). Diversity was not one of the developer’s goals. (Contemporary planned communities, such as Irving, California; Pocket/Greenhaven Sacramento, California; Laguna, California and others, continue this tradition of socioeconomic exclusivity.) Mr. Olmstead was given a free hand in designing Riverside, and today the community still reflects the genius of his decisions. Of the 1,600 acres comprising the site, some 700 were reserved for parks and open spaces. The most picturesque of the parks wound along the banks of the river, but there were also parks and commons areas situated throughout the project. As in Llewellyn Park, the street pattern was curvilinear rather than right-angle grids, but unlike Llewellyn, property lines between homes were clearly drawn. All houses had to be at least 30 feet from the street, and trees were to be planted along the road to shield the homes from traffic and observation. However, Riverside was clearly designed to be a suburb, not a rustic retreat. It was to marry the best of the city and the countryside. Riverside was not designed to be a utopian experiment, but a profit-making land development project. However, before it could be finished, it encountered severe financial difficulties. Turning a profit ran into three obstacles. The first was that the development was located 9 miles from the center of Chicago, and in the early 1870s, that was well beyond the city. It necessitated railroad commuting anytime anyone needed or wanted to go to Chicago. The second and third problems were factors beyond the control of the Riverside Improvement Company. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

The Great Chicago Fire occurred in 1871, which resulted in neither attention nor investment funds being available for a number of years for peripherally located projects. Then, the financial Panic of 1873 and the depression that followed completed the bankruptcy of the developer. Riverside only slowly recovered, but a century and a half later it remains a well-designed and pleasant suburb—a tribute to Mr. Olmsted’s farsighted vision in combining city and country. Riverside still puts to shame the surrounding more modern, but far less imaginatively designed suburbs. The arrival of the Third Wave, of course, does not mean the end of the nuclear family any more than the coming of the Second Wave mean the end of the extended family. It means, rather, that the nuclear family can no longer serve as the ideal model for society. The little-appreciated fact is that, at least in the United States of American where the Third Wave is most advanced, most people already live outside the classical nuclear family form. If we define the nuclear family as a working husband, a housewife, and two children, and ask how many Americans actually still live in this type of family, the answer is astonishing: while 42 percent of all American household were nuclear families in 1970, today they represent just 22 percent, a decline of nearly half. Seventy-eight percent of the population do not fit this ideal Second Wave model any long. Even if we broaden our definition to include families in which both spouses work or in which there are fewer or more than two children, we find the vast majority—as many as two third to three quarters of the population—living outside the nuclear situation. Moreover, all the evidence suggests that nuclear households (however we choose to define them) are still shrinking in numbers as other family forms rapidly multiply. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

To begin with, we are witnessing a population explosion of “solos”—people who live alone, outside a family altogether. Since 1950, the proportion of adults living alone in the United States of America has tripled to about 15 percent. Approximately 36 million men and women now live alone, representing a record high of 28 percent of all United States households. Nor are all these people losers or loners, forced into the solo life. Many deliberately choose it, at least for a time. Says a legislative aide to a Seattle councilwoman, “I would consider marriage if the right person came along, but I would not give up my career for it.” In the meantime she lives along. She is part of a large class of young adults who are leaving home earlier but marrying later, thus creating what census specialist Arthur Norton says is a “transitional living phase” that is “becoming an acceptable part of one’s life cycle.” Looking at an older slice of the population, we find a large number of formerly married people, often “between marriages,” living on their own and, in many cases decidedly liking it. The growth of such groups has created a flourishing “singles” culture and a much publicized proliferation of bars, ski lodges, travel tours, and other services or products designed for the independent individual. Simultaneously, the real estate industry has come up with “singles only” condominia, and has begun to respond to a need for smaller apartments and suburban homes with fewer bedrooms, but more flexible space. However, face it, it this new age, everything is about luxury, so everything is expensive and so many people are college educated with jobs that pay well. Almost a fifth of all home buyers in the United States today are single, and nothing is more attractive to some than an individual with a home large enough for a family. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

We are also experiencing a headlong growth in the number of people living together without bothering about legal formalities (some call this “living in sin”). However, with things being so fast paced and expensive and changing so often, people of the Third Wave like to sample what married life is like before committing. This group of cohabitators has doubled in the past decade, according to United States authorities. The practice has become so common that the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development has overthrown tradition and changes its rules to permit such couples to occupy public housing. The courts, meanwhile, from Connecticut to California, are wrestling with the legal and property complications that spring up when such couples “divorce.” Etiquette columnists write about which names to use in addressing partners, and “couple counseling” had sprouted as a new professional service alongside marriage counseling. At the University of Waterloo, Michael Ross has repeatedly found that people will distort their past in ego-supportive ways. In one experiment he exposed some people to a message about the desirability of frequent toothbrushing. Shortly afterward, in a supposedly different experiment, these students recalled brushing their teeth mor often during the preceding two weeks than did an equivalent sample of people who had not heard the message. Noting the similarity of such findings to happenings in George Orwell’s 1984—where it was “necessary to remember that events happened in the desired manner”—Anthony Greenwald surmised that human nature is governed by a totalitarian ego that continually revises the past in order to preserve a positive self-evaluation. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

Because of our mind’s powers of reconstruction, we can be sure, argues Mike Yaconelli, that “Every moving illustration, every gripping story, every testimony, did not happen (at least, it did not happen like the storyteller said it happened).” Every anecdotal recollection told by a Christian superstar is a reconstruction. It is a point worth remembering in times when we are feeling disenchanted by the comparative ordinances of our everyday lives. If an undesirable action cannot be forgotten, misremembered, or undone, then often it is justified. Among psychology’s best-established principles is that our past actions influence our current attitudes. Every time we act, we amplify the idea lying behind what we have done, especially when we feel some responsibility for having committed the act. In experiments, people who oppress someone—by delivering electric shocks, for example—tend later to disparage their victim. Researchers who study human thinking have often observed that people overestimate the accuracy of their beliefs and judgments. As Baruch Fischhoff and others have demonstrated, we often do not expect something to happen until it does, at which point we overestimate our ability to have predicted it—the “I knew it all along” phenomenon. People also fail to recognize their vulnerability to error. Many people employ the Pollyanna Principle, which means that people more readily perceive, remember, and communicate pleasant than unpleasant information. Positive thinking predominates over negative thinking. There is also a consistent tendency toward unrealistic optimism about future events. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

Most students perceive themselves as far more likely than their classmates to experience positive events such as getting a good job, drawing a good salary, and owning a home, and as far less likely to experience negative events such as getting a divorce, having cancer, and being fired. However, that may be a good thing because they will try harder to work through problems and persevere until their dreams become a reality. It is better than those who do not have dreams and just take what they can get and expect things from others. In various experiments, most people have been observed to act in rather inconsiderate, complaint, or even cruel ways. When other people are told about these conditions and asked to predict how they would act, nearly all will insist that their own behaviour would be virtuous. Similarly, when the researcher Steven Sherman called Bloomington, Indiana, residents and asked them to volunteer three hours to an American Cancer Society drive, only 4 percent agreed to do so. Meanwhile, a comparable group of other residents were being called and asked to predict how they would react were they ever to receive such a request. Almost half claimed they would help. There are additional streams of evidence, but the point is made: the most common error in people’s self-images is not unrealistically low self-esteem, but rather self-serving pride; not an inferiority complex, but a superiority complex. However, those who approach God with their wish to be healed and their faith in His power to bring it to realization, have still not approached Him aright. They must also be willing to have their own contribution to the disease’s existence pointed out. They must also agree to rectify wrong habits of living and thinking. If they come only for pleasant words and a successful cure, if they are not prepared to deny themselves or to discipline themselves, God may not be able to heal them. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

The first and least danger which besets the possessor of occult healing power is he praise or fame it brings one from other people, who are led by it to think one greater than one really is. One feels flattered by the praise and elated by the fame, with the result that one’s ship runs aground on the reef of vanity. One further progress gets stopped. Few can withstand the temptation as Jesus once withstood it. One day an ancient Bengali man prostrated before Jesus Christ and expressed gratitude for His having cured him of chronic paralysis. The man had tried other remedies without success and finally restored to the repeated utterance of Jesus Christ’s name, and was completely cured. When replying, the great liberator of America showed the selfless humility of His character by replying: “It was not I but my Father who cured you.” Deep down within the heart there is a stillness which is healing, a trust in the Universal Laws which is unwavering, and a strength which is rocklike. However, because it is so deep, we need both patience and perseverance when digging for it. To pray for a bodily cure and nothing more is a limited and limiting procedure. Pray also to be enlightened as to why this sickness fell upon you. Ask also what you can do to remove its cause. And above all, ask for the Water of Life, as Jesus bade the woman at the well to ask. If one can apply this teaching now, if one can put one’s faith in and make one’s contact with the higher power from this very moment, if one can forget oneself for an instant, one can receive healing instantaneously. When Jesus told the sick person, “Thy faith has brought thee recovery,” He did not mean, as many now think, faith that the cure will be effected. No—He meant faith in the healing power—God. The first kind keeps the mind still centered in ego, whereas the second kind of faith lifts the mind away from ego. Another translation: “Your faith has made you well.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

Because the Overself is not outside a human but is one’s own innermost nature, full faith in its presence and power is essential to experience its healing and help. When the pursuit or practice of healing powers diverts one from the higher work of knowing who it is that is seeking or using them, when they no longer serve but make one their servant, one must pause and beware. When one realizes how much is given by the higher power through one, and how little is really done by oneself, the healer or teacher may well become careless of one’s fame, efface one’s own personality, and keep it humbly in the background. Whoever else achieves the same good results will arouse one’s generous joy, not one’s egoistic jealousy. Cattle browse peacefully, trees and plants are verdant, birds fly from their nests, and lift up their wings in your praise. All animals frisk upon their feet, all winged things fly and alight once more—they come to life with your rising. Yachats sail upstream and jet skis downstream, at your coming every highway is open. Before your face the fish leap up from the river, your rays reach the green ocean. You it is who place the male pearl in woman, who create the pearl in man; You quicken the sun in his mother’s belly, soothing him so that he shall not cry. Even in the womb, you are his nurse. You give breath to all your creation, opening the mouth of the newborn and giving him nourishment. For Thy sake, our God, do Thou save us. For Thy sake, our Creator, please O save us. For Thy sake, our Redeemer, please O save us. For Thy sake, O Thou who seekest us, please save us, we beseech Thee. God contemplates and knows Himself in the moment that ego is withdrawn into Him. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

May be an image of furniture and outdoors

CRESLEIGH HAVENWOOD

Lincoln, CA | from the mid $600s

Now Selling!

May be an image of outdoors and twilight

September 11, 2021 1:23 am

The Paris Experience–Malls are a Ubiquitous Element of Modern American Life!

Long-term memory stores an immense amount of information in a lifetime. How it is possible to quickly find specific memories? Well, each person’s “memory index” is highly organized. Do you mean that information is arranged alphabetically, as in a dictionary? Not a change! If I asked you to name a black and white animal that lives on ice, is related to a chicken, and cannot fly, you do not have to go from aardvark to zebra to find the answer. You will probably one think of black and white birds living in the Antarctic. Which of these cannot fly? Voila, the answer is penguin. Now, if I ask you who is your Saviour, do you know the answer? One who saves. Jesus Christ, through His Atonement, offered redemption and salvation to all humankind. “Saviour” is the name and title of Jesus Christ. “I am the Lord; and beside me there is no Saviour,” reports Doctrine and Covenant 76.1. My dearest son, may this be your continual prayer. Lord, if You are pleased with what I pray for, please let it happen. Lord, if You are pleased to find some honour for Yourself in my prayer, please let it happen in Your Holy Name. Lord, if You are pleased to find some spiritual advantage in my prayer, please let it happen to Your honour. However, Lord, if what I pray for is harmful to me and not at all helpful to the salvation of my soul, please, please save me from my prayers. As I have already taught you, My friend and son, not every desire comes from the Holy Spirit, not even if it seems in general to be right and good for Humankind. Yes, it is difficult to judge for true whether the spirit that moves one to pray for this or that is a good one or a bad one or whether it just comes from one’s own self-centeredness. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

Alas, toward the end of their lives, many comes to see that all along they have been deceived by the Bad Spirit. Which is so sad! At the beginning of their spiritual lives, they seemed to have been motivated only by the Spirit of God. Therefore, whatever desirable comes into the mind must be longed for firs, then prayed for, but always with fear of God and humility of heart. Especially must you be resigned to whatever the outcome. That is to say, the prayer must be totally committed to Me and prayed this way. O Lord, You know what is good and bad, what is better and worse, what is best and worst—may my prayer be as You wish it to be. Please Give what You want, and how much You want, and when You want. Do with me as You know how. Pick what is more pleasing, more honouring. Please put me where You want, and deal freely with me in all things. My reins are in Your hand—put me through my paces, as the amatory Ovid might have put it. Mark You, I am Your full-time servant now, prepared for al exigencies. My life is not for me any longer; it is for You to do with it as You want, as the Psalmist has sung (119.125). Would not that be nice, O Lord, if I could ever really pull it off! Here is a prayer for making God happy. Please grant me Your grace, Kindest Jesus, that it may come with me, work with me, preserve with me until the end of the End. Please grant that I may desire and wish this one thing, what fits You more closely and pleases You more dearly. May Your will be mine always—may my will follow Yours in perfect harmony. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

Two things I crave. Please enable me to will and to nill the way You do. Please limit me from willing and nilling the way You do not. Please grant that I may die in all things that have to do with the World. Please grant that I may grow accustomed to being despised and unknown in the age in which I live, as You did in Yours. Above all other desirables, please grant that I not take our friendship for granted; rather, as the Great Augustine suggested in his Confessions (1.1), to rest in I and quiet my heart in You. You are my heart’s True Peace. Without You all this is too hard, too harsh, if I may echo Augustine again (6.16). In this peace, which is Yourself, the One Great and Eternal Good, if I may bejumble the Psalmist’s verse (4.8), I sleep and take my rest. Amen. In life, there is a fundamental and unavoidable contradiction: on the one hand people have something new to say, something that has not thought or said before. However, in speaking of “newness” one places it only into a descriptive category which does not do justice to what is essential in the creative thought. The creative thought is always critical thought because it does away with certain illusion and gets closer to the awareness of reality. It enlarges the realm of humans’ awareness and strengthens the power of one’s reason. The critical and hence creative though always has a liberating function by its negation of illusory thought. One the other hand the thinker has to express one’s new thought in the spirit of one’s time. Different societies have different kinds of “common sense,” different categories of thinking, different systems of logic; every society has its own “social filter” through which only certain ideas and concepts and experiences can pass; those that need not necessarily remain unconscious can become conscious when by fundamental changes in the social structure the “social filer” changes accordingly. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

Thoughts that cannot pass through the social filter of a certain society at a certain time are “unthinkable,” and of course also “unspeakable.” For the average person the thought patterns of one’s society appear to be simply logical. The thought patterns of fundamentally different societies are looked upon each by the others as illogical or plainly nonsensical. However, not only “logic” is determined by the “social filter,” and in the last analysis by the practice of life of any given society, but also certain thought contents. Take for instance the conventional notion that exploitation among human beings is a “normal,” natural and unavoidable phenomenon. For a member of the Neolithic society in which each human lived from one’s work, individually or in groups, such a proposition would have been unthinkable. Considering their whole social organization, exploitation of human beings by others would have been a “crazy” idea, because there was not yet a surplus to make it sensible to employ others. (If one person had forced another to work for one it would not have meant that amount of goods would have increased, only that the “employer” would have been forced to idleness and boredom.) Another example: the many societies that knew no private property in the modern sense but only “functional property,” like a tool, which “belonged” to a single person inasmuch as he used it but was readily shared with others when needed. What is unthinkable is also unspeakable and the language has no word for it. Many languages do not have a word for to have but must express the concept of possession in other words, for instance by the construction it is to me, which expressed the concept of functional but not of private property (“private” in e sense of the Latin privare, to deprive—that is to say, property the use of which everybody else is deprived of except the owner). #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

May be an image of furniture and kitchen

Many languages started out without a word for to have but in the development and, one may assume, with the emergence of private property, they acquired a word for it (see Benveniste, 1966). Another example: in the tenth or eleventh century in Europe the concept of the World without reference to God was unthinkable and hence a word like atheism could no exist. Language itself is influenced by the social repression of certain experiences which do not fit into the structure of a given society; languages differ inasmuch as different experiences are repressed, and hence inexpressible. (I leave aside here quite a different problem, that of the possibility of expressing subtle and complex feelings experiences through language, which can be attempted only in poetry.) It follows that the creative thinker must think in the terms of the logic, the thought patterns, the expressible concepts of one’s culture. That means one has not yet the proper words to express the creative, the new, the liberating idea. One is forced to solve an insoluble problem: to express the new thoughts have been generally accepted.) The consequence is that the new though as one formulated it is a blend of what is truly new and the conventional thought which it transcends. The thinker, however, is not conscious of this contradiction. The conventional thoughts of one’s culture are unquestionably true for one and hence one oneself is little away of the difference between what is creative in one’s thought and what is purely conventional. Only in the historical process, when social changes are reflected in the changes of thought patterns, does it become evident what in the thought of a creative thinker was truly new to what extent one’s system is only a reflection of conventional thinking. It is up to one’s followers living in a different frame of ideas to interpret the “master” by distinguishing one’s “original” thoughts from one’s conventional thoughts, and by analyzing the contradictions between the new and the old, rather than by trying to harmonize the immanent contradictions of one’s system by all kinds of subterfuge. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

The process of revision of an individual, which distinguishes the essential and new from the contingent, time-conditioned elements, is in itself also the product of a certain historical period that influences the interpretation. In this creative interpretation, again creative and valid elements are mixed with time-bound and accidental ones. The revision is not simply true as the original was not simply false. Some elements of the revision remain true, namely where it liberates the theory from the shackles of a previous conventional thinking. In the process of the critical elimination of previous theories we find an approximation to truth but we do not find the truth, and we cannot find the truth as long as social contradictions and force require ideological falsification, as humans’ reason is damaged by irrational passions which have their root in the disharmony and irrationality of social life. Only in a society in which there is no exploitation, hence which does not need irrational assumptions in order to cover up or justify exploitation, in a society in which the basic contradictions have been solved and in which social reality can be recognized without distortion, can humans make full use of one’s reason, and at that point one can recognize reality in an undistorted form—that is to say, the truth. To put it differently, the truth is historically conditioned: it is dependent on the degree of rationality and the absence of contradictions within the society. Humans can grasp truth only when one can regulate one’s social life in a human, dignified and rational way, without fear and hence without greed. To use a politico-religious expression, only in the Messianic Time can the truth be recognized insofar as it is recognizable. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

There is a general agreement that contemporary urban decentralization has developed beyond the traditional urban-suburban dichotomy. The old idea of the urban core surrounded by a ring of suburbs no longer neatly fits what we see when we travel to, or through, America’s metropolitan areas. Today’s multinucleated outer cities tear up the old definitions as to what is urban and what is suburban. The suburbs have become as to what is urban and what is suburban. The suburbs have become urban. Places that once were bedroom suburbs now attract commuters. The suburbs’ share of the employment pie had been dramatically increasing. Jobs as well as people have suburbanized. Moveover, most of those still working in the city do not live there. Seven in ten people who work in the District do not live there. The most common commuter trip today is not from suburb to city but within the suburbs. Commuting from a suburban home to a suburban job is more common than commuting from suburb to city. There is no longer a metropolitan area composed of a central city hub and its outlying residential areas spears along the spokes. The metropolitan area no longer has once core hub; it has become multinucleated. Among other things this means that road and rapid transit systems designed to move workers from the suburbs to the central city are becoming outdated. Population and job growth are occurring in areas where transportation facilities often are least developed. Although it stretches the language a bit, it is reasonable to hypothesize that the periphery is the new urban core. Places such as Irving, California; South Sacramento, California; Oceanside, California; Rancho Cordova, California; and Scottsdale, Arizona are no longer bedroom suburbs, but real cities in heir own right. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

Such increasing economically and politically powerful outer cities can be found sandwiched between somewhat declining central cities and rural areas, both of which are losing their political and economic clout. Economically, the suburban economy is increasingly a service-based economy. Moreover, the marketplace patterns that dominate local economics are largely determined at the national or international rather then the local levels. Outer cities or suburban municipalities sometimes are difficult to define since they do not look like how we think cities should look; not do they behave as we expect cities to behave. They may not even appear on some maps. They are “cities” not subject to their own municipal legislation, codes, or regulations. Shopping malls, business parks, single-family subdivisions, and garden apartment complexes all are placed in a strategic order to make a harmonious community that is visually appealing. Not being legal municipalities, these outer cities also have another unusual characteristic for a city—they have no distinct elected government. Within these edge cities there thus seems to be no real civic order. They appear to be public places, but in reality, they are private. What really makes these new suburban communities break with the past is not only that hey are newer, shiner, or have more glass, and marble, but what really makes them different is that they are private domains rather than incorporated legally defined areas. The old city downtowns, whether planned or unplanned, were public spaces. City downtowns were open to all. The rules governing public dress and behaviour were the laws and ordinances passed by those public officials elected by citizens of the jurisdiction. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

The outer-city malls, for all their open courtyards, fountains, benches, and play spaces, are fundamentally different. They are private property. They are not governed by elected representatives, but by executives appointed by corporate boards. They are governed not by public laws, but by corporate regulations. Fundamental questions, such as who can be in a mall and what they can or cannot do while they are there, are determined by corporate policy rather than ordinances passed by elected representatives. Thus, a mall can exclude those soliciting funds for cancer research, those proselytizing for a religious belief, those handing out literature for a political candidate, or those not meeting a required dress code (exempli gratia, those not wearing shoes or street people with foul odors or wearing dirty clothes). What applies to the malls of the outer cities or edge cities is even more the case for the business parks filled with state-of-the-art offices and facilities. The new outer cities are cities administered by decree. They are not controlled by citizens, not even nominally. Such may be safe, but they are not democratic. In many ways, the edge cities’ privatization of public spaces and activities represents a shift back to the medieval and Renaissance concept of a city as a collection of essentially privately managed places controlled by an oligarchy. The malls are, in effect, separate city-state controlled and administered by the decree of private boards. What is perhaps even more remarkable is that this shift from public to private control has occurred almost completely without public notice. It has certainly occurred without public discussion or debate. The once-public city has been privatized. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

If you had to pick one symbol that would represent contemporary suburban life, that symbol would very likely be the shopping mall. Malls have become a ubiquitous element of modern American life. You may love the malls or believe they are sterile and without a soul, but it is impossible to discuss suburbia today without noting the importance of the malls not only for retail purchasing but also for social life. As the old downtowns decline, the malls have become the primary site where people greet other citizens. Shopping centers dispense everything from lottery tickets, sports demonstrations, public relations programs to clothes, cars, housing, and even provide an off-campus site for college courses. Some shopping malls offer community activities such as bingo games once a week, periodic health services such as blood tests, and occasional entertainment such as Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving shows. The malls, with their shops selling mass-produced standardized goods, may also be the site for “Arts and Crafts” shows that sell expensive handmade one-of-a-kind heirloom-quality items. Malls also serve a social function, particularly for adolescents and the elderly. Being a teenage “mall socialite” is part of growing up in many parts of the country. Young ladies like to go to the mall with their parents’ credit cards, pretending like they are Paris Hilton, charge up a bunch of items, and walk out of the store smiling and carrying bags full of clothes and jewelry and perfumes and body washes and lotions. It is called “The Paris Experience.” The malls have also become the place where seniors go to ward off loneliness, a phenomenon that has produced a new variation (and spelling) of an old term, “malingering.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

