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Hope Often is Shattered so Thoroughly that a Man May Never Recover it

February 25, 2024 2:49 pm

Faith and hope and this-Worldly resurrection have found their classic expression in the messianic vision of the prophets. They do not predict the future, like a Cassandra or the chorus of the Greek tragedy; they see the present reality free from the blindfolds of public opinion and authority. They do not want to be prophets but feel compelled to express the voice of their conscience—of their “knowing-with”—to say what possibilities they see and to show the people the alternative and to warn them. This is all they aspire to do. It is up to the people to take their warning seriously and to change their ways, or to remain deaf and blind—and to suffer. Prophetic language is always the language of alternatives, of choice, and of freedom; it is never that of determinism, for better or worse. The shortest formulation of prophetic alternativism is the verse in Deuteronomy: “I put before you today life and death, and you chose life!” In the prophetic literature the messianic vision rested upon the tension between “what existed or was still there and that which was becoming and was yet to be there.” In the postprophetic period a change took place in the meaning of the messianic idea, making its first appearance in the Book of Daniel around 164 B.C. and in pseudo-epigraphical literature which was not incorporated in the collection of the Old Testament. This literature has a “vertical” idea of salvation as against the “horizontal” historical idea of the prophets. The emphasis is on the transformation of the individual and largely on a catastrophic end of history, occurring in a final cataclysm. This apocalyptic version is not that of alternatives but of prediction; not that of freedom but of determinism. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

In the later Talmudic or Rabbinical tradition, the original prophetic alternativistic vision prevailed. Early Christian thought was mor strongly influenced by the apocalyptic version of messianic thought, although, paradoxically, as an institution the Church usually retreated to a position of passive waiting. Nevertheless in the concept of the “Second Coming” the prophetic concept remained alive and the prophetic interpretation of Christian faith has again and again found its expression in revolutionary and “heretical” sects; today the radical wing in the Roman Catholic Church, as well as in the various non-Catholic Christian denominations, shows a marked return to the prophetic principle, to its alternativism as well as to the concept that spiritual aims must be applied to the political and social process. Outside of the Church, original Marxist socialism was the most significant expression of the messianic vision in a secular language, only to be corrupted and destroyed by the communist distortion of Marx. In recent years the messianic element in Marxism has found its voice again in a number of socialist humanist, especially in Yugoslavia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. Marxists and Christians have become engaged in a World-wide dialogue, based on the common messianic heritage. If hope, faith, and fortitude and love their servitude and dependence? It is precisely the possibility of this loss that is characteristic of the human existence. We start out with hope, faith, and fortitude—they are the unconscious, “no-thought” qualities of the sperm and the egg, of their union, of the growth of the foetus, its birth. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

However, when life begins, the vicissitudes of the environment and accident begin to further or to block the potential of hope. Most of us had hoped to be loved—not just to be coddled and to be fed, but to be understood, to be cared for, to be respected. Most of us hoped to be able to trust. When we were little, we did not yet know the human invention of the lie—not only that of lying with words but that of lying with one’s voice, one’s gesture, one’s eyes, one’s facial expression. How should the child be prepared for this specifically human ingenuity: the lie? Most of us are awakened, some more and some less brutally to the fact that people often do not mean what they say or say the opposite of what they mean. And not only “people,” but the very people we trusted most—our parents, teachers, leaders. Few people escape the fate that at one point or another in their development, their hopes are disappointed—sometimes completely shattered. Perhaps this is good. If a man did not experience the disappointment of his hope, how could his hope become strong and unquenchable? How could he avoid the danger of being an optimistic dreamer? However, on the other hand, hope often is shattered so thoroughly that a man may never recover it. In fact, the responses and reactions to the shattering of hope vary a great deal, depending on many circumstances: historical, personal, psychological, and constitutional. Many people, probably the majority, react to the disappointment of their hopes by adjusting to the average optimism which hopes for the best without bothering to recognize that even the good but perhaps, indeed, the worst may occur. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

As long as everybody else whistles, such people whistle too, and instead of feeling their hopelessness, they seem to participate in a kind of pop concert. They reduce their demands to what they can get and do not even dream of that which seems to be out of their reach. They are well-adjusted members of the herd and they never feel hopeless because nobody else seems to feel hopeless. They present the picture of a peculiar kind of resigned optimism which we see in so many members of contemporary Western society—the optimism usually being conscious and the resignation unconscious. Another outcome of the shattering of hope is the “hardening of the heart.” We see many people—from juvenile delinquents to hard-boiled but effective adults—who at one point of their lives, maybe at five, maybe at twelve, maybe at twenty, cannot stand to be hurt any more. Some of them, as in a sudden vision or conversation decide that they have had enough, that they will not feel anything any more; that nobody will ever be able to hurt them, but that they will be able to hurt others. They may complain about their bad luck in not finding any friends or anyone who loves them, but it is not their bad luck, it is their fate. Having lost compassion and empathy, they do not touch anybody—nor can they be touched. Their triumph in life is not to need anybody. They take pride in their untouchability and pleasure in being able to hurt. Whether this is done in criminal or legitimate ways depends much more on social factors than on psychological ones. Most of them remain frozen and hence unhappy until their lives run out. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

