Thursday, January 29, 2009

it's not about THIS, it's about THAT

(you confused? give this a shot...)

---------------------------------------------------
it's a stupid thing to say,
"you'll find someone you deserve."




Love is not about who you deserve,
it's about who you want.

And no matter how perfect a person is for you,

if he's not who you want,



he will never be.


That's why no matter how much a person hurts you,you'd still wish 'em back despite the way you show that you no longer care.



And if lots of good people would line up at you, you barely even notice 'em -- for what's important is who we love, not who loves us.






It's not about "how many",


It's about "who".

Saturday, January 24, 2009

y descendiente finals



Y descendiente FINALS

what can i say ,, even from a bit whooshy view it looks great :D
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Tuesday, January 20, 2009

MARKS of the church

The Marks or Identifying Characteristics of the Catholic Church
The Marks or Identifying Characteristics of the Church

by Fr. William G. Most

We often speak of the four marks of the Church: one, holy, Catholic and Apostolic. We do not mean that these are distinctive enough to prove the Catholic Church is the only Church of Christ. But they do help.

Christ established only one Church. "There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism" (Ephesians 4:5). Presently we will speak of the relation of members of other churches to the Catholic Church.

We say the Church is holy, not in the sense that all members are holy--far from it. But her Founder gave it all the needed means to make people holy.

The Church is Catholic because it is universal: "God wills all to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Timothy 2:4). It aims to take in all persons, in fulfillment of the command of Christ in Matthew 28:19.

We say the Church is apostolic because it goes back to the Twelve Apostles chosen by Christ Himself. The Pope and Bishops have their authority in succession from the Apostles. The Pope is the visible Head as Vicar of Christ, Christ is the invisible Head. We know Christ intended His Church to last until the end of time, because He explicitly said: "Behold, I am with you all days until the consummation of the world" (Matthew 28:20). Again, many of His parables make this clear, such as the parable of the net in which the good will be separated from the evil at the end, or the parable of the weeds in the wheat, with the same idea.

There can be, and are, bishops validly ordained who are not in union with the Pope. These are called schismatics, and lose many graces by their rejection of the Head of the Church.

Vatican II taught that just as Peter and the Apostles formed a sort of college, with Peter as the head, so in a somewhat similar way, the Pope and the Bishops also form a college (LG chapter 3). This relationship is called collegiality. However Vatican II also taught in that same chapter that the Pope can even, if he so wishes, give a solemn definition of doctrine without consulting the Bishops, and that He has immediate authority over everyone in the Church, including each Bishop.

The Church is also called the People of God, that is, those who come under the new and eternal Covenant (cf. Exodus 19:5; Jeremiah 31:31-33). St. Paul in Romans 11:17-18 pictures Christians of his day--and so also today--as being engrafted into the tame olive tree, which stands for the original People of God, into places left empty by the fallen branches, Jews who rejected Christ.

Taken from The Basic Catholic Catechism
PART FIVE: The Apostles' Creed IX - XII
Ninth Article: "The Holy Catholic Church; the Communion of Saints"

By William G. Most. (c) Copyright 1990 by William G. Most.

Models Of The Church

Models of the Church


“I will build my church; and the gates of Hades will not
overpower it.” – Jesus



Jesus came to build his church. All Christians affirm this
to be true. However, there are major differences concerning the nature and
purpose of the church. What kind of church did Jesus intend to build? What should
it look like? How should it be structured? Who is part of it? What is its
purpose?





Catholic theologian, Avery Dulles,
provides a helpful resource in sorting through all the possible ecclesiastical
options. In his book, Models of the Church, he gives an overview of the five
main models of church: church as (1) institution, (2) mystical communion, (3) sacrament,
(4) herald, and (5) servant.[1]
He demonstrates the strengths and weakness of each model. He concludes by
integrating each model’s positive contributions to form a more comprehensive
model of church.