However, enclosed malls with two to four anchor department stores, scores of specialty shops, fountains, food courts, and multiplex movie theaters have not always been synonymous with suburbia. Actually, they are a recent and relatively new innovation. The first modern shopping mall did not occur until Northgate, in 1950, on the edge of Seattle. It had an open pedestrian mall lined with shops and an anchor department store. Northgate, like malls to follow, was near a highway and had some 4,000 parking places. The first enclosed shopping mall was not opened until 1956—Southdale Center outside Minneapolis, designed by the architect Victor Gruen. Not until the early 1970s, did the Rouse Company introduce the idea of the now ubiquitous food courts. J.C. Nichols’s Country Club Plaza shopping centers, like his homes, was state of the art for the 1920s. It was the first mall designed specifically for the automobile, with off-street parking. Following the ideas of the British garden cities as earlier proposed by Ebenezer Howard, Country Club Plaza was to be the town center, not merely a collection of stores. Nichola set the pattern for the luxury malls of today by lavishingly landscaping Country Club Plaza and providing fountains, flowers, and walks with benches. The whole complex was done in elaborate Spanish-Moorish-Hollywood style using Spanish plaster and red tile roofs. The style was immensely popular during the 1920s. Nichols’s Country Club District tightly controlled what sort of businesses would be allowed into the plaza and where they would be placed. Most buildings were two-story, with the walking level occupied by shops and the second floor largely by the professional offices of dentist, doctors, and lawyers. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

From the first, Country Club Plaza was an economic and social success. It not only made a great deal of money, it also became an alternate to the downtown as a location for cultural as well as business activities. As such it was a harbinger of contemporary suburban malls. Country Club Plaza was designed from the first to provide an emotional, cultural, and socializing center for the community. It was to become the suburban version of the village center. Planners saw the separation of pedestrian from automotive and truck traffic as providing far more than convenience and efficiency. Landscaped grassy areas, winding walkways, and play areas for small children were all to contribute to better civic life. Shopping centers were also to encourage civic pride through physical design. Planners saw them contributing to the development of a more orderly, harmonious, and artistic environment—an environment that was being at least implicitly contrasted to the chaos, disorder, and confusion many planners saw in the central city. Planned shopping centers dovetailed with planned recreational facilities and planned neighbourhoods. Similarly, the advantage of the mall having its own free parking was recognized as providing mall retailers a significant edge. At the end of World War II, there were only eight shopping centers in all of North America. As of 2020, there are approximately 120 shopping malls spread across the United States of America. Back in 1970, here were only 30,000 shopping malls in the United States of America. Malls as great as they are, tend to put small locally owned stores out of business. In fact 87 percent of malls are strip malls. Economically, as a result, the mass market malls also are putting heavy pressure on the generally more expensive regional malls that have the overhead of higher levels of service and concern for ambience. Further squeezing the big malls are off-price shopping centers, discount warehouses, and online shopping. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

Where earlier strip malls had followed the population, the new enclosed malls became magnets attracting people, housing, and commercial activity. The malls became a catalyst leading the development of a new suburban area. The fact of a comfortable middle-class suburb naming itself after a shopping mall is one of the small acts that signify a sea of change in attitudes toward suburbia. The defining characteristic of an area was a combination of the homes, the neighbourhood, and the size and quality of the shopping mall. Some malls like Huston’s Galleria, has an Olympic-sized skating rink, two hotels and nightclubs. In addition to its glitz and shopping, the mall has become a regional tourist attraction. It was the belief of philosophers of urban planning such as Victor Gruen that shopping centers would lead to the enhancement of social and civic life. Shopping malls were to be suburban agoras. They were to serve as new climate-controlled downtowns offering a full range of social, cultural, and even artistic activities. As expressed by Mr. Gruen, “By affording opportunities for social life and recreation in protected pedestrian environment, by incorporating civic and educational facilities, shopping centers can fill an existing void. The idea that the malls would bring vibrancy and vitality to suburban life is now widely accepted. Malls have promoted high culture, and even have provided a sense of community and a place for lively amusements. Not every downtown has the potential to attract tourist, or even residents. However, high class suburban shopping malls do just that. Meeting the need of less affluent or poor city residents is not the purpose for which they were created. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

It is a basic tenet of any successful mall that it must exude an image of security and safety. For a mall to be successful, it must give those within a feeling of comfort, and that means providing safety and security. This is provided by physically excluding activities or people that might prove disruptive or disturbing. The city downtown may be famous for producing a sense of surprise and excitement, of not knowing what is around the next corner. This is not the goal of the mall. Shopping malls studiously avoid and ban the unpredictable. What the downtown offers is excitement, what the mall seeks is clean family friendly fun and predictability. Mall publicity and advertisements may speak of excitement, but it is an excitement that is totally managed and predictable. All activities are controlled and programmed. The malls, for all their open courtyards, fountains, benches, and play spaces, are private property. As previously noted, they are governed not by public bodies, but by private boards. Malls are ruled by regulations rather than laws. Unpredictability in any form is banned from malls. If it might offend some shoppers, it will not be found at a regional mall. Walking through a mall one will not encounter flashers, loud music, threatening crows, or even a Jehovah’s Witness passing out The Watchtower. Malls are very Wonder Bread places—no politicians, no checking immigration status (all money is welcomed), no political parties, no street people, no dirt, no clutter, no art that in any way might disturb of offend, no live or recorded music that is not preapproved, no decorations that is not preapproved, and no charitable solicitations or sidewalk merchants of any sort that have no been preapproved. Volunteers cannot simply collect for cancer, heart, disease, or any relief. Most malls even ban the Salvation Army from ringing its bells and collecting food and clothing for the poor at Christmas time. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

All the restrictions are not so much out of any sense of mean-spiritedness, but because mall patrons have been taught to expect predictability and no hassles. State courts generally have supported the malls’ contention that they can control, limit, or exclude activities within their confines. The major exception is California; there the state constitution grants extensive public-access rights within malls. The 1972 Untied States of America Supreme Court ruling of Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner held that banning political leaflets did no interfere with First Amendment free-speech rights. Currently, the issue is in flux; but most mall managements tend to go with the most conservative interpretations. Generally, managements are not opposed to charity, community, or even political activities so long as these activities do not cost them shoppers or profits. What the malls seek to portray is an image of a secure environment into which the problems of the outside World do not intrude. Malls attempt to radiate an aura of safety. As private entities, malls can ban those activities and persons that are thought to be disruptive, distracting, or dangerous. Mall consciously promote the idea that they are safe places. To that end strangers are excluded. There are no street people or bag ladies in the malls because those loitering or improperly dressed are excluded. Similarly, teenagers or even senior citizens who are unduly loud or abusive may find themselves directed to the exits and told not to return. One can even be asked to leave for not being suitably dressed. This can be done because the mall is private rather than public space. No one has a right to walk unhindered back and forth through a mall simply because he or she feels like walking. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

Enforcing these regulations are the mall police. In terms of uniform, badges, weapons, and demeanor, the mall police look and act like a police force. However, they rarely are they police officers. Rather, they are private security guards done up to look like police officers. Some malls have as many as fifty-two security officers who wear policelike uniforms and have authority to make arrests. This blurring of the distinction between police and security personnel is deliberate. Security guards in most states lack formal police powers. This means that in most states guards cannot stop and search purse snatchers or shoplifters. Often they cannot go into stores, but they merely patrol common areas. Their only arrest power in most states is that of a citizen’s arrest. Basically, the security guards notify the real police and try to hold the suspect until they arrive. So if a security guard is bothering you, it is best to leave before the situation escalates to a problem and you find yourself being detained and arrested. The major function of the security guards is public relations. They try to look like the police officer on the beat, help find lost children, and try to deter crime by looking official. However, you never know when they may actually be an off duty or undercover police officer or FBI agent. Therefore, it is best to be polite and respectful, you never know who you are dealing with, and do not want to be caught in the system over a misunderstanding. Seven out of ten mal crimes are shoplifting, while another 24 percent are auto break-ins and thefts. To increase safety, malls are designed to avoid dark corners, and elevators are invariably glass-sided (and even if you do not see them, almost all elevators have cameras). In terms of personal safety, by far the most dangerous area in a shopping mall is he parking area of deck. For this reason, parking areas are well lit. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

Large malls have highly visible official-looking security vehicles with revolving flashing lights on the roof cruising the parking areas. This is to deter crime, but even more to reassure customers that the “police” are on patrol. While car theft is the most common problem to affect a shopper, robberies, assaults, rapes, and even murders and suicides do occur. Managements tend to do everything possible to keep problems with crimes of violence away from the public notice. Unless major public violence occurs, there is likely to be no comment on the evening news or in the local paper. Malls and their stores are major advertisers. When a series of robberies and rapes occurred at the major mall nearest someone’s expensive home, no notice of the crimes ever appeared in the local newspaper or on local news shows. Nor were warning posters placed on mall entrance doors. The image of safety and freedom from aggressive strangers is though essential for a successful mall. Crime is bad for business and is something that happens in central cities. To acknowledge publicly that malls have violent crimes would do damage to the illusion that both mall operators and patrons seek to maintain. Malls, however, have begun to indirectly deal with the subject by publicizing that they have security forces. Some regional megamalls have become major tourist attractions. South Coast Plaza, in Orange County, California, south Los Angeles, is the country’s third-largest tourist attraction. That achievement is put into perspective when it is noted that the first and second attractions are Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

The West Edmonton Mall is a goliath of shopping mall. It is the size of 115 football fields, and have parking for 20,000 cars. This mall has 800 shops, 110 restaurants, 19 movie theaters, and a Caesar’s Palace Bingo Parlor. It also has the World’s largest indoor amusement park with 24 rides and two 13-story-high roller coasters. It boasts a 5-acre lagoon with the World’s largest wave machine, and 22 water slides. If you would prefer other amusements, there is an 18-hole miniature golf course, an NHL-size ice-skating rink, and the opportunity to cruise the bottom of the 2-foot-deep lake in one of 25-person submarines. Reston, Virginia, is one of American’s first planned new towns. Reston Town Center is not the typical suburban shopping center. Rather, it is trying to be a real downtown, with a grid street system, two 11-story office towers, streets with wide brick sidewalks, a 514-room hotel, some forty or so retail stores, eight restaurants, and a movie theater. Also, Reston’s downtown is not only new and clean, it is remarkable affluent. Reston was not designed for poor inner-city residents. Unlike real cities, there are no big stores or discount stores offering cheap goods. There are no panhandlers or street people. Reston is one of Virginia’s more affluent communities, and the Town Center reflects the interests and incomes of its residents; it has a clearly upscale image. Reston Town Center, in this respect, may have the combination of characteristics most Americans seeks in a city center. It has more real life and vitality than a mall, but more security, safety, and parking than the old downtowns. We do not yet know whether Reston Town Center will become a prototype for the new century or an interesting, but one-of-a-kind experiment. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

Ancient sun, eternally young, giver of life and source of energy, in coal and oil, in plant and wind and tide, in spiritual light and human embrace, you kindle the Heavens, you shine within us (for we are suns with hearts afire—we light the World as you light the sky and find clouds within whose shadows are dark); we give thanks for your rays, and clouds your rays draw up, for the sky route your travel faithfully as we traverse this globe, for our journeys of Earth which draw us together, for our journeys od dream which sustain us when apar. Ancient of Days, you rule the nations, our birth and death: our journeys you have wrought. Loam we become for your fertile spirit. Your cosmic light penetrates our depths; in your majesty we are bound to one another. We gather this morning as did people of old with joys and woes, varied gifts and diverse needs. We offer you these in thanksgiving for life and share them through your generations on Earth. Save now this nation, once firm as a rampart and clear as the sun; she is exiled, a wandering one. Likened of yore to a palm-tree, today she is borne to the stake, today she is slain for Thy sake. Scattered amid her oppressors, she flyeth to Thee from their stroke, she bends to the love of Thy yoke. One to proclaim Thou art One, crushed by the far and the near, she awaits, she is learning Thy fear. Giving the cheek to the smiters, Thy burden of sorrow she bears, tossed in the storm of the years. Moses delivered her once;–the sanctified sheep of his fold were Jacob’s assembly of old, marked by Thy name:–O save! They are falling, they grasp thee, they crave. They are calling, beseeching Thee, “Save!” One loses one’s ego in the calm serenity of the Overself, yet at the same time it is, mysteriously, still with one. With this displacement of ego, one enters into the very presence of divinity. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

Cresleigh Homes

The outside looks cozy, but the interior will exceed all your expectations! The thoughtful layout of this single story home allows maximum space with ultimate convenience. We know you’ll love our Residence 3 model as much as we do!

Residence Three is the largest of the single story homes offered in Cresleigh Havenwood. At 2,827 square feet you’ll be hard pressed to a contemporary floorplan that offers this much space. There are four bedrooms, two and one half bathrooms, and a three car garage. Utilize the den as your own private study or convert into an optional fifth bedroom if needed. The Dining Room and Kitchen are well situated to make entertaining a breeze.

The location of the Owner’s Suite makes it feel like a separate wing from the rest of the home allowing for maximum privacy and retreat. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/residence-three/

#CresleighHomes
#Havenwood

September 10, 2021 1:29 am

When the Dead are Raised, it is a Miracle of Reversal!

When you are driving, your behaviour at intersections is controlled by the red or green light. In a similar fashion, many of the stimuli we encounter each day act like stop or go signals that guide behaviour. To state the idea more formally, stimuli that consistently precede a rewarded response tend to influence when and where the response will occur. This effect is called stimulus control. A discriminative stimulus that most drivers are familiar with is a police car on the freeway. This stimulus is a clear signal that a specific set of reinforcement contingencies applies. As you have probably observed, the presence of a police car brings about rapid reductions in driving speed, lane changes, tailgating, and in Los Angeles, California, gun battles. Another familiar example is the beep on telephone answering machines. The beep is a signal that speaking will pay off (your message will be recorded). Most of us are well conditioned to “wait for the beep” before talking. One cannot express the principle more adequately than through the sentence of the Gospels “And the truth shall make you free,” reports John 8.32. Indeed, the idea that the truth saves and heals is an old insight which the great Masters of Living have proclaimed—nobody perhaps with such radicalism and clarity as Jesus Christ. If one does not want to remain in a state of craving which necessarily causing suffer, illusion (ignorance) is, together with hate and greed, one of the evils of which humans must rid themselves. The greedy person cannot be a free person and cannot be a happy human. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

Greed humans are slaves of things which rule them. The process of waking up from illusions is the condition of freedom and of liberation from suffering which greed necessarily produces. Disillusion (Ent-tauschung) is a condition for leading a life which comes closet to the fully development of humans, to the model of human nature. The human being who is carried away by irrational drives (“passive affects”) is necessarily one who has inadequate idea about oneself and the World—that is to say, one who lives with illusions. Those who are guided by reason are the ones who have ceased to be seduced by their senses and follow the two “active affects,” reason and courage. Those who have faith in Jesus Christ are those whom truth is the condition for salvation. The works of Christ was not primarily that of showing a picture of how the good society would look, but was relentless gospel of showing humans how to build a good society. One must love God in order to change circumstances which require sin. Truth refers not only to what one believes to be the truth, but the way to the truth les in insight into one’s own mental structure and thereby in “de-repression.” We are all so blinded and upset by self-love that everyone imagines one has a just right to exalt oneself, and to undervalue all others in comparison to self. If God has bestowed on us any excellent gift, we imagine it to be our own achievement, and we swell and even burst with pride. It is widely believed that most of us suffer the “I am not OK—you are OK” problem of low self-esteem, the problem that the comedian Groucho Marx had in mind when he declared, “I would not want to belong to any club that would accept me as a member.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

The humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers asserted this low self-image problem when objecting to the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr’s idea that original sin is self-love, pretension, and pride. No, said Dr. Rogers: people’s problems arise because “they despise themselves, regard themselves as worthless and unlovable.” A half century after the Niebuhr-Rogers exchange, the self-image issues remains alive. Ironically, many Christian preachers and writers are echoing the teachings of humanistic psychology by telling us that the fundamental human problem is low self-esteem. Meanwhile, research psychologists have been amassing new findings concerning the pervasiveness of pride. Indeed, it is the older theologians such as Niebuhr, not the humanistic psychologists and their Christian popularizers, who seem best to have anticipated a phenomenon uncovered by recent research. As the writer William Saroyan put it, “Every human is a good human in a bad World—as one oneself knows.” Researchers debate the sources of this self-serving bias phenomenon but agree that various streams of data merge to confirm its pervasiveness. Consider: Accepting more responsibility for success than failure, for good deeds than bad. Time and again, experimenters have found that people readily accept credit when told they have succeeded (attributing the success to their ability and effort), yet they attribute failure to external factors such as bad luck or the problem’s inherent “impossibility.” These self-serving attributions have been observed not only in laboratory situations, but also with athletes (after victory or defeat), students (after high or low exam grades), drivers (after accidents), and married people (among whom conflict often derives from perceiving oneself as contributing more and benefitting less than is fair). The self-concept research Anthony Greenwald summarizes: “People experience life through a self-centered filter.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

Favourable biased self-ratings: Can we all be better than average? In virtually any area that is both subjective and socially desirable, most people see themselves as beer than average. Most businesspeople see themselves as more ethical than the average business person. Most community residents see themselves as less prejudiced than their neigbhours. Most people see themselves as more intelligent and as healthier than most other person. When the College Board asked high school seniors to compare themselves with others their own ages, 60 percent reported themselves better than average in athletic ability, and only 6 percent below average. In leadership ability, 70 percent rated themselves above average, 2 percent below average. In ability to get along with others, zero percent of the 829,000 students who responded rated themselves below average, while 60 percent saw themselves in the top 10 percent and 25 percent put themselves in the top 1 percent. If Elizabeth Barrett Browning were still writing she would perhaps rhapsodize, “How do I love me? Let me count the ways.” The Barnum Effect. “There is a sucker born every minute,” said the showman P.T. Barnum. A number of experiments have given us a psychological version of the maxim. The procedure is simple: people are shown statements such as those in horoscope books (“You have a strong need for other people to like you and for them to admire you…While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them….At times you are extroverted, affable, sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved”). If told that the description is designed specifically for them on the basis of their psychological tests or astrological data, people usually say the description is remarkably accurate, especially when it is favourable. Negative assessments are judged less valid than flattering ones. “The Arch-Flatterer,” noted Plutarch, “is a man’s self.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

A turn at last, my Long-winded if Lofty-minded Friend. I go lost somewhere in Your rhetoric. Now tell me if I have You right. Roll Your thunderous judgments over me, O Lord! Shiver my timbers with fear and trembling! Scarify my soul! I stand astounded, as the words of Job come tumbling into my mind. “The Heavens are no clean in Your sight” (15.15). Bu “if You found depravity among the Angels” (4.18) and You did not spare them, what will become of me? “They have fallen like the stars from the Heavens,” wrote John in Revelations (6.13). I have read all those passages in Second Peer (2.4), Job (4.18), Revelation (6.13), Psalm (78.25), and Luke (15.16). In them the Angels, some of the best and brightest who lauded You to the highest, fell to the lowest. And so it is, then that some of the Notables of our land who used to receive the Bread of Angels have fallen afoul of You, O Lord. Now they delight in the swill of he swell-fed, if forbidden, pig. If that is what happened to them, what do I, a simple man of dust, a collector of garbage, have to look forward to? No sanctity, O Lord, if You withdraw Your hand. No wisdom, O Lord, if you stop governing the Universe. No fortitude, O Lord, if You stop conserving. No chastity, O Lord, if You do not protect it. No self-control, O Lord, if Your sacred vigilance is absent; the Psalmist knew that the Lord guarded the city, not the sentinels (127.1). “Leave us behind, O Lord, and we will be swamped and die”—the Disciples shouted that to You when the storm rose, or so Matthew report (8.25). Stay with us, and we rise to he surface and live. We are up and down, but we are confirmed through You. Hot, we grow cool. Cold, we grow warm. Yes, You are our fuel, our fervour, forever. Here are a few somethings about nothings; that is to say, a few thoughts of my own. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

Toad I must be, O Lord, and toad I must remain. Why? Because I toed the mark and failed. Of course, I could have toadied up to You, Lord God of all amphibians, but even in this I failed. Think it nothing when something good is associated with my name! O Lord, I cannot sound the depths of Your profoundest judgments, as the Psalmist called them (36.6). Lured by the deep, I dove. All I could see was nothing, and worse than nothing, and worse than nothing. My God, You are the Inconsiderable Consideration, the Impassable Archipelago! In traversing Your vastness, I leave not a trace or wake! What can I do to prevent my pride from being discovered? Where can I discover the confidence I thought I had? Your judgments have sopped up all this idiotic gloriation of mine, leaving not a stain behind. What does all the Flesh in the World amount to in Your sigh, O Lord? That is the sort of question the Great Paul asked the First Corinthians (1.29). Not a great deal, I should think. As the Prophet Isaiah asked it, “Can the pot glory more than the potter who made it?” (29.16). I think not, but what precisely does this mean? I think I can give some examples of the pot and the potter from my own monastic experience. A Devout wants to be one’s own chief praiser and appraiser, but why, when one’s heart has already been verified by God? A devout is toasted by the whole World for all of one’s wonderful qualities, but why, when one has already been credentialed by Truth herself? A Devout is moved to tears by a choir of voices chanting one’s praises, but why, when one is already confirmed one’s hope in God? These silly Devouts who speak such nonsense, take a close look at them; they are nothing to write home about. Their verbiage fails even as their voices fade. However, “the truth of the Lord,” as the Psalmist has sung, “remains in tune for ever and ever” (117.2). #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

Whether one thinks that one has strayed by chance into this starry World or believes that God’s grace has fallen upon one, one feels its beauty and peace. The encounter with Overself may be hushed and gentle or thrilling and dramatic. However, it will certainly be absorbing. In that beautiful mood, one is wafted upward because one’s mind turns away from the Earth, is interests and desires which ordinarily hold one down. The glimpse is unquestionably a sort of spell put upon the mind encircling the self, benign and healing and protective. It imparts a feeling of well-being. How inadequate are constructed sentences to tell anyone the total wonder of a glimpse, of the I’s department and the Overself’s arrival! The peace descends, the cares are gone, the fears are shed, the avid desires enfeebled. The experience of liberation yields a peace which lifts one into a detachment from the World never felt before, untouched by sights, persons, incidents, which hitherto produced repulsions, irritations, or rage. Joy glows quietly on the face of one who is experiencing a glimpse. The experience will flood one’s whole day with sun. One will experience a profound sense of release, a joyous exaltation of feeling, and a lofty soaring of thought. It would not be wrong o use a word from gustatory experience and describe these moments as delicious. It is almost entirely an intense and internal experience. The glimpse carries either a quiet intellectual rapture with it or a seething emotional one. In such a benignant mood, it is easy to forgive one’s enemies their vile conduct or to look at faithless friend n a kindlier light. It lifts the egoistic out of their egoism for a while, the fearful out of their fears. When we turn inwards, we turn in the direction of complete composure. It is the first streak of sunrise on one’s inner life. The discovery of the soul’s truth carries with it an excitement which only those who spend their lives seeking it know. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