Not so rarely, a miracle happens and a thaw begins. It may simply be that they meet a person in whose concern or interest they believe, and new dimensions of feeling open. If they are lucky, they unfreeze completely and the seeds of hope which seem to have been destroyed altogether come to life. Another and much more drastic result of shattered hope is destructiveness and violence. Precisely because men cannot live without hope, the one whose hope has been utterly destroyed hates life. Since he cannot create life, he wants to destroy it, which is only a little less of a miracle—but much more easy to accomplish. He wants to avenge himself for his unlived life and he does it by throwing himself into total destructiveness to that it matters little whether he destroys others or is destroyed. Usually the destructive reaction to shattered hope is to be found among those who, for social or economic reasons, are excluded from the comforts of the majority and have no place to go socially or economically. It is not primarily the economic frustration which leads to hate and violence; it is the hopelessness of the situation, the ever-repeated broken promises, which are just as conducive to violence and destructiveness. In fact, there is little doubt that groups which are so deprived and mistreated that they cannot even be hopeless because they have no vision of hope are less violent that those who see the possibilities of hope and yet recognize at the same time that the circumstances make the realization of their hopes impossible. Psychologically speaking, destructiveness is the alternative to hope, just as attraction to death is the alternative to the love of life, and just as joy is the alternative to boredom. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

Not only does the individual live by hope. Nations and social classes live through hope, faith, and fortitude, and if they lose this potential they disappear—either by their lack of vitality or by the irrational destructiveness which they develop. The development of hope or hopelessness in an individual is largely determined by presence of hope or hopelessness in his society or class. However shattered an individual’s hope may have been in childhood, if he lives in a period of hope and faith, his own hope will be kindled; on the other hand, the person whose experience leads him to be hopeful will often tend to be depressed and hopeless when his society or class has lost the spirit of hope. Today, and increasingly so since 9/11, the COVID pandemic, crisis at the Southern Border, hyperinflation, and perhaps specifically in America ever since the defeat of the Republican Party in New York and California, hope is disappearing fast in the Western World. The hopelessness is covered up as optimism and, in a few, as revolutionary nihilism. However, whatever a man thinks about himself is of little importance in comparison with what he is, with what he truly feels, and most of us are not aware of what we feel. The signs of hopelessness are all here. Look at the bored expression of the average person, the lack of contact between people—even when they desperately try “to make contact.” Look at the incapacity to plan seriously for overcoming the ever-increasing poisonousness of the city’s water and air and the predictable famine in American cities and poor countries, not to speak of the inability to get rid of the daily threat to the lives and plans of all of us—the thermonuclear weapon. Whatever we say or think about hope, our inability to act or plan for life betrays our hopelessness. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

We know a little about the reasons for this growing hopelessness. Before 9/11 people thought that the World was a safe place, that wars were a thing of the past. And yet, people found out that the government had been warned about the 9/11 attacks and ignored the warnings. Then came the invasion at our southern border, with its comedy of pretensions both from the democrats and republicans. And neither one of the current political parties has tried to use their power to crush illegal immigration to save America. However, there are still other reasons for the increasing hopelessness: the formation of the totally bureaucratized industrial society and the powerlessness of the individual. If America and the Western World continue in their state of unconscious hopelessness, lack of faith and of fortitude, it its predictable that they will not be able to resist the temptation of the big bang by nuclear weapons, which would end all problems—overpopulation, boredom, and hunger—since it would do away with all life. Progress in the direction of a social and cultural order in which man is in the saddle depends on our capacity to come to grips with our hopelessness. First of all, we have to see it. And second, we have to examine whether there is a real possibility of changing our social, economic, and cultural life in a new direction which will make is possible to hope again. If there is no such real possibility, then indeed hope is sheer foolishness. However, if there is a real possibility, there can be hope, based on examination of new alternatives and options, and on concerted actions to bring about the realization of these new alternatives. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

The unity in which we seek consist in a certitude emanating from the nature of man who seeks God and the nature of God who seeks man. Such certitude bathes in an intuitive act of cognition, participating in the divine essence and is related to the natural spirituality of intelligence. This is not by any means to say that there is an equivalence of all faiths in the traditional religions of human history. It is, however, to emphasize the distinction between the spiritual and the temporal which all religions acknowledge. For duration of thought is composed of instants superior to time, and is an intuition of the permanence of existence and it metahisotical reality. The basic and poignant concern of every faith is to point to and overcome the crisis in our apocalyptic epoch—the crisis of man’s separation from man and of man’s separation from God—the failure of love. The truth that the human heart is able, and even yearns, to go to the very lengths of God is related to Being in pure act, moving with centrifugal and ecumenical necessity outward into the manifold modes, yet simultaneously, with dynamic centripetal power and with full intentional energy, returning to the source. The darkness and cold, the frozen spiritual misery of recent time, are breaking, cracking, and beginning to move, yielding to efforts to overcome spiritual muteness and moral paralysis. In this way, it is hoped, the immediacy of pain and sorrow, the primacy of tragedy and suffering in human life, may be transmuted into a spiritual and moral triumph. For the uniqueness of man lies in his capacity for self-transcendence. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

God is not to be treated as an exception to metaphysical principles, invoked to prevent their collapse. He is rather their chief exemplification, the source of all potentiality. The personal reality of freedom and providence, of will and conscience, may demonstrate that “he who knows” commands a depth of consciousness inaccessible to the profane man, and is capable of that transfiguration which prevents the twisting of all good to ignominy. This religious content of experience is not within the province of science account as if it were itself metaphysical or religious; it challenges the tendency to make a religion of science—or a science of religion—a dogmatic act which destroys the moral dynamic of man. Indeed, many men of science are confronted with unexpected implications of their own thought and are beginning to accept, for instance, the trans-spatial and trans-temporal dimension in the nature of reality. No convincing image of man can arise, in spite of the many ways in which human thought had tried to reach it, without a philosophy of human nature and human freedom which does not exclude God. This image of Homo cum Deo implies the highest conceivable freedom, the freedom to step into the very fabric of the Universe, a new formula for man’s collaboration with the creative process and the only one which is able to protect man from the terror of existence. This image implies further that the mind and conscience are capable of making genuine discriminations and thereby may reconcile the serious tensions between the secular and religious, the profane and sacred. The idea of the sacred lies in what it is, timeless existence. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