Church as Institution



The institutional view “defines the Church primarily in
terms of its visible structures, especially the rights and powers of its
officers” (34).[2]
Church government is not democratic or representative, but hierarchical. Power
is concentrated in the ruling class –the church officers – whose jurisdiction
is patterned after the secular state. As officers of God’s sacraments, the
clergy open and shut the valves of grace. Because the institutional model
maintains that its leadership structure is part of the original deposit of
faith handed down by Christ’s disciples, the authority of the ruling class is
understood as God-given, and should be unquestionably accepted by the faithful.



The strength of this model lies in
its visible manifestation of unity. Unlike any of the following models, all
tests of membership are clearly visible. However, the weaknesses of this model
are manifold. In the final chapter of his book Dulles states that this is the institutional
model is the only one that must not be paramount. “The institutional model, by
itself, tends to become rigid, doctrinaire, and conformist” (194). This does
not imply (as many are quick to assume) that there is absolutely no value in
institutions. [3] It simply proves
that the institution must serve other ends besides its own preservation.[4]





Church as Mystical Communion



In this view, the church consists of people of faith who are
united by their common participation in God’s Spirit through Christ. The ties
that bind are not institutional but pneumatological, communal, and personal. “The
Church, from this point of view, is not in the first instance an institution or
a visibly organized society. Rather it is a communion of men, primarily
interior but also expressed by external bonds of creed, worship, and
ecclesiastical fellowship” (55). The experience of ecclesiastical community
differs from any other community in that it has both a horizontal and
vertical dimension.



Communion in the sense of sociological group would be
simply horizontal; it would be a matter of friendly relationships between man
and man. What is distinctive to the Church… is the vertical dimension – the divine
life disclosed in the incarnate Christ and communicated to men through his
Spirit. The outward and visible bonds of a brotherly society are an element in
the reality of the Church, but they rest upon a deeper spiritual communion of
grace or charity. The communion given by the Holy Spirit finds expression in a
network of mutual interpersonal relationships of concern and assistance.
(49-50)


The strength of this model lies in
its emphasis on the shared life of mutual fellowship in loving community.
However, focusing on this alone can lead to disillusion, since the church is
more than a friendly family of like-minded believers. Thus, it is important to
recognize that



there is built into these ecclesiologies [churches that
make mystical communion their primary emphasis] a certain tension between the
Church as a network of friendly interpersonal relationships and the Church as a
mystical communion of grace. The term koinonia (communion) is used
ambiguously to cover both, but it is not evident that the two necessarily go
together. Is the Church more importantly a friendly fellowship among men or a
mystical communion that has its basis in God? (60-61)[5]


Obviously, friendly fellowship and
mystical communion are not antithetical to one another, but neither are they
the same. The appropriate metaphor for church relationships is not lovers
within the same home, but travelers on the same journey. “Christians commonly
experience the Church more as a companionship of fellow travelers on the same
journey than as a union of lovers dwelling in the same home” (61).



Put starkly, friendship and
fellowship are not identical. If these two expressions are muddled, then
confusion about one’s experience of ecclesiastical community will certainly
occur. A member will expect a level of intimacy with all other church members
that is not possible or sustainable. Gregory Baum warns of the dangers of unrealistic
expectations in regard to one’s experience of community.



Some people… are eagerly looking for the perfect human
community. They long for a community which fulfills all their needs and in
terms of which they are able to define themselves. This search is illusory,
especially in our own day when to be human means to participate in several
communities and to remain critical in regard to all of them. The longing desire
for the warm and understanding total community is the search for the good
mother, which is bound to end in disappointment and heartbreak. There are no
good mothers and fathers, there is only the divine mystery summoning and
freeing us to grow up. (61)


In spite of the valid insights of
the communion model, the church is more than communion. For this reason, the
communion model “can arouse an unhealthy spirit of enthusiasm; in its search
for religious experiences or warm, familial relationships, it could lead to
false expectations and impossible demands, considering the vastness of the
Church, the many goals for which it must labor, and its remoteness from its
eschatological goal” (195).