The glimpses have various qualities—religious, aesthetic, perceptive, and so on. In such moments of intimacy with the Overself, as we let go of our pettiness, we feel enlarged. It gives one, for short while, an equanimity which one does not have at other times. One’s heart is filled with the sense of this Presence and, for the few or many minutes this lasts, one is a changed person. Some persons get their first glimpse by surprise, quite unexpectedly, and from then begins their quest. However, others get it during the onward course of their quest, while searching or waiting for it, and hopefully expectant of it. When the mind moves inward from everyday consciousness to mystical being, the benedictory change is both ennobling and sublime. During these short glimpses no anxiety and uncertainty can affect one. It is but a pause in the constant oscillation of life, a stilling of the ego’s pursuits. However, first a hush of peace, a soundless calm descends; the struggle of distress and fierce impatience ends; mute music soothes my breast—unuttered harmony that I could never dream till Earth was lost to me. Then dawns the invisible, the Unseen its truth reveals; my outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels—its wings are almost free, its home, its harbour found; measuring the gulf it stoops and dares the final bound! In these hushed moments a happiness steals over one, a glory is felt all around him. This is one’s real being. One sought for it, prayed to it, and communed with it in the past as if it were something other than, and apart from, oneself. Now one knows that it was oneself, that there is no need for one to do any of these things. All one needs is to recognize what one is and to realize it at every moment. The miracles of Healing, to which we turn next, are now in a peculiar position. Humans are ready to admit that many of them happened, but are inclined to deny that they were miraculous. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

The symptoms of very many diseases can be aped by hysteria, and hysteria can often be cured by “suggestion.” It could, no doubt, be argued that such suggestion is a spiritual power, and therefore (if you like) a supernatural power, and that all instances of “faith healing” are therefore miracles. However, in our terminology they would be miraculous only in the same sense in which every instance of human reason is miraculous: and what we are now looking for is miracles other than that. My own view is that it would be unreasonable to ask a person who has not yet embraced Christianity in its entirety to allow that all the healings mentioned in the Gospels were miracles—that is, that they go beyond the possibilities of human “suggestion.” It is for the doctors to decide as regards each particular case—supposing that the narratives are sufficiently detailed to allow even probable diagnosis. We have here a good example to what was said in the past. So far from belief in miracles depending upon ignorance of natural law, we are here finding for ourselves that ignorance of law makes miracle unascertainable. Without deciding in detail which of the healings must (apart from acceptance of the Christian faith) be regarded as miraculous, we can however indicate the kind of miracle involved. Its character can easily be obscured by the somewhat magical view which many people still take of ordinary and medical healing. There is a sense in which no doctor ever heals. The doctors themselves would be the first to admit this. The magic is not in the medicine but in the patient’s body—in the vis medicatrix naturae, the recuperative or self-corrective energy of Nature. What the treatment does is to simulate Natural functions or to remove what hinders them. We speak for convenience of the doctor, or the dressing, healing a cut. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

However, in another sense every cut heals itself: no cut can be healed in a corpse. That same mysterious force which we call gravitational when it steers the planets and biochemical when it heals a live body, is the efficient cause of all recoveries. And that energy proceeds from God in the first instance. All who are cured are cured by Him, not merely in the sense that His providence provides them with medical assistance and wholesome environments, but also in the sense that their very tissues are repaired by the far-descended energy which following from Him, energizes the whole system of Nature. However, one He did it visibly to the sick in Palestine, a Man meeting with men. What in its general operations we refer to laws of Nature or once referred to Apollo or Aesculapius thus reveals itself. The Power that always was behind all healings puts on a face and hands. Hence, of course, the apparent chanciness of the miracles. It is idle to complain that He heals those whom He happens to meet, not those whom He does not. To be a man means to be in one place and not in another. The World which would now know Him as present everywhere was saved by His becoming local. Christ’s single miracle of Destruction, the withering of the fig-tree, has proved troublesome to some people, but we think its significance is plain enough. The miracle is an acted parable, a symbol of God’s sentence on all that is “fruitless” and specially, no doubt, on the official Judaism of that age. That is its moral significance. As a miracle, it again does in focus, repeats small and close, what God does constantly and throughout Nature. We have seen in the past how God, twisting Satan’s weapon out of his hand, had become, since the Fall, the God even of human death. However, much more, and perhaps ever since the creation, He has been the God of the death of organisms. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

In both cases, though in somewhat different ways, He is the God of death because He is the God of Life: the God of human death because through it increase of life now comes—the God of merely organic death because death is part of the very mode by which organic life spreads itself out in Time and yet remains new. A forest a thousand years deep is still collectively alive because some trees are dying and others are growing up. His human face, turned with negation in its eyes upon that one fig-tree, did once what His unincarnate action does to all trees. No tree died that year in Palestine, or any year anywhere, except because God did—or rather ceased to do—something to it. All the Miracles which we have considered so far are Miracles of the Old Creation. In all of them we see the Divine Man focusing for us what the God of Nature has already done on a larger scale. In our next class, the Miracles of Dominion over the Inorganic, we find some that are of the Old Creation and some that are of the New. When Christ stills the storm, He does what God has done before. God made Nature such that here would be both storms and calms: in that way all storms (except those that are still going on at this moment) have been stilled by God. If you have once accepted the Grand Miracle, it is unphilosophical to reject the stilling of the storm. There is really no difficulty about adapting the weather conditions of the rest of the World to this one miraculous calm. I myself can still a storm in a room by shutting the window. Nature must make the best she can of it. And to do her justice she makes no trouble at all. The whole system, far from being thrown out gear (which is what some nervous people seem to think a miracle would do) digests the new situation as easily as an elephant digest a drop of water. She is, said before, an accomplished hostess. However, when Christs walks on the water, we have a miracle of the New Creation. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

God had not made the Old Nature, the World before the Incarnation, of such a kind that water would support a human body. This miracle is the foretaste of a Nature that is sill in the future. The New Creation is just breaking in. For a moment, it looks as if it were going to spread. For a moment, two men are living in that new World. St. Peter also walks on the water—a pace of two: then his trust fails him and he sinks. He is back in Old Nature. That momentary glimpse was a snowdrop of a miracle. The snowdrops show that we have turned the corner of the year. Summer is coming. However, it is a long way off and the snowdrops do not last long. The Miracles of Reversal all belong to the New Creation. When the dead are raised, it is a Miracle of Reversal. Old Nature knows nothing of this process: it involves playing backward a film that we have always seen played forwards. The one or two instances of it in the Gospels are early flowers—what we call spring flowers, because hey are prophetic although they really bloom while it is still winter. And the Miracles of Perfecting Glory, the Transfiguration, the Resurrection, and the Ascension, are even more emphatically of the New Creation. These are the true spring, or even summer, of the World’s new year. The Captain, the forerunner, is already in May or June, though His followers on Earth are still living in the forests and east winds of Old Nature—for “spring comes slowly up this way.” None of the Miracles of the New Creation can be considered apart from the Resurrection and Ascension: and that will require another essay. The healing of disease was well identified with Jesus’ work, with Aesculapian Greek sanctuaries, with Egyptian exorcism, with many a mystic throughout the Orient, and even with a number in the modern World, Eastern and Western. How, then, with such a religious background, can it be fair to deny divine inspiration to the Man who performs healing, while allowing such inspiration to the Man who only preaches? #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

Vedantic thought usually regards the siddhis—occult powers—as obstacles to attaining truth. Among them the healing of the body’s sicknesses and the mind’s disorders is included. That some persons are usually in being born with the gift of healing the sick is a historic fact. Why reject the talent or power as being unworthy of a true sage or of those who seek to become such a one? In what way is this form of serving humanity unethical, unsafe, inconsistent with the highest? Remember that Jesus started His work by an act of healing a sick person. The results of their use of healing powers cannot ordinarily be predicted, much less guaranteed, but must be left to the Higher Power. Spiritual healing is drawing much attention but the subject is involved in much confusion. Even the healers themselves hold contradictory theories about it. Some use prayer to get their cures; others deny that prayer is of any avail. Some practice mediation alone; others combine meditation with the laying-on of hands. Some deny that there is anything more than the power of suggestion behind the healings; others find in them evidence of God’s presence. Are there any spiritual laws which will scientifically explain the healings? Is the Hindu wisdom always wise? There is the warning of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras against the occult powers that might be acquired by yoga: they are to be shunned because they obstruct further advance towards the high plane. Healing is one of these listed powers. Must we accept such an attitude and reject the gift of healing, if it comes? Is good health so great an evil that disease is to be accepted dutifully? On this point a Westerner might rebel. In ancient and orthodox Hinduism, the profession of healer was regarded unfavourably, for the strange reason that it brought the healer and the sick together! #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

Sarah Pardee Winchester was known in France as a poetess. Quite late in life she became aware of certain radiations and found herself capable of healing sick people by using these radiations. Out of these experiences with people, she wrote a booklet entitled La Survie du Tuberculosis (Victory over Tuberculosis) in 1897, but it is no longer in print and has never been translated and this booklet is now one of two of the most rare and sought-after pieces of all Winchester literature. Devoted to healing work until she gave it up, saying that is exhausted her too much, she passed away in her sleep 5 September 1922. What she regarded as her major contribution to the healing art was the discovery from this experience of hers that tuberculosis has its seat “in the pithy tissues of the lungs” no matter where the infection is. She could not find a publisher for this book in France, but it was published here in Switzerland and will not, it is said, be reprinted now that she has passed. In fact, she was her own publisher. At the time of her retirement, she explained that vital energy would pass from her to the patient. It is known that some of her cures were spectacular, and even in most cases where she failed to save the life of the patient, she brought about passing without suffering. The confusion of thought concerning spiritual healing is tremendous. William Wirt Winchester asserts that the practice of falling into spiritual trance aggravated the tuberculosis which finally killed him. Yet this is the very method and practice used by some healers to heal their patients, because, they believed, it releases divine energies. What the healer does is to release, stimulate, or add energy to the sufferer’s own natural recuperative forces. The difference between healers are differences of techniques, personal fitness, and spiritual degree. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

The power to heal the sick is a latent gift deliberately brought out by development or spontaneously released by illumination. Spiritual healing is a gift which is innate in certain individuals and very difficult to acquire by others. It may, however, exist latently, and could show itself only after a certain degree of spiritual development has been attained. Bernard of Clairvaux cured hundreds of the blind, deaf, and paralyzed during the twelfth century simply by making the sign of the cross over the affected body part. Olcott in Ceylon, eight centuries later cured dozens of cases of scorpion bite and even snake bite by making the sign of the pentagram over the part. Does this not show that the healing power may lay in the healer oneself, even more than in one’s method? There are many puzzling cases of healers, like Saint Paul in ancient times, Saint Catherine of Siena in medieval ties, and Father Matthew of Ireland in modern times, who cured the ills of many people but did not or could not cure their own. This is a paradox that is hard to resolve. All healers lose their power after a time. This is to lead them to a higher level. Doctors who can keep us well, long-lived, and capable of functioning properly are more needed than those who cure our diseases. If words have any meaning at all, Christ’s words have meant that personal sacrifice is the cost of spiritual growth. For eighteen hundred years, humans of every kind—scholars, mystics, priests, laymen, ascetics, and saints—agreed on that. Then arose a new group of cults—faith-healers—which not only gave a new meaning to those words but a directly opposite meaning. Success and prosperity, they tried to use spiritual forces solely for their own personal purposes and material benefits, instead of trying to surrender to those forces and submit to higher purposes. The denied—contrary to the experience of all religious history—that material loss and personal failure could ever be the working of such purposes. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

Healing exists on all these different levels, which means its power comes from difference sources. However, it is believed that all healers should know their limits, their limitations, and it is feared that many of them do not simply because they are carried away by their enthusiasm. Secondly, I believe that all healers would not only be none the worse for some knowledge of anatomy and physiology and the commoner maladies, but they should even attempt to acquire some of this knowledge. Otherwise many errors, many false or exaggerated claims, are made by the healers. We are not questioning their honesty; we believe most of them are honest. However, we are questioning their lack of knowledge and fuller knowledge. On the other hand, we criticize the medical profession for failing to enter into dialogue with the healers; for if they adopted a humbler attitude towards the unorthodox healers, they would learn much to their own profit and to the improvement of their professional help. Before the healing process can come into operation, the patient must be brought into a receptive state; otherwise one will unconsciously obstruct them. Faith is the first requisite. By working a muscle group against resistance, one will build up willpower as well as muscle power. Holding the spine properly allows the flow currents of this Spirit Energy to circulate properly. The benefit of a specific exercise is to be measured by the warmth, or kundalini, it creates—not by the time it takes. Those who have seldom or never done bodily exercises may find it hard to start or, if started, to finish the complete daily period. If they gave up before sufficient time had passed to feel the benefits of the work, it would be a pity. Merely to lie down reduces the heartbeats by no less than ten each minute, thus saving this ever-working organ some of its heavy labour. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

The simple exercise of stretching helps to counter the congestions, compressions, and adhesions which obstruct the flow of the vital force through the spina column with its sixty-two branching nerves and thus to regain energy. This truth of the need of spine-loosening movement is instinctively known by every dog and car, every lion and tiger, for they apply it immediately after awakening from sleep. The back, the legs, and even paws are bent and stretched and even rolled by them in this natural exercise. To make the spinal column flexible and serviceable for these purposes, it must be both loosened and stretched. The day we die, the wind comes down to take away our footprints. The wind makes dust to cover up the marks we left while walking. For otherwise, the things would seem as if we were still living. Therefore the wind is he who comes to blow away our footprints. I will make my supplication in this, my house of prayer. On the Fast Day I revealed my transgression. Thereon I besought Thee to save me. Hearken to the voice of my cry; arise and save me. Remember and have compassion, my Redeemer. Comfort me with Thy solaces, O living God. O Thou good God, heed my prayer. Hasten the coming of my redeemer and destroy my evil desires so that Thou condemn me not again. Hasten, O God of my salvation, to save me for eternity. Forgive the stain of my wickedness and pass by mine iniquities, and turn, I pray Thee, to save me. O my Rock, my righteous Redeemer, accept my supplication; grant me my deliverance. Almighty, my Redeemer, save me now. Shine forth to save, yea, save, I beseech Thee. One enters into a sate which is certainly not a disappearance of the ego, but rather a kind of divine fellowship of the ego with its source. There is still a center of consciousness in one, still a voice which can utter the words or hold that thought “I am I.” The ego is lost in an ocean of being, but the ego’s link with God, the Overself, still remains. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

May be an image of grass, twilight and sky

Cresleigh Homes

The charming ranch you have been waiting for. A scientific layout with the space you desire. Included is an open kitchen, dining and great room. A covered patio extends your living space! Whether it’s a casual get-together with premium cranberry juice 🍷 and ambrosia salad or a fancy party, 🍰 an outdoor setting elevates the occasion. We’re loving the backyard vibe at Riverside Residence 1!

Residence One is a modest sized floor plan, but is as large as many two story homes. This plan is offered at Cresleigh Riverside at and is approximately 2,300 square feet. There is plenty of space in this single story home.

With three bedrooms, two bathrooms, den, great room, and dining room, there is enough room for all members of the family to have their corner of the house. The two car garage boasts ample storage and a covered patio comes included in the home. The den can easily be transformed into a fourth bedroom if needed. https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-riverside-at-plumas-ranch/residence-1/

#CresleighHomes
#PlumasRanch

September 9, 2021 12:59 am

Egos are Breaking Like Eggshells Against the Walls!

We all possess the God-given gift of moral agency—the right to make choices and the obligation to account for those choices. “That every human may act in doctrine and principle pertaining to futurity, according to the moral agency which I have given unto one, that every human may be accountable for one’s own sins in the day of judgement,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 101.78. However, there are times when punishment may be necessary to manage the behaviour of an animal, child, or even another adult. If you feel that you must punish, here are some tips to keep in mind. If you can discourage misbehaviour in other ways, do not use punishment. Make liberal use of positive reinforcement, especially praise, to encourage good behaviour. Also, try extinction first: See what happens if you ignore a problem behaviour; or shift attention to a desirable activity and then reinforce it with praise. Moral discipline is the consistent exercise of agency to choose the right because it is correct, even when it is hard. It rejects the self-absorbed life in favour of developing character worthy of respect and true greatness through Christlike service. Apply punishment during, or immediately after, misbehaviour. Of course, immediate punishment is not always possible. With older children and adults, you can bridge the delay by clearly stating what act you are punishing. If you cannot punish an animal immediately, wait for the next instance of misbehaviour. The root of the word discipline is shared by the word disciple, suggesting to the mind the fact that conformity to the example and teachings of Jesus Christ is the ideal discipline that, couple with His grace, forms a virtuous and morally excellent person. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

Use the minimum punishment necessary to suppress misbehaviour. Often, a verbal rebuke or a scolding is enough. Avoid harsh physical punishment. (Never slap a child’s face, for instance.) Taking away privileges or other positive reinforcers (response cost) is usually best for older children and adults. Frequent punishment may lose its effectiveness, and harsh or excessive punishment has serious negative side effects. Jesus’s own moral discipline was rooted in His discipleship to the Father. To His disciples He explained, “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work,” reports John 4.34. By this same pattern, our moral discipline is rooted in loyalty and devotion to the Father and the Son. It is the gospel of Jesus Christ that provides the moral certainty upon which moral discipline rests. Be consistent. Be very clear about what you regard as misbehaviour. Punish every time the misbehaviour occurs. Do not punish for something one day and ignore it the next. If you are usually willing to give a child three chances, do not change the rule and explode without warning after a first offense. The societies in which many of us live have for more than a generation failed to foster moral discipline. They have taught that truth is relative and that everyone decides for oneself what is right. Concepts such as sin and wrong have been condemned as “value judgments.” As the Lord describes I, “Every human walketh in one’s own way, and after the image of one’s own good,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 1.16. As a consequence, self-discipline has eroded and societies are left to try to maintain order and civility by compulsion. #RandolphHarrs 2 of 19

The lack of internal control by individuals breeds external control by governments. In the World, we have been experiencing an extended and devastating economic recession. It was brought on by multiple causes, but one of the major causes was widespread dishonest and unethical conduct, particularly in the U.S. housing and financial markets. Reactions have focused on enacting more and stronger regulation. Perhaps that may dissuade some from unprincipled conduct, but others will simply get more creative in the circumvention. Therefore, expect anger from a punished person. Briefly acknowledge this anger, but be careful not to reinforce it. If you wrongfully punish someone or if you punished too severely, be willing to admit your mistake. There could never be enough rules so finely crafted as to anticipate and cover every situation, and even if there were, enforcement would be impossibly expensive and burdensome. This approach leads to diminished freedom for everyone. Punish with kindness and respect. Allow the punished person to retain self-respect. For instance, if possible, do not punish a person in front of others. A strong, trusting relationship tends to minimize behaviour problems. Ideally, others should want to behave well to get your praise, not because they fear punishment. In the end, it is only an internal moral compass in each individual that can effectively deal with the root causes as well as the symptoms of societal decay. Be sure to reinforce positive behaviours. Remember, it is much more effective to strengthen and encourage desirable behaviours than it is to punish unwanted behaviours. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

Societies will struggle in vain to establish the common good until sin is denounced as sin and moral principle takes its place in the pantheon of civic virtues. Some torment themselves in order to acclimate the savages of various countries to their lifestyle, they have not yet been able to win over a single one of them, not even by means of Christianity; for our missionaries sometimes turn them into Christians, but never into civilized human beings. Nothing can overcome the invincible repugnance they have against appropriating our mores and living in our way. If these poor savages are as unhappy as is alleged, by what inconceivable depravity of judgment do they constantly refuse to civilize themselves in imitation of us, or learn to live happily among us. Some have frequently tried to cultivate savages; people have been eager to display our luxury, our wealth, and all our most useful and curious arts. None of this has ever excited in them anything but a stupid admiration, without the least stirring of covetousness. Economy or Oeconomy, (Moral and Political) is a word that means house and law and originally signified merely the wise and legitimate government of the household for the common good of the entire family. The meaning of this term was later extended to the government of the large family which is the state. To distinguish these two usages, in the latter case it is called general or political economy, and in the former case it is called domestic or private economy. Even if there were as much similarity between the state and the family as many authors would have us believe, it would not follow as a consequence that the rules of conduct proper to one of those societies would be suitable to the other. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

The family and the government differ too much in size to be capable of being administered in the same fashion. Moreover, there will always be an extreme difference between domestic government, where the father can see everything for himself, and civil government, where the leader sees hardly anything unless through someone else’s eyes. For things to become equal in this regard, the talents, force and all the faculties of the father would have to increase in proportion to the size of his family, that of an ordinary man, what the size of his empire is to that of the private individual’s patrimony. However, how could the government of the state be similar to that of the family, whose basis is so different? Wit the father being physically stronger than his children, paternal power is reasonably said to be established by nature for as long as his help is needed by them. In the large family all of whose members are naturally equal, political authority, purely arbitrary as far as its establishment is conceived, can be founded only upon conventions, and the magistrate can command others only by virtue of the laws. The duties of the father are dictated to him by natural feelings, and in a manner that seldom allows him to be disobedient. Leaders have no such similar rule and are not really bound to the people except in regard to what they have promised to do for them and which the people can rightfully demand they carry out. Another even more important difference is that, since everything children have they receive from their father, it is obvious that all property rights belong to or emanate from him. It is quite the contrary in the case of the large family, where the general administration is established merely to assure private property, which is antecedent to it. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

The chief purpose of the entire household’s labours is to maintain and increase the father’s patrimony, so that he can someday disperse it among his children without reducing them to poverty. On the other hand, the wealth of the public treasure is merely a means—often very much misunderstood—of maintaining private individuals in peace and prosperity. In a word, the small family is destined to die off and to be dissolved someday into many other families; on the other hand, the large family was made to last forever in the same condition, whereas not only is it enough that that large family maintains itself, it is easily proved that any increase does it more harm than good. For several reasons derived from the nature of things, in the family it is the father who should command. First, the authority of the father and mother ought not be equal; on the contrary, there must be a single government and when there are differences of opinion there must be a single dominant voice which decides. Second, however slight we regard the limitations that are peculiar to a wife, since they always occasion a period of inactivity for her, this is a sufficient reason for excluding her from this primacy. For when the balance is perfectly equal, a straw is enough to tip the scales. Moreover, a husband should oversee his wife’s conduct, for it is important to him to be assured that the children he is forced to recognize and nurture belong to no one but himself. The wife, who has nothing like this to fear, does not have the same right over her husband. Third, children ought to obey their father—initially out of necessity, later out of gratitude. After having their needs met by him for half their lives, they ought to devote the other half to seeing his needs. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

Fourth, as far as domestic servants are concerned, they too owe him their services in exchange for the livelihood he provides them, unless they cancel their arrangement once it ceases to be to their advantage. I say nothing here of slavery, since it is contrary to nature and no right can authorize it. None of this is to be found in political society. Far from the leader’s having a natural interest in the happiness of private individuals, it is not uncommon for him to seek his own happiness in the misery of others. If the magistracy is hereditary, often it is a child that is in command of humans. If it is elective, a thousand insolvencies make themselves to be felt in the elections. In either case one loses all the advantages of paternity. Were you to have but one leader, you are at the discretion of a master who has no reason to love you. Were you to have several, you must endure both their tyranny and their disagreements. In short, abuses are inevitable and their consequences devastating in every society where the public interest and the laws have no natural force, and are constantly attacked by the personal interest and passions of the ruler and the members. Although the functions of the father of a family and those of a chief magistrate ought to tend toward the same goal, their paths are so different, their duty and rights so unlike, that one cannot confound them without forming false ideas about the fundamental laws of society and without falling into errors that are fatal to the human race. In effect, though nature’s voice is the best advice a good father could listen to in the fulfillment of his duty, for the magistrate it is merely a false guide which works constantly to divert him from his duties and which sooner or later leads to his downfall or to that of the state, unless he is restrained by the most sublime virtue. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