By emphasizing timeless existence against reason as a reality, we are liberated, in our communion with the eternal, from the otherwise unbreakable rule of “before and after.” Then we are able to admit that all forms, all symbols in religions, by their negation of error and their affirmation of the actuality of truth, make it possible to experience that knowing which is above knowledge and that dynamic passage of the universe to unending unity. Mankind must be directed toward a reality that is eternal and away from a preoccupation with that which is illusory and ephemeral. The story of Adam and Eve’s disobedience, of Abraham’s pleading with God for the salvation of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, of Jonah’s mission to Nineveh, and many others parts of the Bible impressed me deeply. However, more than anything else, I was moved by the prophetic writings, by Isaiah, Amos, Hosea; not so much by their warnings and the announcement of disaster, but by their promise of the “end of days,” when nations “shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more;” when all nations will be friends, and when “the Earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” The vision of universal peace and harmony between all nations touched me deeply when I was twelve and thirteen years old. Probably the immediate reason for this absorption by the idea of peace and internationalism was from growing up in a Christian environment. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

The more insane and dehumanized this World of our seems to become, the more may an individual feel the need of being together and of working together with men and women who share one’s human concerns. I certainly felt that need and have been grateful for the stimulating and encouraging companionship of those with whom I have had the good fortune of working. When the Holy Spirit fills the atmosphere of a room, the spirit of man is conscious of it, not his sense. The faculties of those present are alert and clear and they retain freedom of action. The spirit is made tender and the will pliable to the will of God. All the actions of a person moved by the true and pure presence of God are in accord with the highest ideal of harmony and grace. The holiness of God: When realized by the believer it produces worship and godly awe, with a hatred of sin. On the ground of the blood of Calvary, God draws near to men, seeking their love, and His presence does not terrorize. A truth faith given of God in the spirit, having its origin in Him, reckoning without effort upon Him to fulfill His written Word is trusting God. It coexists with the full use of every faculty in intelligent action. “Faith” is a fruit of the Spirit and cannot be forced. When we have a reliance upon God, one has an attitude of the will, of trust and dependence upon God, taking Him at His word, and depending upon His character of faithfulness. The spirit, when waiting on God, is in restful cooperation with the Holy Spirit, awaiting God’s time to act and to fulfill His promises. The true waiting upon God can be coexistent with the keenest activity of mind. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

Praying to God: Having access to the Holiest of all, on the ground of the blood. Penetrating in spirit through the in abnormal suffering may be the fruit of (unconscious) acceptance of suffering caused by evil spirits, often under the name of “the will of God.” “The depth” signifies “the depth-experience” or “the experience of the depths” which is faith. Faith as ultimate concern is the portal through which one must ass in order to attain New Being. God is the ground of being, but He is encountered only in the experience of the holy, and all religious symbols take their origin from this experience of ultimacy. Jesus is the Christ only because He is received as such by faith, and He rose from the dead only because his disciples had an ecstatic experience of the New Being. The Spiritual Community is created by the Spiritual Presence which drives man’s spirit beyond itself into faith and love. The Protestant principle which constitutes the essence of Protestantism is based upon an experience of God who jealously demands that ultimacy be reserved for Him alone. Finally, the Kingdom of God breaks through into history in a faith-charged moment that is the Kairos. One can see faith everywhere in the World as an operative reality. There is a universality, or omnipresence of faith in the Christian World. Do not look at the human situation and wonder if faith is there. Know it is there, and find it by attuning with the ultimate concern which throbs beneath the surface. An adequate understanding of faith demands that one eventually pass from formal faith to material faith. Faith which is found in the criterion of the Cross and of the Christ is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern; it is produced by the Spirit, not by human activity. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

Instead of erecting a holy community out of the World, true faith understands allows one to see the whole World as already being the holy community. Nobody escapes it. All, even unawares, belong to it. The Christian message must indeed become all things to all men, but it must also be itself. Its roots can be traced back to the experience of the holy as the mysterium tremendum et fascinosum. God’s very presence forces the acknowledgement of the infinite gulf between Him and the creature. In ontological terms, because God is the ground of being, He is also the abyss of being in that He can never be contained within the narrow confines of a finite form of being. This is the meaning of the Cross of Jesus the Christ, for Jesus as a being sacrificed Himself to the New Being. Symbols which originate in and express the experience of faith remain subject to the criterion of the Cross. Victory over religious heteronomy, over the demonization and profanization of the churches, also lies in the sign of the Cross. Only grace effect salvation, and anything that infringes upon this divine prerogative must be met with prophetic protest. Everyone knows that religion has its human, erroneous, even sinful side, but this awareness should never undercut our confidence that God’s grace can reach us, even though conveyed in vessels of clay. Prophecy, in the sense of protect, is a delicate business indeed. Culture is the fruit of the creative activity of man. The role of theology as that of mediating between the human situation and divine revelation, and the method of correlation demands that the answers of theology be clothed in the language of man’s existential condition. The all-important concept of faith is defined in terms of man’s experience of and need for the unconditioned. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

Jesus the Christ is meaningful because in Him appears the New Being which heals man’s estrangement. The Spiritual Community is explained on the basis of man’s quest for unambiguous life. And the eschatological fulfilment of the Universe is accomplished in the essentialization of man, for in him is found the unity of the multiple dimensions of life. In a certain sense any Christian theology is anthropocentric, for the Creed declares that Jesus Christ came down from Heaven for us men and for our salvation. However, one could hold, for example, that sin is the problem of man, for man must be saved from sin; or that grace is the problem of man, for man is saved through grace; or that morally good life; or, finally, that faith is the problem of man, for the way to salvation is illuminated by the light of faith. However, man can also be seen as the problem of man. If man becomes what he essentially is, salvation is achieved. This fulfilled man is the New Man; he posses New Being. Furthermore, according to the doctrine of the microcosm and the multidimensional unity of life, the Universe itself is saved in the salvation of man. Christ, the depth of culture, is translated to mean that New Being is the ultimate concern of man. The New Being provides ontological breadth, ultimate concern imparts experiential depth, and the anthropological emphasis gives vitality to Christ as the depth of culture. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