Church as Sacrament



In this model, the church is a sacrament, a sign and
transmitter of God’s grace in the world. A sacrament is “a visible sign of an
invisible grace.” As such, it is an efficacious sign, meaning that “the sign
itself produces or intensifies that of which it is a sign” (66). In other
words, it is “a true embodiment of the grace that it signifies” (223). Put most
simply, the church truly transmits grace – the favorable presence of God.



One other aspect of a sacrament
underscores and affirms the church as sacrament. Sacraments are communal
realities and not individual transactions:



As understood in the Christian tradition, sacraments are
never merely individual transactions. Nobody baptizes, absolves, or anoints
himself, and it is anomalous for the Eucharist to be celebrated in solitude.
Here again the order of grace corresponds to the order of nature. Man comes
into the world as a member of a family, a race, a people. He comes to maturity
through encounter with his fellow men. Sacraments therefore have a dialogic
structure. They take place in a mutual interaction that permits the people
together to achieve a spiritual breakthrough that they could not achieve in
isolation. A sacrament therefore is a socially constituted or communal symbol
of the presence of grace coming to fulfillment. (67)


The strength of this model is that
the church truly is a sign and instrument of grace to its members and to the
world. Sacramental theology also holds together the outer
(organizational/institutional) and inner (mystical communion) aspects of the
church. Dulles states that its weakness lies in that it “could lead to a
sterile aestheticism and to an almost narcissistic self-contemplation.” (195)






Church as Herald



The herald model “emphasizes faith and proclamation over
interpersonal relations and mystical communion” (76). “This model is
kerygmatic, for it looks upon the Church as a herald – one who receives an
official message with the commission to pass it on… It sees the task of the
Church primarily in terms of proclamation” (76). The heralding church
constantly calls its members to renewal and reformation. The pure word of God passes
judgment on a church that never quite measures up to God’s holy demands.



The strength of this model lies in
its emphasis on the message of the gospel. It is limited in that it is often
not incarnational enough. Sometimes the spoken word eclipses the true Word of
God – the Word made flesh. This is especially obvious when “it focuses too
exclusively on witness to the neglect of action. It is too pessimistic or
quietistic with regard to the possibilities of human effort to establish a
better human society in this life, and the duty of Christians to take part in
this common effort” (87-88).






Church as Servant



The servant model “asserts that the Church should consider
itself as part of the total human family, sharing the same concerns as the rest
of men” (91). The ministry of Jesus, the suffering servant of God who was
certainly “a man for others,” provides the template for this model: “just as
Christ came into the world not to be served but to serve, so the Church,
carrying on the mission of Christ, seeks to serve the world by fostering the
brotherhood of all men” (91-92). As “the Lord was the ‘man for others,’ so much
the Church be ‘the community for others’” (93).



The strength of this model lies in
its emphasis on serving others and not simply serving the church’s
self-interests. However, its weaknesses are manifold, especially when this
model is given preeminence over all other models.



First, authentic service includes
the ministry of the word and sacrament. In the New Testament, the term diakonia
“applies to all types of ministry – including the ministry of the word, of
sacraments, and of temporal help. All offices in the Church are forms of diakonia,
and thus the term, in biblical usage, cannot properly be used in opposition
to preaching or worship” (99-100).



Second, the church’s service toward
the world rarely bears much resemblance to that advocated by those who hold
this model. “It would be surprising to find in the Bible any statement that the
Church as such is called upon to perform diakonia toward the world. It
would not have entered the mind of any New Testament writer to imagine that the
Church has a mandate to transform the existing social institutions, such as slavery,
war, or the Roman rule over Palestine” (100).



Finally, an emphasis on service
alone “may tend to dissolve too much of what is distinctive to Christianity.”