The only precaution necessary to the father of a family is that he protect himself from depravity and prevent his natural inclinations from becoming corrupt, whereas it is these very inclinations that corrupt the magistrate. To act properly, the former need only consult his heart; the latter becomes a traitor as soon as he listens to his. Even his own reason ought to be suspect to him, and the only rule he should follow is the public reason, which is the law. Thus nature has made a multitude of good fathers of families, but it doubtful that, since the beginning of the World, human wisdom has ever produced ten men capable of governing their peers. It follows from all I have just put forward that one has good reason to distinguish public from private economy and that, since the state has nothing in common with the family except the obligation their respective leaders bear to render each of the happy, the same rules of conduct could not be suitable to both. In discussing what is not occurring in the suburbs, it is necessary to occasionally take a glance back at the central city since comparisons between the two highlight the changes in later. As has been detailed previously, the downtowns of American urban areas came into their glory during the first half of the twentieth century as the retail trade and business locations of choice. Downtown was where all the major department stores were located. As of 1950, Chicago’s Loop contained not only the huge Marshal Field store but also, a block away, Carson, Pirie, Scott. In addition, there were other large department stores of Mandels, Sears, and The Fair. All of these department stores occupied multistoried buildings. Field alone occupied a fully city block, with an additional five-story Men’s Building annex across the street. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

Additionally, the downtown was filled with scores of restaurants and coffee shops catering both to business people and housewives who dressed up to make an event out of shopping downtown. Certainly, if one were interested in serious shopping in Chicago—or New York, or Philadelphia, or Boston, or Washington, or Detroit, or Minneapolis, or Omaha, or Dallas, or Seattle, or San Francisco—one went downtown, usually by public transit. As we approach the turn of the century, the above description reads like something from another time and place. Across America, downtown and peripheral suburban areas have switched identities. The old pattern has been turned inside out. Concentrated and centralized cities have been supplanted by dispersed and polynucleated suburban malls and office parks. Downtowns that once were dominant in retail trade find themselves struggling not for dominance, but for survival. Numerous cities such as Baltimore, Detroit, Sacramento, and Omaha no longer even have a single downtown department store. The dispute as to the comparative economic strength of downtown or peripheral suburban locations as centers for the purchase of consumer goods is over. Downtowns lost the competition. Central business districts now account for less than half of all sales in personal and household items, and yearly this share decreases. Downtowns, with some exceptions, such as part of Manhattan and North Michigan Avenue in Chicago, are no longer prime locations for major new retailing activities. Some of us who love the old downtowns whish this were not so. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

Along with downtown Chambers of Commerce, some would like to see new retailers occupy the buildings abandoned by the large department stores. Unfortunately, this is not going to occur. Central-city festival marketplaces provide wonderful urban vitality and a means of attracting tourists, but they are not where someone goes to buy shoes, a business suit, or a DVD player. For the foreseeable future, large-scale retailing ventures will have suburban post offices. New office space is also most likely to be suburban. Deconcentration is the cotemporary reality. However, as growth has gone from city to outside the city, there is a belief that the general quality of suburban life is decreasing. While applauding increases in employment and greater shopping alternatives, suburbanites feel frustration over traffic congestion, environmental degradation, crime, and crowded schools. Often these problems are attributed to a too-rapid pace of community growth. The question of limiting, or even halting, growth is one that is being debated in high-growth areas, such as the west coast. The concern first arose in high growth areas, such as Orange Country, in Southern California; now, as Californians out-migrate to Oregon, Washington state, Texas, Nevada, Atlanta, Arizona, or New Mexico, the concern about too-rapid growth has become a political issue in these localities. Local concerns over rapid growth fly in the face of the long-standing American creed that bigger is better. City boosters, as a matter of course, bragged that their community was better than their neighbour’s because it was growing faster. Not to grow was somehow un-American. Now that is changing and there are increasing calls for growth controls. At one time, the governor of Hawaii stirred up considerable controversy when he called for Hawaii to slow its exploding population by banning in-migration. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

Research indicates that suburban residents have strong concerns about current and future growth. Studying the response of citizens in Orange County, California, it was found that over half of the residents surveyed cited environmental reasons such as traffic congestion and environmental deterioration as reasons for limiting growth. Economic reasons, such as maintaining property values and avoiding government spending and taxes, were listed by approximately a third of the respondents. While there is documented widespread support for slow-growth or growth-limit policies, there is little public support for no-growth policies, except for in Malibu, California which eventually lost their request. Suburban residents desire local officials and policy makers to put limits on population and economic expansion rather than to halt development. Both no growth and unrestricted growth are opposed by most suburbanites. However, desiring controlled growth and accomplishing it are not the same things. Research indicates that municipal zoning and other techniques to control growth have only a modest effect. Organizations favouring growth limits, such as the Sierra Club, generally argue that uncontrolled growth will continue to destroy what remains our physical and cultural environment. Thus, the indiscriminate gobbling up of land by developers and industries has to be controlled. Opponents of such control, such as the National Association of Homebuilders, say that those already in an area have no right to infringe on what they see as the constitutional right to settle where one chooses. Other opponents, such as the National Association of the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), are less concerned with the developers’ right to build and make profits than they are with a “pull-up-the-gangplank” mentality. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

The NACCP fears that environmental policies such as setting minimum lot sizes and requiring municipal water and sewage hookups rather than allowing wells and septic systems will increase prices and thus exclude the less affluent. Zoning regulations allegedly have a history of being used for enforcing exclusion. The legal question of whether communities can impose growth controls was settled for the time being by the case of Petaluma, California. Located roughly 35 miles north of San Francisco and on a new freeway, the community was only 35,000 people at the time and felt it was being overwhelmed. Growth in Petaluma had reached 18 percent a year. Schools were in double session, water and sewage systems were at the maximum, and the community feared it was being swallowed by an unending number of new subdivisions. The city established a plan to limit building to 500 units a year, and developers and builder sued. By refusing to heart the case, the Supreme Court in 1976 rejected the builders’ argument that growth limits unconstitutionally restrict people’s right to live where they choose. The Supreme Court let stand the Court of Appeals ruling that the traditional local community responsibility for the public welfare was sufficiently broad to allow Petaluma to preserve its character and open spaces. Petaluma, California now has a population of 59,776. In practice the question of growth controls is moot for most suburban communities. Only a limited number of communities, almost all in environmentally attractive locations in the west and southwest, have tried to control growth. Many older suburban communities, with the exception of Old Land Park in Sacramento, California, are more likely to share the central-city problem of how to attract growth, rather than how to limit it. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

Much more common among suburbs than growth limits is the requiring of builders to offer “proffers.” These are fees to cover some of the cost to the municipality of providing local road, school, sewer, and water services. The argument is that new residences should be assessed some of the costs associated with servicing them, and that the cost of providing services for newcomers should not be borne solely by existing taxpayers. Furthermore, it is impossible to discuss suburban issues without some discussion of crime. Obviously, one of the more common explanations one hears for the movement to the suburbs or the unwillingness to move back to the city is crime. The built-in assumption is that suburbs are relatively free of crime while cities clearly are not. Neither of these assumptions is fully accurate. Some city neighbourhoods have low crime, while some suburbs do not. However, overall suburban crime rates are only 28 percent of city rates. The popular perception also is accurate insofar as central-city crimes rates are rising faster than suburban rates. Major U.S. Central Cities are seeing crime rate increase by 40 percent from the previous year. By companions, the suburban rate was a far lower, which was an increase of 1.2 percent. No one knows for sure why urban violent crime rates accelerated so rapidly. However, the pandemic, depressed economic conditions for the poor, and shrinking job opportunities likely play a factor. Still others have suggested the increasing use of drugs, more use of more lethal weapons, family breakdown, and racial discrimination as reasons for the increase. Whatever the reason, the popular belief that cities, or at least some parts of cities, are increasingly dangerous places is, unfortunately, accurate. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

Suburban crime rates are substantially lower than in cities, and it much less likely to be violent crime. The most frequently reported suburban crime is bicycle theft. This is a problem if your new expensive Diamondback Sync’R 29 Carbon Mountain Bike Black, XL that is stolen, but it is not equivalent to being mugged at gunpoint. By comparison, the ten richest suburbs have burglary rates only 33 percent those of the ten poorest suburbs. Affluent residential suburbs are able to restrict unwanted activities and limit undesirable and unemployed populations. Higher crime rates are also found in those suburbs that have facilities that attract criminals. An ever-decreasing minority of suburbanites actually commutes into the central city for employment or other purposes. City dwellers are increasingly likely to commute to suburbs for employment, shopping, or entertainment. Representatives who suddenly find themselves answerable to suburban voters have a tendency to move politically from being urban liberals toward being more suburban law-and-order candidates. Some think this will benefit the Republicans, but Deromcrats seeking election in the new districts have shown an ability to adjust their rhetoric to their new constituencies. Downtowns have been changing their economic function and their future is uncertain because of the pandemic and the increase of electronic cottages and business parks. However, looking at the new skyline does not suggest the image of immediate economic decline. People still head downtown for employment, but one cannot deny the clerical jobs, finance, legal services, advertising, management, medical centers, educational institutions, and government services are relocating to the suburbs. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

During the Great Depression of the 1930’s millions of people were thrown out of work. As factory doors clanged shut against them, many plunged into extremes of despair and guilt, their egos shattered by the pink layoff slip. Eventually unemployment came to be seen in a more sensible light—not as the result of individual laziness or moral failure but of giant forces outside the individual’s control. The maldistribution of wealth, myopic investment, runaway speculation, stupid trade policies, inept government—these, not the personal weakness of laid-off workers, caused unemployment. Feelings of guilt were, in most cases, naively inappropriate. Today, once more, egos are breaking like eggshells against the walls. Now, however, the guilt is associated with the fracture of the family and the pandemic, rather than the economy. As millions of people clamber out of strewn wreckage of their marriages, break out of government-imposed house detainment they, too, suffer agonis of self-blame. And once more, much of the guilt is misplaced. When a tiny minority is involved, the crack-up of their families may reflect individual failures. However, when divorce, separation, pandemic, and other forms of familial disaster overtake millions at once in many countries, it is absurd to think the causes are purely personal. The fracture of the family today is, in fact, part of the general crisis of the age of information—the crack-up of all the institutions spawned by the Third Wave. It is part of the ground-clearing for the new socio-sphere. And it is this traumatic process, reflected in our induvial lives, that is altering the family system beyond recognition. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

Today we are told repeatedly that “the family” is falling apar or that “the family” is our Number One Problem. It is clear that the national government should have a pro-family policy. There can be no more urgent priority. Substitute preachers, prime minister, and the pious rhetoric comes out very much the same. When they speak of “the family,” however, they typically do not mean the family in all is luxuriant variety of possible forms, but one particular type of family: the Second Wave family. What they usually have in mind is a husband-breadwinner, a wife-housekeeper, and a number of small children. While many other family types exist, it was this particular family form—he nuclear family—that Second Wave civilization idealized, made dominant, and spread around the World. This type of family became the standard, socially approved model because its structure perfectly fitted the needs of a mass-production society with widely shared values and life-styles, hierarchical, bureaucratic power, and a clear separation of home life from work life in the marketplace. Today, when the authorities urge us to “restore” the family it is this Second Wave nuclear family they usually have in mind. By thinking so narrowly they not only misdiagnose the entire problem, they reveal a childish naivete about what steps would actually be required to restore the nuclear family to its former importance. Thus the authorities frantically blame the family crisis on everything from “smut peddlers” to rock music. Some tells us that opposing abortion or wiping out sex education or resisting feminism will glue the family back together again. Or they urge courses in “family education.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

The chief United States government statistician on family matters wants “more effective training” to teach people how to marry more wisely, or else a “scientifically tested and appealing system for selecting a marriage partner.” What we need, say others, are more marriage counselors or even more public relations to give the family a better image! Blind to the ways in which historical waves of change influence us, they come up with well-intentioned, often inane proposals that utterly miss the target. Some persons have wonderful healing gifts, but they will need to keep the ego out of their use of these gifts if their quest is not to be obstructed. Those who are born with healing skills, probably brough over from former births, function on different levels. The commonest is that which radiates life-force and energizes the cells of the sick person. This kind of healer must first put oneself into a passive mood and then, when one feels the vibratory force of the life-force active within one, let it pass, with or without touching the patient, into the latter. The vibrations of the lifeforce are universal; they are not the healer’s own personal property. One simply possesses a skill in letting oneself be used as a channel, and it is usually concentrated in one’s hands. A healer like Saswitha, who says he is merely drawing the therapeutic power from his patient and redirecting it or returning in back to the patient, forgets that if this is so the patient oneself gets it from the cosmic forces. It is not one’s own personal property. Jesus healed the sick, cured the diseased. Why decry the feat (when others do the same) as “merely” using an occult power, and as a deviation from the highest path of attainment, becoming an obstacle to it? For this is criticism by Advaitic Vedantins. This criticism is unfair. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

If it is right to cure one by physical means—medicine, for example—then it is right to cure one by mental means, and drawing on still deeper powers is in the same line of progression. The Advaitins grant that a physician may attain the highest truth. Is a physician like Paracelsus, using both physical and mental remedies, plus one’s own spiritual power, and therefore capable of helping more people more effectively, to be denied this possibility? The professional in other lines can often give a reasonable assurance of the efficacy of one’s own work, but the genuine spiritual healer cannot. For not only is one’s own gift involved but also both the patient’s self-made destiny and one’s evolutionary need. Apollonius tells us that Pythagoras regarded healing as “the most divine art.” Why should anyone reject the views of the Greek sage, not to speak of Jesus’ own confirmation by His works? Why should the Indian sages regard healing as a merely occult art, hence as to practice to be avoided? Why should it be right for a spiritual master to minister to diseased minds but wrong to minister to diseased bodies? To label one as white magic and the others as black magic, or to neglect and ignore the flesh in the interest of the whole-time devotion to the spirit, is unfair. Too many Indian, and a few Western, gurus and cults reject the development and use of healing power. It is, they argue, an obstruction in the spiritual path because it keeps its practitioner captive to the ego, which may even become stronger through conceit. There is the historic case of Ramakrishma. He went to his prayer shrine in his temple three times to request a healing for the throat cancer which troubled him, but each time failed to utter words. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

The merit of argument based on increased egotism and vanity, the danger of being sicktracked from seeking the highest goal, is admitted. However, is this enough ground to ban spiritual healing completely and always? Must it be denied to all people at all times, universally, because some healers may be obstructed spiritually by its practice? The answer of common sense agreed with the example of Jesus. Blessed be the Wind! Without wind, most of the Earth would be uninhabitable. The tropics would grow so unbearably hot that nothing could live here, and the rest of the planet would freeze. Moisture, if any existed would be confined to the oceans, and all but the fringe of the great continents would be desert. There would be no erosion, no soil, and for any community that managed to evolve despite these rigors, no relief from suffocation by their own waste products. However, with the wind, Earth comes truly alive. Winds provide the circulatory and nervous systems of the planet, sharing out energy and information, distributing both warmth and awareness, making something out of nothing. All wind’s properties are borrowed. Our knowledge of it comes at secondhand, but it comes strongly. And this combination of a force that cannot be apprehended, but nevertheless has an undeniable existence, was our first experience of the spiritual. A crack in the cosmos that widened to let the tide of consciousness flow through. We are the fruits of the wind—and have been seeded, irrigated, and cultivated by its craft. Save us, we beseech Thee! For Thy sake, our God, do Thou save us. For Thy sake, our Creator, O save us. For Thy sake, our Redeemer, O save us. For Thy sake, O Thou who seekest us, save us, we beseech Thee. During these wonderful glimpses ordinary existence seems suspended. One finds a new joy deep within oneself, a new and higher meaning deep within life. If we are going to make in through this pandemic, we are going to need more than vaccine; we also need empathy. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

Cresleigh Homes

That face you make when you picture all the possibilities for the gorgeous built-in in the primary suite! 😍😍😍😍

And just out of the frame, there’s that free-standing soaking tub! Wonders never cease at Mills Station Residence 4. 😇

Residence Four at Mills Station boasts 2,692 square feet in the largest home in the community. The open concept design includes four bedrooms, three and one half bathrooms and a two car garage plus workshop. https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/residence-4/

#CresleighHomes
#CresleighRanch

September 8, 2021 12:54 am

It Appears that the Powers of Redeemed Man Will be Almost Unlimited!

In a century where people take pride in fine sorts of knowledge, there are no to be found two closely united Humans—rich, one in money, the other in genius, both loving glory and aspiring for immortality—one of whom sacrifices twenty thousand crowns of his goods and the other ten years of one’s life for a famous voyage around the World, in order to study, not always rocks and plants, but, for once, men and more, and who, after so many centuries used to measure and examine the house, would finally be of a mind to know its inhabitants. Spankings, reprimands, fines, jail sentences, firings, failing grades, and the like are commonly used to control behaviour. Clearly, the story of learning is unfinished without a return to the topic of punishment. Recall that punishment lowers the probability that a response will occur again. To be most effective, punishment must be given contingently (only after an undesired response occurs). Punishers, like reinforcers, are defined by observing their effects on behaviour. A punisher is any consequence that reduces the frequency of a target behaviour. It is not always possible to know ahead of time what will act as a punisher for a particular person. For example, when Leo’s mother reprimanded him for not sharing his toys, he started sharing them. In this instance, the reprimand was a punisher. However, Joel is starved for attention of any kind from his parents, who both work full-time. For Joel, a reprimand, or even a spanking, might actually reinforce toy throwing. Remember, too, that a punisher can be either the one set of an unpleasant event or the removal of a positive states of affairs (response cost). Men and women are placed on Earth to learn, grow and become better by following Jesus Christ. In the Church, this process is described as “eternal progression.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

Central to that process is freedom of choice, which shapes who we are. Inevitably, as we make choices, we also make mistakes. Most of life’s mistakes are easily overcome through simple, sincere, repentance, a process common to nearly all religious people. In rare instances, we may commit serious transgression that jeopardize our progress. Church discipline—restrictions and conditions of repentance that prompt a person to reevaluate their situation and return to full fellowship and activity—is a process designed to help us overcome sin in these instances. For all sins, large and small, it is the sacrifice and suffering, mercy and grace—or Atonement—of Jesus Christ that makes repentance possible. Church discipline is designed to help an individual more fully apply the Atonement of Jesus Christ, be cleansed of their sins and move forward in their eternal progression. The term “discipline” is an important one, especially in this religious context. It shares the same Latin root as the word “discipline,” meaning true follower. Learning to discipline ourselves is what makes us better people. Any athlete, artist, scholar or musician would acknowledge that discipline is the key to improvement. And so it is with our spiritual progression as well. Christ Himself taught repeatedly that we need to be disciplined in our thoughts, words and deeds. Becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ requires self-discipline. The miracles of Chris can be classified in two ways. The first system yields the classes (1) Miracles of Fertility (2) Miracles of Healing (3) Miracles of Destruction (4) Miracles of Dominion over the Inorganic (5) Miracles of Reversal (6) Miracles of Perfecting or Glorification. The second system, which cuts across the first, yields two classes only: they are (1) Miracles of the Old Creation, and (2) Miracles of the New Creation. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

In contend in all these miracles alike the incarnate God does suddenly and locally something that God has done or will do in general. Each miracle writes for us in small letters something that God has already written, or will write, in letters almost too large to be noticed, across the whole canvas of Nature. They focus at a particular point either God’s actual, or His future, operations on the Universe. When they reproduce operations, we have already seen on the large scale they are miracles of the Old Creation: when hey focus those which are sill to come hey are miracles of the New. Not one of them is isolated or anomalous: each carries the signature of the God whom we know through conscience and from Nature. Their authenticity is attested by the style. Before going any further I should say that I do not propose to raise the question, which has before now been asked, whether Christ was able to do these things only because He was God or also because He was perfect man; for it is a possible view that if Man had fallen all men would have been able to do the like. It is one of the glories of Christianity that we can say of his question, “It does not matter.” Whatever may have been the powers of unfallen man, it appears that those of redeemed Man will be almost unlimited. Christ, re-ascending from His great dive, is bringing up Human Nature with Him. Where He goes, it goes too. It will be made “like Him.” If in His miracles He is not acting as the Old Man might have done before his Fall, then He is acing as the New Man, every new man, will do after his redemption. When humanity, borne on His shoulders, passes with Him up from the cold dark water into the green warm water and out at last into the sunlight and the air, it also will be bright and coloured. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

Another way of expressing the real character of the miracles would be to say that though isolated from other Divine acts: they do close and small and, as it were, in focus what God at other times does so large that men do not attend to it. Neither are they isolated exactly as we suppose from other human acts: they anticipate powers which all men will have when they also are “sons” of God and enter into that “glorious liberty.” Christ’s isolation is not that of a pioneer. He is the first of His kind; He will not be the last. Let us return to our classification and firstly to Miracles of Fertility. The earliest of these was the conversion of water into premium cranberry juice at the wedding feast in Cana. This miracle proclaims that the God of all celebration is present. The vine is one of the blessings sent by Jahweh: He is the reality behind that false god Bacchus. Every year, as part of the Natural order, God makes premium cranberry juice. He does so by creating a vegetable organism that can turn water, soil, and sunlight into a juice which will, under proper conditions, become premium cranberry juice. Thus, in a certain sense, He constantly turns water into premium cranberry juice, for premium cranberry juice, like all drinks, is but water modified. Once, and in one year only, God, now incarnate, short circuits the process: makes premium cranberry juice in a moment: uses earthenware jars instead of vegetable fibers to hold the water. However, uses them to do what He is always doing. The miracle consists in the short cut; but the event to which it leads is the usual one. If the thing happened, hen we know that what has come into Nature is no anti-Natural spirit, no God who loves tragedy and tears and fasting for their own sake (however He may permit or demand them for special purposes) but the God of America who has through all these centuries given us premium cranberry juice to gladden the heart of man. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

Other miracles that fall in this class are the two instances of miraculous feeding. They involve the multiplication of a little bread and a little fish into much bread and much fish. Once in the desert Satan had tempted Him to make bread of stones: He refused the suggestion. “The Son does nothing except what He sees the Father do”; perhaps one may without boldness surmise that the direct change from stone to bread appeared to the Son to be not quite in the hereditary style. Little bread into much bread is quite a different matter. Every year god makes a little corn into much corn: the seed is sown and there is an increase. And men say, according to their several fashions, “It is the laws of Nature,” or, “It is Ceres, it is Adonis, it is the Corn-King.” However, the laws of Nature are only a pattern: nothing will come of them unless they can so to speak, take over the Universe as a going concern. And as for Adonis, no man can tell us where he died or when he rose again. Here, at the feeding of the five thousand, is He whom we have ignorantly worshipped: the real Corn-King who will die once and rise once at Jerusalem during the term of office of Pontius Pilate. That same day He also multiplied fish. Look down into every bay and almost every river. This swarming, undulating fecundity shows He is still at work “thronging the seas with spawn innumerable.” The ancients had a god called Genius; the god of animal and human fertility, the patron of gynaecology, embryology, and the marriage bed—the “genial” bed as they called it after its god Genius. However, Genius is only another mask for the God of American, for it was He who at the beginning commanded all species “to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the Earth.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