Early Christianity did not consider itself as a radical-exclusive, but as the all-inclusive religion in the sense of saying: “All that is true anywhere in the World belongs to us, the Christians.” And it is significant that the famous words of Jesus, “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your Heavenly Faither is perfect” (which was always an exegetic riddle), would, according to recent research, be better translated, “You must be all-inclusive as your Heavenly Father is all-inclusive.” First, one must say that revelatory experiences are universally human. Religions are based on something that is given to a man wherever he lives. He is given a revelation, a particular kind of experience which always implies saving powers. One never can separate revelation and salvation. There are revealing and saving powers in all religions. God has not left Himself unwitnessed. As I think of the blessings God has given us and the many beauties of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I am aware that along the way we are asked to make certain contributions in return, contributions of time or of money or of other resources. These are all valued and all necessary, but they do not constitute our full offering to God. Ultimately, what our Father in Heaven will require of us is more than a contribution; it is a total commitment, a complete devotion, all that we are and all that we can be. The Lord Jesus as Christ shapes our behaviour and forms our character in all area of our life—personally, within the home, in our professions and community life, as well as in our devotion to the Church that bears his name. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

If we can pattern our life after the Master, and take His teachings and examples as the supreme pattern for our own, we will not find it difficult to be consistent and loyal in every walk of life, for we will be committed to a single, sacred standard of conduct and belief. Whether at home or in the marketplace, whether at school or long after school is behind us, whether we are acting totally alone or in concern with a host of other people, our course will be clear and our standards will be obvious. We will have determined, as the prophet Alma said, “to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in fall places that we may be in, even until death,” reports Mosiah 18.9. This loyalty obviously includes support of the institutional church, but one of the purposes of that church is to alter an improve the way we live every other aspect f our lives as well, wherever we are and in whatever circumstance we find ourselves “even until death.” The ability to stand by one’s principles, to live with integrity and faith according to one’s belief—that is what matters, that is the difference between a contribution and commitment. That devotion to true principle—in our individual lives, in our home and families, and in all places where we meet and influence other people—that devotion is what God is ultimately requesting of us. How do we feel about honour and integrity? What is our reaction to polite lying to facilitate easy social relationships? How much tolerance have we for either suppression or misrepresentation to facts to promote business advantage? How sacredly do we regard the good name oof another? Do we pass on spicy bits of entertaining conversation, repeating rumors and stories which have not been submitted to the test of truth? #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

I may not be able to stop all graft and dishonesty in high places, but I myself can be honest and upright, gull of integrity and true honour. We simply must have love and integrity and strong principles in our homes. We must have an abiding commitment to marriage and children and morality. We must succeed where success counts most for the next generation. Surely that home is strongest and most beautiful in which we find each person sensitive to the feelings of others, striving to serve others, striving to live at home the principles we demonstrate in more public settings. We need to try harder to live the gospel in our family circles. Our homes deserve our most faithful commitments. A child has the right to feel that in his home he is safe, that there he has a place of protection from the dangers and evils of the outside World. Family unity and integrity are necessary to supply this need. A child needs parents who are happy in their relationship to each other, who are working happily toward the fulfillment of ideal family living, who love their children with a sincere and unselfish love, and who are committed to the family success. If full integrity were to rule in family life, just imagine the reversal that would take place. Husbands would be faithful to wives, and wives to husbands. There would be no living in adulterous relationships in lieu of marriage. Homes would abound in love, children and parents would have respect for one another. How else will our children come to value honesty and integrity? A successful life, the good life, the righteous Christian life requires commitment—whole souled, deeply held, eternally cherished commitment to the principles we know to be true in the commandments God has given. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

The Sacramento Fire Department truly are jacks-of-all-trades, but they are also masters of them all. Given then any challenge; they will face it and overcome it. That is one of the most awesome things of the fire service. Call the Sacramento Fire Department, present them with a problem, and they will figure it out and work you through it. The fire department is there to help people. They are there to help families. Simply put, their best day is their worst day. When you are at your worst and life has you down, when you have got something horrible going on, whether it is a fire, a medical problem, or some other type of disaster, they were be there to help you every time. The Sacramento Fire Department will do everything they can to make things better again. These firefighters are talented and are the cream of the crop in society. The fire department also makes sure they protect their personnel in every way imaginable. Whether it is protective clothing, and assuring that they have the proper personal protective equipment (PPE) including good, reliable, and safe self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA), assuring that they have radios and that they work, assuring that they have the training needed to do their job, the support of the fire department administration or the upper echelon, the proper apparatus, firehouses, tools, and equipment, and more than anything else, the proper amount of personnel. Their goal is to make sure they have anything that will help them do their jobs to the best of their abilities and stay safe. Therefore, consider making a donation to the Sacramento Fire Department, to insure they have all the necessary resources. I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one Nation, Under God, Indivisible, with Liberty and Justic for all. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

The Winchester Mystery House

In 1901, Mrs. Winchester reported an entity came after her. It beat and shook her bedstead with great force. Mrs. Winchester was not aware of any blows, but she was perceived to tremble violently. After this the servants would hear the sound of scraping under her bed, and Mrs. Winchester would be raised a few inches into the air. It seemed then that the noisy apparition was only interested in her. So Mrs. Winchester decided to sleep in a different room every night in hopes of avoiding the apparitions. On 1 October it ascended into the Daisy Bedroom, making a mighty noise. A young male servant, going into that room one morning, saw two wooden boards of the floor begin to move. He held out his hands and one of the boards was thrust toward him. He shoved it back, and again it returned to him. This happened apparently twenty times in succession, by which stage other people had entered the room and seen the tussle between the servant and the uninvited guest. The chairs walked about the room of themselves, Mrs. Winchester’s shoes were hurled over her head, and every loose thing moved about the chamber.