Christians who are inclined to this theory have
constantly to ask themselves whether they have any clear message, whether they
stand for anything definite that they could not stand for without Christ. Is
revelation really necessary for man to accept the value of peace, justice,
brotherhood, and freedom? Could not a Feuerbachian atheist be as effectively
dedicated to these things as a Christian? Is not the whole Christian teaching
about preaching and sacraments rather a burden than a help in bringing about a
community of the spirit that cuts across the barriers among the traditional
religions? (187-188)


For this reason,



the concept of service must be carefully nuanced so as to
keep alive the distinctive mission and identity of the Church… Interpreted in
the light of the gospel, the Kingdom of God cannot be properly identified with
abstract values such as peace, justice, reconciliation, and affluence. The New
Testament personalizes the Kingdom. It identifies the Kingdom of God with the
gospel, and both of them with Jesus… Not to know Jesus and not to put one’s
faith in him is therefore a serious failure. It is not to know the Kingdom as
it really should be known… The notion of the Kingdom of God, which is rightly
used by secular theologians to point up the dimension of social responsibility,
should not be separated from the preaching of Jesus as Lord. The servant notion
of the Kingdom, therefore, goes astray if it seeks to set itself up in
opposition to the kerygmatic. (102)[6]


(source: http://www.theocentric.com/ecclesiology/leadership/models_of_the_church.html)

Monday, January 19, 2009

Paragraph development

Paragraph Development

Develop paragraphs in a variety of patterns that reflect yourthinking about the material. As you write the topic sentence and its supporting sentences, lookfor ways to structure your thinking. Where one author advanceshis or her material by narrating a series of events, anotherundertakes a physical description and another undertakes ananalysis of the topic. These patterns of paragraph developmentusually emerge in the process of revision. More than one pattern of development may be used in a series ofparagraphs.

Here are some important modes of paragraph development:

Exemplification

Narration

Process

Description

Comparison and contrast

Analogy

Cause and effect

Classification and division

Definition

Analysis

Enumeration


click here to follow the link

MISPLACED MODIFIERS

MISPLACED MODIFIERS

Of all the writing errors you can make, misplaced modifiers are
among the most likely to confuse your readers, but they're also kind of
fun because misplaced modifiers can give your sentences silly meanings
that you never intended. If you're not careful, you can end up writing
that your boss is a corn muffin instead of that your boss invested in corn muffins.



I once worked with an editor who e-mailed everyone in the office the
especially hilarious sentences created by misplaced modifiers. Each
day, we produced enough reports to keep two copy editors busy, and many
of the writers were scientists, so there were always lots of
opportunities to find misplaced modifiers. The e-mails were
entertaining, unless you were the one who had written the offending
sentence.



Modifiers are just what they sound like—words or phrases that modify
something else. Misplaced modifiers are modifiers that modify something
you didn't intend them to modify. For example, the word only is a modifier that's easy to misplace.



These two sentences mean different things:



I ate only vegetables.



I only ate vegetables.



The first sentence (I ate only vegetables) means that I ate nothing but vegetables—no fruit, no meat, just vegetables.



The second sentence (I only ate vegetables) means that all I did with vegetables was eat them. I didn't plant, harvest, wash, or cook them. I only ate them.



It's easiest to get modifiers right when you keep them as close as
possible to the thing they are modifying. When you're working with
one-word modifiers, for example, they usually go right before the word
they modify.



Here's another example of two sentences with very different meanings:



I almost failed every art class I took.



I failed almost every art class I took.



The first sentence (I almost failed every art class I took) means that although it was close, I passed all those classes.



The second sentence (I failed almost every art class I took) means that I passed only a few art classes.



Note again that the modifier, almost, acts on what directly follows it—almost failed versus almost every class. In either case, I'm probably not going to make a living as a painter, but these two sentences mean different things.