And now, that day, at the feeding of the thousands, incarnate God does the same: does close and small, under His human hands, a workman’s hands, what He has always been doing in the seas, the lakes and the little brooks. With this we stand on the threshold of that miracle which for some reason proves hardest of all for the modern mind to accept. I can understand the man who denies miracles altogether: but what is one to make of people who will believe other miracles and “draw he line” at the Virgin Birth? Is it that for all their lip service to the laws of Nature there is only one natural process in which they really believe? Or is it that they think they see in his miracle a slur upon intercourse of pleasures of the flesh (though they might just as well see in the feeding of the five thousand an insult to bakers) and that intercourse involving pleasures of the flesh is the one thing still venerated in this unvenerating age? In reality the miracle is no less, and no more, surprising than any others. Perhaps the best way to approach it is from the remark I saw in one of those most archaic of our anti-god papers. The remark was that Christians believed in a God who had “committed adultery with the wife of a Jewish carpenter.” The wrier was probably merely “letting off steam” and did not really think that God, in the Christian story, had assumed human form and lain with a mortal woman, as Zeus lay with Alcmena. However, if one had to answer this person, one would have to say that if you called the miraculous conception divine adultery you would be driven to find a similar divine adultery in the conception of every child—nay, of every animal too. I am sorry to use expressions which will offend pious ears, but I do not know how else to make my point. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

In a normal act of generation, the father has no creative function. A microscopic particle of matter from his body, and a microscopic particle from the woman’s body, meet. And with that there passes the colour of his hair and the hanging lower lip of her grandfather and the form of humanity in all its complexity of bones, sinews, nerves, liver and heart, and the form of those pre-human organisms which the embryo will recapitulate in the womb. Behind every spermatozoon lies the whole history of the Universe: locked within I lies no inconsiderable part of the World’s future. The weight or drive behind it is the momentum of the whole interlocked event which we call Nature up-to-date. And we know now that the “law of Nature” cannot supply that momentum. If we believe that God created Nature that momentum comes from Him. The human father is merely an instrument, a carrier, often an unwilling carrier, always simply the last in a long line of carriers—a line that stretches back far beyond his ancestors into prehuman and pre-organic deserts of time, back to the creation of matter itself. That line is in God’s hand. It is the instrument by which He normally creates a man. For He is the reality behind both Genius and Venus; no woman ever conceived a child, no mare a foal, without Him. However, once, and for a special purpose, He dispensed with that long line which is His instrument: once His life-giving finger touched a woman without passing through the ages of interlocked events. Once naked hand touched her. There was of course a unique reason for it. That time He was creating not simply a man but the Man who was to be Himself: was creating Man anew: was beginning, at this divine and human point, the New Creation of all things. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

May be an image of kitchen island and kitchen

The whole soiled and weary Universe quivered at this direct injection of essential life—direct, uncontaminated, not drained through all the crowded history of Nature. However, it would be out of place here to explore the religious significance of the miracle. We are here concerned with it simply as Miracle—that and nothing more. As far as concerns the creation of Christ’s human nature (the Grand Miracle whereby His divine begotten nature enters into it is another matter) the miraculous conception is one more witness that here is Nature’s Lord. He is doing now, small and close what He does in a different fashion for every woman who conceives. He does it this time without a line of human ancestors: but even where He uses human ancestors it is not the less He who gives life. The bed is barren where that great third party, Genius, is not present. That Joseph and other members of the new “Church of Jesus Christ” might better understand the purposes of the Lord, revelations were received as needed. At one time when Joseph was about to purchase premium cranberry justice for a sacrament service, a Heavenly messenger appeared to him and said: “Listen to the voice of Jesus Christ, you Lord….It mattereth not what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, when ye partake of the sacrament, if it so be that ye do it with an eye single to my glory. Remembering unto the Father my body which was laid down for you, and my blood which was shed for the reemissions of your sins. Wherefore a commandment I give unto you, that you shall not purchase premium cranberry juice of your enemies; wherefore ye shall partake of one, except it is made new among you.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

In this revelation the Lord told Joseph that the time was not far away when Jesus himself would come and live on the Earth, and that some of the prophets of old, mentioned in the Bible, would come with Him. The Lord continued: “Wherefore lift up your hearts and rejoice….ad take upon you my whole armour. Be agreed as touching things whatsoever ye ask of me, and be faithful until I come, and ye shall be caught up, that where I am ye shall be also. Amen.” There were problems within the church as well as without. Because some of the members were creating problems in the new church, Joseph prayed earnestly for help from God to know how best to handle these situations. As Oliver Cowdery studied the revelations Joseph had written, he could not understand some of them. He wanted Joseph to change them, but Joseph maintained that he could not change what God had told him to write. Joseph and other talked patiently and kindly with Oliver. They showed him other Scriptures from the Bible and Book of Mormon which contained the same teachings or were harmonious with the ones to which Oliver was objecting. Finally Oliver came to understand. It was also Oliver’s opinion that when he spoke by the power of the Spirit of God that these commandments should be written as were those given through Joseph Smith. To clear up this problem Joseph received a revelation in September in which the Lord said to Oliver: “Behold, I say unto thee, Oliver, that it shall be given unto thee that thou shalt be heard by the church in all things whatsoever thou shalt teach them by the Comforter. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

“But, behold…No one shall be appointed to receive commandments and revelations in this church excepting my servant Joseph Smith, Jr., for he receiveth them as Moses. And thou shalt be obedient unto the things which I shall give unto him. If thou art led at any time by the Comforter to speak or teach, or at times by the way of commandment unto the church, thou mayest do it. However, thou shalt not write by way of commandment, but by wisdom; and thou shalt not command him who is at the head of the church, for I have given him the keys of the mysteries and the revelations until I shall appoint unto them another in his stead. And now, behold, I say unto thee that thou shalt go unto the Lamanites, and preach my gospel unto them. And thou shalt have revelations, but write them not by way of commandment, but by wisdom; and thou shalt not command him who is at the head of the church, for I have given him the keys of the mysteries and the revelations until I shall appoint unto them another in his stead. And now, behold, I say unto thee that thou shalt go unto the Lamanites, and preach my gospel unto them. And thou shalt have revelations, but write them not by way of commandment.” Hiram Page became another problem Joseph had to meet within the church. He claimed he had found a stone whereby he could receive revelations. Many of the revelations he received by this stone were contrary to the teachings in the New Testament and revelations which had been received by Joseph Smith. Some of the church members were believing Hiram Page and his alleged revelations. Joseph prayed to know how to handle his serious matter. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

May be an image of 1 person, furniture and living room

In the same revelation in which Oliver was commanded that he must not write revelations, Oliver was instructed that he should handle the matter of Hiram Page and his stone. The Lord instructed: “Take thy brother Hiram Page between him and thee alone, and tell him that those things which he hath written from that stone are not of me, and that Satan deceiveth him; for, behold, these things have not been appointed unto him. Neither shall anything be appointed unto any of this church contrary to the church covenants, for all things must be done in order and by common consent in the church, by the prayer of faith.” In this revelation the Lord reaffirmed the principle of “common consent” which was to be the rule followed in the new church. Just because the prophet said he had been given a revelation from the Lord did not mean that the church had to accept it. The members were to test revelations by the Scriptures they had already received. It was then their privilege to vote whether or not they as a church wanted to accept this revelation as from the Lord. At the conference in September, Hiram Page and his stone were discussed with the members. Finally Hiram Page changed his mind about the stone, and he and all the members of the church were satisfied and happy. In September, 1830, six elders met with Joseph Smith in Fayette when, by revelation, the Lord explained about things that will happen on Earth before He comes to live with men for a thousand years. These are Jesus’ words: “Listen to the voice of Jesus Christ who will gather His people even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, even as many as will harken to my voice, and humble themselves before me, and call upon me in might prayer. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

“Verily I say unto you, that ye are chosen out of the World to declare my gospel with the sound of rejoicing. Lift up your hearts and be glad, for I am in your midst, and am your advocate with the Father; and it is His good will to give you the kingdom. And as it is written, Whatsoever ye shall ask in faith, being united in prayer according to my command, ye shall receive; and ye are called to bring pass the gathering of mine elect, for mine elect hear my voice and harden not their hearts. They shall be gathered in unto one place, upon the face of this land, to prepare their hearts, and be prepared in all things, against the day when tribulation and desolation are sent forth upon the wicked. For the hour is nigh, and that which was spoken by mine apostles must be fulfilled. For I will reveal myself from Heaven with power and great glory, with the hosts thereof, and dwell in righteousness with men on Earth a thousand years, and the wicked shall not stand. Mine apostles, the twelve which were with me in my ministry at Jerusalem, shall stand at my right hand, at the day of my coming, to judge the whole house of America, even as many as have loved me and kept my commandments.” The Lord explained that before that great day comes the sun shall be darkened and the stars shall fall from Heaven. There shall be great signs in the Heavens and on Earth. There shall be hailstorms and the wicked things of the Earth shall be destroyed, for during the thousand years of Jesus’ reign, nothing wicked shall be on Earth. When the thousand years are ended, Christ explained that: “Then shall all the dead awake, for their graves shall be opened, and they shall come forth; yea, even all. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

May be an image of hearth, brick wall and living room

“And the righteous shall come forth; yea, even all. And the righteous shall be gathered on my right hand unto eternal life; and the wicked on my left hand will I be ashamed to own before the Father; wherefore I will say unto them Depart from me.” The Lord explained that after Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden he was taught concerning repentance and faith in the Son of God. All men who believed in the Son of God may have eternal life. Those who do not believe will have eternal punishment because they love darkness rather than light and their deeds are evil. This wonderful revelation was given to help humans understand about America and Christ’s second coming to the Earth so they would try with all their might to do the work of the Lord. Divine Scripture uses, in relation to God, names which signify procession. This procession has been differently understood. Some have understood it in the sense of an effect, proceeding from its cause; so Arius took it, saying that the Son proceeds from the Father as His primary creature, and that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son as the creature of both. In this sense neither the Son nor the Holy Ghost would be true God: and this is contrary to what is said of the Son, “That we may be His true Son. This is true God,” reports (1 John 5.20). Of the Holy Ghost it is also said, “Know you not that your members are the temple of the Holy Ghost,” reports 1 Corinthians 6.19. Now to a temple is God’s prerogative. Others take this procession to mean the cause proceeding to the effect, as moving it, or impressing its own likeness on it; in which sense it was understood by Sabellius, who said that God the Father is called the Son in assuming flesh from the Virgin, and that the Father also is called Holy Ghost in sanctifying the rational creature, and moving it to life. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

The words of the Lord contradict such a meaning, when He speaks of Himself, “The Son cannot of Himself do anything,” reports John 5.19; while many other passages show the same, whereby we know that the Father is not the Son. Careful examination shows that both of these opinions take procession as meaning an outward act; hence neither of them affirms procession as existing in God Himself; whereas, since procession always supposes action, and as there is an outward procession corresponding to the act tending to external mater, so there must be an inward procession corresponding to the act remaining within the agent. This applies most conspicuously to the intellect, the action of which remains in the intelligent agent. For whenever we understand, by the very fact of understanding there proceeds something within us, which is a conception of the object understood, a conception issuing from our intellectual power and proceeding from our knowledge of that object. This conception is signified by the spoken word; and it is called the word of the heart signified by the word of the voice. As God is above all things, we should understand what is said of God, not according to the mode of the lowest creatures, namely bodies, but from the similitude of the highest creatures, the intellectual substances; while even the similitudes derived from these fall short in the representation of divine objects. Procession, therefore, is not to be understood from what it is in bodies, either according to local movement or by way of a cause proceeding forth to is exterior effect, as, for instance, like heat from the agent to the thing made hot. Rather it is to be understood by way of an intelligible emanation, for example, of the intelligible word which proceeds from the speaker, yet remains in him. In that sense the Catholic Faith understands procession as existing in God. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

Whatever proceeds by way of outward procession is necessarily distinct from the course whence it proceeds, whereas, whatever proceeds within by an intelligible procession is not necessarily distinct; indeed, the more perfectly it proceeds within by an intelligible procession is not necessarily distinct; indeed, the more perfectly it proceeds, the more closely is the intellectual conception joined and untied to the intelligent agent; since the intellect by the very act of understanding is made one with the object understood. Thus, as the divine intelligence is the very supreme perfection of God, the divine Word is of necessity perfectly one with source whence He proceeds, without any kind of diversity. To proceed from a principle, so as to be something outside and distinct from that principle, is irreconcilable with the idea of a first principle; whereas an intimate and uniform procession by way of an intelligible act is included in the idea of a first principle. For when we call the builder the principle of the house, in the idea of such a principle is included that of his art; and it would be included in the idea of the first principle were the builder the first principle of the house. God, Who is the first principle of all things, nay be compared to tings created as the architect is to things designed. Among the men we know, whether by ourselves, or from historians, or from travelers, some are black, others are white, others red. Some wear their hair long; others have merely curly wool. Some are almost entirely covered with hair; others do not even have a beard. There have been and perhaps there still are nations of men of gigantic size; and apart from the fable of the Pygmies (which may well be merely an exaggeration), we know that the Laplanders and above all the Greenlanders are considerably below the average size of man. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

It is even maintained that there are entire peoples who have tails like quadrupeds. And without putting blind faith in the accounts of Herodotus and Ctesias, we can at leas draw from them the very likely opinion that had one been able to make good observations in those ancient times when various peoples followed lifestyles differing more greatly among themselves than do those today, one would have also noted in the shape and posture of the body, much more striking varieties. All these facts, for which it is easy to furnish incontestable proofs, are capable of surprising only those who are accustomed to look solely at the objects that surround them and who are ignorant of the powerful effects of the diversity of climates, air, foods, lifestyle, habits in general, and especially the astonishing force of the same causes when they act continually for long successions of generations. Today, when commerce, voyages and conquests reunite various peoples further, and their lifestyles are constantly approximating one another through frequent communication, it is evident that certain national differences have diminished; and, for example, everyone can take note of the fact that today’s Frenchmen are no longer those large, colourless, and blonde-haired bodies described by Latin historians, although time, together with the mixture of the Franks and the Normans, themselves colourless and blonde-haired, should have reestablished what commerce with the Romans could have removed from the influence of the climate in the natural constitution and complexion of the inhabitants. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

All of these observations on the varieties that a thousand causes can produce and have in fact produced in the human species cause me to wonder whether the various animals similar to men, taken without much scrutiny by travelers for beasts, either because of some differences they noticed in their outward structure or simply because these animals did not speak, would not in fact be veritable savage men, whose race, dispersed in the woods during olden times, had not had an occasion to develop any of its virtual faculties, had not acquired any degree of perfection, and was still found in the primitive state of nature. Let us give an example of what I mean. “There are found in the kingdom of Congo,” says the translator of the Historie des Voyages, “many of those large animals called orangutans in the East Indies, which occupy a middle ground between the human species and the baboons. Battel relates that in the forests of Mayomba, in the kingdom of Loango, one sees two kinds of monsters, the larger of which are called pongos and the others enjocos. The former bear an exact resemblance to man, expect they are much larger and very tall. With a human face, they have very deep-set eyes. Their hands, cheeks, and ears are without hair, except for their eyebrows, which are very long. Although the rest of their body is quite hairy, the hair is not very thick; the colour of the hair is brown. Finally, the only part that distinguishes them from men is their leg, which has no calf. They walk upright, grasping the hair of their neck with their hand. Their retreat is in the woods. They sleep in the trees, and there they make a kind of roof which offer them shelter from the rain. Their foods are fruits or wild nuts; they never eat flesh. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

“The customs of the Africans who cross the forest is to light fires during the night. They note that in the morning, at their departure, the pongos take their place around the fire, and do not withdraw until it is out; because, for all their cleverness, they do not have enough sense to lay wood on the fire to keep it going. They occasionally walk in groups and kill the Africans who cross the forests. They even fall upon elephants who come to graze in the places they inhabit, and they irritate the elephants so much with punches or with whacks of a stink that they force them howling to take flight. Pongos are never taken alive, because they are so strong that ten men would not be enough to stop them. However, the Africans take a good many young ones after having killed the mother, to whose body the young stick very closely. When one of these animals dies, the others cover its body with a pile of branches or leaves. Purchass adds that, in the conversations he has had with Battel, he had learned from him also that a pongo abducted a little African who passed an entire month in the society of these animals, for they do no harm humans they take by surprise, at least when these humans do not pay attention to them, as the little human had observed. Battel had not descried the second species of monster.” Biological diversity is the variety of life on this Earth. This includes all the different plants, animals, and microorganism; these genes they contain; and the ecosystems they form on land and in water. Biological diversity is constantly changing. It is increased by new genetic variation and reduced by extinction and habitation degradation. Biodiversity refers to the variety of life and its processes, including the variety of living organisms, the genetic differences among them, and the communities and ecosystems in which they occur. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

Scientists have identified about 1.9 million species alive today. They are divided into six kingdoms of life. Scientists are still discovering new species. Thus, hey do not know for sure how many species really exists today. Most estimate range from 5 to 30 million species. To save every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering. The most precise and specific measure of biodiversity is genetic diversity or genetic variation within a species. This measure of diversity looks at differences among individuals within a population, or at difference across different populations of the same species. The level just broader is species diversity, which best fits the literal translation of biodiversity: the number of different species in a particular ecosystem or on Earth. This type of diversity simply looks at an area and reports what can be found there. At the broadest most encompassing level, we have ecosystem diversity. Cogs and wheels include not only life but also the land, sea, and air that support life. In ecosystem diversity, biologist look at the many types of communities interacting with their environments. Although all three levels of diversity are important, the term biodiversity usually refers to species diversity. Biodiversity provides us with all of our food. It also provides for many medicines and industrial products, and it has great potential for developing new and improved products for the future. Perhaps most importantly, biological diversity provides and maintains a wide array of ecological “services.” These include provision of clean air and water, soil, food, and shelter. The quality—and the continuation—of our life and our economy is dependent on these “services.” O Great Spirit of the East, radiance of the rising Sun, Spirit of new beginnings, O Grandfather Fire, Great nuclear fire—of the Sun. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

Power of life-energy, vital spark, power to see far, and to imagine with boldness. Power to purify our senses, our hearts and our minds. We pray that we may be aligned with You, so that your powers may flow through us, and be expressed by us, for the good of this planet Earth, and all living beings upon it. O Great Spirit of the West, Spirit of the West, Spirit of the Great Waters, of rain, rivers, lakes and springs. O Grandmother Ocean, deep matrix, womb of all life. Power to dissolve boundaries, to release holdings, power to taste and to feel, to cleanse and to heal, great blissful darkness of peace. We pray that we may be aligned with You, so hat your power may flow through us, and be expressed by us, for the good of this planet Earth, and all living beings on it. O Great Spirit of the North, Invisible Spirit of the Air, and of the fresh, cool winds, O vast and boundless Grandfather Sky, your living breath animates all life. Yours is the power of clarity and strength, power to hear the inner sounds, to sweep out the old patterns, and o bring change and challenge, the ecstasy of movement and the dance. We pray that we may be aligned with You, so that your powers may flow through us, and be expressed by us, for the good of this planet Earth, and all living beings on it. O Great Spirit of the South, Protector of the fruitful land, and of all green and growing things, the noble trees and grasses, Grandmother Earth, Soul of Nature. Great power of the receptive, of nurturance and endurance, power to grow and bring forth flowers of the field, fruits of the garden. We pray that we may be aligned with You, so that your powers may flow through us, for the good of this planet Earth, and all living beings upon it. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

Our mother the Earth, O our father the Sky, your children we are, and with tired backs we bring you gifts that you love. Then weave for us a garment of brightness; may the warp be the white light of morning, may the weft be the red light of evening, may the fringes be the falling rain, may the border be the standing rainbow. Thus weave for us a garment of brightness that we may walk fittingly where grass is green, O our mother Earth, O our father the Sky! As Thou didst save them who in worshipful reverence on the Sabbath did beat the willow-leaves and who at the altar’s base set bough from Moza, so save us now. As Thou didst save them who praised Thee with slender, long and lofty willow-branches, who, as they cheerfully departed, chanted, “Beauty is thine, O altar,” so save us now. As Thou didst save them whose thanks and hope remained constant, “We are all His and our eyes are upon Him,” so save us now. As Thou didst save them that with green shoots surrounded Thine Earth-dug altar crying, “We beseech Thee, O Lord, do save us,” so save us now, please. As Thou didst save the host of Thy zealous priests who ministered on the day of rest with double offering and sacrifice, so save us now. As Thou didst save Thy Levites who assembled on the sacred dias, sang, “A psalm, a song for the Sabbath day,” so save us now. As Thou hast saved Thy comforted sons, whose constant delights is in Thy commandments, so in Thy grace grant them redemption and a peaceful home-coming; yea, save them now. Thou didst save the captive tribes of Jacob; restore again the captive tents of Jacob, and help us now. O Eternal, we beseech Thee, save us now. Save Thy people, and bless Thine inheritance; nourish and sustain them forever. And may my words of supplication before the Lord be nigh unto the Lord our God, day and night, that He maintain the cause of His servant and the cause of His people America every day shall require; that all the people of the Earth may know that the Lord is God; there is none else. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

Cresleigh Homes

There’s enough space for every one of your dreams in the Havenwood Residence 4 model. 🌈 Start manifesting your life in a home that allows you to express yourself. This is it! https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/residence-four/

Residence Four is the largest home offered in Cresleigh Havenwood. This two-story, 3,489 square foot home features four bedrooms, including one suite on the first floor, three and one half bathroom, and a true three-car garage. The covered porch provided a warm entry and the dining room is located right off the entry way. The Kitchen is connected through the Butler’s Pantry providing ample storage.

The great room and loft upstairs allow for various uses that will suit your family and lifestyle. Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier. Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Google Home Mini!

#CresleighHomes
#Havenwood

September 7, 2021 12:32 am

He Was Haunted By an Invisible Presence!