Come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/

Evilness is Not Only Human, but Tragic

February 15, 2024 2:25 am

The charismatic and his society are bonded in crisis through a mutual attempt to break free of anomie and alienation, and a sense of powerlessness. Hope is a decisive element in any attempt to bring about social change in the direction of greater aliveness, awareness, and reason. However, the nature of hope is often misunderstood and confused with attitudes that have nothing to do with hope and in fact are the very opposite. What is it to hope? Is it, as many think, to have desires and wishes? If this were so, those who desire more and better Ultimate Driving Machines, Millhaven Homes, and gadgets would be people of hope. However, they are not; they are people lusty for more consumption and not people of hope. If hope’s object is not a thing but a fuller life, a state of greater aliveness, a liberation from eternal boredom; or, to use a theological term, for salvation; or, a political term, for revolution, is it to hope? Indeed, this kind of expectation could be hope; but if it has the quality of passiveness, and “waiting for”-until the hope becomes, in fact, a cover for resignation, a mere ideology, it is non-hope. Kafka has beautifully described this kind of resigned and passive hope in a story The Trial. A man comes to the door leading into Heaven (the Law) and begs admittance from the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper says he cannot admit the man at the moment. Although the door leading into the Law stands open, the man decides that he better wait until he gets permission to enter. So he sits down and waits for days and years. He repeatedly asks to be allowed in, but is always told that he cannot be allowed to enter yet. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

During all these long years the man studies the doorkeeper almost incessantly and learns to know even the fleas in his fur collar. Eventually, he is old and near death. For the first time, he asks the question, “How does it come about that in all these years no one has come seeking admittance but me?” The doorkeeper answers, “No one but you could gain admittance through this door, since this door was intended for you. I am now going to shut it.” The old man was too old to understand, and if he had been younger, maybe he would not have understood. The bureaucrats have the last word; if they say no, he cannot enter. If he had had more than this passive, waiting hope, he would have entered and his courage to disregard the bureaucrats would have been the liberating act which would have carried him to the shining palace. Many people are like Kafka’s old man. They hope, but it is not given to them to act upon their heart’s impulse, and as long as the bureaucrats do not give the green light, they wait and wait. (The Spanish word esperar means at the same time waiting and hoping, and quite clearly it refers to that particular kind of passive hope that I am trying to describe here.) This kind of passive hope is closely related to a generalized form of hope, which might be described as hoping for time. Time and the future become the central category of this kind of hope. Nothing is expected to happen in the now but only in the next moment, the next day, the next year, and in another World if it is too absurd to believe that hope can be realized in this World. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

Behind this belief that hope can be realized in this World is the idolatry of “Future,” “History,” and “Posterity,” which began in the French Revolution with men like Robespierre, who worshipped the future as a goddess: I do nothing; I remain passive, because I am nothing and impotent; but the future, the projection of time, will bring about what I cannot achieve. This worship of the future, which is a different aspect of the worship of “progress” in modern bourgeois thought, is precisely the alienation of hope. Instead of something I do or I become, the idols, future and posterity bring about something without my doing. The Stalinist concept that history decides what is right and wrong and good and evil is a direct continuation of Robespierre’s idolatry of posterity. It is the extreme opposite of the position of Marx, who said, “History is nothing and does nothing. It is man who is and does.” Or, in Theses on Feuerbach, “The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men that change circumstances and that the educator himself needs educating. While passive waiting is a disguised form of hopelessness and impotence, there is another form of hopelessness and despair which takes exactly the opposite disguise—the disguise of phrase making and adventurism, of disregard for reality, and of forcing what cannot be forced. This was the attitude of the false Messiahs and of the Putsch leaders, who had contempt for those who did not under all circumstances prefer death to defeat. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

In these days, the pseudo-radical disguise of hopelessness and nihilism is not rare among some of the most dedicated members of the young generation. They are appealing in their boldness and dedication but they become unconvincing by their lack of realism, sense of strategy, and, in some, by lack of love for life. Such hopelessness shines through Herbert Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955) and One-Dimensional Man (Beacon Press, 1964). All traditional values, like love, tenderness, concern, and responsibility, are supposed to have had meaning only in a pretechnological society. In the new technological society—one without repressed and exploitation—a new man will arrive who will not have to be afraid of anything, including death, who will develop yet-unspecified needs, and who will have a chance to satisfy his “polymorphous sexuality” (I refer the reader to Dr. Freud’s Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex); briefly, the final progress of man is seen in the regression to infantile life, the return to the happiness of the satiated baby. No wonder that Marcuse ends up in hopelessness. “The critical theory of society possesses no concepts which could bridge the gap between the present and its future; holding no promise and showing no success, it remains negative. Thus it wants to remain loyal to those who, without hope, have given and give their life to the Great Refusal” (One-Dimensional Man, p. 257). These quotations show how wrong those are who attack or admire Marcuse as a revolutionary leader; for revolution was never based on hopelessness, nor can it ever be. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