A similar rule applies when you have a short phrase at the beginning of
a sentence: whatever the phrase refers to should immediately follow the
comma. Here's an example:



Rolling down the hill, Squiggly was frightened that the rocks would land on the campsite.



In that sentence, it's Squiggly, not the rocks, rolling down the hill because the word Squiggly is what comes immediately after the modifying phrase, rolling down the hill.



To fix that sentence, I could write, “Rolling down the hill, the rocks
threatened the campsite and frightened Squiggly.” Or I could write,
“Squiggly was frightened that the rocks, which were rolling down the
hill, would land on the campsite.”



aardvark hillHere's another funny sentence:



Covered in wildflowers, Aardvark pondered the hillside's beauty.



In that sentence, Aardvark—not the hillside—is covered with wildflowers because the word Aardvark is what comes directly after the modifying phrase, covered in wildflowers.



If I want Aardvark to ponder a wildflower-covered hillside, I need to
write something like, “Covered in wildflowers, the hillside struck
Aardvark with its beauty.”



Here, the words the hillside immediately follow the modifying phrase, covered in wildflowers.



Or better yet, I could write, “Aardvark pondered the beauty of the wildflowers that covered the hillside.”







I can think of more ways to write that, but the point is to be careful
with introductory statements: they're often a breeding ground for
misplaced modifiers, so make sure they are modifying what you intend.



Modifiers are so funny! In addition to misplacing them, you can dangle them and make them squint!



A dangling modifier describes something that isn't even in your
sentence. Usually you are implying the subject and taking for granted
that your reader will know what you mean—not a good strategy. Here's an
example:



Hiking the trail, the birds chirped loudly.



The way the sentence is written, the birds are hiking the trail because
they are the only subject present in the sentence. If that's not what
you mean, you need to rewrite the sentence to something like, “Hiking
the trail, Squiggly and Aardvark heard birds chirping loudly.”



And how do you make a modifier squint? By placing it between two things
that it could reasonably modify, meaning the reader has no idea which
one to choose.



For example:



Children who laugh rarely are shy.



As written, that sentence could mean two different things: children who
rarely laugh are shy, or children who laugh are rarely shy.



In the original sentence (Children who laugh rarely are shy) the word rarely is squinting between the words laugh and are shy.
I think “shifty modifier” would be a better name, but I don't get to
name these things, so they are called squinting modifiers (or sometimes
they are also called two-way modifiers).



So remember to be careful with modifying words and phrases—they are
easily misplaced, dangled, and made to squint. My theory is that these
problems arise because you know what you mean to say, so the humor of
the errors doesn't jump out at you. Misplaced modifiers often crop up
in first drafts and are often easily noticed and remedied when you
re-read your work the next day.



That's all.



This week Mike Benda and Kristi win a copy of Bonnie Trenga's book The Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier.
It's a cute little grammar book that uses a solve-the-mystery format to
make writing rules fun. The books are even signed! So congratulations
Mike and Kristi, and for people who didn't win and are interested, I'll
put a link on the Grammar Girl web site.



Next, if you're in New York City and you want to meet me, I'm going to
be speaking all day, every day, in the Microsoft LiveSearch booth at BookExpo America
in June, and I'll be signing my audiobook. The Microsoft booth is in a
general area, so you can come by even if you aren't registered for the
Expo. I'll put more details in the e-mail newsletter, so be sure to
sign up at QuickAndDirtyTips.com.



Some of the other Quick and Dirty Tips podcasts have fun topics this week. Modern Manners is talking about how to deal with smelly colleagues, and the Traveling Avatar is announcing the winners of his Second Life photo contest. So be sure to check them out.





Diversions




A new punctuation mark: the pomma point



Thanks



Thanks to Wesley from Planet Retcon for coming up with the title for the podcast feed: I Uploaded This Show To My Webhost Without A Title. (If you followed me at Twitter, you could have played along too.)


(source=http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/misplaced-modifiers.aspx)