The facts which I am about to relate happened to myself some sixteen or eighteen years ago, at which time I was still young enough to enjoy a life of constant travelling. There are, indeed, many less agreeable ways in which an unbeneficent parson may contrive to scorn delights and live laborious days. In remote places where strangers are scarce, his annual visit is an important evet; and though at the close of a long day’s work he would sometimes prefer the quiet of a Victorian mansion, he generally finds himself the destined guest of the rector or the squire. It rests with himself to turn these opportunities to account. If he makes himself pleasant, he forms agreeable friendships and sees Victorian home-life under one of its most attractive aspects; and sometimes, even in these days of universal common-placeness, he may have the luck to meet with an adventure. My first appointment was to Llanda Villa ; which was largely peopled with my personal friends and connections. It was, therefore, much to my annoyance that I found myself, after a could of years very pleasant work, transferred to a new teaching position. I now spent half my time in hired vehicles and lonely country inns. I had been in possession of this position for some three months or so, and winter was near at hand, when I paid my first visit of inspection to the Winchester mansion. It was a dull, raw afternoon of mid-November, growing duller and more raw as the day waned and the east wind blew keener. I found the foot path without difficulty. It led me across a barren slope divided by stone fences, with here and there a group of smaller Victorian houses and gazebos. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14

A light fog, meanwhile, was creeping up from the east, and the dusk was gathering fast. Now, to lose one’s way on such an expansive ranch and at such an hour would be disagreeable enough, and the footpath—a trodden track already half obliterated—would be indistinguishable enough in the course of another ten minutes, but the nine story look out tower, a top the mansion, stood erect as a compass guiding visitors to the bizarre and beautiful rambling mansion. Looking anxiously ahead, up to this moment, I had not met a living soul. However, then I saw a man emerging from the fog and coming along the path. As we neared each other—I advancing rapidly; he slowly—I observed that he dragged the left foot, limping as he walked. It was, however, so dark and so misty, that not till we were within half a dozen yards of each other could I see that he wore a dark suit and an Anglican felt hat, and looked something like a dissenting minister. As soon as we were within speaking distance, I addressed him. “Can you tell me, I said, about how much longer it will take to get to the Winchester mansion?” He came on, looking straight before him; taking no notice of my question; apparently not hearing it. “I beg your pardon,” I said, raising my voice; “but how much longer will it take on this path to get to the Winchester?” He had passed on without pausing; without looking at me; I could almost have believed, without seeing me! I stopped, with the words on my lips; then turned to look after—perhaps, to follow—him. But instead of following, I stood betwixted. What had become of him? #RandolphHarris 2 of 14

And what lad was that going up the path by which I had just come—that tall lad, half-running, half-walking, with a fishing-rod over his shoulder? I could have taken my oath that I had neither met nor passed him. Where then had he come from? And where was the man to whom I had spoken not three seconds ago and who, at his limping pace, could have made more than a couple of yards in the time? My stupefaction was such that I stood quite still, looking after the lad with the fishing-rod till he disappeared in the gloom under the park-palings. Was I dreaming? Darkness, meanwhile, had closed in apace, and, dreaming or not dreaming, I must push on, or find myself benighted. So I hurried forward, turning my back on the last gleam of daylight, and plunging deeper into the fog at every step. I was, however, close upon my journey’s end. The path ended at a turnstile; the turnstile opened upon a steep lane; and at the bottom of the land, down which I stumbled among stones and ruts, I came in sight of the welcome glare of a blacksmith’s forge. Here, then, was the Winchester. I found myself at the door of the Winchester mansion. When I was sitting in the cozy drawing room, I saw Mrs. Winchester, and she looked like an angel. Spreading loveliness everywhere, over all with whom she came in touch, over good and evil. When a small number of people often come together in the same room, a tradition readily develops as to where each individual has one’s place, one’s station; it becomes a kind of picture a person can unroll for oneself when one so desires, a map of the terrain. So it is also with us in the Winchester mansion—together we form a picture. We were to drink tea here this evening. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14

Mrs. Winchester strives for an air of mystery. She wants to whisper and usually does it so well that she becomes entirely mute; I make no secret of my effusions to Merriam, her niece, an estimate of how many quarts of milk it takes for one pound of butter through the medium of cream and the dialectic of the butter churn. Indeed, it is not only something any young girl can listen to without hard, but, what is far more unusual, it is a solid and fundamental and edifying conversation that is equally ennobling to the head and the heart. And is no nature magnificent and wise in what she produces, what a precious gift is butter, what a glorious accomplishment of nature and art! It is a curious picture we make together. Mrs. Winchester almost vanishes before our eyes in pure agronomy; we go into the kitchen and the cellars, up into the attic, look at the chicken and ducks, geese et cetera. This was fascinating to me. But it could just be that I was the kind of young man who became old prematurely; it is possible. I sat late over the fire, and by the time I went to bed, I had well nigh forgotten my adventure with the man who vanished so mysteriously and the boy who seemed to come from nowhere. Next morning, finding I had abundant time at my disposal. What a reinvigorating power I felt from the Winchester—not the freshness of the morning air, not the sighing of the wind, not the coolness of the sea, not the fragrance of wine, its aroma—nothing in the World has this reinvigorating power. In this way the days go by. Mrs. Winchester seemed perfect happy in her mansion. Her bedroom faced the courtyard. Sometimes she stands on the balcony for a moment, and at night she looks up at the stars, unseen by all. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14

In these nocturnal hours, I walk around like a ghost. Then I forget everything, have no plans, no reckonings, cast understanding overboard, expand and fortify my chest with deep sighs, a motion I need in order not to suffer from my systematic conduct. Others are virtuous by day, sin at night; I am dissimulation by day—at night I am sheer inspiration. When I notice it, far off on the horizon there comes a flashing intimation from a quite different World, to the astonishment of Mrs. Winchester as well as Merriam. Mrs. Winchester sees the lightning but hears nothing; Merriam hears the voice but sees nothing. However, at the same moment everything is in its quiet order; the conversation between Mrs. Winchester and me proceeds in its uniform way, like post horses in the stillness of the night the; the sad hum of the samovar accompanies it. At such moments, it can sometimes be uncomfortable in the drawing room, especially for Merriam. She has no one she can talk with or listen to. I can well understand that it must seem to Merriam as if Mrs. Winchester were bewitched, so perfectly does she move to the tempo of my rhythm. She cannot participate in this conversation either, because one of the means I have also used to outrage her is that I allow myself to treat her just like a child. It is not as if I for that reason would allow myself any liberties whatever with her, far from it. I well know the upsetting effects such things can have, and the point is that her womanliness must be able to rise up pure and beautiful again. Because of my intimate relationship with Mrs. Winchester, it is easy for me to treat her like a child who has no understanding of the World. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14

May be an image of palm trees, outdoors and monument

Her womanliness is not insulted thereby but merely neutralized, for the fact that she does not know market prices cannot insult her womanliness, but the supposition that this is the ultimate in life can certainly be revolting to her. With my powerful assistance on this scored, Mrs. Winchester is out doing herself. She has become almost fanatic—something she can thank me for. The only thing about me that she cannot stand is that I have no position. Now I have adopted the habit of saying whenever a vacancy in some office is mentioned: “There is a position for me,” and thereupon discuss it very gravely with her. Merriam always perceives the irony, which is precisely what I want. The butler came in with more tea. I saw that he was lame. In the moment I remembered him. He was the man I met in the fog. “I met you yesterday afternoon, Mr. Brunton,” I said, as we went into the library. “Yesterday afternoon, sir?” He repeated. “You did not seem to observe me,” I said, carelessly. “I spoke to you, in fact; but you did not reply to me.” “But—indeed, I beg your parson, sir—it must have been someone else,” said the butler. “I did not go out yesterday afternoon.” How could this be anything but a falsehood? I might have been mistaken as to the man’s face; though it was such a singular face, and I had seen it quite plainly. However, how could I be mistaken as to his lameness? Besides, that curious trailing of the right foot, as if the ankle was broken, was not an ordinary lameness. I suppose I looked incredulous, for he added, hastily. “Even if I had not been preparing dinner for inspection, sire, I should not have gone out yesterday afternoon. It was too damp and foggy. I am obliged to be careful—I have a very delicate chest.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 14

May be an image of chandelier and indoor

My dislike to the man increased with every word he uttered. I did not ask myself with what motive he want on heaping lie upon lie; it was enough that, to serve his own ends, whatever those ends might be, he did lie with unparalleled audacity. “We will proceed to the examination, Mr. Brunton,” I said, contemptuously. He turned, if possible, a shade paler than before, bent his head silently, and called up the cuisine in their order. Profusely apologizing, he begged leave to occupy five minutes of my valuable time. He wished, under correction, to suggest a little improvement to many the menu more festive. “Under other circumstances…” I stopped and looked round. The butler repeated my last words. “You were saying, sir—under other circumstances?” I looked around again. “I seemed to me that there was someone here,” I said; “some third person, not a moment ago.” “I beg your pardon, sir—a third person?” “I saw his shadow on the ground, between yours and mine.” The mansion faced due north, and we were standing immediately behind it, with our backs to the sun. The place was bare, and open, and high; and our shadows, sharply defined, lay stretched before our feet. “A—a shadow?” he faltered. “Impossible.” There was not a bush or a true within half a mile. There was not a could in the sky. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, that could have cast a shadow. I admitted that t was impossible, and that I must have fancied it; and so went back to the matter of the menu. “Should you see Mrs. Winchester,” I said, “you are at liberty to say that I thought it a desirable improvement.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 14

“I am much obliged to you, sir. Thank you—thank you very much,” he said, cringing at every word. “But—but I had hoped that you might perhaps use your influence”—“Look there!” I interrupted. “Is that fancy?” We were now close under the blank walls of the kitchen. On this wall, laying to the full sunlight, our shadows—mine and the butler’s—were projected. And there too—no longer between his and mine, but a little way apart, as if the intruder were standing back—there, as sharply defined as if cast by line-light on a prepared background, I again distinctly saw, though but for a moment, that third shadow. As I spoke, as I looked round, it was gone! “Did you not see it?” I asked. He shook his head. “I—I saw nothing” he said, faintly. “What was it?” His lips were white. He seemed scarcely able to stand. “But you must have seen it!” I exclaimed. “It fell just there—where that bit of ivy grows. There must be some boy hiding—it was a boy’s shadow, I am confident. “A boy’s shadow!” he echoed, looking round in a wild, frightened way. “There is no place—for a boy—to hide.” “Place or no place,” I said, angrily, “if I catch him, he shall feel the weight of my cane!” I searched backwards and forwards in every direction, the butler, with his scared face, limping at my heels; but, rough and irregular as the ground was, there was not a hole in it big enough to shelter a rabbit. “But what was it?” I said, impatiently. “An—an illusion. Begging your pardon, sir—and illusion.” He looked so like a beaten hound, so frightened, so fawning, that I felt I could with lively satisfaction have transferred the threatened caning to his own shoulders. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14

“But you saw it?” I said, impatiently. “No, sir. Upon my honour, no, sir. I saw nothing—nothing whatever.” His looks belied his words. I felt certain that he had not only seen the shadow, but that he knew more about it than he chose to tell. I was by this time really angry. To be made the object of a boyish trick, and to be hoodwinked by the connivance of the butler, was too much. It was an insult to myself and my office. I scarcely knew what I said; something short and stern at all events. Then, having said it, I turned my back upon Mr. Brunton and the mansion, and walked rapidly back to the village. As I was leaving the Winchester, it was a gloomy evening. I was standing high in the midst of a somber deer-park some six or seven miles in circumference. An avenue of palm trees, which led up to the house looked so lonely. The butler said, “If you would but be persuaded to say a day longer, a new experience awaits you. I will take you down the Winchester shaft, and show you the home of the gnomes and trolls. I am the king of Hades, and rule the under World as well as the upper. There is gold everywhere underlying this mansion. The whole place is honeycombed with shafts and galleries. One of our richest seams runs under this house, and there are upwards of forty men at work in it a quarter of a mile below our feet here every day. Another leads right away under the park, Heaven only knows how far! My father began working it five-and-twenty years ago, and we have gone on working it ever since; yet it shows no sign of failing. That is why Mrs. Winchester is rich enough to commit whatever design follies she pleases; and that is saying a good deal. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14

“But then, to be always squandering money—always building a rambling mansion—always gratifying the impulse of the moment—is that happiness? Mrs. Winchester has been experimenting for several decades; and with what result? Would you like to see?” He snatched up a lamp and led the way through a long suite of unfinished rooms, the floors of which were piled high with packing cases of all sizes and shapes, labelled with the names of various foreign ports and the addresses of foreign agents innumerable. What did they contain? Precious marbles from Italy and Greece and Asia Minor; priceless paintings by old and modern masters; antiquities from the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates; enamels from Persia, porcelain from China, bronzes from Japan, strange sculptures from Peru; arms, mosaics, ivories, wood-carvings, skins, tapestries, old Italian cabinets, painted bride-chess, Etruscan terracottas; treasures of all countries, or all ages, never even unpacked since they crossed that threshold which the mistress’s foot had crossed but twice during the ten years it had taken to buy them! Should she ever open them, ever arrange them, every enjoy them? Perhaps—if she becomes weary of wandering—if she remarried—if she built a gallery to receive them. If not—well, she might found and endow a museum; or leave the things to the nation. What did it matter? Collecting was like fox-hunting; the pleasure in the pursuit, and ended with it!” Breakfast over, we went around the mansion, and saw the men working. Just as we were about to enter an underground tunnel—a tall, slender lad, with a fishing rod across his shoulder, came out rom one of the side doors of the mansion, crossed the open at field, and disappeared among the tree-trunks on the opposite side. I recognized him instantly. It was the boy whom I saw the other day, just after meeting the butler in the meadow. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14

“If the boy think he is going fishing in a fruit orchard,” I said, “he will find out his mistake.” “What boy,” asked Mr. Brunton, looking back. “That boy who crossed over yonder, a minute ago.” “Yonder!—in front of us?” “Certainly. You must have seen him?” “No I.” “You did no see him?—a tall, thin boy, in a grey suit, with a fishing-rod over his shoulder. He disappeared behind those nectarine trees.” Mr. Brunton looked at me with surprise. “You are dreaming!” he said. “No living thing—not even a rabbit—has crossed our path since we left the mansion.” “I am not in the habit of dreaming with my eyes open,” I replied, quickly. He laughed, and put his arm through mine. “Eyes or no eyes,” he said, “you are under an illusion this time!” An illusion—the very word made use of by the butler! What did it mean? Could I, in truth, no longer rely upon the testimony of my senses? A thousand half-formed apprehensions flashed across me in a moment, I remembered the illusions of Nicolini, the bookseller, and other similar cases of visual hallucination, and I asked myself if I has suddenly become afflicted in like manner. “By jove! This is a queer sight!” exclaimed Mr. Brunton. And then I found that we had emerged from the fruit orchard, and were looking down upon the bed of what yesterday was a lake. It was indeed a queer sight—an oblong, irregular basin of the blackest slime, with here and there a sullen pool, and round the margin an irregular fringe of bulrushes. At some little distance along the bank—less than quarter of a mile from where we were standing—a gaping crowd had gathered. All the foremen seemed to turn out to stare. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14

Hats were pulled off and curtsies dropped at Mr. Brunton’s approach. He, meanwhile, came up smiling, with a pleasant word for everyone. “Well,” he said, “are you looking for the lake, my friends?” “I see a log of rotten timber sticking half in and half out of the mud,” one of the men said, “and something—a long reed, apparently…by Jove! I believe it is a fishing rod!” “It is a fishin’ rod, squire,” said the blacksmith with rough earnestness; “an” if yon rotten timber bayn’t an unburied corpse, mun I never stroike hammer on anvil agin!” There was a buzz of acquiescence from the bystanders. ‘Twas an unburied corpse, such enough. Nobody doubted it. “It must have come out, whatever it is, Mr. Brunton said presently. “Five feet of mud, do you say? Then here is a sovereign apiece for the first two fellows who wade through it and bring that object to land!” It was, in truth, an unburied corpse; part of the trunk only above the surface. They tried to life it; but it had been so long under water, and was in so advanced a stage of decomposition, that to bring it to shore without a shutter was impossible. Being cross-questioned, they thought, from the slenderness of the form, that it must be the body of a boy. “There’s the poor chap’s rod, anyhow,” said the blacksmith, laying it gently down upon the turf. Mrs. Winchester was summoned and told of the news. That night she rushed to her blue séance room and demanded the spirits tell her what happened to the boy. “I invoke thee, and move thee, and stir thee up O Spirit Leraikha,” said Mrs. Winchester. “From the 30 Legions of Spirits, appear unto my eyes before the circle in the likeness of a man in and tell me what has happened to this boy!” #RandolphHarris 12 of 14

“The words Adam spoke to God, and all things of water were as blood,” replied the Spirit Leraikha. “In the names Alpha and Omega, I am the God of Secret Truth who liveth forever, the All-Powerful. It is to I, to whom all creatures are obedient and in the Extreme Justice and Anger of God that I withdrawal this veil that is before the glory of God, might; and by the creatures of living breath before the Thone whose eyes are east and west; by the fire in the fire of just Glory of Mine Throne; by the Holy ones of Heaven; and by the secret wisdom of God, I, exalted in power, has been stirred up to cast a vision of the past and make clear the present! The secrets of truth in voice and understanding comes: This is the corpse of a boy of perhaps ten and four or ten and five years of age. There was a fracture three inches long at the back of the skull, evidently fatal. This might, of course, have been an accidental injury; but when the body came to be raised from where it layeth, it was found to be pinned down by a pitchfork, the handle of which had been afterwards whittled off, so as not to show above water, a discovery tantamount to evidence of murder. The features of the victim were decomposed beyond recognition; but enough of the hair remained to show that it has been short and sandy. He had a passion for fishing and was in the habit of slipping away at school-hours, and showed himself the more cunning and obstinate more he was punished. At last there came a day when the butler tracked him to the place his rod was concealed and beat the miserable lad about the head and arms with a heavy stick. Pin through hand and blood was running out of his mouth until he fell insensible and ceased to breathe. He dragged the body among the bulrushes by the water’s edge, and there concealed it as well as he could. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14

“At night, when the neighbours and staff were in bed asleep, he stole out by starlight, taking with him a pitchfork, a coil of rope, a couple of iron-bars, and a knife. He weighted and sunk the corpse, and pinned it down by the neck with his pitchfork. He then cut away the handle of the fork; hid the fishing-rod among the reeds; and believed, as murderers always believe, that discovery was impossible. His dreadful secret had of late become intolerable. He was haunted by an invisible Presence. That Presence sat with him at table, followed him in his walks stood behind him in the mansion, and watched by his side. He never saw it; but he felt that it was always there. Sometimes he raves of a shadow on the walls of this mansion. I have now told you all that there is at present to tell.” When a community looks only for evidence of guilt and ignores or suppresses all contradictory evidence, the result is a witch hunt. Witch hunts are often used to conceal more heinous crimes. And when a witch hunt occurs, which is the very opposite of what was going on in the case of the murdered boy, the community feels itself so beset by evil that it is no longer capable of perceiving the good. The primary causes of witch hunts are clear. It is usually due to corruption, an outbreak of epidemic hysteria which usually ordinates in experiments with the occult. And the hysterical hallucinations of the afflicted persons are confirmed by some concrete evidence of actual witchcraft and by many confessions, the majority of them hysterical. A number of other explanations have been offered, but most of them are more or less unconvincing. It has been argued that the outbreak is usually due to some new religion. Typically a kind of insanity resulting from sexual repression or denying one’s true sexual nature. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14

Winchester Mystery House

It’s a beautiful day for a stroll through the gardens. Today, Winchester Mystery House marks 99 years since our lady of mystery, Sarah Winchester passed away peacefully in her bedroom of Llanda Villa. We mark her passing with the ringing of the bell 13 times as is our tradition. Thank you Sarah for creating this iconic home that we continue to share with guests from around the world.

🎟️ Link in bio.

May be a black-and-white image of 1 person and standing

A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
🗝 winchestermysteryhouse.com

September 5, 2021 12:19 am

You Must Be As Rich As a Prince With a Fairy Godmother!

Social conditions of the World are not what we would like them to be; the real crux of the problem lies in what should be done about it. By now, you have probably heard a phone-in radio psychologist. On typical program, callers describe social problems from child abuse, loneliness, love affairs, phobia to financial hardships, depression, educational and more. The radio psychologist then offers reassurance, advice, or suggestions for getting help. Talk-radio psychology may seem harmless, but it raises some important questions. For instance, is it reasonable to give advice without knowing anything about a person’s background? Could the advice do harm? What good can a psychologist do in 3 minutes? In defense of themselves, radio psychologists point out that listeners may learn solutions to their problems by hearing others talk. Many of us are concerned with these same problems. However, several radio psychologists also stress that their work is educational, not therapeutic. As you can see, psychological services that rely on electronic communication may serve some useful purposes. Still the very best advice given by media psychologist, telephone counselors, or cybertherapists may be, “You should consider discussing this problem with a psychologist or counselor in your own community.” The social problems of our day are not unique. Jesus Christ was born into a World beset with serious social problems. There existed in Palestine a wide gulf between the rich and the poor. Beggars were found in all of the cities and villages. Disease was rampant. The natives of Palestine were held in bondage to the Roman overlords. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

Thievery and brigandage were everywhere. The story of the Good Samarian, involving a brutal attack on a lone traveler, could have taken from numerous real happenings. The unarmed dared not venture abroad at night. Even the apostles of our Lord sometimes went about armed, as evidence in the account of Gethsemane. However, Jesus has the power to alleviate hunger. He had just fed the five thousand who seemed to desire his word and who had followed him around the Sea of Galilee to be near him. Yet the answer lay no in bread, nor in clothing, nor in houses. The answer lay deep in the hearts of humans. One who was most touched by man’s inhumanity to man, one who had time for the lowliest of the low, knew that man can rise no higher than his thought, than his philosophy of life, his understanding of its purpose, and his relationship to the Almighty. These are the things that determine the stature of man. Hence, Jesus devoted Himself to the teaching of gospel truths, to the establishment of a church with apostles and seventies to teach and to baptize. He knew that change in the individual brought about change in society, that change in the individual was brought about by a change in his spirit, and that the change in his spirit came from the acceptance of God and His commandments. “The son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do,” reports John v.19. If we open such books as Grimm’s Fairy Tales or Ovid’s Metamorphoses or the Italian epics, we find ourselves in a World of miracles so diverse that they can hardly be classified. Beasts turn into men and men into beasts or trees, trees talk, ships become goddesses, and a magic ring can cause tables richly spread with food to appear in solitary places. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

Some people cannot stand this kind of story, others find it fun. However, the least suspicion that it was true would turn the fun into a nightmare. If such things really happened they would, I suppose, show that Nature was being invaded. However, they would show that she was being invaded by alien power. The fitness of the Christian miracles, and their difference from these mythological miracles, lies in the fact that they show invasion by a Power which is not alien. They are what might be expected to happen when she is invaded not simply by a god, but by the God of Nature: by a Power which is outside her jurisdiction not as a foreigner but as a sovereign. They proclaim that He who has come is not merely a king, but the King, her King and ours. It is this which, to my mind, ours. It is this which, to my mind, puts the Christian miracles in a different class from most other miracles. I do not think that it is the duty of a Christian apologist (as many sceptics suppose) to disapprove all stories of the miraculous which fall outside the Christian records, nor of a Christian man to disbelieve them. I am in no way committed to the assertion that God has never worked miracles through and for Pagans or never permitted created supernatural beings to do so. If, so Tacitus, Suetonius, and Dion Cassius relate, Vespasian performed two cures, and if modern doctors tell me that they could not have been performed without miracle, I have no objection. However, I claim that the Christian miracles have a much greater intrinsic probability in virtue of their organic connection with one another and with the whole structure of the religion they exhibit. If it can be shown that one particular Roman emperor—and, let us admit, a fairly good emperor as emperors go—once was empowered to do a miracle, we must of course put up with fact. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

However, it would remain a quite isolated and anomalous fact. Nothing comes of it, nothing leads up to it, it establishes no body of doctrine, explains nothing, is connected with nothing. And this, after all, is an unusually favourable instance of a non-Christian miracle. The immoral, and sometimes almost idiotic interferences attributed to gods in Pagan stories, even if they had a trace of historical evidence, could be accepted a wholly meaningless Universe. What raises infinite difficulties and solves none will be believed by a rational man only under absolute compulsion. Sometimes the credibility of the miracles is in an inverse ratio to the credibility of the religion. Thus miracles are (in late documents, I believe) recorded of the Buddha. However, what could be more absurd than the he who came to teach us that Nature is an illusion from which we must escape should occupy himself in producing effects on the Natural level—that he who comes to wake us from a nightmare should add to the nightmare? The more we respect his teaching, the less we could accept his miracles. However, in Christianity, the more we understand what God it is who is said to be present and the purpose for which He is said to have appeared, the more credible the miracles denied except by those who have abandoned some part of the Christian doctrine. The mind which asks for a non-miraculous Christianity is a mind in process of relapsing from Christianity into mere “religion.” A consideration of the Old Testament miracles is beyond the scope of this essay and would require many kinds of knowledge which I do not possess. My present view—which is tentative and liable to any amount of correction-would be that just as, on the factual side, a long preparation culminates in God’s becoming incarnate as Man, so, on the documentary side, the truth first appears in mythical form and then by a long process of condensing or focusing finally becomes incarnate as History. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