However, Marcuse is not even concerned with politics; for if one is not concerned with steps between the present and the future, one does not deal with politics, radical or otherwise. Marcuse is essentially an example of an alienated intellectual, who presents his personal despair as a theory of radicalism. Unfortunately, his lack of understandings and, to some extent, knowledge of Dr. Freud builds a bridge over which he travels to synthesize Freudianism, bourgeois materialism and sophisticated Hegelianism into what him and other like-minded “radicals” seems to be the most progression theoretical construct. This is not the place to show in detail that it is a naïve, cerebral daydream, essentially irrational, unrealistic, and lacking love of life. Credo Perspectives constitute an endeavour to alter the prevailing conceptions, not only of the nature of knowledge and work, but also of creative achievements in general, as well as of the human agent who inquires and creates, and of the entire fabric of the culture formed by such activities. In other words, this is an endevour to show that what we do are no more and no less than what we are. It is the endeavour of Credo Perspectives to define the new reality in which the estrangement of man from his work, resulting in the self-estrangement in man’s existence, is overcome. This new reality is born through the reconciliation of what man knows with what a man is. Being itself in all its presuppositions and implications can only be understood through the totality, through wholeness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

St. Paul, who, like Isaiah before him, went into the marketplace not to secularize truth but to proclaim it, taught man that the “new creation” could be explained only by conquering the daemonic cleavages, the destructive split, in soul and cosmos. And that fragmentation always destroys a unity, produces a tearing away from the source and thereby creates disunity and isolation. The fruit can never be separated from the tree. The Tree of Life can never be disjoined from the Tree of Knowledge for both have one and the same root. And if man allows himself to fall into isolation, if he seeks to maintain a self-segregated from the totality of which he too has his place—including his own labours—then this act of apostasy bears fruit in the demiurgical presumption of magic, a form of animism in which man seeks an authority of the self, placing himself above the law of the Universe by attempting to separate the inseparable. He thus creates an unreal World after having destroyed or deserted the real. And in this way the method of analysis, of scientific objectivity, which is good and necessary or deserted the real. And in this way the method of analysis, of scientific objectivity, which is good and necessary in its right place, is endowed with a destructive power when it is allowed to usurp a place for which it is not fitted. The naturalist principle that man is the measure of all things has been shattered more than ever in our own age by the question, “What is the measure of man?” Postmodern man is more profoundly perplexed about the nature of man than his ancestors were. He is on the verge of spiritual and moral insanity. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

And having lost the sense of who and what he is, man fails to grasp the meaning of his fellow man, of his vocation and of the nature and purpose of knowledge for itself. For what is not understood cannot be known. And it is this cognitive faculty which is frequently abrogated by the “scientific” theory of knowledge, a theory that refuses to recognize the existence of comprehensive entities as distinct from their particulars. The central act of knowing is indeed that form of comprehension which is never absent from any process of knowing and is finally its ultimate sanction. Science itself acknowledges as real a host of entities that cannot be described completely in materialistic or mechanistic terms, and it is this transcendence out of the domain of science into a region from which science itself can be appraised that Credo Perspectives hope to define. For the essence of the ebb and flow of experience, of sensations, the richness of the immediacy of directly apprehended knowledge, the metaphysical substance of what assails our being, is the very act itself of sensation and affection and therefore must escape the net of rational analysis, yet is intimately related to every cognitive act. It is this increasing intellectual climate that is calling into birth once more the compelling Socratic questions, “What is the purpose of life, the meaning of work?” “What is man?” Plato himself could give us only an indirect answer: “Man is declared to be that creature who is constantly in search of himself, a creature who at every moment of his existence must examine and scrutinize the conditions of his existence. He is a being in search of meaning.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

From this it is evident that there is present in the universe a law applicable to all nature including man and his work. Life itself then is seen to be a creative process elaborating and maintaining order out of the randomness of matter, endlessly generating new and unexpected structures and properties by building up associations that qualitatively transcend their constituent parts. This is not to diminish the importance of “scientific objectivity.” It is, however, to say that the mind possesses a quality that cannot be isolated or known exclusively in the sense of objective knowledge. For it consists in that elusive humanity in us, our self, that knows. It is that inarticulate awareness that includes and comprehends all we know. It consists in the irreducible active voice of man and is recognized only in other things, only when the circle of consciousness closes around its universe of events. We have to recognize the cause of human suffering—greed. Man must be confronted with the choice between remaining chained to the wheel of terrestrial life, or of renouncing greed and thus ending suffering and focusing more on Godly qualities. Man can choose between these two real possibilities: there is no other possibility available to hm. We have examined man’s heart, its inclination for good and evil and should be more on solid ground than we had been in the past. As far as we know at this time, evilness seems to be a specifically human phenomenon. It is the attempt to regress to the pre-human state, and to eliminate that which is specifically human: reason, love, freedom. Yet evilness is not only human, but tragic. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

Even if man regresses to the most archaic forms of experience, he can never cease being human; hence he can never be satisfied with evilness as a solution. The animal cannot be evil; it acts according to its built-in drives which essentially serve his interest in survival. Evilness is the attempt to transcend the realm of the human to the realm of the inhuman, yet it is profoundly human because man cannot become an animal as little as he can become “God.” Evil is man’s loss of himself in the tragic attempt to escape the burden of his humanity. And the potential of evil is all the greater because man is endowed with an imagination that enables him to imagine all the possibilities for evil and thus to desire and act on them, to feed his evil imagination. (It is interesting to note that the word for the good and evil impulse is jezer, which in biblical Hebrew means “imaginings.”) The idea of good and evil expressed here corresponds essentially to the one expressed by Spinoza. “In what follows, then,” he says, “I shall mean by ‘good’ that which we certainly know to be a means of approaching more nearly to the type of human nature, as Spinoza also calls it]; by ‘bad’ that which we certainly know to be a hinderance to us in approaching the said as completely destroyed by being changed into a man, as by being changed into an insect.” Good consists of transforming our existence into an ever-increasing approximation to our essence, evil into an ever-increasing estrangement between existence and essence. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

Evil is often present in even the best intended situations. For example, a young girl tells e that she had an attack of heart pounding when shopping. Her heart was not strong, but she did not see why shopping should affect it since she could dance for hours without harm. Nor could she see any psychic reasons for the heart-pounding. She had bought a superbly beautiful blouse for her older sister as a birthday gift, and was delighted to do so. She anticipated with pleasure how much the sister would enjoy and admire the gift. Actually, she had spent her last penny on it. She was short of money because she had straightened out all her debts, or at any rate had made arrangements by which she could pay them off in several months. This she said with distinct self-admiration. The blouse was so beautiful that she would have liked to have it herself. Then, after having apparently dropped the subject, a number of grievances against the sister appeared. She complained bitterly about how the sister interfered with her, how she made nonsensical reproaches. These grievances were intermingled with derogatory remarks which made the sister appear quite inferior to the patient. Even at first sight, this unpremeditated sequence of emotions indicates conflicting feelings toward the sister: a wish to win her love, on the other hand, resentment. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

When shopping, this conflict was accentuated. The loving side asserted itself in the purchase of the present; the resentment had to be suppressed for the time being and thus clamoured all the louder for its share. The result was the heart pounding. Such clashes of contradictory feelings will not always elicit anxiety. Usually one of the incompatible feelings is repressed, or both join in some compromise solution. Here, as the associations show, no side of the conflict was altogether repressed. Instead, love and resentment, both on a conscious level, were placed on a seesaw. When the one feeling went up, in awareness, the other went down. On closer scrutiny the associations disclosed more details. The theme of self-admiration, blatant in the first series, reappears implicitly in the second. The derogatory remarks about the sister not only express diffuse hostility but serve to make the patient’s own light outshine the sister’s. The tendency to put herself above the sister is evident throughout the associations, in the fact that she continually, even though inadvertently, contrasted her own generosity and sacrificing love with the sister’s bad behaviour. This close connection between self-admiration and rivalry with the sister suggests the possibility that the need to be superior to the sister was an essential factor in the development and maintenance of the self-admiration. This assumption also sheds another light on the conflict that occurred in the store. The impulse to buy the expensive blouse represented not only, as it were, a heroic determination to resolve the conflict but also a wish to establish her own supremacy over the sister, partly by winning her admiration, partly by showing herself the more loving, sacrificing, forgiving. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

On the other hand, by giving to the sister a more beautiful blouse than she had, she actually placed her in a “superior” position. In order to understand the importance of this point, it should be mentioned that the question of who was better dressed played a significant role in the battle of rivalry; the patient, for instance, had often appropriated the sister’s dresses. Therefore, it is clear, that no observation should be regarded as unimportant. Just as the patient should express without reserve everything that comes to his mind, the analyst should regard every detail as potentially meaningful. He should not discard offhand any remark as irrelevant but should take seriously every single observation, without exception. Furthermore, he should constantly ask himself why this particular feeling or thought of the patient comes up just now. What does it mean in this specific context? A friendly feeling toward the analyst, for instance, may in one context indicate genuine gratitude for help and understanding; in another it may connote the patient’s increased need for affection because in the preceding hour the tackling of a new problem aroused anxiety; in a third it may be the expression of a desire to one the analyst body and soul because a conflict has been uncovered which the patient hopes that “love” will solve. Sometimes people feel it is unfair that their expectations are not met. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

A failure to examine an association’s exact connections with preceding and succeeding associations, and with preceding experiences, may not only lead to wrong interpretations but also deprive the analyst of an opportunity to learn something about the patient’s reactions to a specific occurrence. Nonetheless, in confrontational situations, beware of tactic of someone wanting to get you on his turf. To further highlight the illustration, your boss comes to your office and asks you to come to his office, he would like to talk to you about something. Some people would get right up and follow their boss without asking a thing. Others might want to know why the conversation could not occur right where they are not. Savy people would ask why they need to take the walk down the long hallway when they could talk it right there. That is because they are aware of the home court advantage. Maybe your boss wants to ask you to do something that is not in your job description. Maybe he wants to ask you questions about a fellow employee he is pretty sure you will not want to give him information on. Whatever his motive is, he is not wanting to risk having the conversation anywhere but, on his turf, the place he feels the most powerful. Before you go to meet anyone in a place you know they feel the most at home in, think about why they want to meet there. You can still go, just be prepared for what they might ask of you and be ready to say no if you feel you should not. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

In the prolonged relationships of intensive psychotherapy, it must be recognized that the patient has opportunity for repeated expression of “punishable” ideas and feelings which do not lead in therapy to punishment or rejection. The anxiety originally accompanying the thoughts is gradually extinguished or reduced through repeated expression without pain. Then it is possible for the patient to see his betes noires differently, to think differently about them, and to plan imaginatively to react differently to their real-life representations. Eventually, with the support and positive suggestion of the therapist, he is able to experiment with new modes of response to those persons and situations which are anxiety symbols and, eventually, to extend the process of learning (and extinction of inappropriate, anxious responses) to the “real” World outside of his therapist’s office. Although there are differences in interpretation as to the elements of the process, differences in emphasis as to whether it is mostly an extinction of old, inappropriate responses or an acquisition of new more appropriate responses, differences as to whether there are basic generalities or necessary specifics in the content of neurosis, nearly all psychotherapists agrees that psychotherapy is a learning process. In this learning, the therapist serves as guide, tutor, model, and primary source of reward. To the extent that all therapists partake of the role of teacher, self-acknowledged or not, we have yet another common dimension. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