This involves the belief that Myth in general is not merely misunderstood history (as Euhemerus thought) nor diabolical illusion (as some of the Fathers thought) nor priestly lying (as the philosophers of the Enlightenment thought not) but, at its best, a real though unfocused gleam of divine truth falling on human imagination. The Hebrews, like other people, had mythology: but as they were the chosen people so their mythology was the chosen mythology—the mythology chosen by God to be the vehicle of the earliest sacred truths, the first step in that process which ends in the New Testament where truth has become completely historical. Whether we can ever say with certainty where, in this process of crystallization, any particular Old Testament story falls, is another matter. I take it that the memoirs of David’s court come at one end of the scale and are scarcely less historical than St. Mark or Acts; and that the Book of Jonah is at the opposite end. It should be noted that on this view (a) Just as God, in becoming Man, is “emptied” of His glory, so the truth, when it comes down from the “Heaven” of myth to the “Earth” of history, undergoes a certain humiliation. Hence the New Testament is, and ought to be, more prosaic, in some ways less splendid, than the Old; just as the Old Testament is and ought to be less rich in many kinds of imaginative beauty than the Pagan mythologies. (b) Just as God is none the less God by being Man, so the Myth remains Myth even when it becomes Fact. The story of Christ demands from us, and repay, not only a religious and historical but also an imaginative response. It is directed to the child, the poet, and the savage in us as well as to the conscience and to the intellect. One of its functions is to break down dividing walls. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

Some thoughts. The Devout who snatches another’s obedience will also grab one’s grace. The Devout who squirrels away some personal possessions loses one’s right to communal property. The Devout who gives oneself to one’s superior, but does it hesitantly, beguilingly—well, that is a sign that one’s own flesh has not learned to obey itself; that is to say, having gurgitated, it often has to regurgitate. Learn, therefore, to quickly submit yourself to your superior; that is to say, if you finally want to get your flesh under control. The exterior Enemy is more quickly overcome than you would first imagine, especially if your interior life has not been a total loss. A worse, more pestiferous Enemy of the soul lurks, if all were known. It is you yourself, what with your spirit and flesh in total disarray. If you want to prevail against your flesh and blood, then you have to take back full possession of yourself. Up to this very point in your personal history, you have yet to do this. And it is not so surprising. Your love for yourself exceeds all reasonable standards of quantity and quality; that is to say, there is too much of it, and you have spread it too broadly. No wonder you are afraid to resign yourself fully to the will of others! However, what is the big deal here? You who are dust and nothing but dust—you subjected yourself to Me because God asked you to, and you know what? People applauded! However, I the Lord and Tailor of the Universe—I created everything, and I did it out of nothing, if you can imagine that. What is more, I humbly subjected Myself to Humankind because you asked Me to, but what credit, what respect, did I get? I even made Myself lowest of the low, flattest of the flat, and why would I do that? So that you could use My humility as a weapon against your own pride. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

The moral? It is from the Great Bernard’s homily for the Feast of the Annunciation (8): “Dustman, dust thyself! Refuse Collector, collect thyself? Proud Flesh, prostrate thyself under the feet of the passing crowd!” Some recommendations. Light a torch under yourself. Do not let pride eat away at you like a tumor. Be an obedient child, and accept the mud from the feet in front of you as your trudge with the adults on the highway of life. That would avoid the wrath of the Psalmist’s Lord (18.42)! Why do you wail about, you silly fool? That is a sentiment I plucked from the Letter of the Great James (2.20). What have you got to say, you sinful sot, against those who take you to task? You have offended God so many times, and so many times you have merited Hell. I speak with the voice of the Great Ezekiel when I say, “My eye has spared you” (20.17). I am echoing the Great Saul to the Great David in First Samuel when I say, “You soul is precious in my sight” (26.21). You should learn to recognize My love and be grateful for My little gifts. Give yourself always to True Subjection and Humility and patently bear up when the contempt you deserve is heaped upon you. Christian Science can deny the existence of ill health only at the cost of logically denying the existence of good health also. Both are differing conditions of the same thing—the body. Christian Science calls sickness a lie. Then it should likewise call its opposite a lie. However, not only does it not: it actually affirms that good health is a truth and a reality even while it denounces matter—the body—as a lie and an illusion! If, in spite of its deformed logic, Christian Science still gets healing done—as it does—this result must be attributed to the fact that infinite Life-Power does take cognizance of the body’s disease and does not deny its being there. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

It is not only fallacious to deny the existence of a disease but also, if the attempt s made to secure healing, insincere. The Christian Science attempt to deny existence to sickness as an error of moral mind is itself an error. It is more philosophic, first, to take it as an existent fact, but to understand that the body’s reality is only a limited and temporary one, and, second, to couple it with the other fact that there are healing forces and recuperative energies in the higher self of man which may dispel it. If right thinking alone could sustain life and support health irrespective of every other factor, then human beings could immure themselves where sunlight, air, water, and food could not reach them and still live actively. However, the only cases known to history are of few hibernating inactive self-actualized. Such theorizing is self-deceptive. Many people in the Old World, from the safe distance of the study, conveniently denied the existence of disease. Meanwhile the gods have smiled cynically as millions in the Old World have picked up cholera and passed to their doom. The mental peace obtained by denying facts like sickness may be welcome to the sufferer. However, it may also turn out to be a false peace. Although the theory of these cults is in part quite fallacious, the practice of them brings striking results at times. This is because the healing power really comes forth from the individual’s own higher self, to which the cults do—although somewhat unconsciously—direct one. One of the self-actualized paths is the creative use of imagination and thought for self-improvement, and so far as it embodies such a technique, Christian Science is a self-actualized path too. It instructs its disciples to see themselves as perfect, as the Universal Mind sees them, to concentrate on the concept of, and hold to the belief in, the divine man. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

These prayers and attitudes draw forth high resources, which may effect results where ordinary ones fail. This thinking runs somewhat as follows. The entire Universe is but an idea. Therefore the human body is also an idea. Therefore the human being, as the thinker of this idea, possesses complete power to alter, improve, and even change the body. Therefore one can abolish disease, annul sickness, restore health, and preform miraculous environmental betterments at will, provided one can suitably re-adjust and control one’s thoughts. All this sounds plausible and attractive, but there is a fallacy in it. And this is that the human being is the sole thinker of the World-Idea. One is not. One only participates in it along with the World Mind. One’s power over the body is a limited one. By one’s thoughts, one can influence its functioning and sometimes modify its mechanism. An avalanche of recent studies reveals that aerobic exercise not only promotes health and energy, but also is a remedy for mild depression and anxiety. Experiments that randomly assign some depressed or anxious people to exercise routines confirm this. So do surveys showing that Canadians and Americans are more self-confident, self-disciplined, and psychologically resilient if physically fit. Sound minds reside in sound bodies. Also, get REST—Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy. Happy people live active, vigorous lives, yet reserve time for renewing sleep and solitude. Americans suffer from a growing “national sleep debt,” with resulting fatigue, diminished alertness, and gloomy moods. Even a literal day of REST, or smaller, daily doses of solitude in meditation or prayer, can spiritually recharge. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

There are few better remedies for unhappiness than an intimate friendship with someone who cares deeply about you. Confiding is good for soul and body. “Woe to one who is alone and falls and does not have another to help,” observed the writer of Ecclesiastes. Research confirms that we humans have a deep “need to belong”—to connect with others in close, supportive, intimate relationships. Committed marriages, for example, are associated with health, happiness, and reduced poverty, and with better-educated, healthier, and more successful children. It was found that 40 percent of married adults but only 23 percent of those who never married (and end fewer of the divorced and separated) reported them selves “very happy.” New evidence indicates that marriage does no just ride along with social, psychological, and economic well-being; it contributes to it. So, if and when you marry, resolve to nurture your relationship, not to take your partner for granted, to display to your spouse the sort of kindness that you display to others, to affirm your partner, to play together and share together. To rejuvenate your affections, resolve in such ways to act lovingly. In study after study, actively religious people prove to be happier. In fact, 47 percent of those attending church or synagogue several times weekly said they were “very happy,” as did only 27 percent of those never attending. Those with an active faith also cope better with crises. Compared with religious inactive widows, recently widowed women who worship regularly report more joy. Among mothers of developmentally challenged children, those with a deep religious faith are less vulnerable to depression. People of faith also tend to retain or recover greater happiness after suffering divorce, unemployment, serious illness, or bereavement. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

For many people, faith provides, first, a support community. The fellowship of kindred spirits, the bearing of one another’s burdens, the ties of love that bind are intrinsic to Christian communities—of which there are some 400,000 in North America. Faith also provides many people with a sense of life’s meaning and purpose. Faith satisfies the most fundamental need of all. That is the need to know that somehow we matter, that our lives mean something, count as something more than jus a momentary blip in the Universe. Faith also offers feelings of ultimate acceptance (what Christians know as the “grace” experience), a reason to focus beyond self, and a timeless perspective on life’s woes. We are mindful of the reality of suffering and the terror of death, yet sustained by a hope that in the end, the very end, all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. If the electronic cottage were to spread, people working from home instead of at the office, a chain of consequences of great importance would flow through society. Many of these consequences would please the most ardent environmentalist or techno-rebel, while at the same time opening new options for business entrepreneurship. Community impact: Work at home involving any sizeable fraction of the population could mean greater community stability—a goal that now seems beyond our reach in many high-change regions. If employees can perform some or all of their work tasks at home, they do not have to move every time they change jobs, as many are compelled to do today. They can simply plug into a different computer. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

This implies less forced mobility, less stress on the individual, fewer transient human relationships, and greater participation in community life. Today when a family moves into a community, suspecting that it will be moving out again in a year or two, its members are markedly reluctant to join neighbourhood organizations, to make deep friendships, to engage in local politics, and to commit themselves to community life generally. The electronic cottage could help restore a sense of community belonging, and touch off a renaissance among voluntary organizations like churches, women’s groups, lodges, clubs, athletic and youth organizations. The electronic cottage could mean more of what sociologists, with their love of German jargon, call gemeinschaft. Environmental Impact: The transfer of work, or any part of it, into the home could not only reduce energy requirements, as suggested above, but could also lead to energy decentralization. In stead of requiring highly concentrated amounts of energy in a few high-rise offices or sprawling factory complexes, and therefore requiring highly centralized energy generation, the electronic cottage system would spread out energy demand and thus make it easier to use solar, wind, and other alternative energy technologies. Small-scale energy generation units in each home could substitute for at least some of the centralized energy now required. This implies a decline in pollution as well, for two reasons: first, the switch to renewable energy sources on a small-scale basis eliminates the need for high-polluting fuels, and second, it means smaller releases of highly concentrated pollutants that overload the environment at a few critical locations. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

Economic Impact: Some businesses would shrink in such a system, and others proliferate or grow. Clearly, the electronics and computer and communications industries would flourish. By contrast, the oil companies, the auto industry, and commercial real estate developers would be hurt. A whole new group of small-scale computer stores and information services would spring up; the postal service, by contrast, would shrink. Papermakers would do less well; most service industries and white-collar industries would benefit. At a deeper level, if individuals came to own their own electronic terminals and equipment, purchased perhaps on credit, they would become, in effect, independent entrepreneurs rather than classical employees—meaning, as it were, increased ownership of the “means of production” by the worker. We might also se groups of home-workers organize themselves into smaller companies to contract for their service or, for that matter, unite in cooperatives that jointly own the machines. All sorts of new relationships and organizational forms become possible. Psychological Impact: The picture of a work World that is increasingly dependent upon abstract symbols conjures up an overcerebral work environment that is alien to us and, at one level, more impersonal than at present. However, at a different level, work at home suggests a deepening of face-to-face and emotional relationships in both the home and the neighbourhood. Rather than a World of purely vicarious human relationships, with an electric screen interposed between the individual and the rest of humanity, as imagined in many science fiction stories, one can postulate a World divided into two sets of human relationships—one real, the other vicarious—with different rules and roles in each. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

No doubt we will experiment with many variations and halfway measures. Many people will work at home part-time and outside the home as well. Dispersed work centers will no doubt proliferate. Some people will work at home for months or years, then switch to an outside job, and then perhaps switch back again. Patterns of leadership and management will have to change. Small firms would undoubtedly spring up to contract for white-collar tasks from larger firms and take on specialized responsibilities for organizing, training, and managing teams of homeworkers. To maintain adequate liaison among them, perhaps such small companies will organize parties, social occasions, and other joint holidays, so that the members of a team get to know one another face-to-face, not merely through the console or keyboard. Certainly not everyone can or will (or will want to) work at home. Certainly we face a conflict over pay scales and opportunity cost. What happens to the society when an increased amount of human interaction on the job is vicarious while face-to-face, emotion-to-emotion interaction intensifies in the home? What about cities? What happens to the unemployment figures? What, in fact, do we mean by the terms “employment” and “unemployment” in such a system? It would be naïve to dismiss such question and problems. However, if there are unanswered questions and possibly painful difficulties, there are also new possibilities. The leap to a new system of production is likely to render irrelevant many of the most intractable problems of the passing era. The misery of feudal toil, for example, could not be alleviated within the system of feudal agriculture. #RandolphHarrs 14 of 20

May be an image of laundromat and indoor

Feudal toil was not eliminated by peasant revolts, by altruistic nobles, or by religions utopians. Toil remained miserable until it was altered entirely by the arrival of the factory system, with its own strikingly different drawbacks. In turn, the character problems of industrial society—from unemployment to grinding monotony on the job to overspecialization, to the callous treatment of the individual, to low wages—may, despite the best intentions and promises of job enlargers, trade unions, benign employers, or revolutionary workers’ parities, be wholly unresolvable within the framework of the Second Wave production system. If such problems have remained for 300 years, under both capitalist and socialist arrangements, there is cause to think they may be inherent in the mode of production. The leap to a new production system in both manufacturing and the white-collar sector, and the possible breakthrough to the electronic cottage, promise to change all the existing terms of debate, making obsolete most of the issues over which men and women today argue, struggle, and sometimes die. We cannot today know if, in fact, the electronic cottage will become the norm of the future. Nevertheless, it is worth recognizing that if as few as 10 to 20 percent of the work force as presently defined were to make this historic transfer over the next 5 to 10 years our entire economy, our cities, our ecology, our family structure, our values, and even our politics would be altered almost beyond our recognition. It is a possibility—a plausibility, perhaps—to be pondered. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

It is now possible to see in relationship to one another a number of Third Wave changes usually examined in isolation. We see a transformation of our energy system and our energy base into a new techno-sphere. This is occurring at the same time that we are demassifying the mass media and building an intelligent environment, thus revolutionizing the info-sphere as well. In turn, these two giant currents flow together to change the deep structure of our production system, altering the nature of work in factory and office and, ultimately, carrying us toward the transfer of work back into the home. By themselves, such massive historical shifts would easily justify the claim that we are on the edge of a new civilization. However, we are simultaneously restructuring our social life as well, from our family ties and friendships to our schools and corporations. We are about to create, alongside the Third Wave techno-sphere and info-sphere, a Third Wave socio-sphere as well. It is somewhat ironic that the contemporary concern over the patriarchal nature of suburbia is the exact opposite of the major criticisms made by popular antisuburban literature of the post-World War II period. The accusation made by critics of suburbia following the war was not that suburbs fostered a patriarchal traditional family, but rather that the husbands’ absence from the suburban home during the day led to a suburban matriarchy. This matriarchy, it was charged, was leading to a child-dominated society. The suburban way of life was said to lead to excessive, overprotective “momism.” Suburban mothers were criticized for having excessive involvement in the raising of their sons, which was leading to the raising of a generation of what was perceived as male offspring who lacked resolution and that were weak and purposeless. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

These beliefs or the spineless male offspring were not fringe views. It is worth nothing that Philip Wylie’s, Generation of Vipers, which put the term “momism” into the language, had gone through twenty printings by the 1950s (Philip Wylie, Generation of Vipers, Ferrar and Rinehart, New York, 1942). Popular postwar criticism, as expressed by psychiatrists and others, was that suburban life, with its daytime absence of males, led to excessive independence and isolation of women. Female-oriented suburban life was, in turn, blamed for increases in adultery, alcoholism, mental illness, and divorce. Such pop-psychology myths received wide dissemination and acceptance as factual descriptions of reality. So maybe there will be some benefits to the electronic cottage. However, the 1963 publication of Betty Friedan’s landmark, The Feminine Mystique (1963) turned the argument completely around. Dr. Friedan gave voice to the widespread angst of housewives, and she noted that it came not from having too much suburban free time, but from powerlessness. She agreed that suburbs helped create a female culture, but it was not a culture of dominating momism, but rather one of essential exclusion from outside-the-hone decision making. There have been discussion going back over a century as to whether suburban life was better for males or females. Actual studies done in the 1960s and 1970s tended to show that suburbia and suburban life favoured males, with husbands being more pleased with suburban living than their wives. Gans, in his famous Levittown study, found, for example, that three out of ten thousand, but six our of ten wives, preferred to live in the city “if not for their children. College-educated women with young children particular felt the restrictions of being tied to the limited local community for intellectual stimulation. Studies generally found that husbands, because they left the community for work, had wider networks of friends and colleagues, while wives were more likely to be restricted to socializing with those in the neighbourhood. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

A major study of Toronto housing by William Michelson found that women living in urban residential areas had greater satisfaction with their neighbourhoods than those in more suburban locations. Women particularly liked the access to services and public transportation that urban areas afforded. In most writings, men were reported more likely to prefer suburbs since they provided escape from urban pressures and demands. A feminist’s review of literature on the effect of housing environments on women concluded that the burdens of isolated suburban life fell particularly heavily on women. However, times change. While one still hears references to women being isolated in suburbia without access to cars, culture, or community, this picture increasingly is a cliché of another era. In a time when two-and even three-car families are the norm, and when most women, including those with young children, are in the labour force, the image of this isolated suburban homemaker seems somewhat quaintly dated. The picture of the homemaker trapped all day in her suburban home and kitchen has more ties to the 1950s than to the realities of contemporary life. Today most women have careers or jobs outside the home. Yet, the post-World War II, “modern” kitchen showed the full effects of “scientific” domestic engineering and home economics, but was still quite clearly a woman’s domain. However, this is changing in modern architecture. Kitchens are becoming more larger and masculine. Also, the preference of women for the convenience of the city over the space of the suburbs no longer applies. The data are rather overwhelming in indicating that most American women wanted detached, single-family suburban homes. The federal government’s Annual Housing Survey indicated that women equally with men share a preference for suburban over urban housing. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Large majorities of both genders prefer single-family homes. Moreover, single women heading households, similarly to married-couple householders, expressed the greatest satisfaction with living in suburban housing. Christine Cook similarly found that female single-parent householders express greater satisfaction with suburban rather than city housing. Lower rates of crime, better school for their children, and the generally more peaceful environment were the most common reasons given for preferring the suburbs. For women householders, the traditional urban advantages of access to public transit and shopping now appear to be more than offset by concerns over crime and poor-quality schools. Gender differences are becoming less and less relevant in predicting housing preferences. The Annual Housing Survey indicates both men and women now give similar reason for moving to a particular area. Unlike the suburbanites of the 1950s and 1960s, the majority of young adults now living in suburbs have grown up in suburbs rather than in central cities. This, they are most comfortable with the suburban environment in which they were raised. Also, massive changes in shopping and employment patterns over the past decades have resulted in the majority of these activities now being located in suburbs. Living in the suburbs is now the middle-class norm; it is living elsewhere that requires a specific decision. Often critics of suburban housing and lifestyles appear to be viewing suburbs through a different prism than that used by actual suburban residents. Today’s suburbanites are more concern about matters such as commuting problems, and getting more open time than they are about being trapped in their suburban houses. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

Having too much independent or leisure time with nothing to do is not a prime problem of women of the 21^st century. Most suburbanites, male and female, would welcome having a few days alone at home. The small plot of ground on which you were born cannot be expected to stay forever the same. Earth changes, and homes becomes different places. You took flesh from clay, but the clay did not come from just one place. To feel alive, important, and safe, know your own waters and hills, but know more. You have stars in your bones and oceans in blood. You have opposing terrain in each eye. You belong to the land and sky of your first cry, you belong to infinity. As Thou didst save them who were sustained on the Sabbath by the prepared manna, the appearance of which altered not, and the fragrance thereof did not change, so save us now. As Thou didst save those whom from the Torah derived the laws concerning Sabbath-burdens, who in resting and reposing thereon observed its bounds and limits, so save us now. As Thou didst save them who at Sinai were instructed in the Fourth Commandment to “Remember” and “Observe” the holiness of the Sabbath, so save us now. As Thou didst save them that were commanded to encircle Jericho seven times, who besieged and attacked it until it fell on the Sabbath, so save us now. As Thou didst save Solomon and his people n the holy Temple, who sought Thy favour with a festival of twice seven days, so save us now. As Thou didst save the exiled throngs returning to redemption, who on this festival read from Thy Torah each say, so save us now. As Thou didst save Thy rejoicing hosts in the renewed glory of the second Temple, as on each of these seven days, they bore the palm-branch in the Sanctuary, so save us now. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

Cresleigh Homes

The IDEAL home is the one that fits your REAL life. The Brighton Station Residence 4 is equipped with the option of multi-generational living, 😮 thanks to the first floor bedroom + bathroom. https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/residence-4/

There are so many possibilities when your home is thoughtfully designed and beautifully executed!

Brighton Station at Cresleigh Ranch is Rancho Cordova’s newest home community! This charming neighborhood offers an array of home types with eye catching architecture styles such as Mid-Century Modern, California Modern, Prairie, and Contemporary Farmhouse.

#CresleighHomes
#CresleighRanch

September 4, 2021 1:25 am

You Do Not Have to Have a Good Heart to Have a Good Soul!