Considering the range and basic nature of these dimensions and processes which are common to all forms of conversation with therapeutic intent, it is remarkable that so many have found so much to say about such a variety of apparent diversities in theory and practice. However, in our culture it is far more acceptable to present oneself as an expert in some moderately occult and complex professionalized technique than to suggest the more modest (grandiose?) claims of being generally perceptive and intelligent about personal problems. Certainly the average counselor can much sooner be confident that he is technically proficient than he can be assured that he is wise. In view of the extensive variety and possibly sizable therapeutic power of those factors which do appear to be shared by all schools of psychotherapy, it is suggested that we might do well to concentrate our researchers on these potential mechanisms of the psychotherapeutic effect, and to emphasize carefully the methods of optimizing their influence when selecting and training psychotherapists, rather than to pursue almost exclusively the search of differences in therapeutic practice that theoretically should be there and theoretically should make a difference. There are men who come as ambassadors from Heaven, and the writings or arts of men, which come as revelators. However, unless the reaction includes recognition, the contact is fruitless, the meeting useless. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

The Holy Spirit dwells in and acts through the spirit of man, and not through either nerve center, which have both to be under the control of the spirit. If in any way he is given ground, exempli gratia, if the cerebral nerves cease to act by “letting the mind go blank,” and the vegetative nerves are awakened to act in their “streams of life” though the body, then “claiming the blood” cannot protect us from the enemy. No claiming of the precious blood of Christ will prevent these physical laws acting when the conditions for action are fulfilled. Hence, the strange fact which has perplexed many, that abnormal experiences manifestly contrary to the Spirit of God have taken place while the person was earnestly repeating words about the “blood.” Moreover, the arousing of the “vegetative nerves” to such abnormal activity that “floods of life” have appeared to pour through the whole body—the enemy whispering at the same moment. “This is divine!”—(1) dulls the mind and makes it inert in action, (2) causes a craving in the recipient for more of this “divine” life, (3) leads to the danger of ministration of it to others, and all that follows, as the path is pursued in honest faith and confidence of being “specially advanced” in the life of God. Should any who are reading this discover their own case depicted, let them thank God for knowledge of the truth, and (1) simply reject by an attitude of will all that is not of God; (2) consent to trust God in His Word without any “experiences”; (3) stand on Romans 6.11, with James 4.7, in respect to the Adversary, and on John 16.12 in respect to the Holy Spirit. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

It is important to invigorate the dry bones of being, finitude, essence, existence, potentiality, actuality, and teleology by interpreting them in terms of courage, power, anxiety, estrangement, fulfilment, and the ambiguities of life. Whether this procedure is a happy wedding of metaphysics to psychology or a betrayal of one or the other is a problem which we leave to the philosophers to decide. However, there is an awareness that pure ontology is too strong a medicine for the modern palate. When one reflects upon man’s existential condition, the mind is positively staggered by the enormity and complexity of the task. Who is competent to venture into “all the areas of culture” in order to formulate man’s basic problems? Yet this is what the method of correlation requires: The analysis of the human situation employes materials made available by man’s creative self-interpretation in all realms of culture. Philosophy contributes, but so do poetry, drama, the novel, therapeutic psychology, and sociology. The theologian organizes these materials in relation to the answer given by the Christian message. They only way such a project could conceivably be executed would be to suppose from the beginning that all these cultural areas are ultimately rooted in ontology. The human situation is structured according to his basic metaphysical concepts. The divine is the true Subject to the human being, and thus from Spirit to life, and the Kingdom of God to history. Each quest thus has its own character and its own personality. This it shapes by the act of dedicating itself to the incorruptible integrity of the higher life. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

After the Sacramento Fire Department was formed nearly 200 years ago, it was not long before it was realized that they could provide first aid. When you are hurting, call the fire department. They started with this basic first aid, Red Cross first responders, and the like, and then moved into the emergency medical technician field—you know the men and women with the big patches—which elevated the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) platform just a little bit higher. And then came paramedicine. Shortly after their introduction to paramedicine, the fire department began getting called to chemical spills and releases, because, when it came down to it, no one else would respond or take care of them due to the serious nature of these incidents. The hazardous waste team if referred to as the “mop” n’ glow crew.” However, anyone who has been around an incident involving hazardous materials, especially a bad one, knows that the haz-mat technicians are definitely the people you want to rely on when the ethyl-methyl-bad-stuff ends up on the ground or in the air. Please be sure to donate to the Sacramento Fire Department to make sure they have the resources necessary to protect the community. Also, Kevin McCarty is running for Mayor of Sacramento. He is a Democrat for Sacramento—on the City Council and in the State Assembly, he had led on housing and homelessness. Sacramento Firefighters endorse McCarthy for Mayor. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

The Winchester Mystery House

Ever since the dawn of humankind, people have believed in ghosts. The fear of the unknown—the certainty that there is something in The Winchester Mystery House, bigger than life, beyond its pale, and more powerful than anything walking the Earth—has persisted for nearly century a half. These fears had their origin from Mrs. Winchester and her staff. To them, there were good and evil forces at work in the mansion and on the estate, both ruled over by supernatural beings, and to some degree capable of being influenced by the attitudes of humans and séances. The fear of death was, of course, one of the strongest emotions, which lead Mrs. Winchester to construct the World’s most beautiful and bizarre mansion over nearly forty years of non-stop construction.

In 1906, Daisy, Mrs. Winchester’s niece told a friend in confidence that the hauntings of The Winchester Mansion were not the usual array of footfalls, presences, and the dog starting at someone unseen. It was around the middle of January, Daisy and Mrs. Winchester were having supper, when Daisy looked up, she saw a man. He was standing by the fireplace wearing a white shirt, dark trousers with suspenders, and glasses with round metal frames. He was tall and sturdy. Then suddenly he was gone. No disappearing act or anything fancy, just vanished. Then the brass candlesticks next flew off the mantelpiece, going towards the back door. Everything flew towards the door. Mrs. Winchester nor Diasy could account for the occurrences; but both agreed in attributing the spiritual demonstration to powers higher than human.