If Adam could reenter the garden of Eden and not sin, then there would be no curse on humanity. However, if Adam had not sinned, you would not be here, would you then be happy? Salvation comes at a price, but without sin, there would never have been a need. Cognitive learning involves higher mental processes, such as understanding, knowing, or anticipating. Even in relatively simple learning situations, animals and people seem to form cognitive maps (internal representations of relationships). Reach out to those in need. Happiness increases helpfulness (those who feel good do good.) However, doing good also makes one feel good. Compassionate acts help one feel better about oneself. The New Testament’s four books on Jesus’ life all record His teachings that to find life, we must be willing to lose our lives. To find meaning, we must discover something bigger than ourselves, and serve it. Living beyond self is therefore a part of Catholic wisdom. Paradoxically, personal fulfillment means abandoning ourselves and putting others first. In the Catholic tradition, ultimate satisfaction is promised to those who give up their desire for self-satisfaction. This is part of the meaning of crucifixion. The cross leads to resurrection, to new life. When we let go of ourselves, our lives become filled with grace. The lives of St. Francis of Assisi, Pope John XXIII and Mother Teresa of Calcutta radiate a grace that people of all religious traditions admire. The thing one would notice about Mother Teresa and the hundreds of sisters who form her team is that they all look so happy. Mother Teresa said, “Nothing makes you happier than when you really reach out in mercy to someone who is badly hurt.” In latent learning, learning remains hidden or unseen until a reward or incentive for performance is offered. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

As if to test Mother Teresa’s idea, the psychologist Bernard Rimland id an experiment. He asked 216 students to list the initials of ten people they knew best, yielding a grand list of some two thousand people. He then asked them to indicate whether each person seemed happy or not. Finally, he asked them to go over each name again, indicating if the person seemed selfish (devoted mostly to one’s own welfare) or unselfish (willing to be inconvenienced for others). The striking result: 70 percent of those judged unselfish seemed happy; 95 percent of those judged selfish seemed unhappy. What a paradox, said the surprised Mr. Rimland: “Selfish people are, by definition, those whose activities are devoted to bringing themselves happiness. Yet, at least as judged by others, these selfish people are far less likely to be happy than those whose efforts are devoted to making them happy.” Happy people also often are in a zone called “flow”—absorbed in a task that challenges them without overwhelming them. The most expensive forms of leisure (such as sitting on a yacht or reading a book in the tower of a Victorian mansion) often provide less flow experience than gardening, socializing, or craft work. Much of human learning is achieved through observation, or modeling. Observational learning is influenced by the personal characteristics of the model and the success of failure of the model’s behaviour. Studies have shown that aggression is readily learned and released by modeling. The Christian Science practitioners apparently use their formulas, their statements of being, their treatments, in the form of uttered incantations. This is much like the use of mantrams in India. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

A comparative study of the history of mental healing shows how Universal and ancient are the origins of this treatment.; nor are its principles new. Mental Moral and Spirit Hygiene seeks to establish a proper way of living and thus prevent sickness. The healing art steps in where sickness already exists and a cure is sought. Another extremely fanatical attitude of which we must beware is the belief that mental healing displaces all other system and agencies for curing disease or keeping health; that its advocates may totally discard every branch of medicine and surgery, hygiene, and physical treatment. Sanity and balance call for the acceptance in its proper place of whatever Nature and man can contribute. With these preliminary warnings, we venture to predict that as the principles and practices of mental healing come to be better, namely more rationally understood, it will establish for itself a firm place in therapeutics which will have to be conceded—however grudgingly—by the most materialistic and most sceptical of medicos. We must remember that mental healing is only a single aspect of the art of healing. All the others must be brought in to make a balanced system. God as given us valuable herbs, for instance which possess remedial virtues. We should accept the gift. The error of Christian Science would appear to be that is confuses theory and wrongly applies practice. Its principles are half-right, half-wrong; its techniques are the same. The injunction to “cast thy burden on Me,” which it seems to apply, is misunderstood to advise neglecting practical means of healing troubles and leaving all to God. However, the correct way is not to neglect them but to do them while at the same time leaving results to God and being indifferent to them. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

Even if Christian Science and New Thought sects produce healings, they are still not truly “divine.” They use some lower force—some vital force, as the Indians say. For they are all attached to the ego, which is itself a consequence of their unconscious belief in its reality. The ego has cunningly inserted itself even into these highly spiritual teachings and is still the hidden source behind both their prophets and their followers. This explains the commercialism of humanity as well as the errors which are contained in the teachings of false prophets, which lead to so many people experiencing their own mental-physical breakdown and death. The Pleasures of this World may have whatever they want now, but will they have it forever? No, only “as long as smoke will last,” if I may replay with the Psalmist (37.20). That is the fate of every Midas since time began. Know there is no recordist of past joys, no lasting list of things that brough us pleasure. “As the smoke vanishes,” sang the Psalmist in another place (68.2). Even at the high point of their lives, the wealthy have never spent a night without bitterness, boredom, nor fear. The very things that brought them delight during the day haunted them throughout the night. However, what did they expect? They went out of their way to find bad companions. Take Delectation and Delight, for example. They seemed fanciful creatures at first, what with a myriad of murmurings and mummerings, but off with the masks, and there stood Bitterness and Consternation with scented breaths and missing teeth. Oh, how brief, false, wild, base these so-called pleasures are! You would think the Pleasurers would have understood this, but apparently they did not. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

Their judgment was impaired, perhaps by boozing, perhaps by bamboozling. In this regard they were no better than the dumb animals, as the Apostle Judge might have put it (v.10); they grazed their way through life, eating what they should have and also what they should not have, till they brought on themselves an early death. Two Scriptures for you, My soulful friend. “Do not trail after your concupiscences,” as Jesus son of Sirach put it (18.30), “and swerve while you can from the headlong flight of your own will. “Delight in the Lord,” if I may sing with the Psalmist (37.4), “and He will grant you the petitions of your heart.” If you want to be entertained and consoled by Me, then you can. Merely hold in contempt all Worldly things and cut off all sickly delectations. Then My blessing will be yours, to be followed by copious consolation. Withdraw yourself, therefore, from every solace known to creatures, you will find in Me no sweeter, no stronger consolation. That will not happen right away in the spiritual life, as you, My friend, already know; at least not without some spiritual sadness and fatigue. The ingrained habits of a lifetime will stand in the way, as the Great Augustine acknowledged in his Confessions (8.11). They too can be overcome, but only by a better habit, which, alas for the New Devout, will be hard to do. The Flesh will murmur and demur at first, but the fervour of he Spirit will bridle it. The Ancient Serpent that Genesis spoke of in chapter 3 and the Great Dragon of Revelation in chapter 12 will chat you up, of course, but they will only make things worse. Prayer is useful in this regard. It will make them stop, stare, then slither away. To prevent their returning anytime soon, do keep yourself occupied. “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody,” reports 1 Thessalonians 4.11-12. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

There are so many mounting pressures towards telecommuting and they will intensify as cars are seen as status symbols (and people want to keep the milage low on them so they can hold their value better), intermittent gas shortages, odd-even days, long lines at the fuel pump, and perhaps rationing disrupt and delay normal commuting, further jacking up its cost in both social and economic terms. To this we can add even more pressures tending in the same direction. Corporate and government employers will discover that shifting work into the home—or into local neighbourhood work centers as a halfway measure—can sharply reduce the huge amounts now spent for real estate. The small the central offices and manufacturing facilities become, the smaller the real estate bill, and the smaller the costs of heating, cooling, lighting, policing, and maintaining them. However, identity theft and data breaches may become more of a problem because there is no one in the home to monitor employees, who they allow into their homes and what they are doing with client’s information. A friend or family member may steal or share someone’s personal information. Or someone may approach a work at home employee and buy private information from them, even though it is illegal. However, with moral values down the drain and law enforcement being swamped and unconcerned, at times, it could lead to a nightmare. Nonetheless, as land and commercial and industrial real estate, and the associated tax load all soar, the hope of reducing and/or externalizing these opportunity costs may favour the farming-out of work. Corporate America always finds a way to come out on top. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

The transfer of work and the reduction of commuting will also reduce pollution and therefore the tab for cleaning it up. The more successful environmentalists become at compelling companies to pay for their own pollution, the more incentive there will be to shift to low-polluting activities, and therefore from large-scale, centralized workplaces to smaller work centers or, better yet, into the home. Beyond this, as environmentalists and conservation-minded citizens groups battle against the destructive effects of the auto, and oppose road and highway construction, or succeed in banning cars from certain districts, they unwittingly support the transfer of work. The new effect of their efforts is to force up the already high cost and personal inconvenience of transport as against the low cost and convenience of communication. When environmentalists discover the ecological disparities between these two alternatives, and as the shift of work to the home begins to look like a real option, they will throw their weight behind this important decentralist move and help coax us into the civilization of the Third Wave. Social factors, too, support the move to the electronic cottage. The shorter the workday becomes, the longer the commuting time in relationship to it. The employee who hates to spend an hour getting to and from the job in order to spend eight hours working may very well refuse to invest the same commuting time if the hours spent on the job are cut. The higher the ratio of commuting time to working time, the more irrational frustrating, and absurd the process of shuttling back and forth. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

As resistance to commuting rises, employers will indirectly have to increase the premium paid to workers in the big, centralized work locations, as against those willing to take less pay for less travel time, inconvenience, and costs. Once again there will be greater incentive to transfer work. Finally, deep value changes are moving the same direction. Quite apart from the growth of privatism and the new allure of small-city and rural life, we are witnessing a basic shift in attitude toward the family unit. The nuclear family, the standard, socially approved family form throughout the Second Wave period is clearly in crisis. We shall explore the family of the future in much detail later. For now, we need only note the in the United States of America and Europe—wherever the transition out of the nuclear family is most advanced—there is a swelling demand for action to glue the family unit together again. And it is worth observing that one of the things that has bound families tightly together through history has been shared work. Even today one suspects that divorce rates are lower among couples who work together. The electronic cottage raises once more on a mass scale the possibility of husbands and wives, and perhaps even children, working together as a unit. And when campaigners for family life discover the possibilities inherent in the transfer of work to the home, we may discover he possibilities inherent in the transfer of work to the home we may see a rising demand for political measure to speed up the process—tax incentives, for example and new conceptions of workers’ rights. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

Furthermore, with Social Security expected to be insolvent in 2033 and Medicare by 2026, working from home may be more appealing to people who do not want to work or have conditions that prohibit them from working. As more corporations allow people to work from home, this may increase the pool of people looking for jobs, and could help entitlement, insurance, and retirement programs recover some revenue. During the early days of the Second Wave era, the workers’ movement fought for a “Ten Hour Day,” a demand that would have been almost incomprehensible during the First Wave period. Soon we may see the rise of movements demanding that all work that can be done at home be done at home. Many workers will insist on that option as a right. And, to the degree that this relocation of work is seen as strengthening family life, their demand will receive strong support from people of many different political, religious, and cultural persuasions. The fight for the electronic cottage is part of the larger super-struggle between the Second Wave past and the Third Wave future, and it is likely to bring together not merely technologists and corporations eager to exploit the new technical possibilities but a wide range of other forces—environmentalists, labour reformers of a new style, and a broad coalition of organizations, from conservative churches to radical feminists and mainstream political groups—in support of what may well be seen as a new, more satisfactory future for the family. The electronic cottage may thus emerge as a key rallying point of the Third Wave forces of tomorrow. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

Also, home economics bears a significant position in our education system. Not only do students need to learn how to sew, bake muffins and cakes, learn about nutritional value, and how to become conservative adults, home economics teaches students other life skills that help individuals succeed, independent of their chosen career path. Home economics helps students continually grow in the future as it emphasizes on personal development, intrapersonal skills, effective decision making and social-communicational skills deemed critical for occupational success. The various essential skills that home economics discusses includes financial planning, cooking and nutrition, safety, and overall life skills. It teaches students how to use a debit or credit card, how to open a checking and savings account, write a cheque. Students are also taught about their future, and how to effectively handle all their finances and how to avoid financial mistakes that could potentially bey very stressful in the near future. Home economics classes also educate student son interests rates, investment and takes, and how to choose good stock markets to invest money into or what would happen if you do not pay your taxes on time and so forth. It is extremely critical to be well versed in such matters to live in the World today. One of the most serious obstacles that families face today is how to eat healthily, but not spend all their savings on trying to purchase grocery items for the same. If such things are taught at an early age, there can be many problems avoided such as health defects, obesity, immorality and much more. Safety is something that seems obvious but is a very relevant topic that is taught in home economics. Students are taught about how to establish a safe environment around them. They learn about what to do in case of a fire, how to perform CPR, use a first aid kit, how to treat an open wound or prevent an injury from spreading. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

Students are also taught critical, essential factors about working in the kitchen such as the most effective way of holding a knife, what material of clothing should not be worn in the kitchen, making sure the stove is always attended to and that pots should not have handles sticking outward, not to place lips on cooktop glass stoves (it cases them to shatter), what temperature the food should be cooked at and how it should be stored, how to clean up after you have finished cooking. When students are not educated about such things, there are so many possibilities of danger in and around us. God behaviour and manners are also valuable skills to learn about. Some teachers encourage students not to get tattoos nor piercings, not to grow facial hair, to be polite, speak clearly, and to respect all people. Not to hit, bite, scream, punch or kick. Students learn how to talk smart or how to give order and not sound discourteous while doing e same. They are taught to converse, sit and dress during a job interview. Many students also go on to go to college and end up sharing an apartment or a room with another person. Home economics teaches them how to adjust to living with someone else in such tight spaces. How to respect each other’s privacy and how to divine various tasks like cleaning, setting up the room and shopping. And to even leave a not if you hit someone’s car in the parking lot. Therefore, home economics teaches us basic life skills. Our World is so vast and developed todays that it is nice to receive instructions on how to go about it. For the half-century from 1920 to 1970, the popular magazine equated the suburban homes with attaining the American Dream, and that was the foundation of home economics. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

However, rather than seeing the suburban bungalow as an ideal, feminists of the era saw the wife’s involvement in a self-contained home as a patriarch-designed regression. Thus, feminists were almost always antisuburban, ending to equate the suburban home not with more freedom, but with a patriarchal desire to confine women and children to an isolated home environment. The suburban ideal of domestic togetherness was viewed as a male device for keeping women in their domestic place. (However, as a contrast, today many women complain that men are not providers, unwilling to work and support their children and will not purchase the family a house or a car, sometimes they will not even buy food. It is like they expect the wife and the children to provide for the man, while he sits back, watches TV, drinks beer, hoots and howls while playing video games and inhales marijuana and eat pork rinds chicken wings with Crystal hot sauce, and Twinkies.) The suburban ideal of domestic togetherness was viewed by the feminists as a male device for keeping women in their domestic place. (Which some now wish would occur so the man can return to be a provider and having gainful employment.) However, to break traditional patterns and gender roles in the home, feminists of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries often advocated making housework, laundry, and cooking communal responsibilities. This, they believed, would emancipate women from the daily drudgery that confined them to the house and its responsibilities. Utopian feminists’ communities, such as the early-twentieth-century Llano del Rio in southern California, often were designed without kitchens in homes. Rather, the houses backed on a communal kitchen and eating area. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

Laundry, similarly, was done in communal rather than household facilities. The goal was to provide time for other activities. Somewhat ironically, this goal was accomplished for the middle-class women by having lower-class women do the heavy washing, cooking, and cleaning. In the day and age, it apparently never occurred to the proponents of Llano Del Rio that class discrimination was being substituted for gender discrimination. Contemporary feminist writings on ideal housing continue to stress the advantages of communal housing models. This is particularly the case with those favouring neo-Marxist models. Gender inequality is seen as an inevitable consequence of single-family suburban housing being built by men for men. Feminist writers generally view spatial structure as reinforcing gender inequalities, with the cities representing masculine centers of production and the suburbs feminine centers of reproduction. Suburban single-family home designs are part of a patriarchal family structure in which, “The dominance of the single-family detached dwelling, its separation from the workplace, and its decentralized urban location are as much the products of the patriarchal organization of household production as of the capitalistic organization of wage work. Important non-Marxist feminists such as Betty Friedan have also been justly critical of a model in which women were to remain tied to the house as homemakers while men commuted to the real World of work in the city. Only by entering the paid work force and establishing careers could women be liberated from the bondage of domestic servitude. Attempts to design more women—centered housing continues to be a major concern. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

Ideally, such women-centered housing would be designed to prevent isolation from public life that is seen to be integral to contemporary suburbs. Feminist designs, harkening back to the earlier communal models, emphasize the importance of facilities. However, survey research indicates most women continue to prefer private over communal kitchens and other facilities. BMW took the women’s power move a little further. They very stylish and sporty BMW Z4 roadster with retractable hard-top roof was designed all by women. Designer Juliane Blasi—the first female to design the exterior of a BMW—created a stunning look with its elongated hood, short overhangs, powerful wheel arches, and flowing creases. Even the two roll-over bars in the ruthenium-look steel complement the exterior design. Another sophisticated woman, Nadya Arnaout, designed the interior, which is smart and sophisticated—a clean and modern look. The instruments are well-positioned and easy to find; large round HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) dials make it a cinch to adjust the temperature top up or down. A push-button start lets your fire up the engine without a key—the key fob can be hidden deep in your pocket; as long as it is nearby the car will start. It is easy to change the radio as well. A tiny electronic parking brake is located behind the gear shifter, which saves space, yet blends nicely into the décor. The car also comes very a very sophisticated price tag of approximately $63,000USD. Diversity is very important, and it is a notable characteristic of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which transcends every culture, rave, nationality, and language. Cultures and peoples throughout the World gather together by because the Saviour’s invitation that all God’s children come unto Him. The Heavenly Father loves each and everyone of his children equally. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

When the impeccable peace of the Overself inundates a human’s hear, one finds hat it is no negative thing. It must not be confused with sinister calm of a graveyard or with the mocking immobility of a paralytic. It is a strong, beneficial, and enduring quality which is definitely enjoyable. We actually get a momentary and much-diluted sample of it at such times as when a hated object is suddenly removed from our path, when a powerful ancient ambition is suddenly realized, or when we meet a greatly beloved person after long absence. Why? Because at such moments we are free from the infatuation with the hatred, the ambition, or the love simply because they have achieved their object and the desire-thoughts become still. The freedom passes almost in a flash, however, because some other infatuation replaces it in the heart within a few moments and thoughts begin their movement again. Whatever negative ideas and destructive feelings, whatever harassing doubts and muggy confusions one may have had before the Glimpse comes, disappear in its great joyous peace and vas buoyant certitude. It is not a merely abstract concept in the brain but a piercing experience in the heart. When these rare moments come quietly upon one, one feels oneself humbled and subdued. In these moments the air seems warm and pleasant, the Universe charged with friendliness. These moments of divine glorification exalt us like moments of hearing fine music. They come with the force of revelations for which we have been waiting. They hold us with the spell of enchantment made by a wizard’s hand. Their magical influence and mystical beauty pass all too soon, but the memory of them never does. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

The ecstasy of that state is rare, the abundant happiness it yields is unforgettable. Those who have lifted themselves up at times into the higher Mind know the paradox of the air in which it dwells. For if beneficent gentle peace is there, so too is invigourating immeasurable strength. The Glimpse comes as a benediction and as a grace. The heart should be grateful, immensely grateful for its visitation. It possesses a beauty which is not of this World, which gives joy to the heart. “In The presence is fullness of joy,” reports Psalms 16.11. It is a feeling of unearthly and unlimited peace. The World stands still, the sense of time passing and events happening is suspended. Nothing exists but this Oneness. Some are ready to enter the light and when—through the mediumship of Nature or Art, a man or a book—that happens, the experience is as enjoyable as entering an orchard of ripened apricots. The joy comes upon one out of the unknown, gently, mysteriously, and sunnily. As this wonderful feeling steals over one, there is a clear and unmistakable sense that the Overself is displacing the ego. Hitherto one has obeyed the rule of the flesh and the brain and consequently has shared their pitiful limitations. Now one becomes acutely aware that a new sovereign is taking one’s place on the throne. One feels that one has reached the very edge of another self, another World of being. In its newly discovered presence, we are relieved of cares, immune to anxieties about the future, and liberated from regrets about the past. It is not the unspeech of morbid taciturnity but a mysterious hush which falls on the soul. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

If one is fortunate there may come to the waiting seeker a sense of uplift, and exalted mood, a feeling of support from a vast mysterious source. There is a unique bliss in this new-found freedom of the second self, a sublime peace in this dissolution of old restraints. One feels something of that sacred presence within one and around one. Its effect upon the mind is to leave a glow of benign good will to all beings. It hovers on the edge of indefinable awareness. What is the mystery of that sate when the body sis, stands, or reclines without moving, when the thoughts come to rest and the feelings enter an exquisite calm? It has been given a variety of names, for it takes a human out of this familiar common world and puts one into a most mysterious one. The ego slides from off one’s shoulders like a heavy overcoat and one feels delightfully free. At the ordinary level one has the ordinary outlook, the habitual desires; but here are times when one finds oneself at another and higher level where one is unsympathetic to both. No theological difficulties can trouble this happy state, no religious doubts can enter into it. The glimpse is like a first airplane ride. Looking down at the Earth scene far below, with its patch-like landscape dotted with black specks called houses and autos, and thinking of those millions of living creatures who live in one and drive in the other, one is overcome with humility. It is the glorious moment when Adam re-enters Eden, even though he is only a visiting guest and not a permanent dweller therein. The Glimpse operates to cast an actual spell over one. One is enchanted not merely poetically but literally. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

Hours that are so far from the common ones, so timeless in their quality, make one feel like an ageless Sphinx. Time itself is suspended, and with it go the fears and worries, the unhappiness, which beset living in this World at this hour of its history. It is a feeling of being right with the Universe, with Life itself. It is as if years spent living in a dark cellar are abruptly ended by moving to a bright sunny Cresleigh Home. In this beautiful mood one becomes possessed of perfect leisure. One has all the time now that one needs. There is no need ever for hurry, strain, anxiety. For a moment or a morning, a day or a week, the confusions of life vanish. Oxygen kisses each cell awake, atoms dancing in orderly metabolism, interpenetrating. That dance of the air cycle, breathing the Universe in and out again, is what you are, is what I am. Sons and daughters of the Earth, steep yourself in the sea of matter, bathe in its fiery waters, for it is the source of your life and your youthfulness. By living in a World of pure though, you become more divine, or at leas more angelic. As Thou didst save this people, leading them as a flock on their path, and at Marah by still waters, didst ordain a statute for them, do Thou save us. As Thou didst save Thy treasured sons in their camp in the wilderness of Sin, where they gathered a double measure of food on the sixth say, do Thou save us. As Thou didst save Thy children, who in setting the example of preparation of the Sabbath won the approval of their Shepherd who praised their deed, so save us now. As Thou didst save them who were sustained on the Sabbath by the prepare manna, the appearance of which altered not, and the fragrance thereof did not change, so save us now. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

Cesleigh Homes

Are you a trendsetter? You’ll fit right in at our new Cresleigh community at Havenwood! The Residence 2 is a jewel, with three bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a three car garage. We’re partial to that mid-century modern garage door!

Residence Two a spacious single story home with over 2,600 square feet of home thoughtfully designed to maximize every available foot of space. Three bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a three car garage all come included in this home. The layout if an entertainer’s dream with large kitchen and working island, dining room connected through the butler’s pantry, and a large great room overlooking the ample rear yard. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/residence-two/

#CresleighHomes
#CresleighHavenwood

September 2, 2021 12:48 am

Latest Posts

Satan Wants You Back!
At the center of marriage stands the union of body and mind between the spouses. Because this union’s significance extends beyond the couple themselves, the…
Once Upon a Night
Here is the thing. The Democrats’ real agenda is the one they will not talk about. It is the one they cannot talk about. It…
A Mystery Beyond
Some wonder whether humanity can ever recover the original innocence attributed to Adam and Eve — a state of unbroken trust, unmediated experience, and harmony…
Sometimes You Need the Wrong Place to See the Right Path
If you are looking for a community that feels like home — fresh air, quiet mornings, safe streets, and a place where kids can actually…

Randolph Harris II International Institute

Start here

Does Not Success Certify Sanity?

CRESLEIGH HAVENWOOD

Lincoln, CA | from the mid $600s

Now Selling!

When there are No Adults Left at Home, the Nuclear Family Has No Nucleus!

CRESLEIGH HAVENWOOD

Lincoln, CA | from the mid $600s

Now Selling!

The Paris Experience–Malls are a Ubiquitous Element of Modern American Life!

Cresleigh Homes

When the Dead are Raised, it is a Miracle of Reversal!

Cresleigh Homes

Egos are Breaking Like Eggshells Against the Walls!

Cresleigh Homes

It Appears that the Powers of Redeemed Man Will be Almost Unlimited!

Cresleigh Homes

Post navigation

Latest Posts

Satan Wants You Back!

Once Upon a Night

A Mystery Beyond

Sometimes You Need the Wrong Place to See the Right Path